Donna Belinda Joy

So over easter we spent the 4 days at a friends parents' farm near the North sea. Its a dairy farm and they breed horse - show jumping horses etc. Fancy horse.

While we were there one of the mares gave birth to a beauriful girl foal - who is called Donna Belinda Joy!!!! Apparently with horses they are given part of their fathers name (her Dad's name is Don Fredericho) hence the Donna.

Here she is with her mum on her first day - she is probably 12 hours old here having her first ever play outside...




Here is Julius who is 15 days old - and quite a cheeky boy...


And here is Webcam who is about 3 days old, with his mum


The last day we weer the there they went to go get more ... to get the mares pregnant again - they said we could go with them but Brett was a bit freaked out by that so we didn't :-)

Happy Easter

Happy Easter all!!

We are heading up north to stay with a friend on her parents farm for the four days.

We hope everyone has a safe and happy easter

Love you all

xoxB

Ich bin doch nicht blöd!

Ich bin doch nicht blöd is the tag-line for MediaMarkt, which is like MegaMart, or something like that.

They have this really cool ad on at the moment, in the lead up to the World Cup, where they are pretending to have fans from other countries come into the store (I think). My favorite one is with the British couple who come in looking for a camera. This is roughly how the ad goes (the ad is in English):

Brit: We are looking for a digital camera.
Clerk: Here, take this one. It is very billig.
Brit: Thank you!
Clerk: Please!
Brit: Good bye!
Clerk: Yes, it is!

Now, if you haven't already killed yourself laughing, then you may need this explanation:

The Clerk obviously usually speaks German, and gets some words mixed up when talking with the Brits. The German word billig means cheap, and as you can see, he didn't quite translate it in the conversation.
Then, when the Brits say "Thank you!", he responds with "Please!". The German word for "Please" is Bitte, which you also use to mean "You're welcome". Case of incorrect translation.
Finally, when the Brits say "Good bye!", it sounds to him like "Good buy", and therefore he responds "Yes, it is!".

Now read it again, and I am sure it will be funnier. :) I wonder if this is what we sound like to Germans?

MediaMarkt - Ich bin doch nicht blöd!

Tschüß,
'Brush

PS: I just remembered that I did have a brain-fart at lunch today. The pasta that I had contained some Obst (fruit)...which I wasn't aware of when I ordered it (but it was pretty good). I could have sworn that it contained pears, so I asked the guy that I was sitting with "Gibt es Glühbirne drin?".
Now, the German word for pear is die Birne. And the German word for glow is Glüh (hence Glühwein etc.). Therefore, if you put the two of them together you get "Glow Pear". So, what looks like a glowing pear? A LIGHTBULB!!! That's right, I was asking my colleague "Is there a lightbulb in this?".

Ich bin doch DOCH blöd!

Service with a "Streit"

So, today I had to take the BWM roof-racks back and get the changed over. I had only installed the things twice, and now the head of one of the mounting screws is stuffed. And before you say anything, yes, I followed the mounting instructions (a first for a male), and yes, I did it right.

Anyway, with the roof-racks comes a torque-screwdriver, that is tuned to 8Nm. For the layman, that means a screwdriver that is calibrated to tighten screws to a certain tightness (8 Newton-meters).

The first time I installed the bastards, I was doing up one of these screws, and had reached close to 8Nm, but not quite, when the screwdriver seemed to slip. Any further attempts in tightening the screw didn't work, because the head was a little stripped. Luckily I could get them back off again, and it was no better the next time I tried (duh!).

So, I take them back today, hoping that they can order a new screw. Turns out that you can't order a new screw for these - you have to order the whole new set. No problems! Surely they are under warranty! WRONG! The nice guy in Service kindly informs me, in German, that it is my fault and that they don't have a guarantee when you install them incorrectly. I try to tell him that I did it right, and after asking him if he speak English - to which he says "Nein" - he goes off to find a translator (was it really that bad?!?!).
He eventually he comes back with someone from Military Sales (lots of American Army guys in Darmstadt...though none of them drive BMers...more like Caddies etc). He tells her his side of the story, which I got the general gist of. I then tell her (in short form) "If I hadn't inserted the screwdriver in the screw head correctly, then I wouldn't have been able to reach 7 or 7.5Nm before it slipped". She turns to translate this, and the guy says to her that he understood! DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH, MY ARSE!

Long and the short of it is, that I guess I convinced them that it was their fault, and they changed the things over free of charge...but not without a fight. Der Kunde ist König doesn't necessarily always apply, huh?

Tschüß,
'Brush

Close encounters of the Aussie kind

Bright and early on Monday morning, I board the plane from Frankfurt to Amsterdam. I take my aisle seat, and a few mins later somebody says "Excuse me" and climbs on into the window seat. The accent sounded strangely familiar, but I couldn't quite put a finger on it. A little later, I saw this guy flicking through his passport, and saw the stylised kangaroos printed on the background of each page. So, I asked "Where in Australia do you come from?" He said "Sydney", which explained why the accent sounded Australian, but with a little twist. :)

Then, when I arrived in Frankfurt last night, as we were getting out of the plane, I saw a guy wearing a Billabong t-shirt, and carrying a Caribee backpack. Seemed a little odd in Europe.
We had to take a bus from the plane to the terminal, and as he got on, I noticed the shoes that he was wearing. No doubt, this guy is from Australia.
When we got off the bus, I heard him say something to the girl that was with him, and I noticed the strong Aussie accent breaking through. He somehow got ahead of the girl, so I asked her "Where in Australia are you guys from?". She said "Adelaide. How did you know?". I pointed at the guy and said "Billabong T-shirt, Caribee backpack, and Blundstones - it's a dead giveaway." Turns out that she is actually Dutch, but lives in Australia now as well (and speaks with an Aussie accent).

It's kinda cool when you bump into other Aussies when bouncing around the globe.

Did we mention the whole group of Aussies that we bumped into in Munich? It was around 30 of them, I think.

Tschüß,
'Brush.

Stau

Today I drove to work rather than catching the train (Brett is away so I have the car, and when we went skiing on the weekend I hurt myself a little bit so had an osteo appointment) and not unusally I got stuck in a big traffic jam (Stau). It was one of those sudden ones where everyone jumps on their brakes
I don't like traffic jams, but there two things about traffic jams that the Germans do really well
1. When you jump on your brakes in a sudden traffic jam you put on your hazzard lights so all the traffic screaming up behind you sees
2. All the the cars in the fast lane then drive as far right as they can and cars in teh second fastest lane pull over a to the left bit in their lane - this way when emergency vehicles need to get trhough there is already a path for them - brilliant!!

Unfortunately it was an accident this morning (which the 3 firetrucks, police and ambulance going past gave away) A smart car had come to a very nasty stop. Hopefully whoever was in it is fine...

XOX B