Februar

You know, I'm a little disappointed that I only wrote four entries for January it seems like a bit of a cop out since I'm away and all. All I can promise is that I will try and post more about the trip later. I have now only less than three weeks to go before I get home and I think I'm torn equally between being glad to go home and wanting to stay another six weeks. Everybody here I have gotten to know over the past 4 weeks have all been very welcoming and fun and I am definitely having a good time. Especially considering there were times when I was rather apprehensive about the decision to spend 8 weeks so far away from home in such a cold climate and in an alien environment. But on the other hand, I miss home quite a lot. The Australian weather and landscape and all my friends and family. Plus I miss being able to understand what is going on around me, the language barrier is a quite a big thing for me. I mean I don't expect to be able to speak fluent German (or even near that) by the time I leave and my German has improved a whole lot since coming here. But when I'm out on the street/in a shop/public transport I still only understand up to 50% of what people say. It is frustrating. In class and with my host family I usually understand a lot more because of context and the fact they know that I'm still just learning.

Anyway am Wochenende I went to two different towns to see two different musicals namely, Wicked die hexen von Ost und Starlight Express. Both were really good and worth all the train-time it took to get their but Wicked was still my definite favourite. All of the songs and dialogue were in German, of course  but since I had seen the musical in Melbourne before I knew what was happening even if I only understood the actual dialogue 50% of the time. I had really come because I really like the songs from Wicked and wanted to hear them sung again in another language. So despite the language barrier it was really good.

Starlight Express wasn't as good, it was fun to see all the characters try and sing, dance and rollerblade at the same time but I thought the music really wasn't that good. It was all a bit bland and predicable.  The show was easy to understand because there was minimal dialogue and all the songs were in fairly simple language plus it's one of those musics that is basically all about the spectacle  and not about the story so there wasn't a complex plot. It was interesting to see all the characters rollerskating all the time but once that novelty wore of it was a little boring.

Also, now I have a whole bunch of programmes to send home. I'm going to have to send quite a few parcels to myself.

Australia Day in Ausland

(Ausland means abroad for those of you who do not know German)

Yesterday was Australia Day but because I am still in Germany studying there was no public holiday, fireworks or summer sun. There was just snow, German class and coldness. But by a happy coincidence most of the people doing the course with me happen to be Australian, either from Adelaide, Perth or Melbourne. This being the case people turned up to school with pavlova and dressed in green and gold with a whole lot of tacky, Australian flag tattoos.

After class as many people as possible (including a good sum of Americans) went out for dinner + drinks at a German brewery/pub/resturant which was a lot of fun. Ironically we went to a traditional Swabian (the name of the group of people who have traditionally lived in this part of Germany) pub, while there was an Australian restaurant next door. Even though it was really convenience that made us choose this German pub over the Australian one, it seemed like a fitting choice for the celebration that has a very young identity and a whole heap of differing traditions.

 There was a decent number of people there from all the German classes and universities so I got to meet and talk to people I wouldn't necessarily see just during/because of class. I ate some traditional KäseSpätzle and Radler (?) a combination of lemonade and beer to drink. Even though German beer is nicer than most Aussie beers I still don't like it! Watered down with lemonade beer is ok.

After we finished eating we went on a massive trek to try and find another pub/club/bar. After losing some people, gaining a few and contemplating going home at least once, we stumbled on a club. Compared to the standard of clubs I am used to this one was fairly decent, 3 Euro entry with a shot of vodka free on entry. Except that went we got down to the dance floor it was pretty much deserted, it's the most deserted I've ever seen a night club. We thought that this was hilarious but stayed awhile and the club got fuller as the night went on. The music was acceptable I thought I was pretty disappointed they didn't play any German pop music, it was all the same music they play at the clubs at home. Partly because I had to be in class at 8:45 the next day and partly because I didn't want to miss my last train home I left kind of early and ended up getting home at about 12:30.

All in all it was a pretty good Australia Day, probably the best so far but that's not saying much because I rarely ever do much to celebrate.

Snow!

It snowed here in Stuttgart today, it was pretty cool. It start with a tiny bit of snow as I left my apartment building but then by the middle of classes today it was snowing a little bit more solidly.  I'm told by my classmates from Connecticut that it was 'good' snow so I guess that's a good way to be introduced to falling snow.

In other news, yesterday was my birthday! I am now officially no longer a teenager! I guess that's exciting but I don't feel any different. It was weird having a birthday twin-less and in such cold weather. Nevertheless my host family put on a lovely dinner for me and a couple of my friends from Winter Uni plus they also bought me a whole bunch of German-themed presents. Which was sehr schön.

I think that is all for now.

Das Handy ist kaputt

There you go a real German sentence, live from Germany where it is mostly a shade of black or grey.
Mein Handy ist kaputt. My water bottle spilt in my bag. Now this happens at least once a semester, usually more often. I can safely say that all of my bags that are large enough to carry a water bottle have been victim to an incident of this kind. However, this time the bag in question was my new RRP $400 Mimco bag (for the record I didn't bay nearly that price for it) which holds water surprisingly well which was good, because it meant that the outside of the leather bag did not get water stained and the bag itself was unharmed. Unfortunately, this meant that my stainless steel, built-like-a-rock, previously indestructible LG phone drowned in a Mimco-induced puddle of bottled German water.

So then I went to a shop and bought a phone that cost 29 Euro. Except I lost all my numbers so I'll have to do a stupid facebook event to get them back if I didn't remember to save them on my other sim.

As for my continuing stay in Germany it's going quite well, it's quite exhausting I have class most days from 8.45 until 3.30. I'm lucky that I know a lot of the people in the course and all the other people are really nice and non-cliquey.

Hey I'm in Germany

Hey non-specfic blog reader, it's 2011! And I'm sitting next to a heater with a cup of Harrods tea by my side in Stuttgart, Germany. I mean let's face it there are more than a couple of awesome things about that sentence. The being in Germany is probably the most obvious one. I've not travelled a lot so maybe that's why I have trouble grasping the physical idea idea of being away from home. I just cannot comprehend that I am oceans and landmasses apart from my home city. Even though if I thought about it for two seconds then I'd realise that it would take me at least 24 hours to to travel to my home from where I am sitting now I still can't shake the feeling that I'm only a couple of hours drive away, that if I wanted to go home and see my mother that it would take minimal amounts of effort and time to go do so. But, of course in reality it's still approximately 7 weeks and a 24 hour flight until I can walk through my front door again.

Whenever I do start to miss my friends and family a little I can log onto facebook or text message or call them and I am reminded that even some form of home is still accessible to me (almost) anytime anywhere.
Perhaps the only thing I can't have a little bit of is the weather at home. The hot, sunny weather. Here it's like you're permanently in an ice-rink, being outside it is being on/near the ice and being inside is like being in the warm cafe upstairs where you can start to feel your digits again. Another thing about Perth or Australia in general is that I miss is the expanse of space. Places like London may be much much bigger than than Perth or even or Sydney or Melbourne but because England lacks surface area things feels so much more cramped and boxed in, even in open spaces. The sky seems different. It's seems closer to the ground in Europe but in Australia it make you feel like the world goes on forever or something. I don't really know how to explain it properly. It's probably the thing (as well as the weather) that I miss most about Australia and it makes me feel like I would never permanently move to any other country.

  

Time to Make a Speech

It's very nearly the end of the year, which is kind of exciting because I will be spending most of the first 2 months of 2011 in Europe in the snow, very far away from home. It also means that is coming up to the last few weeks of teenage-dom for me as I'll be 20 in January. Everything is happening at the beginning of next year. I'm not sure what I should really do with all this information. Should I make a "Year That Was"- style sentimental account of the last year? Should I instead do an optimistic "Year That Will Be", outlining all the goals I have for next year and how I hope to achieve them? I don't think so, I'm not really a fan of either of those things, although I do feel that having goals and learning from your past decisions is important I don't think you should necessarily need to talk about these at length. So instead I'll just give a quick review of a movie a saw yesterday called The King's Speech.


I thought this film was probably one of the best I've seen in awhile. It was an inspiring true story that was executed perfectly through film, nothing included seemed superfluous or repeated, every shot was just as vital as the last. Often when I see films even the good ones have parts which I feel are unnecessary because they bring up plots points or ideas which have already been sufficiently explained or are just plain useless in the way of story telling (Where the Wild Things Are, I thought, was a repeat offender of this). Sometimes films just have parts which makes them lag and as a viewer (albeit one with a short attention span) just distance you from the story through sheer boredom.

The performances of the main two actors especially, Colin Firth who played King George VI and Jeffery Rush who played his speech therapist Lionel Logue were fantastic. Both performers commanded the audiences complete attention whilst on screen without stepping on each other toes, their performances were completely equal never having one outshine the other despite the opposite polarity of their characters. The story brought to light just how very important the ability to speak with confidence and clarity is in power relationships and how we are perceived by others. In a day and age when 'text speak' is infiltrating our spoken language this message is especially prevalent.  

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year.

ARGH.

So apparently perfume is really corrosive went spilt on varnished wooden floors. I mean I probably already knew this in the back of my mind but with these things you only really realise how problematic these chemical reactions are when say your perfume bottle falls on the floor without you noticing and spills a whole heap of perfume on the floor and you don't even notice this because it's under you desk chair and you can't see it until you move the desk chair so now you've made a permanent mark on the floorboards and your room  also smells of a perfume that you don't even wear anymore because the bottle is broken and you couldn't get anymore out (or so you thought).

Sometimes I hate my life.