Mirko Geritz – afib@irland

back in germany!

Although it was a very nice time the last two months in belfast, i am so glad to be back in germany. It feels, my little 1room flat is a big luxury suite and i love the view out of my 10th floor balcony. Its nice to see my friends and family again and to eat a german Bratwurst! Its interessting how fast internet can be… and lovely to see my desktop PC.

I will definitely miss to just walk five minutes to work instead of going by S- „animal transport“ Bahn for 90 minutes now 🙁

everyday life incoming…

was it worth it?

Thinking back the last two months in Belfast i remember alot of good and bad things. What gets into my mind first is a really bad and shabby accommodation with no real internet which made this trip really annoying and based only on this i wouldnt recommend this stay to anyone else! BUT…

there was a lot more than that. A lot more new impressions and experiences.

It was interessting working in a foreign company and get forced to speak english. Thats the needed pressure to start to improve your english speaking skills in an active way. Also to see the differences in mentality and culture even if they are small. The nature and landscape was incredible and compared to Berlin the air was noticeable more clean.

Living abroad also means you are cut off from family support and stuff like that.. I am already living for my own in Germany but not that far away from my parents to get some cheep and delicious meals on weekends 😉 It made me more confident and able to stay on own feets and make the best out of any situation, meet new people, arrange and live together with them.

With all that i have to say.. Yes.. it was worth it.

I will always remember this experience and i’m sure it will help me a lot in my future life.. Thanks for this opportunity!

The last week of working is quiet calm. I have to check some more laptops to be ready for presentations and do all the rest of paperwork for InternEurope and the Europass. I’ve also done quiet well with my form to programm but i have to admit that it is and will not be finished. Finished in a sense of implementing it in the productive systems of the University, and there are still some little things missing.. it got a bit difficult in the end to get a solution to make the form sending confirmation emails out to all the department bosses if someone needs access to their storage and hold this form-request in queue until all is confirmed.. but they will get a new spanish guy for a work placement in september who knows about programming and stuff like that. i will save my progress and maybe he can use it.

On friday my supervisor organized to go to a chinese all-you-can-eat restaurant at launch break with all our colleagues to say good bye.. after it i’m done and the last weekend will start.

We got a long weekend with a holyday on monday, so good conditions for some more multicultural interaction 😉 we were invited to some spanish guys to tase some beer and good bushmills whiskey. It was a long night but it was very helpful considering to improve our english and social skills alot 🙂

The next two days we rested and chilled out in our accommodation. The weather wasnt good anyway. And to be honest, the last week is coming and we all start to looking forward flying back to Germany!

On last friday we had a quick meeting at the internEurope agency to fill out some paperwork and also a survey about our stay here in Belfast and all around that. The results were quiet good exept the topics about accomodation and especially the internet. Sry but we had to give some devastating grades to it! We heard from our portuguese mate that he has to move to another house next week because the contract about this accommodation is running out. So well they just got this piece of living space just for us. I can just hope they will learn for the future that they check the availability of internet before they spend there money.. or maybe they just couldnt find anything better at this time -.-

this week i got some PC’s to reinstall. Installing Windows 10 Enterprsie technical preview, some apps and look if its all working fine. It does 😉

Windows 10 is a balance between lovely Win7 and nasty Win8 but i have to say i still dont like it.. i dont know why i should need all those tile design and app system. I’m sure there are some people who will profit from a few new features implemented or just like the new design but for me there is all fine with Win7 and i have no need to get a new interface and layout. Its just confusing and there should be a version for standard desktop or laptop pc’s without touchscreen with the old design.. but i guess it’s called Windows 7 😀

multicultural weekend

Last weekend we did a little multicultural evening with some spanish, portuguese and french people we met through our 8th portuguese housemate and tryed some spirituous mixed drinks together 😉 it was quiet interessting to speak english for hours in my free time. Sure i had to speak many times before but that was mostly some short smalltalk. But i have to say i managed it quiet well and i experienced that „2beer“ astonishingly makes it easier to speak a foreign language 😀 seems its easier when you not always think about every word and just talk 😉

exhausting friday and it took two days of resting this time 😀

Cavehill

as we arrived in Belfast we saw all the hills arround the city and one of them with a little cliff on it. We already said that it would be nice to get up there and so we did it a few days later. The Cavehill is 340m tall and it was a hard trip (at least for me) but we managed to get up there and it was worth all the work! It was an beautiful view and also the weather was the best we ever had.

finally i will show you some pics of this little hiking trip.

The Weekend was quiet exhausting with this daytrip on saturday but as i said it was worth it. On Sunday the weather was bad and we were just resting and relaxing in our accommodation with some games and drinks.

The week started on Monday (suprising…), and the eat, sleep, work, repeat loop started again =/

Not much to say about working.. not that i dont have to do something.. its just normal working staff and i dont have a demand in telling this.. set up some laptops, update them, programming my form, help to arrange 20 laptops with cables, mouse, power supply for a workshop aaand a lot more little things..

and some random pics for you 😉