Han(g)over

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club" - Jack London

Well, I visited Germany. It’s been a while since the last post but as I said - from now on, I only post about travelling. About the trip now, I & several other guys from my university got the opportunity to visit Hanover Fair in Germany. Hanover Fair is one of the world’s largest trade fairs and it covers industrial technology, energy and logistics.

Group of 15

The 15 of us went to Bremen by plane. After the arrival we rented two cars for the whole trip. Most of us didn’t know each other but we started to get familiar when we walked around Bremen and went to a restaurant together. That day we also had a tour planned. We visited Beck’s brewery and did some beer tasting too. After some history and industry lessons about the company and factory, we were put behind a long table and we were served as many beers as we wanted to. Some of us were quite tipsy after the sit-down. We couldn’t stay for long though, we had to drive to Wolfenbüttel to check into our accommodation. We had some beers altogether and got to know each other.

@ Bremen

In search of a decent restaurant

Beck's factory in its full glory 

Merch

The second day was the hardest. We woke up quite early and drove to Hanover to visit the fair. As it was the first day at Hanover Fair, we decided to just walk through the whole area - clearly it was way larger than I had expected because it took me a whole day to do it. I even realized later that I had done over 25 000 steps that day. I saw many cool stuff and companies. Astonishing robots were everywhere and companies which I’ve only heard of were there and I got the chance to talk to them in person. Even though everyone was exhausted, we wanted to watch the Champions League match Liverpool vs Roma. We went to a local bar and ordered a few drinks and watched how Liverpool smashed Roma. It was fun.

This was just one of the many halls - the fair had in about 250 000 visitors

Need this robot so I wouldn't need friends anymore 

Automated Star Wars action (I haven't seen the whole series though) 

The lady at the right moves her hands and robot follows her 

Get your grip from these guys

Found this precious thingy, next time she'll find me

The bar we watched football in was okay, I didn't like that smoking inside was allowed 

Midnight

The third day was the most productive one. As I had discovered the whole fair area the day before, I pretty much knew where I wanted to be that day. For the most of the day I decided to stay in Hall 27 which was an energy-oriented building. I chatted with a few company representatives and listened to lectures mostly about hydrogen fuel cells, solar power and energy market opportunities. I had some lunch and I knew that there is a test track where one can drive an electric car so it was obvious that I wanted to go there as well. I was hyped that maybe I can drive with a Tesla but unfortunately it had an age requirement of 25. However, I got to test drive a Honda Clarity which is a hydrogen vehicle and maybe it was just that I hadn’t driven for some time but it felt really great. The acceleration was top notch. After the test drive I saw a concert taking place nearby and it was really cringe. Just imagine forklifts, lawn mowers and upbeat rock music altogether.

A lecture about Mexico's energy market 

Honda speeding on the test track

Tractor festival 2K18

Anyway, in the evening, most of us were too tired to do anything. I thought about going to sleep early but I wanted to take a walk alone in that beautiful town we settled ourselves in for these five days. As I was just enjoying the time alone, two guys came to me and started speaking German. I told them that I only speak English but they weren’t too good in English and we split up at first but then they came back to me and one of them tried his best to talk with me and the other just tried to talk with me through the other one. It was a little bit awkward at first but after an hour long walk with these guys I heard interesting stories how they had to leave Afghanistan because of the war and how they get to live in Germany. I had never talked to a real refugee before and these guys were really friendly.

"Lone ranger riding through an open space"

@ Wolfenbüttel

Selfies are still a thing, right?

Furthermore, the fourth day in Germany included a lots of driving. In the morning, we visited the fair as usual. This time I listened to a lecture about virtual reality and had a discussion with a guy who works for Autodesk which is a company that produces software for engineers and architects. Sadly, it reminded me that I have some homework to do in technical graphics. We left the fair at the afternoon and headed towards Wolfsburg. On the way there we went to KFC which obviously tasted as good as always.

Look at my face and tell me I wasn't tired

Road trip

We visited Autostadt vehicle museum in Wolfsburg. I loved that I got the freedom to visit it the way I wanted, without a guide. I saw many special classics which I won’t see on the streets. Odd part was that some cars there were really common and basic. However, the classics were unforgettable. After the visit we had a long ride back to our place of stay. This night we partied, it was the last night together so we decided to spice it up.

Ford

Retro session

Chromed Bugatti looks like something you'd see in GTA

Business trip

Lambo on the wall 

Don Diablo

The last day didn’t start so perfectly. The previous night ended late and drunk. In the morning, we had to clean up the house and give the keys to its owner. In addition to that, we had a tour planned in Jägermeister factory. It was really awesome and all but the only issue was that visiting a factory which produces alcoholic drinks while having a hangover didn’t feel too good at that time. However, I learned much about the history and making of this legendary drink. After that, we did a quick shopping thingy and hurried to airport. We barely made it to the flight home.

Free stuff, aye 

Not enough cars in this post already

The whole trip was really amazing and unique. Every time I go abroad, I realize more and more that I love to visit new places and meet new people. Even though I’m not a fan of beer, Germany made me drink it more than I usually would. The first fair experience for me was very educating. Next time I’ll surely know how to prepare myself better and what to expect of this kind of event. I love it that this trip had several different values in it. For example, usually I travel to mostly have fun and socialize. This one was a little bit different because the main reason was to visit the fair and educate myself by talking with companies that are my future potential employers or business partners. Of course the trip had the cultural value too - I drank more than enough beer and visited a car museum. Next time I visit Germany, I’m going to see a Bundesliga match too.

Green life, bro

2 YEARS

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress." - Frederick Douglass

Let's start off with the good news. The blog is now two years old sooo... Happy birthday to us! It's amazing to think that I started this already two years ago. If you compare my first posts to my recent posts you definitely see the difference. My first posts were shorter, talked more about my recent week but now I'm focusing more on my feelings, thoughts and activities over a month period.
About the bad news now. I'm thinking about doing a pause with the blog because I really don't have the time to post regularly. I'm studying, I'm working hard. I don't want to start posting sh-t, I like to write long posts with over ten photos at least but these take a lot of time to make. Anyway, let's better continue to my recent activities. I'm not going to talk about my activities this time, I'll let the pictures present my doings.

@ my town's New Year party with Johanna

 I smile because I can

 With my fella Madis aka the mayor of Viljandi

Kristjan 20 (Vello 80)

Raiko 18 & lots of 8 pool lately 

Well. Like I said, I'm doing a small pause but I have an idea. I'm planning to go study abroad the following academic year (that's why I'm working so much too). I'm always up to new challenges and this might be my next one. I have my eyes on Mexico, USA, Canada and Spain. Good thing is then I finally can write about travelling like I've always wanted. My longest posts so far have been about my journeys in Austria and Hungary and that's so because I loved writing about my experience in a foreign country. That's my real passion I'd like to follow on this blog. And damn, life is a highway and I want the highway to be as long as possible crossing many borders. Also, Arctic Monkeys is back and Simple Session 18 starts tomorrow!

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Kasabian - Re-Wired

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Blossom out

"Yes I'm tired of all this talking 'cause everything you hear is empty words." - Blossom, Milky Chance

Another long period of time since the last post. Well, maybe I really have motivation problems lately but the thing is I don't have any free tiiiime. School is keeping me busy, I'm trying to get myself into entrepreneurship (maybe you'll hear about it soon!) and I started watching Stranger Things and The 100 TV shows again. 

I took a whole weekend to study and do my chores. I'm currently doing my programming homework, now that I ran into some bug I can't seem to fix I decided to write a blog post instead. I also have to write a motivational letter to attend a course abroad in spring and I found an essay competition which I wanna take part in - so I have too fu**ing much to do. 

Well, the previous things I wrote above were my doings lately, now or near future. But as I haven't posted for a while again then I have several moments I wanna share with you and my future self.

Firstly, one evening when I decided to have a sit-down with my friends from Viljandi, the girls (Kristel, Mariel and Merili) decided they wanted to make the guys a little less masculine. To do that, the put some make up on us, by us I mean my great friend Peeter and I.

#littlebitgayisokay

Secondly, one day Mark came to visit me in Tallinn and we went shopping (didn't buy anything tho) and afterwards had some beers and a pizza. It was cool and the waitress at the diner was really beautiful (should've asked her name)!

Photogenic

I'm starting to get used to living in the capital, I've made many new friends and acquaintances and we're living the real uni-life with our hometown squad in here. Toomas Erik out!

Found some selfies so I thought why not put these in the post

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Milky Chance - Blossom

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TARARA

"I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination." - Jimmy Dean

Wonderful, exhausting but my emotions are great after the five days I spent in Hungary. Like most of you know, I started university like a month ago, I also joined an organisation called BEST. So, why I had this amazing journey to Budapest? The BEST organisation has it's local groups around whole Europe (BEST stands for Board of European Students of Technology) and therefore regional meetings (later called RM) are organised so different local groups could come together to discuss about their plans and doings (and also have some fun!). This RM which called name is RM of Tararas was really special for me because it was the first international event with BEST for me and it also wasn't my local BEST group's regional meeting I attended, I was an out of region (OoR) participant, so to speak an Estonian spy.

A group photo of all the participants and organizers

But what I did there? Mm, we had some training sessions, I had to introduce my local BEST group and of course, we had lots of fun and I met many new amazing people. I started my trip on Thursday by waking up in 4 a.m to catch my flight. It was little bit scary because it was my first flight alone but it turned out that I actually like to travel alone. When I arrived in Budapest I took some time to enjoy the city center and considering the fact that I'm not an artsy person, I loved the architecture of the city. I went to have a lunch and then went to the place the RM was going to take place using public transport. I was the earliest participant in there and met with some of the organizers. At first, I felt really odd in there because the more people came the more I felt lonely because I knew no-one in there.However, thankfully my roommates from Ukraine interacted with me. Thanks to them I started to enjoy the RM right away. Since the RM took place like 25 km from Budapest, we had no idea where we could find the nearest shop. I can say we didn't find one but we found a strip club even though we sadly forgot to go there. Anyway, in the first evening I had to present my LBG (local BEST group) which is as you might know LBG Tallinn. I was little bit nervous because I haven't been in the organisation for a long time yet and I'm not quite familiar with it's structure and projects yet. Thankfully, the presentation went fine, I managed to make the crowd laugh for a couple of times which is important to me as it makes me more confident during the presentations. After that, we had a party and we danced and had a huge amount of fun altogether. I met more and more people and therefore felt more and more awesome.

Emotions after the workshop about social media promotion

We had a training session about presentation skills which I think was the most useful session for me this meeting 

Also, we got many wristbands from other LBGs

It wasn't an easy morning. I hadn't slept much and had to wake up early and the first training session I had chosen was IT tutorial which taught us how to properly use BEST's private website meant only for the members. It lasted for almost four hours but we had some coffee breaks too. After that we had a quiz about BEST and it's history. I was quite bad at it but at least we were in teams so I many wise gals and pals surrounding me, hehe. Furthermore, I attended a workshop about social media promotion. I'm quite familiar with the topic but I still got some new advice which I'm also going to use with my blog's FB page. Besides that, it was time for dinner and the last session was about different departments of BEST. After working hard the whole day, it was time for another party. What I still didn't do was that I couldn't manage to go to sleep early to be rested for the following day.

Feedback is the way to perfection 

Egészségére!

Still, even though I was tired in the morning, it wasn't hard for me to take part of the session because it was about presentation skills and everyone had to talk and perform in front of the others. It was quite scary at first because I'm not used to perform in English but I liked that we got feedback from the others and learned some new tips and tricks to reduce podium stress. But then the day got bad for me. For some reason I had severe back pain, I couldn't move without pain and if I made any wrong move it also made me hard to breath. I managed to take the group photo but after that I had to skip the remaining two sessions I wanted to attend. I just laid in my bed and took many painkillers. I even called my mother and best friend to know the hell is happening and what should I do. Fortunately, painkillers did their job and I managed to attend the international evening. IE was awesome, imagine every country putting out its most special food and drinks. I prepared chocolate, mustard with bread, some candy and the classic Old Tallinn liquor. Somehow, I went to sleep at 6 a.m and woke up at the afternoon when most of the people had their things packed and Polish guy pulled me out of the bed.

The vibe of the international evening was amazing!

 Ha-ha, I picked that photo because it's like I'm playing an imaginary saxophone - finally I can say that I can play an instrument

Hot damn! 

My awesome neighbors from Ukraine

Living the life on the edge

The whole event was really educating and fun at the same time but this wasn't the end. We took a bus to the city and some of us left and we said our goodbyes but some of us including me stayed in Budapest for another day. Firstly, we went to one of the organizer place and ate lunch. Afterwards, we went to the city and enjoyed the pure beauty of the city. When the sun went down, we decided to go to a bar and got some beers and enjoyed the last few hours together. Love you, guys, see you around Europe!

 Trying to look like the statue

 Budapest is one of the nicest places to go for sure

GROUPIE!

 Sorry for blocking the view xd

A small collage of our adventures in the city

That wasn't all for me either, the following day I met up with a friend of mine from an Erasmus+ project which I attended last spring. We had a coffee and did a quick catch up on our doings lately until I had to leave to airport. It was nice to see you again, Anett!

 @ Budapest

My selfie skill isn't really good tho 

Starbucks spelled my name incorrect but I'd like my first name to have only one "o" anyway

Yeah, so far everything seems all good and stuff like that. There is only one thing I wish would've gone better which are the elections in my hometown. My political party didn't win and I didn't manage to get a seat in the city council. It's my own fault because again I have so many things to do and I lost my focus at the end of the campaign. But what I learned from that is that I should try everything even though if I'm not sure about myself - therefore, there won't be any regrets later.

TARARA song aka Kungs vs Cookin’ on 3 Burners - This Girl