And I love YOU...

So we thought Xavier Rudd concert was good... wehehhehell! John Butler Trio - this was one of the best concerts I've ever been to! It was totally and completely amasing and fun! They just have great stage presence and of course the music is so overwhelming and moving.

Again, in the start the deutsches were stationary, but by the end they couldn't hold on anymore and were also _slightly_ jumpy *giggle* Amusingly in the beginning you could see where the aussies were in the crowd, as the majority of the mosh pit was totally static yet there was a part of it (may be 20 people or so) that were just jumping up and down and going totally nuts. And of course when John mentioned that he's from Fremantle in WA all those people started yelling and screaming.

Of course you gotta feel for the locals as the songs make much more sense if you can actually understand them... doh! So they made sure that during the 'Sunrise Over Sea' the audience got involved into singing "And I love you, and you love me...". John is totally amasing with the guitar and Michael Barker is a GOD on the drums. It makes our attempt at playing the Bangkok acquired finger drum very very VERY embarassing *runs away and hides*

They also played a couple of covers, one of which was Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up", which the crowd loved and which Jack and I continued to sing while walking home from the concert on the wide streets of this amazing city.

On a sidetrack, while trying to work out the correct way to spell 'mosh pit' I came accross the following and thought it was beautiful:

"Slamdancing is an art. A mosh pit is a collection of artists who practice the art of slamdancing. There are mediocre artists and there are artists who transcend boundaries of artistic standards. In the pit there are just as many Paula Abduls and Madonnas as there are Fred Astaires and James Browns. In order to exceed mediocrity in the mosh pit, you must understand the basics of slamdancing. None of this, however, is obvious to the untrained eye. To look upon the mosh pit for the first time is an affront to the senses for the mosh pit is unlike anything else in nature. Without any regard for the music, a large crowd shifts and swirls in front of a stage. Bodies move to and fro amidst random acts of self-sacrifice and enigmatic grace. "

The Music and You!

Just got back from a Xavier Rudd concert... very cool. We got to stand right out the front - not hard considering the place was half full... not nearly as packed as the Aussie gigs. Still - he played some of his more known songs, but I was SO disappointed in the cherman crowd... they just stood there! I couldn't believe it! There were these two people right at the front and they kept on checking their SMSs and just being totally bored - it's like, why are you even here?!

The gig itself was good - he made a couple of funny jokes about chermans and all the aussies in the crowd cheered. But as we were discussing it later with Jack it seems that most deutsches were there for the novelty value as he plays so many instruments - most didn't actually know any of his songs... so were a bit weirded out. Fark em I say! We had a blast and I can proudly say that my husband has borrowed and improved some of Michael Stipe's dance moves - yesss, love him!

Check out our signed play list with the 'Thanks Brother XR'... oh, and did I mention I gave Xavier advice after the show on where to party in Berlin? Well I did, 'cos one of the things he mentioned was that his first impression of Berlin is that it's a very quiet city, thus I felt the need to recommend he hangs out in Friedrichsein and around Warshauer Strasse - our first home in Berlin. He seemed to take to the idea, 'cos he asked me to tell him slowly what the place was called.

Oh and we met some other aussies/germans from Melb - also cool! Hope all's great back home in Melbski and oh oh oooooooo, ohhh oh ooooo oooooooo - Let Me Be Freeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Ich bin Hausfrau und ich lerne Deutsch.

It has begun! My German course that is. After so many weeks of struggling to get into the bloody thing this morning was my first class. It's great! I totally love it (as the Deutsches would say).

There are a total of 4 of us in the group. All females. Anna from Poland, Michaela from Italy, and Lina from Colombia... and Polina from Australia. It's funny - all of them look quite young (as in my age), but Anna has a 6 year old son, and Lina has four (4!) kids... the eldest is 19!... man, I don't know how old she is, but she doesn't look whatever it might be. Michaela is the youngest - she's doing her last year of medicine and is doing a semester learning german here. And I am just bumming around and am kinda a housefrau (well I did buy bread today farken!).

So far we did very basic stuff - names, where we are from, what do we do, who are our husbands (only poor hMichaela is not married) what they do... I kinda feel like I'm in a home-making class, but it's awesome. The teacher is a very strict looking German lady, who speaks very clearly and very slowly and ties her hair in an incredibly tight ponytail with a purple shiny band... it's all good.

Thus, by my 600th hour I should be able to schprech Deutsch gut! Wish me luck!

The jozs of trzing to tzpe!

So you think I'm p1ssed as I type this because of the title... well as much as I'd like that to be true think again. It is an experience caused by the inexplicable exchange of the 'z' and 'y' keys on the German keyboard. Why the fark anyone would want to do this is beyond me.
The other point about German keyboards is they have had to find room for all the weirdass letters they need, cause 26 just ain't good enough... So we add ö, ä, ü, ß and a couple of extra symbols like §. That by itself would be fine - but we don't stick these on extra keys as that would be untidy. We simply move everything else around, doing things like moving ( and ) one key further left *grrr*
So I challenge you to find the following keys (and how to access them).
@ { } [ ] < > + * : ; ' " \ / ? - _

Goodbye Simon-Dach Str ---> Hello Leipziger Str!

And thus on the 15th of March 2006 we have successfully put our humble posessions into various containers (mainly calico fabric baggies and plastic bags from Galleria Kaufhof) and ordered a mini-bus to transport it. The taxi lady was slightly confused why we were asking for a mini-bus if there are only two passengers, so it took a little while to explain that we have _a lot_ of luggage.

As I was standing on the ground floor of Simon-Dach Str. waiting for Jack to bring down all of the bags the old guy who looks after the house came by to check what was going on. And one of the first questions he asked was 'why are you moving at night?' to which Jack proceeded 'well we work during the day, so when do you suppose we should be doing it'... and then ran upstairs to get more stuff leaving me to my little knowledge of the great language. The old guy stood around for a bit confused and then said something to which I proceeded 'Entshuldigung ich schpreh nicht Deutsch'... basically something to let him understand that I do not understand him or anything he says. To which he gave a very loud snort and retreated.

The taxi driver was also rather confused to see people move in such a non-efficient fashion... ie. by throwing about 50 little bags into the back of a mini-bus. But it worked and in about 30 minutes we have already dragged all of the stuff to the 14th floor of the new place... Thankfully non-Russian style the lift was working.

So here we are... in our new humble abode. It is only 48 square meters, but we like to call it cosy. It is all IKEA furniture, but we like to call it minimalistic. It is all very white and cream, but we like to call it Zen. And the balcony is farken HUGE!!!!!!! I think we got sold on the balcony thing... Jack's thinking planting a little herb garden there... I'm thinking of putting up a hammock :)

One of the great things about this place is the location - it's pretty much smack-bang in the middle of Berlin in Stadtmitte. And yes Denya, we're still definitely in the East! It's about 20 min. walk to Unter den Linden (main big commie street) and the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag. It's about 10 min. walk to Checkpoint Charlie (former famous checkpoint between East and West, now has a museum and some memorials). And it's about 10 min. walk to Potsdammer Platz (one of the big main squares). And prolly about 15-20 mins. walk to the Museum Island (an island which has a lot of museums on it... doh, those Germans - so precise in their namings!).

Without further ado I give you Leipziger Str.

The lounge room...

The kitchen (and dishwasher - yey!!!)...

The bedroom...

The view...

Closeup of the view...

Colour scheme...

Hiydili Ho Neighboureeni,

As you may possibly have noticed (in the same way that you would possibly notice if you'd just been hit by a bus) the colour scheme of our humble blog has undergone some minor revisions. This has taken place for the following reasons:

1. To reflect better our underlyingly bright characters
2. Give a hint of spring (even though it's still snowing and minus 2 here)
3. Provide a nice concurance with the recent changes at http://blurrrrgh.blogspot.com/ and also show some appropriate use of "carrot colour"

If for some reason you can:

1. No longer read this blog due to artistic shock
2. Feel there is some problem with our underlyingly bright characters
3. Don't like to have your screen look like a procelain bus on the morning after

Please feel free to contact us at mailto:/dev/null. ;-)

Otherwise as always happy to here from you in comments or e-mail.

Buda + Pest = Budapest

After Romania we spent two wonderful sunny and warm (for this wintery weather) days in the capital of Hungary. The city itself is situated on two banks of the Danube river... the hilly side is Buda and the flatter one is Pest...

Buda has the castle on it...

and a hill with the WWII Victory Monument, which we climbed and from there you can see most of the city, which was awesome.

One can also take the Funicular (as Jack made me practice this word) Tram up the hill - oh the fun!!!

On the Pest side there were lots of pests... nah, bad joke. This one has heaps of museums and the really nice church of St Stephan, plus the old opera house and just tons of cool looking buildings. Actually comparatively to all places we've seen so far in Europe, Hungarians dress the best by far... so many clean, properly dressed men and women made us feel very bogan.

Another notable thing is the subway... apparently Budapest has the oldest one in Europe and the train is this tiny little yellow thing of three carriages which makes a very loud but very cute buzzing noise as it leaves each station.

We did a tour of these ancient catacombs under the Buda castle... it's a series of caves and passages that used to have some prehistoric paintings, but during WWII were used as a bombshelter, so not much of it was left. But we did find an underground fountain of wine... it's literally covered in vine leaves and has wine flowing from it on all four sides :)

One other notable thing about Budapest is the abundance of lion statues - they're everywhere... here are just some of the ones we came across.

And lastly some more generic photos...

Fisherman's Bastion in the Buda castle

Jack with 'The Guy on the Horse'...

Meself with the statue of a boy that really looked like Buratino (Russian Pinoccio), but had some weird Hungarian name instead... being Hungary and all.

Jack with the backdrop of the National Museum in the evening.

Cluj-Napoca and RRRRRRRomania

1-5th of March of 2006 were spent in the most expensive city of Romania - Cluj-Napoca. The purpose of this trip was to catch up with Denis and indulge ourselves in deep and meaningful discussions about peace in the world and conflict in Chechnya, why the cool bar Insomnia is being renovated (the walls of this establishment have painted pigs and sheep in various poses from the Kama Sutra... and a recent addition has been a donkey), the curious underlying thoughts brought about by 'Napoleon Dynamite', and lastly why did Denis's flatmate Robert decide that the best place for his painted picture of Gandhi is on the toilet cistern. So here are some photos ...

Our "slightly frozen" mode of transportation

Hanging out in the infamous bar Insomnia

View of the city

Going for a walk beyond the city bounds... into the WILD!

Views of the 'beyond'

Recreating our own Insomnia in 3D

Integration - the saga

*SIGH* - this pretty much sums it up really... but do read on for the thrills the spills and the oh so drawn out saga of getting into an integration course (official German language course).

Some time ago you will recall our jubilation at receiving Polina's residency permit. To be rather precise that was while we were still in Frankfurt in mid January. Now there's a bit of a lead up to this - after much stressing (mainly caused by the Australian Embassy in Frankfurt telling Polina that she should have applied for the permit in Australia and she pretty much had zero chance of getting one now, even though the Germans in Australia had told us the opposite) and much dotting of t's and crossing of i's we did manage to get this important document that allows Polina to stay in Germany for up to the next three years.

Fatal mistakes occur when you combine

1. trying to provide all of the correct information and
2. officials who do not know what any of this means.

Example: We are in Frankfurt getting the residence permit, we ask about the integration course and also happen to mention that we will be moving to Berlin. This is a real problem as what the woman there should have done is say "Ach ja das ist wunderbar, heir ist deine sehr wichtiges dokument" == "Yeah that's lovely, here is your important document anyway". Unfortunately she chose to say "Well ewes blokes had better gettit done in Berrrlinee then hadntcha" :-(

Not knowing any better at this stage we head off to Berlin. Where we proceed to queue for a rather lengthy period of time only to be told that we should have gotten that letter in Frankfurt. So we come out with "Oh well not to worry, you'll just print that out for us here then yeah *hopeful kitten look*". The answer there is obviously "Nein ve vill do keine printing of the forms like zhis. Ve vill vait until your files are arrivhing von Frankfurt". Which disappointingly in this day and age still takes four weeks. To put this into perspective I can walk from Frankfurt to Berlin in four weeks - farken!

Eventually after the allotted time has passed, several chickens have been sacrificed and we have revised our Octagram to include the appropriate occult symbols the files arrive from Frankfurt, so we get a letter in the post saying you have an appointment on the 9th of March to collect your permission to do the integration course. This is lovely, except we were kinda planning to be in Prague on the 9th of March... hmmm...

So we go to the office very early one morning - these guys open at 7am so you can really start your aggravation early in the day - and queue up again with the other die hard fans. We get to the office and talk to the lady there and explain that on the day of the appointment we will be out of the country and couldn't we just sort things out now please given we have waited for 4 weeks already and it is kinda their fuckup. The answer to that is "Nein - you vill take zhis appointment or zhe next one vhich is 11th April". Things go back and forth a bit along the lines of "what the fuck do you mean the 11th of April???" and "isn't it just one bit of paper you have to print for us???" and "can we actually talk to your supervisor".

With the supervisor it goes around and around in circles where she understands that it isn't our fault and we understand that it isn't her fault but she isn't gonna get off her lumpy arse to actually help us out. In the end we agree to the 9th of March date and go and rearrange our lives in a very depressed state.

9th of March rolls around and we rock up to the office at the appointment time 16:30. The lady lets us in, flicks through the file, check the passport, prints out one bit of paper, stamps it, signs it, hands it over and looks at us strangely when we don't leave. Five minutes of this is really all you need to do? Ja. You're very sure of that? Ja. and at 16:40 we leave....

Many important questions spring to mind:

1. WHY THE FARK COULD THEY NOT JUST POST THAT LETTER TO US AND SAVE US ALL THE TROUBLE????
2. Why instead of arguing for 45 min could they not just do this?
3. Why the fark our file needed to meander from Frankfurt to Berlin to enable all this to happen?
4. And did Chewbaka really live on Endor?

Anyway *relieved sigh* it's all over now...

So 10th of March Polina's first German lesson, we get up and have breaky and head to the school. When we arrive we are greeted by the girl who took our details last time we were there, but she has this kinda strange look on her face and says "Jjjjaaaaahhh?..."

Oh fark not something else - but it turns out that the start of the course has been delayed until 20th March - which isn't all that bad, but it would have been nice if someone had told us.

Please please keep your fingers crossed for us that this one sorts itself out and that the course starts. Alternatively start saving up donations so that we can get a nice little padded room and one of the form fitting white coats... :-)