Snowwwwww!!

Wie geht’s!

Now the first time I’d seen proper snow was in Dublin, and I have to say that this experience isn’t exactly as memorable as I wish it had been. I awoke one morning in my freezing hostel that had no shower to discover my roommates saying ‘Oh wow, it’s snowing out there! I haven’t seen snow for like a whole year!’ Little did they realize how exciting this sentence was to me. Without hesitation I ripped on as many clothes as I could and ran outside. To my disappointment, the snow was a dark brown, and just looked like strange mud. It was awful and my excitement went from level 200 to 5.

In Belgium, there was no snow. It was cold enough and it rained a lot of the time, but no snow.

Then I arrived back in Hamburg, where I’d already spent a lot of my trip so far. The reason I came back was for the Christmas and New Years period. I can imagine that apart from the cold and snow, a British Christmas wouldn’t be much to write home about, especially if I didn’t know anyone there. Sonja’s family in Hamburg was the closest family I had available at this stage, so I decided to utilize this opportunity.

It was most definitely snowing here. I could see white everywhere, and even in the city, on the roads and footpaths, it was still a lovely crisp white, not this sludgy brown rubbish I had to endure in Dublin. On that note, it was a couple digits colder than what I had experienced in Ireland too. Ouch.

I arrived at Sonja’s place and after 10 minutes, her parents had left for the weekend and since Sonja was at university, I had the house free to myself for the next three hours. After soaking myself in some bubbly German water and ridding myself of all the rubbish (Beer, Irish take-away, the general smell of Amsterdam after my stop-over and the stagnant smell of sitting on a bus for 18 hours), I spent the remainder of my time alone to marvel at the beauty that is snow.


Sonja came home and we immediately went outside and played in the snow. The river next to her house was frozen over and there were ducks sitting on top. Where the snow had fallen on top of the ice, you could see little bird footprints all over the river where they had been walking over the ice.

I don’t know how I can possibly express how cool the snow really is, and the Christmassy feeling you have throughout the whole winter. The Christmas carols actually make sense now.

Despite all the Christmas feeling and Christmassy stuff that was around, I still hadn’t done anything typically German and since I was in Germany, and that was the reason I came back, I wanted to start straight away. Gina is Polish by birth, and didn’t move to Germany until she was in her 20’s, so the family still carries on many Polish traditions as well as German. One thing particularly Polish is a kind of Christmas ‘biscuit’ or mini-pastry called Chruściki.

With Gina’s help, we mixed, rolled, cut, crafted, fried, drained and garnished the best Chruściki the world has ever seen. Instead of baking them, you deep fry them.


Before cooking, the dough is pretty flexible and tough and can therefore be crafted into lovely little shapes and patterns, but only one is traditionally used, and where we didn’t stuff up, that’s the shapes that we ended up with that you can see in the pictures.

The Chruściki themselves aren’t hugely flavoursome, so we had to absolutely drown them in icing sugar, but in the end, they were still bloody brilliant.



On another day, we took it upon ourselves to find the best and cheapest, dodgiest sled in Hamburg. Apparently the most fun and fastest sleds available are the old wooden one’s that are still popular from whenever sleds were first invented. Because of that, they can cost up to and over €50, roughly $70. A student and a backpacker can’t just throw this kind of money around and therefore we were subject to some of the cheaper alternatives. We managed to find something that looked like a crappy plastic shovel that the sign attached claimed was a sled for €3. There was also the upgraded edition which was a blue construction that looked far safer, but as fragile as an egg. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of even sitting on the thing, let alone riding it down a hill. That was about €15 I think.

Sonja knew of the perfect hill and so we trudged up there with both ‘sleds’. About half way I realized how unfit I’ve become over the past year, having not undergone any form of exercise more strenuous than walking around and lifting one litre beers. A couple times I felt like throwing up and we hadn’t even reached the hill yet.



Needless to say, when we started sledding, no amount of tiredness could have stopped me from running up the hill each time to whizz down it again. I freakin’ loved it!




The bigger blue sled (Our sheet of warped blue plastic) had two little handle things, which if you pulled, would dig into the ground which, in theory, should work like breaks/steering. In reality, they done nothing but sometimes shoot you even more off course, or would just make the entire craft flip over. It went pretty fast too.

Our plastic red shovel wasn’t quite as fast, but was a lot more fun. It was harder to stay on, there’s was nowhere to stick your feet, and if there was a 10% chance of being able to steer on the blue one, there was no chance on the little red sled.

My excitement and fun was too extreme for me to realize that I almost had no feet left due to the cold and freeze factor, I had been sweating, but this was now starting to freeze too and absolutely everything on me was covered in snow. After Sonja started complaining about not being able to feel her feet anymore, I reluctantly admitted that it was indeed probably a good time to head off.


This is just one of many snow escapades we had over the course of my time again in Hamburg, but alas, most of my experiences were right there in the moment, and my fun can’t simply be put into words. In the next blog, my mind is opened once again to the world of public nudity in the German sauna’s as we visit the ever so popular public swimming pools/fun parks.

Tchüss!

In Bruges

Hoi/Bonjour,

Leaving Dublin with a passport and UK working visa in hand, I made my relitavley short journey to Belgium. Since before coming to Europe, I'd always wanted to come to Belgium, and this seemed like a perfect time as any. My knowledge of the place was that it's bloody small and they make good chocolate and great beer. On the way there I learnt that Belgium is famous for the good old waffle too. In my head, waffles were always a completely Amercian thing and I didn't see what all the fuss was about.

I flew to a small town just outside of the capital, Brussles, where I had to find my way to Brussels train station, then I had to get on a train and make my way to Bruges (Brugge if spelt like a local). Before arriving, I had no clue what language they spoke, and while I was there, my brain suffered severely with some people speaking French, others speaking Dutch and absoultely no-one speaking English. I'm sure everyone could speak all three though.

I made it to the Brussels train station, where the majority of people were speaking what I think was French. I make this assumption due to the fact that everyone was an asshole to me because I was using English. I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible so I jumped on the next train to Bruges which took a staggeringly outragous 1 hour (To get from almost on end of the country to the other).

I nearly wet my pants with excitement of my arrival into Bruges. The houses were cute, the people all seemed to be happy and the beauty of the city itself made it's mark in the form of a smile on my face that didn't go away until I reached the hostel (Which took about another hour).

The dumb tourist look must have been smeared all over my face, because two local chaps stopped me in the street and asked if I was lost. I didn't know where my hostel was, or what it was called but somehow they managed to point my in the right direction. I'd never met friendlier locals in my life, and for a second I thought they were going to just drop me off at the front door and check me in to the place.

My hostel was above a bar - The cheapest bar in Bruges mind you. It had almost 40 beers avaialable, each with a special glass of it's own. By my luck, I managed to get a 20 bed dorm to myself.

The closest place for food was next door and it sold...Not much, so I had boiled eggs and some kind of sweet tasting bread for dinner. I found one bottle of milk in the shop, and when I went to buy it, the chap behind the counter asking if I really wanted to buy it. I asked if it was just fresh milk, and when he told me yes, I said that I definitely want to buy it. To complement my sweet bread and boiled eggs for dinner, my milk turned out to be a sour, salty and watery white substance that almost made me cry. It wasn't enjoyable at all.

Before long, I met a couple Aussies, as expected and before long we were all sipping down some beer - or brilliant tasting poison as I'd rather call it. On average, a beer in this bar was about 8.5 bloody percent, and try me, the one's out of the average circle went WELL above that percentage. Because of this, the flavour was also quite different to the standard pilsener or lager. It was such a flavour that you had to drink it at about half the speed, so in theory, you should get drunk any faster fom drinking this as opposed to standard beer. You'd be wrong! After two beers, I could feel the effects and after three, you couldn't shut me up. I wasn't planning for a big night, just a couple to meet some bar flies, but bloody hell, a couple does a good job.



The story behind this beer and the stand (Which makes it look more like a scientific experiment rather than a beer) is that the inn keeper who brewed the stuff, specially made this construction for the men transporting carraiges with horses, and so this could be tied on and they could take the beer with them. Not only does it look cool, it's a lovely beer too!

Waking up feeling not too bad the next day, I found myself walking the streets of the city buying chocolate potatoes, chocolate truffles, chocolate liquer and waffles with hot melted chocolate drizzled over it. You wouldn't believe how messy a waffle with choclate can be. I don't know how it covered so much, I could have sworn there wasn't even that much chocolate on the thing at the start. It was sooooo good though. I took some snaps, bought a few souvenier beers and returned to the hostel, eagerly awaiting the next 30 beers I was yet to try.


Tonight was much the same, just with less people who more more annoying unfortunately. We ended up in a different bar, drinking different beer with a lot more locals. We had an American who fell asleep into his beer, which resulted in it tipping over onto his crotch. Not happy Jan.

Another night sleep in a completely empty dorm allowed me to have a brilliant sleep before I had to start my treacherous journey to Hamburg the next day. Leaving at 3pm and arriving in Amsterdam at 8pm only to leave again at 11pm and arrive in Hamburg at 10am the next morning. The Amsterdam to Hamburg leg of the trip was definitely the more painful one of the two. Buses...

More details of my return to Hamburg to follow.

Hiya!!!

So after Oktoberfest, the four of us all returned to Hamburg to stay with Sonja. While here we managed to see a concert from The Cat Empire, explored the city and a day before I was due to leave Hamburg to visit a friend in a city called Cologne, I managed to lose my passport. This is perhaps one of the biggest mistakes of my life and I've learnt a life long lesson from this experience.

Firstly, I needed a passport again and to do this I needed to travel to Berlin. I needed to somehow prove who I was by supplying all these documents - i.e birth certificate and birth certificates of one of my parents. Luckily, my parents were smart enough to ask if there was a better way than sending over their original documents. It turned out that they could just get the documents verified at an Aussie post office and a photocopy could be sent over to Berlin. Luckily I had my passport with a drivers licence and a couple bank cards on me, that proved to be very helpful. Another rule though, was that you have to have a contact that can sign a recent picture of you saying that the person in the photo was actually me. This person, as the rule was written, had to have known me for at least 12 months and either had to be an Australian citizen, or have an internationally recognised full time job. Firstly, who, when travelling, would possibly know anyone for at least 12 months? To me, this is a ridiculous and stupid rule that is insanely easy to by-pass. Luckily, Callum was still hanging around Europe and could easily come and sign then picture for me, but I have an endless amount of travelling friends who I've met on the way, who may have only had a couple days contact with me, but would have all signed the picture in a heartbeat. Bloody pen pushing idiots. All in all, it took me about a month and a half to get my passport back.

Then I was faced with the next challenge. I couldn't get back into the UK without a valid permit or visa. That was in my old passport, so I somehow had to transfer my old visa in to the new one. I ended up in Dusseldorf, the 5th or 6th biggest city in Germany trying to get my visa put into my passport. It was here that I realised that I was an illegal immigrant. When an Australian flies into a Schengen country (I'm not going to bother explaining in full detail, but there is a thing called the Schengen region which involves all the major European countries, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Greece etc...) they get a stamp in their passport, which allows the traveller to spend 90 days in a 180 day period in the Schengen region. This stamp is the Schengen visa. Because I lost my passport, my stamp was lost, and all I had now was a blank Australian passport. This, to a police officer, makes it look like I never legally came in, it's as if I sneaked in. The next problem is that unless I could prove that I did in fact get a stamp in the first place in my old passport, there is nothing they can do for me except "Stay out of trouble and don't let police catch you". Great advice Germany!! They said that if I had have photocopied the page which had the stamp on it, maybe they could have helped me.

With this information, I decided that I would flee the country as soon as possible to go somewhere I was allowed - Ireland (Which is neither in the UK or Schengen region). I flew to Ireland, and within a month had my old visa, in the new passport. This experience took me about 2 months to sort out, making the entire ordeal about 3 to 3 and a half months long. Bloody hell.

With my visa and passport in check, I was free to find a job. I decided not to find a job just yet as it was about a week until Christmas, and in the best case scenario, I would find a job before then, and I would be working Christmas day, Boxing day, New Years Eve and probably New Years day too. In the next scenario, I would have been sitting in a hostel, upset about not having a job, upset about not having a lovely family Christmas and I probably would have had pasta or a pizza from the supermarket for my Christmas dinner.

Because of this, I found myself back in bloody Hamburg to celebrate a German Christmas, a Polish Christmas and the German New Year - They call it Silvester.

I won't elaborate on my ordeal of getting the passport and visa back, but in that time I found myself starting in Hamburg - Berlin - Cologne - Hamburg - Cologne - Hamburg - Cologne - Dusseldorf - Cologne - Hamburg - London - Dublin - Kilkenny - Cork - Dingle - Dublin - London - Bruges - Hamburg.

Bloody hell.

In the next few blogs, I'll speak of my return to Hamburg, which took me through Belgium, highly alcoholic beer, Christmas, New Years, lots of nudity and most importantly, heaps of fun.

Peace!

Oktoberfest: Part Two

Hoi!

Our second half of the Oktoberfest experience proved to be draining. With a serious lack of sleep due to the fellow drunkards and sheer coldness of "The Tent", lack of showering due to everything about the showers, lack of health from the bug that was being passed around, lack of warmth since we arrived and too many poisonous fumes from the fire, we were all starting to feel as if we'd really 'experienced' the festival. Our time wasn't up yet and we still had more to see.

Sonja and myself marched into the festival by ourselves one day and decided it was time to get drunk...Oktoberfest drunk. With only two people, our chances of finding a seat at any time of the day was raised by 300% and so we didn't bother choosing carefully of which tent to go to. We picked the amazing Lowenbrau tent, which featured a lion on top that would have been as tall as a two storey building. It was animated - Featuring a beer in it's hand which it would bring up to it's mouth every now and then. Sometimes you would hear it yelling out "Luuuuuu-veeeeeeen-broooooyyyyyy" (That's how you would pronounce it, Luven-broy) and Sonja found it amazing about how amazed I was by this lion yelling it out. Each beer tent has a different beer usually, but in each tent you can only buy THAT brand of beer, so in the Lowenbrau tent, only Lowenbrau was available.


I've had Lowenbrau once before back in Australia, I feel a bit silly from how we pronounced as Low-en-brow, like it's spelt. Regardless, I loved it then and I loved it even more in the Lowenbrau tent.


By the time we got in there, it was maybe 12ish, when it starts to get busy. The party was on, the band was playing and surprisingly, there was hardly anyone in there. I say that, but if you saw it, you would call it chock-a-block, but compared to what I'd seen earlier, you fit another 2000 people in this one. As the weekend was now over, I guess it had quietened down.


After two beers and being annoyed by Aussies, bretzel sellers and disabled people trying to sell us some tool for wearing glasses, we decided to move our way to the Hofbrau tent for some beasty food. God knows what I ate, but it was full of potato, saurkraut and various meats - It made me pretty happy of what I can remember. After checking our wallets and making a decision on our sobriety, we decided to abandon the mission of getting rotten drunk. There were no-where near enough people to make drunken friendships with and so a stroll in the park with some beers we bought for a quarter of the price sounded like a better idea.

While strolling/stumbling, we came across a giant snail. I have no idea why it was there, but I felt that I had to climb up on it, forgetting how disorientated I was. My motor skills had suffered greatly, but I didn't let that dampen my spirits. Needless to say, I made it no-where near the top of the snail.




After another stroll through the festival itself, we found a lost child, screaming out for it's Dad. As a non-German speaker, I just looked blankly at the kid, he probably found my terrifying speaking in some weird language and having snakes for hair. Sonja handed him over to the nearest bar where apparantly the protocol for such a situation is to just stuff the kid with lollies until the parents report it missing. Brilliant!!

With our last night we, like usual, gathered around the fire with a beer, said our goodbyes to our campsite friends and left the next morning at 5am. Mmmm, I can tell you now, Sonja and myself both felt FAR from awesome. Callum and Lucy had a rideshare organised for some crazy hour like midday, bloody bastards. Anyway, we jumped on our plane and reached Sonja's place. As soon as we got back, we layed down, put on an audio children's book and within 20 seconds, we'd both crashed harder than an elephant that tried to fly with no wings after jumping off a cliff.

I'm sorry my Oktoberfest story wasn't as full on and outragous and it may have been expected to be, but it would have cost double what we spent, and quite frankly, I think I appreciate the time that I did have there, maybe even more so than what I would have if I couldn't have remembered anything from excessive drinking.

See ya'ron!

Oktoberfest - Part One

Part One.

Woooooooo Munich!!!

One of the things almost every Australian travelling Europe will hope to see if the world famous Oktoberfest, held surprisingly from mid-September to early October. It's perhaps the biggest beer festival in the world, welcoming people from all over Asia, Italy, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and definitely many more. In a nutshell, Oktoberfest began as a wedding celebration. With the news of the engagement of the prince at the time to a lovely lady, the King celebrated by throwing a huge horse race and party for all the locals. Everyone loved it, so much that they had another one the following year and it kept going and growing until one day it became less about the horse racing and more about just being a festival. I'm sure they probably drank just as much beer back then, but right now beer drinking is about the only reputation Oktoberfest has.

It was a 7-8 hour journey if I can remember correctly from Berlin. A long trip. I learnt how to count to 999,999 in German (I can never remember the word for million - Bloody hell). I think everyone around us was sick of hearing "Zwei und siebzig, drei und zwunzig...Uhhh".

When we weren't counting in German, this is how Sonja and myself kept ourselves amused on the bus.

We made it there and as usual being travelling girls, Lucy and Sonja marched their way up to the front and took control of the situation. They walked and we followed all the way to our accommodation called "The Tent". With a name like that, it sounds pretty exciting!

Before leaving Australia, my Dad told me a heap of stories about Germany and what he did, and one particular story was about his experience in one of these German "Tents". He said that for a couple euro, you would get given a crappy mattress and a section of the floor inside this tent. In it were about 100-200 other people, snoring, smelling and sleeping. Our version of the tent was pretty much exactly the same, except it cost 16 euro (The cheapest accommodation around for Oktoberfest it seemed). We were given three thick blankets each and a little card to say it was out bed. We walked in and it was just as cold inside this thing as it was outside. It was also starting to rain outside, which made things more exciting. We found ourselves quickly wondering how waterproof this thing would be. We set up our beds right in the middle of it, as it was the only space left - Probably not the worst place to have our beds as in theory, that should be the warmest spot - But it also means that people have to walk over our stuff. Drunk people. Ahh well, it was good enough I guess for what we were paying. Because Callum left it a little later to book, he found himself by himself in other tent. He had a bed the bloody bastard.

Not surprisingly, the campsite always had a keg of beer tapped and I think the tap was rarely in the off position. After setting up our sleeping arrangements, it started to rain/storm and so Callum and myself decided it was time for a beer and some grub. On the menu was chilli con carne, and who knows what kind of beer it was, but even though it was served in a plastic cup, it was cold and frothy - Gorgeous!

This is how the local wildlife at the campsite kept themselves amused.

It just happened to be our lucky night as a little band consisting of a banjo player, guitar player and a chap sitting on a box and hitting it with his hands came to the stage. They played all the hits from The Beatles, Chuck Berry and The Animals, to AC/DC, Nirvana and Kings of Leon. Callum fell in love and the band became an obsession for him. The girls spent their night laughing at Callum. Considering the atmosphere we were in and the festival we were amongst, we hit our blanket mattresses pretty early for our first night in Munich.

Waking up lovely and early the next day, the four of us made our way into the city to get our first look at the infamous beer fest. It was like nothing I expected. Think the Townsville Show times 10 in size and with better food, more beer, bigger rides, more beer, 100's of nationalities and way more beer. Although no beer was consumed today, we did eat our way around the festival. Salty gherkins, chocolate covered fruit, corn on a cob, pretzels (bretzel in German) bigger than your head, half chickens and most importantly, sausages were all the main attractions for our group. You could buy a metre of sausage.

Sonja and a gherkin.

We spent 20 minutes observing one particular side-show attraction I've always been curious about. One of the oldest and most well-known attractions at any festival - The Hammer and Bell thing. You always see huge men the size of trucks lifting these gigantuous mallets and smashing them down on a pin that is supposed to fling up and hit a bell. If you hit the bell, you win something. If you hit this bell three times, you won a G-String. This is obviously the reason why I chose to finally have a crack at this thing. I watched in despair as I saw countless men embarrasing themselves, only because of a simple technique flaw. Man after man would hold the mallet at the neck and hope for the best. Big swing no ding unfortunately. I'd love to say I was the man-of-the-day and showed them all how it really worked, but I only hit the bell twice out of three attempts, winning a rose for the lovely lady Sonja instead of a G-string for myself. Upon giving her this priceless gift, not only proving my mannishness and that she was one of the very few "Special" girls of the day to be so lucky to receive such a gift, she almost threw it back in my face telling me I picked the wrong gift, she wanted the orange teddy bear. Bloody women.

Since we left the campsite in the morning, I had never really felt 100% throughout the day, and I thought maybe it was because of all the food that was around, but as we walked away from Oktoberfest and into the city, my feeling great rate was dropping at a whopping speed. Since I hadn't had a proper beer since being in Munich again (Something not out of a plastic cup) I thought maybe this is what my body was trying to ask for. After checking out all the rides and eating as much food as we could without throwing it back up again, we decided to go for a walk through the city in search of one of the permanant beer halls. Hofbrauhaus was the option again, like my last visit to Munich. At the Hofbrauhaus, Sonja got her wheat beer and some traditional Bavarian food that I didn't like, Callum and myself got a litre of dark beer and Lucy had an apple strudel and a sneaky vodka when no-one was looking. The beer was great, but every couple minutes I had a hugr urge to violently throw up. While everyone was laughing, taking pictures and talking amongst each other, I found myself frantically looking around the table every couple minutes in search of something to empty my stomach into. Despite this frantic searching, I never found anything suitable, and resigned myself to the fact that if it came up, I would have to put it on my half consumed beer mass. This saddened me.

After maybe 30 minutes, I could no longer hold it down and politely excused myself to use the little boy's room. After 10 minutes I returned from having my head in a toilet feeling 50% better. It turns out the day before Lucy had suffered from a 24 hour bug or something and had spent most of her evening throwing up and feeling as down as I did. What a bummer! I really hoped it didn't pass onto anyone else, I didn't want it to circulate back around to me again. I finished my beer and off we went back to the campsite.

All the faces were the same from the day before and we spent the night sitting around a huge campfire made from treated wood, plastics and plenty of other things that shouldn't be burnt. More beer, more friends, more food and more sleep.

Finally we reached the day where we decided to take the plunge and to head into one of the beer tents. There are 10 beer tents at Oktoberfest, all that cater to a different audience. There was a tent for rich movie stars, rock stars and royalty, one for the dance crowd, one for the Bavarians, one for the tourists...The list went on. We chose one that catered for everyone. Bavaraians and other Germans, forgeiners, old people, young people. This was the mixed tent to put it simply. We arrived at 9am and secured our seat. With four people, it's next to impossible to find a seat for everyone after midday. We placed our order by 9:30, although the beer wasn't supposed to be served until 10am. Those beer wenches could carry A LOT of beer. Each mass (more commonly known amongst English speakers at a stein) on it's own probably weighes between 800g-1kg, and then when filled with beer, reaches almost 2kgs! Some of the wenches were carrying up to and some even over 10 masses at a time! Crazy!



Callum, Sonja and myself were on the beer, Lucy on the vodka and litre of softdrink. After three litres of the golden stuff, Callum and I decided to be real men and order the schweinshaxe. I've eaten this once before, and in English is called the pork knuckle. Bloody brilliant hunk o' meat I must say. Just saying the word schweinshaxe makes me feel manly. Last time I ate it, I absoultely hated the little squishy potato balls (That feel more like chewing on a stress ball) but it turns out Sonja loves the little buggers, so she ate them for me and I was left with my meat. Callum looked like a wild beast ripping the flesh of that bone and it made me very happy to see he was enjoying it.


The band (Which mostly sounds like drums and oom-pa-oom-pa-bum-bom-bop) was playing throughout the day and despite how brilliant they sounded, they weren't exactly the most outragous act on stage. The drummer looked like he'd mastered the ability of still playing drums while asleep. We were almost the first people in the building and scored the best seats we could, but because of stupid people booking in advance, the best seat available was exactly behind the band, so we just saw everyones backs and bums.

As the day went on, everything went up in volume and roudiness. As soon as the Germans started flooding the beer tent, all hell broke loose! The band were playing all sorts of traditional German music that they all seemed to know. A heap of Bavarians sat down at our table and before long everyone was speaking the same language. Luckily, Sonja taught me a German drinking song about egg and ham sandwiches and ice cold Bomalunda and I whipped that out much to others astonishment.


Sometimes, out of the blue, two men will stand up and everyone will start clapping and yelling encouragement/abuse and they will continue to scull an entire mass each. This is some kind of challenge, maybe to prove who is more manly. It's bloody brilliant to watch, but I do feel sorry for the loser. Regardless of how fast the winner drank his mass, the loser has to continue sculling all the way to the bottom, otherwise EVERYONE yells abuse at him. The ultimate shame at Oktoberfest is to take on such a challenge and give up half way.


By about 2ish, we were well on our way to drunkness, but at the same time, we were all getting really tired. After such a huge feast and five litres of beer, I think we were in the best state to just lie down somewhere and have a snooze. The start of the day was really quiet and it took a long time for it to start taking off, so by the time the party started, we were all just about ready for a sleep.

We weren't quite as tired as this guy though.

At that point, we decided to call it quits and jumped on a train which took us out to a small forest. We were sobering up by now, so we bought another couple beers for the trek and found ourselves amongst the trees and peeing in the bushes with the squirells.

Once again, back to the freezing cold tent and poisonous fire fumes.

To be continued.....

Berlin

G'day folks!

Before we made our way all the way down to Munich and Oktoberfest, Sonja and myself decided to make a detour through Berlin, the capital of this majestic and powerful country. We checked into our 10 bed dorm which turned out to just be two single beds in a lovely quiet room - Sweet! Berlin is big on three things - History, politics and party. For the start of our time in Berlin though, Sonja and myself just focused on the history. Sonja proved herself to be as good as any guide someone could pay for, but at the same I could tell her if something was boring the hell out of me. She also added all her own experiences into each part of the city from her previous trips.

Throughout the city you can find a few pretty cool fountains that sort of "Dance" I guess. They squirt up in synchronised patterns and it's a nice decoration for a built up city. One day on a free day with a school trip, S-daw and a few of her school mates bought a couple crates of beer, ripped off their clothes and played in the fountains for the day. With the beer drinking age of 16, no-one was breaking any laws, although I'm sure a lot of people were staring. Sounds like fun!

Anyway, we spent the day walking around the entire city, and I learnt a lot about how Germans deal with what happened in the war in every day life. Sonja told me about at school where the teachers would just drill into their heads how awful and mean the Germans were in the war and that everyone hated them. In every country, most kids just learn about their own country's history, and in Germany, the war was a pretty significant peice of history I guess.

When the sun goes down in Berlin, the history of the city takes a back seat and party takes control. Not tonight though for us, we decided to find somewhere really nice to eat and just have a quiet one. We found a greek restaurant with prices not too hideous and chowed down on. Bloody hell the greeks must eat a lot. Even as I was sitting there starving for most of the day, I struggled to eat half of what was on my plate - Sonja had the same problem, but she got through a quarter. The lady who served us seemed convinced that we thought the food sucked, but I would be disgusted to find out if anyone could finish one of those.

The next day we set out on an adventure to find some currywurst (A chopped up sausage that is covered in a curry sauce and sprinkled with curry powder, pretty brilliant). Berlin and Hamburg are rivals for who has the best currywurst. Although I couldn't taste a huge difference, I definitely think I preferred the Hamburg ones. Sonja said there was no comparison and that the Berlin one tasted like ass...I guess the Germans are pretty passionate about it. They all hate Australian sausage, and despite German sausages knocking the Australian attempts way out of the park in excellence, I think I can still go home and enjoy a good ol' sausage sizzle with onion on white bread.

Having been on a few pub crawls myself, I guess Sonja was sick of hearing about them and just finally wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so she decided that we should take on one of the Berlin pub crawls. We picked a good looking one from the outrageously large list of options and met up at the meeting point for the "30 minutes of free beer". That alone should have told us it was going to be a big night.

Not long into the journey we met a English chap hanging out with a group of three girls from Belgium and we almost became inseparable from the throughout the night. They were all pretty cool and that girl's hair was amazing.

When I mentioned that I was going to make my way Belgium, they went crazy and all offered me a beer and couch to sleep on on my arrival there. It turns out not many tourists go there - Sounds pretty good to me! They warned me of the beer in Belgium though - The most common one's over 10%.

As the night went on, free shots were being thrown at us every time we turned around and before too long, we were both unbelievably drunk. As everyone made their way to the final destination - A crappy club that all pub crawls end up at, Sonja and myself decided to bail on the idea as we wouldn't have even made it inside the door. Throughout the whole time in Berlin Sonja was the navigator, but this evening was my turn apparently, even though I couldn't understand what she was saying most of the time and I could hardly see in front of me.

Somehow we made it back to the hostel, but it wasn't pretty. The pub crawl was a long night, but the next day was even longer for poor old Sonja, she couldn't physically sit upright in the bed until midday and couldn't get out of the bed until 4. This was a hangover I hope to never experience myself.

With the day to myself, I went for a three hour walk to a half built monument, sat in a park on a bench watching people for an hour and went on a quest to find Berlin's best bratwurst (Plain, big, fat Sausage, sometimes served with mustard, tomato sauce and a roll). For the capital city of Germany, the capital country of sausages, it was so bloody hard to find one. It's not just a touristy thing either, the locals love them, so why was no-one selling the bloody things?

Shortly after my return to the hostel at about 5ish, we heard knocking at our door and it was Lucy and Callum! We weren't supposed to see them until we got to Munich. They were really hungry, so we took them to the same Greek place we went to a couple nights before. Sonja was still very slow in moving, but made a pretty good effort as she hadn't seen either of them for 2 or 3 months - since she left Townsville.

7am the next morning we made our way out the doors of the hostel as a group of four and made our way to Munich, bags on backs. We filed onto the bus, with about 30 other smelly Australian backpackers. Everything that was said on the bus was in German, and after translating it to me, Sonja noticed all the other Australians leaning over to try and hear what was being said too, so eventually she just turned around, and yelled out what was being said for everyone to hear. I felt pretty lucky to have my own private translator.

I told you last time that this blog would be about Oktoberfest, but I promise you the next one will actually be about it!!

For now though, keep being awesome and I'll whack up the next blog soon!

Byyyyyyye!

Dialogue in the Dark

Ooook!

So we've seen the Reeperbahn, the Lake Alster and we've eaten German food. This next story is not special to Germany by any means, but it still happened in Hamburg. Sonja had been reading and reading about something called "Dialogue in the Dark" since before she even went to Australia and as she never got around to going to it, she saw my visit as the perfect excuse. Of what she'd told me, I had a very vague idea of what exactly we were going to get ourselves into, and I'm not sure if Sonja knew much more than me. Basically, what I was told is that you go to a building, and are taken into a set of rooms all in complete darkness. The idea of it is to show people what it's like to be blind.

We arrived about 30 minutes before we were due to start our little tour, and slowly and slowly, more and more people turned up and we waiting with us. A quick check and listen around the room made me discover that I, again, was the only person with no German speaking skills. This means it's always going to be fun. Finally, our group was called and it was our time to start. Walking into the first room, a lady stood at the front of the group and said "Who is the English speaker?". I raised my hand and she gave me a card with a list of pointers and things to and not to do. While I was reading, she explained everything I was reading to the group. If there ever was a chance to learn some more German, I guess that was it, but due to everyone speaking German, I thought I'd better concentrate on the things I wasn't supposed to do. I'd never want to get a German angry, they sound angry enough when they're just telling a joke.

So after the rules, we were given our walking canes and we were pushed through a curtain, where our eyes had to adjust to being in the darkness, and then we were put through a door where EVERYTHING was in complete darkness. I cannot being to express how dark this was. Sonja leaned over to me and said "Geoff...It's actually pitch black, I never though a room could be so black". And she was not wrong, there wasn't a flashing exit sign, a little speck of like a hole in the wall...NOTHING. It didn't take me long to start feeling claustrophobic, all my comfort was gone. Due to everyone speaking German around me, I even felt a little more on edge, but then came the reassuring voice of our guide who said "Ok, who is our English speaker, what is their name?". She was a lovely lady and had a really calm and comforting voice, exactly what you'd need in this situation. I introduced myself and she did the same. She said that I had to stick with Sonja through the ENTIRE 1 and a half hour session. I'd never felt so attached and reliant on Sonja in my life. If I lost her, it was all over for me as I was concerned.

Walking through the first room was easy enough, it was just to get a feeling for our cane and adjust to our current environment. After a while, I felt less claustrophobic and a little more adventurous. A couple times I would have my hands out, feeling the walls to see what I could find, and I would grab an arm, back or chest. Somehow a boob never managed to fall in my hands, but maybe that's a lucky thing, I wonder if a slap would hurt more in the dark?

After walking over cobblestones, through "markets" and streets, our guide found me again and put my hand on a box and said "Ok Geoff, in your country, what colour would this box be? Here it's yellow". It was a post box, and when I told her red, she said "Ok, I have no idea what red is, or yellow for that matter, I'm not completely blind, but colours don't exist, I just can see light and dark and even then, not much of that". It really made me think, that she had gone her whole life, and she was asking these questions, not even really knowing what I was answering.

Before long, we found ourselves in a room, and there was no English, everyone was speaking German and I had no idea where Sonja was, just as I was about to call out for her I heard something shut...Something like a door. When that happened, everything was silent. Everyone else had moved into the next room and had closed the door behind them. It didn't take long for me to start to panic, I had no idea where I was, or where anyone else was. My guide and Sonja were nowhere to be found so I started to knock on the wall. I frantically moved around the wall feeling for something, a handle, a door knob, anything! I couldn't find anything but I could finally hear voices through the wall, so I just tried to push on a section of wall, hoping at the same time to not destory something and by complete luck, it just happened to be the door. Thank God. This entire ordeal would have taken maybe 15 seconds, but it felt like half an hour. I could hear Sonja looking for me and I pretty much ran to her and held on for dear life.

At the start, we were given a ticket and were told to NOT lose it because this was our ticket for the boat. We stepped onto the boat and had to give our ticket to the boat person, our guide. We sat on the boat and it started rocking. Again, I can't really express what it was like, but when you can't see everything rocking along with your motions...It's a completely different feeling, especially when the boat 'hit' something unexpectingly. Pretty much the whole time everyone was on edge, because if the boat veered quickly one way, you would almost fall off your seat.

Stepping off the boat, we filed into a room where we sat on the floor. Still in complete darkness, our guide then played a few tunes. Listening to music like this was completely different too. Although not the sort of music I'm used to listening to, it was still an unreal and unforgettable experience. After spending about an hour in the dark already, all my other senses were on overdrive. I could hear what every instrument was doing, and the quality of each song, whether it was really much different at all, was pretty obvious to me. I picked up on the most slightest little glitches in each song, something I would probably never do when listening to a song normally.

Anyway, filing out of that room (Fiercly holding onto Sonja with a death grip), we made our way to the bar. While here we could buy chips, beer, soft drink...Whatever...But all still in the dark. We got ourselves a beer each and a packet of chips. Again, the senses were still in overdrive. I could sort of tell the coins apart, but didn't have enought to buy our stuff, so I had to pay by a note. I knew I had a 10 and a 50...I just had to give the right one. Our guide can easily tell which coin she's holding, even without any other coins to compare with, but to figure out notes, she had to measure them. When she gave my change back from a 10, I was really hoping I'd given her the right note.

We couldn't drink too much in the bar, firstly due to the fact that we didn't have time, but also because of if we got drunk...I think it would be near impossible to get us out when we were stumbling around completely sober. Just before leaving though our guide told us to guess how old and what she looked like. Sonja and myself agreed on a 20 something average height blonde girl, as did most of the group. Everyone was pretty shocked when she told us she was in her mid-40's though. She seemed to have a young voice and I was told that when she was speaking German, she was using popular slang that only young people would use. She was very good at the deceit game. We weren't allowed to see what she looked like though, her ruling was that she doesn't know what any of us look like, and she never will, so we're not allowed to see her. It was shredding me to peices though and I'm sure it was the same with everyone else, I just wanted to see her more than anything, as the picture in my mind had been completely blown into the sky.

As soon as we got out of the darkness, and made our way into the light, it was so much more comfortable, and for an hour I kept telling myself how thankful I was to be able to see. Life is about a million times easier. When we were signing the "visitors book" and I saw my awful and disgusting handwriting, I didn't really care, because at least I could still see what I was writing.

When we walked outside and made our way home, we had to walk past the back entrance and we heard a few voices and we turned around and saw her. I feel a bit bummed because we weren't supposed to see her and it ruined everything, but she just a little taller than my tummy, was definitely mid 40's and she had brown hair. She had the same voice and was sure enough wearing her sunnies. The imagine I constructed in my mind was most definitely destroyed.

The whole experience was AMAZING, and if anyone ever went to Hamburg, or anywhere else where they have the Dialogue in the Dark, I would highly recommend it. It was fun, terrifying, exhausting, informative...Everything!!

Next time, Sonja and myself make our way to Berlin to meet up with Lucy and Callum and then make our ways to the most famous beer festival in the world - The Munich Oktoberfest, popular for one litre beers, dirndls, lederhosen and drunken buffoonery.

Reeperbahn

Hi!!

In Sydney, you go to King's Cross. In Dublin, you go to Temple Bar. In Amsterdam, you go to the Red Light District. In Hamburg, you go to the Reeperbahn. Anyone who has gone to Hamburg has probably found themselves at the Reeperbahn. Here you find streets full of bars, clubs, sex shops, prostitutes and it has it's own Red Light District of it's own. This is my story:

For a couple weeks, Sonja had news that she'd been invited to a Hen's night, a party for a girl she didn't even really know. She was invited because this girl doesn't have many friends in Hamburg, so Sonja decided to go and make the most of it to give this girl her special night. I was left at home to chill out with Gina and Rainer. Rainer had perhaps the biggest music collection I've seen, and what was in display wasn't even all of it. When it was just at home, we would often sit on the couch and he would play me music from all over the world, all of it brilliant. He even introduced me to a Tom Waits song called "Reeperbahn', who'd have thought? So this particular evening, we were going back and forth with each other, as Gina would have to ask me something through Rainer, and Rainer would translate it to me, and I give my answer to Rainer (Sometimes I would have to spend a little while explaining) and then he would have to translate it back to Gina. I'll be honest, it was draining if we carried on too long like this, I can't imagine how Sonja or Rainer felt when I would do it to them every day.

After just getting comfortable, having sunk a few Holsten's (Top 5 beers of my life), we got a call from Sonja. She was telling me that the groom also happened to be having his Stag's night, and we knew absoultely no-one as he was from Canada. Great I thought! English speaker! The chaps on his Stag night so far were just the boyfriends or other friends from the Hen's night. I was invited to his Stag's night to make things a bit better for him. Having never been to a Buck's party myself, going on a Canadian/German Stag's night on the Reeperbahn with complete stranger's sounded like a bloody good start to me. I got changed, Rainer gave me his phone and he dropped me off at the first pub of the night. A billiard's bar. On my arrival, the chaps had already had a couple beers and a couple games and were just about ready to get out of there.

It turns out the Canadian groom was living in Canada, but had originally come from Austria, where they speak German as their first language, so I was still the only one in the group who could speak no German, but I still felt comfortable enough, probably more comfortable than the groom himself unfortunately.

As I said, the boys were just about ready to leave, so after only one beer, we all jumped in someone car and made our way to the Reeperbahn. Our plan was to wait out in a bar, and we would get a call from one of the girls when the Hen's party were going to arrive, and the boys would run out into the street and give the bride-to-be a huge surprise. From that point, we would all go out as a massive pre-wedding party I guess. Before all this took place, we decided to have a gander at the Red Light District, no Buck's party would be complete without it on the Reeperbahn. This Red Light District is one long street rather than spread out over a large area like in Amsterdam. On each end of the street is a huge wall with posters and graffiti on it that basically tells girls to piss off. No girls are allowed on this street. Apparently, the girls in the windows would throw urine or other nasties on any female caught on the Red Light District. I'd love to remember the correct German name for this street, but alas, this street is usually only combined with drinking alcohol, so whatever brain cells were created to remember the name were probably killed in the same night. The girls in these windows reminded me a lot of the one's in Amsterdam...The one's who stand in there and tap on the window and encourage you to go and talk to them. It was only a brisk walk and we got out of there pretty quickly. Sure enough, there were red lights, windows and girls wearing not much at all. Fairly predictable and not so much of a shock to see any more.


The wall.

The real shock lies in the girls who work the streets. As soon as you catch the pattern, you can spot a prostitute a mile away...Enough time to veer your course. How they decided this would be the dress code...I will never know. The prostitutes that walk the streets of the Reeperbahn are easily identifyable by their ridiculous white joggers, plain jeans, bum-bag (or fanny-pack, however you like to call it) and a bright, puffy jumper, usually white, pink or purple. I think it looks awful, but that's just what they wear. Anything else and no-one would be interested in them. Walking alone around these girls can be dangerous...They see you, hold on to your arm and will talk with you for ages, through streets, bars and whatever, until you forcefully push them away and get angry. Safety in numbers - Or if you have another girl with you.


Anyway, after the Red Light District, we made our way to the bar where I met the other half of the group who I hadn't met yet. I couldn't understand half of their names and can't remember the other half but they introduced me to a thing called Mexicana. They seemed to be far more drunk than I, which improves their English like crazy.

Felix - "Heyyyyyy, you're Geeeeoffffffff, the ooooshtraaaalien...Have youuu drinked MexiCANA!??!?"
Geoff - "Naaaaaaah man, what is it?"
Felix - *walks away and speaks to bartender* "Haaaaallloooo!! DREI MEXICANAAAAAAAA!!"
Everyone - "Prooooosst!!"

And the rest is history.

That night I will never forget, the night I discovered the Mexicana. Of what I can remember, mexicana is vodka, tequila, tomato juice and the most important ingredient - Tabasco sauce. Whether it would take off in Australia, I do not know, but after freezing your ass off, a Mexicana burning up in your gullet is exactly what you need on a night out in Germany.

So eventually, the girls finally made it. Hen's nights (And I assume Stag nights) in Germany are a lot more different than in Australia. The organisation factor goes beyond ok for my liking. Although I've never been to a Hen's night in Oz, I assume it's usually just a theme, something to dress up as, and maybe a stripper, and then everyone gets blind rotten drunk. I can't remember all the finer details of this one, but there are all these crazy activities the Bride-to-be has to do. For example, while on the underground trains, she had to get a group of chaps to sing a couple songs with her...They went to a hospital for drunk people (Drunk people were taking up too much room in the regular hospital, so this was specially made) and she had to carry out a number of tasks, like find all this stuff...And fundraising. To make money for the Hen's night, so the bride wouldn't have to pay for any drinks, the girls bought a couple boxes of cheap, nasty shots and sold them for a euro or two to people walking past in the street. With each shot probably costing like 50 cents, they basically made a 100% profit. Then they cut up a massive peice of sheet into a game. The sheet had two holes, one hard and one easy. The idea was to get people to kick soccer balls and try to get the soccer balls into one of the holes, and if they got it in, they would win something awesome. I don't really know successful it was.

In the end, everyone met up successfully, but 75% of the group disappeared. The remaining 25%, myself included kind of felt a bit bummed about it all and after sending out some texts with no replies, we decided to call it a night.

Despite a let down at the end, I believe the whole night went pretty well, I made enemies, friends, discoveries and can now say I've been to the Reeperbahn. Believe me, this was definitely not my only time at the Reeperbahn, there are plenty more stories, but that will do for now.

Thanks :)

This isn't relevant, but this is Sonja with the result of a bull castration:

The Lake Alster

Lake Alster

I awoke in the morning to find a German stabbing me in the back with her finger. "Get up you lazy shit! It's a sunny day, they're pretty rare in Hamburg. I have a surprise for you". For weeks I'd been hearing all about this "surprise". My only clues were that it would have to be a sunny day when I get it, otherwise it wouldn't work very well. I didn't know if it was an object I'd be getting, an experience, a new friend, a story...Who would know. After a brilliant breakfast (Sonja told her mother that Australians eat bacon, eggs, sausages and toast every day for breakfast, so that's what they bought me to eat) we set out on our big adventure to whatever my surprise was. As we were leaving the house, Sonja gave me a big bag which weighed probably 6-8 kg's. I wasn't allowed to look in it though, otherwise it would ruin the surprise. After getting on a bus for 20 minutes, then a train for 10 minutes, we found ourselves walking for about half an hour. We went past her old school, a couple parks and ended up walking around the most prized and loved natural landmark in Hamburg, the Lake Alster.

While we were walking through the parks, I decided to sneak a quick feel of the bag...Maybe I could make out something. I felt a couple pole-like objects, I thought maybe it was a set of goals and she was going to take me to a park to play soccer...That wouldn't explain why it was so heavy though...And I couldn't feel anything ball shaped. She caught me feeling it and got angry, so I just had to walk along thinking about it.

Eventually, we arrived at the point of the lake and Sonja said "Ok, so I do have with me...An INFLATABLE BOAT!!". Words cannot describe how excited I was at this point, I could not for the life of my suppress my smile. Our only problem was that there seemed to be nowhere to launch the bloody thing, all around the lake seemed to be dangerously sharp rocks, or it was just far too shallow. Unlike in Australia where you just take off your shoes and push the boat out, here you would have to take your shoes off, roll up your jeans, somehow not get hypothermia and die, and avoid stepping on any broken glass or whatever else is floating around in the lake. Therefore finding a good take off point is critical. After walking and walking and walking, we finally found somewhere that looked relatively suitable.



Sonja went for a pee in a cafe, and I pumped up the boat. It's ok if there are two people pumping up an inflatable boat next to a lake, but I looked like a lonely loser. Anyway, when she came back, she had with her a little feast from the cafe so we could have a lovely lunch out on the water. As soon as we got the boat in the water and launched with the pair of us in it, the clouds came...And the wind. For starters, I've never rowed a boat in my life. I've been in canoes and kayaks, but never a row boat, so paddling this thing was challenging enough as it was, let alone the fact that the bloody oars were only slightly bigger than my hands. I couple times I thought whether I would have just been better off paddling with my hands. Oh well.



Shortly after making it into the water, it was decided that we go to the very middle of the lake, and there we could sit somewhat peacefully and eat our food. After a painful and exhausting paddle, we made it and ate our sausage meat with salad. It quite lovely sitting there then, the waves were only gently rocking the boat and the sun would spit through little bits of open cloud.



After lunch, it was time to paddle again. Sonja had a plan of paddling to a particular end of the lake which connected to I guess the other half of it. This was against the current and due to my lack of fitness, lack of experience and teeny paddles, there was no hope, so we just made our way to a little bridge and it looked like it would have started raining soon. My lack of experience definitely showed when the waves pushed us to the other side of the lack, when we were getting dangerously close to the jaggered rocks. Through this bit of the ordeal, the waves and wind had gotten stronger, and water was now spilling over the side of the boat, onto me and running down into my bum. Everything on my lower half was wet. In a hot place, this is fine, and even refreshing. In the September temperatures of Germany, it's bloody outrageously cold and uncomfortable.



Some of the people standing on the side of the lake were staring at us, probably wondering if I had some kind of disability due to my paddling skills. They looked genuinely worried and I'm sure if I saw someone in our situation, I probably would have been too.



Somehow, I managed to get out of that, and we made it to the bridge, just as it started raining, so we camped under the bridge for a while and when it started to clear up, we went beyond the bridge. Contrary to what we though was going to be beyond the bridge (Another lake), it turned out to be a long canal that stretches through the whole city. This was the highlight of my day.

With bugger all current and the sun finally out, Sonja cracked open a couple beers, whipped out her mp3 player with speakers and we floated along the river listening to The Beatles. Although still bloody freezing, I was happy as a pig in mud.




Paddling past house-boats, ducks and swans, children who pointed and stared and trees that tried to eat us, we eventually reached a point where we had to get out. It was getting late, cold(er) and the speakers had run out of battery. Just like getting into the lake, getting out of the canal isn't an easy task. You can't simply find any wall and just climb out of the boat. We went past a couple ladders, a couple more bridges and we considered climbing onto one of the house boats to escape. By our luck, we managed to find a little jetty/dock thing. Getting out was probably more stressful than getting in, because we had to somehow make sure that the boat didn't float away. No way was I swimming after it, I was wet enough as it was.

We managed to get ourselves, our bags and the boat out after a little while...But to a place we didn't know. We had to ask some strangers for directions and eventually we found a train to get home. There was dirt, water and grass all over us, and the bag with the boat had stuff coming out of it, because we couldn't get it back in properly, so I'm quite sure we probably looked homeless walking around the train station...I didn't care though, I just wanted a shower and a soup.

After an hour or so journey home, we gave our boat a wash, deflated it and roll 'er back up for next time.



All in all, I had a pretty good day I like to think. That being said though, I wasn't in any hurry to jump back in and do it all over again.