Adventures in the Freezing North 9/11/05

Hello there to everybody,
For those who are interested, I thought I might fill you in on a few things that I've been getting up to lately. 2 weekends ago I went up to the north of the country with a couple of my housemates. One of them is a german, who has a house in Kiel, and the other is a particularly french frenchman. It is only about 500 km from Dortmund to Kiel, so I was looking forward to flying up the Autobahn and getting there in 3 hours. Unfortunately, we chose a time to leave when it seemed that every man and his dog in the whole Ruhr Valley also was wanting to head up north. This meant that it took us over an hour to get just 20 km out of Dortmund. Honestly, what's the point of having these wonderful Autobahns with no speed limits, when you're lucky to reach 25kmh? Anyway, after a torturous hour or so stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, we finally escaped the congestion and cruised up north at the leisurely pace of 190kmh, arriving in Kiel just after nightfall on Friday evening.

Kiel is an interesting place, about the size of Canberra, and is also a very important maritime city on the Baltic sea. It has immense strategic importance, as there is a canal that runs between the fiord of Kiel on thebaltic sea and the north sea. This allows ships to cut straight through the Jutland Peninsula, and I believe it was built by the Kaiser prior to WW1 so that Britain couldn't blockade the German Navy. The German U Boat fleet wasbased there during the 2 world wars, and still is. In fact, there is a fully intact WW2 era U Boat on one of the main beaches, which I got a few nice snaps of.

In addition to having a fine naval tradition, Kiel also has a sizeable student population, meaning that there are some very fine nightclubs in the city centre. Naturally we endeavoured to visit as many of them as possible, and wound up at 5 in the morning walking through the red light district, where I happened to find the greatest Döner Kebab I have ever eaten. I had heard rumours about the quality of the Kiel Kebabs, but nothing had prepared me for this. If you can think of the Kebab that I described in my previous email, but longer, with a deeper pouch, more succulent meat and the hottest chilli sauce you can imagine, then you would have a good idea of why I loved it so... This really was a Döner worth writing home about.

Anyway, after sleeping for most of the following day, we stocked up on alcohol then psyched ourselved up for our little excursion to Hamburg. After knocking back a few preliminaries in Kiel, then a few more on the bus to the train station, we got our 1 hour train to St Pauli, the seedy downtown partof Hamburg, home of the famous Reeperbahn. This place was crazy, teeming with thousands of people, all there to either visit the many nightclubs, sexcinemas, or ladies of the night. So we wandered around the place for acouple of hours, seeing the sights and stopping occasionally at a nightclub to wet our whistles. Eventually we got a train back to Kiel at about 7 in the morning, and slept through most of the next day. We did however get up in time to catch a few sun rays, and went down to the beach at about 4 in the afternoon. Now I couldn't travel all the way to Kiel and not go for aswim, so ignoring the fact that it was only about 15 degrees, and the water temperature was maybe half that, I pulled on my boardies and went for a dip. Now I've swum at Robe in the winter, so I thought I could handle the Baltic sea, but after 5 minutes in the water, I could feel some mild hypothermiacoming on, so I wisely pulled up stumps and got the hell out of there. After towelling myself down and attracting some perculiar looks from passers by,we all went up to the beach front cafe, where I had a nice hot glass of grog to warm me up. What a pleasant experience that was... quite character building I thought. There's a happy snap of me after my swim attached to this post. Take note of the crazy looking, hypothermia affected eyes!

Anyway, after driving back down to Dortmund on Monday, I managed a bit of shut eye before heading out in Dortmund for Halloween. The day after halloween is a public holiday in Germany, so on monday night all of thenighclubs were absolutely packed. While it was a fun night out, it didn't quite reach the dizzying heights of Kiel and Hamburg, and all it really did was make the cold I caught after swimming even worse. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed going back to school on the wednesday. So, that is a little synopsis of what I've been doing lately. This weekend I'm heading down to Frankfurt to catch up with Ralf Eckey, a mate of mine who has a nice little apartment in the city with a fridge full of beer. Should be fun....I hope this post was interesting, and I would love it if any of you felt like filling me in on what is happening in your worlds right now. All news is good news when you're living in a crazy share house full of bulgarians.
Cheers to all, Ed.

24/10/05 German Boredom

Greetings from the man who loves rain so much he follows the winter around the world. I trust everybody is doing well, I am also doing well, but do not have nearly as many tall tales and humorous anecdotes to regale you with as in previous emails. Basically I have got my timetable set in concrete, with every monday being free. This is particulaly useful, as it means that I can travel on the weekends and not have to worry about getting beck to school by monday morning. Speaking of which, this coming weekend I will be going up to Kiel with one of my German housemates, to see the northern part of the country. Kiel is a port on the baltic sea, which also happens to be one of the only places in Germany where I hear the waves are big enough to surf. While I am looking forward to seeing the ocean again, I'm not sure if I will be brave enough to get in the water up there, with the water being about 8 degrees and all... Basically our plan is to drive up to Kiel, and catch up with a few of his mates, before heading down to Hamburg, which is only a few hours away. From all accounts Hamburg is a pretty cool place to go, with heaps of groovy clubs on offer along the Reeperbahn. This strip is actually the place where the beatles played some of their first gigs before they got big.
As far as my job is concerned, it seems that I have got a pretty sweet deal. Most of my time is spent taking small conversation courses in a seminar room, with about 4 or 5 students in years 12 and 13. Since these students are all 18 or 19, most of these sessions are spent talking in English about the merits of the various clubs and discos in Dortmund. So I find out where to spend my German tax payers' money on the weekend, and they practice their conversational english. It's a win-win situation, really. Having spoken to other people in my situation, I know of one person who is being forced to take an entire year 5 class for the rest of the year, because their teacher is sick. This is a person with no teaching experience, and only 2 years of an arts degree in the UK.. Oh well, at least it's not me...
The thing that's starting to get to me is the fact that I come home from school at about lunch time and have absolutely nothing to do. German TV is shocking, there's only so much time you can spend watching Steve Urkel talking in German before you start going insane. Since most of the people in my WG are at uni during the day, it's sort of like cabin fever until nightfall. However, once the sun goes down, the bulgarians start drinking, and all sorts of hilarity ensues. You can often have a pretty good night without even having to venture outside the building. This snap was taken on a random sunday evening.
The good thing about being in the Ruhr Valley, however, is that there are heaps of cities, all within about 20 minutes by train. In each of these cities there are about 5 or 6 english assistant teachers, so it is very easy to organise messy pub crawls on the weekend. So this is what we do every weekend. We pick a city then endeavor to drink it dry and eat all of the döner kebabs within a 5 mile radius, before getting the red eye train home. That is my life in Germany.... Anyway, I must conclude this untidy ramble, and wander around the streets aimlessly for a while until the bulgarians are ready to crack open their first bottle of vodka.
All the best Ed

Amsterdam 04/10/05

Hello once again from the land of acid washed jeans and bad 80's metal...
The past week or so has been quite an eventful one. Last thursday Jonno Worthley arrived on my doorstep for our weekender to Amsterdam. Before setting off, however, we had to warm up the engine, so to speak, by having a few big nights out in Dortmund. The thursday was rather uneventful, but the friday quickly decended into a night of drunken revelry after the bulgarians from our building decided to join us on our pub crawl. The thing is about bulgarians is that they like to drink, and drink well. We went to various places and I found myself at 530 in the morning in a filthy, twisted parody of a punk club, full of acid-washed denim clad, safety pin wearing, german style punks, all rocking out to the dead kennedys. I think I may have stood out a little, with my white shoes and polo shirt... anyway, we managed to get on the train the next morning for the 2.5 hour trip to amsterdam, which was spent drinking coffee and being interrogated by funny sounding dutch border guards.

Once in Amsterdam, after meeting up with the 8 or so other people we were going to be staying with, we got a tip from a random person on the street that there was a legendary nightclub hidden in the eleventh floor of the decrepit old Amsterdam central post building. So after a few preliminaries, we wandered about the middle of the city until we found what looked like the building. It was quite strange, walking into a seemingly deserted building, and being told by seemingly the only person around that there was a 10 euro cover charge. We decided to bite the bullet and caught the 1960's style warehouse lift up to the eleventh floor to be greeted by what can only be described as a magnificant nightclub. With perhaps 1000 people on the 11th floor, with a massive dancefloor, a chillout room with very luxurious beanbags, and a stunning view over the city lights, this was a club that put anything we have in adelaide to shame. Anyway, as the night wore on, and we were finally kicked out of 'Elf' at about 5 o' clock, jonno and I managed to lose everybody in the winding back streets, before asking a kindly chap if he knew where another nighclub we had heard of was. He cheerily offered to help us for the cost of 5 euro, and we cheerily told him to g.f before walking over the street to pull up stumps and get a tram home. Before leaving he told us that he was also going home, and waved at us with a cheeky smile before dissappearing into the ether.

Just a few moments later I patted my pants and jacket only to realise that the filthy street urchin had relieved me of my wallet. By this time he had melted into the shadows, and to make matters worse, in true cartoon style fashion, the heavens opened up and we were caught in an absolute downpour, with one missing wallet and no idea how to get home. Well, we did eventually get home, and I didn't let that little lesson in life's school of hard knocks to ruin my weekend. I borrowed some money from my friend Idle Pete, and we carried on. The strange thing was, on a canal cruise on our last day there, we saw a very flash looking street urchin with a cheeky smile and quite new looking threads waving at us from the water's edge.... At least he didn't have a brand new hat with a long peacock feather in it... That may have been too much.

Anyway, after quite an eventful weekend we arrived back in dortmund just in time for the traditional tuesday night piss up in our cellar bar. After the expenses of Amsterdam, there's nothing quite like half litre beers all night long for 1 euro. I managed to get dad to wire some of my money from aus into my dortmund account, and now I have another week in which I have little to do except sit around my student house, drinking 1 litre beer cans from the servo and 1.5 litre bottles of sangria, which both cost the equivalent of about a buck fifty australian. The only interesting thing is that I am not exactly sure when I will actually get my first pay cheque, all I know is that it could be as early as this week, or as late as the end of the month. If it is anything less than two weeks, I can live like a king, anything more, and I will be eating pumpernickel and boiled dumplings until my german taxpayer funded goose lays its golden egg in my account...

Cullinary Delights 29/09/05

All is well in the land of big beers and sausages. I'm just finishing my second week at the school here in dortmund, and am about to have 2 weeks' holiday. The thing that has struck me most about the food here is the quality of the kebabs. Let me talk you through the German Döner Kebab...
First of all one takes a rather large chunk of turkish pide bread, which is then toasted gently and sliced in half. Your choice of succulent tender pieces of spit-roasted beef or chicken is then lovingly laid in generous proportions inside. Here is where the magic happens... Garlic and chilli sauce of the highest middle-eastern quality is ladled on top of the meat, followed by your rudimentry kebab vegetables of onion and lettuce. In addition to this, the cheery turkish chap will then stack sweet corn, finely chopped cucumber and tomato on top of this creation, then top it off with fetta cheese and a jalapeno pepper to boot. The result, my friends, is a veritable flavour sensation, that leaves you with a warm and fuzzy feeling inside... all for only 3 euro. As you can imagine, I have become somewhat of a fixture at the local turkish grill. The food aside, I have been enjoying myself by spending as much time as possible outside of my seedy student house.
Last week I went to the soccer with one of the teachers at my school, and thoroughly enjoyed myself, I don't know whether it was the quality of the play and atmosphere inside the 85000 seater stadium or the 1 litre beers that most appealed to me... The important thing is, Dortmund won, and I got drunk... Everyone's a winner! So I've now got 2 weeks off, during which I had originally planned to go to the oktoberfest. However, the 200euro train tickets to Munich and back didn't quite appeal to me. Instead I've taken the cheaper option, and am going to Amsterdam for a couple of days, with a few crazy English assistant teachers, and Jonno Worthley. That should be fun. Aside from that, I am taking it as it comes, with the world being my oyster for the next two weeks. Anyway, I'm off to lunch now, I'm thinking I need somethig warm and hearty... maybe another kebab... I hope everyone is doing well, and hope to hear from you soon.

Week 2 19/09/05

Hello to everybody out there who cares.
Everything is starting to settle down over here. I moved into my Studentenwohnheim on Friday, which is a seven storey sharehouse with about 180 people living there. There are people from all over the world on my level, with the majority coming from syria and bulgaria. There really is not much difference between these people, as the syrians smoke apple tobacco through their crazy arabic water pipe, and the bulgarians smoke apricot tobacco through their crazy arab water pipe. Following this, they sit around and have animated conversations in their native tongues, to which all I can do is nod and smile..Anyway, this building is in a very cool part of Dortmund, where loads of young people live. It is close to various shops, and a short walk from some very groovy pubs. Every tuesday they have a party in the cellar, where there is a fully stocked bar. They charge 1 euro for a half litre beer, which I think could be quite dangerous... Good thing my free day looks like it will be wednesday.

I made quite a lot of friends at my orientation course, most of whom are english people doing the same job as me as part of their language degrees. This weekend we are all meeting up in Düsseldorf for a a bit of a pub crawl. There are so many cities in the Ruhr valley that are so close to one another, it's like a giant metropolis of about 10 million people, but with each city having it's own unique character and breweries. The teachers at the school are also very nice, one of them has organised to take me to the soccer tonight to watch Borussia Dortmund play. This team is absolutely masssive and is the heart and soul of the city. Every single homegame they pack over 80 000 people into their Westfalenstadion, even when the team is not doing too well like they are this year. It should be a blast, they pack even more people into the German league games, because unlike for European and International games, where stadiums must be all seaters, terraces are still allowed to be used at Bundesliga games. I'm hoping that I'll be in the seething mass of drunken Germans for tonight's game...

My first week at school has been going quite well. I basically spend most of my time standing in front of english classes talking about Australia, and answering questions from the kids. Most of the questions so far have been the predictable shark/kangaroo/poisonous reptile ones. By the end of the week I think I'll be able to draw a map of Australia with all of the towns and inlets with my eyes closed. Every now and then, however, you get a curve ball like 'what is the situation regarding the relationship and integration of the Aborigines?', which generally is the sort of question that you could devote hours to, and it is quite hard to give a simple 2 sentance answer in simple english so that the students can understand.

Week One 11/09/05

Well, here I am, the first day of a 10 month stint as an English language assistant teacher in Germany. I just spent 28 hours in transit, managing to squeeze 3 hour's sleep mashed between a big fat tatooed dane and a perculiar smelling indonesian... at least when i landed in Amsterdam I found out that adelaide had beaten port handsomely on sat night in the AFL semi. Unfortunately there are very few port supporters here to goad about the result...

It is surprisingly humid here in Cologne, very much like the weather in Sydney in April. So, after meeting my former student exchange partner Hannah at the airport, we set out for a walk around town, sampling a few Kölsch beers here and there. Kölsch is a type of beer unique to the city that is full strength, but so sweet is almost tastes like lemonade. Anyway, after knocking back a few of these I spent my first night in Germany in a youth hostel, with my roomie being a funny japanese guy who spoke about as much english as i do japanese, he was pretty cool, though, and taught me a few cheeky pick up lines in japanese. Our conversation over breakfast was sort of like pushing shit up hill until we started talking about soccer. I think it went along the lines of: Me: Nakata, he is a good player. Roomie: Yes, very good. Roomie: Harry Kewell. Me: Yes, also a very good player, but is always injured. Ahh the world game...

This afternoon I'm off to boot camp at Stalag 13, or something like that. Should be interesting.... at least i'll be able to meet some other english speakers there. Basically this week long camp is used to tell everybody what is expected of them at their schools and what they can and can not do etc. I'm looking forward to getting up to Dortmund on Friday, apparently my room has been furnished and is ready to move into. This weekend I'm going to see Hannah's little brother play a gig at some pub near Dortmund. When I was last here he, although being just 15, could play all of One by metallica including the solos, so his band may be worth listening to.

So, after lugging all of my crap for my 10 month stay across the Rhine to the Hauptbahnhof, I saw a seething mass of about 180 people, mostly from the UK but with a few Irish and Canadians milling around the foyer area. After waiting for a while, we were all bundled into busses and driven to an old monastry in the sticks somewhere outside of Cologne. Of course, with my first day at this camp coinciding with the first time in 20 years the English have actually beaten us at Cricket, the poms couldn't resist having a dig at me whenever possible. All I could come up with was something along the lines of 'One swallow doesn't make a spring.' Naturally I spent the first few days there mostly in the company of the Irish and Canadians.

Anyway, the week went by quite smoothly, with the best part being the fact that they ran a bar every evening with half litre beers for 1 Euro. Naturally, I was quite keen to take part in the night time proceedings, and managed to get to know quite a few people, mostly from the Universities of Nottingham and Leeds. The most interesting evening of the week was definitely the last, when everyone got incredibly drunk, with some of us pulling all nighters due to the 2 hour rule. For those not familiar with this rule, it is a policy used when one is very drunk and must get up very early. Generally if you have to get up in less than 2 hours, you will feel worse the next day if you get less than 2 hours' sleep than you would if you stay up all night. So basically, breakfast at 6 in the morning was quite an interesting affair, with quite a lot of bleary eyes and stumbling drunks trying to force down coffee before travelling various distances to different cities in Germany.

I myself had to travel 1 hour north to Dortmund, and I caught a train with a Northern Irish girl by the name of Laura who was going to be working in Bochum, a town about 10 minutes from Dortmund. Basically, the whole day was a bit of a blur, with me desperately trying to stay awake on the train so I didn't wake up 2 hours later somewhere in Holland, with a crazy eyed Dutchman smoking a ciggarette, leering at me from the seat opposite. Luckily I stayed awake, and got off at Dortmund, to be picked up by Kathrin, the head of English at my school. Kathrin took me on a brief drive around the city before taking me to my student apartment building, where I unloaded all of my stuff before heading out to lunch with her. How I managed to hold up a conversation with her in German for over an hour while not falling asleep in my curried rice is beyond me.

Anyway, my first evening in my student flat was spent talking to a bunch of Syrians, who were the only people to be found on my floor, due to the fact the uni semester hadn't yet started. They were quite welcoming to me, sharing their meal with me before smoking shisha for the rest of the night out on the landing. While this was all very nice, I had to excuse myself at about 9 o clock to go to bed, due to the fact I hadn't slept in over 36 hours.