it's been awhile

so people have been asking why i haven't written here for ages (by people i mean about 5 or 6, and by that i mean friends at home) and there is no real reason apart from laziness. now don't act like you didn't know i was slack at things that i'm not paid to do. well, that and the fact that the berlin story ends in some odd, totally berlin decadence that i was a little unsure about putting down here for fututre prosperity and for my mother to read. think random public sex (not with me, but strangers sitting beside me), sharing toilets with coke-heads, being served by transvestites/transexuals and various other things that may or may not include me being drunk off my arse in an unfamiliar city at 10am in a train station coffee and sandwich cafe. aaahhh... the hazy memories of bygone months. so anyway, i've decided to scrap the idea of finishing it off. sorry if you were waiting for me to do it, but i just can't bring myself to do it. but as most of you know me in real life ask me about it next time we chat and i'd be happy to tell you about it - unedited and unbridled.

what i feel like talking about now is just exactly what i've been up to for the past few months. don't get too excited as it isn't very much. all i've been doing is working, meeting new people and drinking myself into a sort of alcoholic state. work is going well, i've got the hang of waiting tables, which is a little different to back home. apart from the fact that over here you have to work for tips, which for those aussies reading, yes people tip here and so should you when you travel. cheap motherfuckers. and i like to think i've got the hang of the bar as well. the bar was kinda easy, it was more the fact that i had to get used to the different names of things, the amount and types of shots are different and i had to get a little quicker at it. i like working the bar a little more than the floor, but i enjoy waiting tables as there is more tips involved and i feel a certain amount of accomplishment when someone tips well. it's an acknowledgement thing of a job well done. the one thing i don't like about the bar, however, is the friday and saturday night karaoke. now you all know that i enjoy a bit of drunken singstar on the playstation and i do enjoy proper asian style karaoke and what have you. but working during a karaoke night is a completely different story. i don't mind it, it's kinda funny, but the problem is when you have the same people come in every wekend and sing the same goddamned song. like there's this one guy who comes in every week and sings the bad touch by the bloodhound gang. sure it's amusing the first time, but by week 8 you're like, 'do something else you useless twat!?!' what bothers me even more is the fact he's been doing it for ages and still doesn't know the bloody words. ugh... i do enjoy this one guy who used to come in and sing holiday by greenday. not because he was particularly good at it, in fact he was terrible, but i enjoyed the irony of an american soldier singing a sarcastic anti-war song with what i thought was no amount of irony at all. you could almost feel the euros narrow their eyes and look at him with hatred when the line, 'bomb the eiffel tower' comes up. very team america.

apart from working i've also gotten to know the basics of german pretty well. i try and use it whenever i can, even though alot of people will speak english or switch to it when they realise i'm not very good at it. but i can order food, buy my train tickets, ask people about their day and even help people find their way around heidelberg. i'm still a very long way away from being fluent or even knowing the language enough to say i can speak it. although i can understand a hell of alot more than i can speak. my spanish however is another story. it's woeful, plain and simple. you'd think after living with a cuban for 6 months and having a few latino friends i'd pick some up, but nope. my brain refuses to think about another language other than german. all in good time i suppose.

summer is here in germany at the moment and it's killing me. yes i know, i come from australia. land of zinc, beaches, bronzed aussies and skin cancer, but i just spent the last 12 months in winter. i came over here at the end of winter in my beloved melbourne, to arrive at the start of the german winter (which admittedly is alot colder than the melbourne one - you don't see people in melbourne walking around in jackets made for the snow season). so i've become aclimatised to cold, only to realise that i can't handle the heat anymore. and to think i grew up in queensland where the temperature was at least in the mid-forties for almost half of the year. i currently have no summer clothes, sweat all the time (charming i know) and feel like i need a slurpee constanly, of which they don't have here cause 7/11s are non-existant. i suppose if you had a 7/11 then you'd have a shop open on a sunday and that just seems silly. (re:sarcasm. whoever the bastard was that said sunday is a non-anything day needs to be killed. it's like they want you to drink, cause there's fuck all else to do but go to church and hang with your family. let me remind you that heidelberg is a university town. so i ask, 'what family would people have here and why would students go to church?')

anyway, that's the end of the catch up blog. now that i've absolved myself of finishing the berlin story i'll probably blog a little more often. so til next time...

ps sorry if there's spelling mistakes, it's been months and the damn spell check still wont work. fucking stupid blogger bugs... fix it you bastards!?!