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.

Catch up #2

Ok so yesterday I left you with my exciting adventures in Spain. I could talk about them all day really but, in an attempt to avoid gloating about how awesome it was - imma move on. (Note what a good person I am - I didn't even whip out the 10,000 photos of all the sights and people from my travels that you've never seen or met to show you....)

We're now in Zurich in Early-November 2012....

1. I went to visit a friend there after a loose invititation along the lines of  'feel free to come visit if you want' was given. In retrospect, I think it was kind of like those invitations I give to people when I have a big bag of chips or something - 'would you like one?' - I'll ask them, but of course their answer should be no, because if I only wanted three-quarters of my chips then I would have bought a smaller bag - get your own... And so with a half-hearted invite, offered very late one night two weeks before in mind, I found myself standing under a really fat and ugly thing/piece of art, that was supposed to represent the guardian angel of Zurich, waiting for his tardy ass to turn up (admittedly I was also running 2 hours late by that point too...) It was a pretty great weekend actually, I went to museums, spent a lot of money, went to museums, spent more money...I have privately-renamed Switzerland 'little-Australia', because only Australians would look at Swiss prices and think 'well, I've seen worse.' 10 francs for a beer? That's only $10 or so and we are out on the town after all....Germans though...Germans freak out.

And so they should, here the cheapest beer is something like 20 cents...

2. And Budapest. I went to Budapest to visit an awesome girl I met in Valencia and spend a week with the boyfriend I had abandoned for five weeks to go Spain. Budapest is my favourite. It is the magical fairyland of cake on a stick, thermal baths and lots of other stuff - but frankly you had me at cake on a spit. (Germans also have their own version of this...Baumkuchen...I love Germans). God I loved Budapest; it is magnificent, it is beautiful and it is super cheap. I will be going back. I can't pinpoint exactly what it is I loved about Budapest so much...maybe the giant castle on the river or the food or the Parliament building...but it's just...

Go there.

And that will be all for now. From then (a.k.a. now) on the simple story is that I had to quit travelling and get a job (or three as it turned out) to fund my studies and now spend my time either working or arguing with fools at the Rathaus over Visas, tax file numbers or...yeah, don't get me started.

Hope all is well.

Catching up #1

Ok so it's been a while - a very long while.

Here's post #1 catching you up on my life in-between...

1. I went to Amsterdam, it was off to a good start when somehow in ridiculously unlikely circumstances it turned out that my boyfriend's sister just happened to be catching the same train half way with me...at 5am in the morning. That would have been ok if not for the fact that I had a) been avoiding meeting his family for weeks beforehand - knowing that I'd get all awkward and make a terrible impression and b) been on the lush for about 5 hours by then. By that time my trusty friends Russian Standard and Jose Cuevo were joining the party and I found myself teary-eyed and saying goodbye to Pascal at the train station (note the tears...) Then his sister appeared out of no where - having recognised him - and probably regretting it, was forced to sit next to me, trying to make conversation in whatever language I felt my emotions would best be expressed for about an hour before I fell asleep on her for the rest of the way...

I'll admit it wasn't the my best impression I could have made...

2. I was in Amsterdam. Not my favourite place in the world, mostly because the whole place smells like weed and the few places that don't smell like weed smell like hookers. Ok ok - maybe that's a little harsh. It was actually pretty great -  I went with Ash and we rode bikes around and ran over tourists, ate burgers from vending machines and stared at windmills and hookers in windows (I can't even begin to describe how weird the whole thing is)

3. I was in Spain for a month wearing sun dresses and working on my tan (Well, not really - I need only think of the sun in order to score a hefty burn), trying to learn Spanish whilst my fellow Aussies and Germs were freezing their butts off and being useful to society by working or studying.

I regret nothing.


I tried to learn Spanish in Valencia - failed, but found that my terrible Spanish was often more than most Spaniards spoke. That's not to say my friends and I were efficient or always got what we wanted - with one of many requests lost in translation leaving my friend with a whole peach on a plate after ordering what she thought was peaches in cream..the peach was brought to her in a haze of confusion on every one's part of course...

I became a share bear (kind of), living with three other people in a small cabin and living through more than one storm that nearly blew our whole cabin away After Spanish classes and storms were over I went to Barcelona and stared at Gaudi's work (not my style Imma admit) and Madrid to...I don't know, be in Madrid?

And then I went to Montserrat and saw the famous mountain monastery and Toledo with it's ancient city on top of a mountain (both day trips from Barcelona and Madrid respectively and both better than the main cities) but I don't have anything amusing to say about either and I wanted to try to keep this brief - so with that, I bid you adieu -



Hope all is well.

Belgium - Chocolate, Chips and Children.

This week I went to Belgium with my boyfriend of two weeks. Well actually, we've been dating for about three months now but between the German need to take things slow and my probation period to sus the person out in case I've unwittingly picked up a serial killer, we have only officially been together for two weeks and hence we decided it was time to go on holidays together.

As you do.

Whilst we'd originally planned on going on a roadtrip, thus offering Pascal many places to discard my lifeless corpse on the way through Austria, Italy, France and Switzerland, the car broke down the day before we left and we were forced to make an emergency blind booking - ending up in Belgium.

It was awesome.

I not only survived, but I ate more chocolate, waffles and chips than I thought was possible. We saw Smurfs, the works of my favourite artist Rene Magritte and had an apartment on the fifth floor with a private balcony spanning the whole outer rim of the hotel which we managed to book on a random deal that saved us almost 80% of the normal rate - life was good.

Of course there were some minor hiccups...

Whilst travelling I like to take a photo of every second thing I see, so naturally as we were walking along the streets of Brussels and I spotted a fortress/tower thing I needed a photograph of, I completely lost track of what was being said all around me. Unfortunately it seemed that this was the moment Pascal decided to utter those three little words that Romeo whipped out after knowing Juliet for all of ten minutes like a creepy stalker pervert... Now I'm a one trick pony when it comes to keeping my mind on track (note my launch into how much I hate Romeo and Juliet), and I had already decided I wanted a photo of Pascal in front of the tower; So despite my extreme girlish happiness, gushing and such in the moment; not two seconds after I told him I didn't hate him in return I leaned in for a hug and whispered "now get in front of the tower" sweetly in his ear. Well at least I thought it was sweetly...turns out I sounded more like Golem threatening people for the return of his precious. Now Pascal doesn't like his photo to be taken at the best of times. If it must be done he grimaces and looks like he's hurting inside - but somehow this seemed to be even more awkward - did I ruin the moment?

At least my social faux-pas was nothing on Pascal's. As we sat in a little church somewhere in Bruges, a little girl dressed in a short red skirt, pink jumper and knee-high, shiny black boots walked past us. I remarked that she was adorable and that I loved her little boots, to which Pascal replied by suddenly turning into something out of Mean Girls and calling her a special S-word that wasn't sweet or sassy, (or sexy...just for the record). Unfortunately for him, her Scottish father was sitting next to me and overheard it, but for what it is worth Pascal was in his own little world and kept repeating it, completely disregarding her father talking under his breath and giving him death stare from four feet away - I grabbed his arm and speedily dragged him out at that point...luckily no black-eyes were received this trip.

Well I better go for a jog now, work off all those delicious waffles I ate you know?

Or maybe you don't...

Hope all is well.

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.