Saturday, January 28, 2006

Indolence

Simon has been in Kiel for a week and has been a great roommate, apart from the fact that I have to go to work while he reads in bed, which is pretty cruel. But he´s been making up for it by cooking me dinnner and charming my friends, so I forgive him.

It´s been a weirdly normal week in Kiel, work is ticking along and the weather has actually been remarkably ok. Today it´s a balmy zero degrees, which is a thousand times better than the minus six it was last weekend. There´s somethihng about the minus sign that really affects me, it just isn´t natural to be so cold. I even had a dream that everyone I lived with was sitting around at the table complaining that the flat wasn´t warm enough. I wonder what that might mean?

The week began with a visit to the brilliantly named Sports Bar to watch American Football- well I say watch, I spent most of the time exclaiming at how fat some of the players were and paying out their ridiculous shiny pants. The Broncos lost, much to Matt´s mild disappointment, but I was more interested in how all our Australian sports names seem to be rip offs of the Yanks. Is there anything we haven´t claimed as our own which doesn´t belong to us?

I taught a very anti-Australia Day lesson on Thursday, much to the chagrin of some of my students who love us and think we´re nicer versions of the Americans. Bah. I told them all about the riots and Howards nationalist platform- turns out there´s no word in German for supremicist. I kept wanting to say Nazi but refrained.

Tonight we´re heading off to Ann´s for racklette my third to date, and as long as noone talks about football I´ll be happy.

And also... what the fuck was with that lamb ad?

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Multi-kulti

In my bank class on Monday I was telling them about my weekend and I mentioned my cousin who has Czech parents but was born in Germany, and that I ate Mexcian food cooked by an American, and suddenly one of the bankers started laughing. When I asked him what was so funny he said: it´s all so mutli-kulti (German for multicultural)!

Uhhuh. Never really thought of Mexican food made from a packet called Old El something or other as being very authentically multicultural myself. I guess I sometimes underestimate just how culturally isolated it´s possible to be in a Western democracy- I think I annoyed my flatmate by being amazed she didn´t know what Borlotti beans were. Proving possibly just how much of a wanker I can be....

In that vein I have to mention the birthday party I went to on the weekend, which was a raclette, my first I think. It´s basically a grilled meat and melted cheese dish you make yourself at the table. It was great, especially with the racuous singing that began to accompany it as the night went on, and there was even a song about slaughtering a pig and making the sausage, which could have come straight out of a beer ad. I tried to maintain haughty amusment but after a few vodkas was belting out "die Wurst!" as good as the Gerrys.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Channukah pics





Did I mention that Mum and I went to a Channukah event in Rome, on Christmas night? Well the lovely American couple we met took some photos and I just got them. Please note the Rabbi in the cherry picker lighting the first flame.

Saturn returns

Wow. This week has been a series of amazing happenings that are all swimming around in my head a bit. First, Simon is coming on Friday and I´m heading down to Hamburg to meet him and have a few nights staying at Martin´s who is kindly giving up his bed for us. When I rang him to ask him I then found out that he is having a baby and moving house, not so great for my future stays in Hamburg but then again that kind of pales in comparison... He´s the first of any of my cousins to have children which is a leetle freaky but I´m dealing.

The other thing that happened is that I signed a contract to work for eight hours at a technical school in Kiel, with real people in real classrooms in a real school and it´s a bit scary. But I will have paid holidays and money for travel so it´s worth it. And it´s only till June.

I have just checked out Kate´s blog with its incredible tigers and will now stop writing, as my entire life now seems (even more) mundane. Why are there no tigers in Kiel?

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Finally... Kiel






Clearly, coming back to Kiel was the most idiotic choice I have made this year. It can only get better!

Roma






Titus´s Arch (notice the stolen Jewish treasures on the inside), the Trevi fountain (a coin was thrown in for those who requested it), St Peters in the Vatican (if you look closely you´ll see il Papa himself on the TV screens) and finally, Mum boozing it up on Xmas Day.

Firenze again




Mum and I by the Arno, disguised craftily as tourists.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Firenze





Mum looking gorgeous in her new hat, me and the view and finally the police and their snazzi bags in the piazza del Signora.

Milano





The Cathedral in Milan, the gorgeously expensive shopping arcade next to it where Mum bought her green rabbit hat, and mum and I at La Strada. I look very surpised to be there.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Living in a winter wonderland

Well I´m back in the little town of Kiel, somewhere near Denmark, and life is fine. The day I arrived back the whole town looked like a theme park, snow everywhere, glittering off the kerb and the trees and the rooftops. I tried to ride my bike and after about twenty metres discovered I can´t ride in the snow. Good to know. The worst thing was the seventy year old woman who happily rode past me as I lay in a snowdrift with my bike wrapped around my legs. Damn it.

New Year´s Eve, or Silvester as they call it here, was quite nice and I especially enjoyed the maniacal fireworks which made Kiel feel like a big city for about half an hour after midnight, as the sounds of the explosions boomed around the streets.

I´m kind of back at work, which is okay so far, although no bosses in sight yet. In an attempt to feel like a actually have muscles I´ve been jogging for a few days and now I can barely move my legs. But I did discover that´s it´s actually easier to run in three degrees than you think. I draw the line at wearing a beanie when I´m jogging though, and the leggings that people wear here are like some sort of eighties nightmare. I think when I think it´s a good idea to go for a run in minus five degree weather wearing leggings, a beanie and gloves that´s when I know it´s time to leave.

Monday, January 02, 2006

My hot flatmates and pigs on the wall



Two of them... flatmates not pigs, (with me looking by comparision like a brunette) before our fabulous New Year´s party, which was quite fun. My favorite part was all the firework mad boys, and a few shelias, who started letting off fireworks at midnight and got this crazed look in their eyes, stopped talking and starting setting off what bascially seemed to me to be small sticks of dynamite. I was a little cautious, so someone kindly gave me lady crackers, which were not surprisingly, very lame.

Photos of my room for Emma







I took these two months ago when my hair was shorter and there was still sun in the sky and leaves on the trees. It´s taken me this long just because I took them with someone else´s camera. Anyway this is my room until February, it still looks like this only with the trees outside covered in snow. And of course no sunlight.