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?

Old skool / Pimpin' shack

Here are some picks of our old skool / pimpin' shack. Hope it works this time...struggling to work out how to get the pics into the post.


Old skool kitchen table...

Old skool lounge room...

Old skool kitchen (with sloping roof)...

Old skool entrance hall...

Seriously pimpin' bed! You don't get the full effect of the bed here. I will take another pic later without the bedsheets on. Believe it or not, the mattresses match the rest of the bed, and the bedside tables! Also, you can lift up the mattresses to access storage space in the bed for bedsheets etc.

PS: The house smells like my Nan's house. What is with old people all smelling the same???

Tschüs,
'Brush

Sleepy little death-toll town

Despite Tansy’s warning we forgot that supermarkets (and everything else) are closed on Sundays.

Friday was our first chance all week to eat at home, so we bought enough groceries for that day, but forgot the milk, butter, juice, paper towel, tissues and toilet paper (because we had to pay cash we were so worried we wouldn’t have enough that we were a bit distracted). While we were cooking dinner that night the stove and tap incident happened and the fix-it man used the last of the paper towel that we in the house when we moved in. Luckily Frau L. got us another role form her place. I say luckily because we ran out of toilet paper Sunday morning, and we had no tissues, so paper towel was it!!!!)

Because we had forgotten so many things our breakfast on Saturday morning before we rushed to Stuttgart was toast with Jam, no butter. Well, it was toast for me. We had bought an uncut loaf of bread that you seriously could kill someone with, it was so heavy. In trying to cut slices for toast Brett had cut his too think for the toaster and didn’t want to cut more – so he had bread and jam, no butter. No juice, no tea or coffee because we had no sugar or milk.

We weren’t thrilled with our breakfast but thought it would be okay to put up with since first thing Sunday we could run to the shops and buy more food. NOT THE CASE. After driving past ever supermarket in the area on Sunday moring, and then into the deserted centre of town we realised we were screwed. Finally we found a petrol station that had milk and butter so our breakfast was a little less depressing than the day before. It also included muesli – which Brett described as nice but a little boring (how can food be both nice and boring?!?!?!) and which I described as freekin’ cardboard.

Then the bathroom door incident happened and was concluded until about 8:30 so we were too tired to go to a restaurant (and so sick of eating out) that we went and bought pizza at the only pizza place we knew of – PIZZA HUT and brought it home to eat. So Sunday was super!!

For those who care about the daily boring details of my life here in Germany today (Monday) was my first housewife day (should only be a week or so of that) but I had dinner all ready for Brett when he got home, I had done a load of washing and some vacuuming and I had shopped for groceries (using my backpack which also killed me because I bought so much).

Love to all
B

Sick of "kaput"!

===== WARNING - THIS AIN'T SHORT! =====
After the last few days, I must say that I am sick of the word "kaput". Here's a list of things that we have had to get the landlord to come and look at:

1. The stove.
We went to cook dinner one night and the oven wouldn't turn on. I went down to the landlord and gave her a bit of "Ich kan nicht der Ofen anstellen" (I can not turn on the oven). She seemed a little confused by this and kept saying "Was ist anstellen?" (What is 'anstellen'?). At least this is what I think she was saying, though maybe she was asking WHAT I couldn't turn on. After much turning on and off of hotplates, determining that 2 worked and 2 didn't, etc. it turns out that the safety switch had tripped. SOLVED!

2. The kitchen tap.
The tap in the kitchen was leaking a little. Luckily the guy came to fix that at the same time that the whole oven fiasco was going on. Aparently today he came back (for an unknown reason) and gave Belinda a plug (minds out of the gutter, people!) for the sink, which was missing when we moved in. He thinks Belinda is a freak because she didn't want a plug with a chain on it, and this would mean that she would have to pull the plug out with her hand. What else would you use? Honestly! SOLVED!

3. The bathroom door.
Sunday morning I noticed that the bathroom door was a little tough to open. When I was turning the handle, the latch-thingy wasn't pulling back all of the way, and was catching when opening the door. I didn't think much of it until Belinda tried to go back into the bathroom to put on some washing and found that she couldn't open the door. No problems...except that I was BUSTING to go to the toilet!..and so was Belinda after waiting for about an hour, hoping that it would initially miraculously fix itself, and then when that failed that the landlords would come and fix it.
Anyway, with the whites of our eyes slowly going yellow, we boarded the 'Brush-mobile and went to Burger King (thank you GeorgeW for having a base so close by...hence lots of US fast-food places) for a McPiss. (For those who don't know, a McPiss is when you go to McDonalds for the sole purpose of using their toilets. This is a close relation to the McDump, or the McShit).
Oh yeah, here is the note that we left for the landlord, which they also didn't understand (WTF?!?!?!?!).
"Herr & Frau L. Vielen dank für der Apfelkuchen. Es ist sehr lecker. Klein problem. Wir konnen nicht die Badzimmertür offen. Sie ist nicht verschließt. Es tut mir leid. Brett & Belinda"
Here's what we thought we said...
"Mr & Mrs L. Thank you for the apple-cake. It is very yummy. A small problem. We can not open the bathroom door. It is not locked. I'm sorry. Brett & Belinda"
Reading it now, I realise it is a shitty note, that makes about as much sense as any note left by someone with the grammar and vocab of a snail.
Anyway, finally they came to fix the door (or maybe just to find out what the f'k we were on about). After much trying by Hr L. and his son, they finally called a locksmith who came and opened the door for us...USING A DRILL! Turns out that the tongue-type-thingy that keeps the door closed had snapped off in the hole-type-thingy that it sticks into in the wall. (Does that conjur images of french-kissing for anyone else?!?!) SOLVED!

4. Belinda's keys.
So, my keys work fine. I can get into the house, and then into our apartment. Belinda's key, on the other hand, can get her into the apartment...but that's not too helpful when you can't get into the building...but she can open the letterbox! :)We decided not to tell Hr & Fr L. about this yesterday because we thought that the stress might kill Hr L. He was lookin' kinda shakey after the whole Badzimmertür incident of 2005.

Anyway, that's enough from me. I think Bel has some stuff to write now....

Tschüs,'Brush.