back to basics

i'm back in ballarat - or stinktown. it's just like i remembered it. cold, boring and very simple. nothing against stinktown, but i always feel like i've gone through some kind of portal and travelled back in time. somewhere between bacchus marsh and ballan the time continuum slipped and yaz is still number one on the charts, clear cola is all the rage and the equality movement is still just a pipedream. i honestly think if they could, they'd take the vote away from women and burn 'the gays' and 'coloureds' on a burning cross for sunday afternoon entertainment. it's not all bad though, i've just spent a couple of days with an old friend of mine who i've missed incredibly while living in melbourne. i think if i was to ever get arrested, she'd be chained up beside me and we'd both be drunk and giggling.

my last few nights in melbourne were a blur. almost a full 24 hours of hazy remembered stupidity, or to be more specific - 5 clubs, 1 house party, alot of alcohol, too many cabs and soooo many photos of friends, strangers and things i'm better of not remembering. needless to say, it was a crazy night and i think i'm happy that these nights don't come by too often.

the move to stinktown wasn't as bad as i expected, i moved on a monday and since my goodbye festivities happened on a friday/saturday i was mostly recovered. unlike poor irish pete, who ended up coming home early from work on monday still feeling slightly less than normal. that poor boy, he's definitely better of with me gone for his last month or so in australia. i'm what would be called his enabler. i'm just a boy who can't say no, so is he and together it's a whole world of hangover, booze and sundays trying to piece together what the hell just happened.

goodbye work

it's now official and done. i handed in my resignation today and i feel like a massive weight has been lifted. i know that i've already quit, but it didn't feel done with until today. my resignation got handed in and emailed to all the right people and is pretty much as official as it can get. i only have one problem though, i didn't burn my bridges, ie tell the people i wanted to to get fucked and rot in hell. it's the one part of quitting that really seems to lift the weight of one's shoulders, but something about coming home broke and desperate and needing a job stopped me from doing this. i suppose it's smart not to, but it is still a little disappointing to know that so much more could have been said and i didn't say it.

on the other hand though, i have never felt more free and excited at work. i only have two shifts left and i can't wait to be done with it. it seems like as soon as i started at this job every ounce of creativity left me and for the past three years i have just been coasting along and not living up to my full potential. hopefully this will change now that i can start staying up all night and writing again without the worry of work. the biggest thing i will get out of this is never again having to worry about new phones, mystery shopping and what someone else thinks of the way i dress, act or behave. (i worked in phone retail) i have never really been someone that's cut out for the nine to five routine. and until recently i've kinda forgotten this and begun drudging myself around under the assumption that this was how my life would play out. thankfully i have been able to pull myself together and get out of that. i don't know what i would have done if i had of woken up at 40 still doing what i did. killed myself probably, with a note stapled to my forehead saying, 'here lies tim. a dried up husk of humanity because he forgot to live for himself.' but not anymore. i'm going to freakin' germany!?!

need to vent

so i have less than a week left at work and just over a week left in melbourne. the nerves are pretty much non-existent. to be honest with you, i'm more nervous about organising a visa than actually leaving the country. this, or so i am told, is pointless worrying. everybody has said to me that the visa stuff is easy and you'll have enough money and blah, blah, blah... but i don't care what they have to tell me about visas and their trips because none of them have ever gone to where i'm going. sure getting a visa in such and such a place was easy and they didn't check all your references and bank accounts. i'm sure it was sweet as pie to be allowed to go here and there and work without the fear of being stopped by custom officials and being denied. but i'm going to germany - it's where the nazis come from. they may be a little stricter when it comes to things like visas. so i am slightly worried yes.

what i am not worried about is actually being there. i have been told by many a person that when they did this, or they did that, they freaked out, cried or were just plain scared. i am not one of those people. i do not find new situations, people, languages or cultures terrifying. i find them fascinating and unbelievably interesting. i would love it if every month i could wake up with a new place to discover and explore. i am sick to death of being told that when i do this, or when i do that, i will behave in such a way or be homesick because that's how you felt when you did this or that. WRONG. when i do this or that i will feel completely different from how you felt because i am not you and therefore experience things differently. for fuck sake people, i've lived all over the east coast of australia by myself and have been independent for over 10 years now. i think i know how to handle and deal with the things that life throws at you, whether i'm in another country or this one.

so in closing to my rant and vent, quit telling me how i will feel, stop telling me about your trips here and there that have nothing to do with mine just so you can relive your glory days as a stinky backpacker (remember i hate hippies and backpackers - check my myspace rant for evidence of this), quit trying to tell me about what happened when you went there when you spent maybe a weekend on the other side of the god damned country to where i'm going, and stop telling me shit that you found out there like i find it interesting that you're ruining my surprise.

rant over

and by the way, yes i am very aware that i had a freak-out blog written below, but that was not in relation to going to germany, it was more due to the fact that i effectively quit my current life and the repercussions of that. it has nothing to do with going overseas (okay maybe the flying part), but all to do with the fact that i quit my 'career' on a whim and the word of someone i have never met in person. but more about that in a later post.

my home town

i thought i'd write a little about my home town, melbourne. i love this city. so far it is the one place that i really consider home. most people who know me don't realise that even though i grew up all over the place; sydeny, brisbane, the sunshine coast and a small stint in ballarat, i was born here. some of my earliest memories of life are in melbourne. (NB some of these dates are probably wrong, memories are designed to fade and with them the accuracy of time)

i can remember being in grade one at mill park primary and it snowing. getting half the day off from school to build a snow man with the neighbour's kids and when it started to melt we decided to try and eat him. i still have a picture of that snowman somewhere. crooked nose, demented eyes and a lopsided head that made him look sassy and slightly angry. i can remember sitting in the backyard one night with mum and dad watching a comet fly across the night sky. this was in the early eighties and i want to say it was haley's comet, but i don't know much about astronomy and it could have been frank or sandra's comet for all i know, but for now i'll say it was haley's comet cause that makes it seem less like a faded memory. i also have these remembrances of good ol' franco cozzo's furniture add. anyone who's ever lived in melbourne should know this man and love him. he's the old school john so. i can remember him inviting everyone down to his shops in bruns-a-wick and foot-as-gray. i was delighted when i moved back to melbourne after 15 years missing in action to find him still trading his wares on the tv, even using the same quote, 'megalo megalo megalo! grand sale, grand sale!' (if anyone can tell me where to find a copy of his ad i would be in heaven)

now though, i have different memories of melbourne; going out to some funky underground club and coming home at 10am, working in the centre of the CBD and the craziness that seems to go hand in hand with it, brilliant coffee in little laneway cafes that could rival anywhere in the world, finding sweet-as fashions in a strange tucked-away stores. ahh... melbourne - king of all that a city could offer. there's a reason it won the world's most livable city, not once, but a few times.

the reason i'm posting about melbourne is that i went photo-taking the other night around the CBD to show my german friend where i live and just to have some photographic memories when i leave and it made me feel so homesick. there's just this vibe you get walking around melbourne that is unlike anywhere else i have ever been to. brisbane makes me wish it were bigger and more exciting, ballarat takes me back in time, the sunshine coast always made want to reach for sunscreen and sydney always made me wish i was in melbourne. (sorry sydney, but IMHO i'm not a big fan. i like my cities with character, not an obvious need for global attention.) there's just this general feel in melbourne that's full of wonder and excitement. something to do with the fact that the longer you're here the more you realise that there is way more to find, see and do and that you've only just scratched the surface.

i have so much space now

i've started the clear out of my stuff and i have to say, how much shit can one person possibly own? i know i'm kind of a pack-rat, but seriously people! i have things dating back to high school tucked away and it's been many many many moons since i was in that hell hole. heck, we had our class reunion last year and my school was in a different state. did i bring this with me or has it stowed away as a grim reminder of what i used to be like? or is it some physical embodiment of my past destined to haunt me forever? well i say fuck that nonsense and in the bin with you.

i have about four weeks left til i have to move out and as i work full time and have various social outings to attend to i must start this now. as of today most of my books have been shipped to my parent's house in ballarat. this is no small task. i have many a book, as all writery types should have. although it didn't take up as much room as i thought it would. perhaps i've lost a few to friends. oh well, if i don't read them now and didn't know that i'm missing them, i wont notice their absence in the future. i think in total i had about eight boxes of stuff shipped off. i hear you say, 'eight? is that all?' but when you consider that i still have plenty of things left to pack, sell and throw away eight was a fairly good starting point.

this week we had a hard collection rubbish day on my street. which was fortunate because we got rid of so much stuff. (by we i mean my cousin cass and i - we live together and have been doing so for about five or six years now) we have this cupboard under the stairs that is just this mess of crap that has never been touched the entire time we have lived in our house (i think this is our fifth year) and this week we finally got to clear it out. (big sigh of relief) what's strange though is that we found a tv in that cupboard and half a gym set thing from our old housemate, and he hasn't lived with us in over two years. we also got rid of a broken clothes dryer, an old mattress and half a futon. (these last things weren't in our cupboard, just taking up room in our garage - neither of us drive so our garage is more like a holding area for unwanted crap. a sort of limbo before we get the urge or energy to finally get rid of it)

i'm very excited now though, because most of what's left is to be kept. the only real concern is going through my clothes and finding out what i want to keep. this scares me as there is some horrible fashion disasters in there as well as things that really should have been thrown away years ago. i don't think i've ever gotten rid of clothes in my entire history of independent living so this will be quite the mission. i told you at the start of this post i'm a pack-rat. i do get these flashes of my future though, and i'm surrounded by a kajillion cats, stacks and stacks of old magazines and newspapers and clothes that went out of style more than a century ago that i can't bear to throw away just in case they come back into style. (NB in my future i've beaten cancer and death through breakthroughs in uber-modern medicine and live to be eight hundred. although eight hundred years of pack-ratting scares me. what wonders will i keep? shudder)

learning can be fun

i'm about a week and a half into learning german now and i have to say, coming from an english speaking background german is about 50/50 on the easy/hard front. i find that sentence structure is pretty well straight forward and very similar to english. this makes stringing words together into something that resembles communication quite simple, my only problem is remembering the damn words. the words themselves are what makes this learning experience so 50/50. there are some words that are very close to their english equivalents and i am finding myself making things harder for, well, myself. i keep thinking it can't be that easy, surely. and then i go and say something and find out that i'm wrong and it really was that easy. for the words that aren't anything close to english i have been getting most of them right, but unfortunately for me the germans are not afraid of big words. most of you that know me in real life and not from this crazy nerd-fueled computer world will find this most ironic and funny. for years now i have loved big words and now that i am faced with big german words i am at a loss. for instance let's take the word for economics - die Wirtschaftswissenschaften. it's such a simple small word in english and they've got some crazy-arsed dodecahedron of a word.

now don't get me wrong, i can't wait for the day that i can speak fluent german, cause it is coming. you can't spend a whole year somewhere and not learn the language. that's just a waste of a trip. for something comparative, my housemate pete is from ireland (german version = irland. see what i mean about some words and their english equivalents) and he has made an irish friend over here. now pete keeps getting asked out to the pub with this guy, but not just any pub, a goddamned irish pub! what's the point of coming over to australia and going to a pub that you could visit at home? what makes it worse is that this friend of pete's has made friends with a stack of irish guys while being here and that's all they do, go to an irish pub and listen to music from the UK while drinking pints surrounded by the irish. you may as well save your money, stay home and just have a bender. this is not what i'll be doing on my trip. i intend on pretty much becoming a german citizen while i'm there. that includes learning the language and culture, seeing the sights and running the other way every time i hear the words, 'g'day' or 'bloody hell, mate.' no offence australia, but if i wanted to hang with aussies i'd stay home.

the tape and book that i'm learning my german from is very good though. it's a 3 month course which i am trying to cram into 2 months. i have so far completed section 1 and almost all of section 2 and started on section 3. how is this possible you ask, because i have been listening to this on the way to and from work everyday. the plan is, first week i listen to section 1 and occasionally hear section 2. then during the second week i listen to section 2 and, because i've already got a start on it, i start listening to section 3. it's working well so far. i can remember nearly all of section 1 and section 2 is holding. i've only just started section 3, but it seems to be sticking as well. i think it helps that i've started saying hello to people at work in german (customers, not other staff members - i work in retail and it's pretty common for german tourists to walk in) and i have some friends that work in a cafe in the city who are french, but speak some german so they're helping too by speaking it to me. although i will say, being yelled at in german for not speaking it first thing in the morning while you're waiting for your first coffee of the day is very startling. it's not a very pleasant language to be chastised in when you don't know what's being said.



*by the way, my sleeping pattern is fine. i think my brain and psyche have gotten over the shock of me doing this and given up trying to freak me out. either that or they're just as lazy as the rest of me. hehehe... or alternatively, me going into work early everyday trying to get more commission has started to wear them down. i think it might be the latter, but only time will tell. once i finish work and don't do so much we'll see if my sleep starts going to the dogs again.*

nearly finished the before part of it all

and the organisation continues, as of today i know have my tickets paid for in full and collected, along with my passport (such a pretty picture) and the hostel booked in frankfurt. it's kind of a relief not having to worry about any of this stuff anymore. all that needs to be done now is get my injections for travelling and get my visa sorted. i have to say, it's all coming along nicely. i think this kind of rushed organisation is a better way to do things for me. for years i've been trying to get away and travel the world, and every time i've tried to something got in the way. either the people i was intending to go away with changed their minds, money was never abundant enough or just the usual bullshit that stops you from doing anything you want to. but this... ah what a godsend! all in the space of about one month i've got it all sorted. who would have thought that i could do this? i can tell you now that i wouldn't have thought it was possible. sure i've toyed with the idea, there was a time when i wanted to go to japan and another when i wanted to go to the uk, but they never seemed to get off the ground. however now i find myself on the verge of a great journey. i don't mean this in a 'i really learned something over that summer' kind of way. i mean literally. i'm going to the other side of the world and i have no idea what i'm doing. now the fear is over with it's excitement and wonder that fills me.

the first stop on this crazy journey is frankfurt. all i know about frankfurt is that it's about an hour north of where i intend to live for a while and looks like a very modern city. all the photos i've seen just show skyscrapers along a massive river or little quaint houses around a cobbled stoned courtyard. kinda what i imagine japan to be, completely modern and yet completely traditional all at once. i'll be staying here for 3 days in the frankfurt hostel. the address is kaiserstrasse 74 DE-60329 Frankfurt am Main, which i have to say means absolutely nothing to me. all i know is that after something like a 30 hour flight with a 7 hour stopover in hong kong, i get on a train at 7am and go 3 stops to Hauptbahnhof, which i think means some kind of train station. either way, when the sleep deprivation kicks in it's gonna be one hell of a ride just to get some sleep.