Saturday, August 25, 2012

Achievements.


So I bought a 'Deutschland Pass' this month which basically entitled me to go anywhere, on any train I liked within Germany as many times as I liked to truly realise just how utterly useless Deutsche Bahn is.

And boy was it useless.

I think for every hour I spent on a train, I spent another waiting for said train to turn up. "Please excuse us but today's train, scheduled for 5:45, has now been rescheduled for 10:45. Have a nice day from the Deutsche Bahn."

For what it is worth though, when I wasn't living on a train, I saw some awesome places and swear I saw like 50% of Germany's churches. I went up to Berlin for three days just because I could, going out with a friend to some club called Berghain that she made me wait an hour and a half to get into and got home at 9:30 in the morning after talking these two Dutch guys into buying us a box of dunkin'donuts goodness and then I went to Koblenz and played 'spot the castle' with the million fortresses that line the rivers' banks.

I also hit up Freiburg at the edge of the black forest, Ulm with it's giant cathedral, Lindau at the border of Germany, Austria and Switzerland where the lake tried to kill me and a million other places. My favourite though, was probably Kassel where I saw the Documenta, which is an art show that seems to have taken over the whole city. I hate art galleries. I generally think they're the place people go to die when the golf course is in use, but this was amazing. The galleries, theatres, historical sites and hotels were overflowing with art so the park was filled too just to fit it all in. They say you need at least four days to see it all, but a week is advisable if you don't want to rush...awesome. Sadly I only had two days there before I had to head home because my pass ended and I didn't want to actually have pay for Deutsche Bahn to be useless, lest it encourage them...

Anyways that was my very dry and informative post about what I've been up to (I remembered that was the original point to this blog after all), now to plan my next trip. The boyfriend (oh yeah and I have a boyfriend now - his name is Pascal and he is German) (and lovely) (Imma stop bracketing things now) is taking me on a roadtrip through Switzerland and Italy on the way to France...Life is good.

Hope all is well.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

The Poo Shelf.

Now there are probably only two reasons you're reading this: a) You normally read my blog or more likely b) you saw the word 'poo' in the title and wanted to see what all the fuss was about...

Well I'm here today to talk to you about the great german invention - the Poo Shelf.

Normal toilets....
Here's one I prepared earlier...

Eww. No.

Anyways it's probably not what you think. I mean it's not a shelf in the German's pool rooms (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5KbMolsUPA) or even a cupboard where they keep all their toilet related collectables. It is in fact a shelf on the inside of the toilet that...well, makes creating collectables a lot easier....

Not that they collect - I hope.

Now in Australia during the great droughts of like, every four years, older people liked to reminisce with me (and I'm sure any other young person they could freak out) about the good old days when the 1970's slogan "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown - flush it down" was in force.
German toilets....

Eww old people. Just eww.

However, it strikes a certain chord with the Germans, not that they let anything mellow of course, but they are very health conscious and environmentally aware, so they have a little catchment in there so they can take their time checking how things are going on the inside...and just in case they want to take a sample or two before they let it - slip out of their grasp - for lack of a better term...

Well actually there were many better terms, I just felt that one induced the worst images.

*evil cackle*


For what it is worth though these things do seem to be more common in the north of Germany, where people actually want to look at what their body has been digesting for the past 10 hours. I rarely see them down here in BW or Bavaria - I guess we're not much for a long farewell...

That being said, neither am I. So with that I say -

Hope all is well.




Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Weekend away and a world to pay.

This weekend I caught a train north in search of Currywurst and Emma. Both were found, one was eaten.

When I finally got to Berlin we headed straight to a lake Em wanted to check out. Partly coz it was hot but mostly because her uncle owns a boat. Luckily for Giorgia's #1 rule of water - Boats only increase your risk of drowning: Avoid them. - it wasn't windy enough to sail and we had to settle for swimming in the shallow depths of a lake populated by children....the water was rather warm - eww. 

However, the was no swimming before this delightful conversation could be had:

Emma: Hey, what's FKK in english?
Me: You mean like nudists? 
Emma: Yeah exactly
Me: Umm why are you asking?
Emma: Hmm well it's just that we seem to have gone to the wrong lake....


Yup, you read it right. We had accidentally (or so Emma says....) stumbled on to a nudist retreat. There were large, old and hairy men alike but do you think we found one attractive person in the whole place? No; Not that we were looking...

Luckily the whole trip just kept getting better, from getting kicked out of a bar for climbing through a window (we wanted to get to the outdoor seats before someone else took them - Unfortunately they thought we were doing a runner and yelled at us in broken...whatever language that was) to trying (and failing) to persuade one of the many Aussies we ran into that I really am Australian ("but....you don't sound Aussie?")

The highlight of course was Berghain, a club I had never heard of for which I stood in a queue for 1.5 hours (and that was after we cut in towards the front). Em was DESPERATE to get into this place and the closer to the door we got, the more she wanted to maul the bouncers for being so randomly picky. They would refuse girls in gucci but allow guys in thongs and wife-beaters in and then refuse the next group dressed in the same way...random.

Now I'd been up since 6:30am by this point and wasn't really in the mood to club. Luckily for me we got in, I danced a bit and then had naptime on the couch. I also seem to have picked up two guys from the Netherlands at some point, which was lucky coz when we finally left the club at 8am I was in need of Dunkin' Donuts...and thanks to them I had a 12er box to choose from....I think I chose and ate like 8 of them.

Then I had to stay awake till 2pm. Em wanted to go to a flea market and I knew if I fell asleep I'd never get up again. So I got home, zombied my way around, bought some seriously random stuff at the market and barely avoided passing out on the train home. By the 32 hours of consciousness mark I was set to kill - if I'd had the energy that is. Luckily for everyone it was enough effort for me just to keep my eyes open and I fell asleep the second I got to the weird new-age/Tibetan hippy style house I was staying at. 

Next time I guess....

Hope all is well.