Ramblings of an Aussie in Germany

This week marks the beginning of a lifestyle change for me. I have officially been self proclaimed a “fat bastard”. I’m not really happy about my shape and we recently saw a TV program about the Atkins Diet. For those of you who don’t know this is a slightly radical but popular diet which urges you to eat all the fatty food you want as long as you don’t eat food with carbohydrates. The concept being that fat digests slower than carbs, so if you have a lot of carbs that’s where your body gets energy from and then when it comes time to use the fats you don’t need energy so you get fat! Remove the carbs and your body must use the fat. Sounds simple enough. I hope it works.

 

I’ve never really had a proper diet before. I can’t eat bread, potato, rice or pasta or any milk products – but cheese is fine. This removes a lot of my favourite foods but I can eat all the meat I want – chicken, beef whatever. I also have to stop drinking coffee because when mixed with low carbs that can fuck your body up and booze is also a big NO NO. Now these 2 are going to be hell difficult to deal with. I’m used to 2-3 cups of coffee a day! But I’ve gone 3 days and no withdrawals so thats good. The beer thing I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

 

I’d like to lose about 10kgs, I’ll keep you updated on my progress. Wish me luck

 

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We got good news from Simone and Sean 2 weeks ago. It looks like they will definitely be here to visit in July. They can only squeeze in 4 days, as they are in Europe for her sisters wedding, but I’m sure it will be 4 days we’ll remember for a long time.

 

Darren is also making noises about making it over in June, hopefully for one of the many festivals we have here over summer.

 

Christian and Rebecca – you know you want to! I guarantee a better time than the US

The other big thing we confirmed last week was a 2 week trip to Ghana in March. This will be my first trip to West Africa and Ela’s first trip to Africa. We are both really excited about it. It all came about when I realised I had to use up my frequent flyer points. Qantas are changing the rules and from May my points become pretty much worthless here in Europe. So I checked out my options and I could fly up to 10,000 miles return. This meant our options were India, Central America or West Africa.

 

We decided against India because 2 weeks is too short, Central America because I have no idea what is there and that left West Africa. We started reading and Ghana sounded awesome so bingo Ghana it was! It’s one of two English speaking countries in West Africa so language is no problem, it’s hell cheap, they have beautiful beaches, it’s 30 degrees all year round and everyone raves in the guidebooks about how friendly the people are.

 

So I will be returning to Africa. This is something that I feel I have to do this year. I have been here 3 years now and the urge to experience something totally different is back and pulling strongly at me. If 2 weeks is all I have then I must accept that, at least I’ll be in totally new surroundings again. I can’t wait.

Last week was a good week for our plans for 2005 with 2 sets of tickets being confirmed.

 

Firstly we got confirmation that we have 2 tickets for the soccer game at the Confederations Cup, Australia vs Germany. This should be a cracker! It’s in June and unfortunately Steven’s wedding is at the same time so Neil can’t come. It’ll just be Ela vs Paul – should be an interesting day. It’s in Frankfurt, they aren’t playing any games in Berlin so we’ll fly down in the afternoon, celebrate Australia’s mighty victory all night and then fly back the next morning – well that’s my dream at least!

 

Getting tickets proved quite tricky as all the German games only have tickets go on sale sporadically through FIFA’S website, so we just kept checking in every few days for about 2 months. Then one day I saw they were on sale and grabbed a couple. But even then it’s not confirmed, it’s almost like a small lottery, you must wait and then they allocate out tickets, but they took the money last week so that confirms everything.

 

I’ve never seen Australia play before and in such a big game it will be great, I just hope I’m not sitting between some rabid German fans or it could get really ugly, especially if we win, I’m not the quietest dude in the land – luckily I’ll have Ela there to moderate my behaviour.