Frohes Neues Jahr! Happy New Year! A discovery which has made me estatically happy - Firecrackers are legal here! I just went down to the PennyMarket and purchased a massive bag of especially dangerous looking crackers for just 6 euro.  2006 has been a great year for travelling. Heathrow is a nightmare, downtown Bangkok is a no-go zone, Whatisname Hussein is dead, terrorists are trying to blow up everything and everytime I fly I am in danger from deep vein thrombosis, but apart from that, it's been excellent. Case in point - see photo below. Oli took us shopping in Cologne yesterday and we passed a bag-shop selling a line of laptop bags called the "snotty". It made the 15 hour wait at Heathrow and the deep veins all worthwhile.  Also, if I hadn't braved the terrorists, my mild fear of flying, the deep veins, the Heathrow security lines that stretch 15 miles back into the centre of London, the fog, etc etc, I would never have found out other interesting cultural facts, such as the one in the picture below, highlighted by my brother sitting on a pig out the front of a shop selling cooked and uncooked pig products. Germans are obsessed with eating pig. If there is not a pork product included with every meal, it is NOT a meal.  So now I am off to a party with Oli and Kikki where I will live out my childhood dream of letting off a massive bag of firecrackers by letting off a massive bag of firecrackers. Hopefully the next time I write I will still have all eyes, fingers and toes still in place.  But before I leave here is some culture (see above photo). The Cologne Dome massive church thing. Oli made us climb 5000 stairs to the top of the tower. Yes, that tower on the right is filled with 5000 stairs. For 2 euro I had the privilege to endure a mild stroke halfway up and had to squeeze myself into a small doorway at flight 375 to recover whilst obnoxious teens and harried fathers dragging prams and screaming children with claustrophobia staggered past.  Kong meets his match in Cologne. Labels: 2006, cologne, dusseldorf, new years eve, pig, snotty
Frohe Weihnachten! Merry German Chistmas!  It was a christmas of eating until you exploded. Which I did several times, then we'd eat a bit more. Ahhh, the memories. We were invited to Kikki's parent's house for Christmas Eve dinner, which is the more important day than actual Christmas day. Here we are in a luverly little town just south of Hannover, gathered around this rather cool thing called a Rachlet, which is the Swiss way of covering everything with cheese and toasting it under a thingy on the table. Mmm, cheese.  Oli took us to Hamlyn to the Christmas market. There were no rats. Which was nice. There were loads of biscuits hanging from quaint little shops, and more sausages and beer and gluvine to be had. There were also chocolate covered strawberries, ginger biscuits and more gluvine. We rolled out of Hamlyn back to Oli's parent's place that night. Something weird has happened to the bottom of this photo which obscures the other chocolates and assorted foods we also ate that day. Oh well.  After we ate breakfast, and just before we sat down to lunch, we visited Alex's woodturning studio, where Oli's dad teaches the fine art of woodturning and makes really nice stuff to sell. Here he is attempting to teach Jeff a few things. Jeff decides to try and make some cricket bails. They were rather well done, if not a few feet too long.  Here is the table heaving with food once again. This time it was Christmas day lunch. Usually in Australia this would be the first and only really massive feed for the season. But we were still full from the rachlet the night before, as well as from the breakfasts, lunches and dinners from the 3 days prior. What made this meal really special was the "flooshoppin" or "foosloffin" or however you say it in German. It's a special word that means "breakfast drinks" and the only word that Dad retained from his dozens of German lessons from Oli.  Here I am at the christmas table with my glass of flooshoppin champagne and Oli's sister Steffi on the left, Oli to my right and Alex with his flooshoppin beer to the right again. Christmas morning starts with a massive hangover from the night before, so we all woke up and had several shots of schnapps followed by local beers and then more schnapps. Our hangovers were cured. But due to the early onset of the second hangover that afternoon, we were too sick to go to a dance party on Christmas night so Oli and Kikki left us to drink more vodka and colas to get rid of the second hangover and went dancing without us. My stomach was making really weird noises by this stage.  Here is Lonie and Steffi with Steffi's gorgeous little daughter Charlotte, aged 2 and a bit. She already knows how to do a proper German "Cheers" and happily clinked her milk glass with everyone's flooshoppin champagne at the christmas table. Labels: christmas, germany
Geez, it didn't take them long to get rid of his My Space account. Perhaps because the media are so quick to jump to conclusions about who is a psycho killer, who isn't a psycho killer. etc. Yeah, bloody media; judging him before he's even given a fair trial. Poor guy.
Another reason why I don't use My Space...It really is full of serial killer nutcases! http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=85784962Apparently this is the guy they've just caught for all of the serial murders of prostitutes in East Anglia. Shiver me timbers. I wonder how long it will take for this site to get shut down and/or for lots of other psychos to start posting to it. Labels: evil pyscho, nutcase, serial killer, why I don't use My Space
Swiss Army Knives Part III've switched over to the Blogger Beta version and am having lots of trouble loading photos. It's shite. But I'm working through it to bring you more amusing photos from Geneva last weekend. Here are more cool L'Escalade costumes: 
Spongebob Squarepants Mother and Child. 
Cross-dressing Musketeers.  Man with actual ferret.  We had a few luverly cups of mulled wine at the Christmas markets. Later in the evening after the parades with 15th century costumed soldiers and people flapping about re-enacting kicking out the French, we met Penne's friends, afforementioned crazy chefs who cook for the Australian ambassador. We were lucky enough to become acquainted with the Swiss Army. And if that wasn't good enough, they really do all carry a Swiss Army Knife.  'Mmmm... A whole campful of soldiers!' I had a bit of a Lydia Bennett moment.  Chef Johnno shows his appreciation to the bar staff.  Pen, Johnno and Amy work their way through the bar's San Miguel supply.  Oh yeah, I did a tour of the UN as well. Labels: Geneva, soldiers, Spongebob, UN, weird festivals
Swiss Army KnivesCheese and punctuality. Smooth, rich chocolate and the highest gun ownership rate per head of population in the world (Yes! Higher than those freaks in the US). Geneva was every cliche I ever imagined and more. Much more.  Penelope took me and top Aussie chefs Rusty and Amy for the best fondue in Geneva. I proceeded to eat so much fondue I almost exploded.  Click on this photo to expand it and you'll see the biggest machine ever built in the world. It's the new atom-splitter at CERN, the centre for whacky particle physics research. You can see the little man in the bottom-left corner working on the machine. Dan Brown eat your heart out.  Turned out that the weekend I was there was L'Escalade, the biggest holiday in Geneva. They celebrate kicking out the French 400+ years ago on 11 December in 1602, when an old lady was cooking vegetable soup in a big cauldron and she heard a French soldier sneaking up the castle ramparts about to start an attack on the city, so she raised the alarm by tipping the soup out over him and whacking him on the head with the cauldron. To celebrate, everyone eats a chocolate cauldron filled with marzipan shaped vegetables (see photo above) and dress up in totally random costumes.  Example One of afforementioned random costumes - a marching band of kangaroos.
RIP Frankie J Holden I sold Frankie today. It's going to be hard to see him go, but I'll always treasure the precious memories. Like that time in June, the day after spending £650 on repairs, ready to drive up to Scotland with Mum and Jeff, and he conked out. Ahh, that was a great one. We had to hire a car instead. And then there was the time I was driving along a highway, and the car completely stopped dead and I was almost killed by cars coming up behind me. Teehee! And the £250 for the new timing belt. That was great too. Oh, and then that other time, when the bolts in the manifold something-or-other cracked and cost £200 to replace. And the nail in the tyre from the carpentry yard at work. Brilliant. Yep, it will be hard to see him go after all the good times.
MoronsTo my extreme amusement I've discovered a bunch of talentless dickheads I used to work with at the 'trend research lab' run by parasitic cokeheads have now broken away from the aforementioned cokeheads to start their own company pedalling tired, misappropriated, regurgitated ideas for money. So I've decided to throw my hat into the ring and start my own qualitative trend research company as well. Here goes. Send me £1500 and I'll write up a crap 4000 word essay of ideas I nicked and made up for the sake of taking a cheap stab at the people we used to work for. Jerks.
Putting the Pest in BudapestThe riots had quelled, and the beer and food were spectacular.  What would Courtney Do in a post communist country? Take advantage of the great exchange rate to buy more alcohol.  Eli, Penelope and Pascaline at the For Sale pub.  Where it was mandatory to chuck your peanut shells on the floor.  The pool in the Gellert Thermal spa. Mmm, thermalicious...  Roaming the streets looking for beer.  Click to expand.Thermal pools are ace. I'm going to start one in Australia. First, I'll buy 2000 kettles. Then, I'll buy the Gosford Swimming Pool. I'll empty it out and stop schools from having their shitty little swimming carnivals there. Pour in the boiling water, add a fountain and voila!!
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