Kangaroos in Deutschland

To be continued...

2010-10-28T19:57:00.001+02:00

The time has come.

Kangaroos in Deutschland is going on temporary hiatus.

My decision has nothing to do with creative inspiration or motivation to write: I have at least five or six half-written posts and ideas for a further eight or nine - four of those from the last week alone - and the temptation to curl up on my bed with a mug of tea and a biscuit is very strong. But one thing is preventing me from doing that.

That issue is time. Until about a month ago, I had a lot of it. I worked part-time, and could fill in the rest of the week tutoring, translating, teaching myself Turkish, being a tourist when I wanted to, and writing until my heart was content.

In August however, I applied for a place in a Master's course in linguistics at Humboldt University in Berlin. I was accepted, passed a German language test, and two weeks ago, I started classes. The number of contact hours is relatively low, but the preparation required for each class is enormous. On top of that, it's in German, and my linguistics terminology is not only in English, but also pretty rusty, since I finished my studies in 2004. This means more preparation and revision time.

Considering that I'm still working twenty hours a week at the English language school, I don't have a lot of time left over. I've had to stop the weekly voluntary tutoring I was doing at a local library, helping school kids (primarily with Turkish and Lebanese background) with their English and German homework. I've also had to stop tutoring a friend's son on Saturdays: I miss the cash, and the tutoring itself, but I just don't have the time for the travel or the tutoring.

The ideas will keep coming, and I'll keep writing them down, storing them up for the Christmas holidays and the semester break in March, but until then, they're going to have to remain ideas, and I'll do my very best to resist the urge to flesh them out until I can justify spending the time on something other than university work.

I just hope it's possible to snap-freeze creative motivation... and that it doesn't have a defrost-by-date. Guess we'll find out.

Until then...

The Paradox of the Holy Grail

2010-10-24T21:05:00.000+02:00

Hello, my name's Australis, and I'm a science geek. Well, kinda.

At high school, I was an A or B student in almost everything. English, maths, geography, history, German, French, IT. Everything except science. I liked it - I just wasn't all that good at it... Ok, I was terrible at it. Despite my father being a chemical engineer and both of his parents scientists or science teachers, I just couldn't get my head around the theory of it. I liked learning about the origins of the chemical symbols (I guess that's the linguist in me - I still remember that the chemical symbol for lead is Pb because the Latin term is "plumbum"). I found genetics and the human body fascinating in biology. I enjoyed learning about the practical effects and application of the laws of physics. I just never got the grades for it, and eventually dropped science at the end of year 9 after getting horrible grades two years running, despite my best efforts.

As a child though, many weekends and school holidays were spent in the company of my paternal grandmother at various museums in Melbourne. The Museum of Victoria was my favourite. I still remember walking around in the darkened minerals exhibit as a seven- and eight-year-old, awestruck by the black-lit glow of various precious and semi-precious stones, and looking at all kinds of skeletons and geological exhibits. That is, until the mid 90s when Scienceworks opened.

Scienceworks was my absolute favourite place to go in Melbourne as a kid. I think even my grandmother got sick of taking me there at one point. Every school holidays for as long as I could remember, we'd drive across the Westgate Bridge in their blue Honda to Spotswood, and spend the afternoon playing with the pulley exhibits, figuring out spinning pictures, learning about aerodynamics, space exploration, our galaxy and a whole host of other activities. Occasionally we'd go into the Planetarium in the city; sitting there underneath the dome, watching the constellations zoom across the screen above us, then being taken on a guided tour of the solar system and beyond into the rest of our galaxy entranced me. To this day, I remain in love with astronomy. I therefore amend my previous statement: I'm a science geek, with a major in astronomy.

Going to those museums as a child though, I remember seeing that some of the exhibits had plaques next to them, acknowledging their temporary status due to them being on loan from somewhere called Smithsonian. Over the years, this name, "Smithsonian", kept coming up - not just at museums in Melbourne or even Australia, but in the natural history museums I visited overseas, and in all kinds of books: this or that was on loan from the Smithsonian, or on display in the Smithsonian. This "Smithsonian" place attained a status with me as the holy grail of museums, and it was never a question of whether or not I would go there, but when.

So when I ventured to the States for the first time to meet up with my sister and her boyfriend in New York for a few days in July 2010, it was a given that I would go to Washington D.C., with the goal of finally visiting the hallowed halls of the Smithsonian Museum - where apparently everything of any value in natural history was stored. The Apollo shuttle. The Hope Diamond. And much more.

I was like a kid on her first day of school. The alarm went off at 5.30am; by 7am, I was on a train pulling slowly out of Penn station. Four hours later, I arrived in DC. First stop was a tourist information stand, where I found out to my surprise that the Smithsonian wasn't a museum. It was a complex of museums, known as the Smithsonian Institute, comprising natural history, art, scuplture, Native American and African American museums, to name just a few. And the holy grail of holy grails for me - the National Air and Space Museum (NASM). First was a brief bus tour of the city, then I hightailed it for the NASM.

I remember exactly how I felt when I first walked through those hallowed (to me, anyway) doors. Absolute amazement. No, that's not expressive enough. I was dumbstruck. Literally speechless. And completely overwhelmed. I could not stop smiling in awe and disbelief at what I saw before me. The silver-haired man behind the information desk was watching me with a small smile - I had stopped in my tracks about ten metres into the lobby, and was simply staring up at the rockets, shuttles and planes hanging from the ceiling high above me and at the photographs of planets and constellations adorning the walls, oblivious to the hordes of people swarming around me.

Eventually I broke out of my trance and approached the man at the information desk to find out exactly what was on display here. He told me about some of the best exhibits, some of the most popular displays, and his personal favourite, the Ole Miss. Then he pointed out the Apollo 11 lunar module and the landing capsule about 100m away. I grinned, giddy with disbelief and excitement, and he smiled back at me, enjoying my first-timer's reaction to the museum. Like I said, I'm an astronomy geek. And I was in astronomy geek heaven.

Suffice to say the two hour time bracket I'd allocated was never going to be sufficient. I think I had known that even before I got to DC. Sure, I could see everything I wanted to see, but in a whirlwind, not stopping at one display for more than a few minutes before moving onto the next, the time ticking away in the back of my mind. It was very different to how I had imagined my Smithsonian experience - spending an entire day there, or a few hours one day, then a few more the next, absorbing the history, the trivia, the scientific discoveries of the past, present and future. But I would much rather have had two hours there than nothing at all. And those two hours - wow.

The temptation to stay longer was enormous, but while I was enraptured with the NASM and everything in it, I was also in DC, which had a lot more to offer than just the NASM. So after two hours, I reluctantly made my way back to the lobby, bought a souvenir patch, thanked my good friend at the information stand for his tips, and ventured back out into the 37°C heat of the DC summer. The same day, I managed to cram in the Natural History Museum and a few others - not half as much as I wanted to, but an incredible lot, considering I was only in DC for a total of nine hours.

Three months later, on a Saturday afternoon in Berlin, I heard that the German Natural History Museum was commemorating its 200th anniversary with free entrance for a weekend. I'd wanted to go for ages, but a combination of time availability and wanting to explore Berlin's free museums first had put it far down on my priorities. But since it was free, how could I refuse?

After about twenty minutes though, my initial curiosity and wonder customary to a first-time visit to a museum was replaced with a strange feeling. While interesting, all of the displays and artefacts seemed somewhat lacklustre, as if somehow the entire museum had been painted in a matte finish. Everything was interesting, but that's where it ended. Not mesmerising, not fascinating, not enthralling. Just...interesting. And mildly disappointing. The astronomy display was where I noticed it the most. It seemed so small, as if half the exhibits had been removed for cleaning or restoration. And the exhibits that were there appeared to have lost their glow - as if a thin veil had been lowered over everything.
Then I noticed a small sign on one of the displays of moon rocks. "On loan from the NASM, Smithsonian Institute. Washington DC."

The penny dropped. That's why everything was different. This was the first museum I'd visited since I'd experienced the Smithsonian Institute. And the effect was phenomenal. The visit to my holy grail of museums had apparently forever changed the way I would experience museums as a visitor. The aura was gone. The almost childlike curiosity I used to get when I walked into the foyer of a museum, the excitement at being on the brink of learning unknown facts about long extinct animals, geographical phenomena and stars and planets that no living human will ever reach had been extinguished. The standard of exhibits, especially in the space exhibits, had been set so high that it was completely out of reach for any other museum.

This revelation made me sad. Fulfilling my childhood mission of visiting the hallowed Smithsonian, land of all that is sacred and most important in the area of Natural History and Astronomy (in my eyes, at least) had simultaneously apparently forever destroyed my future museum experiences.

I'm not sure if this is something that can be worked around; if now that I know that I'll never get that Smithsonian feeling anywhere except DC will enable me to lower my standards and enjoy other cities' natural history museums for what they are. I'm not sure. I guess only time will tell. In the meantime, I can be forever happy knowing that I have made the pilgrimage to the Smithsonian; that I have seen the landing module that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins landed on the moon in, and the landing capsule that brought them safely back to Earth again, both first hand, and that the two hours spent there were worth every single second of the eight hour return train trip from DC to NYC.

A is for Apple

2010-10-18T21:22:00.000+02:00

This was in the Australian news a month or so ago.

"Buy buy mummy: iPad toddler's spending spree" - The Age, 15th September, 2010.

The story of three-year-old Sienna Leigh of Sydney, who ran up a AUD$50 bill on her mother's credit card in the online Apple store buying iPad applications. Her mother didn't notice until she saw the emailed receipts for Sienna's shopping spree after the little one had gone to sleep.

The kid has skills with technology - I'll give her that. I'm 28, and I'm not sure I could do much with an iPad beyond turn it on without being shown how, let alone find the Apple store and purchase applications. This little girl is only three - she can't yet read or write her own name, but she can go shopping online on her mum's tab.

But while the article seemed to almost jovially research how Sienna managed her feat, and detailed how to disable iPad access to the Apple store for other parents, I found myself asking a more fundamental question.

Why the hell does a three-year-old have an iPad of her own? Following on from that, why does she spend a few hours a day obviously unsupervised with an incredibly expensive and sophisticated piece of technology, which also happens to have access to the internet?

For those of you less in the know, or who like me don't champ at the bit every time Steve Jobs releases another "must have" Apple product, the iPad is just like an iPhone - only bigger. Six times bigger, to be exact. Touch screen display, huge internal memory, internet, access to all kinds of applications ranging in levels of usefulness, practicality, entertainment and idiocy. Oh, and you can also make phone calls with it. iPads retail at AUD$629 in Australia for the most basic model, and over AUD$1,000 for the top of the range version. (€499 - €799 on the German Apple website for those not familiar with the Aussie dollar.)

With those prices in mind, it seems like a good time to repeat my previous question. Why the hell does a three-year-old have an iPad of her own, regardless of whether or not she shares it with her siblings (as is mentioned in the article)?

There are so many issues I have with this. I'm going to stick with just three though. The first is the price of the thing. AUD$629. It's a lot of money. I've only spent anywhere near that amount of money on two purchases (flights aside). A car, and my current digital camera. I could possibly understand an adult spending that much money on a piece of technology for themselves, especially if he or she is an Apple fanatic.

I cannot understand spending that much money on one non-essential item for a child, regardless of what it is, how old they are, or whether or not they are going to share it. Aside from still not understanding why exactly a three-year-old needs an iPad (or for that matter, a computer of any kind), giving a toddler something, half of which happens to be made of glass, is asking for trouble. iPads are easily broken by adult users as it is - just google "broken iPad" if you don't believe me. The screen is glass, the back casing is smooth metal, and there's nowhere for hands, large or small, to get a good grip. In short, it's pretty easy for it to just slip out of your hands and crash onto the floor. The LCD is also prone to distortion, and could easily be put out of action by an energetic poke from enthusiastic little fingers. Game over. At least until it's fixed or replaced.

My major beef though wasn't so much what it was spent on, but what it wasn't spent on.
Take that wad of fifty dollar notes. Here are some alternatives to lining Steve Jobs' pocket with it.

1. Save it. Put it in a trust fund - a savings account, term deposit - whatever. If you want to get a little something on the way back from the bank, grab a stack of colouring books and a pack of crayons. There'd still be over AUD$600 left. $200 per kid in a savings account. Not bad.

2. If the urge to spend is that strong, round up the kids and let them loose in the local toy store with the cash. Think of the number of books, Lego sets, bats and balls, dolls, crayons, board games, and action figures you could get for the same amount of money!! Instead of taking turns with an iPad (or anything else for that matter) which invariably leads to bickering and fighting (and let's face it, who needs more of that?!), all of the kids could use these toys simultaneously and further their development in the process. Get them to hone their fine motor skills and thinking processes, broaden their imagination, learn hand-eye coordination, learn their ABCs while turning real pages of real books, and best of all, run around outside in the fresh air, playing with each other and getting some exercise (considering the rising obesity rates around the world, who can argue with that?), rather plonking them alone on the couch with a touch-screen computer as a high-tech babysitter.

Sure, Apple might have games and applications suitable or even designed for children, but at the end of the day, it's still a computer.

(NB: I originally wrote this on the 16th of September, but never got around to posting it. That is, until I noticed this in the New York Times.
"Toddlers’ Favorite Toy: The iPhone" - New York Times, 15th October, 2010.
It's nice to know I'm not the only one alarmed by the increasing role of technology in childhood, and its ramifications. -A)

Berlin to Newcastle... via Paris... and Amsterdam... (or "Why I Hate Charles de Gaulle Airport")

2010-09-24T22:07:00.001+02:00

I've been on a few flights. Around Australia, across and within Europe, to the States, and let's not forget the 24hr odyssey between Australia and Europe via Asia a couple of times. Fifteen at last count. That's a few. But somehow I have never found myself in the unfortunate situation of missing a flight. Lost luggage? Definitely. Had delays and stopovers lasting hour after hour in all kinds of airports with expensive food, stale air, smelly co-travellers, uncomfortable seats and little or nothing to do? More times than I care to remember.

But never missed a flight. Came close in Vienna a couple of years ago; fell asleep at the gate, but fortunately Austrian Airlines don't leave checked-in passengers behind, and chose instead to mangle my name over the PA and give me five minutes to get my act together.

Made up for all of those years of good fortune a few weekends ago. One of my best friends lives in Newcastle, England, and I don't get to see her nearly often enough, so when I got a few unexpected days off work, I researched flights. There are no direct flights between Newcastle and Berlin. Last time, I flew to Edinburgh with RyanAir and got the train down. That was the first time I'd flown with RyanAir, and god I hope it's the last. The alternative? AirFrance + KLM, via Paris on the way there, Amsterdam on the way back. Done. I just wouldn't check any luggage (experience with AirFrance taught me that the hard way).

First flight, Berlin to Paris. Slight delay, but I figured if I can make it from David Jones to K-Mart in ten minutes in Boxing Day crowds at Chaddy, I could make a one hour connection at Charles de Gaulle.

Or not. The problem wasn't the spaghetti junction of gates and corridors and confusing signs. The problem was getting through customs in under half an hour. Showing the obnoxious guard at the entrance to customs my boarding pass for a flight departing in less than thirty minutes from a gate I still was yet to locate didn't help an iota. Actually, it had exactly the opposite effect. He reinforced my steadfast belief that France would be a fantastic country if it weren't for the French. He refused to let me through the express lane, designed exactly for passengers in my situation, instead demanding that I join the back of the queue; he seemed to be enjoying my rising stress levels as the departure time ticked closer. Sadistic bugger.

Got through eventually, ran another ten minutes to the gate, and made it five minutes before departure. I could see people still walking down the gangway to the plane. Exhale. Sweet. Made it.

Spoke too soon. An AirFrance employee, who seemed to find just as much pleasure in my misfortune as the customs guy had, told me "Ze flight 'as left." Excuse me? "Ze flight 'as left." No, I understood you the first time. But how have I missed the flight if the plane is still at the gate and passengers are still boarding? All this guy had to do was to scan my boarding pass and let me through. Problem solved.

No such luck. The next flight? In an hour, and already full. His solution? A five Euro food voucher that might get me a small dishwatery coffee if I was lucky, and a connection to Newcastle... via Amsterdam. In five hours. And all of this with the trace of a smile. Sadistic bugger. I'm sure the etymology of "Schadenfreude" can be traced back to French somehow.

Five hours later, I'm at the gate, ready to get on the flight to Amsterdam, right on time. Bored out of my mind, sick of hearing Français, and desperate for some actual coffee and decent food, but right on time. Well, I'm on time. The flight's not. A forty minute delay. My connection time in Amsterdam? Ninety minutes. Oh yay. Let's hope Schiphol Airport isn't as much of a mess as Charles de Gaulle, and that it's not remotely interesting, because I'm going to have to run through it.

Left Paris, flew to Amsterdam. Sure enough, the ninety minute connection became forty minutes, and I legged it through Schiphol. Fortunately the Dutch seem to have more in common with the Germans than the French when it comes to airport design; Schiphol airport is not only more organised, but better signposted. Security was shorter, travelators were used exclusively by courteous fellow travellers who either walk or move aside, Dutch security is less anal than French, and I was actually permitted to use the express lane at customs for the purpose for which it was implemented. I felt like I'd just run a marathon as I took off various metal items to go through security at the gate, but I made the flight. Two hours later, I was in Newcastle, and had an absolutely fantastic four days with Squishy and co. in the English sunshine.

What I didn't know at the time... that was just the preview. Believe it or not, my Charles de Gaulle experience was nothing compared to the return trip four days later. Stay tuned...

Notes From The Road: Wooden shacks and silver castles

2010-08-23T22:04:00.003+02:00

31st of March, 2010. Gjirokaster, southern Albania.

Right now from where I'm sitting astride the high stone wall of Kalaja e Gjirokastrës (Gjirokaster Castle), my view is nothing short of spectacular. I'm looking north along the wide Drino river valley hundreds of metres below me, the sun is slowly descending behind the Gjerë mountains to my left and is casting a golden glow over the snow-covered mountain peaks to my right on the opposite side of the valley.

Somewhere off in the distance, cowbells are clanging, sheep are bleating, and a group of children are laughing and calling to one another on their way home. A little further down the hillside, a plume of smoke is rising from a wooden shack, and if I closed my eyes, I would swear that I was standing outside the restaurant I was at in Tirana a few nights ago - whatever is being cooked on that open wood fire smells absolutely divine.
A spectacular view.

Gjirokaster is small - a lot smaller than I expected. Well, that's not entirely true. I hardly expected a thriving metropolis in the quiet hills of southern Albania. One feature that cannot be disputed is its unique topography.

While the tourists come for the picturesque old town, the majority of the 43,000 inhabitants live downtown in the modern lower area. In Gjirokaster, going downtown literally means travelling a good few kilometres down. The city is built into the steep sloping valley wall, and the old town is not only significantly smaller than the newer part, but also about 200 metres higher. The bitumen streets leading up from the petrol stations, schools and supermarkets of modern Gjirokaster are relatively flat for the first 100m in from the main highway running along the river, but the further you venture, the steeper the streets become, and the next few kilometres are uphill all the way, the gradient nearing 40degrees at times, until the bitumen turns to cobblestone and you reach the grey slate buildings of UNESCO World Heritage listed Gjirokaster. Here, rather than continue straight up the slope, most of the streets follow the contours of the mountain like waves, gently rising and falling every fifty or so metres. The only way you can continue your journey up the mountainside is on foot, using the steep old stone staircases, or by winding around for a kilometre in one direction, slowing to a crawl for a hairpin turn, then doubling back on yourself on a road running parallel to the first but about ten metres higher.

I very quickly realised that the 2EUR for the fifteen minute taxi ride to my hostel in the old town was definitely a good investment. In most places, especially smaller towns and villages, I rely on my feet to get me around, but the topography of Gjirokaster doesn't exactly lend itself to exploring the town on foot. I'd considered wandering down through the streets to the lower part earlier this evening, but since I only have one night here, I instead chose to stay up here in the ancient Minas Tirith-esque grey cobblestone old town and just enjoy the view.

Settlement in Gjirokaster has been traced back to ancient Greece - the name Gjirokaster comes from the Greek argyro (silver) and kastro (castle) - but there's nothing left now of anything from that time. The oldest remnants of Gjirokaster's history are the city walls I'm sitting on, which date back to the 3rd century AD. The majority of the old town isn't actually all that old, having been constructed in the 17th and 18th centuries when the area was under Ottoman rule - its status as a "rare example of a well-preserved Ottoman town" is what earned its UNESCO recognition in 2005.

Although I don't like to think about it, there's only one more stop left on this trip before I go back to Skopje to catch the flight north to Germany, which means leaving these quaint stone towns and the rural atmosphere behind until I next venture into the Balkans.

This trip has been so different to the other two though - to my Magical Mystery Tour around the Balkans in July and August 2007, and the Estonia/Latvia trip for Easter 2009. Maybe it's because Albania's tourism industry is relatively underdeveloped, in comparison to the rest of the Balkans, and especially in comparison to the rest of Europe. Maybe it's because travelling in off-season means I've had private rooms or the only occupied bunk in an entire hostel, and the owners at my beck and call, for most of the trip. Or maybe it's because Albania, unlike many of the other Balkan countries, was never part of Yugoslavia: Albania remained an ally of the USSR, but retained its independence. I don't know.

What I do know is that I absolutely love this country. I could quite happily spend another few weeks travelling around here - and would, if I didn't have this pesky thing called "work" calling me back to Berlin. In its own way, Albania is so incredibly beautiful. Maybe in the north it's different, but the south at least, Albania seems like it may be the Balkans as it once was, or even the Adriatic Coast as it once was - a few hotels here and there in the larger towns, but for the most part small fishing villages every few kilometres along white sandy beaches; further inland, jagged mountain peaks, sweeping valleys and isolated shacks dotted along the winding roads. As I said, I would love to accidentally on purpose forget about my flight home and roam around here awhile longer.

But watching Albania and its people and landscape from the window of a bus, or listening to roosters crow, sheep bleat and cowbells clang from up here on the fortress wall, I can't help thinking that while it's a beautiful country, I'm amazed that a country like Albania can still exist within the borders of today's Europe.

Life here must be so incredibly hard. I can see it on the faces of the people who live here. The people I see walking down the street, the men and women in the shops and marketplaces. The kids riding around dusty villages and along dirty littered city back lanes, stains all over their worn hand-me-down clothes, looking at me and my camera like I'm from outer space. Although being a female who most definitely is neither local nor married tends to raise some eyebrows around here anyway.

I've spoken to a couple of locals here in the last few days - Burim the young bus driver in Prizren whose German was better than his English, Miri the student from Korca who insisted he pay for my bus fare in Tirana and accompany me to within sight of the cable car station I was looking for, the taxi driver in Tirana who lived in London for a few years to earn money to send back to his family here, and the guide in the bus down from Tirana whose name I still can't remember who redefined hospitality. Coincidentally, all males. The majority of locals on the streets in Albania are males, or females in the company of males. From what I've read and been told, this is apparently partly due to the dominance of Islam in Albania. Either way, it makes me stand out like a sore thumb.

But aside from that, all of them told me a very similar story. Every single one of them was either working as many hours as they could physically handle in whatever job they had managed to find to get themselves and their family out of Albania, had worked outside Albania for several years and sent money back to their families, or like Burim, were dreaming of leaving Albania to follow their families who had already managed to leave, but unfortunately were themselves years of work away from getting their hands on the paperwork they needed to join them, much less the money to pay for the travel.

Writing that and rereading it, I realise how strange it sounds - to say that life in Albania is hard, when the two books I've read on this trip are set in much more challenging conditions. One is "The Poisonwood Bible", set in the Congolese jungle in the 1950s, the other is "A Thousand Splendid Suns", set in 1960s Kabul.

I think the difference here is that both of those locations - Congo and Afghanistan - are almost synonymous with some of the most horrible living conditions you could think of. Poverty. Famine. Civil war. Drought.

Albania's not quite in the same league as Africa or Afghanistan, but it's definitely well below the living standards you'd expect from most countries in Europe. Ramshackle houses, grotty little kids roaming the streets and toothless old men and women selling their wares in the marketplaces are something you could well expect to be confronted with in various African countries. It goes with the territory.

You don't expect to see that in Europe. If I turn around and look south from my vantage point on the citadel wall, about twenty kilometres in the distance is the Greek border. Greece - a member of the EU, of the Eurozone, of Schengen. If I turn to look directly west into the Gjerë mountains, my back to the valley, the other side of those mountains is the Adriatic Coast; 60km west of the Albanian beach is the south-eastern tip of the Italian mainland. EU. Eurozone. Schengen.

Travelling around the country, every so often I feel so sad that living conditions like this exist within the borders of the European Union. And every single time, I wish there was something I could do - anything - to help these people and their country. But short of what I'm already doing in supporting their local tourist industry and enthusiastically recommending other like-minded backpackers or explorers to do the same, there's not a whole lot I can do.

Apparently Albania applied for EU membership last year. Travelling around here, I can't envisage that happening in the next ten years. Maybe one day though.

And here's where I pass the baton to you. Take the plunge and venture to somewhere off the beaten track. France and Spain and Portugal are always going to be there. Scandinavia and Austria and Italy won't change all that dramatically in the next ten years. But Albania - I don't know how long this sense of having travelled back in time will linger once it gets out that Albania is worth the adventure. So don't just take my word for it. If you're in Europe and are even mildly interested in seeing first-hand what I've just described, including the magnificent view from up here on the stone wall of Kalaja e Gjirokastrës, explore the Balkans on your next holiday. Albania. Bosnia. Macedonia. Ok, Croatia and Slovenia if you're not quite as adventurous and insatiably curious as me. But go there, and go soon. Explore, relax, escape. Support the local tourism industry, spread the word, and help the Albanian and Balkan economies get on their feet.

Notes From The Road: Liberty Street & Church Street, NY 10006

2010-08-06T18:41:00.003+02:00

26th of July, 2010. Lower Manhattan, New York City.

There are some places on this beautiful planet of ours that are quite simply breathtaking. They're rare, and they encompass all landscapes, climates, countries and continents, but the one thing they have in common is that they are awesome. Not awesome as it is commonly used today by anyone under thirty as a synonym for cool. Awesome as in commands the visitor to stand before it in awe. They demand respect. They literally take your breath away.

Most of them are breathtakingly beautiful. They inspire writers to wax lyrical over colour hues, artists to spend hours at the site with oils and watercolours and tourists to take cheesy snapshots of themselves with said wonder in the background - just to prove to family and friends back home that they were there.

This place is breathtaking, but it is not beautiful. There are no painters here. The writers write, but their stories are of tragedy and death, chaos and destruction, tears, lost loved ones and fallen heroes. Even the tourists don't linger - they come, they wander awhile, trying to imagine what used to be here. They take a few photos of what remains, then they leave the shadows and windswept emptiness in favour of sunshine and light.

Behind me is the Cortland Street subway station. In front of me is an immense construction site. Ten years ago, it looked very different. There used to be five tall office buildings and two immense skyscrapers here. Together, the seven buildings were known as the World Trade Center, the heart of the New York Financial District.

The eleventh of September, 2001, changed all that.

Ground Zero - actually being here - is strange. Like the other tourists visiting New York for the first time, I too am trying to imagine that this huge crater in lower Manhattan was once occupied by two of the tallest buildings ever built, and am finding it a little difficult, to say the least. Some guy flogging an A4 photo book with "Tragedy 9/11" scrawled in red across the cover told me as part of his sales pitch that if you want to get a sense of scale here, double the height of the tallest remaining building in the area, and you're getting close to the height of one of the twin towers.

You can't see much of the site - well, of the ground anyway. All that's visible are the umpteen cranes, each with the stars and stripes proudly, resolutely, defiantly fluttering in the breeze from the topmost point. The two-metre cyclone fencing barricading the area is completely covered with a long plastic banner advertising the visitors' centre, which I had no intention of visiting.

I remember waking up the morning of the 12th of September in Australia - it happened at about 11pm local time in Melbourne. A Tuesday. I watched Rove, then turned the TV off before Sandra Sully's face popped up on screen with the late night news so I could get some sleep and make it to my Italian class at 9am the following morning. My mum woke me up long before my alarm though - she said something, a strange look on her face, then turned the TV on in my room. Like so many people, I thought at first it was a new action movie, then I saw the CNN logo in the corner of the screen, and the footage of the second plane. The coverage had been going all night, and there was no escaping it during the next few hours, days, weeks and months.

That was more than enough opportunity to hear all I ever wanted or needed to know about what happened. Not only does the visitors centre have a photo display and various other informative resources, but they also coordinate guided tours of the site run by volunteers - living victims: people who experienced it firsthand, or who lost their partner, sibling, parent or child that day. There was no way I was going to do that. I wanted to visit Ground Zero, to see the area, see what's left, try to imagine what used to be there. Then I wanted to leave the area and not return. If I wanted to know more from someone who was there, I could listen to one of the hundreds of interviews, read one of the many written accounts or watch one of the several documentaries or feature films. To see the look on someone's face as they talk about their memories of the buildings coming down around them, or as they remembered someone they lost that day, someone they dearly loved and sorely miss... I couldn't do it.

So I didn't. I sat on the steps outside one of the buildings around the outside. For an hour or so. I just sat there, thinking, writing, remembering, imagining. At one point, a fire engine roared past, sirens blaring, lights flashing, and a spectacular American flag emblazoned all the way down the side. I took a deep breath. Listened to the sirens fade into the noise of the city. Then I left.

If you happen to be in New York and can handle an intensely negative experience, go down there. Walk around. See the memorials. Pay your respects. Experience the site. It's worth a visit. But I won't go back.

Taxi driver of the year

2010-07-30T16:18:00.002+02:00

I don't usually take taxis. My habitual way of getting around Berlin is either public transport, walking a lot further than most normal people would, or cruising around on my beloved bike.

In foreign cities, that changes. Some are the perfect size to walk around, some have amazing public transport networks, and some are just too big and too hot to avoid taxis for the entire trip.

When I was in New York recently, my options were just those three: subway, walk or taxi. I'd happily walk, especially in a massive city like New York (you never know what gems you might find when you wander through the smaller streets and laneways), but the two weeks I was in New York, every day was over 35°C with high humidity, and I just didn't have the energy to walk for miles and miles in the sun. No one did.

The subway... well, the New York subway has earned its very own blog post. Suffice to say it's hot. Very hot. And very humid. The day I met the subject of this blog post was my last day in New York, and I was on my way to the airport. At the other end of the overnight flight back to Berlin, I would have to go from the airport straight back to work, so I'd just showered and was clean and shiny. The thing about the subway in summer, from my few days' experience, is that while the upper level where you buy tickets is relatively cool, the lower level is a public sauna. Anything more than about ten seconds on the platform and you're sweating as if you were standing on St Kilda beach at 3pm on a scorching February afternoon in Melbourne, wearing thermals and a ski suit, wrapped up in an alpine-warmth sleeping bag and a foil heat blanket, demolishing a chicken vindaloo. Yeah, you're sweating. A lot.

So since I definitely didn't want to be all sweaty for the next twelve hours at the airport, on the plane, at Heathrow Airport, on another plane, and for my entire shift at the other end of the flight, I decided to splash out on an air-conditioned cab ride. Just as I went outside the hotel where I was staying, a so-called "town car" pulled up - a sleek black sedan with a leather and mahogany interior, air-con and tinted windows. As the door man helped the passengers out and the bellhop got their luggage, I asked the other doorman to hail me a taxi and I waited with my backpack in the shade at the door.

"Well, instead of a taxi, would you like to take this town car instead? Same price, just a little more comfortable."

Is this a trick question? Uh... yes. Yes. Definitely yes.

We set off in air-conditioned comfort through the streets of Midtown and I watched my last few scenes of New York through the tinted windows, and had a bit of a chat with the driver along the way.

First question: "So, where are you off to?" he asked me.

"Berlin." And that started the rest.

After I explained to him that I live there but that I'm not German, and told him a bit about my studies, my work, and why I had tried so hard to get a place in Berlin, he began to tell me a bit about himself.

Turns out his name is Mike, he's originally from Brooklyn and he served in the US military in the 1970s and 1980s... in West Germany. He was sketchy on the details, but the one thing he would tell me is that as a way to earn some money on the side, he and some of his army mates worked as couriers, smuggling various small but valuable items across the border into East Germany. Among the more regular requests he received were Beatles and Rolling Stones records, Milka chocolate, food and particular groceries only available in the west, and bottles of Coca Cola (the fourth time he smuggled Coca Cola over the border was the only time the border guards' searches ever found anything).

When I asked him about the strangest thing anyone had ever asked him to smuggle over, he laughed, and said it was a tie between women's stockings in all manner of colours and styles for a 46-year-old cross-dressing accountant in Erfurt, and a Harley Davidson.

I had to ask.

Apparently a motorbike enthusiast in East Germany kept them in business for two years with a special order: he had arranged to have a Harley Davidson motorcycle delivered to a friend in West Germany, who then dismantled it and paid couriers like Mike and his army colleagues to smuggle it bit by bit across the border to him in East Germany, where he put it back together. The whole process took about two years, and amazingly none of the parts were ever found during border searches.

After having received all the parts and having reassembled the bike in his barn, this Harley nut could only ride it because he lived in a very rural area well away from border patrols, and then only in the darkness of the very early hours of the morning. On top of that, the amount he paid to have the bike dismantled and smuggled over was almost as much as the bike itself.

There were so many more questions I had for him - about his experiences with the border guards, what it was like when the wall fell and in the months and years after reunification, but as luck would have it, just as he finished the Harley story, we turned off the freeway, and a few moments later we pulled into the parking bay at the main terminal of JFK.

He seemed genuinely happy that I was so curious about his experiences, but by the same token, I got the distinct impression that just sharing the Harley story and telling me about his time moonlighting as a smuggler reminded him of other things he would rather not remember. Earlier in the conversation when I showed interest at the mention of his military experience in Germany, he started to tell me about the first few months living in Germany, and how the whole courier idea started. Apparently one of his mates had the idea, before -

And that's where he stopped, mid-sentence. It was as if Mike had suddenly remembered that he didn't know me from a bar of soap, and whatever came after "before" was something that he had just realised he didn't particular want to share with someone he'd known for all of five minutes. He didn't talk for a few minutes, and when he started again, it was the Coca Cola story - lighthearted, as if nothing had happened.

He didn't bring it up again - his friend, nor how the courier idea came about - and I knew better than to ask.

The moral of the story? Public transport is cheap, and walking still cheaper, but taxis, while pretty darn expensive comparatively, can pay dividends in story-telling material and invaluable experience, if you just ask the right questions.

By request

2010-07-27T00:49:00.002+02:00

Everything I've posted on this blog so far has gone through one of two channels - one of two methods of composition. Either it's been an entry that involved on-site notes, preparation, drafts and self-editing, or it's a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants entry, that I write strictly off the cuff. Usually at ridiculous o'clock, which tends to be after midnight.

This is one of the latter. It's just past midnight, so it fits the time prerequisite, and it has absolutely no preparation: I didn't even know I was going to write it until about five minutes ago. Added bonus: this one has a dedication.

To Connor - for reminding me that I have a blog, and for informing me that there may just be some people aside from my totally awesome mum at home in Melbourne who actually enjoy taking a few minutes out of their day to peruse my latest musings.

So what's been going on recently? Well, suffice to say, a fair bit. A trip to New York and to D.C., a few days in the former with my sister and her boyfriend, summer in Berlin, ridiculously high temperatures leading to sleepless nights and rides through Berlin's government quarter at 1am (no better time to explore and take photos - hardly any tourists!), exploring abandoned Olympic villages and military complexes in western Berlin, watching movies on rooftops, riding my bike along the abandoned runways of old airports, some of our fantastic students bringing us icecream on really hot days to show their appreciation for all our hard work behind the reception desk, friends coming and going (unfortunately mostly going, or planning to go), and making plans for the next few years in Berlin.

All this has got the cogs turning in my head, leading to some serious thinking. I don't tend to do my best thinking inside - academic work excepted. Instead, I usually have a few places I go if I need to think, to clear my head, or to escape from the four walls of my flat for a while.

There's Paul-Linke-Ufer on the Landwehrkanal if I don't have the time (or the energy) to venture anywhere further. The Landwehrkanal is a tributary of the Spree river that runs through Berlin's inner southern suburbs - right through Kreuzberg, about 10 minutes' walk north of my place, and it's a great place to go on a summer night to hang out, enjoy a cold beer, dip your feet in the river, and watch the Kreuzberg locals practise their juggling routines or strum a tune on their guitar on the Maibachufer. It's also the same river I walked on in February when Berlin rediscovered the ice ages, so I definitely like that area - anywhere from Pannierstraße to Prinzenbrücke.

A little further, and south this time, is my latest discovery: the old Tempelhof airport. I've got a post in the works about that place - it's definitely earned it's own post - so I won't say too much about it here, but there's something very cool and extremely humbling about sitting under a century-old oak tree beside the runway of an airport that essentially saved the city you're living in from starvation only a few decades earlier, and all this within walking distance of your flat.

Even further afield are Berlin's lakes. I'm a water-baby: I grew up either in, beside or on the water, and I naturally gravitate toward the water when I need to relax or to take time out. The lakes are a fantastic escape from the city, but they require a packed lunch and a cooler - Müggelsee in the south is at least an hour and a half away by public transport, even with a bike to ride to and from the station, and Flughafensee in the north or Schlachtensee in the south-west aren't much closer, but if I've got the time and the energy, I'll venture to one of those.

The ultimate though? The ultimate is somewhere that I used to go a lot when I was little. Melbourne's beaches. Yes, Sydney-siders, Melbourne only has bay beaches, but half-metre waves make exactly the same sound as six-foot ocean swells when you listen to them crash on the shore. I spent almost every summer until I was about fifteen at my grandparents' beach house on the Mornington Peninsula - walking along the beach with my grandmother, collecting shells and materials for collages, and just talking. During the year, I'd go fishing or sailing with my late grandfather on his yacht on Port Philip Bay, and I loved it, for exactly the same reason - spending time on the water, listening to the waves lap at the side of the boat, escaping from the city, and talking to him and to my grandmother.

The last few years that I was living in Melbourne, my place of choice became the Esplanade in Brighton. It only took me about fifteen minutes to drive there from my place, and I could quite happily stay sitting on that beach for hours at a time - just thinking, mulling over what was going on in my world, and figuring out the next step - from sunset until well after the stars were twinkling across the skies. It was on the sand at Brighton beach at about 8pm on a summer night in late 2003 that I made the decision to apply for the assistant year in Kusel. It was on the same beach around the same time a few years later that I decided I would reapply for the same program in Berlin, and listening to the waves and watching the stars arc across the sky has provided me the space and clarity of mind to sort through other things in my world - work, friends, family, what I'm doing with my life... You know, the usual.

Like I said, there's a few things going on in my world at the moment - I think everyone is in the same boat - and there is almost nothing I wouldn't give to be able to get into my little white 1987 Corolla hatchback, cruise down North Road, hang a right onto the Esplanade and pull into the car park behind the Brighton bathing boxes, stroll down the ramp onto the sand, find a spot away from the floodlights and just think... listen to the waves, watch the stars, and just think. But I don't live there anymore: ironically the decision I made back there in early 2007 to move to Berlin has meant I can't just drive on down there.

But I've got my places here - Paul-Linke-Ufer, the oak tree at Tempelhof Airport, and the shores of Schlachtensee. These are my Brighton beaches in Berlin.

Notes From The Road: The Tail End of a Very Albanian Bus Ride

2010-06-12T00:52:00.000+02:00

29th March, 2010. Just outside Saranda, southern Albania.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel... or rather at the end of a nine hour bus journey. The departure from Tirana, the Albanian capital, was almost eight hours ago now, and according to our intrepid guide, whose name I can't for the life of me remember, but who is the epitome of Albanian hospitality, we have about another hour to go before we roll into Saranda, a small fishing village on Albania's south coast, about 20km north of the Greek border, and our final destination.

The road, as has become standard for Albania, was ridiculous. The distance from Tirana to Saranda is a little over 300km. The journey took nine hours. That includes a half hour lunch break, but no other major breaks. Yes, the roads are that bad. Potholes at regular intervals, some a foot wide and at least six or seven inches deep. Roadworks crews taking up the whole road and then some. Mountain shepherds laconically herding their flock across the road, blissfully oblivious of anything beyond their rural farming acreage. Sometimes all three within 100m of each other.

The terrible roads also mean that I can't use writing to pass the time in the bus - well, not for most of the road anyway. In the last hour though, as we get closer to the Greek border, the road has become somewhat better, so I'm taking the time now to make some quick notes of the "highlights" of the bus ride.

Coming in at number three is the scenery. About two hours after leaving Tirana, we passed through Dürres, Albania's major harbour, then headed directly south towards Greece. As we left Dürres and the houses and buildings became fewer and further between, the countryside transformed from industrial complexes and apartment blocks to rolling hills and flat green meadows, and off in the distance ahead of us, an imposing mountain range rose from the plains. Within an hour, we were trundling alongside the Drin river as it carved its way north towards Montenegro, soaring snow-capped mountains flanking the valley. As I'm sure some of you can imagine, I was so overwhelmed with excitement, I could hardly sit still, to the amusement of the other passengers on the bus: I kept switching from the left side of the bus to the right and back again, taking photos, basking in the sunshine and absorbing the magnificent view.

A close second in my highlights list is the aforementioned guide - the bus driver's right hand man, and ticket vendor. As I said, I have no idea what his name was, but he was the best possible representative for tourism in Albania that the government tourist board could ever hope for. As soon as I found the bus to Saranda and the guide realised I wasn't a local, he switched into surprisingly fluent English and would have quite happily bent over backwards to make sure that I was happy. He offered me food and drinks for the road, helped me find fruit and water at the bus stop, offered to buy me lunch when we pulled into the truck stop (though after four hours in a bus where two young children had been throwing up most of the time, I didn't have much of an appetite left), and during the longer stretches between stops, he would venture back to where I was sitting in the middle of the bus to have a chat about anything and everything: where I was from, where I was going in Albania, what I thought of the country, what I liked about it, and especially why on earth I'd chosen Albania as my Easter holiday destination. (I got that question a lot.) In short: he was very cool.

Number one has to go to my assigned travel companion for eight and a half of the nine hours. The guide told me at one stage what his name was, but it was long and complicated and Albanian. In my head, he will forever be "Toothless Old Guy." He got on the bus five minutes after me in Tirana, took the seat on the opposite side of the aisle, and travelled all the way from Tirana to a bus stop on the side of the road in the mountains in the middle of nowhere about twenty minutes before the end of the line. I pretty much ignored him for the first few hours - I was too enthralled in my book to pay much attention to anything else ("A Thousand Splendid Suns" - highly recommendable), but after the lunch break around 1pm, I noticed that this older gentleman was regarding me with a curious expression. He had figured out that I wasn't Albanian, nor was I Greek/Macedonian/Balkan in any way (the book in English and the camera were big give-aways), and this proved to be a great source of entertainment to him. He tried talking to me, but there were two slight problems. First: I don't speak Albanian. Second: he had been slurping from a two-litre bottle filled with an orange coloured liquid, which made him smell suspiciously like raki (an Albanian/Balkan version of Ouzo) and the whole bus seemed to erupt with laughter whenever he spoke; this made me relatively certain that even if I'd had some skills in Albanian, I wouldn't have been able to understand him.

About fifteen minutes before he got off the bus, he offered me two oranges, with a renewed effort to get a conversation going. This time he was yelling so loud that the guide ventured from the front of the bus to take the seat in front of me to translate between the two of us. With him as an intermediary I discovered that Toothless Old Guy was a mere 65 years old (I had guessed at least 80, possibly 85), a devout Muslim (as are most Albanians), and that he had a small farm in the mountains of southern Albania which he shared with his two wives. The best part? The reason he had been badgering me to talk to him for the last few hours was because he had his slightly blurry sights set on me as #3 in his collection. I almost died trying to suppress my laughter - after all, it was beyond ridiculous to me that I would be Wife #3 to a 65-year-old Albanian farmer, but in his world, I would clearly be crazy not to take advantage of an opportunity like this. Yes, Toothless Old Guy was the highlight of the bus ride.

He got off the bus about ten minutes ago. We're now well into countryside very similar to what I would expect of northern Greece: orchards of olive trees as far as the eye can see, low stone walls lining the roads instead of the usual curved metal barriers, and every so often, a small white stone altar by the side of the road. Out of the front window of the bus, I just caught a glimpse of a wide expanse of blue water, which can only be the Adriatic; this means that we're very close to Saranda, so I'll leave you here for now, and promise to continue my rambling notes from the beach tomorrow at the latest.

New Series: Notes From The Road

2010-06-02T12:30:00.000+02:00

As some of you know, I like to travel. No. That's not the entire truth. I love to travel. I love the experience of getting on a train, plane or automobile and going somewhere I have never been before. I love the challenge of leaving my safety zone and going to a place where I don't speak the language, where I have no idea what I'm going to see, hear, taste or smell next, and where I'm forced to hastily learn some very basic phrases in the local language just to get by. In the last ten years since I really started travelling, I've managed to get quite a few countries' stamps in my passport: 33 at last count, and I'm not done by a long shot.

Being the Miss Independent that I am, I much prefer to travel alone than with friends, if the safety situation in the destination country permits. I love the absolute freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I feel like doing it - to not compromise on where I'm going to go, what to do there and how long to stay. Apart from meeting a lot of new people I probably wouldn't meet were I travelling with someone, I can indulge my three favourite travel activities to my heart's content.

I can take a quick look at the map then shove it safely in my jeans pocket and head off in the general direction of where I want to go, wandering through the streets, taking a left here and a right there as the spirit moves me.
I can take as many photos as I want. I just upgraded to a Pentax X-70, and it is my absolute favourite toy. I had a Sony DSC-800 until March of 2010, and while it served me well for a long time, it was on life support by then, and there was no way I was taking a dying camera to Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania (my Easter trip this year). I'm learning about shutter speed and aperture and ISO numbers and settings, and loving it.

The most important? I can stop whenever I want, wherever I want, to write as much as I want. I can scout out somewhere comfy where I can watch the locals go about their daily activities and mull over my thoughts on whatever country or city I happen to be in at the time. I didn't write a whole lot in most of the western European countries, mostly because we were on the go all the time. Yes, I was on one of those big organised tours: a three-week booze cruise on wheels, trundling along the highways of Europe. Hello, my name is Australis and I have been on a Contiki tour. Back in 2004, I wasn't the confident adventurous traveller I am today. Back then, I had been to a total of five foreign countries - well, four and New Zealand for three weeks with my family when I was eleven. So I booked a group tour to explore all these new countries with a safety net of a tour manager and thirty of my "closest friends". Since then it's pretty much me and my backpack - no more guided tours for this little black duck, unless safety says otherwise.

Anyways, the point is that I have a lot of "Notes From The Road". One of them is already on here: "Musings from a rusty Estonian bus", from my Latvia/Estonia trip over the Easter weekend in 2009.
There are a whole lot more where that came from. So in the next few weeks, I'll be posting my new series "Notes From The Road" from a whole range of places - from Edinburgh to Pristina, from Tallinn to Marrakech, from Lisbon to Istanbul. Enjoy!

Back with a vengeance

2010-04-19T17:36:00.000+02:00

Wow. I knew I'd neglected this once-beloved blog of mine, but I had no idea it had got this bad. It didn't completely disappear from my memory - every few weeks or so, I'd see, hear or experience something relatively random and think "man, that would make a great blog post", but that's where it finished: ideas were swallowed up by the all-consuming depressing darkness of the most ridiculously hermit-creating winter I've ever experienced. Some of the best of it fortunately got documented in my journal, which is going to be the source of the next few posts.

Sitting here perfectly comfortable now in just a singlet and jeans, the April afternoon sunshine streaming in through my window, is in itself the best possible way to illustrate the contrast between the circumstances of then and the circumstances of now. Four months. Four whole months since December 24th. Back then, it was snowing on and off outside, sunset was at about 3.40pm and the average daily top temperature was rarely above -10°C.

So here comes the update.

The day after the last entry was a very chilled German expat Christmas, then quite possibly the best Boxing Day ever (Glühwein, chocolate and good mates - what more could you want?). New Years - this one definitely made it into my top five: again, good mates, good food, great fireworks in Berlin, and added bonus, a whole lot of snow!
That set the trend for January - well, the snow at least. Snow and more snow, and then just a little bit more snow. Oh, and beyond freezing temperatures. And a blizzard or two. The coldest winter in Europe for decades. Explorative photography adventures in the snow, walking and playing soccer on frozen canals in Berlin, the official christening of my new gumboots (with three layers of socks), coming home at 2am to see a thick layer of ice on the _inside_ of my windows... And then there's Australia Day - which has earned its very own blog post (a work in progress).

February - well, to be perfectly frank, February is best forgotten. Cold, depressing, stressful beyond belief, and not short enough. March - the first teasing signs of spring. One day it's 15deg and the sun is shining, the next day there are snowflakes falling gently from the heavens and everyone's digging through their wardrobes for the winter woollies again.

Honestly the best part of March was the 25th. The flight south to a part of Europe that had actually somehow defrosted enough to be considered to be enjoying spring weather, for ten blissful days in a living breathing history classroom. Blog posts to come from my journal notes in Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo - give me a few weeks to get it together.

The point? Australis is back. With a vengeance, a whole lot of new post ideas, and a certainty that summer 2010 will be the best ever. There are music festivals, cultural festivals, food and beer festivals all over Berlin in the next few months. If that's not enough, it's a World Cup year - summer and football. Winning combination.

The best part? Hours and hours of sunshine-filled afternoons in the next five months to savour with great mates. Oh yeah. Bring it on.

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night

2009-12-24T12:11:00.000+01:00

Well, somehow we've made it to December 2009. In Berlin right now, and for the last few days, it's snowing, it's freezing cold, and I'm sure the Christmas markets are doing a roaring trade in Glühwein and roasted almonds. Usually I would have been to at least six or seven by now, but this year's a little different. I haven't been to any yet (just haven't had time!), with the exception of the one in Edinburgh, which for a German-style Christmas market in the capital of Scotland, it wasn't half bad, if a little pricey. 3pound for a pretzel? Honestly.

Christmas this year is a little different than most though. Christmas to me means family, but Christmas 2009 will be the first Christmas that I won't be spending with a family - as in, a group of blood relatives, either mine, or someone else's. If I can, I spend Christmas with my family in Melbourne - with my mum's and my dad's families. It's chaos and insanity and madness and hilarity all in one wonderful, magical day, and I love every single moment of it with both halves of my family. Christmas 2008 was a special Christmas, and one that I will never forget. I knew at the time that it was probably the last time my mum's family as I knew it would be together, and that's what made it just that bit more special, and just a little bit more difficult to leave afterwards.

If I'm not in Australia for Christmas, I'm in Germany, my second home. Usually, I spend Christmas in Germany with a family who welcomes me into their fold for the holidays. This year though, my family of choice is a group of truly great people; some of my fellow "broken toys" - other expats who for whatever reason aren't going to their home country for Christmas, so I'm spending Christmas 2009 with my Berlin mates.

Aside from Christmas, the other theme for this email is 2009 in general, and what a crazed year it has been. It's no secret that I'm glad it's over - it's been a bit of a tough one, for a few reasons. The bushfires at home in Australia, visa dramas over here, and various other issues. The most difficult for me was the sudden trip home to Australia for the funeral of my beloved Pa - my mum's father, who passed away in August. It was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do, but both he and my family mean too much to me not to have gone home.

I've also managed to add a few more flags to my backpack this year. The first trip after Christmas in Australia was venturing up north to the Baltic states for Easter, for a lesson in all things former Soviet - former KGB listening stations in the spires of churches, and towns closed off to the world for decades while the Soviet military occupied them as military bases. Next was a weekend in Portugal, albeit with a buggered knee as a result of a bike accident, which has since recovered to the point where I can't actually remember which knee it was. The latest was a week in the UK for Squishy's graduation, including a Magical Mystery Tour of Liverpool and a stroll along Penny Lane and a cider in the Cavern Club, a long overdue reunion with Squishy and the Jedi Masters in Newcastle, and a freezing cold few days in Edinburgh with more Australians in the hostel than I've been around in a while, and an encounter with the McKenzie poltergeist in the Covenanters' Prison. Google it to find out what I'm talking about.

The best part of 2009 though? My Freundeskreis - my mates. Some of you I haven't seen days or weeks. With others, it's been months. 2009 has been a mix of seeing old friends again, spending more time with existing friends, and meeting some great new people. Spending hours upon hours cosy in Murrays Irish bar on freezing cold Saturday afternoons in February learning about rugby while watching the Six Nations, drinking Erdbeerbowle and escaping summer thunderstorms at the Karneval der Kulturen, walking on the tarmac of former Tempelhof Airport for the 60th anniversary of the Berliner Luftbrücke in May, taking part in history in the making at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate on a rainy October night, celebrating Thanksgiving (twice, with a third to come in January) with a United Nations of expat friends in November, and now in December, cinnamon toast in Newcastle, and possibly the best Mariannenplatz movie night yet - the movie, the food, the apple cider, but the best part: the people.

And so I'm going to leave you with a slightly plagiarised Christmas lyrical feast.
These are from some of my favourite carols, and put into words what I've been trying to say since I started this post.

"And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young"

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on our troubles will be out of sight
Through the years we all be together, if the fates allow.
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us gather near to us once more."

"And so I'm offering this simple phrase, to kids from one to ninety-two.
Although it's been said many times, many ways, a very merry Christmas to you."

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

The BVG - not just a transport network.

2009-11-24T22:16:00.001+01:00

This post is one of those that resulted from a one-line note in my mobile quite a few months ago, on one of those rare days I didn't have a notebook with me in the underground. And yes, those days are indeed rare.

The BVG, as many of you know, is the city transport network for Berlin. It has its good days, its bad days, and its truly horrific days when major parts of the network strike, but in general, it leaves most of the other public transport networks I've had the pleasure (or, more often than not, the misfortune) of experiencing for dead. A spiderweb of trains, trams and buses connecting most areas of the city to most others, in a network so well thought out that the majority of Berliners choose to ride public transport over owning their own car.

Yes, the Berliners, and indeed ze Germans, are an environmentally conscious lot, which clearly gives public transport an advantage, but the BVG actually really is that good.

Living in a city which relies so heavily on public transport, you quickly learn to take a few select items with you every time you leave the house, so that you are not forced to endure the boredom of a: waiting for said transport, which to be fair is rarely more than about five or six minutes' wait (S-Bahn excluded, since they've been striking on and off for the better part of the last six months), or b: the ride in the public transport itself. One or two stops is tolerable, but then there's the walk to and from the station or bus stop, and add on a few minutes' wait, and heaven forbid you have to change once or twice in your journey, and that leaves you with at least half an hour of boredom which could potentially be alleviated by just one or two of a few small items.

My items of choice? For pure portability, an MP3 player, and usually at least either a book or my journal. Ultimately, I prefer to have at least two of these three items, to cater for battery failure or a particularly jittery driver impeding my writing or reading ability, but one will usually suffice. The problem is, choosing just one item leaves you open to the mercy of the choices of your fellow commuters. Choosing reading or writing material is practically begging for at least one of the kids in the train to play every single Turkish eurotrance or antagonistic German rap track that they have previously downloaded onto their mobile phone at the maximum volume that their Nokia can possibly pump out. Not pleasant.

The MP3 player is a better single choice, but then where do you look? If you're fortunate (that's a relative term, by the way) enough to be travelling by bus, or by tram, then you can quite happily while away the minutes staring out the window and watch the world go by.

Trains however, despite their inherent increased speed beneath the city from one rabbit hole to another, balance out this obvious benefit by removing all external visual stimulation. And so, should you have made the unfortunate choice to travel by train without bringing your own reading material, your only other option is to people-watch.

People-watching is where I get a large part of my inspiration for blog posts - so much so that I've actually got a series of posts in the works at the moment, the results of my observations while travelling around Berlin's underground network over the last two years. The characters of the Berlin transport network are truly unique, and there's never a dull moment in the train, if you know what you're looking for. More on these in upcoming posts though.

Occasionally however, you spy someone in the Ubahn who catches your attention, and even more occasionally, it's positive. You find your gaze drawn to them, not because of the Turkish eurotrash they're playing at volumes loud enough to wake the dead in southern Argentina, and not because you have the distinct impression that he or she hasn't indulged in personal hygiene for a period of years. No, sometimes, just sometimes, you catch a glimpse of someone you happen to find rather attractive. And suddenly, you're quite willing to delay the arrival at your destination a little just so that you can stay in their line of sight for a few extra moments.

Then before you know it, and most definitely before you're prepared to part with the welcome visual treat that he or she has brought into the usual monotony of a BVG ride, the yellow doors open and he or she has disappeared into the masses swarming on the platform. Just a few more moments later, as if nothing had happened, the doors close and you're on your way, back into your bubble of your MP3 player until you too finally reach your destination.

This happens on a regular basis - at least to me - and for the first few months of living in Berlin, I simply learned to welcome the opportunity for some eye candy to brighten up the hour ride from my old flat to Alexanderplatz. One day however, I noticed a poster on the inside of the train, advertising yet another service of the BVG, but unlike the others, this service actually had very little to do with transport and tickets. They weren't promoting the latest subscription deal for a yearly ticket, or kindly asking you to refrain from subjecting your fellow passengers to your choice of "music".

The BVG's latest promotional innovation was a dating service. Genius! Why didn't I think of that? Why just let the man or woman of your dreams get off at the next stop and disappear into the throng of communters on the platform? Find them again on the BVG website! Who knows - it could be the beginning of something beautiful!

The glaring problem here? How on earth to get in contact with him or her.

Simple. Register your details on the BVG website, and he or she can find you there. You can register your name, mobile number, your clothing and the clothing of the person you're searching for during the journey in which your encounter occured, the stations you travelled between, and of course the date and time of the encounter. Then, all you have to do is wait for them to register their details, remember what they were wearing at the time and the stations they travelled between, find you on the website, and bam - love!

It's foolproof! Nothing can go wrong!

Ok, BVG. I've got a tip for you. Stick to transport. Dating services are clearly not your strength.

Back to basics.

2009-10-05T17:14:00.003+02:00

You know, back in Australia, there was something that I absolutely loved doing. Something that made me forget about almost everything else.

Well, two things.

One is writing. Hence the blog.

The other is being around kids.

I was a Brownie Guide when i was a kid: I had the stylish 1980s brown and gold uniform, complete with school shoes on a weekend, and a whole collection of cool badges. The works. I was a Girl Guide too, but when I finished Guides, instead of moving on to Rangers, the next age group in the Guide movement in Australia, I switched from being one of the kids to being one of the leaders. Suddenly I was the one running activities, making pancakes on a Tuesday night in a local guide hall while a bunch of twelve-year-olds played Jacob's Ladder, coordinating holiday excursions to science museums, and weekend camps for thirty pre-teen girls, and I loved it!
I guess it was a natural transition for me. I had started babysitting when I was about twelve: the kids next door were about two or three years old at the time, and had a full-time nanny. I was over there a lot, helping out with the kids, and I also loved helping my aunty with my three young cousins, so as soon as I was old enough, it was logical that I take this on for myself: at one stage, I had four regular families I would babysit for.
I've never really had a favourite age group: school age, toddler, early high school. You can have a lot of fun with them all. But working with kids in general is what I missed in Germany. I didn't notice it for a while. For the first year I was here, I was teaching anyway, so I didn't really want to spend my hours away from school with kids. I went on a few church youth group camps, but I didn't have the regular contact that I got used to in Australia, and when I finished up at the school, that was pretty much the end of my regular contact with kids.

After a few months, I realised something was missing, but I couldn't put my finger on what exactly it was. It wasn't until the opportunity practically fell into my lap that I realised what I'd been missing.
A friend of mine had been working at a community centre in southern Berlin for a couple of months, tutoring a group of about eleven children two nights a week in English, German and multiple other subjects. She asked me if I might be interested in taking over her hours there, since her own workload had significantly increased to the point where she couldn't keep up the twice-weekly commitment. "Sure, why not?"
After the first hour there two weeks ago, I knew this was something I wanted to do. Something I needed to do. This was the something I had been missing.
The kids are a mixed bunch. They all have African backgrounds, but almost all of them were born in Berlin, which makes their German better than mine in terms of slang, but I still have the upper hand when it comes to spelling, and surprisingly enough, articles and gender.
There's Laura*, a pint sized powerhouse who has all the personality of Queen Latifah and demands to be the centre of attention of all of the other kids, despite the fact that she's the youngest and the smallest. Or more likely, because of both of these factors.
There's Rene*, one of the youngest boys, who cannot decide if he wants to be the cool slacker, or if he actually wants to use his intelligence for good, not evil, and give some of the other kids in his class a run for their money.
And there's Tanja*, my secret personal favourite, described recently by the friend I took over from as "the kid you would most want your own child to be like" - charismatic, confident, intelligent - someone you just know has a very bright future in front of them.
But all of them have this strange yet wonderful ability to make me check my baggage at the door. Once I step inside this makeshift classroom, it's all about these kids for the next two hours: making up homework for kids who forgot theirs (either deliberately or not), explaining the solar system in German to a fifth grader, quizzing a twelve-year-old on the countries of the world, and simultaneously helping T revise for an English vocabulary test the following day while helping her friend M complete a written assignment in German at the same table.
Never underestimate the power of a group of kids to make you forget whatever's getting you down for a whole two hours. Even if it's only two hours, twice a week. That's four hours more than before.

Untitled

2009-09-24T20:45:00.003+02:00

Despite my best intention of a few weeks ago to get back into blogging with a vengeance, with the goal of one post per week, the best laid plans were yet again derailed.

As some of you know, the last few weeks have been rather rough for yours truly. Why exactly is still a little too raw for my blog - or even for anyone outside my five or six close friends. I might post about it eventually, but at the moment it's too recent. I lost someone close to me back home in Australia - my grandfather - and while I have the clarity of mind to comfort myself with the knowledge that he is in a better place, I'm not quite back to being the usual genuinely bubbly Australis that my friends know me as.

Speaking of my friends, this blog post is for you guys.

After hearing the news, and after having booked the flight back home to Australia to be with my family for his funeral, I set about the task of telling my close friends.

The people who know better than to ask how you are, because the real answer, the answer you don't give to supermarket checkout chicks when they casually ask "Hi, how are you today?" as they're packing up your groceries into green enviro bags at Coles, is obvious to them.

They don't ask because they don't need to ask. They know that you're hurting and that the best possible thing they can do is exactly one thing.

They can just be there for you, in their own unique way.

There's picking you up at 9pm with a six pack of Smirnoffs in the front seat and taking you out to a salsa club so you can both dance your hearts out until the small hours, like you did many times just a few years earlier as uni students.

Or taking you to a soccer game where the three of you celebrate just being together again over a Carlton Draught and a "Four n Twenty".

There's watching deliberately light-hearted DVDs with you on your sofa at the end of a two-week period which saw you cross ten time zones to be with your family in Australia for eleven beyond intense days, culminating in an epic 45hour journey halfway across the world involving two long-haul flights and a nine-hour train journey back home to Europe. And on top of all that, grabbing some of your favourite beers on the way over to your flat.

There's also making work as easy as possible for you by keeping your news from the rest of your colleagues until after you have left, and accepting without question that despite your best efforts, concentration on your job at this point is just as possible as turning back time.

But the best? The best was gently encouraging you to get out into the sunshine of a Sunday in late August and while away the afternoon lying on the warm bricks of Schlossplatz in central Berlin, listening to the Berlin Symphony Orchestra perform a piece which your grandmother later tells you was one of your grandfather's favourites.

I guess the short version of all this is exactly the conclusion I came to in the eulogy I struggled to read at the funeral.

Thank you.

I thanked my grandfather for the twenty-seven years' worth of memories, stories and experiences he left me with.
And I thank you guys for being you guys.

Charlie. La bella amica mia. The fellow members of the Cat Spew Jumper Appreciation Society. Puss in Boots. Capt'n. Thanks. In all four languages. ;)

20 years later: tracing the scars of the Wall - former checkpoint at Heinrich-Heine-Straße.

2009-08-27T16:07:00.004+02:00

Recurring visa issues have forced my work hours down to 20 hours per week, and while this is frustrating and somewhat inconvenient in terms of paying bills and enjoying this amazing city, it does have its benefits, one of which being that it leaves me with a bunch of free time during the week. So earlier this week, having finished work at 12.30, I decided that it was far too nice a Monday afternoon to spend it inside learning French and Italian vocabulary, and traded the language books for sunglasses, an MP3 player and my bike.

There are still a whole lot of places in and around Berlin that I want to explore more, so this particular afternoon I chose to venture north into Kreuzberg, specifically the area around Heinrich-Heine-Straße underground station.

Since this year is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and since I'm a bit of a Berlin history nut, I've made it my mission to visit each of the East Berlin/West Berlin checkpoints before the summer is over. Heinrich-Heine-Straße is one of the two within about 15mins ride from my flat. More about Heinrich Heine in another blog post.

So I ventured over to this particular border crossing, and like many of the others, there's very little of it left. So little, in fact, that had I not found it on the offical website of Berlin city, I never would have known it existed. The watchtowers are gone. There are no wall fragments here. The only marker is the double row of paving stones crossing the street at the place where this now busy north-south thoroughfare was once truncated by the "anti-facist protective barrier" as it was referred to by the government of the GDR (former East Germany). You could quite happily cruise on past, completely oblivious to the fact that for twenty-eight years, Berlin's streets, underground network, its rivers and lakes, and most heartbreakingly, the lives of the Berliners, were severed in two by this wall.

Today, twenty years after reunification, the scars marking where the wall cut through the city are in various stages of healing. Some, like Checkpoint Charlie and Bernauer Straße, have been preserved exactly as they were, and the adjoining museums offer visitors a glimpse of what life was like in divided Berlin.

But other scars have begun to fade. Some, like the former train checkpoint at Friedrichstraße station, have retained the original structures. Most however are like Heinrich-Heine-Straße though; the Berlin Wall has been reduced to a thin line of cobblestones crossing the street, and life in Berlin takes place on both sides of the pavers as if nothing had ever happened.

Beggars can't be choosers. Except in Berlin apparently.

2009-06-22T18:57:00.002+02:00

I just have to share this anecdote.

Last Saturday, having been rostered on to work the weekend shift, I got to work about 5mins early, and as is usual for me on a Saturday, I had sacrificed breakfast time for snooze time, so by the time I actually got to work, I was indeed rather hungry, having not eaten since the night before. I knew I would be on my own at reception from 9.30am until 3pm, so if I was going to get food, it would have to happen on the way to work.

There's a bakery next door to my building, so I ducked in before going into the school and got myself two bread rolls and something called a "Nußschnecke" (loosely translates as a "nut snail", a scroll with ground nuts sprinkled over it), with the intention of making some lunch at work using the meagre ingredients of the two aforementioned bread rolls, the margarine that a colleague is generous enough to share with me, and my sacred jar of Vegemite.

But as luck would have it, this particular Saturday turned out to be one of those that wasn't ever really what you'd classify as busy - rather just constant. Every fifteen minutes or so, a rumbling kind of noise from my hungry stomach would remind me that I hadn't eaten, and I would think of my breakfast provisions in the kitchen, but every time I went to get up from the desk, either the phone would ring, a student would come to ask for help, or a prospective student would walk through the door, none of which I could really ignore.

Eventually it got to be 3pm, and having long since given up on the idea of having breakfast at work before going home, I put my Vegemite, the two bread rolls and the scroll into my backpack and headed on home.

Sitting on the train a few moments later, headphones in, my focus completely on writing legibly in my journal despite the arythmic rocking and jolting of the train, I did notice a very grotty pair of sneakers walk past me in the carriage. They belonged to a homeless man, a Strassenfeger vendor - one of the two Berlin street magazines: similar to The Big Issue. He did his usual spiel of having not been employed for over six months and being now authorised to sell this particular publication, and continued on to ask for donations of a few Euros or maybe something to eat or to drink. Usually I don't bother, but I've seen this guy on the train almost every day for the last few weeks, and he never seems to sell any of his newspapers.

So I took pity on him. I reached into my bag, pulled out the delicious Nußschnecke and beckoned him over. "Das können Sie ruhig haben, wenn Sie möchten," I told him politely, and handed him the bakery bag.

He half smiled. "Danke," he replied. "Wirklich, danke schön", he repeated and continued down the carriage to the door a few metres away.

When he got to the door, he took a peek in the bag. Then he turned and looked at me. "Was ist das?" he asked me, a quizzical look on his face.

"Nußschnecke," I told him.

"Na, das ist ja schön," he told me sarcastically, with an equally disdainful look. "That's great."

I was confused. I'd just given him food, and he was giving me attitude in return.

"Ich mag keine Nüsse. Hast du was anderes?"

I couldn't believe it. I'd just handed this guy my delicious Nußschnecke, my completely delectable nut scroll, out of pity for him and his situation, and he had the nerve to turn around to me and tell me, using the informal form of "you" no less, that you only use for children and people you know pretty well, that I should give him something else.

He doesn't like nuts.

Boo freaking hoo. That's the last time I give a homeless guy a nut scroll. Or food in general, for that matter. Soup kitchen, sure. Homeless shelter - absolutely. But no more of my food to the train beggars, if that's the thanks I get. Charming.

Kangaroos, koalas, wombats... and giraffes?

2009-05-24T21:41:00.001+02:00

Germany has something of a reputation for being environmentally friendly, and despite Berlin's population being comparable to Melbourne (approximately 3.5million), the German capital is amazingly compact - it's perfect for cyclists, and the vast majority of residents rely either on their bikes or on the admittedly quite incredible public transport system - the BVG.

Compared to other public transport systems I've experienced around the world, especially the dog's breakfast that is metlink, the Melbourne public transport disaster, Berlin's BVG is a masterpiece. It's not perfect - after all, it's run by humans - but it's a bloody lot better than anything other public transport system I've seen.

In the carriages, again, a testament to German efficiency, 20cm TV screens broadcast news, sport, weather, Hollywood gossip and events and in and around Berlin to the commuters. For almost the entire month of February 2009, Australia was making headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons - cyclones and floods in the north, earthquakes, a disastrous oil slick, and in my home state of Victoria, the worst bushfires in recorded history, just kilometres from my home city. Unfortunately I was reminded of this hellfire around my home every morning and every afternoon on my commute to work.

Anyway, one particular morning on the way to work in late February, Australia was yet again the focus of the news: this time it was the heatwaves in southern Australia. The screens are in pairs - usually one display shows the story, and the other a related photo. Sam the Koala had been a favourite photo for recent weeks, so I was rather surprised to see a story about Australia that wasn't accompanied by the grey, fluffy, bushfire survivor.

What was even more surprising was the photo chosen to accompany this particular story.

Sam hadn't been replaced by one of his fellow marsupials - he hadn't even been replaced by a dingo, or an emu, or a crocodile, or a fruit bat, which at least would have counted as Australian.

He had been replaced by a freaking giraffe.

Huh???

Musings from a rusty Estonain bus.

2009-05-20T15:28:00.002+02:00

Musings from a rusty Estonian bus.

(Note: I was flipping through my journal the other day, and found a few of the blog-worthy pieces that I had put together while on the road recently in Estonia and Latvia. Here's one of them - more to come.)

Currently it's Sunday the 12th of April, and I'm trundling down the highway in eastern Estonia on a rickety old bus that in any other country with the exception of Russia, Ukraine, Bosnia or Moldova would have long since been consigned to the scrap heap (oh, by the way, I think we just left the transmission on the road about 100m back...).

Accompanying me is a busload of overstyled eastern European teeny boppers, more babushkas than I care to count and an entire regiment of the Estonian army.

Since I'd planned to be on this bus for about two and a half hours, I have of course brought my trusty mp3 and my journal - there's still 179km between us and our destination, Tartu, a university town in southern Estonia, a stone's throw from the Russian border.

And yes, my calculations of 179km in 2 1/2 hours are correct - this feat of Estonian engineering is chugging along at the lightning speed of approximately 70km/h. Even my 1987 Toyota Corolla could beat this. But considering the Estonian government department responsible for infrastructure seems to have chosen to lay the road with bitumen over a layer of industrial corrugated iron, speeds akin to those on Australian or German highways aren't entirely realistic, or even possible, on this particular road.

I've tuned out the chaos of the rest of the passengers and have quite happily settled in for two and a half hours of iriver music, when one of the army boys' mobile phones rings behind me.

And suddenly I hear the familiar sound of a drummer tapping his drumsticks on some VB bottles, followed by the melodic flute introduction to one of Australia's many unofficial anthems.

Men At Work - Down Under. Random.

Permission to heart Berlin until at least 2012!

2009-05-19T18:00:00.002+02:00

It's official. After having submitted my application for a work permit and German residency in early March, and being told that the processing time would be six to eight weeks (yes, and I'm the Queen of England - just excuse me for a moment while I polish my crown...), Australis now has two pretty new pink stickers in her funky blue passport with a kangaroo and an emu on the front.

Might not sound like much, but these two stickers mean that yours truly has (finally!!!) been granted permission from the German Immigration Department, which I like to call "Höllenbrut" (roughly translates to "Hellspawn"), to remain a resident of the poor but sexy capital of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland until May 2011.

On top of that, the Federal Employment Office approved my work permit until 2012, so technically, it's a two-year residency, with automatic renewal for a third year, and as the icing on a truly stupendously amazing Kuchen, after three years, this permit becomes permanent. As of 2013, I'm a permanent resident of Germany, with unlimited employment rights. UNLIMITED!!!

Who knew it would only take two phone calls and five emails a day for the last two weeks to get an answer from them?

Oh, and in case you're curious, just because they gave me a visa today, and a two-year one at that, doesn't mean they're no longer hellspawn.

Telling an expat, and one from Australia no less, a country that is not only on a different continent, but a mere thirteen time zones and 14,500km away from Germany, and therefore a destination for which travel plans, let alone permanent relocation arrangements, require months of planning and lots and lots of €€€ (and even more $AUD), that the processing time for their residency application will take approximately six to eight weeks maximum, then proceeding to ignore all contact attempts from said Australian applicant, including but not limited to calls, emails, faxes and smoke signals, until four working days before their previous visa expires (ELEVEN WEEKS after the initial application was submitted), is beyond cruel and unusual torture.

Then, imagine my disbelief when the case worker assigned to me had the nerve to tell tell me today with typical German bureaucratic attitude "It was completely unnecessary to call and email us every day in the last few weeks. We were going to contact you eventually. You just need to learn to be patient."

The steam coming from my ears could have powered Puffing Billy for a good few months.

The Ausländerbehörde still = Höllenbrut.
(German Immigration = Hellspawn.)

But I have a visa, and that's reason enough for beer o'clock. As an added bonus, tonight I'm heading out to the movies with a friend: "Wolverine" - in English (yay!), Hugh Jackman looking incredible, and all of this with my mate Hans. Good times are in store.

Mr Bauhaus Trolley Man

2009-04-27T15:07:00.003+02:00

4.22pm on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in January in wintry Berlin.

I'm working a split shift, so I have a few hours before I have to be back at work for round two. I've had enough of not having curtains - my room is on the third floor, and has a huge bay window, which is really great for the sunshine and natural light, but my room looks out onto a courtyard: 30m away on the other side is another apartment building also with bay windows on every floor, and next to that is a high school. Yes, not only can my neighbours stare right into my room, but on weekdays, about ninety students can watch my every move from the comfort of their classroom. *shiver*.

Anyway, there's a hardware store around the corner from me, so I ventured down there into the testosterone paradise that is the German hardware store, Bauhaus.

It's no Bunnings - the standard of service at the two DIY worlds are poles apart, and Bunnings' range is unparalleled, but Bauhaus isn't far off.

I wander around for a few minutes and eventually find the curtain rods and rings, without any help from their staff - all of the high school students I have ever taught showed more enthusiasm towards learning the past imperfect tense than German service staff show towards, well, service!

After a short period of deliberation, I decide to just note down some prices to compare with the Swedish homeware haven. Any excuse for an excursion to Ikea.

As I return towards the entrance to the store to continue on my journey around Berlin, preparing to brace myself for the subzero temperatures outside, I see something which brings an immediate grin to my face.

An older gentleman, perhaps in his late 60s or early 70s, is also making his way out of the store with a trolley laden with paint tins, curtain rods and various other items which suggested a spot of redecoration was in his very near future.

That's not the entertaining part.

The entertaining part is that suddenly this gentleman in his late 60s or early 70s suddenly takes a run-up of a few steps, leans forward, puts his entire weight on the trolley and coasts blissfully along through Bauhaus for about ten metres. His momentum starts to wane, so he repeats his run-up again and coasts a few more metres, before using his feet to brake just half a metre before the concrete steps down to the carpark.

Between Trolley Man and Oma Chuck Taylors, it is clear that even Berlin's senior generation has not lost its ability to embrace their inner youth, even if they only let it show when they're reasonably sure no one is watching.

Reason #43623 why Australis hearts Berlin.

The hint of summer in the Hauptstadt

2009-04-21T21:30:00.001+02:00

In the last five minutes, I have managed to ascertain that spring has indeed finally sprung, for good, in Berlin.

I got home from tutoring tonight around 6pm. On the way home, I had been basking in the brilliant late afternoon sunshine streaming in through the windows of the tram, and by the time I got home, I was so energised by the sudden intake of Vitamin D that I abandoned my thrilling plans of burying myself in my blog or making some dinner while the sun was still relatively high in the sky, considering it was 6.30pm, and after a light-speed costume change, I jumped on my bike and wound my way through the narrow cobbled back streets of Neukölln to Görlitzer Park. I had spent most of Sunday there with a friend of mine, just chilling, dozing, soaking up the rays, and have since decided it is indeed one of my favourite parks in Berlin, if only for the people watching opportunities. Almost as good as Riga International Airport (More on that to come in a future entry).

Anyways, tonight I ended up back at Görlitzer Park, and no sooner had I cruised to a halt, claimed my two metres squared of grass and taken a drink of water, than I suddenly heard my name being called. Berlin is a city-sized village: one of my friend's former flatmates and one of his mates were on the grass only metres away. I hadn't seen them in ages, so I scooted over and hung out with them for a while.

As the sun began to sink lower toward the western horizon, taking with it the blue skies and leaving in its wake the first of the evening's stars, I remembered that since I had no lights on my derelict but trusty bike, I would have to leave before it got really dark - the German police are renowned for issuing on-the-spot fines for non-lit bikes, and I neither had the money nor the inclination to have my day spoiled by the Polizei.

As I made my way through the winding streets on my way back, I was treated to one of my favourite smells in the world: the smell of Berlin on a summer night. It wasn't quite as perfectly Berlin as it will be in a few months - June, July and August are the ultimate - but it was definitely there.

The deliciously hunger-inducing aroma of chicken and lamb slices sizzling in spicy marinades on döner kebab rotisseries around Neukölln, and the occasional wafts of perfumed smoke from the water pipes being smoked out on the pavement shisha bars all over Neukölln and Kreuzberg.

Australis hearts Berlin. Man, does she heart Berlin.

Australis' patented "Clean Up".

2009-03-20T16:32:00.004+01:00

I never thought I would say this, but the therapeutic effect of cleaning one's living space to within an inch of its life should never be underestimated.

The satisfaction of being able to completely control just one aspect of one's life when most of the others bear an amazing resemblance to a horrifically spectacular car crash is very comforting.

For your reference, here are the last ten days in the world of Australis in a nutshell (and yes, I have Austin Powers in my head at the moment):

- a Friday night house party which resulted in me being on the receiving end of a friend's decision to communicate his frustration in an alcohol-fuelled violent display at 5am (not the first time this has happened). Don't worry: I'm fine - no injuries here.

- farewelling a good friend who moved to Turkey for six months on Sunday.

- a phone call home in which I learned that one of my mum's colleagues - also a very good friend of hers - had lost her fight with bone and liver cancer, and that my grandfather had yet again been hospitalised (fourth time for 2009).

- an appointment at the German Immigration Department bright and way too early on Monday to apply for my visa, only to be told to fill out three more forms and bring them in on Thursday, with a copy of my university degrees, at least three references, biometric passport photos, and 10 other documents proving that I do indeed exist and that I am who I say I am. Gotta love the Germans and their bureaucracy. There is most definitely going to be a blog post on German red tape when I get my visa.

- an intense heart-to-heart on Monday evening with the aforementioned friend from the house party about the two violent episodes and where our friendship goes from here.

- a throat infection which resulted in me not being able to speak at all for four days and forcing me to communicate via hand gestures, facial expressions, Skype and a notebook.

- another appointment at the German Immigration Department on Thursday morning in which I handed over half the Amazon rainforest in the form of neatly-filled-out visa and work permit application forms and received the response "it may take up to two months to be processed". Brilliant. Just great.

- as if all that wasn't enough, a browse of the online news revealed that Australia was being ravaged by all manner of natural disasters. What is with that at the moment? Fires, floods, oil slicks, cyclones, earthquakes, landslides as a result of the earthquakes - all that's left is a volcanic eruption... wait, no, even that has also been taken care of! We're only missing the tidal wave for the whole set! Note: Mother Nature, this is not a challenge!!! :)

Given all this happened within the space of a week, on top of a friend visiting from out of town, I was indeed in a state which might best be described as "interesting" by evening of Sunday the 15th of March.

I have various possible plans of action for dealing with such a frazzled state of mind as this.

A good long walk - preferably in a park or along the beach - is usually the first step. Unfortunately it was raining, and I was loath to prolong my throat infection for any longer than absolutely necessary.

Ok, so I scroll down the list to number two. Ooh - one of my favourites! Rock music therapy: create a "Rock Out!" playlist on WinAmp, crank up the volume and sing along to my favourite artists - Jimmy Eat World, Green Day, AC/DC, The Offspring, The Living End and OkGo! among others... Slight problem - no voice. It would also be really inconsiderate of me concering my flatmates, one of whom was still recovering from a serious hangover from the previous night and the other of whom is currently working on a major assessment piece for his university film studies program.

So we come to number three on the list - a sure fire certainty as far as therapy goes. It also involves some serious effort, which ensures I get a decent night's sleep, and there are added benefits in the form of an impeccably clean living space!

#3 on my list of strategies for dealing with Australis in a state which might best be described as "interesting" = The Clean Up. Doesn't sound all that special to you?
Read on.

"The Clean Up" is not just putting stuff back where it belongs though. That I can do any old time. No, "The Clean Up" is the housekeeping equivalent of "The Full Monty".

And this is how it goes.

Step 1 - the basics. Putting stuff back where it belongs, sorting out the junk which had accumulated on my desk/on shelves in front of the stuff that actually belongs there/on my sofa/hanging from the handlebars of my bike/on the area around my loft bed, etc, over an unknown number of days (I'm not quite bad enough to have to add "weeks" to that), and most definitely putting on a load of washing. The small stuff. Lots of small stuff.

Second - the fun part. Here come the big guns. Step #2 = The Vacuum Cleaner.

I love vacuuming. I love the sound. I love the current of warm, clean air. I love doing some actual work to make my space clean and liveable again. I love the smell of a room which has just been vacuumed.

After all that has been achieved, we move on to the final phase.

Step #3 = The Post-Clean Chillax.

The entire effect of the clean living space is then completed by having a long hot shower, lighting a few candles and some Nag Champa incense, opening a window and curling up on the sofabed with a cuppa and a good book, and revelling in the cleanliness and the amazing effects, both internal and external, of Australis' patented "Clean Up", possibly the best ever plan of action for rescuing a weekend (or in my case, a ten-day period) which for all intents and purposes, was quite honestly $!#@.

Reason #8324 why I heart Berlin

2009-03-19T18:47:00.000+01:00

Unlike my last blog entry, which was a work in progress for about a year, this one is about two hours from start to finish: experience, contemplation, commitment to a blog entry, formulation and publication.

I've been off work sick for the last few days - throat infection, so nothing drastic enough to keep me bed ridden: just bad enough that I was, for all intents and purposes, mute for the weekend. Brilliant. I was forced to communicate either via whispers (not great in a room full of people), a notebook (writing takes an amazing amount of time, and by the time I had written my witty comment down on my notebook and shown it around, the conversation had long since moved on. Grr.), or via Skype (very effective simply due to the speed of communication available, but slightly ridiculous when talking to a friend who is in reality sitting on the sofa on the other side of the room, only two metres away).

Anyway, today I was feeling much better - the drugs had been working, I had my voice back (partly), and on top of all that, I got a marvellous night's sleep and awoke to the first day of spring in Berlin, albeit halfway through March, but better late than never.

So after breakfast, I got my camera, mp3 player, sunglasses and hat, and lugged my new bike down all six flights of stairs (no lock-up facility in the basement, and also no lift in my building), and set off to discover undiscovered corners of Berlin.

Karl-Marx-Straße, the infamous Sonnenallee, Treptower Park, the Soviet Memorial, the Archenhold Sternwart (where a visitors' information board proudly announced that Albert Einstein had held his first lecture in Berlin on his newly discovered "Theory of Relativity" right here), then into Kreuzberg, one of the suburbs of inner Berlin which was split into two countries for 28 years by the Wall, and is now the thriving heart of Berlin's punk and alternative scene, in addition to being my favourite neighbourhood for drinks, shisha and general great nights out.

I began to make my way home - since it was St Pats day and all, I had various pubs to tour later in the day with my Irish flatmate and various other expats from the Emerald Isle, and had stuff to do before that. Coasting down an unassuming street, I noticed a metal display board at the side of the street, and slowed down to have a better look.

The site was the location of a tunnel built in 1962, through which 29 people escaped from East Berlin to West Berlin.

Bam. A subtle reminder (if I needed one) that Berlin has only been a reunified city for twenty years, and that East Germany and West Germany existed in my lifetime: these escapes were in the lifetimes of my parents, from a regime which was only brought down in 1989.

Love this city.

The Button Bag

2009-03-16T22:10:00.007+01:00

button bag. /bΛtn bæg/. noun.
1. The convergence of stylish accessory and wearable conversation piece in a spectacularly alternative, slightly bohemian and completely unique hessian shoulder bag with the ability to bridge international cultural & linguistic barriers and built-in travel bragging rights for the owner.

And I am the proud owner of the only one.

Let me explain. To tell the full story, I have to take you back in time to mid-August 2007. Location: Sarajevo, Bosnia.

I had been on the road for a few weeks, just me, my passport and my backpack, exploring Eastern Europe for the first time. The previous four years had consisted mostly of travel or work in various countries in Western Europe, and in September of 2007, I was due to continue that trend by taking up a position as a teaching assistant at a high school in southern Berlin. My curiousity surrounding the mysterious lands which had for so long remained in the shadow of the Iron Curtain had finally got the better of me, and I had decided that enough was enough: five weeks before I was due to start work, I dumped my winter stuff at a friend's place in Berlin and set off a five-week "Magical Mystery Tour" of the no-visa-required-for-Australians countries of south-eastern Europe.

Bosnia (ok, technically "and Herzegovina too") was the fifth country on my tour; prior to arriving in Bosnia, I had explored the grey concreteness of Slovakia, visited the Paprika Museums and thermal baths of Hungary, rowed on the most beautiful mountain lake ever in Slovenia, partied until dawn with fellow backpacking expats on the beaches of Croatia, and had slowly started to get used to the Eastern European mindset. From Bosnia, I would be heading further east toward Serbia, Bulgaria and the Black Sea, before finishing up the tour in Romania, then returning to "reality" in Berlin.

Bosnia had in just two days claimed the enviable title of being my favourite country on the tour, and Sarajevo without a doubt the crown of my favourite city of the five weeks so far. It achieved this status within two days, and by the time I left, Sarajevo's status had been elevated to the rank of "One of Australis' Top 5 Cities". (In case you're interested, the others are Melbourne a clear #1, Berlin the runner up at #2, Istanbul a close third, and Marrakech scraping in at fourth - Sarajevo is number 5, just above Fes.)

I would happily have spent an entire week in Bosnia, but unfortunately, the two days I had in Sarajevo were all my time budget would allow for, and after a day of walking around Sarajevo from one historical site to another, which were most inconveniently situated at least five kilometres apart, I was ready for a Pivo or two, and began to make my way back to the hostel for beer and börek, starting to contemplate exactly what form my Bosnian souvenir would take.

My policy for souvenirs so far on that tour had been a self-imposed minimalistic one: a postcard from each country, and if I really liked the place, a pair of earrings. Yes, yours truly has an earring problem.

Bosnia was however the exception to the souvenir policy. For two reasons.

Number 1, I loved the place. At that time, I hadn't yet been to Turkey or Morocco, and Sarajevo had a taste of the East - of Asia and of the Middle East - that I found mesmerising, intoxicating and most definitely addictive, and I resolved to return; in the meantime, a truly stupendous souvenir was in order.

And the second reason? In addition to my large backpack, I'd been carting a small day pack around for a few weeks. The experiences of the previous three weeks had instilled in me a whole new level of awareness of my personal security, and my small daypack just wasn't doing the job. I had noticed along the way that a satchel was without a doubt a better alternative in terms of protecting the contents of my bag from the increasing creativity and pickpocketing talents of the gypsy street urchins.

However considering I only had two more weeks on the road, a new bag wasn't really a priority, especially since I had already experienced the problem of finding one that I liked enough to part with my Bosnian Convertible Marks for, and also finding one that I hadn't already seen in every tourist-targeting, "typically-Eastern-European" bazzaar I had meandered through in the previous three weeks. In spite of this hurdle, the lack of versatility noted while wearing a backpack as a satchel had caused me to contemplate the notion of investing in a shoulder bag at some stage.

It was this dilemma which was occupying my mind while wandering around the marketplace, trying to find my way back to my hostel. As usual, I'd got lost in the narrow winding alleyways of the bazaar.

I got to the end of an alleyway, which looked like every other alleyway in the bazaar, turned a corner, and suddenly in front of me, in a narrow lane I had somehow never discovered before, was a small textile store. It was in the shadows of the neighbouring buildings, and the front window was dusty, but through the glass I could see a number of shoulder bags: two were embroidered with traditional Bosnian patterns, and one was a hessian shoulder bag covered in all manner of buttons. I had had my eye on something typically Bosnian, and initially considered one of the woven bags, but half an hour later, I left the store with a little less Bosnian currency and the button bag.

This is where the best part of the story starts. Up until then, as far as I was aware, this was a completely normal bag. Yes, it was covered in a myriad of buttons of different sizes, shapes and colours, but aside from that, it seemed to be your average slightly bohemian shoulder bag. Right?

Wrong.

The button bag is, as my previous definition stated, "the convergence of stylish accessory and wearable conversation piece in a spectacularly alternative, slightly bohemian and completely unique hessian shoulder bag with the ability to bridge international cultural & linguistic barriers and built-in travel bragging rights for the owner."

It's all of that, and so much more. As if that's not enough, you even can carry stuff in it!

Ok, I admit it: the "stylish" part is debatable, especially if you consider that style is subjective - the Button Bag certainly doesn't compete in the league of Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, or Gucci. I'm not sure I'd want it to.

But the rest of it is completely true. It is most definitely alternative and bohemian - it's not the kind of thing you'd see sold at David Jones or Myer at Chadstone, or in Macys in New York City: more the kind of thing you'd see in an alternative chic store along Brunswick St in Fitzroy or around the area of Friedrichshain or Kreuzberg in Berlin.

Unique? Yes. The elderly woman behind the counter who sold me this wonderful souvenir made it herself, using a selection of buttons she had taken from her own collection, built up over the previous twenty years in her time as a tailor and seamstress.

Travel bragging rights? Absolutely. But we'll get to that.

It's the "ability to bridge international cultural and linguistic barriers" that turned out to be the bag's greatest strength.

Who knew that a humble shoulder bag could be such a conversation starter? The strength of this conversation starting ability is all the more proven by the fact that it has not only started conversations between myself and random strangers in Australia, where everyone's your "mate" and everyone will quite happily have a good old natter with someone they met less than five minutes ago, have no idea of their name and most probably will never see again in their life, but also in Germany, a country whose folk are not exactly renowned for their friendliness toward strangers in public. Or indeed at all.

I have actually lost count of the number of interactions or conversations which have been instigated by a random stranger's interest in my button bag - whether it be in the bus, the train, at the market, at the Department of Immigration while applying for my visa and work permit, at the post office, or just about anywhere at all. There are also varying levels of interest. The lowest is a vague glance, usually followed by the infamous double take. This occasionally leads to level two, in which the person who has noticed the Button Bag attempts to attract the attention of the person accompanying them and direct it toward my bag. Level three involves the two of them starting a conversation about the bag, which is rather entertaining for me to watch, as they talk about my bag, which usually leads to level four, in which they make eye contact with me and smile politely, continuing their conversation while marvelling at my fabulous accessory. This usually leads to level five; the conversation.

The conversation typically involves two questions:

1. "Did you sew those on yourself?" The more bohemian the neighbourhood or the asker, the more tempted I am to say "Yes, I have collected buttons all my life and sewed them all on to an otherwise mundane hessian shoulder bag." In Berlin, that's an entirely feasible answer, but I remain proud of the fact that at last count, the replies are as follows: "Yes, I did it myself" - 0. "No, I bought it like that" - quite possibly in the hundreds by now.

My negative answer to the first question is typically followed by this question:

2. "Where did you get it?" Remember how I mentioned the "travel bragging rights"? This is where that comes into play. Whenever I am asked this, and I answer with a casual "I bought it in Sarajevo a few years ago", I am usually greeted with an expression of wonder at my extensive travel experiences, quickly followed by confusion as the asker considers the question "Why on earth would anyone travel to Bosnia - voluntarily?"

Usually by this stage, we've arrived at either my or the asker's train station, one of us is next in the queue for Turkish bread at the market or there is a rather annoyed postal worker behind the desk demanding that we pay attention to her, and we bid each other good day and go our separate ways.

But the attraction of the button bag has worked its magic on yet another person.

And I am the proud owner of the only one.

Victoria's bushfire hell.

2009-02-08T20:41:00.008+01:00

It's pretty rare that Australia makes the German news. The last time that happened was to announce the death of Heath Ledger in January of 2008, so when it does happen, it gets my attention. It's also very unlikely that the news is good.

I had known that the temperatures in my home state of Victoria and the neighbouring states of New South Wales and South Australia had been scorchingly high of late, with all three states experiencing multiple days of 45ºC and over, temperatures significantly above the normal summer highs of 40ºC, so it was only a matter of time until the first bushfire reports would begin to trickle through. Bushfires are a part of summer in Australia; some years are worse than others, for example Ash Wednesday of 1983, and the horrific Black Friday of 1939, both of which claimed many lives. Usually though, the maximum toll is limited to several hundred hectares of bush, some sheds and livestock, and occasionally some houses which were in the path of the fire. Very rarely are lives lost.

As soon as I heard the words "Australia" and "bushfire" in the Berlin radio news recently though, I knew that this could not be your average bushfire season, especially since the piece had made it all the way up the list to second billing behind the latest developments in the German financial crisis. I kept listening, and what I heard shocked me into silence.

Thirty-one fire fronts across the state. 330,000 hectares burnt out. Entire towns razed to the ground. 750 homes destroyed. 108 people confirmed dead, with this number rising all the time as more towns were reached. Thousands of people homeless. Emergency services working around the clock to bring the infernoes under control.

The worst part? Some of the fires are suspected to have been deliberately lit. The notion that anyone would concieve of lighting a match and setting it to the tinderbox that south-eastern Australia had become during the heatwave of the previous two weeks is nothing short of horrifically sickening. In one fell swoop, one or two individuals had created the worst bushfires in Australian history. Lives of innocent people have been extinguished, homes have been destroyed, communities decimated, and countless volunteers have, without a second thought, put their own lives at risk to fight bushfires which need never have been fought.

I know there's nothing I could do even if I was at home. But being this far away is torture - hearing via online reports and Berlin radio news updates that my home state is an deadly inferno is very difficult to handle. The fact that, as far as I know, my family and friends are very fortunately all safe, reassures me. But just because I don't know the hundreds of families who have been affected doesn't mean I'm not thinking of them, or that I'm any less upset.

This post was partly inspired by the ever-eloquent MD; therefore, I conclude with a brief quote from my favourite Inspector Rex fan.

"Love those around you. Hold them tight, tell them that you love them and never, ever let them forget it. ... Like most Victorians, I have friends affected by this - and some we're yet to hear from. If you've any prayers going spare, we could use them. ... So tonight, do me a favour. Hug someone you love. Tell them you love them. If not for you, then for all those who can't."

And my request to you? Pray for rain and a cool change, and an end to the inferno. Then tell your family and friends how much they mean to you, because there are 108 people who will never get the chance again.

Partial restoration of my faith in males.

2009-01-21T23:20:00.005+01:00

I have a quite simply beautiful story to tell you.

Let's set the scene. Tuesday afternoon at work, about an hour before I knock off. I've been on my own at the reception desk since 9am, and I'm slightly stressed from trying to simultaneously sort out the day-to-day client issues and tackle the weekly mountain of paperwork and administration.

The computer has frozen, the phone is ringing, there are clients standing at the reception desk demanding my immediate and utmost attention, and my boss has chosen to stand in the corridor and watching me handle this alone, rather than step in and make herself useful.

I don't recognise the man standing before me, which is unusual, since I know almost all of the clients at least by face, if not by name.

"Can I help you?"
He replies in German. "I hope so. I need a favour." He confirms that he's not a client, past, present or future, but that he needs me to do him a favour nonetheless. I'm curious. "What can I do for you?"

He explains that he is looking for a native speaker of English who can also speak German to translate a letter for him. Considering the crowd of clients starting to gather behind him, I politely suggest he check the trusty annals of Google for a professional translator.

No, he explains: this isn't a standard letter. His girlfriend is Australian, and she's been living in the UK, but the financial crisis has forced her to return home to Australia on short notice, with no possibility or plans to return to Europe, all but sealing the fate of their relationship.

He explains that she is booked on a flight home early the following morning, and since he is too upset to tell her how he feels about her himself, he has written a letter which he wants to give to her. He doesn't have the words in English to express his feelings, so he's written it in German. Problem is, his girlfriend doesn't speak German. That's where the favour comes in.

I really sympathise with this guy, and I really want to help him, but I've got a thousand and one things to do - clients to deal with, my boss still watching my every move, and the phone is still ringing. I answer the phone, and while arranging an appointment, a light goes off in my head, and I realise how I can help this guy out while staying out of trouble with my boss - clearly I'm not supposed to be hawking my services as a translator while working at a language school.

I write an email address on a scrap of paper. "I can't help you out, but a friend of mine might be able to. Her English is native, and her German's good. Email her." I wish him luck, and pick up the receiver to answer the phone, returning my focus to my work.

That night, I check my emails. It was an alternate email address of mine that I wrote on that scrap of paper - one that I use when I don't want my name advertised. Sure enough, he'd emailed me. He explained the story again, and begged for my help in translating the attached text.

Well, Shakespeare or Goethe this guy is not, but the emotion in his writing made it clear to me that he was very much in love with this woman, and that her departure was leaving him in a world of heartache and pain. I replied, revealing my identity as the receptionist he begged for help, and promised to translate his writing as best I could.

As tempting as it is, I will not post his work on this blog - I respect his privacy and his rights an an author, and hope that the good writer's karma I'm sending out may come back to me eventually. Suffice to say that if I received a letter like this one from someone I was dating, I would be 100% and completely theirs.

Guys, take note.

More tourist capers...

2008-11-26T15:51:00.004+01:00

Sometimes I wonder if I work at an English school or a branch of the Berlin Tourist Information Centre.

Take the 3rd of September for instance.

Within half an hour that afternoon, I was asked for directions by three separate tourists. The first was your standard backpacker couple: a Canadian couple, who were most impressed when I asked them where in Canada they were from, having figured that out from their accents. Credit for that to my sister's boyfriend, and various actual Canadian friends. Anyway, they wanted to get to a particular hostel, and were still more impressed when I told them the tram number, the time it would take to get there, and the stop name - all of which I only know because this particular hostel also happens to be an Australian-themed sports bar which broadcasts, among other things, the AFL Grand Final, and serves VB.

The second was an American couple, from Sacramento, California. They needed a post office, and also wanted to get to Checkpoint Charlie (about an hour's walk from our building, but about 8mins on the underground). I recommended they get the tram (which they insisted on calling a trolley-car) or walk to Friedrichstrasse station - about 15mins, then get the underground to Checkpoint Charlie - three stops, no changes required. The husband seemed quite happy with this, and began to move away, but the wife seemed to take my offer of information as an invitation to ask me more touristy questions than I had ever asked one single individual in my life. She seemed to consider me her personal Berlin travel consultant, and had me cornered outside the building for about 10mins, asking me about train connections to Potsdam from Zehlendorf where they were staying, about how much admission to the different theatres would cost, and if I would recommend watching movies in English at Potsdamer Platz.

I resisted the temptation to respond with a curt "Do I look like I work for Berlin tourist information?". My actual answers? 1 - no idea; check the BVG transport map. 2 - no idea; check the internet or ask the concierge at your hotel. 3 - no: too expensive - wait for the free inflight movie on the way home.

I then blatantly looked at my watch, glanced longingly (a rare occurrence) at the door of my office, and politely excused myself to return to work. He had long since got the point, and finally she did as well. Ah, freedom.

The third... the third was Chuck from Virginia, USA. Chuck would have been about the same age as my two grandfathers - mid 80s. Both of them are still very astute and intelligent individuals; age hasn't significantly affected their minds. If it weren't for the physical effects of aging, they and their respective wives would still be travelling around the world and having a marvellous time.

Chuck on the other hand... well, Chuck reminded me in many ways of some of the residents at the nursing home where my late great-grandmother spent the last six years of her life: barely able to comprehend a basic sentence, his reading skills all but gone, and very slow in his movements. He had been separated from his tour group, and having seen that we're an English school, figured that we could help him. Like the previous couple, he was supposed to be at Checkpoint Charlie. However, where I needed only a few moments to explain to them where to go to get the train and where to get off, Chuck could barely see where I was pointing to on the map I'd printed out from Google for him, let alone understand the process for buying a ticket for the train or which station he needed to look out for.

I was so tempted to walk him down to the train station, buy the ticket for him, and wait for the train, but unfortunately, I was actually supposed to be working. So I gave Chuck the map, wrote the station name on the map in large letters, and pointed him in the direction of the station.

I just hope he made it ok.

Lightbulb moments

2008-11-02T18:47:00.006+01:00

Today was a brilliant day. Today, I had the rare opportunity of being reminded of exactly why I love to teach, and how much I miss teaching regularly.

It didn't start out that way. For the first five hours of my six hour shift, I was practically chained to the front desk - fielding calls, making appointments, answering questions, with brief sojourns into the kitchen to make coffee for clients.

At the start of the final hour, a colleague emerged from a meeting to relieve me - not a moment too soon. I had just got off the phone with a particularly challenging student, and in the ten minutes that she talked at me, six students had gathered at the reception counter demanding my immediate attention, a prospective client was asking for information on an English course, not to mention the incoming calls on the other line.

Five minutes of teamwork, and calm was restored. I seized the chance to escape from behind the desk, and headed into the back of the school to check the state of the main classroom. After refilling the pens and cleaning an explanation of possessive pronouns off the whiteboard, I ventured into the computer lab. Everything looked to be in order, and I was just about to leave when I heard my name being called.

I turned around, and saw the eager face of one of the newer students smiling at me over his computer."Hi, L. What's up?"

He was working on a grammar exercise practising the conditional mood, but despite having read the explanation and asking one of the other students for help, he still didn't understand. The memory of sitting in a university tutorial room in Clayton with two of my best friends trying to get our heads around the very same topic in German was still fresh enough in my mind that I could sympathise with his confusion, so I pulled a chair over, sat down next to him at his computer, and opened up the grammar book.

For the next fifteen minutes, we worked through the explanation and some of the activities. He seemed to be getting it, so when we got to the end of the page, I asked him to explain it back to me. To his amazement, he did it perfectly. When he finished, the look on his face is one that I will never forget. The golden moment of comprehension. The lightbulb moment. The "Aha!" moment. That expression was all the thanks I needed.

He looked at me, smiling, and said thank you. "No worries," I replied, and stood up, heading for the door. What happened next was the icing on the cake. The student he had previously asked for help had got up from her computer and was standing next to L; I heard her ask him in German to explain to her what I'd just explained to him, and you can imagine how proud I felt of him to hear him pass on the explanation.

That one fleeting moment made my day all that much better. The knowledge that I had been able to help a student understand something which previously had been a mystery to him, and seeing the realisation on his face when he discovered he had figured it out, was invaluable. It reminded me that regardless of the office politics, the problem students and the unrelenting chaos of the reception desk, the most rewarding thing about teaching for me is, and always will be, moments like that: having the opportunity to take the time to help a student understand that which was previously shrouded in mystery and confusion, and to use that feeling of achievement to encourage and motivate them to continue learning.

Those rare golden moments of realisation are the reason I teach. You can never see them coming, and you can go for days or even weeks without experiencing a moment like that, but when you do, for one blissful moment, it makes everything else seem trivial; somehow, it makes all the chaos, all the late nights and early mornings, and all your extra effort worthwhile.

Everyone wants their 15mins...

2008-10-02T00:46:00.003+02:00

I think the population of Berlin is actually trying to make it into my blog. It seems that everywhere I go in the last week, people are actively entertaining me in order to feature in the superlative web publication that is Kangaroos in Deutschland.

Seriously, where do I start?

Maybe the coffee hawkers in the Ubahn? Two street kids in the Ubahn trying to sell me a 500g jar of Nestlé Gold for the bargain price of 4,- Euro (RRP 7.95). They even took the lid off and proudly displayed the in-tact golden foil seal. (Don’t worry – I didn’t buy it).

Or the "Äh, du Penner, du Opfer, ick ____ deine Mutter," Turkish kids, again in the Ubahn? (Non-German-speakers can use their imagination or Leo.org.) Seriously, some of the most interesting tales that this city has to tell happen in the subterranean maze of the train network.

This time, it was four Turkish teenagers having a full-on fight in the Ubahn… during which I unfortunately was occupying one of the two window seats in the group of seats they had chosen as the location of their very public difference of opinion. Great opportunities for studying Gastarbeiter Deutsch, and Neukölln slang… which the linguist in me would’ve wholeheartedly embraced and possibly noted down, had I not been trying to avoid all eye contact and not make any sudden moves.

No, I think the award for "Most Hardcore Berlin Experience of the Week" goes to my casual stroll through Hasenheide.

Exploring my new neighbourhood one idle Tuesday afternoon and ending up in a corner of the semi-infamous Hasenheide, an expansive park in the predominantly immigrant heart of Neukölln, with a reputation for being the narcotics supermarket of Berlin, watching the police and drug dealers play cat and mouse for half an hour, before making the decision to leave when I saw three police vans storm the park from all angles.

Yes, Neukölln is most definitely an interesting place to live.

More trouble with English...

2008-09-18T12:06:00.001+02:00

And what did I tell you? Yes, “The Trouble with English” has a sequel.

Walking down the cleaning product aisle in a discount supermarket on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon, in an area of Berlin where the vast majority of residents are Turkish immigrants (just off Hermannplatz, Neukölln for those who know Berlin), I notice a Turkish guy, I’d guess in his mid 30s, standing in front of the toilet paper, muttering to himself and shaking his head. “Einfach unglaublich, wie viel das alles heuzutage kostet.” Translation not really necessary: mostly just complaining about prices, and just desperate for me to take the bait and show solidarity with him in the face of the international capitalist conspiracy against the average consumer.

And sure, he seems nice enough, but I'm not interested; I’d had a challenging day at work, was tired beyond belief, and completely not in the mood for small talk or being chatted up in front of the toilet paper.

I am however awake enough to remember that my t-shirt – out of pure coincidence – is a Gallipoli commemorative t-shirt with an Australian flag on the right side of the chest.

So I do it: I call his bluff, and play my foreigner trump card. “Sorry, I don’t, ich nicht speak Deutsch”, while inwardly cringing – even the most linguistically challenged could have managed better than that. But desperate times…

And you’d think I would have learned from Homeless Dude. Never judge a book…

“Oh, sorry. I thinked you is German. Where you come from? You live here, or on a holiday? That flag on your shirt is England, isn’t it? My cousin - ”

Bugger. Again.

This guy’s English was about the level of my Italian, but he had more front than Myers. Translated from Australian slang, that means he was damn confident. And someone with a little bit of language and a lot of confidence can be really, really annoying. He just wouldn’t shut up.

Eventually the topic of toilet paper led him into a conversational corner, which for some reason prompted him to share with me the contents of his shopping basket. Apples, Nutella, and black hair dye.

“How old are you thinking I looks today? Looks at mys hair. How old do you thinking I looks today?” Without waiting for an answer, he charges on. “Maybe 40, 45, I think I looks today, like old mans.”

Sure, he’s got a few stray grey hairs here and there. Whatever. Get to the point so I can get out of here.

“But tonight, I change – I will be young again, I will go to the bathroom – ”. I really don’t want to know any more; it’s at this point that I begin my retreat. I step past him as he continues, very obviously looking at my watch, and backing away from him towards the opposite end of the aisle. “Sorry, I really have to – ”
“Tomorrow,” he interrupts, continuing undaunted and taking a step towards me, “I look again 20 years!”
“Um, ok…” I'm now at the end of the aisle, and have again reached that point where I feel I've been subtle enough for long enough. I take a deep breath and spit it out before he can interrupt me. “I'msorrybutIhavetogo.”

Suddenly he gets that look on his face. That “sad puppy” look. And had he not invaded my perfectly alone shopping experience, I might have caved and forgiven him. But I was past the point of caring. Before I could give myself a chance to backpedal and untrample his feelings, I gave him a generic “you know how it is” smile and disappeared around the end of the aisle behind the fabric softener.

But I know without a doubt that I’ll try it again. The convenience of the linguistic “Get Out Of Jail Free Card” is irresistible. Besides, it either works like a charm or leads to great material for blog posts.

Blue and Gold Addiction.

2008-09-14T14:01:00.004+02:00

Sweden. Population just over 7 million. Currency: Swedish Krona. Member of the EU. Famous international exports include ABBA, Pippi Longstocking, H&M, a hilariously funky Muppet chef, magnificently tall blue-eyed blondes with wonderfully Swedish names like Astrid or Hjalmar, and surnames with cool accents and lots of 's' like Ångström or Påhlsson.

And Ikea.

That wonderfully addictive Swedish DIY paradise in its golden and blue magnificence. A magical world where perfect household organisation is only a Malmö wall-mounted storage system with in-built rail-mounted wire baskets and convenient hooks away, and all your interior design dreams would become blissful reality if only you could manage to put it together.

As most of you know, I've recently moved into a new flat. Well, a new share flat. The extent of the furniture in my room on arrival in that new flat included a loft bed frame, a bamboo lounge chair, an ancient armchair and a pair of wooden TV tables inherited from the previous resident of my room.

That was all the excuse I needed to venture to Tempelhof in southern Berlin, the closest of the three Ikea superstores. I even did a re-con visit, trekking across town one Friday night after work in the rain to obtain a copy of the renovator's bible, the coveted Ikea catalogue, in preparation for my planned excursion the following day.

Over a coffee the next morning, I perused the pages in search of bargains that not only would fit my extremely tight budget, but also turn my room from four walls and a floor into a living space.

Then that afternoon, I joined forces with my Berlin best friend and one of her flatmates, and together, the three of us took on the two-storeyed homeware haven of Ikea, Tempelhof.

The design ingenuity! The innovation combined with affordability! The coolness of bold colours and unpronounceable names! It’s an adult’s toystore!

We spent four hours there. I could have bought half the store. As it was, I had to show considerable restraint in only buying what I did. I mean, who can’t find a use for 100 tea candles for a few Euros, or a stylish yet reasonably priced wicker laundry basket, or a brightly coloured floor rug? On this particular visit however, I showed remarkable restraint in only buying a few things.

A mattress – clearly essential, considering the previous three nights I’d been sleeping on all of the winter clothes I had in Berlin carefully folded into a makeshift bed so that the wood of the base wouldn’t be so uncomfortable.

A desk – DIY of course. But considering my Lego skills as a child, and the fact that my reputation with a previous employer for assembling furniture faster than any other colleague led to my then-manager designating an hour per week on my roster to constructing display models of new stock, I knew I wouldn’t have a problem. Give me an Allen key and a Phillips head screwdriver, and I'm good to go.

The piece de resistance however, was my sofa bed. I’d had my eye on a few sofa beds advertised in Buy/Swap/Sell websites in Berlin, and I really wanted an Exarby. Comfy, cheap, and chic. But as it turned out, this store was out of stock. They did however have a fantastic alternative. Sign up for the Ikea loyalty card, and for the punishment of receiving the aforementioned renovator’s bible, otherwise known as the quarterly Ikea catalogue, conveniently delivered to your house, in addition to the occasional special offer email… you would get a €99 sofa bed for the bargain price of €49!!!

Yes, I bought it. And I love it.

Hello, my name’s Australis, and I'm an Ikea addict.

The trouble with English...

2008-09-09T10:29:00.003+02:00

I have to admit, one of the things I love about being fluent in two languages and having skills in a further two is having the option to codeswitch, to switch into the another language and plead foreigner when people bug me – gypsies, beggars, salespeople, people handing out fliers on the street, or wanting you to sign their petition for/against [fill in the gap].

In Australia, it works like a charm – while Australians do learn languages at school, and the classics of French and the like feature, the focus is logically on Asian languages. On top of that, with the exception of people from non-English-speaking backgrounds, most people’s skills extend to a vague high school level and rarely any further. Brilliant.

In Germany, it doesn't work quite so well. Sometimes, yes, the pure shock of receiving a quick “No, thanks” to their casual icebreaker is enough to cut people off at the pass and they let you walk by. But other times I’m reminded that having English as my default switch language in Germany, or in the majority of countries in Europe, if not the world, does not have the same power that German does at home. Possibly because English is the most studied language on the planet (the often-quoted statistic that the number of native speakers of English is vastly outnumbered by the number of people learning English in China is astounding but true). By the way, my backups of French and Italian also often feature in people’s linguistic repertoire here – and their language level is almost always better than mine, so aside from the fact that my usual attire of jeans, Cons and a hoodie is nowhere near chic enough to pretend to be a Parisienne or a Florentine, I'm also linguistically out-skilled.

So the default switch remains English. And sure, sometimes you can get away with it – either because the other person’s English isn’t up to the level required or they just can’t be bothered to translate their sales pitch on the spot. Or because my Australian accent freaked them out a little.

Other times though, you weigh up the odds, and you decide to play that card, thereby calling someone’s bluff that they don’t speak English, or at least not enough to continue annoying you…

And it blows up in your face, usually in a rather spectacular fashion.

Example 1. Mid July, 2008. Sitting at a pavement table with a good friend of mine in Berlin at a cheap burger place in Kreuzberg, a very “uni student” area (cheap, alternative, and just a little grotty), happily chatting away in English over some delicious potato wedges, mayo and ketchup.

Enter random homeless guy.

He’s holding his beer as if someone might try to wrench it from his grasp at any moment, smells like a brewery and looks like he hasn’t showered in months, possibly years, but his German is remarkably non-slurred. He stands at one end of our table and starts making small talk with us – complaining about something or other, and just begging for us to start a conversation with him. Neither of us are really interested, and after politely nodding and smiling and making small talk with him in German for a few minutes, we switch back to English and continue our own conversation, hoping he’ll take this as a subtle “Please go away” signal.

He doesn't. To our horror, he takes a seat and follows our lead, switching to surprisingly fluent English. Turns out this guy lived in England for a good few years, studied at some university there (Oxford comes to mind, but I can’t remember exactly), and apparently retained his language skills.

Bugger.

For the next twenty minutes or so, we are subjected to his ramblings on all manner of topics which he thought essential to discuss with us, including an apparent dislike of America. Oh, and he also decided to bring up the Australian government’s treatment of the Aboriginal community, which he then compared to the slave trade in America. It was obvious that he had very little information about the situation or the history, and I ceased talking to him at this stage. He continued talking to, or rather at, my friend for a while, insulting America all the way. By the way, she’s American, which he knew.

We kept hoping he’d run out of steam and leave of his own accord, but he never seemed to. So, as soon as we’d finished our beers, we bid him goodnight (yeah, we’re too polite and subtle for our own good – need to learn some of that German directness), and made a run for it. He got up after us, and made a move to follow us for a few minutes, but fortunately we wove our way through the evening pedestrian traffic on Oranienstrasse and lost him.

I have no doubt that this will not be the last blog post on the dilemmas of code switching into English. Stay tuned…

Reflections on the year

2008-09-02T16:37:00.000+02:00

Over pasta and pre-made Bolognese sauce a few night ago – mostly because I couldn’t be bothered cooking – I pulled out the diary, which I hadn’t written in for months. That’s actually a long time for me – usually it’s at least every week, at the bare minimum.

It’s amazing how a few months can completely change you.

Take today. Got home from work, and for some reason decided the mountain of papers I had dumped on the black wooden TV table I had inherited from a previous resident of my share flat could no longer remain there. So over pasta and Lidl’s attempt at bolognese sauce, I got comfy on my new Ikea discount sofa, and I began to sort them.

There was all kinds of stuff in there – photos of my family and my friends, postcards from Turkey, Morocco, most of eastern Europe and many other places, brief pages of scribbled dot-point notes which had since turned into lesson plans for my jungle-like year 9 classes, CDs people burnt for me, official-looking letters from German companies calling me “Frau _____ ” (or, more often that not, “Herr ____ ”: I don’t get it – my first name is not exactly uncommon in Germany) and handwritten ones from both of my grandmothers in Australia (the latter being a much more welcome sight in my letterbox than the former)… and a stack of notebook pages covered with scribbled diary entries from the last year.

It’s been just on a year since I moved here. Never been away from Australia that long before. And it’s going to get up to 18 months before I get back home. And in the last year, a whole lot has gone down – old friends, heaps and heaps of new friends, new accommodation times three, getting used to calling one of the most vibrant and lively cities in the world my home, and a hell of a lot of travelling.

I guess my point is just how much I love the way travel changes you. How much you learn about your world and about yourself. And it doesn't matter if you’re backpacking through former Soviet states or remote villages of northern Africa, or living and working in a vibrant European capital. Main thing is being away from what you’re used to, and becoming completely self-reliant – knowing that your family isn’t just around the corner. Actually, that home, family and most of your friends are just about as far away as physically possible while remaining on this planet.

You’re on your own – flying free, and without a safety net, and while it can be really scary at first, the feeling discovering you have what it takes to make a life for yourself overseas, and to make it work, is its own reward.

Hope I'm this cool when I'm 80.

2008-07-13T16:39:00.000+02:00

Funkiness and octogenerians don't have to be mutually exclusive.

I think this could only happen in Berlin though. The city where you could wear anything at all, and you would fit in. Seriously, anything goes here. Emo, goth, punk, street übercool, preppy, don't-care, fashionista/fashion victim, indie, bohemian. Or a mix of all of them. All at once. I haven't seen that in any other city. Ok, yes, I have seen all of that in other cities, but not all at once, and not without some strange looks and negative comments from passers-by.

Anyways, to the point. U Bahn Johannisthaler Chaussee, south-eastern Berlin, 13.45 today. I'm on the way to my local WiFi cafe. I get off the bus, head down to the platform, and join the throng of people waiting for the train, passing the time by surfing through tracks on my iriver, day-dreaming and people-watching...

I glance toward the stairs coming down from the street above, and see a pair of stockinged feet in navy Chuck Taylors. Nothing unusual. I turn my head the other way, then look back a moment later. Walking past me is a grey-haired lady around my grandmother's age, immaculately dressed in a scarlet red jacket and skirt, a complementary silk scarf around her neck, her jewellery and makeup elegant and stylish.

And navy Chuck Taylors on her feet.

As she walks further down the platform, she attracts the attention of most of the others on the platform. Some raise their eyebrows, others nudge the person beside them and subtly (or not so subtly) point.

I, like the others, watch her continue down the platform. Yet unlike the others, mine is an expression of deep admiration and respect.

I can only hope that I'm that cool when I'm 80. You go, Oma.

Warm summer nights on Berlin balconies...

2008-07-02T12:27:00.000+02:00

This is one of the many things that I absolutely love about summer in Europe – the happy middle ground between an English and an Australian summer. The sun definitely has some warmth and strength in it, but you can quite happily sit in the sun for hours without frying; unlike in Australia, it’s not enough to enslave the general populus to air-conditioning to escape daytime highs in excess of 40°C and then force them into seasonal insomnia due to overnight lows only a few degrees under 30°C.

Today, for example, I spent mostly on my balcony, chilling out, reading up on the complexities of English grammar and pitying all those who had to do real work. I had both windows and the door open, I turned my speakers to face the balcony, took my laptop outside and inflicted the entire neighbourhood with my “Road Less Travelled” playlist while I was working: mostly the stuff that I've got from a variety of sources but hadn’t had a chance to listen to. Among the artists? Tocotronic, Die Ärzte (their new album and a lot of their back catalogue), Die Toten Hosen, The Wombats, The Decemberists, The National, Vampire Weekend, Interpol, The Hoosiers and Sunrise Avenue. Eclectic, I know.

I did venture down the road to Aldi around 7pm for salad ingredients, then returned to the balcony to eat a home-made spinach pizza with a crunchy salad while watching “Traumschiff Surprise” on DVD as the sun slowly made its way toward the north-western horizon, leaving the sky streaked with a thousand and one shades of pink, orange and red. It’s currently 10.30pm, and it is just now getting dark, and the night chorus of cicadas is starting up, although not to the volume that we’re accustomed to in Melbourne.

I love Berlin, I love summer, and I really love summer in Berlin.

The Middle

2008-06-27T18:27:00.000+02:00

There is this one song that I absolutely love. I just heard it on the radio in Hamburg, about an hour before the end of my last shift here, and before I head over to my beloved Berlin tonight. It’s by a relatively unknown (in Australia anyway) group from Arizona in the USA, and the first time I heard it, I loved it. I loved it so much I bought the album, which I also loved, so much so that I have since bought their entire back catalogue, and seen them live recently. I was not disappointed. This first album happened to be their best ever album, as acknowledged by many of their other fans, not just by me.

This one song though, I absolutely love. It’s so positive. The other reason I love it is because somehow, I only ever hear it on days that something very significantly positive is happening. And no, it’s not because I hear the song that I imagine the rest of the day to be positive.

Example 1: I get into my car in late 2001 after handing in a philosophy essay that had taken me weeks and weeks to write, although it was only worth a minor percentage of the final assessment. Philosophy was a subject that I really loved, but just didn’t come easily to me; I put in the work because I enjoy figuring things out. Anyway, I get into the car after having handed it in, turn on the radio, and I hear this song immediately. Two weeks later I get my grade for the essay: a High Distinction and a commendation from the head of department.

Example 2: I got home from uni one afternoon in 2004, turned on the radio, and this song gets played. I’m instantly in a brilliant mood, and I go to open my mail. I find an acceptance letter for a program to go to Germany for a year and teach English in a high school there as an assistant.

Example 3: I head into the foreigners’ office in Berlin, Germany, to get my Working Holiday visa. I’ve been listening to the radio all the way in, and I’m sick of it. I turn on the 100% shuffle mode on my MP3 – this creates a random playlist of all the songs in my MP3, regardless of the number of times songs have been played. The first song I hear, just before my number is called – yes, this song. And the visa? I get it, with no problems, and the surprise here - less than 2hrs waiting time!

Example 4: and now, just as I'm preparing to leave Hamburg, of course, I hear this song.

The song is “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, and I completely love it.

The Winds Of Change

2008-06-18T12:15:00.000+02:00

The winds of change are in the air. Still in Hamburg, and still plodding along at work, but two events have taken place, which resulted in an admission of error and a decision to make a change to fix that error.

Event number 1 - a weekend sailing on the Baltic with some of my Berlin friends. Possibly the best way to chill and clear your head in northern Germany - or anywhere, for that matter. Sea air, good friends, German beer, northern German dice games at 1am, some good conversation, and a few days away from Hamburg and work - ah, bliss. Also inspiration from Harold and Maude to not worry so much about what other people think of you.

Event number 2 - one of these friends told me something that I had actually known subconsciously for a long time: I think too much. I over-analyse things. And not just the life-changing, monumental issues - the tiny stuff, that in a matter of weeks, days, or in many instances, hours, will have been long relegated to the file "Not worth remembering".

This leads me to a question: am I alone here? How many of you actually nodded in sympathetic agreement whilst reading the above admission? Changing my FB status alone to reflect this new mindset of "less thinking, more doing" resulted in a wall post and an instant message within half an hour. I welcome your comments.

Event 1 + Event 2 = Result: I am moving back to Berlin. Soon - within a fortnight. Reasons vary: work, friends & (substitute) family, and instinct/gut feeling/mindset.

First, the job is not at all what I thought it would be. I'm not someone who enjoys working completely alone. I need to have people around me both at work and in general with a similarly positive and enthusiastic outlook, for mutual motivation and support. I am also someone with ambition and direction. I need to know that both myself and the company I work for are going somewhere, that what I do at work actually has a purpose in the grand scheme of things. Hamburg doesn't fit the bill for me at the moment.

Second, my friends and one of my German families are in Berlin, and I truly miss them. Fair enough, I've only been in Hamburg for three weeks, which is definitely not enough to create a friendship group here, but I already have a circle of friends in Berlin, which is enough of a reason for me to seriously consider going back.

Third - I'm in a Berlin state of mind, to quote Mr Joel. I'm not finished with that city, and I want to maximise my time there. It's an incredible city and I feel just as much at home there as I do in my native Melbourne. Sounds strange to most of you, but I know at least Blonde Canadian knows how I feel. I need to go back there.

So, it will be "Goodbye Hamburg - nice knowing you", and a reunion with my beloved Berlin next weekend. That prospect alone is already giving me the motivation to continue through this week.
I'll keep you posted.

The flatmate

2008-06-10T17:08:00.000+02:00

I am the first to admit that I have never lived in a share flat before - in Germany, they're known as WGs. Well, not for longer than a month anyway. I've seen my fair share though from hanging out with friends in Berlin, and crashing on various couches - from small WGs with only one or two flatmates, to the relatively huge, with up to five flatmates. I've heard about a lot of different styles of flatmate, from the socialites to the hermits, from the cleaning freaks to the slobs, and everything in between.

My new flatmate though - strictly temporary, so don't get all worked up that I haven't yet sent a Hamburg address out to everyone - is... well, interesting. He's about in his mid 30s, I think, Bangladeshi, and works the afternoon/night shift in a restaurant on the harbour in Hamburg. He cooks a lot of curry - understandable, being from that area - but the way I knew wasn't by him telling me. Rather, by the yellow stains in the kitchen. Not just around the stove from the night before. No. These are stains that have been there for months, if not years. I know - I tried to scrub, and started to destroy my fingers before making any impact on the stains. And it's not just a few. They're all over the stove, on the rangehood, on the counter, on the side of the fridge adjacent to the stove, on all of the light-coloured utensils, and on the bottom of all of the crockery.

And then there's the cutlery. Most people use the cutlery drawer, some people use a cutlery dispenser or a rotating hanging contraption for their forks, spoons, etc. No. In this flat, there is a bucket half full with water on the kitchen floor: every utensil in the kitchen was in this bucket of water when I came into the kitchen to cook on the first night I was there. No idea if they're clean or dirty or somewhere in between. I removed my jewellery from my right hand, gritted my teeth and reached in to grab some essentials: one fork, one sharp knife, one wooden spoon, and a normal spoon. None of the crockery matches, so after having washed all four of these carefully with hot water, detergent and a scourer, I put them in the drawer and made note of their identifying marks.

Like I said, this place is temporary.

Germans and their Vegemite

2008-06-10T16:17:00.000+02:00

I have no doubt that this will be a continuing series. Here's number two - Germans and their Vegemite.
The phone rings on an average Tuesday afternoon.
"How can I help you?" I ask politely after announcing the company name.
"Good afternoon. Do you have Vegemite?" In German, and of course straight to the point.
"Unfortunately we are completely out of stock of Vegemite at the moment, but we are expecting - "
"When will you get more Vegemite?"
Well, if you'd let me finish the first time... I take a deep breath. He's obviously one of those customers. "We're expecting a delivery by the end of the week."
"Do you have Marmite?"

I couldn't believe he asked. Such a poor substitute, but if you're not Australian, you usually don't notice the subtle difference in flavour. Short answer is "Yes, at the moment we have three jars of Marmite in stock."
"Is that all?"
Sorry, I forgot to mention the two thousand jars we've got in reserve in a warehouse in downtown Hamburg... okay, a little heavy on the sarcasm. "Yes, that's all we have for the moment. How many would you like?"
"I am the catering director of a cruise ship currently docked in Hamburg, and I need thirty-six jars of Vegemite."
"Well, we don't have any in stock at the moment, but I'm sure if you would like to give me a contact phone number, I can call the owner of the store and we could arrange a special order for you."
"We sail out on Friday. Can they be delivered by Thursday night?"

Ok, one second. First - I don't know where to start. Thirty-six jars of Vegemite? Even your average Coles Supermarket in Australia would rarely have that much stock on hand at any one time. But a small import business in Hamburg, catering predominantly for the niche expat market? No way, Jose. And all of this by Friday? Sorry, Thursday, ready for departure Friday morning? You've got better chances of a free return ticket on the next shuttle to the moon.

I am rather more careful with my words than that, and I inform Mr Caterer Extraordinaire that unfortunately that just isn't possible, as shipping from Australia alone can take up to ten weeks. He's rather displeased with this and wishes me a pleasant day. I hope he's not like that with all of his suppliers, for his company's sake.

Anzac Day 2008 - The Gallipoli Experience

2008-06-09T17:33:00.000+02:00

Anzac Day - the 25th of April - is a national public holiday in Australia and New Zealand. The term itself, "Anzac", is practically sacred in Australia and New Zealand, and has even been copyrighted by the RSL to protect it from potential 'misuse' [website: Using Anzac] Most of you know why it is so significant. If not, have a look at the Australian War Memorial site. In a nutshell, Anzac Day commemorates the landings of the Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops on the far north-west coast of Turkey at dawn on the 25th of April, 1915. It was a complete disaster, in terms of tactics, intelligence, and above all, loss of life on both sides. However, out of this unthinkably horrible battlefield, the national character of all three countries was born.

Since 2000, my Anzac tradition is to sleep at my grandparents like I used to when I was a kid. My grandfather and I get up at 4am on the 25th to get the bus from the local RSL to the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne with tens of thousands of others for the Dawn Service. I’m not sure when I first considered making the trip to Turkey. Maybe it was at the first Dawn Service I went to… maybe years before that. Either way, I’d been researching the logistics of this for quite a few years, and without a doubt, the easiest way to do it was to join a tour group. So I did.

I’m definitely someone accustomed to doing their travel homework, and in this case, I hit gold. The wonder that is Google brought me to the website of Istanbul travel agency True Blue Tours - without a doubt the best travel agency I’ve ever dealt with. I could not fault them. Yes, they are that good. Yilmaz, the owner/manager, will quite literally do almost anything for his clients. And so I found myself abandoning school for two days, claiming an Australian national cultural pilgrimage, and set off for Istanbul, the only city in the world to span two continents, possibly the city with the greatest number of official names over the years, and even a song to commemorate this feat. Almost as soon as I arrived in Istanbul, I fell in love with it. Before I’d even got to the centre of the city, Istanbul had well and truly got under my skin. I think it might have been a combination of the warm weather, the sunshine and the magnificent harbour, reminiscent of St Kilda Esplanade, that entranced me. Then again, I think the immortal words of Darryl Kerrigan capture it much more succinctly: “It’s just the vibe”.

The 4-day round trip from Istanbul started on the Wednesday night with a Turkish cultural evening - a belly dancer reminiscent of Amy Winehouse and a very entertaining singer, whose linguistic skills spanned not only Turkish and English, but also German, Hindi, Mandarin and French. His repertoire included musical masterpieces and cultural cornerstones from all nationalities present - a Chinese ballad, a groovy Bollywood number, a Latvian folk song, and “Muss I Denn” for the Germans. He unfortunately overlooked the Kiwis, and instead chose to include them in a Turkish-accented rendition of “Waltzing Matilda”.

The following morning was a bright and early 6am start for the five-hour drive down to the Gallipoli peninsula. About three hours into the drive, we began to realise with every passing truck stop just how many Australian and Kiwi expats had chosen 2008 to make the pilgrimage. The number of giant white luxury coaches in each and every carpark continued to grow (I stopped counting at twenty - at one truck stop!). For many reasons, we were indeed fortunate that our tour company had chosen a 30-seater minibus with all the luxuries of a coach, in addition to being painted a spectacular shade of bronze. Not only did this make our group a lot easier to keep together, and to get to know a lot more people on the tour in the few days we had together, but it also made it a lot easier to both park the bus and find it in the fleet of over 400 (!!!) total coaches.

Eceabat, the major town on the peninsula, appeared to have been transformed into Manly/Torquay for the weekend. The streets were filled with Australians and Kiwis, wearing Socceroos, All-Blacks and various AFL jerseys (Essendon and Collingwood were the frontrunners), Havaiana thongs/flip flops, Billabong boardies, Oakleys on their heads and all manner of commemorative Gallipoli landing t-shirts. First up was an essential Turkish lunch - a real Turkish döner (similar to a Greek souvlaki). Since Berlin apparently has the largest Turkish population of any city outside Turkey, döner is the unofficial dish of Berlin, and goes down a treat at around 3-4am. There are some great döner places in Berlin, but nothing compares to the real thing. I also caved to the local entrepreneurs and bought myself a souvenir t-shirt, and managed to get my first practice at haggling - got the guy down from 20YTL to 15YTL (1YTL (lira) = approx AUD$1.10). Felt very proud.

We left Eceabat behind and began our tour of the battlefields. First stop was the Dardanelles coast, followed by Lone Pine, the site of a major battle between the Australian and the Turkish armies in August of 1915. At times, the front lines were within metres of each other, forcing the soldiers to abandon their rifles and bayonets, and instead use rocks, knives, and their bare hands. For more information, have a look at the AWM website. This is now the location of the major Australian memorial on the peninsula. The entire site is no larger than your average suburban footy ground. At one end is a low wall covered in the names of the fallen; behind this is an immense granite monument, and in front of it is another low wall with the inscription “Their name liveth for evermore”. We had about twenty minutes here, and I walked around the monument first, then wandered between the rows and rows of gravestones. All had names, birthdates, and dates of death, but for some, those were the only pieces of information known. Many had also been inscribed with an epitaph; some reflected those waiting at home for the dead, some were biblical verses, others poignantly simple: “He laid down his life for his friends”, “Could I just clasp your hand one more time to say well done”, “Until we meet again”, “Peace perfect peace”. I could have spent hours there, but unfortunately more and more people were streaming in as tour groups arrived from Istanbul, and we still had a lot of ground to cover before heading over to Anzac Cove.

Next stop was Chunuk Bair, the New Zealand official commemorative site. As with Lone Pine for Australians, Chunuk Bair was the site of a major battle, this time between New Zealand and Turkish forces. The entrance is a wide open hilltop with a spectacular view up the coast towards Suvla Bay, and there are five massive concrete blocks mounted here in a circle, each with quotes from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk or similar; all in Turkish, but nevertheless spectacular. The focal part of the site is a small commemorative area, again with spectacular views of the coast, and between the two areas there is a maze of old trenches. Chunuk Bair, while spectacular, and the New Zealand equivalent of Lone Pine, wasn’t as moving for me as Lone Pine, or indeed Anzac Cove. While both of the others have areas of marked graves, Chunuk Bair seemed more to me like a construction site, and unfortunately we didn’t have the time here to walk around and explore more.

From there, we moved on to a site which most of the big tour groups simply skip over; the Turkish 57th Infantry Regiment Memorial. It’s right on the tour route, very close to The Nek, Lone Pine and Chunuk Bair, but as an Anzac group, we were without a doubt in the minority. The atmosphere here is similar yet also different; where the other monuments are rectangles of white granite, the red-tinged Turkish memorial has a distinctly oriental design, and while crosses and the occasional star of David mark the graves of fallen Anzacs, here each headstone is engraved with a star and crescent moon, and all point south-southeast towards Mekkah, with inscriptions in both Turkish and Arabic script. While this was a significant enough change, it wasn’t until we were leaving that I noticed something that gave me a very personal connection with this place. A group of about twenty school-age children were gathered in front of a wall of remembrance engraved with hundreds of Turkish names, while two adults attempted to wrangle them for a group photo. It was then that I noticed that not only were they all similarly dressed, but that they were also wearing blue neck scarves very similar to the ones we had worn as Guides and Scouts in Australia. They were a Turkish Scout group, visiting a war memorial for the fallen soldiers of their country, just as I had done many times with school and Guide groups in Australia, and it suddenly hit home that although this site was considered almost sacred for the descendants of the Anzacs who had lost their lives here, it is just as significant for the Turkish people for exactly the same reason. As I wrote in an email to the travel agent who organised the tour, I could relate to those kids; suddenly it didn't matter which uniform the soldiers had worn, which flag they saluted or if their home was thousands of kilometres away on the other side of the world, or a small village in a nearby valley. None of them should have died there.

We left the Turkish memorial and slowly made our way back toward Anzac Cove, where we would spend the night. The entire area was declared an alcohol-free zone in 2003, although I cannot imagine how the organisers ever saw fit to allow drinking at the site. Approaching the main entrance, we noticed two long queues for security, and so joined on the end, and waited. Then my phone rings. Some back story required here - check one of the previous entries. Anyway, security was tight, involving rigorous body and luggage searches, then we finally made it inside. Seeing the area itself for the first time I have to admit, I was surprised by the small size. I had expected an area the size of a city block, although I think, in my imagination, having heard stories about this battle for as long as I can remember, I had built it up in my mind to be an expansive area to fit the immense significance of the battle which took place here. In reality though, the area is probably the size of two football fields - a similar size to Lone Pine.

It was only 4pm and already the grassed area was almost completely full, and the empty seats in the grandstands were rapidly disappearing. We managed to find a group of seats together and settled in for the night. The light was slowly fading, and considering we’d be in the grandstands all night, I left the group to explore the area for myself about an hour before sunset. I wandered back up the entrance road towards Ari Burnu, a small point marking the south end of Northern Beach, and made my way down onto the beach. On the way down, I saw a large granite block, again with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's famous quote on it. I love the sentiment behind it.

There were a few others weaving between the graves, pausing here and there for a moment, and after reading some of the inscriptions myself, I moved further down onto the beach itself and settled on the rocky beach to watch the sunset. Although I grew up in suburban Melbourne, a lot of my childhood was spent at the beach or on the water, and just sitting on the shore at Ari Burnu, away from the crowded chaos of Northern Beach, watching the waves gently wash over the pebbles, I finally had a chance to reflect on why I was actually there and the significance of the place. One song kept running through my head - And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, by Eric Bogle. I'd taught some of my year 11s in Berlin about the history of Anzac through this song, and I love it. Watching the waves on the shore, the line "And their blood stained the sand and the water" had newfound meaning. It was this beach that he was talking about. The clear blue water gently ebbing and flowing, and the yellow grainy sand mixed with grey pebbles that I was so calmly relaxing on had once been stained scarlet with the blood of my ancestors. Truly food for thought.

I stayed there for a good hour, and only long after the sun had set over the Aegean and the stars had begun tracing their path towards the west, I gradually made my way back to the rest of the True Blue Tours gang. And then began the long wait for dawn. I had read some previous extracts from online travel reviews about the Anzac experience, and so knew it would be cold, but I had no idea it would be the kind of cold that froze you to the bone, so that no amount of moving could get you warm, that cups of piping hot Turkish tea straight out of the urn seemed merely lukewarm, and that your own shivering kept you awake, even at 5am after having been awake for almost 24 hours. Many people had brought sleeping bags, but unfortunately I neither had a one in Berlin, nor was inclined to buy one just for this trip. Even our tour organiser had expected a significantly less Antarctic overnight experience, having advised me against bringing a sleeping bag and assuring me that a warm jacket and a beanie would suffice. Unfortunately it did not. Sitting in my ski jacket with my jeans tucked into my socks and boots, two scarves tightly wrapped around my neck and a fleece blanket snugly around my legs to keep the wind blowing through the back of the grandstand from turning my lower legs into iceblocks, I began to appreciate the soldiers’ experiences of arriving at Gallipoli that morning in the boats, wearing not much more than a military uniform, and certainly not having the luxury of high tech fleece or good old hot tea to ward off the hypothermia.

To be fair, the organisers made a fair attempt to distract us from the cold; they had set up massive screens around the area and throughout the night showed personal documentaries relating to both Anzac and Turkish soldiers, which included extracts from diaries and letters home, and interviews with Gallipoli historians from both Australia and New Zealand, as well as intermittent performances of music from that era by the Australian and NZ military band.

Then finally around 5am, there began to be movement at the station. Well, at the podium anyway. I have to admit, although the service itself was the main reason for making the trip to Turkey in the first place, by this stage I was so overtired that I had discovered I have the skill of being able to nap standing up. I literally could not keep my eyes open any longer, and during some of the readings at least, I know I drifted off for a few minutes here and there. I was however awake long enough to see a truly magnanimous gesture from the Turkish military. Behind the stage, the flags of all three nations were fluttering gently in the early morning breeze - the Australian and New Zealand flags both at half-mast in accordance with military tradition. However within the first few minutes, a senior Turkish military officer directed one of his subordinates to lower the Turkish flag to match the Australian and New Zealand. Turkish military tradition differs slightly from Australian in that the flag is either fully raised or fully lowered, and breaking tradition to acknowledge the customs of the military forces of two then-enemy countries may have been a small gesture, but its significance was not lost on the crowd.

The service itself was similar to the Melbourne service, and all of the elements that I love about the service at home were there. I’m not sure what I would choose as my favourite part though. I think just hearing all of the readings and hymns that I’m so used to hearing in Melbourne actually read and sung at Gallipoli, at Northern Beach, was the best part: Abide With Me, which always reminds me of my grandpa - I don’t know the words, but he does, and when they play it in Melbourne, I love to listen to him sing along with the other veterans. One thing that I don't recall hearing in Melbourne is Ataturk's speech - the one I mentioned before. Here, it had special significance. The original Mehmets and Johnnies may have long since passed away, but their descendents continue to remember their sacrifices, and have an incredible amount of mutual respect. And his words still hold true.

The Ode of Remembrance had particular importance - after all, the 17,000-strong crowd gathered on the shore was all the evidence anyone would need that to clearly demonstrate that “We will remember them.” The Last Post echoed around the hills and valleys and reflected off the cliffs behind us, then Advance Australia Fair was played. At the time, I was extremely moved by this, but that was before Lone Pine.

And suddenly it was all over. Almost without anyone realising, the sun had risen and was starting to bring some warmth to the chilly morning air, and gradually the huge crowd dispersed for the separate services. Again, full credit to our travel agent - Yilmaz and our driver had managed to demonstrate strategic genius in finding a space for our bus, and after a quick breakfast, we got back onto the bus and headed up to Lone Pine [photo].

This was the other service I’d been looking forward to; a service with just Australians, in a place that has a significance for our country and our history like no other place on Earth. Where yesterday the site had been relatively calm and spacious, the grandstands along both sides of the memorial and all of the grassed area between the graves and around the Lone Pine were now filled with people, still obviously very close to being either frostbitten or asleep - in many cases, both - from the Dawn Service. The service here was different to Anzac Cove - for me, it was much more personal. By this stage, I’d been away from Australia for nine months, and aside from my mum’s visit and a few random eavesdropping opportunities in the trains in Berlin, I’d had very little contact with Aussies here. And now, to be surrounded by Australians, and to stand at a place like Lone Pine, seeing the Australian flag at half mast and hearing Advance Australia Fair - that was something that I will never forget as long as I live. I’m not a huge fan of the anthem - Adam Hills most definitely had a point when he said that it’s not the most inspiring anthem in the world. The tune shares a greater resemblance with a funeral dirge than an inspiring ballad, and some of the words are linguistically obsolete - exhibit A: girt. However, it is still our national anthem, and standing in the grandstand, my flag wrapped around my shoulders just like hundreds of other people, hearing those first few notes, seeing everyone get to their feet, and then listening to the 10,000 strong crowd sing along (of course, majority for the first verse only - then there was a great flurry of activity as people dove for their Order Of Service booklets for the words to the second verse); that is a moment that will stay with me forever. In the middle of Turkey, I felt like I was at home.

The rest of the day is something of a blur. Following the Lone Pine service was the Chunuk Bair service for the New Zealanders. By this stage, I was getting to the point of saturation with military services and official commemorative memorials, and like many of the others in the group, I chose the warmth and wind-free shelter of the bus. By that afternoon, we were on the highway back up to Istanbul, and that night in the hotel, I think I probably got one of the best nights sleep ever.

And with that, I’m going to bring this entry to a somewhat premature close. I think I managed to fit two completely different trips into the space of a weekend - the craziness of Istanbul, and the monumental historical and cultural significance of the Anzac Day Dawn Service on the Gallipoli Peninsula, and hence I’ve chosen to separate the two in my blog. Ok, you’ve got me: I’ve only managed to finish the first part. Yes, I admit - I take my time with blogs. Either way, the Anzac part is done, so enjoy that, and I hope to not keep you all waiting too long with the Istanbul experience. Ciao -A

Customers and their randomness...

2008-06-09T15:36:00.000+02:00

The weird thing about working in a store in Germany... well, there are many weird things. The first - no, the main one - is the customers. Strange customers and their strange comments and opinions are without a doubt an international plague.

Example: a woman at the cafe I used to work at in Melbourne who would come in at least once a week, order herself a coffee and a muffin, sit at a table and proceed to have a lengthy and earnest yet almost silent argument with herself, at the end of which she would present a member of staff with a small gift, usually a perfume or hand cream sample from one of the major department stores in the centre, before leaving the store without a further word.

Here, the customers might not talk to themselves, but the way they talk to each other or even to me about Australia is sometimes astounding. The first afternoon I worked here, I noticed a rather scruffy looking old man standing outside reading one of our window signs, then shaking his head at it before pushing the door open. At first glance he looks rather average, however having lived in Germany for a while, I can spot the homeless a mile away - unidentifiable stains on his clothes, years of street grime staining the back of his hands and his fingernails, and a faint aroma of urine and stale beer following him like a cloud. He looks at one of the displays at the back of the store.
In German: "You sell meat?"
"Yes, we do. We sell kangaroo meat and also emu sausage." Both of which I find revolting, but that's just my opinion.
"Why do you kill animals so that you can continue your life?"

Oh, god. Here we go. Not just your average homeless looney tunes, but a vegan one hankering for an argument. And on top of that, it's in German. My Deutsch skills are good, but I don't have an answer for a question like that in any language that would satisfy him. He takes my "Tja" - the German equivalent of - "Well..." as an admission of moral corruption and an invitation to preach. For the next five minutes, he proceeds to bombard me with opinions and self-righteous statements concerning veganism and the Ten Commandments: as he very bluntly reminded me, "Thou shalt not kill" is one of them. Eventually he loses the will to argue with me - mostly because I refuse to argue with him - and leaves the store.

Two days later he's back. This time the boomerang is the bone of contention. He sees that we have two designs of boomerang, and knows from the previous encounter that I am Australian, and now flying solo in the store (1 day of training for a full time position was considered completely adequate - the fact that my trainer spent over 50% of the day on flirtcafe.de is totally irrelevant.). He goes in for the kill. "What's the story?" he asks me, pointing to the boomerang display. Note: in German, the word for 'story' is the same as the one for 'history'. I have no idea which one he means. I ask.
"You're Australian. This is an Australian store. Boomerangs are from Australia. You should be able to tell me the history of the boomerang."
You've got to be kidding me. Where do I start with the issues here? I don't. I tell him that there's two main styles of boomerang that we stock: the returning boomerang and the hunting boomerang.
"Wrong. There are three types."
And yet again, I get a lecture from Mr Wikipedia himself, this time on the topic of the history of the boomerang.

Then there's the inspiration for this blog: the woman who just left the store. She and a friend came in and had a bit of a look around. I quickly realised that she would be one of those who would find everything in the store too expensive, and would clearly target me, the salesperson, as the reason for this daylight robbery. I agree, our stock is expensive, but with good reason: it's known as freight, and considering Australia is on the other side of the world, the extra charge for us to bring Australia, or pieces thereof, to Germany and alleviate the need for our customers to either go there themselves to buy things or to order things online and pay postage from Australia independently is a small price to pay. Most people understand that.

This woman didn't. First stop: Blundstones. Yes, they're expensive.
"Do you have kids sizes?"
"Yes, we do, but unfortunately we have limited stock at the moment."
"I wouldn't buy them anyway. They're too expensive and they're not worth it for kids - they grow too fast."
I can see in her eyes that there's no possiblity for a rational discussion here.
Five minutes later at the register, as they're paying (incidentally, the woman bought one of those tourist-targeting green and gold slouch hats with the corks on the brim), her friend blurts out "Someone died in Australia recently."
Well, yes, I'm sure someone has died in Australia at some stage. I bite my tongue however and suggest the name Steve Irwin, since that's one of the few Aussies people know over here.
"Yeah, the crazy guy who had it coming."

This got my back up. For two reasons. First, it's extremely bad taste. Even if it were toned down, only Australians can say something like that, and even then, only in a group of Australians, because we understand the black humour. Second, from other nationalities, I would be prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to sense of humour - maybe I just don't get theirs. And in Germany, that's been proven before. It took months for Simon and I to figure out each other's sense of humour. But this woman had such an insulting and negative tone in her voice that it was all I could do to ignore the comment and politely ask for the 7.99 for the stuffed koala she'd selected.
"And the kid's continuing - she's just like her father. Disgraceful mother encouraging it. I suppose she's rich though. Dead husband, but still rich," she said with a glare as she waddled out of the store.

I was speechless.

FB isn't always evil.

2008-05-27T17:17:00.000+02:00

I admit it. I sing the praises of Facebook. Sometimes. While I completely understand the reluctance of some to succumb, I have willingly joined the ranks, and in the process, have managed to both maintain and re-establish contact with people from my past who I otherwise probably would never have seen again.

Prime example of this: my best friend from early high school. I’ll take you back to 1993, the start of Year 6 for me. Rather than sticking out another year of my own personal hell at my local primary school, I bailed and traded it for my future high school, a small private girls’ school in the inner suburbs of Melbourne. This school, although without a doubt elitist and snobby, introduced me to something that would have an enormous impact on the rest of my life: the German language. Yes, that’s where it all started. Year 6C. Ah, the memories. The other great thing about 1993 was that I met one of my best friends from my primary school days. Ingrid. From about two weeks into year 6 until the end of year 7, we were nigh on inseparable. We were at first united by our common love (based on our shared talent) for German, and a strong friendship grew from there: we had tween-ish nicknames for each other, knew each other’s families inside out, spent many a weekend together, helped each other to cheat on our Year 7 German teacher’s evil vocabulary tests, and even created our own Calligraphy club at school – consisting of her and me.

Anyway, unfortunately at the end of year 8, her family relocated back to Sydney, and somehow, despite our closeness, we lost contact. Sure, we heard bits and pieces about each other from friends of mutual friends, but nothing significant.

Then came FB. I noticed about four months ago that Sarah, a friend of mine from way back – we went to kinder, primary school and high school together, and even the same uni – had added Ingrid as a friend! Well, there was no way I was going to miss this opportunity. I added her also and so the reconnection process began. We emailed, messaged and compared “what-I’ve-been-doing-for-the-last-ten-years” stories, and discovered that we’d both changed an incredible lot since high school. Figures. Anyway, she had recently got married, and was headed over to Europe with her husband, and they were planning to go to Turkey for Anzac Day. Coincidence! So was I! From there, it was a no-brainer that of course we would meet up in Istanbul. We traded mobile numbers and went from there.

Imagine my surprise when, while waiting in the security queue at Anzac Cove, my phone rings: the display reads Ingrid. I answer, and discover that she’s already inside the security area, and bored, so we arranged for her to come down to security and meet me there.

And seriously, it was as if no time had passed at all. I recognised her instantly, and after sticking with my group for a while to secure a place in the grandstand for the overnight ordeal, I found Ingrid and her group and settled in with them for a good chat for a while. It was great to catch up, and I discovered that although we hadn’t seen each other in over a decade, nothing much had really changed: we got on just as well that afternoon in Turkey as we had all those carefree afternoons in 1993 and 1994 in Melbourne.

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin.

2008-05-27T16:09:00.000+02:00

Seriously, I have no idea where the last 10 months have gone. It seems like just yesterday I was still at work in stationery with Zoe. and the team, counting down the days until I escaped for Germany and a year in Berlin, and now it’s the end of May, and I’m packing up again, but this time to move within Germany. And on that topic, it is truly incredible how much junk you can accumulate in a year. The paper rubbish alone has filled four of the trusty green Coles shopping bags, and the other random rubbish – yes, it’s taken me about two weeks, off and on, to pack up my flat. Made all the more difficult by the magnificent weather outside in Berlin, the hundreds of “end-of-the-year-and-probably-the-last-time-we’ll-see-each-other” shindigs with the other assistants, and yes, travel too: well, wouldn’t you do the same thing if you had 10 days off in the middle of May, three eager travel buddies, a few hundred Euros saved, and return flights to Morocco were less than 200€ return? Yes, you know you would.

Anyway, it’s my last weekend in Berlin – last full one anyway. Last night we went out to Russendisko, the Russian disco in central Berlin, a truly unique cultural experience. It’s so much fun, especially last night for some reason – the atmosphere was electric, and the entire place was jumping. There’s a theme song for the place, “Moskau, Moskau”, and playing that at Russendisko is like playing Land Down Under at a Socceroos match; the entire crowd goes absolutely wild. I completely love this place, as do two of my best mates in Berlin, Tim and Sam, so it was clear that we would go there last night. I really hope that Hamburg has something similar… doubt it though, but if not, there’s plenty of other options. And hey, Berlin’s only two hours on the train away. Yes, I’ve already warned the boys I’ll probably be crashing on one of their couches for most of the weekends in June, and possibly July, until they leave. There’s just too much going on here.

I’ve got mixed feelings about the move to Hamburg next weekend. I will definitely miss Berlin. This city is unlike any other in the world, and it is without a doubt my favourite city in Europe, and my second favourite in the world – I could live here for the rest of my life but Melbourne will always be my home. Berlin though – there’s no explaining it. You just have to come here. And for those of you who have had the incredible opportunity to live here, you know what I’m talking about more than most.

But for now, it’s a new city, new job, new flat, new friends – it’ll be a challenge, and I know I’ll be busy for the first month – actually, for a lot longer than just the first month, but I can’t wait. I’m definitely ready for a change – school’s been pretty boring for the last few months, with over half of my lessons being cancelled for some reason or another, and I’m looking forward to leaving. I’ll miss my table buddies in the staff room – Simon, Christa and Conny, and some of the other staff, and definitely some of my classes, but I won’t be half sad to leave like I was in Kusel. I’m ready for some serious work – something I can get my teeth into, and from what I’ve seen of the Berlin branch of the company I'm joining, there’s definitely plenty for me to do. I can’t wait to get started; I’m also going to get an English conversation class running there, which should be good. We’ll see how it goes.

This week, it’s all about Auf Wiedersehen, Berlin. A total of four classes – if they’re running – and a lot of socialising, and some packing, but apart from that, it’s all done. So basically, by this time next week, I’ll be in Hamburg, albeit in a youth hostel for the first few nights, but as soon as I have an address, I’ll let you guys all know – and hopefully this one will work! So, until Hamburg, auf wiedersehen! -J

Welcome, allerseits!

2008-05-27T16:08:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the grand premiere my very own blog. Regular requests from many of you and a significant amount of guilt have motivated me to follow the genius advice of a certain Blonde Canadian, who is neither blonde nor Canadian, and to set up a blog for myself.

So, here goes nothing. There’s a whole lot of stuff that most of you haven’t heard about, mostly because I’ve been flat out like the proverbial lizard for the last three months; travelling, occasionally teaching, travelling, sorting stuff out, and yes, some travelling. Those of you on Facebook would be the most up to date. I think the last time I sent out an email was in February, but don’t quote me on that. Yes, just checked, and that’s the latest. So, February, March, April, and May. I'll get to most of it eventually, but for the moment, we'll start small. And I love the comments almost as much as I love Allens Strawberries and Creams, so tell me what you think! :)

Los gehts!