ich bin ein berliner... sort of

yes, i'm finally in berlin. the capital. the birthplace of cabaret and burlesque. the king of undisclosed decadence. the giant wurst. to be perfectly honest with you i haven't done that much sightseeing wise, but i have wandered around a little. i've seen the reichstag from outside (haven't been inside yet, that's for another day, along with a couple of museums and galleries). i've seen a church that has been left as it stood at the end of the war. i've seen some hardcore goths (one resembled pinhead from hellraiser). and most importantly i have been to berghain/panorama bar and i loved it that much i bought a ticket to go back for new year's eve.

there are two things that i have been surprised at. there doesn't seem to be a skyline here. i've been to a couple of areas and i have yet to see a skyscraper in the distance. i don't know if there are any here, but i have been truly confused by this. don't all capitals, or at least major cities on an international level, have skyscrapers? the second thing is i haven't seen what can be called a city centre. melbourne has bourke st, new york has time square. the list in endless. so doesn't berlin have something similar? i'm not bitching by any stretch of the imagination, but i seriously expected a city centre. granted i saw the reichstag, but that could hardly be called a city centre.

but that all seems beside the point. i went to berghain! this place was insane. it's basically a club in an industrial area that is an old warehouse looking very hostel-esque that sits kinda by itself with a chainlink fence around the entrance. i have a photo of the outside on my phone but i have yet to put in on my computer, so i promise i'll add it later when i get home to heidelberg and back to my own computer. (i'm using a friend's mac at the moment so i wouldn't even know where to begin. oh pc how i miss you.) the reason i have a photo of the outside is because you are not allowed to take photos once inside. i thought this was a little odd until i went in. all i will say now is darkrooms for sex, small little 3-walled rooms facing away from the dance floor for what i assume is for taking drugs, as that's what most people did in them (pot is legal in berlin, and i have a sneaking suspicion that most things are here) and people just being decadent everywhere you look. apart from that, the foyer was filled with giant photographs of various fetishes, the mezzanine has a massive picture of what looks like the apocalypse, two gigantic rooms for dancing and barstaff that are from all walks of life. i swear to god i got served by a transexual at a small bar near the toilets. one word of warning, if you have to go to the toilet, try not to sit down. there is no lid bit for your bum and the weather being about -6 degrees makes the metal a tad cold on bare skin.

i'll post more later about the various things around, like the cafe that resembled hell (in a good way), the dali museum/exhibition, the cool as goth shop round the corner from where i'm staying and all the other sights and sounds. before i go i will let you all know that i'm trying to find a cabaret place and an S&M/fetish place to go to before i leave. i've already found the erotik museum...

till then...
merry christmas und tchuss mein gut freunds

some words of little comfort

if you hate christmas shopping like i do, then a word of caution - i have just discovered that no matter which country you are in, no matter how picturesque the landscape or view, christmas shopping is shit. i have just come home from spending an afternoon shopping down the hauptstrasse and i hate myself for it. my legs hurt, my brain feels like mash, i am not in a happy mood, and the next person to nudge, push or stop directly in front of me will feel something hard and sharp in the back of their skull.

i love shopping. i used to work in the CBD of melbourne and i loved it. i could go shopping if i needed to after work or before if i could get my lazy arse out of bed. when i first got here i was in love with the sheer joy of walking down a huge shopping district still looking like it was back in the 13th century. my first trip to france (which i still haven't blogged about! sorry!), was a shopping dream. as was my first trip to mannheim. (mein gott, the jackets!!!) now, after spending the entire afternoon dodging pedestrians and pushing my way through crowds of, what i can only call, motherfuckers, i hate it. christmas, you've ruined one of my favourite hobbies. although i shouldn't say that, last year i wanted to kill everyone and the year before i wanted to kill everyone, but i soon got over it and enjoyed shopping once more. my only saving grace is that i'm heading to berlin tomorrow and i can't wait. hopefully the christmas 'spirit' wont attack me there, as i'm in a new place and somewhere i've always wanted to go. ah berlin... home of burlesque and cabaret, new home of marilyn manson and home of the hardcore euro beats and clubs i've been craving. ich bin berliner!!!

in other news, after five tries at getting my 'working holiday permit' i finally have it!!! the crazy thing is the woman who's been alternatively nice and the devil, didn't even check anything. all she asked for was my insurance paperwork. she didn't even look at my bank statements. she didn't care that i hadn't filled out the form completely. nor did she seem to care about my living arrangements or when my plane leaves. to be honest, i'm not even sure how many months my bank balance would let me stay for, but she didn't even calculate that! i think frau halter has been into the gluhwein and i got her in the right mood. i wonder if i had gone in asking for citizenship would she have just giggled and gone, alright? but who cares?!?! i'm now allowed to stay until october next year!!! maybe now i'll actually focus on learning some german, instead of just looking blankly at people with the look of a startled deer in headlights. but first things first, berlin, party party party, then i'll get a job and then i might learn some german. or maybe i'll try the german learning thing before the job. who knows, but things are looking up mein freunds. i even found a place that serves melbourne style coffee and i know how to order it! ein milchkafe bitte... (even if i don't know how to spell it. hehehe...)

movie review; or some of the reasons the golden compass pissed me off

i've been to the movies twice since i came to germany. there is a cinema in mannheim that plays american and english movies in their original language and on my first trip i went and saw beowulf. not the most exciting movie. it left me with a feeling of indifference and a need to watch 300, what i feel is a far superior movie. on the second outing i went and saw the golden compass (IMDB page) and official website here for the trailer and other nonsense. now what has me blogging about the golden compass is the fact that so many people have criticised the movie, started calling for boycotts and everything else this side of a public lynching before it even came out. i have seen it and i am going to tell you, do not go and see it. not because all of the press (good and bad), not because it has received some good reviews, not because of the perceived anti-christian plot, but simply because it just isn't that good of a movie and if you're in australia movies are too expensive to see out of curiosity. i left the cinema piised off, more so than when i saw beowulf, and i actually didn't mind beowulf that much. (i just wished it wasn't so obviously animated and strategic in its hiding of rude bits. if you have the guts to have the titular hero and jolie naked, then have the guts to not put candles, forearms and ideally placed gold bits in the way zemeckis!)

the golden compass is like a swag of other movies to come out recently (eragon, the dark is rising etc) which all come from children's novels and hope to cash in on that harry potter money now the books have come to an end. sadly, it seems that some of these books would have worked quite well as movies if they had just left in all the darker parts of the stories and not treated them to the infamous 'hollywood' treatment. not everything is suppose to be light and fluffy and not everything is morally black and white (something which the last two harry potters had better be wary of, cause they go into some dark territory before the end). the golden compass however, hints at something darker, but never quite explains it.

***SPOILERS FROM NOW ON***

the plot revolves around children being kidnapped and an apparently evil woman who will stop at nothing to keep the church in power. i will not go into specifics about things as i don't remember some of it (it was that exciting) and i don't really care enough about this movie. i just want you to know the general gist so you can understand my feelings of indifference. now in this imagined world people's souls aren't inside them, but are personified by animals (daemons) that co-exist with their human counterparts. now as a child, your daemon doesn't have a specific animal, it morphs between animals until you get older and then it becomes a single being. this is all well and good, but the only child whose daemon morphs is the main characters. i guess she's about 10-12. her friend's and other children all seem a lot younger than her, but their daemons are constantly one animal. point why the movie shitted me number one. it's made abundantly clear that she needs to grow up and they know she hasn't because her daemon changes. so what about the 5 year old she was playing with at the start? is he all grown up? is he an adult, while a girl twice his age is still a child?

the main girl i found irritating. i'm not saying she's a bad actress, hardly, she's still a girl and we'll have to wait until she's much older to determine this, but what i am saying is that as a main character i found her annoying. she seemed to act like what a child would think an adult would want a child to act like. (if you follow me) there was no depth, no emotion and no nothing to it. it was like that kid from AI turned female and decided to act again. sure she cried when needed, sure she looked kinda angry when needed, but it all seemed fake. like that kid who gets what he wants by pulling out the crocodile tears. not all the acting was bad, nicole kidman and daniel craig were excellent in their parts. although craig didn't have much of one. everyone else on this movie tended to phone it in. it was like they all thought, 'this is a fantasy/special effects movie, no one will notice if we do nothing here, they'll just keep watching the polar bear talk.' point two - why say yes to act in a movie if you wont actually act? i'm looking at you sam elliot and eva green.

but then again, how could one act when most of the plot is never explained, or if it is, it's quite simple and really goes nowhere anyway? which brings me to point number three. if this was a book, then shouldn't there be more plot? or if there isn't more plot, shouldn't things be a little easier to expand and deepen? or even to patch up plot holes or inconsistencies? for example, when kidman's character tells the main one, 'i am your mother,' why the bloody hell doesn't she check with the damn compass to see if she's lying? the character is evil! what you think she wouldn't lie? she's in league with the kiddie kidnappers!!! or how about explaining why kidman's daemon doesn't talk when every other character's does? how about explaining why when a child is separated from their daemon they don't die? if you set up the premise that what the daemon feels physically so does the person, and vice versa, then when you rip that child from its daemon shouldn't they be dead? not just sitting in a shed freezing their tits off saying, 'i'm cold. where's my rat?'

now point number four, there's a major plot point about witches going to war. the main character stands in the middle of an ice-desert and looks up to see all these witches flying in the sky. some character then states they are going to war. what freakin' war? in the big climax of the movie the kidnapped children are set free and the kidnappers and the gypsies have a mass brawl that the witches come down to help with. is this the war they're going to? cause it looked more like a scuffle than a war. maybe even a rumble if i wanted to be nice. and why, if this is indeed the war, does it take them so long to bloody get there? the main characters are travelling by polar bear and walking, and yet if you fly it takes you longer. did they stop for gingerbread on the way?

look i could go on and on about the terribleness of this movie, but i'll stop here. it's a shame it was bad, i was hoping for something good to come out of this movie, but alas, it looks like i'll have to what till next november for harry potter and the half-blood prince to come out. (zombies in a 'kids' movie! YAY!!!) i'll leave you with the words of a friend who saw the golden compass with me. after seeing the final moments of the film, where the main character turns to her friend and says in the most obvious cliffhangery (i think i just made a new word) mood, 'but there's still so much to do...' begin swelling music... he said, 'i have to come back in a year to continue watching? i don't fucking think so.'

change for the sake of change

you might have noticed a couple of small changes on here. firstly i now have a picture of me on here. at first i didn't want to do that, i wanted to stay somewhat anonymous. i'm not too sure why, it was just a gut instinct to hide myself on the net when i started. being invisible allows you certain freedoms, ie the ability to pick something apart totally and give bad reviews to places or events without and kind of backlash in the real world. other than that, it just felt like the right thing to do. however, i am now back tracking on this decision and am putting a 'sort of' recognisable picture of me looking out over the town of heidelberg from the schloss. i decided that i needed to give a more personal look to this blog and hence the picture. plus, as a total starfucker and camera whore, i want people to recognise me from this blog in the unlikely event that anyone from heidelberg germany reads this thing. i seriously doubt anyone would as it's sort of too diary/i'm on holidays for the general public to be that interested. plus i don't think i'm that exciting of a person that people would want to read my censored exploits on here. if anyone, in the most unlikely event, does live in heidelberg and reads this, if you ever see me down the hauptstrasse at a pub come over and, after explaining yourself of course, buy me a drink and i'll be sure to tell you about the things that have omitted from this blog due to varying reasons.

second change, is that i now, in my list of blogs people should read, have a small explanation of what the blog entails. it looks a bit wordy, but if you're reading blogs, then you shouldn't be afraid of words. or else why are you reading to start with?

and lastly, in an attempt to start making any kind of money on this damn thing i have added a 'news' feed thinger under my generic photos of heidelberg. just click the titles at the top and the articles will change. any ideas for other topics are welcome, but just to let you know, anything that includes something a little un-PC or dirty will get a giggle from me and then be forgotten about.

if you don't like the changes let me know. if you like them let me know as well. i'm all for praise and criticism, well mostly praise. and if you feel like donating to the 'keep TJ of the streets' campaign just click the adds and news articles till your finger aches!!!

contemplating connexions

saturday night i went to a nightclub in mannheim called connexions. connexions is a bit of a mash up of three clubs all in the one building, with one thing in common - they all played old, boring, tiresome music. i don't know if it was the night that we went or the fact that the place was full of americans (again i ask where are all the germans?), but it wasn't the best night out i've had. perhaps it's the somewhat 'grass is always greener' view that i've had about other countries and their clubbing habits? perhaps it's the assumption of dance music's roots in europe? perhaps it may even be the endless list of fellow travellers telling me europe is better? or perhaps it's just that i come from melbourne? where the beats are awesome, the coffee strong and americans are where they should be - somewhere else other than where i am. (don't get me wrong, i don't mind americans, i am just tired of seeing and hearing so many of them in germany. i'm somewhat offended on the german people's behalf with all the american bases here and the fact that none of them seem to like where they are except on a kitsch level. 'oh look at that quaint building, chuck?' 'yes it is nice, cindi, but i think chicago is better at christmas time.')

anyway, we arrived in what could only be described as an industrial area of mannheim - the club was down a side street, down another side street, then down an alleyway with no actual road, just mud, and finally nestled between two warehouses, which i assume were empty. it was like walking onto the set of hostel 3. i kept waiting for someone to pop up and tell us there was a great party down the road and that we should go there, only to be drugged and woken up by a chainsaw to the chest. it didn't help that from the entrance you could see two smoke stacks nearby churning out, well, smoke, and that everything looked quite dilapidated and forgotten about. i didn't mind this so much, it added to allure of the place. if it looks out of the way and like it doesn't exist, usually it means that it's an awesome underground club and only the true party-goers know about it and attend. something melbournians have subscribed to for a while now. for an example look at honky tonks, sure it wasn't the best kept secret, but if you weren't from melbourne you would never have known where it was or if it even existed.

so we went inside and, just like the club i went to in frankfurt on my last day there, there was no money exchanged once inside. you get a drink card worth fifty euros and as you buy drinks the bar staff cross off what it's worth and you pay at the end. don't lose it or you have to pay the full fifty euro to get out of there. i remember thinking, 'well this place must be popular if they have this system.' it didn't occur to me that popular does not always equal good. for an example of this look at paris hilton. sure she's popular, but what good is she really? still i went in and after checking my coat at the door went for a drink and a boogie...

...or i would have of the music was any good and the bar staff cared about making a profit. they seemed more interested in greeting their friends at the side of the bar than serving people drinks. and the music? dear god! the DJ in the main area was a classics DJ, which i though meant good time-tested music, not crappy shite from 10 years ago that should be left as a cautionary tale of what not to play, like the eigthies. although i did get to hear britney spears' new song THREE TIMES!!! i shouldn't have been surprised by this though, the main floor was having it's fortnightly gay night - think the peel without the irony. this became overtly apparent when i heard a cher song mixed with a beat that sounded eerily similar to every other beat heard so far that evening. i even remember hearing alanis morrisette. *shudder* once the party got started it wasn't too bad. alexis and i found a room where the DJ was playing 'black music', or what the rest of the enlightened world call R'n'B or hip hop. which personally i don't mind. again though it was all old school except for that damn umbrella song, which seems to be haunting me no matter which continent i'm in.

the decorations where pretty cool though. in the gay area it was a christmas theme and had snowflakes, snowmen and all sorts of christmas inspired nonsense hanging from everywhere. the dance floor even had white sheets cut like the snow hanging from rooftops around it. the 'black music' room had, predictably, dollar signs cut out of styrofoam everywhere. only problem was the place looked kind of crappy and uncared for, so no amount of decorations was going to save it from looking like revolver on a monday morning without the reassurance that at least your off your chops. what was cool though was the fact there was a cafe inside the club. i'm talking about an actual cafe here, where you can sit down at a table and chairs and have a coffee or kind of chat if you could hear above that terrible beat that backed every song played by Mr Classics DJ. that man should be shot. there was a third dance floor as well downstairs, but alexis and i didn't enter it. we didn't need to. we could hear the music from outside. it was the same as the gay dance floor, just without the pop song layered over the top. we didn't need to hear that one beat again and without the lyrics trying to disguise it as cool and trendy 'classic' dance.

well i'm off to berlin for xmas and new year's so here's hoping the clubscene will be better there. i know it will be. i've already got two clubbing nights planned. berghain (not usually work safe with the crazy themes and such), and click here for a random youtube clip of the panorama bar inside berghain (it's not the best, but at least you get an idea why i'm excited). and the kitkatclub (definately not work safe) for a totally german night of S&M/leather/pvc/cabaret-inspired kraziness. here's two youtube clips as a taste one and two. it's about time i saw what people have been raving about and to in europe. can't wait!!!

tchuss

awards for coolest part of the evening in mannheim is a tie.

firstly an honorable mention to - americans (white and black) who think it's cool to dance like a cliche sexist rap song to timbaland, justin timberlake or any other slightly sexy singer/song every singer/song. never before have i felt so much pride in not being what someone else is. they grinded and booty-shaked all night long, with not a hint of irony or sarcasm to be seen. granted it may seem cool on tv sometimes, but in real life it's just wrong and somewhat icky. i did giggle and stare quite a bit.

first prize goes to two things, firstly - super-gay germans. consider that for all my life germans have taken the brunt of anti-WWII sentiment and are usually shown as the evil people. need a crazy euro bad guy for a movie? throw in someone with a german accent. need someone creepy, ala hostel 1? throw some german in there. never before have i seen a squealing, prancing and (my personal favourite adjective) mincing german. it was brilliant. i'm smiling as i type this and it's 3 days later! oh the joy of the super-gay german. trust me when i say it was fantastic. it was like robert de niro in stardust. the day cape fear went camp. comedy gold!

second thing - when you left they gave you a chocolate santa, complete with little felt santa hat. just precious! it was so cute and unexpected i don't want to eat him, although he did melt somewhat on the journey home.

drinks and dancing ahoy

tonight i'm going out clubbing in mannheim. apparently we are going to one of the biggest clubs in this region of germany. it should be fun and i am promised there is to be no gluhwein anywhere. it's funny how i've gone from loving that sweet sweet elixir to being completely wary of it. anyway, the night is starting with me cooking dinner. a chicken and creamy sauce with spinach and cheese ravioli. then a few beers. probably kronfels (i translated this page through google so i hope it works!), as it's very cheap and comes in half litre bottles. wash all that down with a few jagermeister shots and then off we go.

it will be interesting though, as we have to catch the train to mannheim from heidelberg and then a quick cab ride from the station. it reminds me of being at home - a few drinks followed by that train/tram ride where you hope that you've drunk enough to still be feeling it once you've gone from essendon to st kilda. if we time it just right it should take a little less time to get to mannheim than it would to get to st kilda, but german transport being what it is, we could end up in frankfurt or even strasbourg again. hope not, as the alcohol will not last that length of time. unless we somehow get the fancy fast train and sneak some jagermeister in for the journey.

anyhow, i hope all goes well, because this will be my first time out in mannheim that wasn't just to see a movie, do something fancy or just shop. i'm pretty excited, but not too much. i don't want to burn out early and these clubs look and sound awesome. jungle, house, crazy euro style dance and everything in between. i only hope that i can find good enough clothes to go out with. the washing machine is still being unhelpful and it's starting to get cold out. oh well, a few jagermeisters and i wont even realise what's going on. now, all that's left to do is eat some dinner, get drunk and avoid gluhwein like the plague.

i'll let you all know how it goes.

tchuss

the trouble with gluhwein

so on wednesday night i went out with the intention of getting drunk on gluhwein. this was all good in intention. i went to the christmas market with alexis and spanish carmello to meet a few of their friends and have some drinks. now, as an australian i have that cultural breeding that includes the joy and love of getting quite smashed and merry - something that i have found out is not a world-wide cultural thing, but merely something that only a select few countries are quite fond of. us, new zealanders, the brittish, irish and scandanavian (or northern european). this was fine, i am australian, i like to drink and when i do i like to get absolutely blind. not because i need alcohol to have a good time, or because i am a shy person who uses it as a way to make friends, or any of the myriad of reasons that people use it for, alcoholic or not. quite simply put, i think it's fun. i have been known to on occasions get so drunk that i have forgotten parts of the evening, done things i would normally never have done, etc. the list is pretty long and highly amusing, as i'm sure every one's list is that comes from the land down under. i am by no means an alcoholic, i may have binge drinked occasionally, but who hasn't. apart from this i am no where near the worst drinker in my group of friends or the larger circle. i usually prefer scotch or beer, and sometimes a nice red wine. although i have never been drunk on gluhwein before and after my experience on thursday morning i never will again.

gluhwein, for those that don't know, is a seasonal beverage that is made here in germany and available at the christmas market. it comes steaming hot in a mug and smells like cinnamon and apples (which handily you pay for once and then when you're done you take the mug back for a refund, or you just keep it. i would like to start making a collection of these mugs to bring back home, even though they do look quite gay and christmassy. they have an ad for the christmas market on the front and the handle is a little heart. gay!). it is perfect for drinking outside in the cold german streets. although it is quite funny to see all these uptight and tough looking and sounding germans drinking from these little gay mugs. because it's heated up, the wine itself isn't that alcoholic. to help it in that regard, the hotness of it lets your body soak up the alcohol quicker, but the real trick is depending on which stall you go to, they add vodka or rum to it. quite the little kicker.

now i had a few (by few read 8) of these little beverages in my couple of hours of standing around and chatting to people i don't know. as the old saying goes, 'if you can't talk, you might as well drink up.' and drink up i did. so much so, that i can remember wishing i was here with one of four people, cousin cass, kiwi ben, ballarat katrina or irish pete. these are the people i rather enjoy getting extremely drunk with and i think they would have been brilliant company for this particular outing. plus it would have given me someone to get blind with apart from german oliver, who i quite liked and thought was fun. i was told later on that everyone thinks he's an alcoholic because he likes to get really drunk when he goes out. let none of these people ever come to australia i thought when i was told this. we're a nation of big drinkers and these people would think we all belong in some form of anonymous group for dependants. but i digress, i had a wonderful time getting blind-drunk for the first time since i came to heidelberg. (remember i had gotten absolutely smashed in frankfurt two nights in a row and that was over a month ago! such a long time between drinks. *sigh* so unaustralian.) i wasn't too worried about getting to drunk and being a mess. i've figured out how to say and direct myself home, and as i am generally a happy and cheeky drunk i have no qualms about being blind. i think i've been in two fights while i've been drunk and i haven't started either of them. i sure did finish one of them though. hehehe...

my only regret about this night is the way i felt the next day. gluhwein leaves its mark, just like vodka does. the headaches, the dizziness, the all over craptacular feeling of nausea. dear god it was like i was a teenager again and had just discovered how much fun alcohol could be. that gluhwein is not to be messed with - you can't win that fight. i made a vow with myself that i was going to stick to beer or scotch form now on, and if gluhwein was going to be drunk, i would have one or two and then politely decline anymore. but we'll see how that fares. i've never been too good at saying no to anything. just ask irish pete or melbourne cecilia about nights out. my only problem is that i bought a bottle of gluhwein the other day, but i'm pretty sure i wont be drinking that in a hurry and it should be safe for the return trip back to australia.

what i did over the weekend

on saturday i went shopping down the hauptstrasse and to the christmas market again with alexis and his spanish friend carmello. this was the second time i've been there and the magic of it still has me enthralled. it just looks so quaint and like a postcard that you can't resist walking around and feeling all christmas-clucky. and this is from someone who had never gotten into the christmas spirit. ever. for those that don't know the christmas market is in the three different squares down the hauptstrasse and includes stalls that have everything from children's wooden toys to candy and gingerbread, clothes such has hats, gloves, beanies, general market stalls and food and wine. the food is very traditional fare, mainly with meat like wurst and steak on offer. there is a stall that has half metre long sausages in a roll. quite tasty and helps to line the stomach when you start to consume all the gluhwein you can to stay warm. the wine, which i am very partial to, is called gluhwein and it tastes like apple and cinnamon. i am in love with this wine and have already brought a bottle to bring home. it's served hot like sake and really helps to warm you up when the temperature is about 3 degrees. the best part is that when you get it it comes in a mug that you get to keep, or if you have enough mugs at home you can hand it back and get some of your money back.

after the market alexis and i went out with some other friends, matthias and paula, to a spanish restaurant for tapas. i've had tapas before in mannheim and i was a little wary of this, as last time, if you have been reading this you'll remember, i ate unknowingly tongue. ech. this time however i was prepared and asked about everything i ate before i ate it. somehow i just don't trust the spanish anymore when it comes to food.

on sunday alexis and i went hiking in the heidelberg hills, which was fantastic. a friend of mine i met through facebook took us on the trek and showed us some fantastic sights, including an old ruined monastery from centuries BC and an old nazi auditorium. which i am told is still used for things that it shouldn't be used for, but also on mayday the local students have a party up there - getting drunk of their arses etc.

that night we went out to mannheim to watch a choir and small orchestra perform one of johann sebastian bach's christmas cannons. i didn't understand a word of it and only caught on what it was about near the end. something about mary and the three wise men. i turned to alexis and said, 'i know what this is about! the christmas story!' he just looked at me like i was stupid and pointed to the front of the program i was holding to a picture of the three wise men giving the baby jesus gifts and shook his head. i giggled at being stupid. the odd thing about this performance was that you don't clap until the whole thing is over. i found it weird that you don't clap at the end of each of the three sections and the first time i went to do it i was lucky i stopped before i started. alexis must have thought i was one of those uncultured westerners. i however just laughed and kept harassing him with a, 'can i clap now?' whenever there was silence.

after this performance we went out for dinner with my friend from facebook and a few of his friends at a french restaurant i can't quite remember the name of. the food was amazing, but alexis ordered some australian wine with his meal, and i'm sorry to say it was awful. maybe we keep the best wine for ourselves or something, cause i've had way better wine at home. some of which i'm sure is still sitting at mum's house, unless her and pop have drunk it all. in which case i will not be happy. damn drunks! lol.

so that's what i did this weekend gone. pretty exciting stuff, but i haven't gone into much detail on here, mainly because i want to spend a little more time detainling everything and eash one would take up heaps of room. i still have to talk about the heidelberg schloss and strasbourg france, but that will all have to wait as i'm going back to the christmas market very soon ans i don't have the time, but luckily it means more half metre wurst und gluhwein ahoy!

tchuss

trials and tribulations

for the past few weeks i have come across one of the most trying and frustrating things since i started this spontaneous trip. it has nothing to do with customs, sleeping patterns, german red tape, people on the street or being called an american everywhere i go. it is one of the most simplest and mundane of all things. it is quite possibly the easiest thing to overlook as well. i am talking about using a washing machine.

before you laugh, consider this. nothing is in english (obviously) and nothing written on the machine is in my dictionary. not only is this frustrating, but it is a drain on my energy, my time and my fashion sense. it stops going for reasons unknown to me or my housemate. it clicks and flashes its little lights over several different wash cycles which i am sure mean nothing in the grand scheme of clothes washing. and aside from the fact that it likes to fill itself with water and then stop for reasons known only to itself, when asked to do a simple thing like spin dry (or what i assume is spin dry judging by the picture) it flashes it's mocking light, stops, makes a few grunts and groans, and then skips the spin dry in favour of moving onto a cycle it knows it cannot perform yet. frustration thy name is siemens. this of course means that i have to continually walk up and down the two flights of stairs and into the basement of the building to get to the washing machine, usually carrying a load of clothes in the vain hope that i might be able to wash them, all to no avail. alexis is even at a loss to make the damn thing work and it's his washing machine!

so i am (very) slowly getting used to the idea that i may not be able to wash as often or as much as i want to. i am not, however, becoming used to the idea of not being able to wear my clothes as i want to. instead of opting for (what i think is) a cool style of dress, i have to dress like laundry day is everyday. well it's either that or using all my money for clothes that i can only wear once, ala oprah or, for a more local flavour, rose porteous.

traditional sunday dinner

pizza sundays has been reinstated in heidelberg. before i came to germany myself and irish pete indulged in what we liked to call pizza sunday. it started as a hangover cure for the incredibly drunken nights we started having on saturdays. usually starting with us being bored on a saturday and going out for drinks that ended with us coming home in the daylight hours on sunday - very boozy and very incoherent. this lasted quite a while and was a part of the week that we used to look forward to. (well i know i did anyway) nothing beats sitting on the couch, giggling about the previous night's exploits and watching really crappy tv (hello idol and america's next top model) or a movie. so here i am in germany several months later and pizza sunday has made a return.

the thing you have to know about german pizza is that although it is very similar to australian pizza there are several differences. the main one being the fact that when the pizza comes it isn't cut. i know, how strange. you have to cut it yourself, which creates a problem if you don't have a pizza cutter and have to use a knife. ever try cutting huge bits of ham covered in cheese with a knife? rather than cut, it just kind of pushes everything off the base. the other main difference is the toppings. they have something here called the dutchman and it contains tomato, ham, cheese, broccoli and hollandaise. it sounds disgusting, but in reality it is one of the tastiest pizzas i have ever had. the euros like broccoli on alot of things baguette related and it tastes good no matter what it seems to be. i am completely perplexed by the taste, but i still rather enjoy it. although i am yet to try the pizza gourmet which includes asparagus. that just seems a little too wacky for me. we did branch out the other week and try the mediterrana, which includes ham, parmesan, tomato and some green leafy thing i have yet to translate. it looked good in the picture and sounded nice, but when it arrived the green leafy yet-to-be-translated thing covered the entire pizza! it looked as if we were eating astroturf and we seriously wondered if this was a joke by joey's pizza heidelberg and they thought of us as cows. it tasted okay, but i will not be ordering another one soon. i like my pizza to look and taste like pizza, not a meal fit for rabbits.

so it comes to this, what do i try this week? i'm curious as to what the italia (salami, tomato, mozzarella and basil leaves) or the pizza crazy dog (which some words defy translation but does include sausage and pickle - curiouser and curiouser). but it will a cold day in hell when i try the athena (feta and spinach - why kill a pizza like that?)

party time, excellent...

i bought a bottle of jagermeister for 6.49 euros!!! also found out a bottle of johnnie walker scotch is only 12.49 euros. let the good times begin. teeheehee...

the resident permit saga

i had a friend describe to me his bad experiences with german bureaucracy the other week. (i'm not going into his particular issues, as it's not for me to say) he's german and said that the german people like to make rules about rules and if there's a loophole found, instead of changing the rule, they just add another one onto it. i laughed and said it can't be that bad, but oh lordy how i was wrong. i found out that when you get here you have to 'apply' as a resident before you can do anything, ie live, work, get a house etc. this is whether you are a visitor, citizen or pure-bred card carrying member of the SS. i thought this was a little odd. never have i ever had to tell the australian government where i live, what i do or anythig of the sort, so i was a little put out by it and felt that it constituted somewhat of an invasion of privacy. not necassarily with me as a visitor to their country (i would want to keep tabs on visitors too), but to anyone who was born a german and will die a german. what kind of government wants to know all this kind of information? i thought it was dictatorships that enjoyed having this over their people's heads. 'we know where you are, so no speaking ill of us or your family gets it!' (hello china *waves politely*) but then i thought, maybe they don't have a census like we do. they do. but that's all besides the point and not what this post was about. i'll get into civil liberties and my ill-informed opinions of such another day.

where was i... that's right, confusion and unncessary bullshit... you need to register within a week of arriving at your new place of residence or you get a fine. i didn't ask or push the issue of fines, mainly because i was here three weeks before applying and i didn't want to seem suss. luckily though, because i was in frankfurt and mannheim and strasbourg and the like i got to say that as i was touring around i have only just settled into a residence. phew! but the first time i went up to the stadt heidelberg (it's the name it as you see it game again. in literal english - city heidelberg) to see about applying for a visa was a travesty of miscommunication, staff rudeness and plain old confusion. it wasn't just me either, a mexican woman, a french dude and an american were all there confused as hell and not sure what was going on. the mexican woman could speak german, but that didn't really help her. as she spoke to the woman at information she turned and looked at me as if to say, 'that didn't help, i'm more confused than i already was.' this all would have been very amusing had it not been for the fact we were dealing with people's passports and visas and more likely their ability to live, work and study in germany. when it finally got to my turn to ask someone something the woman i spoke to had no idea what i was talking about. it wasn't like she couldn't understand me or anything, her english was fantastic. she just had no idea what i was asking about. she just repeated herself over and over again about needing a passport-sized photo. i told her three times in a row i know what i need, i have it all at home. i just wanted information on how to apply for a visa and i wasn't lugging my precious documents around when i didn't need to. to which she responded with, 'you need a passport-sized photo...' i was getting nowhere. all i got out of it was a stack of information leaflets and many a form to fill out, all in german cause someone coming from overseas would obviously speak excellent german. i've yet to hear an american say guten tag (good day) or tchuss (informal goodbye - everyone says it here. pronounced tchuss by males and tchu-uss by feamles), let alone ask for a coffee in german. even the french just speak french to people here. sort of gives you an understanding to why people get pissed off when you don't speak their language. in any case, all i was after was something that is similar to the word auslander (which means foreigner or outsider, depending on your view of things) so at least i had a heads up on which direction might be the right one. anyway, i was then told that before i go for a visa i have to register downstairs as a resident of heidelberg. alexis tells me that he registered in berlin when he first arrived, but i haven't the heart to tell him that i think he needs to do it again here. i could be wrong though, and he does have a wacky visa that basically means he gets treated as a citizen of the EU doesn't need to do anything more than say, 'well, i'm here.' why can't i get one of those? mainly because you're a university drop out and even if you weren't, every man and his dog has an arts degree, so get back to washing those dishes and serving those coffees. as a side note, just to add to the confusion nothing in the stadt building was in any other language other than german, and there are no signs anywhere saying what anything is. is this normal of european visa centres? i know at home even the drug awareness and youth buildings have pamphlettes in other languages. it's called helping people be informed and not leaving them completely in the dark. the website for german visas is most amusing, as it states that what they're all about is helping people from other countries and backgrounds be involved with their city and help them to know what's going on. here's an idea, write it in several langauges. it doesn't even have to be english. what about spanish or mandarin and cantonese? i hear lots of people can speak those languages. but that's just the frustration talking.

so i go downstairs to register after a terrible introduction to the world of german bureaucracy and find myself in a circular room with eight different tables that form a figure eight formation. again, confusing and odd. that's just what you need to help people, a circular room, with circular tables, with nothing telling you what any of it means - not even in german. i felt like alice going down the rabbit hole. if anyone had offered me to drink this or eat that, i would have gladly accepted. anything to get me away from all of this. (i forgot to mention the fact i had to walk up and down the stairs of the six story building about ten times to find the information lady. i had to wait, uncertain if i was in the wrong place and not the pensioner building for about 30mins before i even got to talk to the useless woman who handed me the pamphlettes and forms and went on about about the bloody passport photo who wasn't even the information lady, but some strange mix of one of my lecturers from uni and an dirty fat emo. oddly enough, she didn't even say passport photo, but kept giving me measurements and the right angle of a head tilt. so you could say i wasn't in the best of moods by this stage.) after looking around this room i finally found another information lady, who was wonderful and put me straight back at ease again. she told me in english i had to take a number and wait. this i was relieved at. it felt like i was back at centrelink and waiting for someone who could re-activate my youth allowance after a paperwork error. aaah... the joy of familiarity. so i waited, not knowing what i was waiting for or what i had to do. i just knew i had to wait. when my number finally got called i circled the room trying to find the right table to go to. this was after watching many people, all with different complaints and looking very confused about the situation get up for their turn. one guy even had about ten licence plates for cars. another was going on about their dog. i'm not sure what this office isn't used for, as i think anything can get approved or denyed here.

so i walk up to the woman i'm suppose to get help from. this woman was all stereotyped german in attitude and in demeanor. i don't think it was a german thing, i think it's one of those, you work in a government office for so long you begin to hate everyone kind of deals. but i still think she would have been right at home standing next to goebbels, smiling as the bodies kept piling up knowing that the final solution was going to come to fruition. she had this pinched face and hair usually reserved for pensioners getting a budget-conscious hair style, clothes that a math teacher would ware and an expression that said i'm here to put through your paperwork not be your friend. this is one of those times where a funny accent wont help you and don't bother being nice, she isn't going to do you any favours. still i smiled and said, 'guten tag. sprechen sie englisch? entschuldigung, mein duestch ist nicht so gut. ich bin australien.' she looked at me as if i was death and was about to take her beloved dog to that far off farm, where he could play all day and chase cats for as long as he wanted. she replied, in english, 'yes. a little. what do you want?' not even a hello? a how are you? this was worse than the worst customer service i've experienced here. i explained what i wanted and a brief explanation that i didn't have documents with me cause i didn't know i even needed to do this. all i wanted was a little help and maybe some explanation as to what was required. and no i haven't filled in the form because it is in german and i don't want to put things in the wrong place and cause you more headaches. (to the camera, 'one more headache and this woman's brain would explode.') she sighed and turned to her friend, also a member of the we love goebbels society, and said in the most derogatory german, 'do we have an english form i can't be bothered looking for it and this guy is wating my time?' i don't know exactly what they said to each other, but the snide looks i received wasn't telling me it was good. anyway, once frau my-arse-is-so-tight-i-turn-coal-into-diamonds found the form and printed it out i got the hell out of there. i didn't have my passport so i couldn't register today, but i had to go back there another day. dear god! go back? you have got to be joking? if it wasn't for the fact i needed to do this in order to get a visa i would have just left and tried to forget the building existed, illegal immigrant or not.

as it stands, i went back two days later with a half-filled out form and my passport. i waited patiently (again for over 35mins) at the side of the rabbit hole. i sat there thinking please not that woman again. i know you have a sense of humour creator-type person, but this isn't humourous. it's like a bad sitcom that isn't funny and delagated the 1am timeslot. as i sat there i watchd what went down around me. it turns out that nearly every person behind a desk there is evil. i watched a guy get his euro ID from bitch at desk number three, someone register their dog with bitch at desk number five and... well you get the idea. none of them smiled, none of them asked how anyone was and none of them seemed to display any emotion that would class them as human and not tools of the devil. i was not looking forward to round two of let's treat the commoners like dirt. this'll be fun, this one doesn't speak our language. however, when my number came up i was at desk number two and as i couldn't see who was at that desk i was nervous. i could feel a cold sweat coming on and my hands felt clammy. 'is this what you feel like when you know you're going to die?' i remember thinking. it sounds a little dramatic, but i was surprised when i didn't see anyone get dragged off, kicking and screaming to the gas chamber. however, when i sat down i was pleasantly surprised to find a young frau who smiled, was genuinely nice and seemed actually interested in helping me. it was like i had won the jackpot. i got someone who had obviously not been there long enough to know that they should check their humanity at the door. i felt like giving this woman a hug. she even giggled when i said i didn't fill out my complete form as i was scared of putting things in the wrong spot. she smiled, assisted me and it all took about five minutes. she even spoke about as much english as i do german! but in the end, all that mattered was that i am in the system and because she stamped and entered in all my info i was now a resident of heidelberg. i just have to wait about 3-4 days before the paperwork gets completely processed and then i go for my visa. which means i start the process again with new people and on a different floor. luckily the girl i just saw explained to me which floor i have to go to and who i actually have to see, so i am not at a complete loss. i just fear what i will come up against now. i got past the devil's minions and what could be next? the devil himself? all i know is that i appreciate centrelink more now and long for the days of their (in hindsight) small inadequacies. at least they smile at you.

stereotyped germans

i think i've been here long enough to be able to talk about the german personality and demeanor now, except the work life of course. (i'm still unemployed - and loving it!) before i left home i was told by a few people to watch out for the stereotyped german - cold, uncaring , business orientated blah blah blah... you know the stereotype. since i got here, yes there have been a couple of them that are like that, but as a whole i've found them to be quite pleasant people. they all have their own idiosyncrasies and what have you, which every race has, but i really don't see why people felt the need to warn me. the most obvious stereotyped germans i have come across are definitely in the minority and even then, i see them more as a euro stereotype, rather than a german one. for example the american hating euro. this is understandable. i've only experienced this once, mainly because their first thought was that i am american, but it was mainly because of a communication breakdown, not as a result of anyone's wrong doing. ie 'stupid american doesn't speak my language. hahaha!' to that i say, 'fuck off obnoxious bastard, and the jokes on you cause i'm australian, not american. so you're racist nonsense doesn't really affect me or my people, so hate away, retard!' this made me angry at first. how dare someone call me american, but then later i thought to myself why bother being angry? for one, i'm not american so they can think what they want about them because, as stated above, it doesn't affect my people. and two, doesn't their attitude reflect exactly what they're getting uppity about. the fact that i don't know their language, but at the same time they don't even know my race. it's that old tired adage, racism, homophobia, sexism etc really says more about the person committing the hate crime than it does about the intended victim.

however this is all one incident, everywhere else i go i seem to be either nothing (in a good way, like just another customer), or i seem to be liked cause i'm different. i don't know if this is because i at least try to use my very basic german, or because they can tell i'm different to them and to the usual traveller. a good example of this is yesterday when i went up to famila center (they spell centre like americans, as much as it pains me it is not a spelling mistake). waiting in line to buy my products at the supermarkt i let a guy go in front of me and instantly the woman behind the counter treated me with more kindness than i used to receiving. i know this is probably because of the whole pay it forward/good karma/kill with kindness deal, but had i listened to the german bewarers, it shouldn't have mattered. secondly, i went to the backerei (bakery, obviously) and bought some brotchen (rolls) and sweets (i am not even going to begin to remember how to say the name or spell it - let's just say it begins with quark, ends in en and has about 15 letters between), for the second time in three days. i was served by a different lady than previously and before i could try my german with her, she smiled and treated me very well. she even helped me to pronounce things properly (working in retail for years i have to knack of knowing instantly when someone is humouring me or doesn't want to be there, so i'm a fairly good judge of character), and seemed to take extra care with me. some of you may think that it is all because i 'tried' to speak her language and others may think that it's because she's just a nice person. but the lady i spoke to the time before was exactly the same and both of them were wonderfully nice before i could open my mouth and butcher their language. so again, naysayers of the german people, what are you talking about?

it's not just shopping either, there's a whole world of niceness in the southern part of the country. (i can't talk about the top part because i haven't gotten there yet - soon though. berlin for christmas? sounds great.) there's a custom here from bavaria that allows for complete strangers to sit next to each other at lunch or at a pub and either sit side by side or converse with each other. sounds nice to me. one the other hand though, there is some trepidation talking to me that i have noticed. i tend to think it's because they know i'm not german and may think i'm american, which is as i said above both fine and expected. if you had american bases everywhere in your country, wouldn't you feel a little animosity towards them? i know i would, especially if you were still technically occupied by them until around 1986. i don't know about you, but my hate wouldn't be veiled in a subtle euro way, more a get the fuck away from me american infidel kind a way. alexis seems to think that i might be a rare breed here and that people aren't quite sure where i come from. basically because of how i dress and my skin colour people treat me accordingly. granted i may seem to be american to some, or, as alot of germans have taken me for until i open my mouth, german (which i think is just a guess cause they're unsure). but as alexis pointed out, i'm too pale to be german. they seem to have a yellowish tinge to their skin tone, which i don't have. i'm pure pasty irish/scottish white. particularly now i don't see alot of sun. i'm starting to look like a goth/emo again with my paleness, mainly due to the season and the fact that at 4pm this afternoon it was already dark outside.

but i don't care how people treat me as long is it isn't with rudeness, because i don't know enough german to have a go back and they wouldn't understand me if i was to go off. who gets taught, 'you flaming galah!' or 'pull your head in, fucknut' in english classes? no one. either way, i'm just happy that the warners of the german people were wrong so far. that being said there is a slight coldness, but as i'm used to australians and their 'she'll be right, mate. how's it hangin'?' attitude, i think we might by the different ones here, as not alot of races are as open as ours. but here's looking forward to meeting some more friendly germans and hopefully learning enough duetsch to tell someone off one day for being obnoxious! (if that day ever comes again)

damnit mason, that sonofabitch is getting away!!!

okay, i just finished watching 24 season one. i know, i know, you're in germany and you're watching tv! what's wrong with you? why aren't you out steinering it up, you boozehound? i'll tell you why, i've just spent the last few weeks going places and seeing shit and experiencing some of what travel has to offer. now i want to sit down, watch some tv and chill out. and since german tv is good for short stints, not extended viewing, i went and bought 24 season one. i love 24. it's like a visual mathew reilly and one of the few shows where everyone is expendable and every episode contains a climax that you don't usually see on tv. (with the noted exception of heroes. however this season of heroes is somewhat lacklustre compared to last. but i'm sure they're just building up to something huge. ep 7 sure made it seem that way. if it turns into lost with it's inane characters and pointlessness i will be one very angry and disgruntled little man.)

i'm not going to bother explaining 24 for you, the show's been going for six years and i'm sure everyone knows the premise. bad shit happens on a sort of 'global scale', people die, people are betrayed and jack bauer (keifer sutherland) is always there to save the day (sometimes). for the uninitiated, he's tv's answer to bruce willis in die hard, just without the wiseguy routine and lots of military and secret service training thrown in.

now that's out the way, for those of you who haven't watched 24 and want to i suggest you stop reading this post now. for everyone else who has seen it, doesn't care, or likes to scratch that curiosity itch keep reading.

what the hell is with dennis hopper's accent? he's meant to be serbian or some shit, but he comes of like a douchebag american doing a terrible german accent and acting like, well, dennis hopper. i mean come on guys, i know you need big names in the first season because you're trying to draw people in and movie 'stars' bring in the funding, but dennis hopper? he hasn't done anything good in years. plus would it hurt tell him that serbians don't pronounce vowels like americans and german's do not sound anything like serbians. i'm pretty sure they sound similar to russians, but i could be wrong. one thing i have noticed since coming overseas is that most people will say yes and no in their native language because everyone knows what that is. german is ya, russian is da and italian/spanish is ci. fairly easy concept, dennis you shouldn't say 'yeah' like you just got out of the surf in malibu. just a hint.

apart form that i really enjoyed this show immensely. i couldn't remember most of it, so alot of plot twists came as quite a shock. all i could remember was nina being the ultimate traitor, jamey dying and palmer's wife (i want to call her cherie, but i can't remember!) being a complete and utter undermining bitch. what i was pleasantly surprised at was my irritation for milo being minimal cause now i know he bites it later in the series (i hate that actor soooo much), tony almeda being kick arse (as per usual) and the introduction of aaron the secret service guy. i have a mild affection for aaron, as do most people who watch the show. there's something about that guy that gives comfort and ease even when hell's raining down on the cast. what i found most intriguing this time around is that i hate teri bauer. this character (not the actor cause i thought she was pretty good) i wanted to kill! i wanted to reach into the tv grab a gun of one of the drazen's and shoot her in the face myself. 'oh, i've lost my memory cause i can't handle the stress. oh, i must sleep with this horny goon to get his cell phone. oh, where's my daughter, what's happened to jack?' how about you toughen the fuck up, instead of grabbing the cell phone grab the goon's gun and kill him, and let the poor people of CTU do their job and stop harassing them with your inane bullshit about how you'd feel better if you could just talk to jack or kim. you just spoke to them 15 mins ago. i know this because the time flashed up and took over the screen obtrusively each time you did this!!!

ranting over. i hated that character so much i was almost cheering when nina shot her. the one thing i'm not amused over is the fact i have to wait until tomorrow to go to the shops and get season 2. season 1 ended with teri being shot by nina, her subsequent arrest, the palmers divorcing and no one knowing who the real mastermind of the assassination attempt was. DAMN YOU 24 PEOPLE!?! i want to know now. it would be fine if it wasn't sunday, cause all the shops in heidelberg are closed on sundays. i don't know why, they just are. and the dvd store is one stop away by tram. i can't wait for my next hit of 24. yes i am an addict, i can admit this, but i'll be damned if i'm going to seek help on this matter. now all that remains is to wait patiently for monday's trading. all i can say is bring on season 2, bring on chloe and morris and bring on the action driven exposition. we loves it, precious.

german tv

let's talk about german tv. so far i've noticed a couple of things. german's love married with children, or so i gather from the amount of times i have seen it on the television. it's almost as if it's their simpsons. (speaking of which, i am so missing the simpsons. it's one of the things i miss the most. i know it sounds stupid, but after seeing it almost everyday for the last 17 years, i miss it so.) married with children (different youtube clip) is a cackle and a half on german tv. i have no idea what they are saying, as it's dubbed in not too bad german, but given the show is one of the lowest common denominator kind of things, you can easily guess what's going on. the laugh track i am assuming is left as is, but i'm not too sure. although i haven't heard many germans laugh unless drunk, so i can't tell if it's different or not.

what's interesting about german tv is that on satellite you have about 1000 channels. i'm not kidding. 1000 channels!!! although it suffers the same fate as australian tv, the more channels tends to mean the less there is to watch. half those channels are taken up by news (cnn, bbc, cnbc, spanish news, cuba vision, italian news and even the english version of al jezeera (which unfortunately doesn't have beheadings or that anti-western mickey mouse damnnit!!!)) and the rest is either quizmania-esque shows , tv shopping or porn. though that's one thing i knew about before coming here. after a certain timeslot it seems you can put anything on tv. the other night i was flicking through channels 247-389 and saw a woman looking like a russian car crash victim licking her lips at the camera in a bikini sitting on a not so sanitary couch, two women going at it in a park, a young guy with a hand down his y-fronts looking like he needs a hit (either physical or drug-related, i don't think he'd care), and about 5 women on different channels fingering themselves. seriously, who needs that on tv. it's what the internet is for, and as the broadband here is unbelievably fast, so why bother?

but that all brings me to my next point, why are there so many channels devoted to calling up and spending money? besides the quizmania channels, tv shopping and porn (which understandably has numbers underneath), there are so many ads for ringtones, phone games and god knows what else cause i can't understand what they're spruking. here, it's like at home, everyone has a moblie, but i'm yet to see or hear people going on about it or showing their new crazy-frog inspired phone crap. at home you'd always get a group of teenagers who are more than happy to show off their new ringtone or make everyone on the train/tram/bus hear their way cool new mp3, here no one has done it yet. maybe i'm just not getting on the right transport for it. or maybe germans just have a better understanding of public etiquette. MTV is the worst for it. i thought australian MTV was bad with programming that was all reality shows and no actual music, but here it's abysmal. between every song there's at least 3 ads for phone nonsense. although i was a little comforted by the fact that there seems to be just as much reality programming on that station as at home. i'd hate to see american MTV though, imagine the awful programming on that channel! but i will say that one show has made me laugh, it's a german version of so you think you can dance (wikipedia entry of the US show as i couldn't find and actual official website). i've only caught it once, but my god was it funny. imagine kraftwerk and the nazis got together to show off their new moves they learnt on an exchange to america, but put a euro spin on it that isn't quite right and you've got it. i don't know what the show is called and i can't remember what time i caught it, as i saw it during severe jet lag in frankfurt, but trust me, it was better than almost anything else i've seen here so far. i laughed and laughed and laughed til i cried tears of pure joy.

the other night i was lucky (or unlucky) enough to catch a really old show that had some guy in the seventies or sixties teach his audience how to paint. it was brilliant and i couldn't stop watching until he'd finished his landscape. to give you an idea of what i was watching, imagine a blank studio stage with an late 40s/early 50s guy sporting an afro standing in front of a blank canvas telling you in hushed whispers how to get certain effects while he painted a generic landscape of sunset over a shack in the woods. this alone was comedy gold, but when you consider he was talking like the gay guy tobi from family guy. it was pure genius and very creepy. he was saying things like, 'that's it... a little more. look at that happy shrub, he don't care. oooh, that's it. i think a little more, ahhh...' as if he was talking to his lover. i was waiting for him to start saying, 'a little faster now, i'm going in deeper. you like that, don't cha.'

there is one channel that is brilliant though, it's called arte. it's french and refuses to dub hardly anything from its original language. i love this channel for the pure fact that late on a thursday night i have seen day of the dead twice now, in its original language, uncut and with no ads! tre bien!

well that's my introduction to german tv. i'd love to show some clips from it, but as i don't have any of the names of shows it's kinda hard. just rest assured that if i did, you probably wouldn't understand them anyway. hell i don't!

tchuss

random musings 2

as a couple of people have said that my last post was a little negative, or that i simply had a bad day, i'm going to take this opportunity to say some of the things i like about germany just so you know that i like it here. (i've also included the pronunciation of numbers so that i can help remember how to say them and to show people back home the difference between the numbers and how to say them)

number eins (i-nz) - the beer is fantastic and cheap. i picked up a six-pack of half litre beers for 1.99euro. that's right, 3 litres of beer for something like $3.50! and even the crap beer tastes good. it's nothing like at home where you pay way too much for beer that tastes like crap. unless of course you're willing to pay for something that's either imported or classed as a luxury fancy beer. and of course you can't go wrong with 3 litres of beer. 3 LITRES!?!

number swei (zvy) - the architecture is amazing. it's like walking around fairy tale village. (see my previous posts for examples of this)

number drei (dry) - the baked goods and fruit are something to really get excited over. i haven't had fruit this good since i lived in queensland. the bakery food is exquisite. they have these things called berliners which are basically a jam donut, but instead of having sugar or cinnamon over them they have this really fine version of icing sugar, that coupled with the great fruit, which lends itself to delicious jam, cannot be beat. unless of course you go to france and eat a proper eclair. i had a chocolate one in strasbourg and it was unbelievably tasty. i went halves with alexis, but i really didn't want to give him any, i just wanted to inhale the damn thing! (all this being said is wonderful, but as an australian, some of the food does scare me slightly - be wary of the dark wursts. i nearly ate something that was made of pig's blood. ech!?!)

number fur (fear) - the staring thing. even though i mention this in my last post, i think it's funny therefore good. i've learnt to stare back and it makes for great amusement on public transport. the only problem is i start smiling and laughing, which means i have to look away first and makes me lose the staring contest half the time.

number funf - the shopping. as most of you who know me in real life know, i love shopping when it's good shopping. i'm talking about clothes here, not grocery shopping (which i'll get to next). some of the clothes here are fantastic, some not so much, but most of it is wonderful. cecilia (one of my dearest friends) would die to buy some of these fashions. unfortunately mannheim has better shops than heidelberg, but there are still some shops here that are fantastic. as you can guess, strasbourg france has better clothes, but they are slightly more expensive, so i put forward that the shopping is better in germany. by the way, who knew that espirit had a fully-stocked male's section? at home it's all girly clothes, here they have wonderful guy's clothes. i even bought the jacket i love so dearly there. and it's fairly inexpensive. espirit also just clothed the european MTV awards, so you know they have cool funky stuff. i'll fully go into clothes shopping in another post. i have some pet peeves and some wonderful things to say about it. but again, anyone who knows me, knows that i have opinions about everything so this wont come as a shock.

number sechts (zex) - grocery shopping. i love grocery shopping here for the pure fact that i have no idea what i'm buying half the time. the other half, i've either taken my dictionary with me, or i've guessed by the picture on the box. the main reason i love it, is because it always feels like an adventure and things are very cheap to buy here, which means i can get a giggle and some food at a very low cost to my wallet and my self-esteem.

number sieben (zee-bin) - i know i've mentioned architecture, but this is different. THE CASTLE!!! i freakin' love the castle. i could look at it all day long and never tire of it. i know i still haven't posted about it, or strasbourg for that matter, but i have the weekend to myself (alexis went to nice to visit a friend) and i plan on blogging up a storm, so be patient damn you!

number acht (oct) - the language and language education. as far as i can remember i have liked three languages more than the others, russian, japanese and german. granted german isn't a hot language, but the sounds made while talking it intrigue me. you should hear little kids speak, they sound so cute. here people know several languages, as is the case throughout western europe i assume, it makes you think that we should be taught more in school in australia. i know of some little kids about 5-6 who can speak german, a little french, a little spanish and a little english, which is way more than i can. so pull your finger out australia and don't follow the path of america and england, where you think that english is the only thing worth learning because you're too bloody arrogant to look outside your own country and it's immediate neighbours.

that's all for now, there's heaps more, but i'll leave that for another post.
tschuss

random musings

before i post about the heidelberg schloss i thought i'd write about some of my experiences here. these are completely random are not about a particular place. just me either having trouble doing something or just noticing the difference between australia and europe, whether it be the way people behave or me being a stupid traveller. the first thing i want to talk about is customer service. it doesn't exist here. i'm so used to going into a place and the person behind the counter being friendly and wanting to help, here not so much. before anybody starts, it's not about me being taken for american or a language barrier thing, it simply does not exist. example, i walked into a shop the other day and was made to wait as the girl behind the counter could finish her conversation. at the castle we had to wait as the guy behind the counter continued his conversation on his mobile phone. people sigh when you try to interrupt them and don't seem too concerned that you are becoming completely put off buying whatever it was you came in for. this doesn't happen everywhere, but 9 out of 10 times it happens. the other night i had to ring up for my credit card (to australia) and it felt so wonderful to have a chat to the girl as she worked on her computer. alexis was in the room and when i finished he said, 'why were you talking to her so much? did she have to give an interview? why was she asking so many questions?' my response was, 'because that's customer service!' the idea is that you make people feel welcome and want to continue business with you, not like you're putting them out by asking them to do their job. i will say though, that france seemed to get the customer service angle. it may be just a german thing. who knows. although in true stereotyped french fashion, waiters treat you like crap. i nearly giggled at one when he sighed and then asked for our order. i have also noticed that when you try to talk german to a person behind a counter they seem amused and generally interested in what's going on. this was only in heidelberg though. this could be down to all the american bases here and the fact that most americans don't care to try german.

the transport here is brilliant, always on time and very clean. they do like to change the track trains run on without telling people, and they don't list all the stops on a train line, so watch out! although trying to figure out which ticket to buy is also very amusing. i have no idea what i'm pressing for the trams in heidelberg. i usually just press buttons until i get something that is the right price. although the other day i think i bought a ticket for the stadium. i didn't even know heidelberg had a stadium, let alone a ticket for it!

people like to stare here. when i say stare, i mean eye to eye, like they're sizing you up. as an australian i found this a little unnerving at first. i remember walking down the street and after the 4th person did it i started feeling around my face thinking something was wrong. haha. now i'm used to it though i just stare back and see how long it takes for them to look away. i'll be damned if i'm losing a staring contest to a stranger. this social occurrence is usually done by old people. it's like they think we can't have an army to beat you, so we'll just glare and make you uncomfortable. doesn't work anymore fools! i've learnt to stare back and not blink. now who's uncomfortable, hey?

while i'm on the subject of the general public, people like to push past you here. they don't go around you as you walk, they come straight at you. i'm sure this is fine for them, but having heard many tales of pick-pockets and muggings, every time it happens i instinctively go for my wallet to make sure. in strasbourg i felt really awkward and uncertain. i kept double checking my passport was still in my pocket an sizing people up, as if ready to pounce and beat the crap out of the person who dared to start me.

people here drink on the street down the hauptstrasse. i find this odd and completely startling. alexis thinks i'm weird because of it, but i'm used to thinking that people milling around drinking are usually up to something or waiting to cause trouble. i suppose this is my own problem as what i'm used to, but at the same time, if i can't understand what they're talking about, then i'm going to get nervous around drunks in a group on the streets.

that's about it for now, i'm sure there's plenty more to talk about, but i don't feel the need to show all my insecurities in just one post. next time i swear i'll write about the castle or at least something constructive with pictures.

tchuss

photos of mannheim

cause blogger has issues, once again i have decided to publish the pics on a separate entry. and once again i'm not giving huge explanations, read the previous post to find out more.

this first one is of the town hall in the marktplatz.

this is a main street in mannheim. you can see the 'water tower' in the distance. and yes they have trams here, as they do in frankfurt, heidelberg and even in strasbourg. melbourne and san fran ain't so fancy now.

the 'water tower' from closer up. i wont bother putting a closer picture on here as with most of the big things here, you can't get them in one shot!

this is the view from the 'water tower'. can you see any water? apparently where all the white concrete is is a big pond-thing and there is meant to be water shooting up from the middle. again i ask, can you see any water?

this made me giggle so much. it's an angry whopper! hahaha...

this is the christuskirche (church of christ). it looks really pretty and i thought cool, but now i've seen the cathedral is strasbourg, this looks so insignificant. you'll see what i mean in a later post and when you do, you know exactly what i'm talking about.

me and the much-loved hoodie. i've been to heaps of places now and i still think it's the best one i've seen. how i love it so!

alright, so that was mannheim, briefly as it was, the next blog will be about the heidelberg schloss (castle). now this i was really excited about. i took something like 114 photos. you wont see them all as i don't want to kill blogger, but i can talk for hours about it. yes, i was that excited about it. i even bought a 5euro book about it!

till then

tchuss

mannheim

(it seems that again blogger wont let me spellcheck or add pictures, so you'll have to get by without my pictures and any spelling mistakes are too bad. this is starting to really piss me off. is it something i'm doing or not doing? i don't think it's the size of my posts, as some of the earlier ones are larger and i could still use all the basic tools and add pictures. if anyone knows could they please tell me before my frustration makes me move this blog to a different site.)

let's talk about mannheim. now mannheim is south of heidelberg and takes about 20mins to get to by train. one thing i have noticed is that that travelling by train in germany is more expensive than at home. that being said, i think it may have something to do with the country being alot smaller than australia so the prices are upped a little. this doesn't really bother me though, as with the extra revenue raised by this makes travelling by train a little nicer than at home. the carriages are smaller, but they are kept in a really nice state. something that i am not that used to. in melbourne, and i guess the surrounding metlink areas, the carriages are covered in graffiti and have this vibe that anyone who isn't used to it would feel a little cautious of their fellow commuters. i have only felt this vibe in frankfurt, and if you read my earlier post about frankfurt you'd understand. oddly enough, everyone i have spoken to about frankfurt agrees with me. no one seems to like it except those who live there, and i'm assuming it's that strange patriotism one gets about their hometown. but enough about frankfurt, this post is about mannheim.

mannheim is beautiful, as has been all that i have seen of germany so far. the only difference between heidelberg and mannheim is that there is no castle there and there is no american presence. thank god! the american accent seems to bombard the ears and grate the brain. no offence to any americans reading this, but when in a non-english speaking country, that particular accent stirs up stereotypes and ideologies that are better left behind. and just so you feel better, the australian accent is no better off. we just have a different boganish quality to ours. now mannheim is seems to be all about the statues and architecture, the shopping and the nightlife. (the nightlife i'll have to take the locals word on this as i haven't experienced it yet.) the acchitecture is brilliant, but somehow not as grand as heidelberg. that said, there are some fantastic buildings here. the water tower for one (pictured). this 'thing' stands proud and surveys the area like a king amongst paupers. as you approach you can see it from all sides and several streets away. the only thing is that there is no water anywhere near it. i asked alexis if this is normal and he was unsure. he told me last time he was here the large water pool in front of it was full and there was a grand fountain shooting water out of the middle. i saw no water. i saw no fountain. the tower itself has windows all up th sides and has this entrance, between two sphinx, at teh ground level. i started thinking if there really was water around here and if it wasn't some relic from yester-year to attract tourists and those looking for a hookup. the ledge where you can walk around has graffiti all over it, mainly with hotmail addresses with names such as 'hot_greek_boi' and 'lusty_girl_4U' - you get the picture. shame though, cause it really is a sight to see.

'the castle' in mannheim is not a castle. don't be fooled by the mannheim tourist board! it is merely a palace. there's no moat, no turrets, no drawbridge or anything else you would describe as a being castle in appearance. it was a fine building in its own right, but it is not a castle. however, now it seems to have been transformed into a university building.

other than this the martkplatz in mannheim is worth the trip. there's a statue in the middle that was given to the town by heidlberg and it stands in front of the town hall (pictured). it's an older german style building that has these two ledges either side of it. i was half expecting the mayor or someone to come out onto it with a proclamation about something or other. apart from the many random statues that again line the streets of a german city (there was even one here that seemed to be about young gay boys getting busy outside the bibliotek (library)) there was the christuskirche (church of christ) (pictured). this was truly amazing. sure it wasn't one of the biggest churches i've ever seen, but it had this cool vibe about it. that and the place didn't crumble to the ground by lightening stricking it when we walked in. as soon as we entered in knew that this place was important as there three older people ready to tell you about the place. one guy walked straight up to us and started going on in german about the place. me not knowing anywhere near enough german to understand what was going, and alexis being the same, we just listened and gathered that he was talking about the accoustics and the organ that stands behind the altar. we know this cause the german word for accoustics and organ are pretty much the same as english, that and he pointed alot. when i mtioned if i could take a photo he nodded and came right up close to me and whispered something about something being fantastic. i just smiled and nodded. as we left i grabbed a pamphlette in english and he said, 'oh, englisch. haha...' then continued on in german. alexis said that he was amazed that people keep speakin german to me, but i retorted by saying, 'look at me, i'm blond as can be. you're oblviously not german with your cuban looks.' then we laughed and said a few random rascist things about me having a black servant because he was holding the bags and how the older germans must love it. thank god no one can understand our english, cause if they did the polizei would be on their way! lol.

the shopping in mannheim is wonderful. there are so many shops to waste money on. there's a place called saturn that sells electronics that is about three or four levels tall. i got to show alexis the playstation stuff and start to tempt him with going halves in a PS3. (i really miss the one i left at home. my brotherhad better not be leaving it to collect dust or he's in big trouble. she needs to be played everyday.) this store aslo had a largish DVD section, from which alexis bought the proposition (aust movie) and several others. apat from that mannheim is also great for clothes. i bought a jacket here for the german winter and i love it. some black thing with a fur-lined hood that i keep wearing and it being almost a week later i think it's staring to need a wash. although i can't uderstand the german on the tag and how i wash the damn thing! it only cost 99euros and was insanely cheaper than alot of the other stuff on offer. the only thing i can't seem to find anywhere in germany is a good pair of jeans. they all seem so flimsy and american in style. where are all the cool euro styles? i have found a few shops down the hauptstrasse in heidelberg though, so i might go looking down there as i don't like the generic clothing and like to opt for a more alternative style of dress.

so that's mannheim. the only other thing that happened on this trip was at the station before we entered the hauptbahnhof (main train station) alexis was approached by some old guy who asked for change. the only reason i bring ths up because he described himself, in english, as a man who lives under a bridge. i've never heard this phrase before and had to stifle a laugh. not because he was funny, far from it, but it brought on these visions of the simpsons and the hobos tikling each other with a feather.