This probably doesn't come as a big surprise to those of you who have been following my life for a while: I am leaving Kiel, I will not finish my master's here. The main reason is that the programme is boring and I don't seem to learn anything. Also, obviously, I've been here for almost a year and it feels like it's time to move on. Also, I've already had plans to move to Turkey after I finish my studies in Kiel, so it was rather easy to just do this a year earlier. So my life should get exciting again and I should write more often in the future - when I have internet access, that is.

For now, I have quite a lot to tell about my past few months in Kiel, which turned out to be the last few months here. They have been extremely busy but in a very good way. I was always busy meeting friends, learning things and going into the field. I started to help at a bird ringing project, which was really nice and the people there were really nice too - which is, of course, generally the case with people in bird ringing projects. It's a really nice site that we are working in and it awakens memories of the good old times. And it has been good training for the next few weeks in Sweden.
I also went on quite a few excursions both from university and some bird counts. (I am on one right now, but more about that below.) I did my first ever real bird race which turned out to be extremely impressive as we got a whole of 156 species in almost 24 hours. Even the best areas in Austria couldn't get you that much and we stayed very close to home and didn't go anywhere specifically to get the most birds. We started at 1.30 am at the house of one of the group's members. The nocturnal birds were very cooperative and called and sang and showed me a completely new picture of nightlife - which is what I normally always miss because it is when I am sleeping. We biked from there to the east coast of Schleswig-Holstein, which is, as I learned, not half as impressive as the west coast, but still good, and we also had a fantastic day with lots of migrants still around. I also find you appreciate birds more, when you have only one of each species, not like at the west coast, where you have hundreds and thousands of each. We biked back through a forest, went swimming in a freezing cold lake, which was good because the day was quite hot and arrived back where we started at 11 pm for one last owl. I was still fit enough to play a whole football match the next day, which I was rather impressed with. But the truth is that we had so many birds we really didn't have time to get tired even after more than 20 hours and 100 km on the bike.

On another excursion we actually went to the west coast and got to see the hundreds and thousands of shore birds which feels like paradise to me but I can also understand that they can get boring if you have them all the time. The one thing that I don't think could ever get boring was the breeding colony of arctic terns that we visited. Arctic terns, next to being really pretty and amazingly elegant flyers are just the best birds in the world anyways, because they fly a distance equalling a trip around the planet each year. In case you ever wondered where I got my inspiration from...
In yet another excursion I learned a wholly new definition of the term "hill". I had to look twice, when I was told to look at the hilly landscape in the eastern part of Schleswig-Holstein compared to the flat part in the west. To be honest, I still don't really see the difference, but if they need hills to feel better, let's just have them hills, even though most people can only laugh about them.

And finally I went on one last excursion for a week, and we are now at Büsum which is a tiny village at the west coast in the Wadden Sea national park. We study birds and bird food (i.e. worms, mussels and the like). We went out with a research vessel twice to go to outer sand banks, do bird counts from the ship and collect sediment samples including worms and stuff. It was my first ever time on a research vessel and it was really, really cool! The birds themselves - as I said before - are cool because they are species that don't occur in the mainland and so I do not see them often, but they are very few species and lots of them, so they do get a little boring after a while. Same goes with the worms, although technically I would say they are boring from the start but that depends on your preferences, of course. But actually studying the birds and their food directly is pretty cool still. However, this excursion also showed me - again - that science at this level is probably not what I want to do with my life. Scientists here are basically just trying to make up things so they can research something. Like the question why a bird sits to sleep exactly in place x and not 100 metres further away. When every normal person, I suppose, would just think that it just sleeps there without any particular reason. But, of course, if you get enough data and use statistics correctly you can probably come up with a fancy explanation that will earn you a publication in a medium good journal and possibly help you earn another grant for further research. Well, I would just leave the birds be and allow them to sleep wherever they feel like sleeping and instead of disturbing them and making up causes, I hope to invest my efforts in researching more interesting questions. But, of course, I suppose, researchers also have to earn money in places where there isn't really that much to research...

Next to the excursions I took several philosophy classes this semester at university, because I could and I didn't feel like taking the boring classes that my master's programme officially offered. They were really interesting and I even thought about staying for another semester just for that. But then, while summers in Kiel are great, I felt like I'd rather spend a winter in Turkey than another winter here. The weather is really cold and annoying and the days are very short and the lack of artificial turf football fields mean that football training mainly consists of jogging which gets boring after a short while too.

The other thing is that, of course, the more you learn about society and politics the more you find how stupid things really are. And you start to doubt democracy. Well, I do. And Donald Trump is not the only reason for this, although he is perfect image of what's the problem with democracy. Or rather, the whole of the American election campaigns is a perfect image of this. Of course, when you come to think of it, it does not make any sense at all. Just think of quiz shows, for example. In Austria there is one (well, there was like ten years ago), where the contestant has several jokers, one of them is one where they can ask the spectators present for their opinion. And everybody knows to use that joker for questions like "Who did celebrity X divorce because of Y?". You can be sure random Austrians on average get this answer right. Of course, if you asked them anything that you could count as real "knowledge" they most likely get it wrong. So probably it is also not such a great idea to ask them to take political decisions. Of course, I would never dare to say we need an alternative to democracy, but I do think that if we do not manage to educate the public better then democracy just won't work.
And really, when you finally understand that there is scientific evidence that we have been doing everything wrong for so long and still, rather than changing for the better, things only change for the worse, for the only reason that people develop completely stupid and ungrounded fears, this doesn't really make it easier to accept the politics we have to live with every day. And you start to wish you never learned everything you learned and were rather just one of the stupid mass. Well, no, not for real but somehow yes. And I found I am really fortunate to live in Schleswig-Holstein which is amazingly open and not-right after all, while the rest of Europe is heading down a steep slope at full speed.
Of course, wherever you are, it depends on the people you decide to hang out with, but I am still very glad I do not have to live in a place where election results prove that 50% of the people around me are either stupid or racist or, most likely both. Because racism is mainly based on an irrational fear of the unknown fuelled by right-winged political campaigns and stupid media reports. Only sometimes people understand that the wealth we live in in Europe is only possible if we actively stop people in other countries from achieving the same level of wealth and still think it is okay to pretend that our wealth is well-earned and should be protected using force.
I probably know better than anyone what it is like to give up wealth that you had or could easily have, having done it so often and doing it all the time. Of course, it is different when you do it voluntarily but it is also important to understand that you get used to the lack of luxury goods very quickly when you don't have them. Just imagine your TV is broken and you need to give it away for a week to have it fixed. You will probably not die from withdrawal symptoms within the week, even if while you had it, you were watching several hours every day. But you will find other things to do. And by the time you get your TV back, probably you will have got used to doing other things and will watch less TV. Of course, the TV-people don't want this to happen, which is why, if they have to take your TV to fix it, they will give you a new one for the week, so you don't get to find other ways of wasting your time. Just as they do with cars. But in theory, it would be very easy to get used to it. Which, of course, is also the reason why they spend so much money and effort on telling you that, actually, you cannot survive without those things that you never thought you needed, before someone told you so. And if we are honest, then it is exactly these things that we fear we could lose if more refugees enter Europe. Because chances are rather slim that they eat all of our food and we will have to starve. And then you understand that the less you have, the better off you are because you don't need to be afraid that someone takes something away from you. Which, in the end, is, why I am happy and so many people who own so much more than I do, are not.

Anyways, since I only took fewer classes this semester (although they made me think more) I needed something else to do. Something else in this case meaning working with the refugee organisation Kiel hilft Flüchtlingen. I worked with them before, of course, but the work has changed a lot since the borders closed and very few new refugees arrive now. We switched from giving food and clothes to desperate people to working on integrating people who settled and start to build a future in a new country they know very little of. When I talk about work, of course, I don't mean the time that I spend with the refugees. The "work" part is really only the coordination and organization part I took over for sport activities. That part is annoying enough to call it work. And sometimes I am not sure if the people who get paid for helping the refugees are just too busy or too protective to allow volunteers to come in and do their own projects with the newly arrived residents. Because these projects are highly necessary because how else would people with poor German language and cultural knowledge get to know the way of life in this country if they never meet any locals. And how would any local meet them if not through these volunteer activities.
Of course, once you get to know the "refugees" they quickly become friends and "work" quickly becomes a cover name for time spent doing things you like and exchanging knowledge and experiences with people you appreciate but if you cannot easily integrate these activities in your regular schedule you just call it "work" so that people will not ask any more questions and just let you go. In reality for the past few months, hanging out with these people has become a substitute for university. All the things I would have liked to learn in my master's programme, I learned there. About problems in foreign countries, about politics (local and foreign), about hospitality. I even learned cooking and some Arabic (even though I would have preferred to improve my Turkish rather, but can't have everything). I learned about different religions and most of all I learned to discard many of my prejudices.

So I started as a football coach of a team of young men all living together in one refugee home (see photo). They are several different nationalities (Eritrean, Syrian, Iraqi and one or two more). Some have told me their life story by now, some I still barely know their name. Some speak German very well and some don't. Some are Muslim and some are Christian or have other religions or are not religious at all. Every time I go to their home, I get invites to at least drink tea, but, depending on the time of the day, also to eat. Sometimes I was invited specifically to come and have dinner. I play football with them, but we also started other activities, including cooking together and German practice. Of course, in the beginning I was worried how people would react to having a female football coach. I am sure they were surprised but they didn't show any of it. They always treated me very well and when we play they tend to pass me the ball much more often than some Germans do. I should also not omit writing about the fact that when we played tournaments they suddenly changed and became very egoistic and stupid players. I got really pissed with them but had to accept that they wouldn't easily change. I don't know how this change happens, because before our first tournament I only knew them as really nice and open people. I guess we all have our downsides sometimes and I am sure they didn't understand that the tournaments we played were not the World Cup but just some fun tournament. They won the 3rd place in both of them and were not even happy about it, for them only the first place counted. But then, they have clearly never played in a team before so winning and losing is not something they are used to the way I am.
When they heard that I am leaving they organised a farewell party for me, which was really sweet. Of course, you'd rather not do that to me, as I hate good-byes and would rather just silently disappear but it was still sweet.

For the rest, I must say, I am amazed how little of Kiel I have seen in 10 months of living here. I have seen several parts of Schleswig-Holstein, I know all the parks in Kiel and the woods and waters surrounding it, I know the birds and the bike paths to leave the city in all directions. I know also what feels like all football fields and sports halls of Schleswig-Holstein, I know most towns by name, because I played against teams from there, but I barely know any town really, and I have not really stayed anywhere but in the outskirts of Kiel that I live at. I think I have been "shopping" (i.e. entering a big store) about twice, I went out a total of three times, getting to know a café, a pub and a food place. I know the infrastructure for underprivileged people much better than the shopping centres, because I was there for work stuff so often. I know all of the university, and, of course, this is where I spent most of my time. And I know almost all refugee homes. But other than that, Kiel didn't have anything exciting for me to offer. Or rather - I had better things to do with my time. But I am sometimes amazed by how different I experience a city from other people. I know many of my fellow students know most of the pubs and no birds. Well, I don't have to be like all the others, I guess. I sometimes wonder if I am missing a lot, when I listen to their stories, but then I think of what I get instead and I decide I am doing the right thing.
But his way my past 10 months in Germany were mainly very enjoyable because the culture I lived in was as un-German as you can imagine. I got used to leave one place at the time where I technically had to be at another place. This was partly because I was always so busy but also because my refugee friends would be late anyways. So I managed to become more unpunctual while in Germany, and I am proud of it. Also, of course, I came to improve my German, but instead I learned so many more languages and my German got very much neglected. Assuming I knew it well enough. For the first time ever I was really affected by Ramadan (when I was invited for dinner but we couldn't start eating before 10). I ate Arabic foods, drank black tea with sugar and played football with people from a while range of countries. The German part of my experience here was actually for the most part limited to friends I met when doing things that were related to refugees or birds and this is not where you meet "normal" people. So to be perfectly honest, after 10 months in Kiel I can tell you not much about the "real" Germany.

The only thing I did miss was that I did not really do any water sports as I had planned, but hopefully I can do that in Turkey, where it is warmer...

I will upload pictures soon (well, within the next weeks). And I will try to keep you updated throughout my upcoming travels but I do not know how much internet access I will have in the next few months. But I hope I will have a lot to write when I do! :)
Have a great summer everyone - I will!