What's the difference between Melbourne and Darmstadt?

About 44°C!!!!

I hear that it is around 40°C in Australia at the moment. So, to help you cool down a little, here are a few pics that we took while out for a walk this afternoon...it was around -4°C.

Searched for this little hut in the park forever. We were planning to have a cup of tea in the hut, but it took too long to find it, so we drank our tea elsewhere. We finally found it on our way home.

An old guy out for a walk on a cold winter's day.

Don't think they will be needing this for a few months...

This is where we drank our tea instead. Looked like a Munchkin Christmas Tree plantation. And look! There's a Munchkin in the trees now!

A 'Brush with nature...

Hope that helped you all cool down a little! :)

Tschüß
'Brush

Chillin'

Just a quick pick of us literally chillin' in Darmstadt. This was on the way to the supermarket, and is the first picture that I have been able to take with the camera since I charged it this afternoon.
David and Gwenda will hopefully recognise the jackets - THANKS! :)

Wanna get high?

Here are a few pics taken from the top of the Zugspitze. This is the highest mountain in Germany, and we were standing at about 2900m. The air was quite thin up here, and just a little bit of exertion made me want to fall down.
You can see from the pictures that it was a very overcast day in Garmisch (the town below), but once we took the Seilbahn up the mountain we broke through the clouds to a magnificent -12C Christmas day.


View from the top.

Another view from the top. Apparently you can see a number of countries from up here on a clear day. From here you could basically spit on Austria...but they are nice people, so we didn't.

How you doin'?

Belinda on top of the Zugspitze.

Es ist schön, oder?

Tschüß,
'Brush

Merry Xmas & Happy New Year!

Wir wünschen euch schöne fröhliche Weihnachten, guten Rutsch, und ein gutes neues Jahr!

Zu schlange stehen, oder zu schlange stehen nicht. Das ist die Frage.

Ok, so the external perception of Germany is that it is a very strict and regulated country. All you have to do is picture the "Soup Nazi" in Seinfeld, and you know exactly what I mean.

I some cases this really is true. For example, when we moved here, we were first registered in Bad Homburg. Then we moved to Darmstadt a few days later, so we had to drag ourselves down to the Town Hall and register as living in Darmstadt. Every time you move you must do this.
Another example is with our license. Before we can go for the test we must:
1. Register ourselves with a driving school;
2. Do our eye test;
3. Do our first aid course;
4. Go to the town hall and register as a potential driver, with proof of the above.
Once all this is done, the town hall will eventually process our papers and send a letter to the driving school. When they receive it, then, and only then, can we make an appointment to sit the driving test.

So, will all of these stringent rules in mind, now let's have a look at the town hall. I believe we may have described this before, but I will recap here...
There is a long hallway with many doors down each side (picture Alice in Wonderland...). The doors have signs above them breaking the alphabet up into three parts A-K, K-... Fairly orgainsed so far. Look around for the queue...there isn't one! Everyone just waits in the hallway, and when one of the doors lights up with "Enter" it becomes a shit-fight to see who can get in there first!
It was like this again when we were doing the first aid course. This time it was a little different, because we formed an orderly queue to register for the course and the vision test. Then everyone went back into the hallway and waited. When the vision tests started, so did the shit-fight. Why not just process people in the order they signed up?!?!?!

Two steps left, one step forward, three steps right, one step forward....SHIT FIGHT!!!!

Das ist alles.

Tschüß,
'Brush

I don't think B eats fish anymore...

One of the TV channels here - ProSieben - runs little documentaries throughout the night. While I was cooking dinner tonight there was a documentary on Christmas Carp. There seems to be a tradition in Germany that ppl have carp at their Weihnachts dinner....

Anyway, the documentary covered everything from the catching to the cooking of the carp...problem was that they decided that the best way to tell the story was to use animated carp. The main story teller was the grandpa carp who was explaining to the kiddy carp what will happen to them when they are caught etc... Every time he told them something bad, their little eyes would go really wide and look really scared! But then he would say Hab keine Angst... and then go on to justify something or other.

But that's not the worst of it...

Of course, they showed the carp being caught in the nets, being hauled onto the boat, being kept alive in little tanks on the boat, and then finally reaching shore. At shore they were transfered to tankers full of water that transported them to little farms where they were put in bigger ponds to swim around for a while (apparently it makes them taste better). All is looking good for the carp right now. Nice little retirement home in the country...plenty to eat...
Anyway, when it is "time", they dragnet the pool and get the carp out into plastic bin things full of water. Sure, it's a little crowded in here, but we are still alive! Kind of like living in New York...
Finally, I guess it is time for the carp to go to the big pond in the sky. So, how do you think they do it? Do you think they:

1. Take each one out one by one and thump them on the table until they are dead?
2. Wait until they are sleeping, and then smother them with a pillow?
3. Drain all the water out until they suffocate?
4. Call Dr Philip Nitschke for a nice Euthanasia Cocktail before bed?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above, you would be wrong.

Let's look at it from the point of view of the carp...
Phil: Hey! Stop pushing! There's plenty of room for everyone!
Barry: Hey Phil! What are you and the Missus planning to do for Christmas this year? Going anywhere interesting with the School?
Phil: Um...Barry. What's that wire mesh thing coming into the tank in front of us?
Barry: I dunno Phil, but there's another one being lowered in behind us!
Phil: Maybe it's to keep the Sharks away or something...
Barry: Then what is that red lead that is being attached to the mesh in front of us? And what about the black lead being attached to the one behind u...

ZAP!

And then silence....

THAT'S RIGHT PEOPLE! THEY ELECTROCUTE THE FISH!!!!!

One minute they are happily swimming in their crowded tank, and then ZAP! One minute we saw them as a happy swimming mass, and then ZAP! they were all completely still at the same time! It was really kind of disturbing.

I don't think B will ever eat carp again...

Ich werde für eine Woche nicht scheißen!

That right there is a Schweinshaxe...and not a very small one at that!

Am Dienstag habe ich nach Essen gegangen. Als ich dort war, habe ich eine Schweinshaxe gegessen. Die Schweinshaxe war zu groß... Ich werde für eine Woche nicht scheißen!

On Tuesday I went to Essen. When I was there, I ate a Schweinshaxe (leg of pork). The Schweinshaxe was too big... (I choose not to translate the next sentence...)

Tschüß,
'Brush

Just out of interest...

Wer liest dieses Tagebuch?
Who reads this blog?

Tschüß,
'Brush

Wie bitte?

This one is for Tansy and all the other German speakers out there...



Sometimes I am just too funny for my own good!

This week # 49

No this isn't the 49th time I have made an entry called 'this week', the Germans are a fan of using the week number when talking about weeks. Confusing when you aren't used to it but proabably easier than saying 'the week starting Dec 4' and I might do a few week updates when I have had a busy week to update those concerned about my daily doings.

This week, as is the recent plan, I volunteered at World Vision on Monday and Tuesday. The plan was to then volunteerat CBM for the next few days. CBM has offered me a temporay 3 day per week contract until the end of Jan, so once this is sorted then my wed-fri will be paid. On Tuesday however I got a phone call from HR at CBM telling me that there is a German law that says once a contract has been offered I cannot work or volunteer there until the contract is signed and the work permit issued (here job offer must be made then work permit is secured) so I wasn't allowed to volunteer this week. I understand that the law is there to protect me from being bullied into working for free, but I want to do something.

Tuesday morning I had dropped Brett at the airport for his day trip to Vienna and then driven to work for the first time. This turned out to be an adventure as the Nav system list 4 or 5 Friedrischsdorfs and none of them with the additional name 'am Taunus' that my Friedrischsorf has, and the few that I guessed didn't have the street, so after much screaming at the system while being double parked in arrivals and Brett returning from check-in to try to rescue me I had to enter another nerby town, Bad Homberg, and go from there. Because we had stayed in Bad Homberg initially I knew there were signs from there to Friedrischsdorf so I took a stab. Lucklily it worked, there were signs to F, but once I got there no signs to where I needed to go. I had gotten a lift home with someone one day and so I luckliy recognized one weird looking building and went from there. I was a bit strssed because I had to be on time that day as I had the office key because I was meant to beat my co-worker in. So after not being able to locate F, and a few missed turnoffs because the Nav lady can be very unclear I got there.

When I picked Brett up that night I told him about my phone call that I couldn't volunteer so we decided that I would tag along with him the rest of the week.

Wednesday we went to Nuremberg/Nürnberg. Lovely city, massive castle that we will have to return to so Brett can look at it properly, and reputedly the best Christmas market in all of Germany (I did't think it was that much better than Darstadt, just bigger - am I getting defensive of my town already?). I was also planning on going to the Nazi Paty Grounds/Reichspartei Gelande but when I got there and looked at the map I decided to skip it as its all outside and it was FREEZING and raining. Instead I spent the day looking around some very expensive shops pretending that I was actually interested in buying, trying shoes, clothes and jewlery on. It was great fun!!! The result of the day was a christmas present for Brett.

Thursday Brett was going to his office near Stuttgart so I tagged along and caught the train into Stuttgart. Regular readers will remember that we have looked around there already so I decided that I would relive the previous day's fun and again pretend I was loaded. All the shop people again were very helpful (even when I tried to say ' i wear...' by saying ''Ich ware, Nein, Ich treffe...' Afterward I relised my correction was also wrong I had said 'I was, No, I meet... ' Should have been Ich trage - which means both 'wear' and 'carry'.

So the result of that day was a Kookai jumper/Pulli for me for €30 reduced from €140. I love a bargin!! And Susan will be very happy - its a magneta colour - almost pink, not quite, but I am embracing colour. New ski pants for Brett which are a birthday present that he can have early (they have the removable overall section). New gloves for both of us for daily use as our hands have been freezing. Not quite so sucessful the second day with not spending, but all items were reasonably priced or on sale.

Friday we had German leasons and I did housework. While doing the housework I got mad at the pile of washing I had sorted, beacause it was in the way, and so I tried to kick it out of the way but was standing on the items that the kick connected with so manged to hurt my ankle quite well.

Brett spent all Saturday after our first aid lesson in bed because he has a cold.

Tschüss
B

Erste Hilfer

Today we did our Erste Hilfer (first aid) course, which everyone has to do for their licence here (great idea but unfortunately no requirement to redo it - still better than never doing one though). The course though is only available in German, but we were assured that there was no test at the end, as long as you stay there all day (8am-3pm) you get the certificate. We were dubious but it turned out to be true. We now both have the necessary German first aid certificate for our licences.

Those of you who know me well (or have ever travelled or hiked etc with me) will know I have a bit of a thing about first aid, and I have done a few courses before, so this was actually interesting to see the differences. I will quickly note these for those very few of you who will care. While they may sound like criticisms I am open to the idea that perhaps they could be better methods, but I haven't yet seen why.

In Aus we are taught to check for DR ABC - Danger, Response, Airways, Breathing and Circulation.
This course differed:
1. Check for response by firmly shaking the shoulders - I think we did that in one of the first courses I ever did but that is now not recommended for spinal damage reasons - and in case they are actually conscious they might get mad. (We didn't check for Danger though, so we only have the R for Response so far.)
2. Check for breathing while they are lying on their back by opening the mouth, tilting the head back, and listening. I am sure I have always been taught to check breathing and that airways are clear when they are on their side in the recovery position. Doing it while they're on their side is helpful because anything in the mouth runs out rather than down the throat, and since if unconscious they need to be in that position either way. (So we covered the Breathing part of DR ABC, but not really the Airways part.)
3. Once breathing checked call for help, before putting them in the recover position. In the 10 minutes it takes you to make work out where you are, make the phone call and try to explain in bad German what has happened they have drowned in their own saliva. Also in every course I have done we have been told that you should help before leaving to call for an ambulance. I can see both sides of the when to call debate, but I guess you just have hope that you never find someone in need of help when you are alone, or that you always have a mobile and signal.
4. Getting someone into the recover position. Done very strangely, by putting the closest arm under their bum, a few other things, and pulling towards you - this largely resulted in pressing their face into the ground and a twisted back... hmmmmm. Obviously not the intention but what was happening.
5. CPR/EAR. As far as either Brett or I could understand we were never told to check the pulse (even after 12 minutes of CPR that we practised) and we weren't taught just EAR (breathing without heart compressions) so at some stage after calling for help you start CPR without checking for a pulse or clearing any airways. (So we also skipped Circulation). I am not sure if they are skipped in every course/never done, or if it was just this quick course.

We did however cover how to remove a motorbike helmet - which has disappointedly been skipped in almost every Aus course I have done.

And we also covered how to wrap some one who is lying down in a space blanket. A few times. I guess it’s a lot more important here with the snow and all, so it was nice to know, but I would have traded its repetitions for EAR or checking pulses.

Oh well.
B

Burg Hohenzollern

So this weekend we caught up with Christy (a friend from our time in CA) who was in Germany for a week on business.

We took her to Burg Hohenzollern, an amazing castle that I had visited when I came to Germany alone a few years ago. I have always wanted to take Brett to this castle as I knew he would love it. I just couldn't remember where it was or what it was called, only that it was on top of a hill, which doesn't narrow it down.

We finally found out what it was called, and we went there on Saturday

this is what it looks like in Summer (when I went last time)
this is what it basically looked like on the weekend
this is the hallway you see on the tour
the Queen's room
a big gun in the coutyard

In case you want to check it out, here is their website
www.burg-hohenzollern.com

We also went to Herrenerg, which is one of those gorgeous very German towns. It has the church and castle ruins at the top of the hill and then all this old houses are terraced down from the church.

Lots of love to all
B

Wir haben Schneefall in Darmstadt! :)

Hallo lieber Leser und Leserin!

Wir haben Schneefall wieder in Darmstadt! Es ist sehr schön (und kalt)!

Am Wochenende sind wir zu dem Darmstädter-Weihnachtsmarkt gegangen. Der Weihnachtsmarkt ist auch sehr schön. Er besteht vielen Verkaufsstände daß verkauft der Glühwein, der Eierpunsch und der Lebkuchen. Ich denke Lebkuchen ist sehr Lecker, aber Belinda denkt nicht! :)

So, I am pretty sure that I screwed a lot of that up, but here is what I mean to say:

Dear reader,

We have snow falling again in Darmstadt! It is really pretty (and cold)!

On the weekend we went to the Darmstadt Christmas Market. The Christmas Market is also really pretty. It consists of many stalls that sell Mulled Wine, Egg-Nog, and Lebkuchen (no translation for that one). I think Lebkuchen is really delicious, but Belinda doesn't.

Tschüß,
'Brush.

(S)no(w) good reason to post...

Guess it must have been cold last night...







EDIT - Turned out to be somewhere between 5 and 10cm of snow on top of my car. Had to get most of it off with a plastic water bottle that I had in the back seat of the car. I pity the guys at BMW who had to then work on my car with all the snow fallling off it.

Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän

According to my "friendly FE" (FE = Sales Guy), the longest word in German used to be Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän. Apparently the word does not exist any more, and you will see why as we decode it...

Donau - The Danube River
Dampf - Steam
Schiff - Ship
Fahrt - To drive
Gesellschaft - A company
Kapitän - A captain

So, throwing all of that into the big-German-cooking-pot, adding some spices, and mashing the living shit out of it, we come up with Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän which means The Captain of a Steamboat, who works for a company, who sails on the Danube.

Crazy Germans... :)

Bis zum nächste mal! Tschüß!

How many things can break around here?

A few weeks ago we bought a DVD player (all very exciting - hours of entertainment, and an adventure in itself as we had to return the first one we bought because we couldn't change the region on it - and the guy in the store didn't speak English and wasn't at all interested in trying to understand our German). Our collection of DVDs is still floating over here so we purchased a few (do I hear gasps - yes we paid money for DVDs). After a while we realised there was a DVD rental place near us so we joined (for €5) and have rented a few movies (another adventure as we didn't initially realise that they charge by day rather than by night so if you hire it tonight and return it in the morning you pay for two days - we were stung a few times and just thought we had rented more expensive DVDs than we realised).

Tonight we decided that we would rent a movie, and then to save some money we would return tonight. GREAT PLAN!!!

So an hour or so into the movie it stops. '"Odd!". We get up to investigate, and discover that the DVD player has died! Turn it on\off\on\off, nothing. What a pain in the arse. Then we realise - we can't get the DVD out... We have tried everything we can think of, short of opening it (which we couldn't do anyway because we have no tools of any kind).

So then I thought perhaps I could ring the DVD rental place and tell them what had happened, and they would allow us to come to some sort of arrangement that wouldn't mean we pay a fortune for this DVD. (My dad thinks I live in a fantasy land where people are reasonable.) Apparently though this place likes to keeps its number a secret. It's not on the membership card, or their internet site, or in the phone book. Eventually I drove down there and spoke to them. I have to go back on Monday to talk to the manager... And I guess I also need to go the store we bought the DVD player from and try to get them to give us a new player....

Can anything else break? We will keep you posted...
Belinda

PS - did a perfect parallel park when I got home - it's only my 4th attempt on the other side of the car (1st one was a disaster!!!!).

PPS - it got to -3 today when we were out. WTF!?!?!?! It's only the beginning of winter.

Was ist das?!?!?!

Anyone for a bowl of maggots? Really, they ARE tasty!
Nah, just kidding. They aren't really maggots, they are Spätzle. Spätzle (pronounced Sh-pets-la) is a Schwäbish kind of pasta that is made of eggs, flour, and salt. They are kick arse, and especially good when made into a Bavarian dish called Käsespätzle (cheese spätzle).


A bitchin' stylin' vest that we found in Karstadt (a store in Darmstadt). This would be ok if it was in the chicks section, and they wore it kinda small with their shirt haning out the bottom (it was the style of the time), but this was in the DUDES section! Ivy-league rowing crew, anyone? Shall we adjourn to the smoking room for a snifter cognac and a fine cigar?


Sideways hanging jeans. Why not just use the frickin' top of the jeans so they hang like they wear? Or would that just be too easy?
But if you think that is bad, they do it with jumpers too! I didn't get a pic of it, but picture one of the sleeves all bunched up over the top of the coathanger, the neck kinda parallel to the floor, and the other arm pointing straight down at the floor. Surely it is easier to hang it the Australian way, right?


Hehehehehe....noblesse mens' jocks. If they are knobless, then what is that lump in the front?!?! Bratwurst mit kartoffeln anybody?


Who is that sexy man?!?!?!? And where did he get such a wonderful hat?!?!?! Gotta love a good winter baseball cap, complete with ear flaps! :)


Yeah, it's unfortunate, but my name is actually a German word. What have I become?!?!?!?
So far we have found me as a Schneiderbrett (chopping board), Surfbrett (surf board), a cat scratching board (can't remember what it's called), etc... It is important that I introduce myself as Ich bin der Brett, and not Ich bin das Brett. May seem very similar...but it has VERY different meanings.


DUDE! WHERE'S MY CAR?


Mmmmm..Schokolade mit Voll-Nuss (chocolate with full-nuts)... It must be healthy because it says "Sport" on it! DON'T TELL BELINDA!!!!

Anyway, that's enough of that for now.

Bis später. Tschüß!

Ich bin glücklich...und unglücklich...

To follow up from Monday's post, here is a picture of my lovely new Beamer!

Let me tell you how great this car is. It has full leather interior, nav system, seat heaters, dynamic stability control (for fast cornering)...
So, now picture this. It's a nice brisk November afternoon. You've had a customer visit in the morning in Münster (about 220+km NW of Frankfurt), and you're dying to get home. So you're banging down the Autobahn at a lazy 180km/h and you hear this BANG! from your car, followed by a rhythmic thumping from the back end. Your first thought is "Shit! There goes a tyre!", so you cross the 3 lanes and pull over on the side of the road. You carefully get out of the car, with traffic screaming by, and check all of the tyres...everything seems ok. You walk around the back of the car and find this...

That's right...that's my $%&$!§ MUFFLER DRAGGING ON THE $%&$§§! GROUND! WTF! I mean HONESTLY! WHOSE MUFFLER BREAKS OFF AND STARTS DRAGGING ON THE GROUND? REALLY!?!?!?!?! So much for German-$%&$§§!-engineering!
So, if this had happened to me in Australia I would have freaked out enough, but at least I would have known who to call. But this time I am in a foreign country, where I don't speak the freakin' language, and I have no goddamn idea who to call...and I have no goddamn idea where I am!
Anyway...I put a call in to one of the admins at work, and once she got over the "What happened?", and the swearing Australian on the other end of the phone, she asked me where I was...good question! All I knew was that I was on the A45, and the Ausfahrt (exit) ahead of me was saying U25 and U37. What the $%&$§§! does U25 and U37 mean? Are there submarines down there?
So the admin puts in a call to the lease company while I go firstly for a slash (up a very steep hill, in the bushes) , and then secondly to see if I can find out any more info on where I am. The nav system was good enough to tell me that I was near Olpe, about 10km past the nearest rest stop, and about 5km from the nearest BMW dealership, but other than that it was useless. I walked back up the A45 (kinda scary with traffic doing between 120-200+km/h), and managed to find a distance marker reading 83,5km (83.5km from where I still don't know), and a sign naming the towns you could reach on the exit...I am SO Sherlock freakin-Holmes!
Anyway...long story short (too late)...I get back into the car, turn the seat heaters on (it was about 9C outside), and wait. BMW service finally turns up, tears the muffler clean off the car, and then gets me to follow them the 30km to their service center (What about the one only 5km away!!?!?!?).
At the service center it turns out that they don't have the new part in to fix the car, so they "repair" it for now, and I have to take it to a dealer in Darmstadt tomorrow to get it fixed properly. On the upside, I did manage to get a quote on a new BMW 120d, including a €3000 discount, that I will submit to the leasing company tomorrow. (Do I really want one now, after all of this?!?!?!).

What is God's name will happen next???

PS: Bel bought me snacks to make me feel better...and is looking forward to eavesdropping tomorrow when I tell our German teacher what I did for the last few days...and attempting to do it in German. :)

PPS: Good thing it wasn't the tyre... :)

Q: How does one say "And then my $%&$§§! MUFFLER FELL OFF!" in German? Tansy? :)

Tschüß,
'Brush

Trauma has a new name...

AND IT'S NAME IS T-FREAKIN'-MOBILE PRE-FREAKIN-PAID!!!!!! But more of that later.

I took the train from Darmstadt Südbahnhof to Herrenberg today. Purpose of the visit was to pick up my new pool car, and start the "configuration" of the car that I want to get in a few months, that Agilent pays the lease on.
The two cars that I am looking at are the VW Golf Sportline (6 speed, 103kw, Turbo diesel), and the Audi A3 Ambition (6 speed, 103kw, Turbo diesel). Both of them are the sporty model, though the A3 is a bit sportier, with 17" rims, etc. The VW comes in at about €27k, and the Audi at about €30k.
While I was there I also picked up my new pool car. This one is a BMW 320d (Turbo diesel). I think it is a 77kw Turbo diesel, and all I can say is that if this is 77kw, then the 103kw in a smaller car is just going to be dangerous! (Read as sooooooooo much fun!).

When I got home from picking up the BMW, Bel and I headed up to the Frankfurt airport to return the piece-of-crap Mercedes. I say "piece-of-crap" because it has a top speed of around 170kmph, whereas the BMW does at least 200-220kmph. :)
Apparently, a "colleague" (the Germans love that word) of Bel's was telling her today that they most important keyword to listen to in the German traffic updates is not stau (meaning traffic jam), but Geistfahrer (Ghost/Spirit Driver) or Fahrfalsch (Driving Wrongly). These apparently mean that someone is driving the wrong way down the Autobahn.
Now, you might think "What has this got to do with the price of fish in China?" Well...as we were approaching the rental car return at the airport we noticed a car coming towards us. I didn't think too much of it - I thought that we were on a two-lane road...and then I remembered that we were on the Autobahn, and that they shouldn't be where they currently are!
The car in front of me managed to get out of their way, and so did I, and so did Belinda (in the Merc behind me). Funny thing was that the dude just kept on going down the exit ramp, and onto the Autobahn, IN THE WRONG FREAKIN' DIRECTION! Hope they made it home alive....stoopid heads.

And back to T-Mobile.
Bel has purchased a pre-paid card from T-Mobile, and also purchased an XtraCash card to add another €30 to her account. We weren't quite sure how to go about this, and we were going to ask our German teacher to help us out, but we forgot. It surely can't be that hard, so we decided to give it a shot ourselves.
On the back of the card there is a 13 digit number, a value amount, a use-by date, a bar code, and what looks like a hologramatic security strip. There are also instructions, in German, on how to load the cash onto your account.
So Bel gives it a shot by entering *101* 13-digit number # and then dialing. It comes back and tells her that the card number isn't valid. After a few more shots - all unsuccessful - we decide that it's my turn.
It also mentioned on the back of the card that you can call 2000 for KontoService...so I thought I would give that a go. GOOD IDEA, DIP-SHIT!
I managed to work my way through the options in the menu (in German), and pressed 2 to load the credit. Something was babbled at me, and I was transferred to an operator.

ME: Hier ist Brett White. Entschuldigung. Ich spreche wenig Deutsch. Sprechen Sie English, bitte?
T-MOBILE: Nein.
MY BRAIN: SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!
ME: Haben Sie ein Kollege...?
T-MOBILE: Nein.
MY BRAIN: SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!

So we start working in some broken English and some SEVERELY broken German. He asks if I want to load the card, I say yes, and he asks for the number. I give him the 13 digit number off the back of the card (using the German numbers, of course!). A few seconds later I get:

T-MOBILE: Nein. This is not right.
MY BRAIN: SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!

More broken English, and more decimated German, and we work out that it's not the use-by date, or the 13 digit number. Process of elimination, people!
T-MOBILE dude tells me that it's under the 13 digit number, but the only thing here is the bar code. I ask if it is the bar code "bar code?", but he doesn't know that English word. Lots of silence on both ends as I flick through the dictionary to find Registrierkode, and he says yes, so I read it out...but that ain't it either!

MY BRAIN: SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!

Lots of confusion...Lots of silence...Lots of nothing really going on...
I look again at the card, and the hologram strip is staring back at me... Surely that couldn't be it! I remember that when I got my T-Mobile information for my work phone that I had to scratch something off to find the PIN and PUK codes...so I start to scratch at it...and it starts to come off!

T-MOBILE: Ja.

Apparently he can hear the scratching, and either I am on the right track, or scratching really excites him and we are into some wierd phone-sex thing...

T-MOBILE: What are you wearing?

Nah...just kidding...

So finally the code is revealed, read out, and the credit is loaded. All three of us are laughing, and now alles gut. Next time it's Bel's turn. :)

Tschüß,
'Brush.

Oh shit!

I just upgraded MSN Messenger to 7.5. Intelligent Microsoft determined that my machine is configured for Germany, so now I have MSN installed in Deutsch! Apparently a number of my logged on Kontakt are Abwesend at the moment...which I think means Away. Oh well, what better way to learn, huh?

Prague...

Greetings from a hotel room in Prague.

Got to Prague safely after 2 security scans at the airport (we aren't in the US, right?), a bus from the terminal to the farthest-away gate that one could possibly imagine (including going past all the cargo terminals, service terminals, and a Qantas 747), and a struggle to find space in the overhead bins for my luggage.

I exited the airport, after clearing immigration (doesn't seem right after a 1hr flight), and finally managed to find a taxi.
The guy that I found was parked and waiting inside a ticketed parking area. The cab started towards the exit, and then he stopped. He told me that he had "an old ticket", so he reversed to ask one of his colleagues if he had a newer ticket (that I guess would mean he wouldn't have to pay for the parking). His colleague didn't have one, so we did the next best thing... Just as his colleague was saying he didn't have a newer ticket another car started heading towards the exit...so we followed it. The taxi pulled up right behind the car as it inserted it's ticket, and then proceeded to tailgate it through the boom gate, meer inches off the bumper of the other car. The boom gate did start to come down, but then detected that we were in the way, and it went back up again. Nice work Mr Cab-Driver!

Here are a few snaps from around Prague. Sorry about the lighting, but it was getting kinda late.

Some statue...

Stumbled across this store - "Sydney Shop". Full of FAIR DINKUM Aussie stuff!

The front window of Sydney Shop...

The river that runs through the middle of the city.

And again in the other direction.

[EDIT - 01 Nov 2005] Happy new American-financial-year. It turns out that I didn't see the nice part of Prague. Unfortunately I won't get to on this trip, but I have been reliably informed that I will be back here 2-3 times per year, so I will see it one day.

Big-up respect to the B&BIG reading crew.
'Brush

New definition of fear...

Ok, so last week I had to attend 3 stops on the Agilent Technologies Triple Play Seminar tour. (No Dad, it's not a spy thing. Though, if it was, would I tell you?!?!). The three stops were in Frankfurt, München, and Vienna (Austria).

The first stop was in a conference center attached to the Frankfurt airport. I was the first to arrive, and I decided to wait for some of the other guys near the departures board in the Lufthansa terminal (they knew I would be there).
Apparently, if you stand near the departures board, in a shirt and dress-pants, with your security card around your neck, people think that you must work for the airport. I quickly worked out Ich arbeite nicht hier (I don't work here), and used it a few times. God only knows if it is a correct phrase...but it seemed to work. :)

So, as if that wasn't bad enough, I soon found out that the whole seminar would be conducted in German (except for the parts presented by our colleague from Canada). To make matters worse, this meant German introductions to the Customers.
The couple of other Native English Speakers decided to introduce themselves in English (if you can call Canadian and Scottish English). It came to my turn, and there seemed to be some joking pressure from my German colleagues for me to do mine in German...so here goes:

Guten Morgen. Mein name ist Brett White. Ich komme aus Australien, aber Ich wohne jetzt in Darmstadt. Ich arbeite seit 6 Jarhen bei Agilent Technologies. Ich bin der neue AE für N2X und NetzwerkTester. Entschuldigung, Ich spreche wenig Deutsch, aber Ich lerne.

Translation time:

Good Morning. My name is Brett White. I come from Australia, but now I live in Darmstadt. I have worked for Agilent Technologies for 6 years. I am the new AE for N2X and NetworkTester. I'm sorry, I don't speak much German, but I am learning.

What do you think?

Tschüß,
'Brush

von München nach Darmstadt...

Bel and I took a trip to Munich (München), in Bavaria (Bayern), from 19th to 21st. I can't really tell you what Munich is like, as I was there for some meetings, but Bel got to see a bit of the city...rumour has it that it is quite nice.

Anyway, to save a bit of money, and a bit of stress, I decided to take the ICE train down from Darmstadt to Munich with one of the FEs (sales guys) from the Kronberg office.
The trip started in fine style with Bel and I rocking up to the Darmstadt Hauptbahnhof about 1hr early. To kill some time we decided to get a coffee... We found a little café in the train station, and Bel ordered a hot chocolate, and I ordered a cappucino. I am not sure what they brought me, but sure as shit it wasn't no cappucino! The filth that I received was kinda like a long-black, minus the crema, with some frothed milk on top...it was also so strong that you could have stripped paint off the walls with it.

Train trip down was pretty uneventful, as well as the couple of days of meetings (except that I had to do an intro to them in German...).

On the way back, the FE and I were taking different trains home, as he had a train that got him to Frankfurt at a more convenient time for him.
I told the FE that our train was departing at 13:39, and he said that his was at 13:42, so we could take the S-Bahn (kinda like the Met) together at 13:20 and we would have plenty of time. I wasn't so sure that this was right [and he ignored my suggestion that we do our own thing and catch an earlier train in], as we needed to be at the Hauptbahnhof by 13:39 for our train, but the FE seemed sure that the 13:20 S-Bahn would be ok.
Anyway, we boarded the 13:20 S-Bahn for the Hauptbahnhof. After about 10min I start to doubt that we will reach the station in time [those of you who know Brett can imagine how well he would be handling this - but he actually was quite calm. Many paniced looks, but we did look at each other a few times at laugh about how rediculous it was]. With 5min to go I am looking at my watch, and looking at the train system map feeling kind of worried. With 1min to go I said to the FE that I didn't think we were going to make it for the 13:39 train at the Hauptbahnhof. He looked at the time, and at the train map, and he said "Yep, you will miss it. We should have left earlier." OH MY GOD!!!!!!
So, after a few confused looks it was revealed that the FE's itinerary was talking about him having to catch a 13:49 train from the S-Bahn station, to connect with a later train at the Hauptbahnhof. Our itinerary had been talking about us getting at 13:39 train from the Hauptbahnhof... :(

When we arrived at the Hauptbahnhof, about 5min too late, the FE helped us change our tickets to a later train, and we went separate ways.
Our new train required us to take the train from Munich to Mannheim, and then change for a train from Mannheim to Darmstadt. The trip to Mannheim was about 4hrs.
As we were nearing Mannheim, Bel and I were looking nervously at our watches. Our itinerary said that there was about 11mins overlap with the connection in Mannheim...problem was that our train was now running about 11mins late...we may just make it!
The conductor started babbling over the PA about some shit, and we kept hearing Darmstadt blah blah blah Darmstadt blah blah Darmstadt... It really sucks when you know they must be saying something about your train, and the fact that they are late, and all you can understand is Darmstadt. [And I thought I heard them say about our train 'Nicht Verheiratet', or 'not married', which made no sense, but perhaps they use married to mean connect or link up, so I was super worried.] And we had no idea when the next train to Darmstadt would be that day.
To make matters worse, a few mins out of Mannheim the train stops. Blah blah blah Darmstadt blah blah Darmstadt blah blah Darmstadt... SHUT UP ABOUT DARMSTADT ALREADY!!!! Now we are surely going to miss the train.
We finally pull into Mannheim, and Bel bolts out of the doors, ready to run in vain hope from platform 2 to platform 9 for the connecting train. As she starts to run off on me I notice that the train on platform 3 has the same time on it as our connecting train. Added to that, it also has Darmstadt on the list of stations. I yell out to Bel, point at the train, and we board it.
Once on board, we have a bit of a look around, and we can't find anything that indicates the train is going where we want it to go. To make matters worse, it has just come from France...and as it starts to move out, we are sure it's heading back the way we just came...in the direction of France! Panic much?!?!?
I go off in search of something that mentions the stops, but I can't find anything that mentions Darmstadt, and they fail to do their usual announcement telling the new passengers what train they have just boarded. I find something that says it stops in Frankfurt, so at least it's in the right direction...I guess. I had a bit of a closer look at the sign, and it had EC-55 for the train number. I checked our tickets, and they also said EC-55, so I was sure that this must be the right train. We hoped. ...luckily it turned out that it was, and eventually we got home.

Someone remind me again, who in their right mind would go to a country where they don't speak the language? And then who would board trains with intricate connection schedules in the same country? Nobody in their right mind, huh? :)

Tschüß
'Brush [and Bel]

Diese Scheiße ist bananen!

Bel and I just discovered a gorgeous forest/park near our place so we just went expolring. We got back from our walk, and treated ourselves to some flavoured milk...YUM!


Here's a pic of the müllermilch bottles. The one on the left is Bananiger, and the one on the right is Pistazie Cocos. Let me just say that This shit is Bananas!. The banana flavoured one is like your standard banana flavoured milk...YUM! The pistacio coconut one is a whole new world of heaven! Die Milch is sehr lecker!

Tschüß,
'Brush, and Bel

Random bizarre German meat products...

Welcome to a new series entitled "Random bizarre German meat products..."
Here's entry number 1...
Unfortunately you can't see the name of it too well, but it is Bärchenwurst, which roughly translates to Little Bear Sausage. This one nearly made me spew when I saw it in the catalogue. I wonder how many little bears it takes to make each highly over-processed roll of this crap? But, not only is it delicious *spew*, but it's also nutritious! It comes Mit extra Calcium! In fact, I think I might go out and buy some now!!!! Oh, hang on...I can't! It's Sunday and all the shops are closed! DAMN IT! :P

Tschüß,
'Brush

Random crazy stuff...

Here are a few random crazy pics I took on my phone over the last few days...

Found this one in Plus (a discount supermarket, similar to Aldi). Now your breakfast can taste good and sound good at the same time! :) "Anybody want toast?" "Sounds good to me!"

My only question is..."Where do you store the parking ticket???" YELP!

Found this one in the airport in Vienna. Guess people get Austria and Australia mixed up fairly often.

Also found these in Plus. I can just picture the weekly shopping trip now...
Käse (cheese) - check!
Milch (milk) - check!
Bärchenwurst (...) - check!
Radio Toaster - check!
Brot (bread) - check!
New hub caps for the Pinto - check!

Tschüß,
'Brush

Showing our Knackers around Stuttgart...

Hope they don't mind, but here are some pics of Belinda, Anita, and myself exposing our Knackers around Stuttgart...
Pressing our Knackers against a vintage Porsche...
Brush, Bel, and Anita in the "second hand" section of one of the Porsche buildings. We could nearly afford one of these...if we combined all of our incomes. For those who are wondering, we are hiding our Knackers behind the camera.
Brush, Bel, Anita, and our Knackers in the middle of Stuttgart.

I guess I really like Stuttgart...we didn't get arrested for exposing our Knackers in public at all! :)

Tschüs,
'Brush

PS: For those who haven't worked it out...Knackers is the nickname of the guy leaning against the Porsche.

Is it still as funny?

This is for the Dilbert fans out there...I wonder if it is still as funny in German...

Here is a very rough translation thanks to Google (and a little work from me...but very little):

• Our goal is nothing less than the complete assumption of the software department of Pointy-Haired Carl.
• We begin secretly to settle their work additionally to ours. Then I require that he is to report to me.
• Purely hypothetically, if the plan succeeds, we would have to do twice the work for the same money?

Hmmm...I'll let you be the judge.

Tschüs,
'Brush

Bad Homburg

I don't know who Homburg was, or what he did to have a city named after him, but was he really that bad? Boy, that was shit! FYI, Bad == bath. Anyway, here are some pics...


The main shopping street in Bad Homburg. There was some farming festival on that day.

Not even Wensleydale?

This was for Damo. Gotta love a good organ grinder! *snicker*

Belinda in some cute little park we stumbled across in the AltStadt (old city).

A small street in the AltStadt. Could it be any cuter?