Photo: (c) Marina Hong, 2009 shot at my 35th anniversary
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My full name is Alexandra Doell and, as you already know, I live in Essen in the middle of the Pot. Normally, Essen is the German synonym for eating but in this case something different is meant ;o). Essen also is an old German word for an ash tree, so it marks an area with many ash tree forests.
Essen is situated in the center of the so-called Ruhr area which was famous for its coal mines and steel industry in former decades. Its neighbour towns are Muelheim at the Ruhr, Oberhausen, Bottrop, Gladbeck, Gelsenkirchen, Bochum, Velbert, Hattingen, Ratingen and Heiligenhaus. Another cities that belong to the Ruhr area are, for example, Duisburg, Herne, Herten, Castrop-Rauxel, Lünen, Recklinghausen and Dortmund.
There are some more synonyms for the word Ruhr area: Ruhr Pot, Coal Pot, The Pot. This region was named by the river Ruhr. It rises in the east of Westfalia in a touristic region called "Sauerland" and flows through some cities of the Ruhr area - Bochum, Hattingen, Essen, Muelheim and Duisburg. In the harbour of Duisburg - it's the greatest domestic port in Europe - the Ruhr flows into the Rhine, one of the biggest rivers in Europe, running from Switzerland to Rotterdam in The Netherlands.
Though the Ruhr Pot has changed and most of the coal mines were closed between 1970 and 1990, the name still remains. Also the steel industry and its factories decreased up from the middle of the 1970ies. One of last active coal mines is Prosper Haniel in Bottrop. The most famous coal mine in Essen is Zollverein in the northeast of the city and in the last years it became a cultural center so that the visitors of Essen are able to see how the miners worked and the coal was processed. The last pit of Zollverein was closed in 1993.
I was born on 1 May 1974 so I will become 36 years old in a few days ;o). I live in the southwest of Essen near to the Highway 40 ("Ruhr Highway" but because there is often any long traffic jam, the people call it "Ruhr Creep") together with my Campbell hamster Slayer. Moreover I like my many stuffed animals very much, especially the mini mountain gorilla Sammy with the red hair ribbon and her little brother Egbert.
I am a mistress of social sciences/social work. Since October 2008 I work as an editor, job researcher and team assistant for an outplacement company that helps people who are or might be out of work because their current employee will be restructured. Our office is situated in Duesseldorf, the main city of North Rhine-Westfalia. Duesseldorf is more or less 28 miles away from my home, so I get there with my black French limousine (Renault Clio). I share my office with my colleague Marina - a funny, 32-year-old blonde girl with such a great humour like me. Marina is our office manager and she is a master of the American language, so she likes to read and to write in English. Her main topic are all kinds of fruit, especially pineapple ;o). Last year she made a photo story with me and our colleagues called the "Pineapple Massacre".
The third assistant in our team is Steffi who is one year younger than me. At the moment she only works here for more or less eight hours per week because she contributes the Green party within the election campaign for the election in North Rhine-Westfalia taking place on 9 May 2010. Steffi often makes an embarrassed face and becomes red when Marina and me make jokes about sex or morbid things, hehe, but this does not mean that Steffi could not be sexistic and morbid, too. Moreover she's the only one of us who got a laughing fit at a funeral of an uncle she did not know very well. This only happened because she made some jokes with her parents when they drove to the graveyard to take part in the funeral. Nevertheless the other mourners were angry with Steffi because she laughed during the funeral ceremony.
Beside Steffi, Marina and me some consultants work at our office: Zeno, Thomas, Annette and some other consultants who are only part time in our office. Our consultant Kumi will manage our little office in Berlin in a few weeks but Marina, Steffi and me will do the secretary's work and job research for the Berlin customers here in Duesseldorf - it's only possible because of e-mail and internet.
Other important persons in my life are: my parents, my best friend Uli with her little dog Herkules, my friend Renate (she's a real Duesseldorf original!), my buddy and former colleague Thorsten and some more.
I like music very much, especially Heavy Metal. My favourite bands are Metallica, Slayer, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Nevertheless I also like songs that don't have anything to do with Metal but in the last years the good tracks unfortunately became quite rare. When I was a young girl, I bought a lot of records and CDs because there were many good musicians and bands but in the last years there's often superfluous monotone, always-the-same tracks on the radio :o(. When I drive my car, I always listen to a CD and not to the radio because of the a. m. circumstances...
Other interests of me are writing short stories and articles (since April 2008 for the German page Suite101.de, since September 2009 for the German page vnr.de as an expert for the topic applications), being on stage and presenting my own comedy, walking, swimming and reading. Though I am female ;o), I am moreover interested in some of "men's favourite topics" like cars and sports (soccer, boxing and many more).
