Operation: European Husband

wondering about the flexibility of thai airways' baggage weight restrictions

eks — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:07:00 GMT

Sorry, I know this has been the blog that wasn’t. I’ve been without access to the internet since Friday so haven’t had a chance to update this – I will though, very soon there’ll be heart-racing stories, tantalizing descriptions, maybe even photos. For now though I’m nestled in the hills in the north of Thailand with a dial-up internet connection and my usual lack of patience with slow internet. I will tell you though that I’ve been blessed by a Buddhist monk, slapped around with scalding hot balls of thai herbs, photographed and stared at by locals (I’m bringing pasty back) and teased relentlessly by our driver who thinks my affliction for cheap fisherman pants and market stalls is possibly the greatest evidence yet of the weakness of the human condition. My god, there are fisherman pants, and I don’t care what any of you say. I’ll be bringing back enough to convert you all I’m sure. Stories soon – stories about peeing beside the Mekong river, stories about horse and carriage rides and tea plantations and a lot of rabbiting on about mountain ranges and street food stalls. Hope you’re all well. xx

i bought beer from a hairdresser today

eks — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:46:00 GMT

Everyone sells beer here. Clearly, this is an approach that i'm strongly supportive of.

So I'm in Chiang Mai - transit was largely uneventful, the reunion with Annabel was joyous and her parents are fantastic. Annabel and her dad both crashed out shortly after we got into our hotel room this afternoon, so her mum and I did some wandering around, bought some cheap beer from a hairdresser, had lunch and popped my thai massage cherry. thai massage is indescribable bliss and worth the 8 hour flight here on its own.

As it's the first time i've been to Asia i'm predictably bug-eyed over the traffic, the tuk-tuks, the different look and feel of the place, etc. it's really nice though and it's brilliant to see something so different to Australia.

tonight we're going to the night bazaar. have to get my bartering shit together. i'm not very good at it yet. i paid $6 for fisherman pants today which is clearly very silly and embarrassing. must try harder next time.

one of those planes in the sky which usually torture me will soon have me on it

eks — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 11:30:00 GMT

this is a holding post to see if the new journal is working.

thailand will be 14 Feb to 25 Feb with Annabel the swedish pornstar and her, clearly-open minded, aussie folks. there will be elephant rides. that is all.

you know what's awesome?

eks — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 16:10:00 GMT

sunshine. and hibiscus flowers. and the beach.

but more than anything else, you guys. my disappointment at leaving germany and my ambivalence about being back in australia have been cushioned beautifully by the warm embraces, happy smiles and loving text messages i've shared this week with some of the most beautiful people in this whole freakin' country. i hope it's true that you can judge a person by the company they keep, because i think the calibre of the people in my life here says good things about me :-)

to those of you i've already seen, it was AWESOME. thankyou. and to those of you who are in next week's diary pages, i'm SO looking forward to it. and to those of you i haven't managed to connect with yet, let's do that soon. it's so amazing to see you all again, it feels like it's been much longer than 2 months. you make being in australia feel good.

BIG LOVES TO Y'ALL

damn, it is hot up in HERE!

eks — Fri, 9 Mar 2007 12:59:00 GMT

Australia = warmth, sunshine, easily accessible beaches, happy smiling friends and lecturers whose every word I can understand.

I'm back, for now*, and i look forward to catching up with all of you really soon. As long as it's in an air-conditioned venue.

loving sunny aussie greetings to you all, aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi etc. xx

*where 'for now' means 'until i can get out of debt and save enough money to get back to Europe'. I have to get back to Germany because it appears i left my heart behind. probably on a train somewhere, i'm so gosh-darn forgetful...

swiss chocolate is actually that good

eks — Fri, 2 Mar 2007 08:38:00 GMT

i have to admit a significant amount of my motivation to write this blog entry comes from my desire to add another country to that list on the right there - i'm SO easily amused. i really did go to switzerland today though, so it's totally justified. coming from australia, a huge landmass of samey-same-sameness stuck out on the edge of the globe (yes, edge. of the... globe. i can do science, me...), the concept of completely different countries with completely different landscapes, cultures and languages all sandwiched together, pressed up against one another vying for space and squinting protectively at borders is mind-boggling. brilliant example, basti's mum speaks some italian and can drive to italy in 2 hours from here if she wants to practice. it's a far cry from my $2000, 24hr flight to germany to practice my second language. in the same time it takes to get to italy, or france, or switzerland from here, i could get to, uh, toowoomba. lovely place and all, but the difference in culture between brisbane and toowoomba is not really one to be marveled at, it just makes you want to shower more often*. so, because he enjoys seeing my eyes boggle and my face fill with childlike wonder (of course anyone can achieve that with a basic kitchen appliance, let's face it, but he's always been one to go the extra mile), basti took me to switzerland today for breakfast (which ended up being lunch) and france for lunch (which ended up being beer). awesome? awesome.

Switzerland

Or more precisely, Basel, which is the city we went to, is (wait for it, because i know this is going to shock you) old and pretty (yes yes, just like every other city in europe but different... somehow. and not just because they speak german that i can't understand) and sits on a river. it has a positively eerie lack of cafes and a nauseating over-abundance of chocolate shops. we wandered along the river and through the city in search of a simple coffee and croissant for our (extremely late) breakfast, and were amazed at the lack of options. plenty of places to buy clothes and chocolate (seems an ironic combination, really**), nowhere to sit and have a cup of tea. it was beautiful to walk around though, despite the extremely ordinary weather, and we did eventually manage to find our coffee and pastry, and a cream-baked-good-thingimajiggy that actually could fill the place of sex in my life if i can work out how to make it at home, it was that good. the people in switzerland have a reputation for being less friendly and although we didn't have too much contact with them i could believe it. when asked for directions they seem to grunt a perfunctory, heavily accented answer simply because they know they're obliged to, whereas most germans will give you comprehensive directions with helpful landmarks and check to make sure you understand. having said that though, they could have been saying all manner of lovely things, to be honest, i could hardly understand a word (though basti assures me it was some kind of german). the other reputation the swiss had to fill today was for chocolate and oh... my... god... the chocolate. at first i thought they were a bunch of bastards because it was so expensive and then i realised, no, they're just trying to help those of us with sweet teeth and impulse control issues who, if not for the barriers of financial limitation, could actually eat themselves into a diabetic coma on the stuff. exceptionally expensive though, and not really that much better than the chocolate you can get in some nice places in germany.

France

More to come on France tomorrow as we're going to Strassbourg with Evi. Today we went to Colmar, which is nice and close to the border, and got some Kronenburg 1664 (which was my wanky import beer of choice back in the Pig & Whistle days, before i discovered beck's) into us. for the first time in a long time i was speechless, because i can't speak any french, but it was very nice. comfortingly, the beer was just as expensive in it's home country as it is in Australia, so i won't feel like i'm getting screwed when i buy it at home***.

a traditionally swiss dinner of bread, fondue cheese and red wine with evi in her new apartment capped the evening off beautifully. i saw three countries in the time it would take to me to get to, oh, rockhampton (hoo hah) in australia, and i'm supposed to be looking forward to coming back there!?? bah. if anyone's looking for me, i'm hiding in the mountains near freiburg. unless immigration is looking for me, in which case i'm definitely not.

*i understand that i absolutely deserve the slapping i will get from my toowoomba mates when i get home.

**she says, having gained 5kg from eating good european chocolate EVERY freaking DAY...

***beck's on the other hand, the other day i paid about $5AUD for a mug of the stuff as big as my head, and next week i'll be paying that for a bottle in an australian bar.

I'LL show you SNOW!!!

eks — Thu, 1 Mar 2007 09:53:00 GMT

You know what's fun? climbing hills of snow in shoes and clothes that are absolutely unsuited to cold, wet weather! that's fun! if you're an idiot!

convinced that the light powdering layers of white i'd seen in Berlin and Essen weren't enough, Basti decided today to show me real snow. accompanied by german versions of cheesy old english pop songs, we drove through the incredible countryside surrounding freiburg and up into the mountains. the unusually warm (sorry, warm?!?!?) winter this year has resulted in green where there would normally be white, but the scenery was nonetheless beautiful. way up in the mountains though you could forget you'd ever seen grass, or ever lived in a place where it never snows. having walked from the car to a cafe we decided we'd earned a hot chocolate by an open fire, then wandered through the snow. now we're talking about a boy in snow here, so the obligatory snow fight ensued. it was very civilised though ("ok, one at at time, no moving. oh i'm sorry, i threw out of turn, that gives you 2 free shots"), and not very gruesome at all - basti either stood still while my reliably unfortunate gross-motor skills and terrible aim did the work for him or simply caught the snowballs i lobbed at him and threw them back at me (now that shit is just rude.). after calling a truce (read: erica admitting defeat and basti being extremely kind) we wandered further into the snow along a perfectly serviceable path until i decided that bitumen was no longer for me, i was in fact a snow bunny, and ventured into the white. it could be argued that i should have stopped after my first step off the road landed me up to my knee in snow. really though, where would the adventure be in that? the tripping, falling, flailing, giggling catastrophe that followed was, unbeknownst to me, captured as video on basti's camera, and it gets funnier every time we watch it i swear to god. eventually though i got up the first, most slippery part of the hill and, having chosen my target point, trudged slowly up the hill, one ankle deep step at a time. when i got as high as i wanted to, i never wanted to come down. hiding out under a tree buddha-styley seemed like a perfectly workable idea until i realised i couldn't feel my feet anymore (proper snowboots? they're for sissies!) so i decided to go back down to civilisation, just to get some waterproofing spray for my shoes and a couple of pretzels for sustenance (i know, i know, abstinence from everything, transcendance of needs, but one has to take these things gently you know...). once back on the road though i allowed myself to be dissuaded from my snowy pursuit of self-realisation by the promise of warm feet and beer. what can i say, i'm a simple girl, i'm motivated by simple things. leaving the skiing children (i don't feel inadequate when children can stay upright in snow better than i can, NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT!!!) behind us, we drove back through some of the most beautiful country i've ever seen and into freiburg, where basti showed me the (even) prettier parts of town (IT JUST KEEPS GETTING PRETTIER!) and then up to a lookout point with views all the way to france (seriously). freiburg is incredible - it's so pretty it actually hurts to look at it. i have to close my eyes at intervals so my head doesn't explode. i'm worried that when faced with brisbane's 70s construction dullness in comparison to this, my central nervous system will actually grind to a halt, i'll be so unaroused.

the atmosphere this week is nice and relaxed, which is brilliant. basti's mum is really hospitable and incredibly sweet - this morning she bought me a chocolate croissant when she went to get breadrolls for breakfast, because she knows i like them. ok, so, she's either incredibly sweet... or fattening me up so they can kill me and eat me. either way, there are chocolate croissants though, right? so... we'll see. basti on the other hand keeps threatening to make nasty gas emissions during the night, and he says if i'm not nice to him he won't wait until i'm asleep. he is CHARMING and i like him a lot.

almost gone

eks — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:54:00 GMT

so the dream slowly comes to an end. i'm spending my last week in freiburg with basti, just relaxing and seeing a bit of the south. it's brilliant to just be still for a bit and it's really comfortable here with basti and his mum. i leave here on saturday and will be back in australia on monday. since i left essen, every train trip has seemed like a step closer to australia, and that simultaneously breaks my heart and warms me - the thought of sunshine, aaah. when i get back i'll be spending a few weeks at my dad's place on the coast, so coasties, i'll look forward to seeing you then. I'll also be back and forth to brisbane for uni and jobhunting, and probably go back to my place after a couple of weeks. i have to sit on the beach and thaw out a bit first.

so there may not be much in the way of action or excitement this week, just a girl sitting in cafes in southern germany eating croissants and wishing she didn't have to go. i'm looking forward to seeing you all again and catching up on the last 2 months in australia.

big loves xx

Nectar of the gods

eks — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 01:49:00 GMT

yesterday i fulfilled one of my most important Germany-dreams. I went to the Beck's brewery. the mothership. the holy grail. the bedrock of my dreams and the purveyor of perhaps the finest beer known to man. i was so happy.

I spent the weekend in Bremen, home of My Beer Of Choice (tm) and a lovely friend of mine, Jennifer. Jennifer was an exchange student in Australia in 2005 and i met her at the commencement of my german language studies. In an effort to cultivate some interest in the social goings-on at uni (a commitment to social participation that was limited as most of you know) i joined a couple (read: 50 million) clubs at market day and went to the welcome bbq for the UN group. While the bulk of my experience of the social side of UQ has amounted to a few hours of my life i can never get back, this particular outing was worth it - Jennifer was there, we got to talking and she suggested a language exchange, which we did in fact manage, every week or so for the duration of the semester. shocked that she still wanted to be friends with me after what must have been an intensely frustrating struggle with my fledgling german language skills, i stayed in touch with her and always hoped to be able to visit her in her home town. As she was my first german language buddy, Bremen was something of a landmark in my head before i came here (and not just for the obvious reason of the rivers of gold that run through it's centre) and to experience it in the frosty flesh was sheer delight. Jenni did a beautiful job of showing me around her lovely town; she didn't stop at enduring the Ultimate Cliche Brewery Tour, she showed me the GORGEOUS old town with streets so narrow only a fairly thin middle-ages horse without a carriage could fit through, the market, a football game in a local pub full of supporters (Bremen Weser ueber alle!) and a wander through the sights of the city. she also introduced me to the best of german confectionary AND fit in a trip to hamburg, where we stayed with her cousin and saw the Reeperbahn (because i'm a tourist and we had to). In the bar we drank in there I met a group of old english guys who bought me drinks just because they were friendly and two german girls who started chatting to me and gave me their email addresses because they were NICE - these things do not happen in australia. Hamburg was IT - the city i could live in.

Gallery: one last trip around the annabel and erica merry-go-round

eks — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:13:00 GMT

ans' last day in essen

Karneval - these people are INSANE!!!

eks — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 07:03:00 GMT

Karneval is this incredible celebration that happens in the area of germany we've been staying in for about 3 months of every year. the culmination is in february when the whole area positively shits itself if i may be so crude and turns into the all-singing all-dancing world capital of frivolity. annabel and i jumped on the karneval jalopy on thursday - traditionally the first day of crazy-fest proper, when the mayor turns over control of the city (cologne) to the womenfolk and they run through the town chopping mens' ties off. all very primitive and unenlightened if you ask me as there are for more effective ways to emasculate a man these days if one is so inclined, but nonetheless it's as good a way as any other for the town to get off it's tits and run through the streets like a mob of crazed costume-clad antelopes on crack. what's that? i didn't mention the costumes?? ooooh yes, the costumes. that's what makes this nut-fest so much more than just a city full of people roaming the streets drinking - THEY'RE WEARING FUNNY CLOTHES. what's that? it still sounds ridiculous?? oh shut up, you're no fun at all.

the atmosphere was, and i do understand i will for the next two words sound like an utter twat, positively electric - the people were laidback and friendly, the costumes were amazing and the alcohol was... i would say flowing, but it was more like cologne was marinated in a titillating cocktail of kölsch (the local beer, see previous entry about the düsseldorf-cologne rivalry for more info. after four days of having it forcibly poured down my throat i've developed a taste for it by the way...), jägermeister (say no more) and feigling (i would only bore you if i tried to explain how awesome this stuff is.).

on thursday we called jens, who we knew was in the area for work. he'd been drinking since midday and said he'd love to see us, so we jumped on a train after uni, costumes in hand and a spare for jens, and hurtled headfast into a world of drunken ridiculousness i could never have previously imagined. the photos probably tell more of a story than my words could, and let's face it, the recounting of silly drunken tales is far more enjoyable for me in the reminiscing than for you in the hearing, so i'll keep the details to a minimum. we wandered the streets for a while, taking in the atmosphere and making friends with strangers until we lost jens and co. - as we all know, the 'loss of friends' moment tends to be a catalyst for crazy things either wonderful or dreadful in the drunken night out system, and in this case i would argue it was both. they called us to tell us they were on Roonestrasse, at the Cubana Bar. we wandered around for a while before turning a corner to see, looming before us with it`s shiny lights, the very same bar we had spent a little too much time in just a few weeks earlier, befriending the barmen with our tales of adventure and lies about our sexual orientation. we shared a look of sheer terror and ran inside in the hope of dragging jens out and saving ourselves the embarrassment of being recognised. long story short, there are two cubana bars on Roonestrasse (WHAT!?!? i know.), jens wasn`t in this one, we were recognised, entry charge was waived and the free alcohol flowed until they closed and we continued on elsewhere. at some point during the night they began to cotton on to the fact that we're a pair of raving heterosexuals. the giant bird may have had something to do with it (please see photo gallery unless you are my parents, grandparents or past employers). we stumbled home around 5am, vowing to be more well-behaved for the duration of karneval. HAH.

On friday we hoped for a quiet night of recovery - our hopes were dashed by an invitation from Ellie's brother Norm to go out for a few drinks. Just a warning to any of you who may one day travel to germany - i don't think the phrase 'few drinks' means the same here as it does in australia. then again, maybe it's just me... so this particular 'few drinks' was an 11pm start at a packed out dance club full of people singing karneval songs, followed by an almost-deserted possibly (A says definitely) gay club where a crazed lesbian prostitute (or so we believe) forcibly bought us all drinks because it was her birthday ('SHOTS!! SHOTS!!!' she kept screeching. the woman was insatiable.), and finally a world of madness called 'Micha's Kannchen', which is staffed by people who look and dress like scary ex-sailors, opens at 5am and serves breakfast alongside shots of whateveryoulike. suffice it to say the patrons of this particular establishment were a brand all of their own; by the time we got home the sun was already up.

Having ruined my plan of spending the day in düsseldorf with basti i trekked on down there mid-afternoon and met up with the boy at the train station. it was brilliant to see someone i have a connection to and reunite with my good buddy in his home country. he then drove us to cologne (autobahn, oh my god!) where we set off for the ghost-train: a night-time parade through the backstreets of cologne. the idea of this this parade is that it's a big two-fingers to the rigid tradition of the main parade on monday, and it's just a bunch of people walking through the streets with brazilian drumming groups on every second corner, culminating in a writing swarm of people dancing to percussion in a tunnel. it's a very different atmosphere to the rich-people-throwing-lollies

-at-poor-people extravaganza that followed on monday and it was, if i may be such a 40-year-old, a tonne o' fun (no, i don't know any 40-year-olds who would say that either...). no photos unfortunately, you'll just have to take my word for it. after the parade we met up with basti's cologne mates again and went to a gay bar, of course, because THEY ARE THE ONLY KINDS OF BARS I EVER GO TO HERE and when i'm not in a gay bar i'm in a straight bar pretending to be gay!! this went on for hours and hours and we drank, danced and stood in circles arm-in-arm singing karneval songs (they sang, i pretended.).

On Sunday basti and i got up late and did so very slowly, then cautiously made our way out into the sunshine for kebabs. we then wandered into the city and met up with annabel and The Plain One for some coffee (even though we knew all the coffee in the world couldn't save us) and then went out for dinner with basti's mum and her partner. They were two of the loveliest people in the whole world and dinner was lovely. the barman incessantly brought beer as soon as the glasses were empty but apart from my fear of drinking too much and giggling too much in front of the adults, the evening was without mishap. we were in bed by a respectable hour and slept like babies on valium in preparation for...

ROSENMONTAG. this is the main day of karneval and involves the big rich-people-poor-people parade, followed by, you guessed it, more of the roaming the streets in costumes and drinking. fantastic. we had alcohol for breakfast and trudged into the city, dreading the expenditure of energy we didn't have and hoping it would be over quickly (you can see what's about to happen here, can't you). After meeting up with Annabel we watched the parade, marvelling at the elaborate floats and the chocolate raining from the sky, until we really thought about it and turned to each other, saying 'can you say 'class gap??' ' the parade is put on by a huge number of 'karneval clubs' - old boys' societies of rich people who spend incredible amounts of money on lavish costumes and productions for karneval in order to, well, show off how rich they are i suppose. *cough*orcompensateforsomethingiguesswe'llneverknow*cough*. they stand in their huge floats and throw chocolates at the commoners below, who line the streets yelling 'kamelle!!' which, roughly translated, equates to 'please rich people, give us poor bastards some chocolate while we marvel at how fantastic and rich you are!!' (oh alright it doesn't, it just means 'karneval lollies' but the meaning is implied.). we were somewhat unimpressed by this idea and eventually stopped filling our pockets with their trashy token gifts. the rest of the people didn't though, they scrambled on the ground around us like vultures, illustrating exactly what the difference is between the people in the floats and the people on the streets. luckily it was over just as A and i began to tire of it completely and after watching the end of the parade, by which time the rich people in the floats were simply drifting along, sipping expensive champagne and tossing whatever dregs they had left at the plebs in a most disinterested manner, we were able to get on with the drinking. we wandered through the club area for a while before heading again to the cubana bar (naturally) - this time because A had a hot tip-off that a bit of eye candy we've seen around uni was going to be there. he wasn't, and after accepting more extremely cheap alcohol from our friends, basti and i took off, leaving A to soak up the attention of the barman who had developed an interest in her on thursday. B and i went to a place called 'boogaloo', which promised a lot on the basis of the name alone, and, delivered. we stayed there for hours, dancing on benches and making friends with everyone (one guy said he thought i was doing a great job of being friendly and integrating everyone, i say i was just being a tart and dancing with all the boys.). everyone loved everyone else and for a few hours i was the carefree, hip-swinging dancing queen i always wished i could be. i was also very drunk so it could actually just have been 3 people in a dingy club gyrating like whores on LSD. basti assures me it was exactly as awesome as i remember though, and i believe him, because i know for sure i spoke to at least 8 boys so there must have been heaps of people.

once again, train home from cologne at 4am and Annabel and i spent about 3 hours awake on monday, wishing we weren't.

Gallery: Karneval Cologne

eks — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 05:28:00 GMT

you know what's fun? photos of other people being drunk and having fun!! yeeeeah!

Gallery: shut up Herr Bayer just SHUT UP!!!

eks — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:13:00 GMT

Berlin, which, apart from Herr Bayer, was all kinds of super.

Gallery: shiny

eks — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:57:00 GMT

essen and surrounds

Gallery: ah hev ay kehm-ehr-uuhr...

eks — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:47:00 GMT

photos for the sake of photos

Hannover

eks — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:02:00 GMT

On the basis of Ellie's recommendation and our intense desire to spend the weekend anywhere but in Essen, Annabel and I decided to visit Hannover on our way home (to Essen) from Berlin (it's roughly halfway between the two). We were taken in by the aunt of one of the other girls in the course (with whom we shared a room in Berlin - which is a lesson for all of us in not following our primal urges - my urge to kill when i was constantly woken up and left without easy access to a bathroom would have left me without accomodation in hannover had i followed it. and that is why we play nice with the other children.) - this woman, the aunt, is my hero. she lives in a gorgeous old apartment in a beautiful street, has the place perfectly decorated, works from home as a consultant and is generally just the most awesome independent friendly person ever. after we arrived she let us take over her bathroom for however long it took us to purge the horrors of a week of shared bathroom and limited hot water from our shivering forms. she then drove us all over the city, showed us the town hall, took us out for cups of tea and made us a beautiful meal of raclette. she then let us sleep in (which, after a week of getting up early to withstand herr bayer's monologues was a pleasure i can scarce describe) and then wander her lovely city at our leisure.

A word about the other kiddies in the course

eks — Thu, 8 Feb 2007 09:07:00 GMT

because when i said i was dreading the other participants because i just knew they'd be an army of utter tossbags, you all said, 'now erica, stop being such a grumpy cynical tart, they could all be lovely.'. knowing that it was absolutely possible that you were all right, at least about me being a tart, i kept an open mind. i hoped for the best. i smiled in a friendly way for at least the first two days. and this is what i got:

The Intense One: some of you know of this one already. this is the one who emailed me as soon as we found out we'd been accepted to suggest that we all make friends before locking ourselves in the confines of a german university for six weeks with no hope of escape. when i dodged her advances, she emailed me again because one of the others (oh we'll get to her) had accepted her offer of friendship (more about birds of a feather to come) and she didn't want me to miss out on the 'meeting fun-ness'. I knew this one was trouble from the start, and none of you bastards believed me. she's a law student, she's the president of the debating society, she has a plate (which she wears ALL DAY) and a speech defect, which would make it difficult to listen to her even if she said interesting things, but as all she does is spew boring, inane, self-involved CRAP, being in the same room as her is similar to being in the same room as a bandsaw going to town on a sheet of corrugated iron. as if the auditory experience of this person isn't enough, she's also positively unfortunate looking. now, i'm not generally one to judge people on the basis of appearances, i really am generally a better person that that. this girl, however, brings out the awful, superficial tart in me - she not only got

The Weak One - this is the other brisbane inhabitant. we were both contacted by The Intense One as soon as we received word that the DAAD would fund our desire to visit Sausageland. One of us did the perfectly normal adult thing and ignored the email and got on with her life (that was me, by the way). The Weak One, not having the social acumen to spot a nutjob from 4.5km, was email-bullied into having coffee with ms. intensity, and so earned her name. she is small, plain, lives at home and has, at this point in time, absolutely the most horrendous nasal-ocker aussie voice in all of germany (unless kevin bloody wilson is in town). she us utterly weak, utterly uninteresting, and genuinely believes that the fact we come from the same country (nay, the same CITY, even!) makes us automatically friends. I don't know how to explain to her in simple enough terms for her to understand that in fact, the fact that she comes from australia makes it immeasurably less likely that i would want anything to do with her. she's in my class. we made an extremely uninteresting presentation on australia together.

The Plain One - this one also comes from australia but, luckily, not from brisbane. she comes from melbourne, so annabel gets to keep her (eheee!). i have looked at sheets of cardboard that were more interesting than her, i have had conversations with cans of beans that were more interesting than a chat with her, and i have scars around my eyes from trying to scratch out my own eyeballs out of sheer frustration on the few occasions that i spent more than 3 minutes in her presence. she was another one of these same-country-equals-common-ground (NO IT FRACKING DOESN'T!!!) fools and followed annabel and i around like a lost puppy (though not as cute), convinced that we were a pack of crazy, raucous, fun-having girls, when in fact annabel and i are crazy, raucous, fun-having girls and she is an idiot.

The Barely Noticeable One - she's actually quite pretty, but wears the same jumper and jeans to uni every day, and worse, to the opera, and never says anything. ever. i imagine she has a beautiful personality hiding in there somewhere.

The Innocent One - does not swear (we taught him to converse like a trooper), does not drink (we took him out for cocktails), almost certainly lives with his right-wing-christian-fundamentalist parents, never says anything interesting, ever. latched on to A and i because he thought we were cool renegades. we may have damaged him for life.

The Miserable Bitches - we are very good-looking. also deeply unhappy. you can tell this by looking at our sour miserable faces, you need know no more. go away now, you bore us. and your jeans were not handsewn by a famous designer known personally to one or both of your parents.

The Pretty One - This girl has such a pretty smile. really. did i mention she has a pretty smile? wow, what a pretty smile. This smile, held together by a most unbecoming plate by the way, is the only thing this girl has in all the world. she bestows it willingly on all who would gaze on her visage with a self-righteous insincerity that makes scarlett johanssen look as genuine as mother theresa. she stands in front of things, any old things really, and poses, one leg always oddly placed, for photos. she jumps into group photos to improve the overall picture with her dazzling (no-doubt artificially whitened) teeth. Actually, that's horrible of me - i shouldn't make it sound like she has only the smile to offer. she also has perfect hair. when she's not smiling beatifically at all us poor unfortunate ordinary-looking souls, she is checking each individual hair, i'm not even joking, for split ends. this is a process that takes hours every day, but that works just fine because she has to endure hours of classes every day, and if not the endless fascination provided by looking at her own hair, what would she do with all that time? Pretty, what would you do with a brain if you had one?

The Mind-Bogglingly Irritating One - I-AM-CUTE-AND-LOUD-DID-I-MENTION-I'M-CUTE-I-AM-WHAT-PEOPLE-ARE-TALKING-ABOUT-WHEN-THEY-SAY-TOO-MUCH-POSITIVE-REINFORCEMENT-WOULD-YOU-LIKE-TO-TAKE-A-PHOTO-OF-ME-SO-MY-CUTENESS-CAN-BE-PRESERVED-FOR-AS-LONG-AS-THE-DIGITAL-AGE-LASTS-TAKE-A-PHOTO-OF-MEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! also i will ask ridiculous stupid questions, all the time, but you won't mind because i'm ADORABLE!!!

The Cute One - i actually feel sorry for this one, her teeth are 56 kinds of messed up and no-one told her. she loves a good photos and every time she smiles i want to eat my own hair so it blocks up my intestinal passage and slowly kills me. she's made screechy-cute-we-are-still-in-primary-school friends with The Mind-Boggingly-Irritating-One too, much to the displeasure of all who can hear their stomach-churningly inane exchanges of stupidity and hot air ('conversations' seemed a little generous), and the neighbourhood dogs, who can hear their greeting for one another - yeeeeeeee!!! trevor calls them the teletubbies because they actually never say anything intelligible (much less intelligent) and their every noise is high-pitched.

you see, it turns out that this conception that everyone has of me as a nice person is horribly flawed - i'm only nice when i'm around nice people and we can all relax and feed off each other's nicey-nice-ness. when i'm around idiots, i'm a horrible, duplicitious, judgemental BITCH. and i like it.

who's ya DAADy

eks — Wed, 7 Feb 2007 09:37:00 GMT

As a display of their apparently bottomless generosity, the DAAD took us to Berlin for a week. They paid for our transport, accomodation and breakfasts (!) and gave us an exceptionally well-informed tour guide who slowly but surely droves us all mad. sorry, i should clarify what i mean by 'exceptionally well-informed'. What i mean by that is dirty-rotten-ex-politician-with-bad-teeth-and-a-massive-ego-the-size-of-which-was-only-rivalled-by-his-frightful-stomach. the guy was a menace. he spoke at the speed of economic progress in india, liked to place his hand in the small of girls' backs when they weren't expecting it (oddly, he wasn't expecting the reflex punch-in-the-face from me. i'm kidding. i wish i'd punched him in the face.) and was generally a right wanker. he dragged us around Berlin (which, when not providing a dreary backdrop to his nauseating visage and meandering self-indulgent monologue, is a really nice city) for hours and hours every day in the wet, frightful, bone-chilling cold, making us stand outside buildings of enormous political and historical significance and telling us every single detail he knew about the place, advising us to keep in our minds not only the building now before us ("i swear to god we saw this building yesterday, just from a different angle"), but also to imagine the buildings that stood there in the past ("no i frikking can't can i have a coffee please"), before trudging us along to the next, infinitely less inspiring building. by the end of the week, when he was showing us through cemetries full of famous dead germans, i was about ready to kill him. all that stopped me was the knowledge that the dignity of dying next to bertholt brecht's grave would give him far too much pleasure. that and i wanted to get inside and get a coffee as soon as possible and he's a big guy, it'd take a while.

saturday - long bus trip, ridiculous orientation, wandered through the town with ans, dinner in the aldstadt, dessert at alexanderplatz.

checking emails briefly in the lounge area afterwards i overheard some english guys practicing german profanities and offered to teach them some more. it turned out they were in town for a literature reading as part of some youthy-bohemian-fuck-the-man-we're-deep-and-alternative-and-you'll-never-understand-us-you-capitalist-bastards cultural festival and they kindly invited us. after traipsing through a dark berlin suburb for a while we eventually found the predictably smokey, dimly lit hovel in which they were delivering their cutting edge contemporary dialogues and shuffled in, a considerable passage of time after the official start time, much to the weary disdain of the diehards at the front. i should take my tongue out of my cheek, it was actually really good. very heartwarming to know that the love of WORDS (i know it's wrong to say you 'love words'... but i do.) and EXPRESSION still exists in the world and that some people are still chipping away at that stone, trying to create something new or capture something beautiful or remind us of something we'd rather forget but shouldn't.

sunday - after more walking around (note: this is a developing theme), blah, literature reading! went to gay bar thereafter for hot chocolate, realised only as we were walking out together, having paid for annabels drink, that it was a gay bar. A says bargirl was eyeing us off.

monday - more walking around (theme continues), the whole day, then out to potsdamer platz for cocktails and general wandering around. painkillers + alcohol = happy times. I went home and tried to sleep, A came back and announced they were going out, apparently i told her i'd stay in then messaged her as she was in the lift telling her i missed her and begging her to come back. to say that it was an ill-considered move to continue drinking beyond that point is an understatement. we wandered through kreuzberg, me poking my head into every bar and returning with a full report, which generally amounted to 'yeeeeah!' or 'no it's rubbish' but because we were with The Plain One and she is no. fun. at. all we eventually just went home.

tuesday - more walking around (theme becomes inane and repetitive), walked around with ans in the afternoon, couple of quiet cocktails at gay bar. bar girl now totally convinced that we're a gay couple, might like to join us for a threesome if we're so inclined.

wednesday - it may surprise you to know that the walking around continued (theme begins to grate on the reader's sanity) quiet one, sore back.

thursday - walking around (clarity of theme reaches positively freudian proportions) after which the good man Jens took us on an auto tour, pointing out the less significant yet somehow more interesting highlights (golden quote which sums up Jens' childlike hilarity - "so you are now in East Berlin and I am now in West Berlin because we are parked over the line where the wall was."), followed by beer in a suburb i can't remember in the east. pommes quota (463 serves) hadn't been met for the day so we went out for pommes before he dropped us home like the charming gentleman he is.

hang on, explanation necessary - Jens is a friend of Ellie and Marco, who, before I left, filled my Germany notebook with the contact details of their friends in every major city. ain't they lovely? Jens being the delight he is agreed to meet up with what must have seemed an odd australian girl messaging him out of the blue in barely passable german to see if he had time for a drink. champion people all round, even if Jens did advise that I'd be able to spot him when we first met up (in a dive called the 'Australian Bar', which we stayed in for about 3.2 seconds) because he'd be completely naked.

friday

snow fracking patrol + beer with jens and kathi.

in other news, we're putting on weight. this is evidenced by me having one new chin in every photo that's taken of me and was hilariously illustrated by annabel yesterday when she poked her stomach out over the top of her pants and said 'i think it's yours' before disappearing into the bathroom. she poked her head out the door moments later and said 'no seriously, i think i'm going to give birth to a block of chocolate.'

a note on the gay bar - when we caught up with ellie's brother norm in essen he took us to a gay bar, where we were enormously popular with a person i'm quite sure was an oddly convincing drag queen. further, when i spent a night at Karneval with basti and his friends in cologne, we ended up in a gay bar where we had the most wonderful of times and i was lovingly hit on by a german girl so adorable i almost wished i was gay. the irony of so many queer experiences on my epic search for a european convenience husband is not lost on me.

more essen action

eks — Wed, 7 Feb 2007 09:31:00 GMT

After the non-stop excitement of the London weekend, Essen greeted me with more of the usual - pommes frittes and the felafel stand, freaks on the tram and my increasingly messy room at the hotel (a ripple of surprised gasps tumbles through the crowd). Lovely moments were had though, and are detailed as follows:

Tuesday

Sorry, can i just first of all say that i now understand why people keep diaries - it's so much easier than constructing a flowing narrative.

on Tuesday Annabel and i slept in and were late for our first class, so didn't go to any of them ("would've been bollocks anyway", we grunted). Instead we wandered the town looking for a nice cafe (a long trek that ended in disappointment and hot lemon drinks at the only nice cake shop we've been able to find so far, breaking our 'never go to the same place twice when you're in an exciting foreign land' rule) and trying desperately not to buy things as the january sales, subtly forgetting their end date, continued to hound us with their relentless barrage of affordable winter clothing. in the afternoon we got ourselves a train timetable and a sonar device and trekked out to the tiny outer suburb in which the bus company who had my glasses is situated. this turned out to be a lovely trip and the sonar device was absolutely not necessary as we would happily have stayed there forever. Kupferdreh, as it is known to people who can pronounce such things, is exactly the kind of village one pictures when one imagines ye olde europa - quaint houses, the odd cobblestone street, pretty churches... naturally it's also been taken over by supermarkets and hairdressers (and a diving shop, which A and i stared at, bewildered, for a few moments before deciding that there are just some things in germany that we will never understand), but the pubs are still old and beautiful and it has a wonderful atmosphere. we wandered to the edge of the town looking for the bus depot - i say depot because having seen a number of buses belonging to this company traipsing around the place that's exactly we expected - much to our delight and amusement though, what we actually found was a tiny mechanic's workshop adjoined by a small lean-to office filled with grubby smoking old men. the surly secretary handed me my glasses and bid us a quick farewell before the old fellas could start in on us. they assured us that we're welcome to visit any time and we escaped, relieved, to an ice-cream café* via a gorgeous handmade jewellery shop before heading back to the dreariness of home.

Wednesday

After finally attending our classes in a manner similar to that of good students, we visited Dusseldorf. We were aware of how lovely Dusseldorf is and had for this reason put off our visit – we decided early that Dusseldorf would probably only make Essen look sad and tired by comparison and didn’t want to create such disappointment for ourselves too early. We were absolutely right and I was very glad we’d waited. Dusseldorf was exquisite, it has a beautiful old town, interesting museums and a very picturesque walk along the river. As usual we ate cake (in a traditional-ish greek café) and drank beer. The beer brings me to the long-established rivalry between Cologne and Dusseldorf, at the centre of which appears to be a feud over which beer is better. So, our answer to the age-old Altbier (Dusseldorf) or Koelsch (Cologne) question is…

Altbier.

But don’t tell anyone in Cologne I said that.

Thursday

On Thursday we saw a performance (actually, half a performance, for reasons that will become clear) of Swan Lake that I will describe for want of better words as unconventional. Crazed modern dance students (Annabel calls them ballet-school-dropouts, she spent the better part of her childhood en pointe and so has earned the right to be something of a purist) flailing about with a flimsy grasp on the concept of rhythm and even less understanding of synchronized movement. The moves were unimaginative and repetitive, and gosh darnit, it’s just not ballet if they’re not wearing shoes. The costumes were odd, and apparently poorly organised because when they turned into swans they had only skirts to cover themselves with and so ran about the stage clutching their skirts to their breasts and looking most ungraceful indeed. Uncomfortable with such erratic and rough movement juxtaposed with the intense beauty of the music, Annabel and I left at interval like a pair of snobs so as not to waste another 40 minutes or so of our lives looking at each other, horrified, and trying to work out exactly what was going on.

Friday

There were workers climbing through Annabel’s window for reasons we were happy not to know so we escaped to the city for more coffee drinking (seriously, coffee drinking and beer drinking, it’s just like I’m in Australia except it’s cold.) and faffing about before returning home. I stayed in and discovered german tv – it turns out they’re hilarious!

Saturday was the train trip to berlin for the week, Berlin stories to follow.

*some explanation is perhaps necessary here, you did read correctly, ‘ice-cream café’. “are you insane??”, I hear you ask, “sub-zero temperatures and you’re eating ice-cream?!” and I can understand your confusion, as I was equally perplexed when I arrived here and saw these curious establishments bloody everywhere. Brisbane is almost always warm, and has only 2 cafes of this desserts-only persuasion, both owned by the same people, and because of the liquor-licensing laws, they’re not even solely devoted to desserts! The idea of freaky-cold germany being more excited about ice-cream than crazy-hot Brisbane did bake my noodle, i must admit. The idea has grown on me though, thanks partially to the presence of these cafes on practically every block but mostly to Annabel’s crippling penchant for ‘spaghetti eis’ (vanilla ice-cream pushed through a spaghetti machine and covered with cherry sauce and grated white chocolate). Oddly, I’m now completely ok with the idea of eating ice-cream in the cold (at least it doesn’t melt!) and do so (arguably a little too) frequently. Most places offer a dish which involves ice cream and bailey’s too, so that helps to warm things up.

Gallery: The Motherland

eks — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:42:00 GMT

London, Australia Day Weekend