Hilarious!

Funny thing happened today. I got an email from Eidgenössisches Departement des Innern EDI, Staatssekretariat für Bildung und Forschung SBF, Ressort Allgemeine Bildung, Maturität. So far nothing special but you might wonder what it was about (so did I). First paragraph went like this:

Guten Tag,
Sie haben uns im Januar 2005 auf dem Postweg Ihre Bewerbungsunterlagen zukommen lassen und sich darin für die Mitarbeit als Aufsichtsperson bei den Maturitätsprüfungen interessiert. Sie haben damals weder eine Eingangsbestätigung noch einen Absagebrief erhalten, noch sind Ihnen die Unterlagen zurückgesandt worden - wir sind uns bewusst, dass dies schlechter Stil ist, und bitten Sie nachträglich, diesen unkorrekten Umgang mit Ihrer Bewerbung zu entschuldigen. (Unser Prüfungssekretariat musste zu jener Zeit bei gleichbleibendem Personalbestand substantielle neue Aufgaben übernehmen und war deshalb chronisch überlastet.)

Everywhere else they wouldn´t write anything anymore and hope that you forgot it, but not here! I´m lovin it!

Btw: What should I do? Write an email back with "Thank you for your immediate answer." or wait for two years and then tell them, that I was in military service two years ago...

Project: Memories

While surfing on youtube lately, I had an idea. So, I invested some time and here´s the result:

AIESEC new years event, Kosice, 26.12.2006-2.1.2007



My traineeship time, Stuttgart, 8.12.2005-4.9.2006



TWIN in Finland, Tampere&Jyväskylä, 19.2.2006-26.2.2006



AIESEC new years event Praha, 28.12.2004-2.1.2005



Lifesaving Interclub World Championship, Viareggio, 19.9.2004-27.9.2004



Interrail trip in Scandinavia, Berlin, Göteborg, Stockholm, Jönköping, Koebenhavn, 22.2.2004-11.3.2004

Bern vs. St.Gallen

My first term in St. Gallen is almost over - only the ugly part remains: exams. But it´s time to for a first conclusion, to answer some questions I´ve been asked connected to my transition and to compare Universities Bern and St. Gallen - now that I´m one of not too many who can really compare it! And I hope that all those strange reactions and behaviour a person gets (from both sides) when they say, that they switch from Bern to St. Gallen will change in the future. One side thinks, that you abuse the system and get easier, with less effort to the same degree than they did, and the other side thinks that you turn into an arrogant, money oriented bastard. I really can´t remember a first reaction which was “cool move”. It was more or less always “why?”
Ok, all of you who are reading this, I´d like to ask before reading further, what your picture about both universities is? And then ask yourself for how much of it you really have a proof and not just rumours you heard?

Now, here we go with my impressions from the first 3 months…

The students
Well there´s a common prejudice that all St. Galler students are arrogant, living on a different level than other students and thinking that they´re better than everyone else. My impression is that this prejudice is wrong on a general level. Most of the students are normal people, you can talk on a down-to-earth level and they face the same problems like me and you. It might be that sometimes they´re looking a bit more for their bests than at other universities, but still it´s not so drastic that you don´t help eachother out.
Like I said, this conclusion is on a general level. Like everywhere else, there are exceptions which prove the rule. You have them as well in Bern. Here, you can recognize most of them form their burberry scarfs (favourite color brown) or their draw-up collar of their polo-shirts. And another good indicator is a membership of AC (Ausländer-Club).

The lectures
The approach of my studies is more praxis oriented and more collaborative work in groups than I was used to in Bern (which was actually one of the reasons I decided to switch). The level of regular lectures is not really higher than I´m used to. Which proofs, that you can learn something at other universities as well and that St. Gallen is not the one and only. And the quality of professors is approx. the same. There are the ones who lecture very well. Then you have the ones who´s structure of thinking is very confusing - and if they express their thoughts in the same order, it´s kind of difficult to get their message. In the third category are externals which provide good lectures but are annoyed by all the regulations of the university. And finally we have the ones who are more a substitute of the central heating system than a facilitator.

The infrastructure
In this section I see the biggest difference to Business Administration in Bern. We have a nice centralized system where you can apply for exams and a central platform where you can get all your study material. In Bern you always had to do a hunting trip through the institute sites in order to get your study material. Apart from the systems you have quite similar infrastructure. Rooms are too small (or too many students are in there), too expensive cafeterias or a crowded library - we know this already.

It´s difficult to say what is better and what is worse and what the real reason is. Some effects are maybe related to the university, some might be related to a different level of studies (master vs. bachelor). To conclude I can say that I don´t regret my step and I don´t have to wonder how it would have been, if…

It´s 007!

Oh, I travel... a sort of licensed troubleshooter, said JB back in 1965. Well, this could be approx. my year of 007. Travelling probably a bit less - troubleshooting a bit more. Some stuff I´d like to fulfill:

• finished master thesis by the end of the year
• get accepted for an exchange term for 08
• do some more sport than last year
• have as much fun as last year
• have some time for holidays
  

007-Motto will be:

Cos only you can be your help
So darling listen
Listen to yourself

In the hope of a good year - shaken not stirred!

An experience from Kosice

I just needed a study break, so here´s what I promised in the last post - an experience I had in Kosice. It was on the evening of the 28^th around 5 o´clock - it was already dark and it was snowing, the streets were almost empty. I walked from the city centre to the flat (which takes approx. 30min), alone, wrapped in my warm winter clothes, nice music of Lunik and the beautiful voice of Jael in my ear - basically in my whole head…
Walking through those dark, empty, snowy streets I started to think. And there were two major thoughts which went through my head. First one: human mind. I was really amazed, how the human brain has the abitlity process things very fast and learn immediately. I mean I arrived around 24 hours earlier in a place, around 1´000km from home. In a city I haven´t been before where they speak a language I don´t know. But still from a look on a city map and the memorizing of the near neighbourhood I was able to find my way home immediately - even with walking the whole way. I´m amazed how humans can absorb stimuli with their eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin, process the stimulus somehow, sometimes connect it to earlier experiences and store the information. I can´t imagine how life would be without this ability…

The second thought I had that evening is something completely different but still connected to Kosice: Friends! How great is it to have friends?! Why I had this thought in Slovakia? Simple: I met a Slovakian trainee in Germany - Ludmila. She´s originally from the area of Kosice and is studying there. When I found out that NYE will be in this city I dropped her some lines in an email and told her that maybe I´ll come to Kosice. She was so excited, you could already see it when you read her emails. In the end we finally could meet on 27^th although not for such a long time but still better than nothing. And she even gave me the keys to her flat and let me, Dan & Kate stay in the flat for the whole time. Thank you so much for that Ludmila!!
But the point is not, that it´s great to have friends, because you can stay in their places when you´re there! But because a friend is someone, you can share memories with, someone you can have fun with. But as well someone with whom you can talk seriously, someone who helps you even someone who realizes you need help although you didn´t say anything! A friend of mine once wrote me the following:

The most beautiful thing about friendship is not an outstretched hand,
It´s not a friendly smile or the human contact,
but it´s the substantial feeling to have someone who believes in you and who trusts you!

Making friends is sometimes easy, sometimes hard. But really keep in the touch with them seems even harder - but it´s possible! Some time ago, after around 2 months without hearing from most of the people I spent a lot of time with in Germany, I got an email from one of them, complaining a bit that she haven´t heard from me since I left. I thought: She´s so true, I didn´t have contact with many of them! So I decided to write to almost everyone instead of just replying to her. A mail-chain started and I was so amazed - because it wasn´t a chain with emails of the kind “send this to 15 friends, and…” but it was a chain of people sharing things with each other! And some people even wrote: Simon, thank you so much for this email! Therefore: The time is now! It´s a time to make friends! But most of all: It´s a time to keep friends!

Queen once sang the following:

Friends will be friends,
When you're in need of love they give care and attention.
Friends will be friends,
When you're through with life and all hope is lost,
Hold out your hand, cause friends will be friends
right to the end!

Trip to Slovakia - Part III

Here´s the third and last part of my report about the happenings in Slovakia. Next post will be about a nice experience I had in Kosice. But first enjoy Episode III of the story...

31^th Dec - new years eve
D-day finally arrived. We planned to go bowling during the day but when we heard that it was booked out completely for the whole previous day, we didn´t even try to go there. Instead one of the slovaks - the one with the two apple pies in McDonalds three days before - had the idea to play pool-billiard. We wanted to have a nice lunch before, because we weren´t sure how good the dinner would be (based on what we heard and saw from the days before…). Therefore we decided to go once again to the place with the marvellous steaks. We even convinced the other swiss delegates to come with us instead of going to paintball. Kates convincing tactic was very funny - “you get blue spots all over your body and it´s gonna last at least for two weeks…” Anyway, when we arrived in the city centre we had to notice that the place was closed. Too bad, but hey what, we went to La bomba again and ordered there US steaks, which were even slightly bigger than the ones before. And there as well, it was delicious again.

After our at least 2 hours lunch we searched the place to play billard. Unfortunately we couldn´t find one which was still open, so we ended up in a internet café. Dan & Kate wanted to write new years text messages, I wanted to check my connection to travel home and the other three planned to go aqua-city in poprad-tatry and looked up some information about it… Half an hour later when we left the place again we realized, that the christmas market was open again (which wasn´t the case the previous days we spent there). So, we ended up there drinking silvester punch and hot wine. Even though it was already dark we realized that it wasn´t too late yet and that we should stop after the second one… Instead we went to Kaufland again to buy some important things for the evening and then went back to the flat or the dorm in order to prepare for the official dinner which started around 2 hours later.

The official dinner was in the dorm itself in a cold and unfriendly room. First they served some salad with bread and a drink for the toast which was quite ok. Then it only got worse - first we realized that the red wine we bought on our own wasn´t very good. Later - actually a lot later - the dinner was served and it was already cold. So we went back to the kitchen and heated our plates in the microwave again. Then, we opened our bottle of white wine, which was even worse. In the mean time they started with a game in the official program which was as funny as a power breakdown… At around 11 o´clock when we were pissed off enough we decided to grab our bottles of champagne and go to the city centre. We supposed that there was more going on as we already saw that they built a stage next to the christmas market - and there was more going on. So, we ended our year with candles and hot wine and music from the stage. It was sort of a cover band playing there which was ok - they seemed to like Queen…

We started our new year with some champagne, a nordic circle - those who know what it is can imagine how cool it was - and then another hot wine… All in all a great start to a hopefully successful year 2007! After some partying on there we went to a club where they played some turkish music for some time. Then we let the day/night die away in the dorm room of our swiss delegates before we went to bed at around 0430…

1^st Jan 07 - I´m coming home…
Already 4.5 hours later I woke up again. After showering and packing my stuff I walked with my heavy backpack for half an hour through the deserted city of Kosice to the mainstation where I had to catch the train at 1018. What followed was a 6.5 hrs long and boring train ride to Bratislava. The train stopped more or less everywhere on the way - I´m sure I saw the railway stations of each town which has more than 5´000 inhabitants… Anyway I spent my time with sleeping, listening music or reading Vodka (nooo, I´m not drunk, that´s really the name of the book I´m reading at the moment!). In Bratislava I had to wait for my connection for approx. one hour. So I rushed to the centre, took some pictures of the presidential palace on the way, bought some dinner in McDonalds (as it was more or less the only thing opened and I didn´t have much time) and rushed back to hlavna stanica where I boarded the train to Vienna.

After this nutrition I felt pretty good so I decided to start studying which I did for around one hour! Thanx to earplugs I even could absorb the noise of the grouching kidz from the compartment next door…

In Vienna I spent another hour waiting for my nighttrain with drinking coffee and reading in Vodka ;-) Then finally I went to the platform and searched my wagon. But I couldn´t find it. So I walked up the whole platform and then again down and finally I saw it, but strange, it was the first one! When I got in the wagon I finally realized why the ticket they sold me in Kosice was sooo expensive - because the incompetent woman from Slovakrail booked a bed in a two-bed room instead of one in a 6 bed compartment. Anyhoo, the money was already spent so I made the best out of it (as I´m a student I´m used to do such things). I ordered of course a full, 4-component breakfast because it was included - not that I´m a hungry person early in the morning :) My breakfast therefore included 2 orange juices, 1 coffee and one fruit.

At around 0620 on 2^nd in the morning I finally arrived in Zürich, means at 0730 I was in Bern and at 8 o´clock after almost 22 hours on the road I finally arrived back home, where I first took a nice, hot and long shower. Afterwards I went to sleep for around three hours and then started to study - I only had 8 days left till my first exam…!

To conclude I can say, that I´m glad I finally decided to go to Slovakia. Although some parts weren´t that cool, we spent a lot of great & funny moments together. Dan, François, Kate, Kathrin & Mirjam: It was great to spent NYE with you in the city centre of Kosice. Or as a kazakh journalist once said: “Niiiice, I liiiike!” ;-)

new year´s eve in the city centre

the presidential palace in bratislava

Trip to Slovakia - Part II

Another rather long post about what happened in Slovakia. This time about 29th and 30th of December. I´m sorry for the mistakes in the previous post (it was already late when I wrote it...). Once again for this post as well: Whoever finds mistakes may keep them!

29^th Dec - first official day & global village
New day, new funny stuff experienced. Dan, Kate and me decided to meet around 1230 next to the hostel where we were supposed to stay and where all other delegates were. At the agreed time - no sign of the other two. So I waited and waited. After around half an hour I received the following text message: “Simu we need your help!! Find us please! We are hanging for half an hour around different Dom Mladezi but can´t find the right one :((“ As I was almost a local in the area (the flat was just 5mins away) I found them immediately - of course ;-) They weren´t too far away, but didn´t find the right dorm building. I guided the upset, tired and hungry Dan&Kate to the check-in and the flat we lived for the rest of our stay in Kosice.

While relaxing there a bit, we got a message from the three other swiss delegates - they missed the connection in Vienna and told us that they will arrive late in the evening. We thought, that this can´t be true and can´t happen because they had important stuff for our global village. Beside, Dan and me had the took the same connection from Zürich to Bratislava two days earlier and spent 3 hours in Bratislava and managed to be in Kosice before the arrival time they mentioned. So, we made some remote travel management: First of all, we told them to go Bratislava at least and take the next connection from there - they somehow didn´t come up with this idea yet. Then we told them which train they have to catch there and they did it - our stuff for global village arrived in time :)

After these issues were solved we went again to city centre. Dan and Kate wanted to eat something, then we met again with Tanya (one of the Ukrainian girls) and the girls wanted to go to a place where they have the “icecreamiest ice-cream” ever. Dan and me ended up drinking coffee and the girls eating ice-cream - somehow Ukrainians are more used to eat ice-cream in winter than swiss...

In the evening we went to Kaufland in order to buy some bread for our fondue at global village. I decided that I want to eat something so, we went to the food corner in this mall and I bought a pita kebab. The others didn´t want to eat as they weren´t hungry yet. Dan even said: “I´ll eat at the global village!” - yeah Dan, this was a very wise decision as we saw later on… ;-)

At around half past nine in the evening, the global village finally started. We had a nice fondue served with white wine, some chocolate and of course some swiss tequila and we distributed stickers with swiss cross on it to everyone - by the end of the evening almost everyone was somehow swiss. There were even people who came to us and asked if we have stickers left!

Dan´s condition started to get bad already at around 11 o´clock - somehow he couldn´t executed his plan - how surprised I was… Anyway Kate and me brought him to our flat and I went back to the dorm where the afterparty already started. When I arrived there again, two of the other swiss delegates told me that they´ll go to sleep, while the third one started an intercultural communication with Slovakia… Soon after I returned to the dorm I already left again, went back to the flat and got some sleep as well…

30^th Dec - the day before THE day
On Saturday we planned to go skiing/snowboarding in a place called Plejsy which is about 40km from Kosice. After one hour with train and a nice ski-bus (picture below) we arrived in the ski resort. But there were just two problems: First, long queues at the “ski rental station”, second one, almost no snow - well they were producing artificial snow with some snow machines but that wasn´t enough for the whole resort. Still we started to queue in order to rent snowboards or skis. After some time we heard that there are no snowboards left - we decided to ski again after several years without skiing ;-) But as efficiency was somehow a foreign word we could see any progress. We went to another place to rent skis but there was as well a queue which didn´t progress. After some time we gave up, bought a one-way ticket for the chairlift and went up. It took us around twenty minutes go up the mountain and when we arrived we were almost frozen - therefore we went to the restaurant first. After some thing to drink and some food (yes Dan was hungry for once:) we decided to walk down at least…

When we arrived back in Kosice it was already evening and after showering we went to have dinner. I proposed the place where I´ve been on the first evening because it was pretty close and had some nice Italian food. But this time another funny thing happened: First I wanted to order a salad. The waitress said “Sorry we don´t have vegetables anymore!” Ok, I thought, somehow strange but anyway, then I´ll just take a Pizza al Prosciutto. Her answer: “As I already told you, we don´t have vegetables anymore because of the end of the year we didn´t order new supplies yet. You can have this Pizza, but there won´t be tomatos on it!” Hmmm, ok, whatever I´ll take it without vegetables. Dan ordered Pasta - so no problem with that. Kate wanted to have a steak - no problem with that either. But then the waitress returned and said: “Sorry, we don´t have steaks anymore…” After we finally got our meals and eat the other two wanted to order dessert - but guess what, yes they almost had nothing left. Well Kate ordered something with coconut and Dan with chocolat - what he got was something like hot Nutella… ;-)

We thought that we had our fun for the day already after we left our dining place, but noooo, we were wrong. We didn´t take the other swiss delegates into account. When we got to their room and asked how their day was, they came up with the following story: they were caught in a tram without ticket. And they thought they are smart - the only slovak guy there pretended to be foreigner who doesn´t understand as well and they played stupid foreigner didn´t know what to do and how to buy tickets. Well, somehow it didn´t work. Then they thought that they´re even smarter and showed their swiss IDs to prove there point - didn´t work out as planned because the controller took their IDs away. So, everything ended up in a bit a mess and each of them had to pay a fee in order to get their IDs back…

After they told us their story we went to a pub to drink some beer. Then we returned to the dorm and joined topalky party which wasn´t very good. So we went to a room of some slovak people where - at midnight - we did a pre-run of new years eve in order to make sure that we are well-prepared and everything will go smoothly the day afterwards!

to be continued...

Fondue @ global village

(almost) everyone was somehow Swiss

the SkiBus which took us to Plejsy

Swiss delegates & Kate

Trip to Slovakia - Part I

After some relaxing and already some studying, I´m now able again to write about what we experienced on our trip to Kosice, Slovakia for new years eve celebration. I decided to split the whole story in different posts, as it would be too long for one. So, here comes Part I:

The travel
It all started on the evening of 26.12.06 at around 9 o´clock in the evening when Dan and me boarded the train to Zürich. After we talked a bit about how we celebrated christmas, we already arrived and switched to the night train to Vienna. As we realized, that our beds would be in railway cars which were pretty far apart, we decided to go to a car in the middle. We spent the next hours with some chips and beer before we already went to sleep.

At 8 in the morning we met again the platform in Vienna where we switched to the train in direction of Bratislava. After crossing the boarder we finally arrived there. First thing which caught our eye in Slovakia, was the sign “Intim Salon - Happy-a-GoGo” which we saw from the train. Happy-a-GoGo developed to one of our running gag during the next days…

In Bratislava we left the train and spent 3 hours in the city. What we saw: beefeaters wearing sunglasses, the castle, McDonalds and Coffee&Co. There Dan ordered a hot chocolate and was very surprised when he got “melted chocolate”. We found out later in Kosice, that this seems to be very common in Slovakia. At around 13 o´clock we took the train to where we arrived at around 7 pm.

Ludmila, a friend of mine, which I met in Germany, and her boyfriend picked us up at the train station. After bringing Dan to the hotel he booked before we went to her flat, where I could stay during the whole stay (Dan and Kate joined two days later as well). The evening we spent with catching up a bit and talking about Switzerland and Slovakia. Unfortunately, my friend left already next morning as the had celebration of her sisters engagement…

28^th Dec - the day before it officially started

On the following day I met again around lunch time with Dan and Kate. First we went to eat something as they didn´t have breakfast yet. Afterwards we met two other ukrainian Aiesecers and went to a place called “La bomba” in order to drink hot wine. It was very funny there, because of the different discussions and question people had. Dan for example presented us his idea about toilet business in Ukraine - very interesting ;-) Then afterwards we were asked, very funny questions about Switzerland: “Do you have villages?”, “Do you have toilets on the street?” and “Do you have kangaroos in Switzerland?”

In the evening we went to have a really nice and compared to Switzerland very cheap dinner in a steak house - yummy, the beef steak was very delicious. After that we joined the other Aiesecers in a bar drank some stuff and then went to Mc Donalds because the girls wanted to have some ice cream and it was the only place still open. The boys ended up with eating apple pie - a slovak guy even bought two pies simply because there was a promotion and not because he wanted to! After that we all walked home and went to a well-deserved sleep…

Some pictures of the first day:

The castle in Bratislava

City centre of Kosice

Dan & Kate @ late night dessert

Happy 2007!

Soo, finally arrived in 2007 and back home from Slovakia again. It was very cool in Kosice but right now I´m too tired to write too much about it. Therefore just: Happy new year from Swiss NYE 06 Delegates! - More to come later on...