Lucky days

I declare that this is nice-people-week! At least for me.
On Sunday Gottfried was in town. He gave me one of the coolest presents ever - the bag you see on the above picture. It's a solid plastic bag from the stereotypical Dutch supermarket. It fed both my nostalgia for the Netherlands and my craving for decorative things to carry around. That bag is huge! I could fit my little brother in there! As it is, my head and shoulders go all the way in as well. That's the right thing to carry university books around in.

There were also daffodils involved. He got them back in Rotterdam and brought them all the way to Vienna. That is just so, well, nice! It made me happy happy.
We talked about photography and I complained about photoshop and idealized pictures. A minute later we saw this:



Nice one!

But that wasn't the end of friendliness. Yesterday must have been the highlight, I was smiling all day. Andrea texted me about a man in New Zealand who was convicted of weapon possession because he had thrown a hedgehog after a boy. Only the animal didn't survive. Hysterical! University was so interesting as well.
Today the friendliness continued. There are professors at university who are so great and who make me feel as if all of this is worth it. I had Pakistani lunch with the infoboy who told me about a theatre production of "The Importance of Being Earnest". We're going to go there. Then I had to do the exam about the new exhibition in the museum which basically meant giving a tour for my one of my "bosses". Piece of cake.
My colleague Benedikt's shift was over when I was about to go, so we left together and he asked in broad dialect if we should do some nonsense or other. We had ice-cream and sat in the sun for a couple of hours. It was pretty great.

It's odd to feel all warm and appreciated and affectionate for a couple of days. Usually there's the family to rely on, but it's nice to know all these people who actually like talking to you. It's great to eat ice-cream with someone and talk about philosophy or bikes.

With all those new-ish people, there are also new things to be learned, apparently. Two new colleagues told me yesterday that they had a nickname for me. Amelie. "You know the film? You remind us of that girl." I don't actually like Amelie, but...I suppose it's the hair?
Then the infoboy told me today that, "I think it's sweet how you live in your own little world." Interesting point there! Most people seem to think it's slightly scary when I throw random Simpsons-quotes in their faces. I never thought of myself in that way before, but if he wants to tag it like that, so be it. I like it in my own world.
Another thing I learned about myself concerned, once again, a make-up artist, this time in a MAC shop. The girl was advising me on colours. She looked me up and down. I looked like this on that particular day:



She said, "You like primary colours, no busy things, no spectacular prints, but you dress slightly trashy, so you're not a grey mouse, you don't like nude tones, you don't like sparkly or shiny things."
Okay! Trashy. Hmm.