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.

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.

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.

Switzerland tried to kill me.

Today we went to Lindau. Today I almost drowned.

I'd like to keep my dignity and say that I didn't, that I was just taking a small break, gracefully lying on my back in the water - but I wasn't. I was struggling and the boat we had hired seemed to get further away every time I glanced up from the water in a panic - because unfortunately unlike normal Australians - I can't really swim. After years of weekly lessons and school swimming competitions my swimming skills pretty much cover how not to die - Or so I thought, seems I may have overestimated my skills a little there... 


Luckily for me, Pascal jumped into the water to save his damsel in distress as she put more effort into telling people to stop asking if she was ok than actually keeping her head above water *cue dramatic splashing scene* Unfortunately it seemed to be an out of the frying pan and into the fire kind of situation, with Pascal deciding the best way to drag me back to the boat was by my neck - Fate had it that I was going to survive drowning only to be choked to death by my lifesaver. 


Now when you almost die your life doesn't flash before your eyes, you don't get to see what you did well or where you went wrong - mostly you just see water, and a lot of it... Then you drink said water and think about how gross that is because millions of swans, ducks and fish have excreted their waste into your current drinking source, not to mention all the semi-(and completely) naked germans swimming in the water all around you... Then you realise you need to die gracefully and try to look calm and peaceful as you give up on doggie-paddling your way to salvation. Admittedly any elegance I had retained by that point was lost through the sounds I made as Pascal semi-choked whatever life was left in me trying to get me back on board but -


 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySzgYVqk4p8

(Couldn't help myself)


The real challenge with drowning though, is actually surviving it - because then you have to maintain your dignity afterwards... Of course I tried to play it off as an act, pretending that it was really just an overly theatrical performance and that I hadn't really panicked, just wanted everyone to prove their loyalty... That didn't really work though and instead I had four people asking "Are you ok?" at once. Thank god the hero of the day - Ash - went on to tell me that he would have come to my rescue but he felt there was no reason for two of us to die when he's going off to travel at the end of this week... 

Luckily I recovered my usual pep by throwing Pascal's underwear into the water as he awkwardly tried to get changed, hoping to watch a passer-by swim right into them and distract from my shame. However it would seem gravity is no one's friend, and we watched them sink to the bottom of the lake through tears of laughter before he had any chance of rescuing them,. Guess who had to freeball it for the rest of the afternoon?


My hero.


Hope all is well.