Right, it is near the end of Feb, it has been dark and cold for far too many months now. It has been snowing all week, which grant you is better than rain, but I am so happy that at this time in 1 week we will be on a plane heading to the warmth of Africa! It can’t happen soon enough.
Wednesday saw Finland’s oldest and finest pay us a visit. Signs were ominous for a low turnout when the gig was switched to a much smaller venue but on the night a good 200 punters turned up to watch a throwback to the 80’s. I went with Neil and a dude who works with Donna. Neil is possibly Hanoi Rocks biggest fan, I have never actually heard a song and the other guy was in it for the entertainment factor.
The night opened with the support Adam Bomb, and while musically they were a very strong 3 piece with a huge sound and some great tunes the singer was some jaded old New York muso who hasn’t quite come terms with the fact he has a good bit of talent but he has never become successful. He moaned and whinged about this and that all through the set, begged us to buy their album so they could eat and dropped every name he could to try and impress us, all in all he was a WANKER. The bass player seemed embarrassed by the whole thing and both Neil and I said to him at the end of the night we liked his performance and we thought the singer was a dick, to which he rousingly agreed!
After a short turnover and a couple of sneaky beers on our part, Hanoi Rocks burst onto the stage. Ok there are only 2 original members left, but they are the important ones. Michael Munroe belting out the tunes and Andy McCoy strumming the guitar. Despite not knowing a song I found myself taken on a wicked musical journey for an hour or so. They were great, I must buy an album, the songs are catchy metal tunes, groovy guitars and a pounding rhythm section. Michael looks great for an old guy, he has the biggest eyes of any person I’ve ever seen! While Andy looks a bit lived in, he has after all consumed ridiculous amounts of illegal substances over the years, he still looks in better condition than Mick Mars and they must be about the same age!
All in all a solid performance that has convinced me to buy an album and saw Neil buy a T-Shirt. Not bad for a Wednesday night, but the next morning teaching at 8.45 was a bit of a struggle.
Ok I have stagnated at 85kg. Basically my lifestyle at the moment hasn’t permitted me to be so strict with my diet, too may things on the weekend and crazy hours at work have seen coffee and Kebabs re-enter my life thereby hampering weight loss. So for now I’m going to settle for 85kg. This means I don’t attain my goal of 10kg lost but I am pretty happy with the 8kg. So my poll is coming down. Thanks for those who voted and while Fat bastards rule was the winner I do feel and look better and others have commented on that so I can only conclude that THEY DON’T!
Well my exhausting week caught up with me on Friday night and I never made it to the Teddy Awards unfortunately. It was a very late start, a friend of Ela’s knew a guy who was working at the awards who put us on the VIP Guest List for the party afterwards. But the party started at 12.30am. I was pretty much dead on my feet by 10 so made the decision to give it a miss and sleep instead. Ela went off and met her friends all dolled up for the party, I think I made the wrong decision! Ela wasn’t home again till 8.30am, she said the party was amazing, they were in the VIP area with free food and drinks and plenty of German celebrities, oh well, there’s always next year.
I ended up having a pretty boring weekend after that. Ela grabbed a bit of sleep after she got home but then Simone rang and we spoke for about a half an hour about their trip to Europe in July, they are coming to visit for a week at the beginning of July which will be excellent. Anyway, my booming voice woke Ela back up so we headed out to organise some shopping stuff we needed to do. It’s my mums 60th Birthday in April so we are looking for something special and after plenty of hunting around we came up with the goods.
We also wanted to buy paint, as that is our XMAS present from Mum and Dad so we can do our lounge and bedroom, we have been very slack, not buying still! We wanted to buy it from a place we had been before but unfortunately they don’t sell paint! We only found that out after trekking to the other side of town, we were sure they had it but NO! To save the day though we had free vouchers for some coffee and cake they had sent to us so the trip wasn’t a total waste, plus we had a 15 euro voucher for housewares to spend – Do we lead an exciting life or what, here I am raving on about housewares and free cake, time for a new topic!
Hi everyone,
Another mad week at work. At the moment we just have so much work available. I have hired 3 new teachers in the last month and still some days we seem to have no one to work, and that means I gotta do it. Being at the top of the pile has its advantages most of the time but when push comes to shove and their aint no one else to do the work, then it lands in my schedule.
I taught a 14 year old girl this afternoon. I hate teaching teenagers. They have no interest at all. Some stupid too rich parent decides their kid can't speak good enough English at age 14 or 15 and decides to invest big cash with Berlitz. No one asks the kid what they want!! The girl today has no life, she spends all day at school and then studies in the evening. Her plan for the wekend is homework, homework homework - sad sad sad!
Anyway, only 2 weeks to Ghana, man do I need a break. Is hell cold here again and snow made a triumphant return this week! Forecast is for more on the weekend, better than rain I guess.
Missed out on tickets to both the movies we wanted to see this weekend, but got tickets for Hanoi Rocks. Now this should be interesting, they have moved to a smaller venue - capacity about 100!! And I just read today I can get 2 for 1 tickets now! Pity we already have them..it has bee that sort of week.
Tonight we are off to some Gay/Lesbian film awards night. A friend has free tickets, if nothing else I'm sure it will be interesting, stay tuned for a review later. Later.....
I know I haven’t updated for 2 weeks – sorry but work has been crazy lately and then on the weekends I’ve just wanted to crash or as you will now read, I’ve been up to having fun, you gotta do something to keep your mind off the fact it’s been really cold now for 4 months and we still got 1-2 months before shorts and t-shirt are making any kind of regular appearance! I promise to do better, plenty going on in the next 2 weeks – stay tuned!
Anyway I have posted heaps of stuff and new photos, it won't all fit on the main page so check out the archive on the left here for February to read all the entries and see the new pics – Enjoy.
After my poor performance on Sunday afternoon/evening (see story below) I was forced into leaving my card out for Ela to find before she went to bed, in the hope that my sentiments of love would smooth things over ready for the next day. It worked to a point but the big dinner out was really the clincher. We headed out for Mexican, Ela’s choice, and got stuck into cocktails and fatjas, both delicious!! Best thing is it doesn’t break my diet so badly. Speaking of which I have maintained a steady 85kg for 2 weeks now. I’ve broken my diet quite regularly lately but I’m happy to be 8kg lighter and I’m still aiming to reach 80kg. The positive is that I’ve been breaking my diet but not putting weight on, which ultimately is the goal. I got put onto Diet beer by a mate of Ela’s who has done a similar diet to me. It is full strength, but half the calories and no carbs and still tastes great – see there is a god!!
Was the Manchester Derby last Sunday so hooked up with Neil for a coupla bevies and some footy on a Sunday arvo. City went down 2-0 but they put up a gallant fight! We were joined by a United supporter who fortunately didn’t rub it in, but left us in no doubt for the rest of the evening who had won. About half way through the second half we noticed the place really starting to fill up, which we thought rather unusual for the end of a game, and there seemed to be a lot of French people. Anyway it turned out to be for the rugby England v France in the 6 nations. So we decided to stay on for this. Now I am far from a connoisseur when it comes to Rugby and most of the subtleties are lost on me, but it seemed to be a good game and France one in the dieing minutes, and watching English lose at anything is always good craic, particularly rugby. Neil left early but I carried on with a mate of his from work which was to have consequences later as I arrived home much later and much drunker than anticipated, this is never a good mix for boyfriend/girlfriend relations!
Feb is Berlinale time. Berlinale is the film festival, and it shows the largest number of films of any film festival in Europe. It is a real mixed bag of documentaries, new unreleased movies and old crackers. It’s hard not to get into the spirit as nearly every film is in English and those that aren’t come with subtitles. So last Friday I hooked up Neil and Donna to go and see The Shining. I hadn’t seen it before and I know it’s a classic so it was a must do, and it was brilliant. I was genuinely scared! It has been a long time since I have watched a movie and been scared, but watching Jack Nicholson’s character come apart at the seems and go slowly mad was not only great acting, his facial expressions are perfect, but riveting and so bloody scary. I will never be a caretaker at a deserted hotel!!
On the Sunday Ela and I tried to get tickets for a German movie about a woman who was a fighter for the resistance in Germany during WW2 which is a hot favourite for best movie but we were a bit late so we will try again next Sunday. Plus 2001-A space odyssey is on Sat, which I haven’t seen since a kid so will definitely try for that one.
When deciding to go to Ghana for our holiday one small factor we overlooked was the vaccination issue. We need jabbies for Hep A+B, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Tetnis and of course Malaria tablets. This shit isn’t cheap either, at this rate it’ll be the highest expense of the whole bloody holiday. We have also started visiting the tanning salon because we are so white that arriving looking like this will see us go direct to Red Lobster after 30 minutes in the sun, and beach and relaxing are our main priorities so a bit of sun tolerance is required. You feel like a bit of dill lieing there but you feel well relaxed after, makes you realise how important that UV is for your happiness factor, maybe that’s why people get so grumpy here at times????
For 3 days every year the far west of Germany goes completely mental, dresses up in costumes, has parades through the streets and consumes stupid amounts of chocolates and lollies. All in the name of Carnival. I have no idea what Carnival is for, something religious I think as it all finishes on Ash Wednesday which is the start of Lent and then your supposed to have no fun for 40 days until Easter, or something like that, you don’t have to understand it to enjoy the party.
The centre of the Carnival universe is Cologne where they even get a public holiday for their parade on the Monday, and any idiot stupid enough to wear a tie on this day can find themselves faced with marauding weirdos brandishing pairs of scissors with which they will then cut your tie in half. Now Cologne may be the centre of the universe but Berlin actually hosts the parade which while not being the coolest, attracts the largest number of spectactors, 700,000!
This was the first year Ela and I had celebrated Carnival as in Hanover it is a complete non event and last year we didn’t know that Berlin was such a big Carnival city. We began celebrations by going to a Carnival party on the Sat night at a friend of Ela’s. You must get dressed up and we were a bit short of imagination so decided that we would go as the undead (See picture of me with a friend of Ela’s below) Nearly everyone got dressed up and despite being held in the smallest apartment on planet Earth and getting trapped by the window in the kitchen with all the smokers we had a good time. To understand the horror of being trapped by a window you had to open once every 30 minutes for about 10 minutes to clear the stale air out check out the temperature gauge picture below. That picture was taken at 9.30pm on the way to the party, by 12.00 you could add a few extra degrees on to that, and yes, that is right what you are seeing is MINUS!!!
Somehow we managed to avoid getting the flu – which has afflicted nearly every person I know but fortunately not us so far – so we were up bright an early the next day to go the parade. One weird thing about Carnival (one of many really) is the parade kicks off traditionally at 11.11am, fortunately organisers in Berlin realise Berlin is a party place and gave us an extra ours grace and kicked off festivities at 12.11!! Again it is a dress up affair, which was all to much for me and I only donned a red nose, Ela went the whole hog of course and dressed up a clown – lets face it she has the hair! (Check out the photo below)
The parade is a huge laugh. Basically loads of floats cruise down the street with music blaring and interspersed with marching bands, your typical street parade fare. What makes it more interesting is that each float throws truck loads of sweets and chocolates out into the crowd. Now this results in every adult in attendance turning into a 5 year old and madly scrambling on the ground to collect as many lollies as possible. Picture this, people throw lollies into the air – smart people bring umbrellas, turn them upside down, hold them up in the air and catch shitloads of lollies, regular joes like us, curse at them, swear we must remember to do that next year, and them scramble to catch what we can, this inevitably leads to us crawling about on the ground basically trying to collect what is essentially 1cent lollies – sad and pathetic when you think about, and we did often but somehow you just can’t stop yourself, even when you already have half a shopping bag full of sweets that will take you 2 months to eat, you just keep going!! We were there for about 4 hours in the end, watched every float go past and then scooted around the parade route to end up back at the front and start all over again, at this point I had to subdue Ela a bit as she wanted to continue on and try and fill the bag but I had lost all feeling in my feet and hands, you must remember, yeah it was a beautiful sunny day but the temperature was probably o degrees and after 4 hours I’d had enough. Great stuff, can’t wait for next year.
Big football weekend here in Berlin. Bayern Munich came to visit for Match of the Round. We had organised a big group of us to head out for it, with expectations of an absolute cracker. And while we did have a cracker of an evening the game itself never lived up to any great heights. Basically you had the 2 best defensive sides in the league cancelling out 2 great attacks, end result 0-0! Berlin did have the better of the play and did put the ball in the back of the net once but they were offside.
The game was a sell out, 74,500 punters which was pretty cool and the atmosphere was quite good, but Germans are not that loud, there is no big chanting or singing like at the English leagues, most people just kinda sit there and watch, which made us after 6 or 7 beers the loudest mob in our area complete with our own unique insights into the game, kept us chuckling anyhow.
The Olympic Stadium here is brilliant, fully covered and not a bad seat in the house. Plus tickets are dirt cheap really, only 18 euros to sit up the back. I must say a word about the weather. Check out the photo below, I don’t know how these guys play in such weather. It was 5.30pm on a Sunday evening when the game started, the temperature must have been about 2 degrees and we had wind and ice rain. These people are made of steel!
World Cup Tickets are now on sale and while we won’t know if the Aussies will be there until the end of the year, by which time nearly all tickets will be sold – this is a concept I don’t really understand, how can you buy tickets for games when you don’t know who is playing, why can’t they wait till the schedule is fixed!! Anyway I’m toying with the idea of applying for tickets to the final here in Berlin. The cheapest ones are 120 euros which is a bloody lot of money but it is a one off event and I know the seats here are good. We’ll see, I’ll keep you updated.
