One year already??

Yep. It's been one year. One year since I lost my passport, followed by one year since I left home, and one year since I arrived in Europe.

I celebrated the latter two anniversaries whilst in the Faroe Islands. For those of you who don't know, the Faroes are a group of 18 islands situated in the North Atlantic, sort of in the middle of the sea between Scotland, Iceland and Norway.

I went there for a week to break up my time in the UK, to visit two Germans I know through CouchSurfing - Eleonora and Hannes. They're originally from Dresden but during this year they spontaneously decided to move to the Faroe Islands. Crazy, but I was intrigued by this new home they'd chosen and decided to make my way there.

It's right up near the Arctic Circle so daylight is limited to about 9:30-15:30, but that didn't stop Eleonora, Hannes and me seeing as much of the islands as we could in a week. Although there are 18 islands, with a car you can reach all the central ones, which are the biggest and most important, using undersea tunnels and bridges. Over the first few days I was there, I saw Vágar, Streymoy, Eysturoy, Borðoy, Kunoy and Viðoy.

We also took one car ferry to Kalsoy, and spent a night on a farm at the top of the island, which I really enjoyed because it really felt like a genuine Faroese experience. Thanks to CouchSurfing (the people on the farm are relatives of a CS friend of ours), I've seen so much more than a normal hotel-staying tourist will ever see. Anyway, the week I spent in the Faroes went by too quickly, and before I knew it I was back in London, this time for the last time.

Luke joined me. He's going to appear in all my blogs from now until further notice, because we're travelling together for three weeks. Luke's just finished his bus tour around the continent and took the Eurostar to London, where he joined me in staying with Sharna for the next three nights. I've just searched back through my blogs and have not even mentioned Sharna's name, which is misleadingly unfair because I've been staying with her for many weeks now, she's an Australian who decided to move to the UK for an adventure and the most open friendly person you'll ever meet. For the latter two nights at Sharna's, we also had Emma with us - another friend I have not yet mentioned, who I met through Alexandra, she's also German and is working as an au-pair in the south of England, coming to London most weekends because it's so much more exciting.

However, as I knew it would, my last time in London flew by and before I knew it, I was saying goodbye to Sharna and Emma as Luke and I made our way to Paris on the night bus. This bus was scheduled to travel from 22:30 on Sunday until 7:30 on Monday, but because the Eurostar service is being halted, there's a lot more traffic attempting to take the transport trains through the Eurotunnel and our bus had a mega five-hour delay just before the Eurotunnel and ended up not arriving in Paris until more like 14:00 on Monday! This successfully took up half a day of our short stay in Paris, but we still managed to make something of the day and checked out the Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Élysées and the Louvre Pyramid, before dining expensively with our CouchSurfing host, who's a 60-year-old concert pianist called David.

Today, Luke and I had even more ups and downs. The biggest downside of the day was that we found out all the trains to various places in the next few days are full, meaning our plans to go to Luxembourg tomorrow were seemingly dead and buried. We scoured the internet for other options, most of them using ride-sharing websites, but had no luck until very late in the afternoon when David found a ride for us that will take us to Luxembourg (we hope!) tomorrow morning. So that's one of the upsides of the day. Another upside was that we visited the Eiffel Tower, one year since I was there with my family, which is a pretty weird feeling. Another downside of the day was that today, there was heavy fog and you really couldn't see anything from the top of the tower. It wasn't so bad though. We enjoyed skipping the long queues to go up the tower because we'd bought our tickets online already.

I hope to be able to write my next blog, not having had some awful experience to further complicate travel plans!

All I can say for now is my impression of the French train service has not been improved from the 0/10 rating it got from me in January! (see posts from one year ago)

from Patrick in Paris next to Luke

Eeeetaly.

That's how you say Italy if you're speaking English with an Italian accent.

I went there.

It was a mixture of emotions.

But mostly good ones!

One week ago.

I flew to Trieste.

That's in the extreme north-east.

I saw a friend again - Aleksandra from Lithuania, mentioned as the "best friend" of my CS host in Slovenia in a previous post.

We CouchSurfed with a nice Italian couple and saw the city and ate great food.

We had the best time, and it hurt a lot to say goodbye to Aleksandra just two days later. I will not see her again before I leave Europe.

I took a train to Rome.

I slept the entire way.

I saw Luke.

Luke is my best friend.

And it had been almost one year since we'd seen each other.

Within seconds, it was as if we were never apart. Me making a fool of myself and Luke feeling humiliated about that for no good reason :D

We were planning for me to secretly stay in Luke's hotel room. But they discovered us, almost.

I switched to CouchSurfing. I stayed with an American girl called Mae.

She and her room-mate took Luke and me to get half-price gelati.

Luke and I saw:

The Pope sing. Seriously.

The Vatican.

The Colosseum.

Tourists.

Ruins.

Tourists.

Hello did you read that first thing? We were in the courtyard of Vatican City watching the Pope address the masses and he sang!!!

Luke tried to enter Vatican City with a full bottle of alcohol in his bag. Hahahaha. It was taken off him.

Dot dot dot.

And now that I've reached the end of this post I realised I never mentioned that Frances (another best friend) was in London for a while and we met up and hung out tooooooo. She is far too interested in fashion and we must have browsed every £500 pair of shoes in London. We also saw a movie, had a sleepover, ate ice-cream, and ran down the up-escalator.

Back in London, another exciting week-long trip coming up!

Ciao!!

Patrick

Ireland

I HATE blogging.

Not really, but it's just getting to be a bit of a chore to keep up with all the things I'm doing by writing a blog about it every so often.

However, in this case, I have a bit of a solution - I can summarise the first two weeks of November in one simple sentence!

Here goes:

I spent most of the first two weeks of November being incredibly lazy in Alex's apartment.

There, wasn't that quick and painless?

Right, since those two weeks have finished, I've been in Ireland. I realised that, in my schedule of goings-on in the UK, I only had a maximum of around 6 days to get away and discover this country, where I suspect my ancestors might come from.

In my incredibly last-minute realisation, I searched for flights on Ryanair and, despite booking only three days in advance, still got cheap fares, although the condition was that I fly at odd hours. The flight from London to Dublin was at 6:30am, which involved getting an airport bus at 3:30am, and on that night I simply stayed up all night, then said goodbye to Jack for the last time in Europe, headed to Victoria, got said airport bus, slept the whole way, got the plane to Dublin and slept the whole way through that too. And then I slept through the whole train to Galway.

This all happened on Sunday. Since then, I've been absoutely taken by this country - it's expensive, and the weather is awful half the time, but this is all put to one side the minute you turn your eyes to the scenery outside the cities and your brain takes in what you're looking at. It's just magical! I'm no travel author, but what I saw during my travels through the west of Ireland was a stark contrast of red earth with green grass, blue water and grey sky. I've taken a lot of photos, some of which look like they were painted.

It seems that Ireland is a truly international country (well, most countries are these days). In Galway, I was hosted by a Hungarian man who's married to a French woman. In Athlone, I was hosted by an American girl, and right now I'm in Dublin, being hosted by a German girl who lives with Italians. I did manage to squeeze in one Irish host, well three of them - three students who live in a small picturesque town called Letterfrack.

And I hitch-hiked there from Clifden, and hitch-hiking in Ireland really is easy.

So basically, I highly recommend to everybody to come to Ireland at least once in your life. I haven't actually done anything typically touristy, but what I have seen and done while here is enough to leave me convinced that it's really quite a nice country.

And I just know that as soon as I get back to noisy dirty London, this joyful feeling I have will soon disappear. But no matter. I'll only be there for another week before heading off to Italy!

Going shopping,

Patrick

Video upload #2!!

(If you're reading this on Facebook: Either go to www.patrickneasey.blogspot.com to watch the video, or look in my profile where I posted it in my status recently.)

This video is an update from my hitch-hiking trip with Maria over the past couple of weeks, taken in Koper, Slovenia. More details of the trip are coming in a blog post very soon.

All the best,

Patrick

Hitch-hiking with Maria and beyond

It's getting harder to update this thing! Weeks go by just like that *snaps fingers*.

So I've been on a bit of an adventure since my last post. Maria (from Dresden) and I have been on a hitch-hiking trip we'd been planning for a while. I won't bore you with all the details, instead I'll attempt to put in some of the things I particularly enjoyed as well as a rough run-through of the route.

We began in Graz, having both successfully hitch-hiked there from different places. Graz is a nice city in Austria and we had even nicer hosts.

We've been through Slovenia from top to bottom. First Maribor, then the capital Ljubljana, all the way to the coastal towns of Koper and Piran. We've had fun in a road-trip style van with two Slovenian friends and even more fun hanging out with Erasmus students in Koper - our host was a girl from Finland, her best friend was Lithuanian, and there were others from tons more places. Yep.

We walked over the border into Croatia.

In Croatia, though not as hot and tourist-infested as it would have been in summer, we stayed with some great hosts in Rijeka and Zagreb.

In Zagreb, we were even inspected while fare-dodging on the tram but the guy was far less strict and intelligent than the German inspectors and it was pretty easy to just walk around him to the exit door and avoid any possible fine.

From Zagreb, Maria successfully hitch-hiked north back to Dresden because her school holidays had come to an end. I successfully hitch-hiked to the eastern city of Osijek, and from there across the Serbian border to the capital city, Belgrade.

This was the city I chose a few days earlier to be the city of my 19th birthday, and what a birthday it was. I couldn't have picked a better place to CouchSurf. I was hosted by Natacha, a Belgian student living and studying in Belgrade, and her French room-mate Amelie. We also had another CouchSurfer at the same time, Simon from Germany. On my birthday, around 30 more people came for a party that just happened to take place in this apartment on this day, and they came from a wide range of countries. Around 3 were actually from Serbia I think. We had lots of drinks and conversations before going out clubbing, in a night that lasted one extra hour because of the end of daylight saving time.

I had a slight hiccup in my plans today - I got up earlier than usual and got myself out to a hitch-hiking spot with a bus. My destination was Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But I never made it. Not one Serbian person stopped for me in around 3-4 hours of attempted hitch-hiking from 3 different spots. By the late afternoon I was fed up with the whole concept of hitch-hiking and became a quitter. Unlike the time I had to sleep on the grass in Leipzig, this time I was able to get the buses back to the city centre and surprise Natacha and Amelie with the bad news. They were totally cool with me staying for an extra unexpected night.

This cuts Bosnia and Herzegovina out of my trip because tomorrow I was going to go back to Zagreb, now I'll be making this journey from Belgrade rather than Sarajevo, and I won't be risking another hitch-hike. I'll take a train like a normal person. ARE YOU HAPPY SERBIA? IS MY SPIRIT CRUSHED ENOUGH FOR YOUR LIKING?

Before I go, here's yet another video update, somewhere in the middle of Croatia just before I'm taken to Belgrade by a nice man, his son, and his son's friend, all of whom spoke great English.

from Belgrade (for the last night this time, I hope!)

Patrick

Crazy people

Crazy people are the best type of people. I don't mean people who have something wrong with their mind. I just mean people who are interesting, laid-back and who are up for almost everything.

I've mostly been hanging out with these people over the past week. I left my last blog hanging as I got on a train with the destination of Altenburg airport. I'm pleased to report that everything went smoothly and I was able to fly to London, something I spontaneously decided to do while I was in Belgium.

I was there to visit Alex, the girl who I spent a few days with after that long hitch-hike I wrote about. This time, it was a 5-day visit to her new apartment in London. She's just started studying photography, but doesn't let this get in the way of her being a crazy person for a living.

I spent these five days with Alex and her fellow crazy friends. There are her two room-mates, David and the Polish guy whose name we can't pronounce. There is her future room-mate Joe, a CouchSurfer from Singapore called Jas, and a few people I talked to at a CouchSurfing meeting. It's so easy to get on with this kind of people. The world should be full of them.

They introduced me to the wonderful world of independent cinema.

I accomplished something the other day.

I took a bus from London to Amsterdam and I managed to sleep for maybe 9 of the 12 hours that made up the journey. Stoked. I arrived in Amsterdam not tired at all, and was soon surrounded by more crazy people. I CouchSurfed with a girl called Kayley who's a Malaysian with an Australian accent, and her room-mate Natalie. Jack also came up from Belgium to apparently start living and working in Amsterdam. He stayed with us as well. There were also two more crazy CouchSurfers in the place. Over the two days I spent there, we had some great times. Funnily enough, most of our conversations ended up being about bicycles and weed.

Today I used a fresh new Eurail pass to spend around 11 hours on trains that took me from Amsterdam through Germany and all the way to Vienna, Austria. This marks the beginning of a two-ish-week hitch-hiking trip with Maria, my friend from Dresden. A slight hiccup in our trip is that Maria failed to hitch-hike to Vienna from Prague today, and is spending the night in Brno instead. Hopefully we will meet up in Graz tomorrow.

Crazy times ahead.

Oktoberfest!

The world's biggest beer festival takes place over two weeks each and every year in Munich, the capital of the German state of Bavaria. It used to be in October, but they brought the date forward many years ago because they kept getting bad weather during the festival. It now starts in September and finishes on the first weekend of October.

And I went there! (I even went in October as well!)

Having spent a great few days with Jack and Alice in Belgium, which included CouchSurfing with some really cool people, fare-dodging the Brussels transport system every single time we used it, and eating a heart-cloggingly tasty Belgian snack that involves sausages and chips in a baguette, I spent the entire 30th of September on six different trains that eventually took me from Brussels to Munich.

I met up with Steph Gough and Lauren Anderson, two school friends, and Bec, a girl from Victoria who did a placement with Steph before they went travelling together.

We spent three nights in our own apartment - I managed to find a nice CouchSurfing host for us, but after letting us into her place, she had to go to some other city for work for a few days, and allowed us to stay in her place by ourselves!

Thursday the 1st began with a walking tour of Munich, then we headed to the Theresienwiese, the site of the Oktoberfest festival. After finding space in a beer garden next to a giant beer tent, we spent the next several hours with some more loud Australians - Madi, another friend from Steph's placement, was there with her Dad and her older brother, and a few more friends of her older brother. They were already tanked.

The Oktoberfest beer is a special beer that's only brewed for the festival, and comes in one-litre glasses at around 8.60€ a litre (like $15?) which is massively expensive of course. After my first glass, I was hesitant to buy more, because I'm trying not to splash out money right now, but I was shouted more by the others who were in no such financial trouble and hated to see a guy sitting at Oktoberfest without a beer!

After just two and a half glasses (I think), I was surprisingly drunk and having a good time. All of us were. We had some loud conversations and took some funny photos and videos until 11pm came and it was time to close.

Before closing time, I'd gone for a walk, and I'd found a beer glass from the famous Hofbräuhaus beer tent, outside on the ground. This is rare - many of these one-litre glasses used to be stolen from the festival until they introduced security and bag checks in 2008 and recovered 220,000 attempted thieveries! This year there is a 50€ fine if you're caught sneaking off with a glass, and a security guy at every beer tent door. So finding one outside the security zone made me happy. I picked it up and hid it between some trees, hoping nobody would find it as I went back to join the others.

When closing time came, I told the three girls I'd meet them at the main entrance. I drunkenly walked back to my hiding spot and retrieved the beer glass, then hiding it under my jumper, walked around to the main entrance. I don't remember my thought process then, but something made me decide to take the glass out and just hold it behind my back. I accidentally dropped it in doing so, and it shattered on the ground, and I quickly rushed away before anybody tried to fine me for breaking a glass.

But, by that time, I had got it into my head that I'd be going home with a beer glass, and breaking one wasn't going to stop me if I could help it. I was drunk and had a mission. I walked quickly back to the Hofbräuhaus tent, went into the beer garden area, found a glass that the waiters hadn't picked up yet, put it under my jumper and walked quickly back out past the security guard. The security guard reached out and put his hand in front of me, trying to stop me so he could check me, but i just kept walking quickly, straight ahead, straight ahead, hoping I wasn't being followed, hardly able to believe I'd just done what I'd done, and even less able to believe I'd got away with it.

I then went back to the main entrance, found the girls, and we walked to the underground station. I was still scared that one of the security guys herding people through the station would stop me, but the glass wasn't very visible. Once we were back at the apartment, I was finally able to breathe a sigh of celebratory relief. Although the relief was somehow lessened by me being sick.

I was still feeling rubbish the next morning and it didn't look like we were going to the festival anytime soon. The girls went to a concentration camp while I got on the internet and organised my life for the next week or so. I'd already been to a concentration camp near Berlin and one is enough for a while.

We made it to Oktoberfest later, but weren't able to find the others again. We didn't get drunk this time, just walked around the entire place looking at some of the rides and stuff. I bought souvenirs for myself and for my mother and brother, who have birthdays coming up. When closing time came, this time it was Lauren who found a glass - on the ground in the festival site, with some beer still in it. Rather than look suspicious by hiding it, she decided to just carry it in front of her as normal. If security stopped her, she was just going to say she didn't know she wasn't allowed to take it with her and innocently hand it over to them. We made it out the front entrance and after a longer-than-was-necessary walk, found an underground station and made it home with Lauren's glass safe and sound. We did some cooking and washing up before heading to bed.

I got just over 3 hours of sleep before getting up again. I had to get everything sorted and pack my bag then catch an organised ride share at 6am after saying goodbye to the girls. For 20€, the driver took me from Munich to Dresden. In Dresden, I dropped my guitar off with my friend Ria and am hopefully about to get in a train that takes me to Altenburg, where an airport is...

Hitching across Germany and trains with internet

A way overdue update.

There's so much to write here that I don't even know how I'm going to do it without making everyone bored.

So since CzechSurfing....

I did the most amazing hitch-hike I've ever done. Some of the places I will mention here are not famous enough to know where they are, so please, go to Google Maps to find out!!

My total journey was Dresden to Niederselters on Wednesday. Nearly 500km. The reason why is a girl called Alexandra who I met at Klöden Camp and again at CzechSurfing in Prague. She wanted me to visit her, and I needed to get my act together and clean Stefan's apartment and get out of Dresden. Still, I had no idea if I'd be able to make it right over to the west in one day.

10:50: Begin hitch-hike from Dresden

Lift 1: Dresden to Chemnitz - 60km or so, and I was picked up by a WOMAN for the very first time (apart from two married couples. First woman on her own.)

Standing at a petrol station in Chemnitz, my passport was checked by two plain clothes policemen in an unmarked car. Of course, when they pulled over for me, I thought they were normal people who I could hitch-hike with.

Lift 2: Chemnitz to Limburg an der Lahn - this is the one I'm so stoked about, because it is around 401km in the one car, extremely lucky, knocked off most of the journey for me. And it was a woman on her own again! What is this world coming to?

Lift 3: Limburg an der Lahn to Bad Camberg - an army man took me this short distance

Lift 4: Bad Camberg to Niederselters - a small town to an even smaller town, only around 6km, but oh my gosh I was so happy to be picked up by the man who had a lisp.

17:50: arrive in Niederselters directly on Alexandra's doorstep as the world's happiest guy.

I spent three nights at Alexandra's place. Maybe it would have been more, but the day after I left she had to move to London. Go figure.

My next destination was Heidelberg, where I visited my friend Jacqueline, a fellow Lattitude volunteer who I began e-mailing around a year ago after finding out we were both going to Germany. She's from Brisbane and so is Annie, the other girl doing the placement there. I spent three nights there and can only say that Heidelberg is a beautiful city. We happened to catch an outdoor André Rieu concert.

Are you bored yet?

Tuesday afternoon, I left Jacquie and hitch-hiked north to Darmstadt, one of the only cities in the world with an element of the periodic table named after it. I stayed a couple of nights with Graham, another guy I met at Klöden Camp and CzechSurfing. He's a New Zealander, but also really cool (rare, I know). We went partying Tuesday night at a student club and last night we played poker with four more guys, I survived quite a while before finishing in 4th place, money-wise.

This morning I got up early and left Darmstadt with a train. In Frankfurt I changed to an InterCityExpress train, and that's where I'm sitting at this very moment, because the train has wireless internet. Fancy. My destination is Belgium, where I hope to visit Alice, and Jack, who is staying with her right now. Jack and I are then going to spend a few nights in Brussels, cause we felt like it. I was getting pretty tense because I'd sent out several CouchSurfing requests to people near Alice and people in Brussels and didn't have any positive responses yet, but just now, when I checked CouchSurfing in the train, I found I have places to stay in both cities!

One more piece of news: I've set a date to bring an end to this trip by booking a flight with QANTAS. Departing Frankfurt am Main on January the 14th and arriving in Melbourne on January the 16th with a stopover in Singapore. But I don't want to think about going home just yet...

Well then, that's all for now!

My gosh it's rather foggy outside...

CzechSurfingwastotallyawesome

I spent a wicked weekend in Prague.

I returned to Dresden on Thursday for a day of rest after Leipzig, Klöden Camp, Magdeburg, Hamburg, Frelsdorf, Hanover, Rostock and Berlin. I drove down to Prague in a guy's car with three more Dresden friends.

The reason?

Czech Surfing 2009 - a big CouchSurfing meeting. Like Berlin Beach Camp and Klöden Camp, except this one was in the middle of the city. There were probably 300 people there, most of them not from the Czech Republic.

After arriving at our CouchSurfing host, we spent Friday evening first drinking at a bar, then drunkenly walking around the city on a night tour, then finally going crazy at the Cross Club.

Saturday was the biggest day. I chose to go on the beer-garden-and-city tour, which was a long walk all around the beautiful city of Prague, visiting some beer gardens on the way. I met tons of new people who made the walk that much more fun.

Saturday evening was the biggest event of all - a party for which we had an entire hotel basement (which was a bar) booked out for CouchSurfers. Lots of alcohol and food was consumed, lots of music was played and lots of fun was had.

Actually I drank too much and was sick for the last bit.

I blame the price of beer. 25Kč for a 500mL glass, that's less than one euro, and about one third the price of beer in some bars here in Dresden. It meant I'd finish one beer, then buy a new one straight away. I did that maybe six or seven times and then joined the crowd dancing to a DJ before everything went downhill.

Sunday was a nice relaxing day. We had a picnic in the park followed by a FREE HUGS campaign where we gathered in the busy main square and gave out free hugs. This thing has gone world-wide now and was started by one guy in Sydney via a YouTube video.

I also gave out FREE CHOCOLATE.

Unfortunately, my ride was leaving Sunday afternoon, otherwise I would have stayed a bit longer. Maria, Xenia, Sunhild and I drove back to Dresden with Peter and the awesomeness came to a quiet end.

I really have no plans right now. I'm thinking I'll head to the very west of Germany and then onwards from there, coming back briefly for the world cup of beer, Oktoberfest.

57

My first video upload!

If you are reading this on Facebook: you won't be able to see the video below. To see it, you could a) go to the original blog at www.patrickneasey.blogspot.com or b) go to my profile where I've uploaded and posted it.

I took this video with my camera at 8:46pm, on Friday 28/08/09, standing on a highway north of Leipzig.

The scenario is described in my previous post, I just thought I'd do something different and add a video to the words!

Despite how it looks, I swear I wasn't crying.

Patrick.

P.S. In response to something I say in the video, yeah, I can now look back at this one with a grin!

I am a hitch-hiking machine.

So. I spent last week at Maria's place. It was jolly nice of her to have me. We had a pancake party for lots of CouchSurfers on Wednesday. On Thursday, I uploaded several photo albums to Facebook.

On Friday, I got out. I packed some stuff into my big backpack and small backpack, and set off, with my guitar as well, destination Klöden - a very small down in Saxony-Anhalt, where there was to be a camp held for CouchSurfers.

My method of travel was hitch-hiking. I made it to Leipzig really really easily. I then took a bus out to the Autobahn 9 and it went downhill from there. I stood for 3 hours and had no success in finding a lift. I had to turn around and hitch-hike back into Leipzig city centre, then I made it up to the minor highway north of the city and tried hitching from there for a while. But it got cold and dark and the chance of getting picked up all but disappeared.

At 9:30pm, 5.5 hours after I originally attempted to hitch-hike out of Leipzig, I gave up for the day. I was supposed to be getting drunk with fellow CouchSurfers but I ended up sleeping on the grass under a tree, with my sleeping mat and sleeping bag, just like I'd done once before in Munich.

On Saturday morning I had more luck. Using 3 different drivers, I made it from Leipzig through Wittenberg to the small town of Klöden and met up with the others, including Maria, who'd left with her boyfriend a few hours after I left and managed to arrive on the same day.

The camp was great fun. We went swimming in the lake, played volleyball, made ratatouille and baked pizza, visited the church tower, watched a fire show, and the rest of the time was spent getting drunk and having fun. I met people from Slovenia, Latvia, Czech Republic, France, Brazil, Lithuania, Netherlands, Italy, England, New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Switzerland and Germany. 

It came to an end for me yesterday (Monday) with views ahead to visitng friends in Uelzen once again. This plan changed to Hamburg when I found nobody was available for the day/evening in Uelzen. I hitch-hiked away from the Klöden camp, over the Autobahn on the minor highway all the way to Magdeburg, capital city of Saxony-Anhalt. When I got to the train station, my plans still weren't sure because I couldn't find a bed in Hamburg either.

With neither Uelzen or Hamburg to head to, it seemed I was about to spend yet another night in some random grassy area. I hung around being a homeless person in the station until sometime after 1, when I got on a bus and just rode until I saw a suitable place out the window. It ended up being an area in front of an abandoned broken apartment building, shielded from the street by bushes. I slept quite well, on the plus-side.

This morning (Tuesday) I finally found a couple of friends and a bed in Hamburg so I ditched hitch-hiking for the moment and took a train up there. I first spent a few hours with Larissa, a girl who came to Friends' School in the first half of 2007. We got some awesome ice-creams and falafel and basically walked and talked about everything we'd done in the time between then and now.

Larissa then had to head to work, and I met up with another friend called Nele, who I met at the Berlin Beach Camp earlier this year. She was about the greatest thing that had happened to me in the past few days. I was able to go with her to her apartment where I could finally have a rest from carrying all my stuff, and better still, she offered me a place to stay for the night. This is where I'm writing from - Nele's nice cosy room with nice cosy internet.

Today was much much more enjoyable than yesterday, although hitch-hiking is genuinely quite fun when you haven't been waiting for 3 hours already. I enjoy making eye-contact with each driver, attitude cheerful, hopes high. Some drivers give you a kind of expression and gesture that says "sorry, I'd take you, but I'm not going where you're going" or "sorry, but look, I've already got 4 passengers and a bootload of stuff". Some of them stare straight ahead, pretending you're not there, and rather than losing hope, I find it kind of amusing. It's really a nice break from the regular rush of life and that's aside from the obvious reason you do it - free transport.

I hope to see you all soon,

Patrick

Freedom

Yep, I've finished working at Pat's Bunnyhouse.

Today was my last day. I spent the morning outside with the kids then after my break time, some of the teachers gathered around to farewell me with a gift of a big book and calendar of Dresden.
I actually felt sad. Regardless of what's happened to make me leave this place, I still had a lot of fun there with the kids, and 95% of the teachers too.

On the weekend, a few friends and I got a few big bags containing all my stuff and took them on a bus to Bannewitz, where we dumped them in Stefan's apartment. He's travelling right now, and said I could use his place until I sort out my travels. Today after work, I took the last of my stuff out and am now staying a few nights with another friend, Maria, who lives much closer to the city (and my old place).

I think I have a vague plan of the next couple of weeks. It begins with a CouchSurfing camp in the middle of nowhere between Berlin and Dresden this weekend, then I plan to get around a few other German cities, visiting friends, before coming back through Dresden for another CouchSurfing meeting in Prague.

After that... who knows?
Main thing is it's a day of mixed feelings and well, who knows how I'll look back on this in a few years' time... hopefully as a good thing, if the next few months turn out to be really awesome.

from Patrick

...man what a short, boring blog. Seriously, I shouldn't have even written this one.

Concrete proof that Pat's Bunnyhouse is actually a correctional facility.

So as if my situation weren't tricky enough. (see previous posts)

There's this new teacher here now, from Iran, speaks slow but good German and English. He's already doing English with the kids in place of Susi in the pre-school and who knows, he may take over my stuff too when I leave after this month.
Anyway.
The principal called me into a meeting yesterday afternoon.
She said "Reza is now a teacher here, blah blah, he's looking for an apartment for his family but it's taking a while, blah blah, we want to offer him your apartment."
So yeah, they asked me to go and move into Camilla's old room, in number 404 /405 with Erin.

But that's not all!
I had to do it yesterday. Not "could you take the day off tomorrow and move your stuff" or "do it before Monday", but "this evening you must move all your belongings down to the 4th floor apartment and hand in your keys tomorrow morning".
I tried to say I had plans. Cause I did. With Stefan, and Eni (from Hungary) and it was going to be the last time I would get to see Eni before she leaves on Saturday.
Susi even said "yeah, it's going to take an entire evening" but Frau Klügel reckoned it would not disturb my plans to move out on the same day.

WELL.
I went to German at my teacher's place first,
got home at 6:30 or so,
spent the first hour and a half getting rid of all the posters and other stuff on the cupboard doors,
then my doorbell rang!
I was expecting a text or something to say "meet us here at this time", but Stefan and Eni decided to surprise me with a visit,
and I surprised them with the news.
Being the kind people they are, they offered to help.
We spent the next couple of hours hard at work, then had a break when we went to the supermarket to buy beer. We also ordered a "party" sized Hawaiian pizza to be delivered, which is a rectangle measuring 60cm x 40cm. Tasty.
Then we worked some more. We eventually filled the lift with everything else I own and shut the door to number 814 for good. At 2:07am, we were done, and I thanked Stefan and Eni a hundred times and apologised for our change of plans - we were going to go to a movie at 11pm maybe, and I even thought I'd manage to move out before that time. But nope. Pat's Bunnyhouse therefore thoroughly ruined my evening.


So today, I was in the middle of writing everything above this sentence, when I had to suddenly go and meet the principal. And it was in the dining room downstairs, in front of some other kitchen and cleaning staff. The principal got angry. Apparently the lady who inspects my apartment had been there this morning and thought it was a pigsty. I admit, I did not get on my hands and knees with a cloth and spray bottle and polish every surface til it shone. Why? Because at 2am I was stuffed and needed my 4.5 hours of sleep!
This had absolutely no effect on the principal. She said that for all she cared, I should have stayed up until 4. I have to add that the inspecting lady was saying "the shower is brown, the toilet seat is yellow" and stuff like that. But that's just not true. I told her that they're both white, but who's the principal going to believe out of me and her?
She also got mad that I hadn't brought the key to Erin's room (which was given to me along with Camilla's), even though I explained it was because I couldn't find it in my giant pile of stuff before I had to get to work this morning. She ALSO got mad that I had "stolen" the Nintendo 64 console from my place.

Now, in January, this Nintendo 64 was in Erin's room downstairs, it was there before either of us arrived here. She asked if I wanted it, cause she didn't, so I took it up to my place. Last night, I took it back down to the girls' place along with the rest of my stuff. Today, I had the principal yelling at me because she reckons the console belongs in the upstairs apartment, despite me telling her everything I just wrote.

So basically, yeah. They put me in the car of the inspecting lady who drove me home, I finally found Erin's key and also gave her the N64. Then she said "you have to take the tram back, I'm staying here to do something else", and of course I didn't have my wallet with me because I didn't think I'd need money, and in my wallet is my tram ticket. So I even had to rummage around my new room until I found 1.80€ for a ticket.

Then I came back here and wrote the rest of this.
Gotta hurry off now. Over my time limit and my mentor just walked into the room.
PN

Fired, for real, for real. Soon. For real.

I finally got a letter today.
It was typed by the boss on the 22nd of July. Why she did not send it to me then, I do not know. For some reason she gave it to the principal yesterday, who then gave it to the mentor, who then gave it to... me at last.

It has a few paragraphs about "your expectations were given to you in a letter then you got a contract and a warning etc."
Then something along the lines of "after another few months you unfortunately are a terrible English teacher." Not quite like that, but basically they're not happy enough for reasons I've said before.

Then the bit I want to know - my contract is being shortened until the 31st of August, i.e. I have until the end of this month to finish my placement and get out of my apartment.

I'm sitting here just having found out about this and apart from being annoyed that I wasn't told three weeks ago when the decision was made, I have no idea what I'll be doing from here. Hopefully I make my mind up in the next few weeks. Travel is for sure, I wouldn't go back to Australia yet if you paid me. Well, maybe if you paid me enough. But you aren't. So I'm still here!

Mid-December to mid-January will be travelling with Luke. In the meantime, I can probably visit more friends and family friends than I would have been able to if I'd had to stick to the ridiculously low amount of holidays they give you here.

Any last words?
I suppose I'm just annoyed about inconsistency through the Dresden placements. If both the volunteers at Villa Pat's Freunde and Pat's Dahlienheim had over 100 kids to deal with each and every week, and do at least 2 English classes with 3-5 year olds on all five days every week, and had to plan and produce an entire theatrical production performed in English by German kids who are between the ages of 7 and 11, maybe I would just pull my head in and deal with the tasks at hand.
But they just don't. Not even close.
Whenever I'd come home and tell them about another problem my work had with me, they'd say "that's surprising, our bosses don't treat us like that at all."
I feel like yelling at Pat's Bunnyhouse that they're firing the hardest working Pat's English teacher they have right now, including the mentors and stuff who do it occasionally.

That'll do for now.
At least I'll be able to get more pocket money for staying another month.
Look out, Europe. I'm suddenly and unexpectedly coming to get you.

Spontaneity!!

Halina is a friend I know from year 11 and 12 at school. She's doing a placement as a matron at a top-end boarding school for boys in England, but right now they've got summer holidays and so Halina has been travelling Europe. She was also kind enough to come visit me, and this worked out will now that I'm on holidays from nearly being fired.

Last Wednesday we hitch-hiked to Berlin and caught up with Kate Walker and Dim Archer. It was fun. We also got to stay in the apartment of the guy who drove us there. Lucky!
We wanted to go to Krakow in Poland but missed our train on Saturday, so we decided to go back to Dresden for the night. It was also fun. We had burritos with a girl from Belarus.

Sunday afternoon at 14:15, Halina comes home from the station asking about Poland trains and says "wanna go to Venice instead? Train leaves in 40 minutes!"
And I was saying "no, this is such a stupid idea" the entire time as I packed my stuff back into my backpack.
We decided on a train that left two hours later cause the 14:55 one was just too soon to be able to catch.
So we were in four different trains, the last one arriving in Venice the next morning at 8:30!
We had two full days together there, and it's pretty awesome. Like everyone's heard, it's got canals. There are cars, but only on a few sections of land. Usually it's canals or simply pedestrian streets. There are also many islands separated from the city centre. We camped on one of the islands, Lido, bordering the Adriatic Sea. It has a beach, and the water is warmer than in Tasmania. We went swimming both days.
So, basically, yeah. An expensive spontaneous decision. As in the train cost me 122€ to get there and Halina has a Eurail pass. Grrr.

Yesterday (Wednesday) morning I had to get moving because tomorrow (Friday) I have to work. I wanted to get home as cheaply as possible, maybe including some hitch-hiking. But I began with a bus from Venice to Villach, then took a train all the way to Munich cause it was only 39€. Munich is where I spent last night. I found a ride-share going the next morning at 6:15am to Dresden and rang the guy. He told me where he'd leave from and I took the S-Bahn there last night sometime after midnight. I found a kind of park near the spot and rolled out my sleeping mat and sleeping bag next to a bush and just slept there for the next 5 hours or so. Luckily enough, nobody had stolen my stuff when I woke up this morning at 5:30 and ate breakfast of crackers with tomato. I found the guy and we set off.

Now, I've always said nobody in Tasmania needs a car faster or more polluting than a Holden Barina, cause they can drive 110km/h and that's your limit in Tasmania. I now believe nobody ANYWHERE needs anything faster or more polluting because the guy had one (an Opel Corsa, which is the same car in Europe) and we drove at 180km/h the whole way to Dresden. I thought it would take at least 5 hours but it only took 3. So at 9:20am he pulled up and told me we were there and I was like WOAH.

Ok, I lied. This isn't all about Halina, cause there should definitely be a section devoted to another friend of mine. Camilla Kruize of Timaru, New Zealand was at Pat's Dahlienheim as the English teacher from September 2008 until August 2009. Today is her last day of work. We'll be going out with a few friends to eat dinner tonight, and tomorrow evening she gets on a train to head to The Netherlands, followed by England, then after her mini-break, she heads to Stuttgart to work as an au-pair for a few months. She will be sorely missed.

So I'm going to work tomorrow and finding out what exactly they want me to do.
Bis dann, Leute!
Patrick

The turning point in my year, for real?

It's like pulling petals out of a flower, one by one.
I'm fired, I'm fired not. I'm fired, I'm fired not.
Right now:
I'm fired not. Not yet, anyway.

The background situation to me almost being fired just now is hard to explain, but to put it simply, my current mentor has got upset during the past few weeks at my behaviour and told the principal of Pat's Bunnyhouse that she did not want to be my mentor anymore. I found this out on Monday afternoon, and was told the principal would be going to see the boss of all the Pat's kindergartens to tell her what my mentor said, tomorrow. Which means Tuesday, yesterday. She wouldn't be coming to work that day, so I had to wait until today to find out my fate. I was convinced I'd be fired, given previous experiences with the head boss.

I met with the principal and my mentor at 1pm today, Wednesday.
The principal told me that this is the deal for the moment:
Since I have a holiday allowance of two days per month, from January through July that is 7x2 = 14 days. I have, so far, used three. What's happening now is that I'm having a break, the bosses are making me take the remaining 11 days off, starting right now. In addition, I had approximately 2.5 hours of overtime left, and they made me take those off for this afternoon, therefore I left work at 1:30 and came here, to the library, to write this.

Taking the next 11 working days off, I would theoretically have to return to work on Friday, 7th of August.
I am to expect contact from the boss before that date, probably via a letter. She will tell me what's happening from here. If I do not receive anything from her, I come to work on that day as would be normal.

So, basically, even if I still get fired, it won't for a while longer, and for that time I'm allowed to live in my apartment, and I even get pocket money and money for meals as usual! It's just like me being fired immediately (cause I don't have to work), but I'm allowed to use some of my holiday that I didn't use up in the previous six and a bit months, and stay in the apartment, before being kicked out into the world of the European backpacker - spending more money and finding accomodation, etc.

So, it seems I'm staying put for the next few weeks at least! This is about all I can say at this stage.

To the people I wrote a message to: yeah, this blog is quite similar to the message. But oh well. Maybe some others who didn't get a message will read this, plus I can't really write as much as I wrote in the message here, cause I'm not really allowed to.

If you're reading this on Facebook, please check out the site it comes from, www.patrickneasey.blogspot.com, it looks nicer for one thing.

Good afternoon,
Patrick

The best thing that ever happened, anywhere, ever.

There is a place in Belgium that is largely occupied by nothing, or farmers, for 99% of the time. Only four days a year do 80,000 people descend on the area to rock out at Rock Werchter.

2009 AD. Thursday morning.
After surviving a gruelling 13-hour bus trip, Patrick arrives at a campsite fast filling up with people and puts up his tent near the entrance.
In the afternoon, Elliot and Ollie join the group.
And it begins.

Elliot, Patrick and Ollie get through the insane crowds into the festival site and watch Dave Matthews Band whilst chilling on the grass. Patrick then goes into the crowd to watch Placebo rock the place. The three of us do various things watching Oasis from a distance. Patrick then missions into the mosh and pushes through to the front section, ending up two or three people from the bar, to experience The Prodigy live on the main stage.

Friday's bands are even better. After watching a few bands from the grass, Patrick and Ollie come together in the crowd and watch Bloc Party, then Patrick stays in the crowd for a great set by The Killers, and then the absolute top highlight of the festival, Coldplay. They play for an hour and a half and bring some awesome effects into the show, plus they go into the crowd to play a few of the songs.

On Saturday, Patrick and Elliot are in the crowd to see possibly the world's greatest acoustic guitar duo, Rodrigo y Gabriela, capture the crowd with their skillful playing. Patrick and Elliot then push their way into the front section for the hard rocking power of Limp Bizkit. Patrick has a can of ravioli in his back pocket that he smuggled into the site, and as soon as the mosh starts, he regrets having it there. After much squashing and moshing, Elliot heads off with Ollie to see Katy Perry. Patrick stays in the second row of the mosh and watches Franz Ferdinand play a nice show, then Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and finally Kings of Leon. For the final song, Black Thumbnail, a guy lets Patrick into the front row. Awesome. After that, Patrick, Elliot, Ollie and their Dutch campsite neighbours go crazy dancing outside the other stage, where a DJ is going off. They then catch the end of 2manyDJs on the main stage before heading back to the campsite.

Sunday brings the festival to a close with Patrick watching Kaiser Chiefs in the crowd, then Ollie and Patrick watch Röyksopp outside the tent while Elliot sees Nine Inch Nails, then the three of them head into the crowd for the closing band, the one and only Metallica. The crowd are boring. They do not move at all, except a few people at the front. That said, we moved, and Metallica are just awesome at doing what they do.
The festival is brought to a close with awesome fireworks and Patrick, Ollie and Elliot eat hot chips.

Oh by the way, this blog sucks. In no way does it come close to describing the awesome time I (erm, I mean Patrick) had at Rock Werchter 2009. I saw so many great bands do so many great songs and had many great times with great friends.

I got up this morning at 5:25...

...and went to work.
That's how the story ends.
How it begins?

Well.
Eskimo Joe are a good Australian band. I saw them earlier this year, in March, in the Magnet Bar in Berlin. I saw a while ago that they were playing in the same bar on June 23rd, which was a Tuesday night. I thought to myself "hmmm... I don't really want to use up a day of holiday allowance just to go to Berlin and see this band again."
But I did want to go.
But wait, there's a way to do both!
Und zwar:

Straight after work yesterday, I went home and packed and went and met a guy who was going to drive me there - mitfahrgelegenheit.de - ride sharing - you find someone going where you want to go and pay them a bit of petrol money. 10€ in this case - better than a train, safer than hitch-hiking.

I dropped my stuff off at this guy's apartment - I found him through CouchSurfing, and was lucky to receive a positive response to my totally freeloading request of just one night, leaving early next day.

I headed to Magnet Bar a bit before the gig started, and was right up the front for the whole thing. There was a band before Eskimo Joe - The Alexandria Quartet, an alternative rock band of Norway/London origin. Really good stuff! I enjoyed their set so much that I bought a CD and a T-shirt, plus I got a set-list off the stage and had the guys sign it. Now I have 3 signed setlists. Woo!

Eskimo Joe came on and rocked the place up as usual, though I have to be slightly critical - it wasn't as good as the March concert. This is partly to do with the sound mix - for most of the songs, there was too much lead guitar and not enough rhythm guitar or vocals. Bass was sometimes up sometimes down. It made it sound less full. The other reason is one that's just my opinion - although I love their new album, Inshalla, I don't think that these songs played live sound as good as the songs off their other albums played live. The recordings are good enough though, maybe that can be attributed to sound engineering.

ANYWAY. I enjoyed myself. Eskimo Joe didn't come and join the rest of us after the gig, unfortunately, but I got stuff signed back in March. I was happy with talking to The Alexandria Quartet, then heading back to the apartment to get some much-needed sleep.

So if you were wondering why I got up so early to go to work, I woke up IN BERLIN FOOLS! I got dressed and packed my sleeping bag away and said a quick goodbye to my host. I negotiated the public transport system back to Schöneweide, where I had been dropped the previous day, because ironically, it was the same driver bringing me back to Dresden! I tried to sleep in the car but couldn't really manage it. I was dropped at Bahnhof Neustadt and took a tram to work, arriving about 20 minutes late. But I had warned the teacher of my group today that I might be about 20 minutes late, she was all cool.

Basically, I managed it! It all went off without a hitch! It cost me a bit of money but more importantly, I saved a whole day of holiday allowance that might just give me an extra day of relaxing in Portugal, or something.

Ollie gets back today from his adventures in Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria.

Wait a second...

Where is Sonya?

I've kept in contact with most people seemingly well, but I realised I haven't heard from or said anything to Sonya since before I left in December!

And I hope this very easy open question will get some comments, endlich mal. Also los, Leute!

Oh and how's uni going? Am I going to like it?

long time, no blog

...well, like 2 weeks. Which is enough, since I've done quite a few things in that time, and I don't have all that much time to write here, so here goes:

- Weekend after I posted the last blog post -
Berlin Beach Camp. It's an event organised for a lot of CouchSurfers, there were maybe like 600 of us spending the long weekend at a beach in Berlin, yeah there is a beach even though it's not on the coast, it's beside a big lake and it was nice and sunny for most of the time! I hitch-hiked there with Chloe and came back with Anna. Ollie was there too. I met tons of new people, went swimming, played beach volleyball, played tons of guitar, cooked on a grill and sat by the campfire each night, and we also went into the city to do a Free Hugs campaign. It was a lot of fun, basically!

- Last weekend -
Prague. Chloe, Ollie and Anna hitch-hiked down there on Thursday, Camilla and I had to wait until after work on Friday. We got there at like 9pm after about 3 hours hitching, spent the Saturday morning in bed at a CouchSurfer's apartment, but the guy was getting evicted and we had to sleep in a hostel Saturday night. Saturday afternoon and evening was my only time seeing the city, not enough time, I have to go back there, which I will, since I can hitch-hike there and CouchSurf there nice and cost-effectively! Camilla and I didn't have an easy job hitch-hiking back to Dresden - a few waits of over half an hour, up to 2 hours at most, all together we were on the road from about 1 until 7 and arrived home after this epic journey on Sunday evening. Ollie has gone further south, to Austria, Hungary then Bulgaria. Chloe and Anna hitched back to Dresden, separately, and beat us.

- Now -
I have CouchSurfers! 3 cool Americans are sleeping at my place for the next couple of nights. I also have trouble at work, but am not allowed to go into detail about it. All I will say is I'm thinking about how I'm going to manage the rest of this year. Too unspecific but... yeah, until later,

Patrick

Quick news

Thursday was a public holiday. I took Friday off and used the weekend to go to Uelzen, the city in Lower Saxony where the sister school of Friends' School is, and where I went to as part of an exchange in 2007.

I stayed all three nights with Thilo, the guy who hosted Aaron when we were there. Great guy, great big house!

I...
...went to Vatertag celebrations, and got drunk and met lots of new people,
...went to Thilo's late birthday party, and got more drunk and met lots of new people,
...played beach volleyball, foosball and eight ball,
...caught up with the current Friends' School trip, seeing my old German teacher and some of my friends who are now in year 11 or 12 and just beginning their own school exchange!
...had a great time.

It was such a spontaneous decision on Thursday morning - at 11am I decided to go, and at 12pm I was on the train!
Also on that Thursday morning, Jack and Steve sadly left Dresden. Ollie and Anna went up to Berlin and so I spent the weekend away from them, until I made it to Berlin on Sunday and Anna and I hitch-hiked back to Dresden together.

Also!
On CouchSurfing.org, the greatest website ever, I've been improving my profile and starting to become a real part of the community - not just someone saying "help, I'm new in Dresden" but a willing host, surfer and friend - I'm now stoked that someone I know vouched for me (and you can only get vouches from people who've got at least three themselves) and I also got two requests from people who want to stay with me next month!
my new and improved homepage:
www.couchsurfing.org/people/pn57/
Just thought I'd let you know...

Coming up next: Berlin Beach Camp!

Things that nobody should ever do (AKA things the four of us do on a regular basis) #154:

I don't know the exact origins of the three pizza challenge, but apparently it was coined by Jack while he and Ollie and/or Steve were contemplating a hitch-hiking race.

If you're sitting there wondering what this mysterious three pizza challenge is, you may be slightly disappointed to learn that it's exactly what it sounds like:

The three pizza challenge

Eat three pizzas.

A few days ago the guys and I set a date for attempting this, and that date happened to be yesterday. Jack, Ollie and I each bought a box of frozen supermarket pizzas, the cheapest brand in there, three in a box for 2€. Steve looked at that box in the supermarket and decided to spend nearly three times that amount on buying three separate pizzas of a slightly less crap brand.

Oh and here comes half the fun of it - the apartments that Camilla, Erin and I live in don't have ovens, but the others figured we could manage using... microwaves. We brought my microwave down from my place to the girls' kitchen (Camilla is in Italy, Erin let us use her room cause my room is choc-full of junk) and set to work. We'd microwave two pizzas at a time, one in each microwave, and each eat half a pizza when they were "done". (By done, I mean shot with enough microwaves that the underside of the pizzas weren't cold anymore, thereby making them extremely hot and really quite soggy!)

We had to do this six times to microwave and eat all twelve pizzas.
After my first half-pizza, I felt like I could easily eat all six halves.
After the second, I felt snack-full.
After the third, I felt meal-full.
After the fourth, I felt being-greedy-and-eating-too-much full.
After the fifth, I was dreading the last one.
The sixth was a real challenge, with my mind having to keep telling my jaw to chew and swallow.
We didn't try and make it a race against each other, or against the clock, we just made it a group effort to manage the twelve between us and ended up each managing our three-pizza share.

Throughout the challenge, I kept saying this was the worst idea in the world, and when I'd finished, the way I felt just confirmed that. There was no real sense of triumph - nobody won anything, basically we just showed how good we are at being morbidly obese if we put our minds to it.

So that's my update for now.
Our plan tonight is to find some nice spot in the city, maybe beside the Elbe river, and sit and relax and drink beers.
Tomorrow, for our last night together, we are considering an all-you-can-eat pizza/pasta place that is basically Pizza Hut. I probably shouldn't put that there, having just described our feat of last night.

And sadly, that's it for Steve and Jack's Dresden times - on Thursday they'll be flying to England. Steve is apparently returning to Australia in July, having run out of money. Jack and Ollie reckon they probably won't be travelling together for the rest of the year, although their paths may cross at times. Ollie will be staying around here for at least another month, he may travel around a bit but he'll be based in my apartment still.

Oh and one more thing - I had a meeting today to learn my fate as a result of my severe warning a while ago that caused me to delete two blog posts, and apparently I've made some nice changes and won't be getting fired anytime soon. Good to know!

Bye bye ya'll.

Epicness!

So here’s the scenario.
Saturday evening. Ollie and I go to visit the girls’ apartment, and Jack, Anna and Francesca are already there with Camilla and Erin. Jack goes upstairs with the key and comes back, then Steve comes down. Ollie and I want to go upstairs to get something, and Jack has a horrible realisation: he had walked out of the apartment without the key. Steve hadn’t picked it up either. So yes, for the first time this year, and possibly for the first time in the Dresden gapper history, I was locked out of my apartment!

I felt pretty awful at first. Ollie and I tried ringing both neighbours’ bells to ask about climbing from their balcony to mine, but neither answered the door. I rang the lady who inspects our apartments but she told me the key she uses actually lives in the office of the principal and deputy principal. Since it was a Saturday evening, she couldn’t do anything about it and suggested we try sleeping in the girls’ flat.

By the way, I had come downstairs without any shoes, or my bag, which includes my wallet, all my money, my tram ticket and a whole lot of other useful stuff. Ollie didn’t have any shoes either. We had been contemplating going out clubbing but decided to just drink and have fun at home. We were joined by Chloe, another Australian girl who lives in Dresden, to make it 9 people in total! After much drinking, six of us headed to the main station with the crazy idea of taking a train in the middle of the night to Berlin or somewhere, but there were no trains apart from S-Bahns so Chloe said we’d take trams to Kleinschachwitz where she lives and go swimming in a lake.

Were we up for it?

Hell yes we were.

On the tram, we spoke far too loudly and drunkenly and Steve and I ended up having a time-trial running all the way down to the end of the tram and back to our seat. We got off at the end of the line and walked a really long way before getting to this lake, and despite the alcohol in our systems, it started looking like less of a good idea! Nevertheless, Ollie instantly took off everything and jumped in. The rest of us left underwear on and got in cautiously, then I went under to try and get used to the freezing temperature and Ollie, Anna and I had a bit of a swim around.

We spotted a campfire further up the lake and once we’d all got out and got dry, we went to investigate. It was a big group of Germans celebrating an 18th birthday. They invited us to join them and so we warmed up by this fire and chatted to them. There was a guitar that I played a bit, doing some songs with Ollie, and we also had some food heated in the fire and some drinks. We had the best time ever. Basically, we spent the remainder of the night there – and I mean without sleeping! The sun came up extremely quickly at like 6, then at like 8 the people who were left started packing up. Camilla had already left and Chloe went back to her house in Kleinschachwitz so it was Ollie, Steve, Anna and I who walked a hugely long way, Steve and I barefoot and Ollie borrowing Camilla’s thongs, then caught a tram (without tickets, apart from Anna) back home. We were entirely tripping out on the fact that we hadn’t slept. Ollie and I just kept recalling what we’d done and laughing hysterically in the tram, Steve was kind of dozing off and Anna was sitting far away from us to save the apparent embarrassment of being with us!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the key back on Sunday either, and was told that I’d have to organise for somebody to get the key out of the office when the kindergarten opened on Monday, and bring it to me in the girls’ flat. I couldn’t exactly go and do it myself because I had no tram ticket and no shoes, plus I’d been wearing the same clothes for the last two days and felt quite scummy.

So through the magic of alcohol, we turned a bad situation into the most fun we ever had. (imagine that as the happy-ever-after ending of a children's story book, read in a really soothing voice. Fun times!)

Amerykański rekord trzykrotnie pobity!!!‏

That's the subject of an e-mail I was just sent, confirming the world record we set on Friday, 1st May, detailed in my last blog post.
The only way the people have my e-mail is cause I wrote it on my registration form, so some dedicated group of people have gone through EVERY form and typed the e-mail addresses into a computer!

The official number is: 6,346 guitarists!
This smashes the previous record of 2,052, set in the USA.

Well that's it for now.

One more thing: Anybody listened to the new Evermore album and noticed similarities to Muse's most recent album Black Holes and Revelations? Some of the first song, "Plugged In", sounds like Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole", the song "Chemical Miracle" has chord progressions resembling those in Muse's "Take a Bow", and this record contains several synthesiser ostinato sections, such as in "Between the Lines", which is just what Muse have in many of their songs, am I right? The stuff that the extra member plays when they do it live?

Update update update update!

Firstly, just so you know:
ANNA is my friend from England who I've known for just over a week. We met at a CouchSurfing barbecue. She is my age, and living in Dresden at the moment being a language assistant in a primary school.
FRANZISKA is my friend from Dresden who I've known for a couple of months now. We met at a CouchSurfing pub get-together. She's 23 and studying at university here.

Ok.
On Friday May 1st, a festival called "Thanks Jimi" (as in Hendrix) happened in Wrocław, Poland. Our Dresden CouchSurfing city ambassador Stefan organised a bit of a trip for anybody interested in going. It ended up being Anna, Franziska, Stefan, his friend Galka from Russia, and me. Franziska got there on Thursday evening using mitfahrgelegenheit.de. The other four of us had a hitch-hiking race, set up by Stefan - he and Galka vs. Anna and me. We began the race at Bahnhof Neustadt at 5pm on Thursday and the winning team would be the first to arrive at the main entrance of Wrocław's main station. Anna and I headed up the road to a Shell petrol station and asked 3 drivers if they were headed east before we got a yes, and the man took us about halfway to the border to another petrol station. Again, after asking just 2 cars, we found a Polish couple heading all the way to Wrocław, who kindly took us with them. Even though there was a traffic jam before Wrocław on the highway, and they let us out near the highway so we had to get a bus in there, we took like 4.5 hours in total to arrive and beat Stefan and Galka by like an hour. It was quite nice, since both of us were first-time hitch-hikers and Stefan had done it before.

Anna and I spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday night at the apartment of a girl called Nathalia, who we found using CouchSurfing. She was great, really nice and really helpful. And it was free!

On Friday, the festival took place. The main attraction, the reason we went, was a Guinness world record attempt that they do at the festival every year - most guitarists playing at the same time. I had brought my guitar with me, unfortunately I was the only one of the five of us who had one, but nonetheless, I took part in playing of Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple and then Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix, in an absolutely packed market square. The old record stood somewhere near 2,000, and after we played, it was announced that this year, over 6,000 guitarists took part. Naturally, the crowd cheered. So now I can say that I (jointly) hold a real official Guinness World Record! Stefan and Galka hitched back to Dresden later that day. In the evening, there was a Wrocław CouchSurfing gathering, and in total there were like 30 CouchSurfers in a bar, drinking and talking, including another Australian, and what's more, he was from Tasmania! Pretty astounding really. Nathalia, Anna and I went there, and got KFC afterwards.

On Saturday, Franziska, Anna and I cruised around Wrocław, looking north of the city centre at all the islands and bridges that lead to the nickname "the Venice of Poland". It was quite a nice sunny day and I enjoyed it very much. Later, we hung in a cafe with Franziska's CouchSurfing host.

On Sunday, Anna and I began the task of hitch-hiking back to Dresden. We cheated a little, because the buses to the highway didn't run since it was Sunday, so we got a taxi there. But our priority was to get home, not to be able to say we hitched 100% of the way. We took three trips back, each about a third of the journey, with our longest wait being about an hour and a half in a small-ish petrol station outside Legnica. But we eventually found someone there to take us to the German border, and another person to take us to Dresden. We were stoked!

I was especially happy - I had pulled off a long weekend trip to Poland for less than 20 euros - well, that's how much I converted to Polish money, and I still have a little left! So that's getting there and back, sleeping 3 nights, 2 cafe lunches, KFC, plus a merchandise t-shirt at the world record attempt on Friday that would cost 20 euros alone in Germany or even Australia.


Now:
Steve, Jack and Ollie from Hobart/Friends' are staying with me!
Dresden is their latest stop on their mad trip round Europe, taking all the free accommodation they can get. Steve and Jack are staying about 20 days, and Ollie will stay longer. It's absolutely hilarious - it's the four of us big guys living together in my 1-person apartment! We had to put my furniture out on the balcony to fit our mattresses on the floor, and using the bathroom and kitchen is... you can imagine! I'll post an update later to say how we're going and stuff.

For now, I have to get off the computer, cause I overstayed my time limit writing this thing!
Peace!

Patrick

Du Wurst!

April 24th.
It's my eighteen-and-a-halfth birthday!
You could look at it in a bad way and say it's the day that's the furthest possible from my birthdays.
But I don't remember the last six months going by so quickly. I still feel like I only recently turned 18.

In addition,
If you wanted to let somebody know that they have to turn up to a meeting at 2:30 on Tuesday, AND you see that person every single day at lunch time and also around the place where you work, do you;

a) Tell them when you next see them, or;
b) Type three lines on the computer, print them out on an A4 page of official business letterhead paper, sign it and put it into their in-tray for them to collect and read at a later date, and thereby not mention it whenever you see them each day?

Choose the more logical answer, and the one you didn't choose is the way I was told about a meeting at 2:30 on Tuesday. I look forward to it!

Since I won't be posting a separate blog tomorrow, I wish everyone an ANZAC Day filled with respect and gratitude. I will certainly be observing a minute's silence at 11:00am, Australian Eastern Standard Time. *chuckle*

My Polish adventure.......!

Happy Easter to everyone! I know it's Tuesday already but... I wasn't about to blog in the middle of the trip I'm now writing about I suppose. Not even only to write "Happy Easter"! Anyway, I don't know how to best sum up my Easter in fewer words than a billion. But I will try my best, because my posts have been getting increasingly long and I know your eyes and brain probably get tired after about this point already!

On Thursday,
I got off work at noon and spent the afternoon and evening travelling to Kraków, which I think is the second-largest city in Poland, located way down south and requiring an 8-and-a-half hour train trip from Dresden via Wrocław, another major city in the west. I went with Camilla, who you should know, and Francesca, one of the other Australian gappers who's doing her placement near Heidelberg and who decided to join this trip when Camilla told her about it in Erfurt.
On the train from Wrocław to Kraków, the three of us sat in a compartment with a guy called Tom, who could speak good English and pretty much talked to us about increasingly random stuff for the whole journey. We arrived late and checked in at Orange Hostel (yep, good name), and I found there was free Wi-Fi so I used my laptop to catch up with stuff.

On Friday,
We spent the morning walking around the city centre. It's great, very historic and a big attraction for tourists, particularly the main market square with its many cafes and stalls. I spent the afternoon with a girl called Ewa, who I met in January 2007 when I was in Germany for the first time - we've kept in E-mail contact, and for me, one of the reasons for doing this trip in the first place was to visit her. We saw a few sights around the place, had a bite to eat and spent a while in a bar with her friends. My plan was to stay the night in the youth hostel again, but the next two at Ewa's place. She said she still had to ask her parents and we'd see each other the next evening. Camilla and Francesca spent this time doing a tour at the nearby salt mine. While I wasn't there, they booked a tour of the Auschwitz concentration camp for the next morning, which I was interested in, however the tourist information place was closed by the time they told me they booked.

On Saturday,
I was still hoping to do the tour - when the girls were getting picked up outside the hostel I was going to ask if I could buy a ticket and come with them. However, at 8:30 the girls went down to the street and I joined them at 8:32, only I didn't join them because I got a text from Camilla saying the tour bus left and they couldn't ask them to stay a minute to wait. I thought the tour would leave the city at 8:30 and be outside our hostel at more like 8:40, but that aside, I was alone in Kraków with nothing to do. I went and chatted with the receptionist at the hostel and she suggested I visit the Kościuszko Mound, a big spiral-shaped hill that looks out over the city. Ironically, Mount Kosciuszko, the highest mountain in Australia, was named by a Polish man after this hill. This hill was named after a Polish general, by the way. I spent the morning there, which was good, and I also looked around a nearby wax museum of famous past Poles. In the afternoon the girls got back and we looked around a castle area in the city for a bit before having a meal at a restaurant - I probably should mention that one of the things I noticed about Poland was everything is cheaper when compared with countries that use the euro. Despite being in the EU, Poland uses its own currency called the złoty, with 4.30zł converting to 1 euro. Prices of stuff I saw included 3.80zł for a cold 500mL bottle of coke, and 2.50zł for a tram ticket, which is much cheaper than you'd find anywhere in Germany for one thing. At this fancy restaurant, I had an entrée of soup followed by a main of grilled chicken, accompanied by a side of fries and some vegetables, plus two glasses of Coke, and all of that cost about 45zł. Basically 10 euro! I got back to the hostel and had no e-mails or texts from Ewa to tell me if I was able, or not able, to stay with her, and I asked if I could stay at the hostel for another night, which was fine with them. I paid 100zł in total for the three nights at the hostel, which includes internet and breakfasts! That's like 23 euro, which is what you'd pay PER NIGHT in Germany.

On Sunday,
I had no contact from Ewa when I checked my e-mail in the morning and came to the realisation that I had nowhere to stay that night (Camilla and Francesca are continuing south to Budapest, with the train leaving tonight, so that's their bed). I got onto CouchSurfing.com (you know, that awesome website that has held meetings I've blogged about) and sent out a few requests to people in Kraków to see if I could find a bed at such short notice. Camilla, Francesca and I spent the morning walking around the Jewish quarter of the city, which has several synagogues, and ate lunch at a nice café, again very cheaply when you convert to euros - for 30zł (less than 7 euro!) I had a main of pierogi (traidional Polish stuffed dumplings, kind of like ravioli) and a side of potato pancakes and a beer. When we were back at the hostel (we'd left our bags there), they kindly let me use the internet some more, and I found a reply from a CouchSurfing host saying I could stay with her, if I didn't mind sharing the room with her and another CouchSurfer. I said that was totally fine and we arranged to meet later.

Camilla had arranged to meet Tom, the guy from the train, so he could take us to see a few places. He picked us up in his car and first took us to see an old bunker, built in the 19th century and used during the world war, then to the historic town Nowa Huta, but on the way there, he stopped to get petrol and asked for 100zł between the three of us for doing this "tour". We gave him the money but were puzzled, cause he should have told us beforehand that he wanted to charge us for this. We had a walk around Nowa Huta then got back in the car and weren't sure where we were going. Tom, whose driving was growing increasingly more wreckless, ended up taking us to an abandoned factory. The three of us were exchanging looks like "I don't want to be here anymore!" as Tom opened a big gate that he said we weren't actually allowed to drive through. Francesca chose to stay in the car and Camilla and I followed Tom around the place, with him asking us to climb up to the top of one of the buildings on a conveyor belt, which we politely refused, then later, walk down into a cellar full of water, which we also refused, wondering more and more if this guy was actually safe to be around. As he drove us back to the city, he drove without a seatbelt for some of the way, talked on his mobile while changing lanes to weave between cars and then drove up over 120km/h on a road where I saw a 70km/h sign. When we arrived in the city centre and he dropped us off and drove off, we were quite happy to be there alive to tell you the truth! I never felt any real danger apart from the stupid driving, but it was increasingly weird all the same, and we were glad to be rid of him. The others went to the station but I had to go to the market square, so I said goodbye to Camilla for a week and Francesca for who knows how long.

I met Andrea, my generous CouchSurfing host, in the market square. She was born in Romania, raised in Hungary and has lived for a couple of years in Poland, so she's fluent in Hungarian, Romanian AND English, and quite good at Polish too. We spent the evening with many other CouchSurfers, not unlike meetings I've been to in Dresden. Some of them were locals from Kraków, some from other places in Poland and some from other countries including Canada, France and Azerbaijan (and now Australia!). We had a bite to eat at a restaurant then moved to a bar, where we sat talking and drinking for quite a few hours! It was a lot of fun though. It was after 2 when Andrea and her other CouchSurfer and I headed back to Andrea's apartment and got some sleep.

Yesterday (on Monday),
I had breakfast with the other two in Andrea's kitchen, then the other CouchSurfer left to get a car ride back home, then it was time for me to go if I wanted to get my train in time. I thanked Andrea for being so helpful at the last minute and headed off, taking a tram to the main station then catching the train to Wrocław, having a burger and coke in the station and finally taking the train home to Dresden.

So that's it - I didn't know what to expect from the weekend, and it had its ups and downs, but turned out to be quite an adventure and I had lots of fun if nothing else. One more thing: Over a lot of this weekend I had a sore throat and a bad voice - slightly rougher and deeper. This morning, I woke up feeling the same way again and rang Pat's Bunnyhouse, explaining to the principal that I did not feel sick but that I didn't have the voice to take any English lessons today, and she said I should stay at home for the day. Bonus!

P. T. Neasey
A big thank-you to anybody who read this until the end.

Erfurt

So I spent the last four days away from Dresden.
Here's how the action unfolded:

Thursday
We had the day off work, and didn't want to waste a morning spent in Dresden when we could be somewhere else. But we didn't want to get to Erfurt early because we'd have plenty of time there later. Camilla and I chose to spend the morning in Leipzig. We arrived by train in the morning and looked at a museum housed in the old headquarters of the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, and did the walking tour recommended by Lonely Planet. It took us through a couple of amazing churches, one of which was once the workplace of J. S. Bach, some market places, and the "Street of the Stars" - kind of like a walk of fame - it's got these cubes on either side you can see into and they have plaster casts of the hands of various celebrities, including Michael Schuhmacher, John Bon Jovi and Mariah Carey. After lunch we went up a really tall building to a viewing platform and saw cool views of the city, then got the train.

We arrived in Erfurt and dropped our bags at our youth hostel then met with some others in the city - I should explain the reason we're in Erfurt is that all the Lattitude (GAP) volunteers from Australia, New Zealand and the UK that are in Germany right now had to come to this four day meet-up in Erfurt to be able to meet each other and talk about our experiences with two representatives from Lattitude, Seonaid and Borghild. We met them back at the hostel with the rest of us and ate dinner that night at a restaurant on a hill. Es hat gut geschmeckt.

In total there were 12 gappers - four boys and eight girls. Five of them, including Erin, came from Melbourne. Hobart and Sydney had two people each - Elliot Steele was there with me of course. Then there was one girl from Adelaide, Camilla from New Zealand and a girl from Scotland.

We went out to a club Thursday night and a funny thing happened - because of the size of the place, I wasn't able to spot any of the others when I looked for them all at one stage and was convinced some people had left without me. I walked back to the youth hostel - which was quite a distance, to find the front door locked, and once I had woken someone up to let me in, the door to the boys' room was locked too. Turned out nobody had left, and the key to my room was in the club with one of the others still. I had to wait for the next two hours in the foyer of the hostel - not at all fun. I slept for about half an hour of that, on the floor. When they came back I couldn't be annoyed at anyone but myself. Oh well. We got about 3 hours sleep that night.

Friday
We did a walking tour of Erfurt with two of Borghild's local friends leading the way. Erfurt is the capital city of the central state of Thuringia and has about the same population as Hobart! We saw some cool sights including the only bridge in Europe with people living in houses on it, Martin Luther's statue and a massive fortress with high walls and great views. In the afternoon, Elliot and I had a jam on two guitars in a music store and rode the tram back to the hostel... not exactly legally... then we played a bit of poker, and for dinner we ordered some massive pizzas to be delivered to the place. Only a few of us felt like going out - I didn't, and got nearly a full night's sleep.

Saturday
Our last compulsory thing was to have a bit of a conference in the morning and talk generally about our experiences or problems we'd had with placements so far. After that we said goodbye to Borghild and Seonaid and had the rest of the day for free time. Most of us decided to do a day trip to Weimar, a town just east of Erfurt which is quite nice, historically important and such. We looked around the streets a bit and then sat in the famous "Park an der Ilm" beside the river and finished by having a drink outside in a cafe. In the evening we all went to the same club, after drinking many pre-drinks that were bought at supermarkets to save money. I talked to a few new people as well as dancing with the others, and didn't get home til about 5 and wasn't able to sleep until more like 6 because we had girls in our room being annoying. Oh well.

Sunday
After a full two hours of sleep, some breakfast and finishing packing our stuff, we checked out of the hostel and made our way to the city. At various stages, members of the group would leave us to get their various trains back to their placements. We sat in the square outside the station, had hot chocolates, went shopping for a bit then the last people apart from Camilla and I left. We had time at an internet cafe, got food and went to the city park near the station, before heading to the end of a tram line to meet someone I'd found on mitfahrgelegenheit.de - that's a German website for organised hitch-hiking - people register on there and say they're driving their car someplace and for a share of the petrol cost you can go with them - cheaper than a train, and it turned out to be an hour less travel time as well. Before we knew it, we were back in Dresden after my longest trip out of the city so far - it's always a let-down coming back to work on Monday but I'll manage the next four days before Easter and a trip away to Poland.

Until then,
Patrick Neasey the first

best weekend everrr

Yeah so I'm back at work on a Monday and it's a bit of a let-down after the following:

FRIDAY
I had the day off work to go to Berlin. I took the train there and met Josephine Blümel, a girl who spent the first half of 2007 at Friends' School so that's how we know each other. After getting to her place, she took me for a bit of a drive on the Autobahn just near her house, and when we had a clear way ahead we went as fast as 230km/h - that's 50 more than my previous fastest speed of 180 back in Uelzen in June 2007! Didn't feel scary at all, cause of the sheer size of the highway. 160 on this thing feels like a normal 100 in Tasmania.

In the evening we went to a bar to see Eskimo Joe perform - that's why I came to Berlin on this particular day. The concert was wicked! They played 5 songs from the upcoming album, quite a few favourites from Black Fingernails, Red Wine and also a few from the older albums, a good mix. Josy and I were way close, only a few people standing between us and the stage. I got some cool photos and videos and sang along with all the songs I knew, which I think they noticed, cause they're not big in Europe at all it would have been surprising to see someone who knew their stuff.

After the gig, Josy and I each bought a T-shirt then we were randomly asked by a couple of people to do an interview for some kind of indie rock magazine based in the USA. We answered a few questions in front of their camera and are not sure what to expect from it! Anyway, we rejoined the crowd to queue for autographs. Stu McLeod came past while Kav Temperley was at the desk, and because I had a permanent marker already I asked him for a signature which he was fine with. He signed both Josy's and my copy of Black Fingernails, Red Wine as well as my setlist I took from the stage after they finished playing. Then Joel Quartermain came past on his way to the bar and was more than happy to sign our stuff too! I left him with my marker cause he had a few more fans gathering around him, and Josy and I got to the desk and had Kav sign our stuff, completing the set of three, we left very hapy indeed!

SATURDAY
Josy and I spent the morning going around Berlin's Alexanderplatz area - we went to Media Markt and Saturn (both are like JB Hi-Fi but bigger) and bought CDs, we looked in the Marienkirche, we browsed the local markets, we ate lunch and were going to go up the TV Tower but decided against it due to the queues and the amount of time we had left. Eventually, the time came for me to say goodbye and I took the S-Bahn to the main station then got the train home.

Not even an hour later, it was time to go again - Camilla and I went to the Neustadt to go to a barbecue. It was organised by the Dresden CouchSurfing community, that website where people offer travellers a bed for a night instead of having to pay for accomodation. We got there at like 6 and ended up leaving after midnight. It was cool, there were about 40 people there and a whole ton of food and drink that everyone brought to share. I talked to people from Spain, USA, Chile, England, and some locals as well. It was a really fun night.

SUNDAY
After getting an hour less sleep due to the beginning of daylight savings, Camilla and I joined a group of people who were at the barbecue who'd organised a bit of a hiking trip for the day. We took the train south-east to "Saxon Switzerland" - an area of Saxony (nowhere near the country Switzerland) that has a lot of wilderness, walking tracks and small touristy towns. There were 10 of us in total, during the day I talked to most of the others so I've made quite a few friends through CouchSurfing now.

We walked along the river Elbe for a while and then headed up through some awesome cliff paths then some rainforesty type scenery that reminded me a bit of Tasmania. After like 3 or 4 hours of walking and stopping periodically for drinks and stuff, we arrived back in the town we started and went to Ria's house - she's one of the CouchSurfers and happens to live in this town. We had some awesome cake and played cards and sometime around 5 the rest of us caught the train back to Dresden.

So yeah, unlike a lot of my recent weekends, I feel like I really made something of this one and should get out and do things more often - there's a whole lot more of Dresden and Saxony I haven't seen yet.

This week I'm only working three days because from Thursday to Sunday there's a big Lattitude meeting - all the Aus/NZ volunteers who are doing placements in Germany are meeting up in Erfurt, a city in the middle of the country, and so my next post will probably be in a week, talking about just that.

Tschüs ya'll.

Funny story...

That title is something I say far too often at the moment.

A couple of days ago
I was on the computer when Daniel (my mentor) came in to tell me a meeting had been cancelled, and I was like "yeah I already knew, thanks" and he's like "do you have any questions at all" and I said I didn't. Then he didn't get up from the chair next to me, and I felt like saying "why are you still sitting there?" but I couldn't because unlike him, I know how socially interacting with people works.

So he proceded to sit there for the next quarter of an hour or so, just watching what I was doing over my shoulder. And I really wanted to just swear. But instead had to try and get him to leave through boredom. I couldn't use E-mail, Facebook, anything at all that concerns my private stuff I don't actually want him to see. I instead started reading a long report on a recent Arsenal game and eventually he said he was going back to his classroom. Then I went into my conversations being like "sorry, I wasn't replying just now because my mentor..."

Same day, after work
I left kinder, and in the distance saw a line 7 tram arriving at the tram stop, which I knew I could never catch even if I sprinted. So instead I sprinted over a car-park to the next tram stop around the corner, hoping to catch it there. I could have got there except I was on the wrong side of the road when it arrived and couldn't get over cause of traffic, and another tram coming in the other direction. Then I thought I'd go to the tram stop 2 stops away from this one, cause that stop was going to be my destination anyway, to change to a line 12 tram.

I knew I had to run though.
And I did.
Like 500m.

And I got there just as the new line's tram was arriving, and ran up to the end door. There was an elderly man in front of me, waiting for his wife, who was hobbling over to us. Because I'm such a nice person, I let her go past me, and the two of them got on, then the door began to close, and I pressed the open button several times but the door kept closing and stayed shut, and the tram departed. And I swore not quite loudly enough for anybody else to hear. It was like, reverse karma. If I hadn't let the elderly lady go in front of me, I could have been on the tram before the door closed. So I was there, absolutely stuffed from running that distance in my warm jacket, having not kept fitness up since arriving in Europe. I browsed in a Euroshop (everthing for 1€) until the next line 12 tram arrived.


What else...
Evermore released their third studio album today! I've pre-ordered it on iTunes store and will download it next time I go to the hostel near my apartment to use the internet on my laptop. Which could be tonight. It's a concept album, which is quite different from what the guys have done before, with some more synth-techno type songs and some more symphonic songs. But generally there won't be anything like "Light Surrounding You". Buy it! Unless it's bad, in which case I'll blog about it ASAP to stop you guys buying it and blaming me when you hear it. But it won't be bad, will it?

ooh what a mysterious ending.

I should have added...

I bought myself a guitar last week.

It's acoustic.
Quite a nice one, €199.
And it has a pickup and volume/tone controls and a cutaway, so I suppose you'd say it's acoustic-electric. But I'm not looking like getting my hands on an amplifier anytime soon.

I got it cause I wanted some kind of instrument to be able to play in my apartment, and I got this acoustic one so I can play it with some of the songs I do in my English lessons at the kindergarten. At the moment, it's been "If You're Happy and You Know It". Works quite well.

What else? Erin and I went out to a club called Downtown on Saturday night. Mil was away in Berlin. Was awesome fun. We both got talking to a few new people and had some drinks.
Oh and I went and met other new people on Friday night in a gaming pub, that was a meeting between people in Dresden organised on CouchSurfing.com.

Um, tschüs! I'm kind of late for a meeting!
PN