Procrastination (and other things)

I should be doing my UTS Project, but I have keine Lust and I'm also incredibly tired, having arrived home at midnight last night, after a whirlwind tour of Malaga in Spain.

First of all though, Christmas and New Years greetings to all of you out there who still read the blog... and also thanks to those who sent Luke and me birthday greetings =)

We celebrated our birthdays by holding an 'Australian Party' at our place before Christmas. We cooked Australian food, played Australian music and DVDs of Kath and Kim and the Chaser, to show our German friends a bit of Australian culture. Our guests hooked into the beer (in cans, of course, although unfortunatly, no Australian beer was to be found), and much fun was had by all!

Luke and my Christmas was spent in Frankfurt and Heidelberg with my parents and sister, and our family-members-for-the-weekend Graham and Tanja. Christmas Day rounded off my family's rushed Europe adventure... it was nice to see them again, and was good to be able to show them around Berlin!

You'll be happy to know, I'm sure, that finally after working the last 3 New Years Eves, I finally got to celebrate it! And oh, how we celebrated... after pizza, beer and wine at Luke and my place, we headed off to Magnet Club in East Berlin with Katho, Robin, Volker and Tilo. The club was typically Berlin--grungy, run-down, everything goes sort of cool--and the djs pumped out Brit Pop and indie... the sort of music I always wanted to dance to, but never got the chance!

At midnight we went outside and watched people set off their own fireworks; the air was full of smoke, excitement, and random guys trying to hump Robin (hehe). After that it was back to the warmth of the club to dance the night away!

After a lull of a couple of days, the momentum rose again as we touched down in Malaga on Thursday to visit my ex-flatmate Patricia and her boyfriend Ismael. Staying with Patri's family, we were welcomed like long lost relatives! Her mum and dad are incredibly lovely, even though we didn't understand a word each other said... Patri and Isma showed us the best parts of Malaga and Seville, and most importantly, the best food. We didn't have to go far though for a good meal; Saturday was actually Spain's quasi Christmas Day (the day presents are given out), and we were treated to a feast of seafood paella (I'm drooling just thinking about it)! Isma's family came around, as well as Claudi (our other flatmate, who also just happened to be in Malaga) and her friend Basti, and the celebrations lasted from midday into the late evening.

It's funny to think that just yesterday, it was 24 degrees, cloudless, we were near the sea, and eating seafood, and now we've voluntarily come back to cold, rainy, sea and seafoodless Berlin! The even stranger thing is that I wouldn't swap it for the world! We're down now to the last five or so weeks of our time here. I can't believe how quick it's gone. I'm sad too, to think that I'll be leaving this place that I've grown to love so much, and all our friends. But, chin up, there's a whole assignment to write before we leave!

Having said that, I'd better get to it...

liebe Gruesse, mel

Wanderung

Since you last heard from us (me), we've just been trying to get into the groove of studying, with varying degrees of success... but now things are starting to wind up again...

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Goettingen, the home (for some part of their lives) of Gaust, the Brothers Grimm, Siobhan and Claudi's friends Bifi and Janine. Claudi drove us there in her little Zwerg... the Autobahns are scary when you've got huge freight trucks to contend with, and you see accidents every 50km or so, but we got to Goettingen in one piece, only getting lost in Goettingen itself about 5 times.

Goettingen is small and quaint, with a beautiful town hall and university, and it was great to see Siobs again after all this time. We had dinner with some of her flatmates, where we all spoke German together (kudos to Siobs, she has improved out-of-sight)... many glasses of wine were drunk and the conversation flowed, a very enjoyable night.

We also spent a lot of time with Claudi and her friends, having Sunday lunch with Janine's family. Her mum cooked a delicious traditional German lunch, but somehow I felt like Luke and I were somehow intruding...

To this weekend though, which saw us going to Cottbus with Robin for his father's birthday. We got there on Friday night, to be heartily welcomed by Robin's parents with dinner and the gift of an advent calendar (Christmas here is taken much more seriously than at home). On Saturday Robin took us on a tour of Cottbus, a city that's been marred by war and the soviet occupation, but nonetheless has a lovely church and inner city.

In the afternoon, we went back to Robin's place, and the relatives started arriving for his dad's party. We went on a relaxing wander through the forest near his house with his aunt and his omi and opi (grandma, grandpa, mother's side), and the family's three dogs. Afterwards, we had coffee and cakes, in traditional German style, then once most of the relos had arrived, it was time for the drinking; beer, wine, whiskey and vodka flowed, creating a loud, merry evening... the gorgeous Opi entertained Luke and me with stories about his childhood, the war, and getting drunk with Russians during the GDR, while Robin's dad showed us his dance and air guitar moves to the Beatles!

On Sunday we drove to Dresden, where we met Siobs again! She took us on a tour through the city, and we went to all three of the Weihnachtsmaerkte (Christmas markets), one of which was in the courtyard of the palace, with a medieval theme... cool pottery etc. We drank plenty of Gluhwein to keep us warm (although it's not very cold here, only 8 degrees or so).

Dresden is a beautiful city, (und ich muss zugeben, Siobs) and I can understand why Siobs loves it so much. At dusk (read 4:30pm), we walked over a bridge from the Neustadt to the Altstadt, and the skyline of the 'old' beautiful churches and palaces, with two bells tolling and the black outline of birds swooping around in the sky was one of the most beautiful things I've experienced in my time here.

We parted with Siobs and Dresden and made the long trip home, tired but content after a lovely weekend. Thanks so much to Robin and his parents for making us feel so welcome and being so hospitable... even though it was his dad's birthday, his parents ended up giving us more than we gave them. vielen vielen Dank!

Next weekend Vienna, the weekend after that, Holland with my parents! You wouldn't guess that we're students...

Greetings to Constance who came and stayed with us for a few days, and to whom we got to show all the different sides of Berlin!

Bye!

More Melbourne Cup photos

Melbourne Cup

Although we're all the way over here in Germany, we too have been caught up in Melbourne Cup fever (well not really, it was just a good excuse to drink free Australian wine and eat meat pies). We (Katho, Luke and I) managed to wrangle an invite to the Australian Embassy's Melbourne Cup party, which saw us getting all dressed up last night, ready to rub shoulders with all those prominent Aussie expats in Berlin.

Disappointingly, that Deutsche Welle newsreader wasn't there, nor anyone famous that we could recognise. I think it was fairly obvious that we were the only students in a sea of boringly dressed business people... you know the ones, young IT and management 'professionals' rubbing shoulders with pompous-looking, fat CEOs.

However, during the obligatory fashion awards, things started getting interesting. The third placed contestant was a lady who looked uncannily familiar; she has curly hair like Sam (from our German 5-6 classes), she has the same last name as Sam, and Sam said his mother was thinking of moving back to Germany... she must be Sam's mother! So after our third glass of wine each, we had gathered up enough courage to talk to her, and... she was Sam's mother, she's wonderfully lovely, and gave us plenty of dirt on Sam =)

Yes Sam, that's right, we met your mother!

How small the world is! And through her, we met a nice young Australian Opera singer and his wife, which means we might just have to go see him perform at the Komische Oper here in Berlin.

Anyway, here's a photo of Luke and I in our scratched together outfits;

I'll put one up with Katho in it when I find it...

Bis dann.

It's a good thing I bought that duck-down jacket

Because it's bloody freezing! Yes, that's right, it's freezing. When Luke and I picked up our bikes from the station last night, there was ice on the seats.

The weather here's been strange. Up until Tuesday, you could get around with a warmish jacket on. Then on Wednesday, it just hit; it started raining, and the wind that whipped around us was icy cold. The sort of cold that seeps in through the gaps between your new duck-down jacket and your skin, freezing your lungs and making your ears hurt and your nose feel like ice.

It was like the weather said, ok, it's the first of November, I think it's time to turn up the ice. And it's not even winter yet! For the last month or so, we've had the most glorious Autumn I've ever experienced. One thing I've noticed about Europe, is that you can really tell the difference between seasons; after the long winter, spring really did 'spring' with all sorts of flowers, blossoms and the greenest greens I'd ever seen. Then came the hot summer, and now the autumn. All of a sudden the leaves of the trees started changing colour, the full spectrum from yellow to orange, to red and even browns. Now the leaves are falling, and there are huge piles of them in the street. It's really beautiful... except for the cold!

Apart from that, life here's going along as it always has, except for a UTS assignment, which I'm studiously avoiding at the moment. The most exciting news is that we're (Luke, Katho and I) are going to a Melbourne Cup Day party at the Australian Embassy here next week! Get to rub shoulders with Aussie expats, including that yummy newsreader from Deutsche Welle =)

I'm sure I'll give you a rundown about it while I'm procrastinating next week.

Bis dann...

New semester

So it's been so long since we posted that noone's probably even looking at this site anymore, but just in case someone's there, I thought I'd post something to keep them coming...

This week's the first week back at uni for us Potsdamers, which means testing out subjects, and running into little obstacles like unannounced room changes, day changes and week changes... oh and incredibly full public transport. Luke was on a train yesterday where it took literally 10 minutes to cram everyone onto the train, and he had about 10cm space for himself... it should calm down soon, once the keen 1st years cotton on to the fact that you don't have to be at uni at 9am every day if you don't have classes.

My subjects this semester will probably be something like Chinese, Einfuehrung in die Medienkulturwissenschaft (Introduction to media/culture studies), Amoklaufende Geschichte einer Nachricht (Stories about 'running amok' in the news), Text-Bild Beziehungen (Picture-text relationships) and Cultural Broadcasting (focusing on Australian soaps broadcast in Germany... I thought I'd be well suited to that).

And the big news is that Luke and I have moved to Berlin!! To a suburb called Charlottenburg, in a really nice street with lots of eating places, turkish takeaway and 4 supermarkets within 2 min walking distance. Oh, and our apartment's lovely too. Any post would be welcome:

Danckelmannstrasse 20, 3OG rechts (QG)
14059 Berlin
Germany

Half of the living room

The Kitchen

Anyway, I'd better get to class... I hope everyone out there's well and not studying/working too hard... except you Simone!

Tchuessi

NIPPON!

OK, so I got told to post, and as I should, since i've been in Japan for the last week. Came here for a touristy holiday with my brother and his girlfriend.

We arrived in tokyo (I had a great flight through HEATHROW...), got settled in Shinjuku, spent a day in Disneyland, Harajuku, Akihabara and Shibuya/Yoyogi respectively, then moved on to Hiroshima to hang with an old work friend of ours who's got himself set up here as an english teacher, hanging out with all the other expat teachers and dating one of the students. We mostly did a whole pile of shopping in tokyo, but are seeing sights in Hiroshima, like Miyajima island temple today, and the Castle and parks tomorrow..

We stayed in a dodgy, cramped hotel in Tokyo, but in Hiroshima we are in the Roayel Rihga, 5 star goodness for only $100AU per person per night. On the 25th floor, facing the Castle grounds, we have a pretty awesome view, and a bathroom that's literally larger than the hotel room we had in Tokyo.

We go back to Tokyo on tuesday, my bro and his gf fly back to Aus on wednesday, and I fly out on thursday afternoon back to Deutschland. I'm hoping to spend a bit of time travelling around germany (hopefully north) before my parents come to visit at start of October, then it'll be back to uni after that.

That's about all from me, hope you guys are enjoying your crazy trips and exciting adventures, I kind of ran out of time these holidays I guess, too much sitting around waiting for things to happen TO me.