Krystal Clear.

It has now been over a year since I have been home and whilst I hate to admit it, I am kind of home sick some days.

Krystal, one of my oldest friends is about to turn 18 - June 10th, a date she is counting down to desperately - fair enough considering she's in her second year of uni and two years younger than everyone around her.  I'm sad I won't be there for her birthday to pinch her cheeks and taunt her about how she's the baby like I always do, nor will I be there to be a terrible influence like I was growing up - which must come as a relief to her parents - one more birthday when they don't have to worry that I'm going to hit someone in the head with a hairbrush, talk everyone into getting into their sleeping bags and sliding down the stairs or go puppy hunting with Krys in secret until they are forced to get her the dog of her dreams... 14 years and I won't be there to help her take the leap into adulthood by dragging her to the casino for her first drink, gamble and club all in one go - that makes me very sad indeed - but on the bright side; I do have a terrible Skype connection and can occasionally make it function well enough to see people in slow-mo with their mouths moving completely out of sync, that and maybe a bottle of Jaegermeister in the mail shall have to cut it...until I can talk her into a little euro-trip that is.

Apart from that I miss all the obvious things like my family and friends, mint slices, vegemite, australian slang and accents, the beach even though I avoided it like the plague for fear of turning into a lobster and having sand in places sand should never be. I miss family reunions over Easter, Flippin' Pancakes in Sassafrass, it not snowing for four months of the year forcing me to layer up until I look like the Michelin man. I miss shops being open on Sundays, bogans starting fights at the bus stops and Knox City....I miss Knox. I miss going there and always running into someone I knew, chilling in the food court and window shopping with friends after school. I miss shops like Target and Myer. I miss working at Maccas (McDonalds) so many hours in a week that I start answering my phone with "Would you like fries with that?" and baking cupcakes with Magenta on holidays instead of using the time to study. I miss Halloween at Heidi's and Wednesday night dinners with the family and countless other little things that make the place a home.

That being said I'm happy here in my new home, and there are things here I prefer to Australia - inexpensive casinos, alcohol and clubs for example Krys ;) and a million other things, but I'm going to avoid another long list and instead prepare for my job interview - sadly no fries are on offer at this particular bar, but maybe I can get them to add them

to the cocktail menu....

Hope all is well.

Doggy Dial-Up

I am in a bus. This bus has wifi. Oh the wonders of technology, soon we will just hook up little routers to our dogs so that we are connected on even the shortest of walks - or alternatively we could just not be a massive bunch of cheap skates and get an internet flat rate on our phones....but I like the doggy dial-up idea better....

I'm heading to Nuremberg  the city in Bavaria where I did an exchange two years ago. I will see my exchange family and we will merrily go and drink copious amounts of beer together at Bergkirchweih, the region's big(gest) beer fest. I will drink two litres of beer, pee like a stallion and then - under Laura's instruction - be dragged on one of those drop-towers of death that make your stomach come out your mouth and your lungs drop out your...you get the point. Maybe if I drink the beer fast enough I'll look green naturally - without needing a satanic roller-coaster or two to hit that point....we can only hope.

And in no relation to anything that I have said so far at all: Uni is excellent. No one can ever quite describe just how excellent uni is. Uni keeps you busy with everything from parties to the pile of homework you come home to at the end of the week, but I somehow like studying; yes, it offers me a range of pointless new facts to bore my family members with so that we can wonderful conversations like this:

Me: Hey, did you know that...
Mum: ...No! No I didn't.

Mamabear has learnt over the years that the best way to get me to stop talking is to never let me start - Pascal hasn't learnt that yet. Unlike Mamabear - he foolishly lets me get started and is then forced to just sit there and listen. One time he even got shiny eyes as he pretended to be interested in my discussion of the third accepted gender (males acting and dressing as females) in Native American culture, although in retrospect those could have been  tears...best not dwell on that.

Anyways that's enough for one day, I have a beer fest to hit up!

Hope all is well.

Eurovision 2013: At least they spared Switzerland the humiliation of being in the finals

And so it was that time of the year again, a beautiful time filled with white spandex and glitter - it was Eurovision time - and oh how we celebrated.

Now as I explained last year, Switzerland always loses (unless they cheat and get Celine Dion) and there is a great drinking game to go along with the song contest. The rules are simple, all one hundred of them: http://www.webtender.com/handbook/games/eurovision-song-contest.game and you'll find that the game makes the epitome of trash TV bearable, some might even say enjoyable! This year I played it with 11 others as we watched Denmark sing themselves to glory - well, we kind of played it - Mostly we just drank copious amounts of alcohol any time the horrors of Eurovision became too real for us. Each time that happened, we'd simply drink ourselves back in to the wonderland where people in morph-suits weren't doing acrobatics whilst men in tight, white spandex thrusted away to an 80's beat  - don't judge. You don't know what I've been through!

Speaking of being through things - I have decided that exactly that: "You don't know what I've been through!" will be my excuse to get out of anything and everything that I don't want to do or admit fault to - Oh I'm sitting in your chair? Well you don't know what I've been through! I forgot it was your birthday? You don't know what I've been through! I ate the last cookie? Let's just say YDKWIBT for short.

Anyways back on track: So after the votes were called and the very undeserving Denmark won (Romania had my full support), the police were called. Ok, so maybe it didn't happen exactly like that but for some reason or another; one of my friend's hater-housemates called the police rather than just knocking on her door and asking us to quieten down like the normal German night-dragons do (Koennt ihr bitte ein bisschen LEISE SEIN?!?!?!? *spoken as a death threat*) none the less that ended things and we headed off on our path of destruction to upset all of my neighbours whilst we were at it. Then nothing interesting happened for a while, there was a lot of dancing to 'Thrift shop' and then we found ourselves on an island. 

Now obviously at this point you're either thinking a) wow, this whole wonderland thing really got out of hand, or b) seriously, where is this going? Actually the little island is situated in the middle of town; there we fearfully ran away from the spawn of satan A.K.A. swans and I proved that I shouldn't be out without my glasses after incorrectly identifying a duck as a fish. We frolicked, we danced, I tried to make people swim in the refreshing river water and then after finding out that not even the 24-hour Doener place was offering food at 6:30am we settled for breakfast cake and after setting an alarm for 4pm, I finally fell into bed sometime after 9. 

The end.

P.S. Romania should have won: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV3xp5ZXSYA

Hope all is well.

Backtreet's back ALRIGHT!

I have not written in a very long time, but as Pascal is on my case about writing again, I might as well bite the bullet - can't say it'll be entertaining though because I am incredibly happy/borderline smug at the moment and that never makes for good writing...people want tortured, haunted writers to write their deepest darkest secrets down - Or Harry Potter - either or really. None the less Imma give it a shot and skip the part where I went to Finland with my Mum for Christmas (totally molested Santa and ate a reindeer to boot) (also I cried in front of 10 year-old children coz I was so cold...dignity is overrated), I'll also skip the part where I got fired from the easiest job ever for being unpleasant to customers (I hate people. It was never going to go well), not to mention being escorted out of said workplace after flipping at the boss for going three months unpaid...

So we'll just pick up at the point where I got into university. Yes, I Giorgia, avoider of the German sprechening, am now studying entirely in German. It' actually going rather well too, the professors all think that I am barely literate and regularly direct entire lectures at me as if extreme eye-contact is the key to understanding forced migration in the 20th century, I have also already put those classmates who thought it was giggle-time in their place (I actually held up a class for a moment to ask a girl what she thought was so funny about my German...she squeaked - clearly a jealousy issue) and I have found a group of friends that includes the necessary token giant to hand me stuff that I can't reach.

Things are excellent.

But there is a downside to everything (see? Tortured writer coming through) and mine is Archivkunde. the study of the Archives...evil stuff. I'm pretty sure my professor actually takes pleasure from the extreme boredom of his class. It has gotten so bad, that people have actually started bringing in their iPads and are clearly playing games and taking selfies the whole time - can't say I haven't pulled a few Archivkunde duckfaces myself... Luckily I'm pretty sure this class only requires attendance and a short speech in order to pass, if we were supposed to be taking notes I'll be impressed if anyone knows the difference between storing tax papers and setting all the archives on fire...

But I have a class now, slowly learning latin - because that's the kind of pretentious, idealistic student I have become. That being said, I am studying history and Slavic studies so it might be time to idealise myself a job after my degree...Would you like fries with that?

Hope all is well.