alcippe | (no subject)

I'm back from the company holiday party in Hamburg. While I haven't officially had my first day of work yet, they invited me to come along, which was cool.

I met up with everyone at the Berlin office on Friday afternoon and we all took the train together to Hamburg, where they had gotten hotel rooms for us. After we freshened up we continued onward to the Hamburg office, where the company had gotten the event space on the first floor for free. It was a really nice big space and the food was great. The owner of the company sat next to me at dinner and he explained that he felt it was better to have a cheap holiday party and be able to give out great gifts to the employees, than to spend big bucks on an expensive venue.

They gave us all iPads!!!

This is so much easier to lug around than my laptop, and so much easier to use than my iPhone. And it was free, which is the really cool thing. So here I am, sitting in a cafe, typing away on my iPad, looking excessively like a Yuppie hipster, which in this particular cafe means I fit right in.

Tomorrow it's back to searching for an apartment, and this nifty little gadget is going to make it a lot easier. I'm going to investigate spaces in Neukoln and Kreuzberg this week. All my new coworkers seemed to think that area was pretty good, so I'm going to investigate and see what I can find.

You know, as a tourist I always found Sundays so excruciatingly boring because nothing was open and there was nothing to do. But now that I'm living here it has become my favorite day. I don't feel guilty about being lazy, and I can just chill out. It's a great feeling, definitely different from Chicago, where I never felt like I could take a break or even just take a moment to breathe or notice what season it was. Speaking of which, I have totally noticed that it is winter here (even though fall is not technically over). It hasn't stopped snowing since my first night here, and everything has a beautiful blanket of white covering it. It's hard to get around, but it sure looks beautiful.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.