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