Do Pilots and Aussie Expats in Germany wear brown undies?

I think it's a fair question, don't you? But here's the explaination / motivation behind my question.

Firstly, yesterday was a BAD work day for me. I had to get up and fly to Vienna for a day long evaluation / demonstration at a Customer site. I had to be there at 10, so this meant getting up around 5 to get to the airport for a 7am flight to Vienna with Adria Airways (Slovenian national carrier).

So, as you would expect, these guys don't fly big planes (Canadair Regional Jet 200LR on this leg - that's him to the left). This was a 10 or 11 row plane, with 4 seats to a row - 2 on either side of the aisle. It is nearly impossible to stand up straight in the plane, even when walking down the aisle.

Right, so plane takes off, and I fall asleep, as I am becoming prone to doing. (I am getting this whole Belinda's Pop thing going on, where I can fall asleep at will in almost any location. Zzzzzzzz...beh! Wa? I was just blinking...)

Again I missed the lecker lecker Käsebrot that is on offer on the flight, but I managed to wake up for the beverage service - chosing the normal water and apple juice option - and then starting to read my book (The Neverending Story in German...and it feels like it too...).

Skip now to about 10min before the landing (90min flight). Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the plane tips to the left (looking out the left window, all you see is ground...out the right window roughly meant that you were looking at the Hubble space telescope) and the plane dropped. Then it lurched back the other way, so that the right window was pointing to hell, and the left to heaven, and dropped even more. Ladies screaming, hearts racing, calls of "Oh My God!", and then the plane was back level again. This all happened in the space of about 2-3 seconds. No explaination from the cockpit, nothing from the hosts / hostesses (who also looked kinda worried), and we eventually land.
So, back to the original question - do pilots wear brown undies? I sure hope so, because I can guarantee that 100% of the cabin shat itself, the hosts and hostesses shat themselves, and I am pretty sure that the pilot probably left some pebbles in his jocks too.

Sidebar: What is the Oxford English past tense for "to shit"? I used "shat" above, and in a conversation with a German the other day, only to have them say "shit is the past tense of to shit".

After that, I turned up at the Customer to find that the required hardware hadn't arrived yet. So we start the discussion without the hardware, only to very quickly discover that what they need to test cannot be done with this particular product. Within 1 hour the meeting was over, and I was going back to the airport at 11am for a flight at 8pm. Luckily I was able to switch onto an earlier flight and get out at 16:25.

While at the airport I did have my first experience of two of the following German / Austrian specialties:

1. Pretzels or bread that is delivered with your meal, but if you eat it, then you get charged for it. Hang on - this was not the first experience. The first one was in Munich for our first Xmas, but at least it said on the menu that it cost extra if you ate the bread.
2. Sitting at a table for 4 all by myself, I actually had two Austrians (yes, you can tell because of their accent when the speak German) come up and ask if the other seats were free, and then proceed to share the table with me.

Finally fly home again with Adria, hating the turbulance that we hit on the way up to crusing altitude. Never been a scared flyer before, but the morning's events were still with me a little.
Get back to Frankfurt, get in the car, bang along the freeway, and right into a traffic jam just before my exit. After sitting there for about 20min without going anywhere, watching the police, ambulance, and fire engines squeeze through the jam, we were finally able to move again. Turns out there was an accident just before the exit between a car and a motorbike, and the road had been blocked so that the helicopter ambulance could land.
I actually recognised the bike as I drove past. This same guy came up quite fast behind me on the A5, and I got out of his way. The people in front of me didn't, so he tried to pass them on the inside. The car infront of them decided to get out of the fast lane, and tried to come back into the lane where he was illegally overtaking on the inside. Luckily all parties hit the brakes, and there was no accident...at this point on the road.

Right, so that takes care of the first part of the question, and my bad day yesterday. So what about the second part of the question? The answer is "I would if I had any". I just completed, and have to submit tomorrow, our second income tax return in Germany. An accounting company did it for us last year (paid for by my company) but they wanted €2000 to do it this year from us privately. So I got hold of some software, and I did it myself. If you ever think the Aussie system is hard, try the German one...and then try doing it in German, instead of English. :)

Tschüß,
'Brushy.