Paradise Deutsch

2009-10-25T18:57:00.013+01:00

"You should write about Japan."

"I know but I haven't really got time to blog. I've been knitting a lot."

"But your blogging's better than your knitting."

I don't know if I should take Adam's last comment as kind praise of my writing or harsh abuse of my knitting but, either way, I can put it off no longer and what follows are selected highlights of our Japanese jaunt.

It was hot. Not only hot, but humid, the kind of air that puts my hair into a frizz and and that mosquitoes thrive on. Despite being dosed up on antihistamines, the inevitable happened: I was mercilessly bitten and the familiar yellow blisters sprang up with gusto.

Welcome back, friend

There was nothing to be done; it had to be another round of lancing, which, much like the fairy tales where only the princess's true love can awaken her from a hundred-year slumber with a kiss, only my heart's true love could put himself through alleviating my bite situation. But that didn't mean we couldn't have a little fun first.

Leg bite the first

By the time we arrived in Shirahama, a small beach town popular with the natives but little visited by tourists, my right foot, with a fresh, double attack, was in this shape:

We arrived in Shirahama as the main season was ending and the beach, which apparently sees long queues for entry in peak summer, was relatively empty. We headed down to the beach early as I was anxious to secure one of a few thatched umbrella shelters; the sun was fierce and strong, and shade was essential. Fortunately there was still one unoccupied and we laid out towels and books beneath and I dug a hole in the sand in which to hide my offensive foot.

Shirahama's short-lived beach umbrellas

The beach grew steadily busier as the morning wore on. A short while later I made my way along the sand to the bathrooms, sweating and frizzing in the oppressive heat. On the way back, trying not to look down at my foot, where the twin blisters were staring up at me like a pair of bulging yellow eyes, I saw with a sinking heart that four of the most astonishingly gorgeous Japanese girls, all clad in the wispiest hint of swimwear, were playing a lively and squealy game of volleyball not three yards from where Adam was sitting beneath the shelter, mouth agape and eyes on stalks. Great.

I ducked under the shelter, relieved to be back in the cool shade, and sat down heavily on my towel. I looked at the girls and huffed pointedly.

"Well," I said, "This is just great. Isn't it? Why are they standing right there? There's the whole beach! Adam?"

"Hmm?"

"I said, isn't this great?! They're right in our space!"

"I know..."

I shot him a black look.

"I mean, er....I know! Jeez! Ahem. How's the foot?"

We both regarded it.

"It's hideous!" I wailed. "I'm a monster. A sweaty, frizzy-haired monster, and now these four supermodels and their eight prominent breasts have to play a sexy game of volleyball right here! I couldn't feel more ogrely." I sulked.

"Ah come on baby, it's not that bad! Yes, they're gorgeous but..."

"But what?!!"

"But," he hurried on, "Nothing compared to you!"

"Hmph," I said, placated. "Well. They are quite pretty...but a bit shrieky. I suppose they're only young, probably 18 or..."

The volleyball bounced over and hit me in the face. It landed at Adam's feet and two of the lovelies skipped up to retrieve it.

"Sumasen! Sorry", they trilled, smiling shyly at Adam, whilst I scowled and touched my face gingerly, checking for bruises.

"No problem!" called Adam, tossing them the ball, with a saucy wink. They thanked him in their singsong voices and bounded off.

He stared after them for a moment, then glanced over to me.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What?!"

I lay down and closed my eyes. It was cool beneath the umbrella and with the gentle sound of the rolling waves and the seagulls overhead I began to relax and enjoy the beach. I dozed for a while. Adam got up to go for a swim; I watched him disappear down the sand to the sea and then leaned against the trunk of the umbrella and settled down to read my book.

A few moments later a Japanese man appeared next to the umbrella and peered in. He said something in Japanese and looked at me expectantly. I returned his gaze blankly but then it occurred that he might want payment for use of the umbrella. I reached for my bag but when I looked back he'd gone. He returned a moment later, ducking under the umbrella and attaching a thick metal cable to its base. He disappeared yet again and I leaned out in confusion to see what was going on. That was when I saw the crane. Its engine roared and the ground beneath me began to shudder. The umbrella stand shook and sand spilled up around it, as it was hoiked abruptly out of the ground. I sat staring in disbelief but then had to hurry to grab all our belongings that were being scattered by the hastily unearthed umbrella.

In a matter of moments it had been hoisted out of the ground and dumped on the sand, leaving me exposed and unprotected in the intense midday sun. I looked around for some spare shade before I was burnt to a crisp but there was just the wide expanse of white sand. I saw that the umbrella next to ours was also lying on the ground but all of the others remained intact. The two men were now packing up beside me and wandered off, leaving the crane behind. I was utterly bewildered. And hot.

Adam came hurrying up the beach, clutching his sides and roaring with laughter. "What happened?!" he cried, looking down at the now defunct shelter.

"I don't know!" I said crossly, gathering up our things, "I just wanted a nice day at the beach, with some shade and a sea view but no! Four shrieking Venuses and a crane saw to that! I'm going back to the room, I'M GETTING SUNBURNT OUT HERE!" I stomped off up the beach, back towards the ryokan. Adam followed behind, laughing his head off, and picking up the things that were dropping from the heap of belongings I had scooped up and piled in my arms.

Back at the room, I put 100 yen into the coin-operated air conditioner and had a sleep. I woke up an hour or so later to see Adam holding a newly purchased beach umbrella. I gave him my sweetest smile and a kiss on the lips, and we went back to the beach and wiled away the afternoon on the sand, in peace.

2009-09-27T19:35:00.007+02:00

For the past two weeks I have been thinking about what to write about Japan. There is simply too much! Perhaps I should start at the end and say that it was the most amazing trip I've ever had. It was hectic and exhausting and at times overwhelming but it was all part of the fun. At least, I can say that now, retrospectively. There were some points, standing in the baking heat with the sun pounding down after having walked solidly for four hours and insisting that we have to stop for lunch right now or I would die, that were hard work but every minute was amazing.

I arrived in Tokyo after an uneventful twelve-hour flight. My careful beforehand seat schemings were hopelessly in vain as I boarded the plane and saw in the seats next to mine the heart-sinking combination of, God help me, a wide-awake fidgety whiney three-year-old and his inattentive mother who already had her nose so far into a magazine that I couldn't see her face. I almost cried. Fortunately there were two empty seats in the row in front and as soon as the seatbelt signs had been turned off after takeoff I leaped into one, reasoning that although I now had a kid behind me at least he wasn't in my personal space and I didn't have to look at him.

Adam was waiting for me as I came out into Arrivals. It was so wonderful to see him after so long that I wanted to run and throw myself into his arms but of course I had a trolley with two suitcases, a coat, a handbag, and a bag of duty-free, not to mention there were five thousand other people with trolleys between the two of us so instead I inched my way forward until finally I reached him and we were reunited. It was heaven.

Tokyo station was incredible and terrifying. It was chaos with signs that pointed to different areas of the chaos. It was spread over several levels, each looking identical, and with hundreds upon hundreds of people rushing through. You could only go into certain parts of the station with the right ticket and if you had the wrong one you might not be able to get out. Fortunately by now Adam knew the station well enough to find our way around with relative ease and whilst he was buying and charging my electronic travel card I stood and gawped at the scene around me. I was in Japan. Japan!

The next two and a half weeks were to be the most exciting and awe-inspiring I have ever been lucky enough to spend in the company of a devilishly handsome and wonderful man and I'm not just saying that because he paid for everything and carried my suitcase around the entire time.

Next week on Paradise Deutsch: where we went, what we saw, what we ate, who got bitten (any guesses?), who got headbutted, who got burnt, and how many rows we had. With pictures!

2009-08-23T16:28:00.008+02:00

I'm packing. I've been packing for four days.

The excitement surrounding my two-and-a-half-week trip to Japan has been quickly building over the past few days, aided greatly by the pictures of the ryokan inns we will be staying in and images of great sweeping beaches of white sand, upon which we shall be relaxing and sweating in equal measure.

After I suggested that perhaps Adam's original itinerary, which took in every city in Japan, stopping for a maximum of four hours in each, and includes a visit to his host family, be revised slightly to accommodate those of us in the party who are likely to deliquesce in the heat and whose pace will deteriorate to an exhausted shuffle, I have been receiving email updates on the amendments of the schedule, of which the following is the latest:

"Hi Soph, had a reply from the host family, saying that on the first Saturday you're here they're free - although the mother isn't, only the dad and the kids. And they don't say whether we should stay the night or not. What do you think?

This the plan so far:

Visit host family on the 29th.
Head to Kyoto on 30th.
Nara on 2nd.
Temple place on 3rd.
Shirahama 4th - 6th.
Then Hiroshima.
Then back to Tokyo on 8th.

Things we could change:

1) Go to host family a day later to see the mother too. This means an extra day in Tokyo at start. We could then either lose a Tokyo day at the end, cut out the temple place, or cut out Hiroshima.

2) Cut out the temple place and have an extra day at the beach.

3) Not go to Hiroshima. This gives us an extra beach day and one extra day in Tokyo to visit Nikko (mountain temples, lake, waterfall) or Hakone (hot springs, Onsen, lake).

4) See host family at end instead and shift schedule back by three and a half days, not counting the beach day, and gain a day and a night extra over the second weekend, depending on whether or not we go to Hiroshima.

Thoughts?"

Thoughts? I have no brain left. I don't know where or what Temple place is. In the end I said he clearly knows best when it comes to these things and I'll happily go anywhere as long as he doesn't try to show me the spreadsheet, which has no fewer than 17 columns.

Adam has requested that I take with me to Japan several items of English culture that will form gifts for the friends from his lab and I was issued with the following list, the majority of which, please note, are not easily and cheaply available in Germany:

Bottle of Musty Ferret real ale
Marmite (in a glass jar, not the squeezy type)
Tin of shortbread
Chocolate orange
Bottle of whiskey in a nice box
T-shirt

T-shirt? What size? For whom? Germans do not eat Marmite, shortbread, or chocolate oranges, and they do not drink real ale. However, they do drink whiskey and wear T-shirts, so I was able to obtain these items easily enough (the latter of which, it transpired, is for Adam -it appears he was so ill-packed that, despite having miraculously struggled through the past three months without one, he now desperately needs me to go buy a T-shirt, in a light colour with a V-neck and no writing on the front, and fly it 6000 miles to Tokyo, where he will leave it three weeks hence. And since I'm going shopping anyway could I get sunglasses and a camera case too please).

The other items were assembled through a combination of the outrageously expensive English shop in Heidelberg (7 euros for a chocolate orange? No thanks) and a short trip to the Homeland last weekend. There are going to be some serious foodmiles on that jar of Marmite.

Total carbon footprint? Best not to think about it.

I hate flying. Or more, accurately, I hate every single passenger on the plane when I'm flying. It is for this reason that I spent 40 minutes choosing my seat, wishing to minimise the number of people within earshot and trying to decide if I would be more inconvenienced in terms of toilet access sitting by the window or in the aisle. By the window I am at the mercy of the fellow occupants of my row, which is indeed annoying and inconvenient when I wish to get out. On the other hand, I don't want to be disturbed by their wishing to get out either, and there will be two of them and thus double the likelihood of occurrence, and to spend most of the flight with someone's crotch or buttocks inching past my face. I chose window.

I have not seen Adam in three dimensions for 76 days. There are three left to go.

2009-07-13T20:35:00.011+02:00

Last week brought with it the milestone birthday of the quarter century. This was my fourth German birthday and fortunately the only one I have passed at work. A stark lack of holidays and flight money owing to August's upcoming venture to Japan mean that presently I am confined to the Deutschland.

I awoke early to open my cards and presents in the company of Adam, by virtue of miraculous modern technology. He was sitting in his room in Tokyo at 2 pm, I in my pyjamas at 7 am in Germany, connected by webcams and Skype.

I'd had several presents from Adam and mother piled up on the desk in the spare room for a month. Various others had been arriving in the post during the week and it was finally time for the opening ceremony. Unfortunately for Adam, who had but a lunch hour in which to bear witness to the great unwrap, I like to take my time over the cards and gifts and enjoy each to the full - it's only one day a year after all. What it isn't, as Adam revealed in a burst of impatience when it became just too much to stand, is a spectator sport.

"Ok Ad, I think I'll open this card next! I wonder who it's from, let's open it and find out.....ooh this one's from Grandma! It's got a picture of a teddy holding a balloon on the front and it says "Happy Birthday Granddaughter". Can you see? Let me get closer to the camera, hold on. Can you see that? Wait a sec, I'll zoom in."

"Just hurry up."

"And inside it says "Happy birthday, love from Grandma and Grandad." That's nice, isn't it? There's a lovely verse too, shall I read it out?"

"No."

"Ok, next. I think this present is also from Grandma, I can tell from the wrapping. Look how well it's wrapped! Can you see that on your end, is the sellotaping coming through on the webcam?"

"Dear God, please get on with it."

"I need a pair of scissors."

"Soph..."

"Right, here we go, let's see what's inside! Ooh, it's more wrapping paper! Isn't it well wrapped?! Let me show you...."

"Just open it!"

"Here we go, nearly there....it's a scarf! Oh it's lovely, what do you think?"

Thus I went on until all of the cards were opened, read aloud, and positioned on the mantelpiece, and the presents were each unwrapped, gushed over, and neatly stacked on the table.

Let's take a closer look at the state-of-the-art Comfort Summit hiking socks (which I suspect were generously re-wrapped and gifted to me when the giver discovered they were five sizes too small for him).

I'd have previously doubted that the design and functionality of the humble sock could be improved upon but note how much technology has been knitted into this garment: a warmth and cushion rating of four, no less, and constructed not from wool but from heavyweight coolmax wool fusion. The Comfort Summit socks also feature "a soft, slack-knit cuff, a warm, full terry leg, and double density pads underfoot". These are serious socks.

The back of the packet notes that they were previously called "Ascent" but this name must not have been getting the comfort level of this footwear across; also, hikers of a more literal mind may have assumed that these are monodirectional socks and are not suitable for descent. There is no such ambiguity with the newly branded Comfort Summit.

Now all I need is a mountain to climb.

2009-07-05T21:10:00.010+02:00

I would just like to say that I do have several very credible excuses for not blogging these past four months but rather than bore you with trivial detail I shall instead update Paradise Deutsch.

So to begin: is four months sufficient a period to master the cello? Alas no. Is it sufficient to discover that your cello teacher is actually an arrogant egotistical mad pervy bastard with short-man syndrome? Indeed yes.

Unfortunately, following my last post things immediately went sour. He took great delight in mixing up anatomical terms when directing me where to hold the instrument. "Oops, did I say breasts? I meant of course chest, it's my English you know." Sure.

Clearly I am far from being an expert on methods of teaching music but there was a lot more walking around the room, "connecting with the music", touching the piano, and imagining the bow as part of my arm than actually playing the cello.

I already regretted signing the six-month contract as it turned out to contain all manner of sneakiness, the main point of which was that he took money from my account and may or may not feel like "teaching". Several times I arrived at my lesson on time only to find him still with another student and I had to wait almost an hour to begin. It was at this point that I knew I should have listened to Erin, who had said "He's a bastard!" almost immediately after meeting him.

In the meantime, however, Erin and I found a new cello teacher. We went to her house in the sticks for a free trial lesson and I learnt more with her in twenty minutes than three months with Niko, despite it being entirely auf Deustch. I could play a song! I walked out with a light heart -even the cello felt less cumbersome - and was so thrilled to have discovered what it feels like to actually play an instrument and not just absorb the essence of the music and breathe in the spirit of the cello that we missed the last bus and the last train home and had to be rescued in the dark and the rain by Denis, who had doubts about the ability to fit two girls and two cellos in his pimped-out Golf and was right.

The only question was how to cunningly extract myself from the remaining three months of my contract with the prima donna. I had made up my mind to complain that in all the lessons I'd had essentially I could still only bow the open string. As it turned out I needn't have worried as when I arrived at my next lesson he was angry with me, for not going to his concert the night previous. He demanded to know what I'd been doing instead. A row ensued and the contract was cancelled. A perfect result.

Thus is the current cello situation.

I have a great many other events of recent months to relate, most notably the departure of my beloved Adam to Tokyo. We are no strangers to the long distance but a 79-day separation is a new test. However, this has allowed for the occasion of my going to Japan for three weeks at the end of the summer, which is sure to be an adventure, the like of which will keep Paradise Deutsch going until Christmas.

Sundry other news items include two new additions to my ever-growing family in the form of babies: one human, a new sibling courtesy of my father and stepmother, due end of September, and one canine, a Norwegian elkhound puppy by the name of Kizzy, belonging to mother and sister; Brid's wedding in Galway, where I spent most of the day trying not to bawl my head off at how beautiful she looked and how much she and Fred clearly adore each other; a much anticipated trip to the Hay Festival, which included a resistant sister as a last-minute addition, and one fabulous evening in Manchester that was as close to going back in time as I am likely to get, as despite already living in the future there is still no commercial time travel available at a reasonable price.

I hope to expand further on the above instances of interest in future posts but forgive me if I become neglectful once again - it really is remarkable how much of my time is taken up just by working, sleeping, thinking about practising the cello, and worrying about going to the dentist.

2009-02-24T20:38:00.018+01:00

My new baby

My new baby's disturbingly penguin-esque case

Friday night's musical beginnings were a satisfying if slightly delayed success. It was cold and snowing when I arrived at the practice room a few minutes early and the cello teacher, Niko, whose name I type with crossed fingers that he isn't in the habit of Googling himself, told me that they were a few minutes behind schedule and he hoped I wouldn't mind waiting.

Niko's wife was at the piano and another student cellist accompanied her (on the cello that is, not the piano). As previously noted, the practice room itself is rather bare (when I have established myself in a few lessons' time I'll get a photo), and I found myself perched on a cushion on the floor, alongside a lady named Tanja whom had finished her own lesson and was staying on for the social scene.

There were thus five of us crowded into the tiny room; Tanja and I drank some of the Japanese tea and listened to the piano and cello music, and Niko shouted words of German encouragement amid much emphatic gesturing.

Eventually, when the few minutes had ballooned into more than an hour, I unpacked my own cello and handed it to Niko for approval. He ran the bow over it. His face took on a look of horror and he cried out "Oh no no! This instrument has had already a great adventure, yes?!"

It was apparently horribly out of tune. He sat opposite me on one of the room's two stools, I upgraded to the other, and spent the following ten minutes turning the fine-tune pegs by minute amounts scarcely visible to my keenly watchful eyes.

"We have a saying in German: 'Somebody already died tuning a cello'."

He handed it back to me and took up his own instrument. He drew the bow across the strings and a low, resonating sound filled the room.

"The cello is tuned in fifths," he said. "Fifths are perfect! Fifths are pure! You know what is a fifth?"

I shook my head.

"Ok, let me put it this way. If it was tuned in thirds, it could be like this."

He grinned hugely, the corners of his mouth reaching up past his ears, and screwed his eyes up tight. He bowed the G string, giving a long, drawn-out note.

"It could have a very smiley sound, like that! Or," he said, in an instant melancholy, with his bottom lip stuck out, "It could have a very sad sound........"

He bowed the G string again, giving out, to my ears, an identical long, drawn-out note.

He looked up. "Still a third."

Most of the remaining lesson was spent with me bowing the open G string whilst he played along with wonderful, effortless music. Though all I was doing was drawing my bow back and forth across the G string and trying to remember to relax my wrist and my shoulder and to move my body in the opposite direction to the bow, it felt rather good to have some small part in creating beautiful sounds in a tiny room in Heidelberg whilst the snow fell outside.

He talked whilst he played, imparting insightful advice and telling me of his student days, at the same time reminding me to relax and move ("don't forget your body").

He told me that he had been taught to play by a very severe cellist. "I think it was because he had a bad childhood. The kind with only bread and water. And punishment."

He also said, as my bow slipped off the end of the string with a horrible clang that grated the nerves, "You should know, noise is the brother of great sound."

Just before nine I packed up and headed out into the snow, trying to avoid banging the neck of the cello case on the roof as I boarded the tram.

I think I shall like learning to play but the trek up to Heidelberg every week carrying one and half thousand euros of cello with me is an inconvenience I would have preferred to be without.

Champagne, Subway, and a String Quartet

2009-02-19T19:10:00.009+01:00

...but not necessarily in that order. During my weeks absent from Paradise Deutsch I have been attending my German language class twice a week, sitting in a class of immigrants whose common language is the mime and feeling right at home as one of them.

I have also taken up the cello. I am not, nor have I ever been, musically inclined but I suddenly took it upon myself to learn an instrument, of which the cello has always held a sophisticated, elegant attraction. Within an hour of taking the notion I had secured private tuition with a cellist in Heidelberg and the following Saturday I took the train to a small town outside Heidelberg to visit a cello maker, whereupon I hired a cello, including all the necessary accessories, for the very reasonable monthly price of €30.

This is what the inside of a cello-maker's house looks like

The cello teacher, who is German and has a Japanese wife who plays the piano, is not as severe or bald as his photograph on the website would have you believe. I went to meet him before deciding whether or not to sign up to his course of lessons (though to be honest, the choice of English-speaking cello teachers in the Rhein Neckar delta is not vast). He has a small practice room a few minutes' walk from the main sqaure in Heidelberg. The room has bare walls and contains only two stools, a kettle, and a grand piano.

After introductions and explanations as to why I wished to learn the cello in particular, he asked if I wanted to hear him play. The music that he effortlessly picked out almost broke my heart with its grace and beauty. I took a gulp of the lukewarm Japanese tea I'd been given by his wife and swallowed a jaffa cake so as not to burst into huge sobs of grief and longing - for quite what I'm not sure.

He handed me the cello. "Now you try". He showed me the correct way to hold the instrument.

"Hug him! Hold him like you give him a cuddle, yes?!"

I hugged the cello.

"Right, now you are holding him the right way. Now move the bow from left to right. Move it gently."

The sound that issued forth was somewhere between a foghorn and a choked cat. But it felt good. He was full of flamboyant gestures and big grins and wandered around the tiny room waving his arms and waxing poetic about the beauty of the cello.

I asked, somewhat doubtfully, if he would be teaching from a book.

"A book, ha! I am the book! We don't need a book. I could have written ten books if I had wanted!"

My lessons are to be once a week, beginning tomorrow evening.

To return to the title of this post, Thursday evening brought the lovely Adam over from England; we passed an idyllic weekend (with only one cross word exchanged when he hung his wet towel to dry on my cello) that left me feeling blissfully happy that I am so lucky to be able to spend an idyllic weekend with the man I love, and yet miserably depressed because I wish every weekend were like that rather than the reality of spending most of them in my pyjamas eating dry cereal from the box and listening to Radio 4 on the internet.

Saturday was Valentine's Day and in a infinite improvement upon last year's, we began the evening with dinner and champagne and then went to see a string quartet play in the town hall. We were the youngest people there by forty years. Nevertheless, the music was wonderful and afterwards we walked out into the snow feeling both very uplifted and very hungry.

This is when we stopped into Subway to share a 30-cm chicken-with-everything sandwich, bringing our sophisticated, classy evening down a notch but it tasted pretty good.

2009-01-14T19:39:00.009+01:00

I have been back in the foreign for less than a week and the return to work, in combination with the brisk outside temperature and daily there-and-back soggy tramp through six inches of grey slush due to the bike's being frozen stiff to the Hoff's kitchen wall, has made for a bleak commence of the new year.

However, a new year is an opportunity for a new start and in the spirit of such I have signed up to a German language course at the institute in Mannheim, beginning on Monday. I have committed myself for the next ten weeks for two hours a night twice weekly to the cultural endeavour of immersing myself in the mother tongue of my host country. A bold move but after two and half years of Deutsche living and no imminent prospect of escape it can surely only serve as a productive diversion during the dreary winter months ahead.

An unexpected positive that has come from the arrival of Germany's coldest winter in twenty years is that my flat seems to be slightly warmer; this could of course simply be because it is far colder outside than ever before but whilst I am enjoying being down to only three layers in bed and finding just the two hot-water bottles to be sufficient, I'm not going to question it.

I had planned to detail the events of my three-week holiday in England but the fingerless gloves make typing wearyingly cumbersome so for now I shall say good evening, or Guten Abend, as I will no doubt be in the habit of saying ten weeks hence.

2008-11-15T19:31:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy month with visits from Amelia, Mum and sister, and Adam in quick succession, and a trip to the Homeland, which has left me little time to blog, or knit, which were intended to be my chief winter pastimes.

Before my weekend visit to England, I was dismayed to find that my decrepit, cripplingly old toploading washing machine was once again broken.

"This time it cannot be fixed," said the Hoff. "Es ist kaputt, finished".

I wasn't sure I believed her because she hadn't actually had anyone in to look at it and this was her personal verdict. She left a note reminding me yet again that the washing machine does not belong to the flat; it is my responsibility to repair or replace.

The Lavamat 240, circa 1972.

Being escorted from the building.

The space available for the washing machine is in the bathroom and is 45 cm wide. Trying to find a new machine to fit into this narrow gap was not going to be easy, particularly when I was reluctant to spend more than 100 euros. It would surely have to be another toploader. I turned to eBay.

There was one machine being auctioned, located in Karlsruhe, about an hour's drive away. It looked fine, was the right size, and a reasonable price. I put in a bid and waited. Some days later, the auction mysteriously ended early. By this time I was thoroughly fed up of handwashing and had resorted to digging clothes out of the charity bag so I was unwilling to give up when I'd found what I needed.

I emailed the seller, who I was disconcerted to find was called, I kid you not, Trusty Dirk. I don't know about you but I have reservations about buying domestic electrical appliances over the internet from a man named Trusty Dirk. However, these were desperate times. I asked why the auction ended - he replied to say that he'd been offered 25 euros to sell the machine immediately.

What's a good trade name that'll show customers I'm honest and reliable?

I emailed back and offered 50. My limit for the auction would have been 100 so I considered this a bargain. In another suspicious twist, Trusty Dirk, who I was beginning to suspect was less than completely trustworthy, replied to say that ok, we had a deal but I need to hurry because there's a lot of interest. I doubted that but wasn't in a position to argue. He asked me to call him to arrange collection.

Later that evening I hesitantly dialed the number and waited. A male voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is that, er, Trusty Dirk?"

"Look, if you're the one calling about the fertiliser you can forget it ok, I'm hanging up!"

"No, no!" I managed to cry, "I'm calling about the washing machine, I emailed you earlier?"

There was a pause.

"Are you the one that's going to pay 50 euros?"

"Yes."

"Good. You can pick it up Saturday morning. You just need to bring 50 euros cash."

"Erm, ok."

He gave me his address and hung up. I had a bad feeling about the whole thing.

I drove to Karlsruhe with Tim. Shortly before we arrived I had a text from Trusty Dirk, asking if I was coming alone.

"NO", I texted back. "I am with ten male friends, eight of whom are policemen and the other two are in the army."

Disappointingly, or not, depending how you look at it, Trusty Dirk turned out to be a skinny ginger economics student at the University of Karlsruhe - even more disappointing, for Tim at least, was that he lived on the fifth floor of the building. Happily though we were soon on our way back with a new old toploading washing machine that is at least twice the height of the old one but fortunately the same width.

I have so far used it twice; it seems to only respond to the D program ("Buntwashe") and it periodically makes alarming clanging noises but it works and the spin is quiet. I try not to touch it if possible.

The newly ensconced Washmaschin; not the most aesthetically pleasing appliance but for 50 euros I can live with it.

As to what happened to the old one I cannot honestly say. Guido hauled it down the stairs and put it out on the street. Twenty minutes later it was gone. As Adam observed, in Germany even the scroungers are efficient.

2008-10-15T20:40:00.008+02:00

It is the middle of October and time to begin the winter knitting. The most ambitious items I've created so far are hats and mittens. I've decided to expand my range and knit a Christmas jumper. Sleeveless, to begin with. Nothing too complicated.

Whilst incapacitated with the overzealous allergic reaction I practiced the shaping and pattern of a Christmas jumper. I found a reindeer pattern online and knit it into a green-and-white trial run.

I made two enormous errors. Firstly, I misread the chart and only knit the legs on the knit row rather than both knit and purl rows so they came out rather thin and spindly. Having realised my mistake but unwilling to rip the legs out I then moved onto the body. This time I was careful to include the pattern on the purl row but now I erroneously doubled every line of the pattern.

So, rather than elegant reindeer leaping gracefully across the jumper, I got something more akin to llamas. Robot llamas.

Spindly legged robot llamas: not a good look.

I frogged it all out and started again. Fortunately, I got reindeer the second time round and so I began the Christmas jumper proper.

I've been threatening to present Adam with an outrageous hand-knitted garment for some time. He has solemnly promised to wear it on Christmas Day but severely doubts that he'll ever be persuaded to don it on any other occasion (fancy dress does not count).

I started it last weekend and have knitted all the way to where I'll begin the armhole shaping. I added in a row of snowflakes for extra naffness. I've taken it off the needles now as I'm taking it with me to England at the weekend and I need to measure him before I continue. In the meantime I've started on the back.

Essential German Vocab for Knitters

Knitting needles: stricknadeln
Circular knitting needles: rundstricknadeln
Wool: wolle

2008-10-05T18:25:00.008+02:00

A webcam, I thought. Why haven't I got one? I'm an expat, I have the internet, and I have people to see back home. All living-abroad types have webcams.

I went to a digital-things shop and and bought the first I found that was under 20 euros and said Vista on the box. Upon opening, I was shocked to find that it looks disconcertingly like an eye. A wild, manic eyeball that is staring, threatening, and thinking dark thoughts. It's the PC equivalent of Edvard Munch's The Scream.

Tell me I'm imagining it?

Trying not to look at it, I plugged it in; nothing happened but I loaded up MSN Messenger nonetheless and called Mum into a conversation.

"I've got my webcam," I typed.

"Ooh good," she replied.

"Can you see me then?" I asked, waving at the Eye. It stared unblinkingly back.

"No," she typed. "Can you see me?"

"No. But you haven't got a webcam have you, Mum?"

A pause. Then "No."

Clearly something had gone wrong.

"Have you taken the lens cap off?" asked Mum, helpfully.

"I don't think it's got one," I said, picking it up to make sure.

After lengthy investigation of all the buttons on the Messenger toolbar I gave up. When it comes to computers, if the instructions suggest anything more than Take Out Of Box, Plug In, Click Go I instantly despair.

I may make a brave attempt and wade part way through the "Wizard" ("Bastard" would surely be more apt), convinced I'm being tricked, frustration steaming out of my nostrils and fogging up the screen, before picking up the whole lot and dumping it in the cupboard under the stairs and refusing to look at it for a week.

With much concentration and three glasses of white wine I eventually got it working and can now have successful jerky robotic video links with Adam. The rest of the time I keep it covered with a tea towel and turn it to face the wall. I don't like the way it watches.

2008-10-03T17:03:00.004+02:00

It's back. Not three months after the last attack I am once again host to an overly theatrical allergic reaction to an insect bite.

On Monday night as I lay in bed I heard the unmistakable high-pitched shriek of a mosquito fly past my ear. Furious, and half asleep, I struck out in the direction of sound and pounded myself about the ears several times before settling back down to sleep, the ache in the side of my face assurance that I must have got him.

The next morning, however, I spotted him languishing on the wall, too gorged and heavy to fly away. I picked up a slipper, which has seen a heavy death toll this summer, and splatted the greedy monster all the way back to its maker. It's October, for goodness sake. Where did it come from?

By Tuesday afternoon itchy bite marks had appeared on the side of my face and on my nose (nose!) and by Wednesday morning I was back in yellow-blister territory. I won't go into further detail but so horrified was I at my own reflection in the mirror that I called in sick at work and crawled back into bed to swear out loud and try not to touch my face.

I spent the following two days housebound, listening to the radio, reading, staying in bed, and periodically looking at my nose in the mirror for prolonged periods. In the evening my sister called and demanded a look over the webcam and had such sympathetic words as "Eerrghhh! That's disgusting! Do you feel like a witch woman?!"

As I swallowed another antihistamine, feeling as attractive as the Elephant Man on a bad-hair day, I thanked God that the love of my life, who is the most handsome and good-looking man I have ever been lucky enough to share a sauna with and has never looked less than completely gorgeous apart from once when he had his hair cut really short, is doing an Outdoor Thing with his friend Ridders in the Dolomites and isn't witness to my facial plague. Small mercies.

I told him over the phone.

"Oh God, again?! Jesus! Ridders, listen to this!"

"I'm glad you're not here to see it."

"You'll have to take a photo for me, I can't miss this!"

"No way! It's horrible. It's on my face. It'll turn you off me sexually."

"Of course it won't! Please. For me."

He absolutely insisted. I think he's starting a collection.

2008-09-01T20:55:00.005+02:00

"Arghh! Where are you?!"

"I'm at the meeting place, at the escalators, like we arranged. Where are you?"

"I don't know!"

"Are you in the station?"

"Yes! I can see a Burger King."

"Ok, wait there, I'll come find you. See you in two minutes."

I don't know why Mum and I had bothered to arrange a meeting point the night before as I knew that as soon as she arrived at Piccadilly Station she would get into a panic and phone me. I spotted her looking anxiously around and glancing at her watch. When she caught sight of me she gave an excited wave and hurried over to pull me into a hug.

"Hi! Ooh I'm excited!" she said. "What platform is it? Have you got the tickets?"

We were going to the Edinburgh Book Festival and were rather excited, in a geeky, bookish sort of way. We made our way over to platform 13, which was a long walk because, as Bill Bryson mentions in Notes from a Small Island (unnecessary and pretentious quotation of the modern authors is all the rage at these things), it is actually in another county, and boarded the overcrowded train to Edinburgh.

"Did you bring the picnic?" I asked Mum once we'd found our seats, which thankfully weren't in the same carriage as the hen party.

"I did," she said, pulling out two bananas, a Capri Sun carton drink, and a packet of cigarettes. "Can't smoke these in here though, have to wait till we get there. God, I haven't been on a train in years!"

The delicious and nutritious picnic that was to sustain us throughout the four-hour journey.

Edinburgh was wet and grey when we arrived but there was something in the damp air that said the city was excited; the Book Festival was confined to one site in Charlotte Square but the Fringe had spread itself out in every direction.

We trundled through the rain to the B&B, which had this lounge

and these books.

I would have been happy to spend the evening ensconced in one of the luxuriously deep and squishy couches nosing through the encylopaedias and wishing I lived here but instead we headed straight out to the festival.

Mum and I have been to a few book festivals together and one striking point of note is that there's always a lot of very posh people with their very posh, overly privileged offspring.

"Mummy, may I go to the Freedom-of-Expression-Through-Interpretive-Dance and Young-Pampered-Poets' Workshop? Oh please, Mummy!"

"Not right now, Timothy darling, come and finish your brie-and-seedless-grape wheat-free organic pannini whilst Papa and I sip this carafe of '87 Chateau d'Yquem before the afternoon readings."

It rather gets up the nose after a while and it is grating to see these self-important upperclass types swanning about, their well-behaved and good-looking infants dressed in Baby Oshkosh fairtrade cotton being carried behind by their eastern-European nanny.

I was standing in the queue in the cafe (called "The Cafe", which was next to "The Bookshop"; not very inspiring considering these are meant to be the literati) listening to a man with an Eton accent explaining to his sympathetic friend why he's glad that this festival isn't any bigger as he just can't bear the crowds; "I mean, the carnival in Brazil just isn't the same any more, it's absolutely overrun, it really is. I used to go every year but I just don't anymore because I can't cope, I absolutely can't cope. It's just too much."

His friend nodded along in agreement whilst I thought about stabbing the Eton chappie in the eye with an environmentally friendly wooden cake fork to see if he could cope with that.

Around the festival site were several pieces of large art, which I didn't really understand, even after reading the label.

Is what?

Wonky Shed: A post-modern, pseudo-idealistic socio-politico contemporary figurative juxtaposed representative metaphorical expression of the degradation of the gardening classes.

.
And these bins, which were a bit German.

The main reason we were at this festival was to see Terry Pratchett, of whom Mum is an especially big fan and owns at least two copies of all his books. Two years ago we were at the Hay Festival in Wales; we were about to go into a talk by Margaret Atwood when we spotted a miniscule sign that announced in very small writing "Today, Extra Event: Terry Pratchett".

Apparently they do not usually put him in the programme as it otherwise turns into a Pratchett Festival but if he turns up they'll squeeze him in. We therefore immediately turned around and hurried back to the box office where we, sorry Margaret, exchanged our tickets and spent the rest of the day feeling particularly chuffed.

My lovely mama, waiting to see Terry (I can call him Terry, I've met him twice).

This time he talked about his forthcoming book, Nation, and was generally entertaining and witty, and a bit pervy, and gave a lively and interesting talk. It was, however, rather marred by the fact that I couldn't take my eyes off the bloke chairing the session, for he absolutely could not sit still. He was a nervous wreck and was constantly touching his hair, scratching his head, crossing and uncrossing his legs, adjusting his collar, sitting up in his chair, rubbing his arm, checking his watch, wringing his hands, and generally displaying an unceasing array of agitated movement for the entire hour. Terry Pratchett didn't seem to notice.

Afterwards he did a signing session in The Cafe. Our usual technique at book signings is to go last, which allows for a bit more conversation with the author as there is no impatient huffing and puffing issuing from the queue behind.

However, in this particular case there were two million people in the queue and we had to catch our train back to Manchester in four hours so we joined the masses.

We got progressively excited as we neared the front and eventually it was our turn to step up to the table. He looked up with a friendly smile.

"Ah. Hello!" we said.

"Hello!" he replied. "Oh! Are you the lady with the black boots?" he asked, turning to me.

Oh my god, I thought. He remembers me! He remembers me from the book signing in Hay!

"Yes!" I cried, looking excitedly at Mum and then down at my boots, only narrowly resisting the urge to hoist one leg up on to the desk to present the evidence. "Yes, I am! That's me!"

"Ah good. I picked you out as a marker in the queue; I'm just seeing how long it's taking people to get round." He took our books, signed them, and handed them back with another smile.

We made our way outside and wiled away the rest of the afternoon discussing what a thoroughly nice chap he is and wondering who'll be at the Hay Festival in May.

We were on our way out and had just about made it to the exit when, I couldn't help it, I rushed back to The Bookshop and bought twelve books. They were a bugger to drag back to Deutschland the following day but surely worth it.

2008-08-20T19:43:00.008+02:00

I’ve been back from Konstanz for two weeks and it hasn’t stopped raining. This hasn’t helped my bout of post-holiday blues, which came on during the train journey home. I thought about how much fun it’d been, which cheered me up, but then I remembered that it was over and that depressed me again.

I tried not to think too much and instead read my book for four hours straight, which made my head ache and my eyes blurry but at least it gave me something to think about other than the fact that I was no longer on holiday and my friends and boyfriend had all left the country that morning.

I had arrived in Konstanz about twenty minutes after everyone else. Adam met me on the platform and we walked out of the station and crossed the road to a café, where everyone else was sitting outside sipping the first beers of the trip. After exchanging details of each other’s journeys and Adam explaining that he’d been ripped off twice in Zurich (couldn’t use his German rail card to pay for the train ticket to Konstanz and they gave him his change in Swiss francs) we made our way over to the apartment on Münsterplatz.

They say you learn a lot about a person when you go on holiday with them. It was on holiday that I learned that Cassie can’t be expected to drink two bottles of wine and then go on a camel ride without being ill, and that she prefers to not have her veganism questioned when at a Chinese restaurant she is trying to explain in English to a seventeen-year-old Chinese Spanish waiter that what she wants, instead of anything on the menu, is a vegetable dish of her own design composed of an amalgamation of all the vegan elements of the items on the specials page.

Things I learned on holiday in Konstanz:

Aneesh has a summer look.

Modelling the winter 07 and summer 08 collections.

and is worried about the notorious German towel thieves (Deutsche Handtuchdiebe).

You can't be too careful.

Jenko is, as we suspected, a perv.

Helen is the boss of Johnny.

Johnny did enjoy watching the Südwest Philharmonik’s last performance of the season out by the lake whilst eating croissants, sipping champagne, and paddling in the water, but he wouldn’t want to do it two days in a row. Things would be different if this was Boys on Tour, which, as Helen and I reminded him, it wasn’t.

Adam is…I don’t want to say “a slob”….Adam is untidy.

We shared a room for a week.

I am tasty. Having barely recovered from the recent foot incident, I was dismayed to find that by the second night word had got round and several vampire insects had visited (and brought straws), leaving me with swollen patches of oversized bites anew.

Nice.

Monday morning saw me banging irritably on the door of the chemist, swallowing half a packet of antihistamines and sellotaping the rest to the window as a warning to the mosquity bastards.

Stew feels alive on a bike.

Like every other holidaymaker in Konstanz, we had the idea to hire bikes. However, it soon transpired that only Adam, Stew, and I had been on a bike in the last ten years and no-one else wanted to go.

As this was a holiday, and not the Tour de France, I was looking forward to a bit of a tootle round the lake, perhaps wearing a floaty cotton frock and perching side saddle on a bike with a basket, stopping every now and then to sit on a bench and gaze elegantly out over the tranquil waters, remarking to Adam that this is quite the pleasant town, what?

We needed a route. We were in tourist info, looking at maps. Or, more accurately, Adam and Stew were looking at maps -I was sitting on a chair fanning myself with a leaflet about ferry companies and looking at a tank of tropical fish.

“Where shall we go then?” I eventually asked.

“We thought we’d go to this island,” said Adam, pointing at the map. “It’s got a castle.”

Oh good. Another castle.

“How far is it?”

“Not far.” Over the years I have learned that Adam’s idea of not far differs greatly from mine by several orders of magnitude.

“How far?”

“15 k.”

“There and back? I can’t ride 30 kilometres in a day! It’s 30 degrees outside. And it’ll be further than you think. Are you sure we can get to it?” I said, peering over at the map.

“Of course!” cried Stew. “It’s not that far, we can easily do it in a day if we set off soon and go at a fair pace.”

This is the trouble with boys. They want to “do” things. They had hardly been out of the water since we’d arrived. I’d dangled my feet in over the side of a pedalo and was more than content, as was Helen, who had briefly considered going in but decided against it as she’d just put sun cream on.

They're a bit short, Stew.

In the end, caving to weighty peer pressure, I did dip myself in for a few minutes so that in years to come I can say that the majority of me has been in the Bodensee.

However, I soon regretted the decision as I began to foresee a problem with getting back into the pedalo. I won’t go into detail besides saying that it was a rather undignified moment involving Adam hauling me up me under the arms and Jenko steadying the boat from the other side. I seemed to have taken on the grace and dimensions of a very pregnant elephant and have since tried to erase the incident from memory.

A pedalo not unlike the one the I struggled to reoccupy.

I’d thus had quite enough of “doing” and was planning on spending the rest of the day lying in the shade wearing a big hat, drinking warm beer, and trying to not get sweat on my book. I certainly didn’t want to do anything at a “fair pace”.

In the end a compromise was agreed; Stew departed for the island and Adam and I set off along the lake. We didn’t tootle but neither was it a time trial. Bench rests were less frequent than I would have liked and I spent most of the afternoon trying to make out Adam as a distant blot on the horizon but it was very pleasant and energizing, if a little hot in the midday sun.

We retuned to the apartment at lunchtime to find Jenko asleep in the lounge and Aneesh watching CNN. Apparently Stew had been back earlier. He’d followed the route to the island but come to a point where he could either go across the Swiss border or go on the motorway so he’d turned around. He’d now gone to buy a hat.

One evening we came across a wine and food festival and spent the rest of the night being jolly in the German way, which involves sitting on long wooden benches in a tent, swigging beer from large, heavy-bottomed glasses, and wondering exactly how many sausages is an indecent number to consume in one go.

Lovely German dead thing on a spit.

On the way back we saw this Leeds sign in a shop window, which we were all very excited about and was very fitting as we all met at Leeds University six years ago.

In a result that is quite the reverse of what I'd have predicted at the outset, I would love to go on holiday with everyone again (even Jenko) and I am in no way glad to be back.

Luckily the next trip is never very far off, which is possibly the reason I have managed to save not a euro in the entire two years of earning a living.

2008-07-25T17:24:00.006+02:00

Tomorrow morning I'm taking an early train to Konstanz in the south east of Germany, where I will meet Adam, Johnny, Helen, Stew, Jenko, and Aneesh for our jollies. I am almost packed and have narrowed it down to these three pairs of shoes:

They will almost certainly appear identical to the untrained eyes of a colour-blind boyfriend but they are each subtly different enough such that I can sacrifice none. I am thinking of adding in a cream pair but it depends on space, which is already at a minimum.

See you in a week Paradise Deutsch, when I shall return with tales of raucous adventure, cultural life experiences, drunken commaraderie, Stew's irrepressable enthusiasm, and Jenko's unavoidable vegetarianism.

2008-07-23T20:18:00.015+02:00

During the below-mentioned pampering at a hotel in Bad Durkheim, I had the misfortune to be bitten by a viscious mosquito from the Devil's own backyard.

If I am outdoors in clement weather for a duration for more than five or so minutes I invariably meet with such an event; it was therefore of no great surprise to awaken the following morning with no less than five itchy red bite marks, one of which was on my right foot.

As usual I cursed the little insectoid bastards that had taken the liberty of having a bite out of me, but thought little more of it. It was only after Adam and I had deplaned at Birmingham airport that evening, on route to his mother's 50th birthday party, that the itching on my right foot began to drive me nuts.

I was standing in the customs queue hopping from foot to another, scratching my arms, and neck, and whispering to Adam about how awful it all was, and, I imagine, generally displaying all the signs of a Suspicious Person.

However, I soon discovered that my behaviour was well founded on the fact that the bite on my foot had swollen such that the itchy redness had extended well beyond the radius of the bite and that my foot was twice its normal size. Not good. Not diastrous either though as it's happened before - I whacked on a blob of antihistamine cream and went to sleep.

The next morning I felt as Jack must have felt when he awoke to find his seeds were now a giant beanstalk. Whereas the night before there had been an itchy red mark there was now a yellow (yellow!) blister the size of a marble sitting boldly in place. Oh God.

Actual size.

After lengthy consultations with the household Adam and I were dropped at Warick General Hospital's A&E, where, including me, there were exactly three people to be seen but the wait time said 90 minutes. I wished I was back in Germany. Yes you pay 300 euros a month health insurance but at least you're seen on the same day.

There wasn't much else to do in A&E other than photograph It.

I would have been horrified by the appearance of this monstrosity on my body if I hadn't seen it before: please refer to "My first trip to casualty was in Rome, aged 18". Note the description: "...the bites began to swell into yellow marble-sized blisters".

Thus it wasn't a complete shock to me but everyone else was simultaneously fascinated and disgusted, including the doctor, who agreed that it was indeed quite horrid.

He gave me some antihistamines and antibiotics and I hobbled out the door. By the evening, and the birthday party, it had grown to twice its size (and was now being referred to as The Boil) and provided much entertainment for the guests. We all agreed it would be dangerous to board a plane with such a pressurised body part and so the next day Adam bravely volunteered to do the deed.

We sat in the bath, my foot resting on his lap. Using a needle sterilsed via the well-known medical practice of boiling it in a pan, I covered my eyes and he drained ("burst" is so much more gruesome) the unsightly blighter. That, in my book, is true love.

These pictures were taken two days later; my foot was still swollen and red but the blister had gone. It tried to reform but I kept it at bay with a plaster.

This picture was taken five minutes ago. It's now three weeks since I was bitten but the mark will persist for weeks to come.

On Saturday I am going on holiday and will have to keep it covered for the duration so as not to frighten the locals. I have sworn no mercy if anything, insectoid or otherwise, tries to bite me. This is war.

The Big Two Four

2008-07-15T19:41:00.005+02:00

Last week was my 24th birthday and the third I have spent in Germany.

Adam flew to Germany and I went to meet him at the train station. He said he was arriving at 2.15 so I arrived in plenty of time to reapply lipstick and to practice a suitably alluring greeting.

Not wanting to be spotted before I’d achieved the desired level of poise I snuck by the main entrance and took the left stairs down to the lower level of the station. I checked the timetable to see which platform his train would arrive at and thus which direction he would be coming from. I walked along to the right and came up the escalator at the opposite side of the station. I headed back out towards the main entrance and saw Adam standing outside, holding what looked like a huge cushion.

He was in fact holding flowers that he had purchased a few minutes earlier and that, to his dismay, the florist had completely sealed in a paper bag such that none were visible. He said he’d arrived fifteen minutes ago and snuck across the entrance and down the right-hand stairs, bought the flowers, and come up the left stairs. I smiled to myself.

A pile of pressies, which contained nine books, a handbag, a cardigan, a purse, a box of chocolates, make-up, and an invitation to pampering in a hotel.

First edition! And it's signed! This calls for a "WHOOP!"

Mum bought me a signed first edition of Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog, which occupies the number one slot in my Top 5 (of which, until recently, there were only three, the logic of which makes perfect sense to me but sent every man I know into a fit).

Other books in my Top 5 are Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 and works by Douglas Adams, both of which appeared in the birthday books. Catch 22 is auf Deutsch, a gift from Zoran and Janine. I think it fitting that I read at least one book in German whilst I live here. It will be slow going, with some heavy dictionary intervention, but I will take it a bit at a time. I have so far read (and successfully understand) the first line.

Adam absolutely outdid himself on the present front with, happily, not a practical joke in sight. Perhaps it was last year’s leftover guilt or last week’s severe warning that prevented a similar event but later that day I found myself lying by the pool of a five-star hotel in the nearby spa town of Bad Durkheim (nicer than it sounds). The weather was glorious – hot, sunny, and perfect for thinking how good life is when you're lying next to your boyfriend on a beach towel on a Wednesday afternoon.

We had dinner in this wine-barrel-shaped restaurant, which served delicious and pleasingly large usual-German-type food.

Usual German-type food

The following morning we went to the thermal baths; we changed into swimwear and walked down towards the pool, where we were confronted by a hundred old people being led in a rather lacklustre aqua aerobics session by an even older person. Not ideal for a saucy birthday weekend away but nevertheless Adam and I managed to unwind in the jacuzzi, where the density of pensioners was somewhat lower, though unfortunately not the preferred zero.

In summary it was a fabulous birthday that I managed to extend over a period of about a week. I'm already looking forward to the next one although if it turns out to be German Birthday 4 I will have to have a serious rethink!

2008-06-24T21:13:00.003+02:00

No excuses, I’m a bad blogger. I think it’s the weather; it’s hot in Deutschland.

Tomorrow night Germany are playing Turkey in the semifinal of Euro 2008. I decided a while ago that, much to the horror of many back home, in particular my dad, in the absence of England I would throw my wholehearted support behind the German national team.

Last week we watched Germany against Austria in an underground stone room at the Hausbrauerei (that’s where we were, not the game), which looked something like this:

It was a long thin room with the big screen at the far end, behind which was a huge silk flag. The walls and tables were decorated with red, black, and yellow, and patriotism was rife. Germany had to win to stay in and it was just about sweaty and airless enough down there to make a rather dull game quite tense.

Having made it through the group stages, we went to watch Germany’s quarter final match at the Schlosshof (nicer than it sounds) in town. This is a gated, open-air area of the park and there was a big screen and a bar; it was crowded. In a good way.

This was my view for most of the game. I heard and felt all of Germany’s goals—every time beer splashed in my face and my toes were jumped on I knew they had scored---but I had to watch them on the news the following morning as my vantage point offered almost nothing in terms of live viewing.

I wore my half-England half-Germany scarf that I got at Wembley last year with the England half subtely covered until everyone was too drunk and too busy celebrating the 3-2 win over Portugal to notice. It looked to be close; Portugal fought hard to find the third goal and Denis nearly had a fit when four minutes of extra time were added but fortunately it wasn't enough.

It was a very different, and more enjoyable, experience to watching England play. I didn't spend the entire first half watching through my fingers and the second half worrying about penalties.

Sadly for Guido, who until Saturday had the air of superiority wafting around him after Holland's performance in the group stages of the tournament and would take it upon himself to dispense patronising advice and snide comments to those of us whose teams didn't qualify this time, Holland crashed out of the Euros at the weekend.

We watched the game at Zoran's house, where Guido spent much of the evening quite literally on the edge of his seat, muttering to himself and suggesting at regular ten-second intervals that the ref really ought to recognize when a yellow card should be issued.

Not a happy Dutchman

But they got beat, he sulked for two days, and has now decided to wear his Holland shirt to tomorrow night's game: a bold move.

2008-05-25T19:44:00.008+02:00

To continue (I was interrupted for a reason that I shall shortly relate in a separate post): after Bingen we took the boat to Koblenz, stopping off at Boppard on the way. What I found particularly striking about Boppard was that all the shops and bakeries were open and doing a brisk trade, which you may expect in a small and popular tourist town, and yet it was Sunday. I had to double check.

I was disappointed to subsequently find that many such places have Sunday opening hours; my town does not. Somehow, despite being but 60km from Frankfurt and 80km from Stuttgart, this is the sticks.

Another memorable feature of Boppard was the chairlift, a concept in which I have not indulged since the onset of my fear of heights, though more through lack of opportunity than cowardice.

The chairlift rode to the top of a great hill, from which was promised the remarkable “Vierseenblick”, where the Rhein curves in such a way as to create the illusion of four individual lakes.

I was a little tense on the journey to the top but fortunately the path of the chairlift, which was really nothing more that a couple of metal bars and a plank of wood, which did little towards easing the nerves, followed the curvature of the hill itself so for most of the ride we were only about 20 feet from the ground.

I couldn't help but think of the spikey death below should the lift break.

Holding on tight - like that'd help.

At the top, the Rhein was indeed remarkable in its meandering, actually doubling back on itself more than once. This was also a popular spot for hang gliders to launch themselves into the air and waft about over the river.

The Vierseenblick is supposed to look something like this:

Not what we saw

You have to be standing in precisely the right spot to see it correctly but the view was spectacular nontheless. We saw something more like this:

Two images (almost) seamlessly spliced together. Boppard is the town on the far right.

Next stop: Koblenz, where I bought a leather bag, Adam had a fit of temper in a shop, and we ate the most delicious dinner in a restaurant occupied entirely by drunk Glaswegians (is there any other type?).

2008-05-12T13:21:00.007+02:00

Paradise Deutsch, it's been a while, I apologize. But I have been away, with Adam, on a fabulous boating jaunt along the Rhein Valley.

We began in Mainz, which was as lovely as I remember; this time I made it into the Gutenberg Museum, which contained, among hundreds of examples of seemingly identical giant bibles, a goat skin stretched on a frame that looked, if you’re into that sort of thing, exactly like Cassandra from the first series of the new Dr. Who (which I have recently borrowed, watched, and returned to Jill, which is hopefully the reason it immediately sprang to mind).

The following morning we went down to the river to catch the boat to Bingen. We were informed that unfortunately, due to the “Rhein in Flame” (whatever that is) up in Cologne, there would be no 11.30 boat leaving from Bingen today (information that is just about visible on the timetable). The ticket man helpfully informed us that there had in fact been an extra boat service on the previous Thursday to make up for today’s shortage. We took the train to Bingen.

Could they have made it much smaller?

In Bingen there was a national flower show held along the banks of the river, which looked (and smelled) very much the colours of summer; Bingen was thus very busy and bustling and we had time for some pleasingly German bratwurst and flammkuchen before it was time to catch the "paddle-wheel steamship Goethe" on to Bacharach.

It cost €1.50 extra apparently

Bacharach was every bit the idyllic German village, with cobbled streets, half-timbered houses, and spärgel on every menu. We were staying in a castle converted into a youth hostel, which looked immense and impressive high in the hills as we stepped off the boat. Unfortunately the path leading up to the castle was not much more than a dirt track with some wooden posts nailed in every now in then to point the way to Jugendherberge in the vague direction of up.

Neither the cobbles nor the path were conducive to my wheely suitcase so Adam heroically hauled both his own and my luggage all the way up whilst I strode ahead taking photographs and calling back brightly “Nearly there! I think I can see the top!”

He'd always hated that suitcase. Now he had good reason.

But the view from the top was worth it!

I was very excited about staying in a castle and was even looking forward to the youth-hostel aspect. I have just begun to get used to staying in hotels, rather than camping or not going on holiday, so the communal accommodation was a novelty. Admittedly the bunkbeds were a bit of a surprise but I remained enthusiastic and kept clapping my hands together in a manner that I hoped was robust and practical and said things like “We don’t mind roughing it, do we?!”.

It was a bit commune-like in that there seemed to be hundreds of children roaming about unattended and people sitting about eating packed lunches out of paper bags; I tried to reassure myself that the noise would have quietened down later and anyway, I didn’t mind roughing it.

Down in the town we strolled through the streets whilst Adam examined the menu board of every restaurant in town. A few glasses of local Riesling made the hike back up to the castle in the pitch black a bit hairy but we arrived safely to collapse into our respective creaky bunk beds.

Morning began at around 6.30 with such an astonishing menagerie of noises issuing from the surrounding rooms and corridor that it was almost as if the other guests were intentionally making as many different but equally annoying sounds as possible using any aid available.

I was looking forward to getting back to a hotel that night in Koblenz.

2008-04-15T19:31:00.001+02:00

At the weekend I rode the new bike to the Penny Market. So excited was I at the thought of zipping along in the cycle path and not having to trudge home with armfuls of groceries that I actually looked forward to going. Usually on a Saturday morning I skulk around the flat despising the very thought.

Afterwards, the bike laden with shopping bags, I arived neatly back onto the drive to find the Hoff fully occupying the doorway, arms folded, grim stare hammered onto her face.

"Guten Morgen!" I chirped brightly, flicking open the bike stand and unloading my shopping. I always try to be friendly. She doesn't like it if I try to best her in a surly grump match.

"Ist das your bike?"

"Yes it is!" I said, patting it proudly and knowing what was coming.

"Well you can't leave it there. It is too close to the street. It must be moved."

My new bike now has a new Hoff-approved parking spot down the side of the house, behind the bins.

Still full of enthusiasm I took it out for another trip on Sunday afternoon when Guido and I rode to the lake. We went to the beach bar, ordered two cocktails, and sat in the sun where Guido spent the next fifty minutes complaining about the price of the cocktails.

I rode back, parked the bike in its new spot and went upstairs, satisfied with my Sunday exercise and pleased that my decision to not attend the gym proved wise.

This morning I rode the bike to work for the first time, hit the curb, crashed, and fell off.

I am not so keen on it anymore. It needs overhauling.

2008-04-11T21:45:00.006+02:00

After eighteen months of it idling in the cellar, I released my bike onto the open road and finally took it to the repair shop last Saturday. I asked that they return it in a state fit to ride. In excited anticipation of gently cycling through the summer months and reduced-effort trips to the Penny Market, I went to collect it last night.

A sharp sleek racing machine with razor-thin tyres and a shine so high I could see my own startled face in the paintwork was wheeled out.

For a few moments I actually thought it might be mine; I had simply asked them to make it rideable – did that involve changing the handlebars, replacing the seat, adding a crossbar, and painting it black? I wasn’t sure.

There was also the fleeting idea of not acknowledging the mistake and claiming this superior model as my own, a thought that was swiftly dismissed if not for the slack scruples but because my daily route to work takes me past the very front door of the bike shop.

The repair man looked rather baffled when I said that this was not in fact my bike. Did he not remember the aged and rusty bicycle I had handed over to him not four days ago?

“Das it nicht meine,” I said.

“Nein?!”

He asked me the make of my bike. I didn’t know. I hadn’t paid much attention to the details when I purchased it in deep December 2006 and I didn’t recall any markings when I was parking it in the cellar for the next 18 months. All I know is it’s blue.

“Mein ist blau,” I said helpfully. He returned the gleaming sports bike into the workshop and came back out.

“Die Name war….?”

“Sophie,” I said for the third time. He disappeared into the back only to come out again. He strode over to his colleague and they conducted a low conversation in swift German that involved looking at and pointing to the row of bikes for sale outside the shop and consulting the computer.

I began to worry that they had sold my bike, or perhaps when I wheeled it in on Saturday, tyres wheezing and puffing with the effort, rather than “Please fix this,” I’d mistakenly announced “I’ve brought this in for scrap”.

A few moments later, however, I was reunited with my bike and we rode home together. It really is much quicker with a bike.

At the weekend I will take it for a spin to the Famila, where I will buy a wire basket for the back and truly embrace German living.

It really needs overhauling but as a great philosopher once wrote,

“There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can 'overhaul' it or you can ride it.”

I prefer to ride mine so the rust can stay for now.

2008-04-04T20:02:00.005+02:00

For comparison, this was Easter Sunday last year.

This year, in England, was rather different. I woke up at 6am on Sunday and, for no reason, looked out of my bedroom window. Saturday evening had been damp, cold, and drizzly so it was with some surprise to see that snow, lots of the best fluffy, crisp kind, had arrived overnight.

Later that morning as Adam and I were sitting at the dining table eating breakfast and trying not be stuck on the Guardian crossword, I suggested it'd be nice to go for a walk. The garden backs onto hills and a farm, which is ideal for the kind of winter-wonderland lovers' stroll I pictured.

"Great idea!" cried sister, appearing from nowhere and pulling on her coat and hat.

"Ah well..." I pointlessly began.

"I'll get the sledge, meet you outside!"

The eagerly constructed snowman, wearing a rather smashing hat, and sister hiding from the snowball Adam tried to sneak up on her.

So five minutes later, Adam, sister, sister's friend Lewis, and I went up the lane past the farm, some walking, some being dragged higgledy–piggledy on a sledge (as above), and found a suitably big hill down which to hurtle at high speed. We also found a small quarry of water frozen over that we took turns throwing sticks and snowballs onto, the kind of thing that's fun when you're playing in the surprise snow.

My brother and I used to play up here when we were sister's age; it felt like being a kid again.

"Good shot, whose turn is...LEWIS GET BACK HERE, YOU DO NOT GO NEAR THE EDGE!!

Perhaps not.

Two big kids, one tiny sledge

Snow angel

Snow Jesus-on-Cross. I think it's the camera angle.

By the following morning it had all but melted; the snowman's midriff remained resolutely steadfast in the middle of the lawn, getting steadily grubbier and decreasing in radius until it too had disappeared.

It was one of the most enjoyable Easters I've had, even though my egg count is now down to two. It's a sad indication that you've achieved adulthood when you're the one buying the eggs for the children in the family. Luckily my baby sister needed *help* eating her Milche chocolate bunny (though she was surprisingly more capable than I'd credited a one-year-old. She gave me several meaningful stares that clearly indicated she could manage.).

The thing is, if it hadn't been for my sister (the one old enough to drag me out of bed to go sledging) we'd have gone for a walk instead, which would no doubt have been very pleasant but not quite as much fun as we had.

2008-04-01T19:52:00.005+02:00

A momentous event: may I present my first ever completed cryptic crossword!

Note how the grid is fully occupied with correct answers rather than swear words penciled in in frustration. Note the patient solving of the clues in the margins and at the bottom of the page, and the absence of evidence of screwing up the page and setting fire to the crossword. I am proud indeed.

Admittedly it was a combined effort between myself and Adam and it was only the Manchester Evening News but I have since managed to wade, unaided, three quarters of the way through the Observer and have now moved on to the Guardian.

They do say that success is 99% perspiration and 1% ripping the newspaper to shreds and kicking the sofa in bitter defeat; it's taken eight months, but Zoran is finally getting his money's worth from that subscription he bought for my birthday.

2008-03-16T19:47:00.000+01:00

My recent visit to the Homeland did much to revive the spirits, despite a troublesome and traumatic journey to England brought on, I’m convinced, by my own doing. For no reason that I can think of, apart from perhaps a desire to give my new German credit card a test run (rather than wait until I find myself entangled in the next financial crisis), I purchased, two days before my trip home, travel insurance.

It did occur to me that perhaps I was tempting that bitter and mildly sadistic mistress Fate by doing so; having taken upwards of seven hundred identical journeys between Here and There the most grievous problem experienced to date was when the Lufthansa drinks trolley passed me by.

I left my flat and set out into the eye of a hurricane, battling my way onto the tram through horizontal rain that whipped across my face and undid everything nice I’d done to my hair five minutes earlier. The horrendous weather caused my train to the airport to depart ten minutes late. This wasn’t too disastrous but as I’ve now got my flight-catching procedure (catch train, arrive at airport, board plane) timed to the minute there is little room for error in the thirty-minute train ride.

The train went progressively slower until we had stopped entirely and the train began to rust. My flight was due to leave at 11.25. At 10.30 I was anxious. At 10.45 I was out of my seat with anger and impatience. I already had my boarding pass and no luggage to check in; if we arrived now I could make it. At 11 o’clock I pressed myself up against the door and began the process of forcing myself through the glass one atom at a time to speed up my exit when we eventually arrived.

At 11.10 when the train finally crawled into the station I had resigned myself to the embarrassing situation of, for the first time ever, missing a flight. I strolled wearily through to departures, busily working on the lie I would tell Mum and Adam, who would be awaiting my arrival in Manchester, that would free me of blame and responsibility, when I saw that my flight was also delayed, allowing me just sufficient time to hurtle through to security, who searched my bags and I painstakingly slowly while the sound of the clock on the nearby wall ticking off the seconds to departure thundered in my ears.

I ran as fast as my legs would co-operate to passport control where the passport officer leisurely scrutinised my photograph for any resemblance to Bin Laden, and arrived at the gate with a comfortable ten seconds to spare before it was announced that the flight was delayed for a further three hours.

As always happens when you are saved from a catastrophe only to be presented with an new inconvenience, relief immediately gave way to annoyance and I sank back in my sticky plastic seat to begin a long, uncomfortable wait.

At Frankfurt airport, passengers flying to England are subject to two security checks; the inference that somewhere between the first and second checks I may have somehow fashioned a weapon made only from objects either smuggled through the first check or available in the airport Bistro is most bizarre but the worst part is that after the final check there is nowhere to buy a drink.

Maybe it’s psychological but I instantly feel paralyzed by thirst and have to go back out to buy a an exuberantly priced beverage, drink it in one go under the glare of the eagle-eyed security people, go through security, and immediately have to come back out again to use the toilet. This charade continues until it is time to board.

Once on the plane and in the air after a shaky and violent takeoff, and I had chosen to direct the entire force of my bad mood towards the man across the aisle for having a permanent smirk on his face, things got worse when I spilled my miniscule Lufthansa glass of juice, which I had been sipping at an almost invisible rate so as to make it last, all over my boots and the trousers of the air hostess.

There was a teenage boy sitting next to me, who kept calling out to his friend “Lucas” sitting three rows in front, and then ducking down to hide as his friend called back. After the third time I was ready to stab them both, and realised that this is the real reason they don’t let you bring sharp objects on board. Had I a knitting needle and a pair of tweezers at that point they would be looking at each other’s speared necks from beneath a pair of severely plucked eyebrows.

We came into land just as the storm was really getting into its stride. The aircraft jerked around and dropped and tipped such that it felt like being on a rickety roller coaster that’s been on the news for being mechanically unsafe. I was scared for my life; I gripped the arms of the chair and cursed the travel insurance again. I looked over to the man across the aisle; he was still smirking. I concentrated on planning to use his leg to springboard me to the emergency exit when the time inevitably came.

The ground suddenly loomed up from below and in an instant we crashed heavily onto the runway. I had got part way through an utterance of thank God before we shot back up into the air, the plane almost vertical and the sound of high-pitched hysterics and heaving issuing from the front.

The captain’s voice appeared on the intercom to inform us that it was too windy and unsafe to land so we would make a “go around” and try again. The second time, thankfully, we landed safely, and a pair of shaky legs carried me off the plane.

An interminably slow passport-control queue completed the nightmare journey and I emerged into the arrivals lounge to the greetings of a wearied pair of mother and boyfriend, who had been waiting for four hours and had all but given up on me ever appearing.

It might have been worth it if I could have claimed for anything on the travel insurance, which was the source of all that went wrong- it seems weakened nerves and being extremely pissed off aren’t covered - and I had but 48 hours to recover before I had to make the whole trip again in reverse.

2008-02-29T18:48:00.006+01:00

Recently here in Deustchland the weather has been filled with the hopes of Spring, a new season ready to burst into bloom as soon as Winter gives up its grip. This was the view from my balcony last weekend, which was so joyously fresh and such a pleasing change from the soggy tide of rain that has clouded the panorama since November that I was moved to fetch my camera:

However, a new lead blanket of weary fatigue lines the skies today and a pathetic stream of steady drizzle has hung in the air, which I have taken as a personal reflection of my own melancholy. This morning's rain did allow me to wear my trenchcoat though, which makes me feel like a unsettling combination of Holly Golightly and Columbo.

As a further display of solidarity it seems a small Armageddon has arrived in my freezer. An Exit-Grief-induced overzealous slamming of the door after oven-chip retrieval caused it to rebound and subsequently not close properly.

It had to be the pizza that suffered, didn't it? Notice how the peas go free!

So I have this untimely woe to attend to when I return from England next week, which will be March and which I hope will be a fair improvement on February, which has been rather bleak and was a day longer than usual! If it wasn't a leap year I'd already be home by now.

2008-02-27T21:50:00.003+01:00

Today was Brid’s last day and hence a fresh and enormous bout of Exit Grief, which this evening brought on a severe case of oven chips, pyjamas, and 24 Season One.

I will next see her if I either find a fabulous stash of air miles and present myself to her hospitality in Canada, or receive an invitation to Irish Wedding Part 3.

It was the usual company procedure for a Departing Colleague; we all surrounded Brid at her desk in an aggressive and oppressive farewell circle and presented her with a gift. The Senior Management Colleague gave a thank-you-and-get-out speech and then we ate slices of cake, the people that didn't know her so well standing around trying not to look embarrassed that they'd dived head first into the cake, and me standing around trying not to cry.

People leave. It's the way it is but it's hard to take.

On Saturday evening we had her leaving party at the Irish pub near the train station, which was very busy with burly English types watching the rugby and then trying to watch the rugby as a bearded Irish man and his guitar performed enthusiastic acoustic folk songs in front of the big screen for the next two hours.

Brid and I went to Yam Yam beforehand, a Thai fast-food place that prints its menu in eight different languages and has walls painted in a lively shade of green. Overwhelmed by choice, a waitress walked past holding aloft a steaming bowl of appetizing smells; she called out 44, which is what I ordered when I got to the front.

It wasn’t the best beef soup I’ve ever eaten, if that’s indeed what it was. Along with the identifiable ingredients of beef, water, noodles, water, grease, noodles, and water were suspicious balls of rubbery grey matter, which Adam assured me were cow testicles when I described them over the phone. I can’t say for sure but I imagine €6.20 is a good price for cow testicles.

This is perhaps as tempting as the “cattle hip” featured on the English menu at a bar in Heidelberg or the smoked ham, which, on the breakfast menu at a café in town, is translated as simply “carcinogen.”

This weekend I am going to the Homeland; I am thankful for the timing of this trip as I suspect that were I here in the Deutschland I would be so consumed with Exit Grief that I would likely ingest an enitre box of chicken nuggets and not get dressed for two days.

2008-02-21T17:29:00.005+01:00

Not the view from my balcony last night

I woke up at 4 am last night and wandered sleepily onto the balcony (immediately returning for slippers after stepping barefoot onto the icy stone) where, instead of a glowing blood-red moon in the full throes of a total lunar eclipse resplendent in the night sky, there was only a thick blanket of smudgy grey cloud to be witnessed, along with various of my rooftop neighbours wrapped in dressing gowns rubbing their eyes and looking skywards.

I went back inside disappointed, to find a text from Adam:

"Zero visibility here, can't see nuffin or nuffin!!"

I quickly fell back to sleep, where I dreamed that I saw the eclipse and it was damn good.

2008-02-14T19:15:00.008+01:00

To continue with the theme of Bad News (and no, it isn’t that tonight, rather than revelling in the soft lilt of sweet serenade in between a foot massage and champagne top-ups administered by an oiled and obedient man, I will be alone and loveless whilst my Valentine goes to the darts with his dad, staying at Mum’s in Manchester and sleeping in my bed, no less; I looked, but could find nobody else to blame as the darts tickets were my own choosing, an inspired Christmas gift purchased in November when my head and mouth were full of chocolate Santas and thoughts of fat little scantily covered cherubim wielding archery equipment were far from my mind) in two weeks’ time Brid is leaving.

This will impart a sizeable deficit in the pros of living abroad (the list of which is beginning to tilt heavily towards the cons) and be a serious upset to the balance of my usual exposure to a mxiture of Sensible Girl Talk and Boy Waffle.

I will miss her as much as I miss orange squash, the Saturday Guardian, and any kind of three-dimensional nonelectronic interaction with a person I’ve known for more than eighteen months.

As is the usual case with people leaving, I have acquired a lot of Brid’s stuff, which includes a pine desk that was disassembled in ten minutes in Brid’s flat by Zoran and Guido, watched over by her fat cat Beag who looks like Garfield’s older brunette brother, in ten minutes on Sunday afternoon and reassembled by me in the spare room over the course of an angry and sweaty two hours on Sunday evening.

I filled the draws with things that I will never again look at it until I am leaving and it is time to disassemble the desk and pawn it off onto a newly arrived migrant Colleague.

I arranged the laptop, a digital photoframe that was a surprisingly normal Christmas present from Dad, Brid’s lamp, and several academic text books that I claimed for free at one of the Book Department’s regular clearouts and amassed into a forboding and dangerously heavy pile by the side of my work station and carried home one at a time over the course of a year; the effect is rather studious.

Other things gleaned from Brid include a three-foot emerald-green draft excluder in the shape of a snake whose name is Saint Patrick, a sewing machine from the days shortly after time began, and a handheld electric English-plug whisk, which I've wanted ever since I discovered that my blender doesn't blend.

When Cara left last year she gave me a coffee machine, which is large and grey and taking up the last available worktop area and that I’ve only ever used once to brew a pot of grizzly brown water that subsequently turned to mould.

Why is nobody ever getting rid of a dishwasher or a Jacuzzi or a flight to the southern hemisphere?

2008-02-11T19:33:00.000+01:00

A summary of the bad news: Chief has recently resigned his post as Chief. Blows being described as major or minor, this falls into the major category, although it was not a complete, or indeed any kind of, shock; working in Dublin, some professional differences with the New Boss (who, it seems, is currently in the process of taking over the world), and the dynamic nature and high staff turnover of the company meant that maintaining his position as Editor-in-Chief became increasingly difficult and he took the inevitable decision to leave. Plus he has a new, better job.

With Cara moving to America late last year and last summer's replacement of Denis the Production Colleague* with the equally nice but twice as old with half the banter Agnes, Chief's departure reduces the members of the journal's original team to me, which can be a strain on motivation and morale and other office-based jargon beginning with M.

I was surprised to find that after the initial expressions of regret at this news the main concern of the Management Colleagues (to whom I will refer as Blackberries, as company policy welcomes Colleagues elevated from Underling level, where I currently languish as a sub, to the superior rank of Management with an ostentatious Blackberry device, instruction in the art of the brisk walk, and a new lunch slot) was not the fate of the journal or how we would cope with the crippling work loads and the simultaneous transitions to a new typesetter and a New Chief, who himself was already spread wafer thin between two journals, but the issue of Chief’s work-loaned laptop.

“Shame about Chief leaving, isn’t it?” I would sigh with deep regret and heavy sadness.

“Yeh…” replied Blackberry. A pause. “Is he sending the laptop back?”

“Er…I don’t know, I suppose so. Eventually.”

“Mmm. You should remind him, make sure he hasn’t forgotten.”

“I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten…”

“Well just make sure.”

I didn’t mention it again until a couple of weeks ago when I heard that Chief and Mrs. Chief planned to visit Germany to say goodbye. I tentatively broached the subject with the nearest Blackberry.

“Chief’s coming over next weekend, we’re having a leaving do.”

“Good. Is he bringing the laptop?”

I have now handed it back to IT on behalf of Chief and hope this signifies a degree of closure on both sides. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed a hostile attitude towards departing (or deserting, as it seems to be interpreted) Senior Colleagues; when In-Charge-Of-Company Colleague left last year his name plaque was crowbarred off the door and his office bulldozed before he’d even driven off the premises.

It’s tough at the top.

*We refer to one another as Colleagues, which if you ask me has a sinister touch of the Animal Farm about it.

2008-02-06T21:31:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I met Adam in Amsterdam for his birthday weekend. I had an involved and romantic plan to meet him in arrivals at Schipol airport, which was then relegated to the Centraal train station in the city when I found his flight arrived a full three hours after mine. This was then changed to meeting indoors, at the hotel, when I saw the weather.

I caught the train from the airport to the centre and stepped out of the station. It was grim. It had just gone five and the light was already gone. The rain was blowing in at exactly the right angle to get under my hat, allowing the icy wind to blow directly into my brain; I had to keep one hand clamped to my head while the other battled a flimsy umbrella whirling about like an unruly kite stuck in the wheels of a overhead rollercoaster.

I struggled along the Damrak, the huge busy road leading directly away from the station, with a heavy holdall and the spokes of the umbrella jabbing me in the eye. It blew inside out for the third time and then I dumped it in the bin.

My sense of direction (s.o.d.) is not strong and rarely do I trust or rely on it. I barely even consult it these days and instead try to have with me a map or an Adam for orientation purposes. On this occasion however I fancied there was a possibility that luck or chance, or possibly both, favoured me and I set about finding the hotel unaided.

The Damrak ends in Dam Square: several smaller streets then lead off from the square and I knew that the Cornerhouse Hotel was, as the name suggests, on the corner of one of them. I walked across the square and along the street facing opposite to the Damrak. I emerged into the outskirts of Amsterdam some twenty-five minutes later. I turned around, walked back to the square, and picked another street.

Anybody watching the square that evening would have seen an exasperated and soggy English girl wearing a half-on-half-off hat, soaked to the skin, squishing across Dam Square under the weight of a tasteful white-leather weekend bag, periodically disappearing down side streets only to emerge five minutes later back on the square, groaning in desperation and pulling out an increasingly soggy Google map to stare at it in deep annoyance.

The thing is, I had been to this hotel before. And its situation as I remembered it was not where the map claimed it to be. I was determined that this time my s. o. d. would be vindicated and I could boast to Adam a glorious tale of effortless navigation in which I found the place with one eye and pure memory. I then thought that if he could see me now in my attempts to locate the hotel with both a map and having stayed there before he would, quite literally, go mental.

By this time I was cold, wet, hungry, and tired (in that order), and getting concerned about the looks I was attracting from what appeared to be, at a hurried glance, a lunatic. After fruitlessly exploring all other options I conceded to the map and set off along the one remaining street, all the while my feet aching and my s.o.d. screaming in protest as I was now walking, according to my s.o.d., backwards.

I took a hairpin left turn and shortly found myself in a dark and sinister alley. I glanced at my map; I was going the right way. I looked up to see a dark and sinister man with the darkest of sinister grins, who nodded towards me and said in a James-Bond-baddie accent, “Lost in Amsterdam eh, I can help…” and motioned me to follow.

“Ah no thanks”, I said quickly, “I’m not lost, I’m staying here,” jerking my thumb towards the building on my right. The stranger raised his eyebrows and sauntered off. Relieved and a bit impressed with my quick thinking and danger-aversion techniques, I looked across to find that I was apparently lodging at the Turkish Embassy but that didn’t matter.

Thankfully it wasn’t long before I found the Cornerhouse and put myself into a hot shower followed by a warm bed. Adam had called to say he was delayed so I had a while to wait. I toyed with the idea of heading back out into the city but with the wind and rain still howling outside the window the notion of staying in bed with the TV on was preferable.

I had the idea that Adam would arrive in the hotel to find me in the bar, perched sophisticated and sexy on a stool at the bar, sipping an outrageous cocktail and perhaps smoking a long and fragrant cigarette. Alas, I should have known this wasn’t to be for two reasons: 1) It never is, and 2) it wasn’t that kind of hotel.

It was rooms above a dark, narrow, five-table, smoky bar, the staircase to which was behind a hole in the back wall. Everyone knew each other and all eyed me suspiciously when I walked in and then eyed Adam suspiciously when he walked in three hours later; he looked around and then said to the barman “Where’s the hotel?!”

“This is the hotel!" he replied, indignation present in his thick Dutch accent. "What is your name?” he asked, looking at the guest book.

Adam, using his talking-to-foreigners style of communication, shook his head and replied, “You don’t need my name: I’m here for a lady.”

He was pointed through the hole in the back wall and directed to room 17. I sprang out of bed at the knock on the door and the weekend began.

2008-02-01T21:11:00.001+01:00

In recent months I have begun to take an interest in the words that visitors to Paradise Deustch type into Google and consequently find their way here. I won't say anymore but present a choice selection below:

Impact factor 6 I know, brilliant, isn’t it?!

Van hire site blogspot.com Sounds like a brilliant read.

Adam sophi blog germany

Brid’s shoes On Brid’s feet

Deutsch sexy

Deutsche nicknames The Hoff?

German Irish wedding

Picture of Brid of Paradise Maybe if you ask nicely

“Astonishingly hairy” This is worrying enough but the quotation marks make it more so. When they said hairy they meant it!

Bow to anger Don’t. Be strong.

Fear of running out of anything

Testament of Gideon Mack A great idea for a book but a disappointing story

Wearing two bras Always, especially in winter

What about Tom? Aachen What about him?

2 sexy for ya German I doubt it

Adam Sophie Germany blog

Americans in Mannheim There certainly are, especially in the cinemas and being obnoxious on the trams

Apartments near Den Haag University They looked reasonable from what I saw

Aussie girl keen http://www.zorandinev.com/

Bahnkarte Aachen Ask Tom

Boot mug for gluhwein You’ll have to wait till December but you can get them at all the big Weihnachtsmarkts

Bump-started deutsch Don’t know about bump start but starterkabel are useful

Cadbury caramel cake Tasty

Cara hen night Berlin You missed it

Cuff links Prague sign

Den Haag with my wife night attraction I don’t want to know

Deustch boys

Deutsch dutch There’s a fight waiting to happen

Deustch refused to pay for wedding Tight bastard

Deustch joke Kommt ein Skelett zum Arzt. Sagt der Arzt, "Sie hätten früher kommen sollen".

DIY coat rack Won’t pay for a wedding and wants to do his own coat rack. Miser.

Guido name pronunciation Collect a decent wad of phlegm in throat, make a noise as if you were coughing up an outsized hairball, and finish it off with “doe”.

Hanging drying rack balcony rope

Heidelberg Penny Market It’s on the street parallel to Hauptstrasse, open 8 till 10 weekdays, 7 till 10 Saturdays.

Hen party L plate explanation It stands for Learner.

Horrible toothache dentist drill Please don’t!

How to paint numbers onto wheelie bins Take paint, take bin, paint on bin.

Handelstrasse Bremen

I have completed one year Congratulations!

I love thee Deustch Ich liebe thee.

I’m “totally blind” and “astonishingly hairy”?

Is Ikea open on Sundays in Mannheim Germany? No.

Justin homeopathy deutsch Try the Thai place on Brid’s street.

Justin Timberlake “hairy legs” Pervert.

Kakaopulver

Ladies from Germany with long toenails Pervert.

Lesbian in Den Haag

Michel nickname fuer Deustch What’s wrong with Michel?

Mix sexy in bathroom

New Years fireworks at Heidelberg Castle It’s carnage.

Nicknames for Adam

Pacing up and down auf Deutsch? Auf und abschreiten. Ich schreite auf und ab! (I am pacing up and down!)

Paradisedeutsch patch

Parcel Germany to England Only if it has four corners.

Photo of Gideon Mack He’s fictional.

Preeti pronounce Prithi.

Reindeers eyelashes The DIY coat rack man is making his own sweeping brushes.

Remind me later in Deustch Erinnere mich später daran

Renewing a German passport in England Has to be easier than the reverse.

Revolving restaurant in Mannheim television tower Skyline Service awful, expensive food, but the view’s worth it.

Rik Mayall meeting fans You don’t want to go down that path, believe me.

Sexy men of Arminia

Signing a card to a new girlfriend Ask Disco Dave

Sinterklaas rhyme on boss Toss?

Sly clock deutsch

Sophie nice (1) part 2

Sorry one could smell bratwurst Well it is Germany.

Don’t hassle the Hoff Wise words

Double barrel surnames and problems Don’t get me started!

Double barrel surnames possible+passport Possible and compulsory in my case.

Emergency reorganization

Fabulous breath text Deutsch Fabulous breath?!

Fantastishe vier fornika blogspot I’ll have to check this out myself.

Fear of heights climbing Kilimanjro Stew managed it.

Frankfurt Den Haag train ICE Four and a half hours, change at Utrecht.

Frankfurt nice place wedding I’d say so.

Gay rentboy in Manchester Pervert. Rather concerned that this kind of search leads to Paradise Deustsch.

German haircut Only if you want a mullet.

German housewarming customs Same as everyone else’s.

German silvester It’s lively.

Germany sauna british prude I’m glad others besides me worry about this.

Giant inflatable tents Germany Those are two words I would never expect to describe a tent.

Sourpuss woman She’s still here.

The british embassy in Dusselfdorf Don’t trust them with your passport!

The hoff carrier bag

Uncle Nicky Guido jail sentence I knew it, he has convict written all over his face. Uncle Nick was just an innocent bystander .

Wedding Brid bag

What do the numbers mean on German flour? No idea.

What happened to Gutenberg’s original printing press? It’s in the Gutenberg Museum, Liebfrauenplatz, Mainz, €3 entry. I can’t vouch for it personally as when Zoran and I got there it was closed.

Where to get some sleep in Frankfurt airport Anywhere in Terminal 2.

Zorrers http://www.zorandinev.com/

Paradise deutsch Guido is a bum Not always.

Paradise deutsch Guido is magnificent Guido has an inflated ego.

Paradise deutsch women love Guido If you say so.

Paradise deutsch Guido is gay We don’t know that for sure.

Maintenance Work

2008-01-23T19:16:00.000+01:00

Paradise Deutsch is currently undergoing refurbishment. Patience is kindly requested until next week, when the new-look Paradise Deustch will be unveiled (unveiled - how exciting!).

The overhaul should be complete after the weekend, provided I don't get tangled up in HTML, templates, and widgets, lose all posts, accidentally switch language into Farsi, shut down site entirely, unleash virus onto Blogger, hit head on desk, wish I'd never started, try to fix errors, regret life, and go mad.

Stay tuned Readers.

Sophie

2008-01-16T17:05:00.000+01:00

Saturday was a six-hour round road trip to Cologne to collect two lime-green chairs from a German Christian design shop. You know, the usual.

Guido hired a car for the occasion as La Voiture, which he didn’t mention while we were hurtling along the autobahn during last week’s forty-minute drive back from the airport, has lately been given up for scrap and is now without MOT or insurance.

Until he can decide on a fitting and cheap farewell (ideas so far include selling the tyres with car attached, setting fire to it at the waste ground near the gym, or driving to the edge of the country and pushing it across the Polish border) Guido is naturally keen to attract as little attention as possible from the Polizei and reasoned that wedging two second-hand lime-green rocking chairs into the back of the wheezing La Voiture might not be wise.

Three hours and a short stop at the charming Gustico autobahn services later and we arrived at the address. The inside was nothing more than a warehouse packed high and wide with 1980s reclaimed furniture, bits of wood, and all manner of unusual objects, which I covertly photographed whilst Guido enquired as to the whereabouts of his green chairs.

A wooden bust of Voldemort isn't something you see every weekend

At first I was struggling to see where the Christian element had been incorporated into the designs but then this oil painting of the Virgin Mary and a four-foot wooden monochrome giraffe made it clearer.

After ten minutes Guido reappeared with the chairs; I searched his face for signs of malcontent but he gave nothing away. We arranged the chairs German-style at right angles in the boot and set off for another three hours of autobahn and Take That's Greatest Hits, a Christmas gift from Cassie that had caused 200 kilometres of silent seething from Guido during the first leg of the journey.

Guido dropped me at Brid's house that evening, where I drank enough red wine such that my feelings towards an early morning trip to the gym had become rather hostile by the time Sunday rolled around. Remembering my new-year plan I eventually made it and met Guido and Mike outside.

"How are the chairs?!" I asked Guido brightly, before turning to Mike with, "Yesterday we drove 500 kilometres to Cologne and back in a hired car in the pouring rain amid traffic jams and bad German radio, which took up the whole of Saturday. But it was worth it, wasn't it?!"

A pause.

"I don't like them."

2008-01-13T19:18:00.000+01:00

The only good thing about flying back to Germany last Monday was the unique occasion of being picked up from the airport. Of the countless journeys to Frankfurt made over the past 19 months, every single one has required a thirty-minute train ride followed by a forty-minute tram ride to convey me home.

Last week, however, Guido and his on-its-last-legs car, La Voiture, were awaiting my arrival into Frankfurt. I slung my half-ton suitcase, bulging at the seams with various items collected during my three weeks in England, into the boot and sank into the front seat to begin moaning about the imminent prospect of going back to work.

Christmas already seems to be weeks gone. Adam and I spent most of my trip home together but spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day with our own families. There was the usual mountain of presents beneath our tree (note the chair in the right of the picture, hosting Rudolph's apple and Santa's sherry), including this rake for Adam’s dad, which we had wrapped as best we could.

Fortunately, his dad is not always terribly perceptive and Adam knew the rake would attract little enquiry beyond how to accommodate it in the boot of the car. His dad arrived to pick Adam up two days before Christmas; Adam, holding the rake, which you’ll notice from the picture I had cunningly disguised as a spade, informed his dad that he had this large, awkward-shaped gift to take with them. His dad looked at it enquiringly.

“Who’s that for?”

“It’s for Neil,” replied Adam. “It’s, er,…an oar. He’s saving up for a boat.”

“Right. Shove it the back. Let’s go.”

On Christmas morning, his dad was, apparently, delighted with the rake and equally pleased with the pair of elbow-length pond gloves that we’d discovered in the same shop.

It almost seems a cliché to say that I ate too much during the festive period but after countless mince pies, fish and chips, Mum’s breakfasts, and dinners at the Thai Café, I have arrived back in Deutschland with renewed determination to embrace a healthy and active lifestyle, ready to admit that blogging and knitting are not sports, and wine is not a fruit.

While enthusiasm still burned I made the first trip of 2008 to the Penny Market and purchased this impressive array of nutritious goodness and arranged it in the kitchen where I can best adsorb the full benefit of its virtuous vitamin-filled promise.

As if to encourage this feat, as soon as my back was turned the gym took another six months’ membership fee from my already damaged bank account. I went down there on Thursday with gritted teeth, urging myself to come to terms with the German nudity amid reminders that this is indeed good for me. I went again this morning and am hoping that this uncharacteristic energetic bout of gym-going will not only be sustained but become something of a routine.

Two weeks into the new year and the signs so far are good.

Frohe Weihnachten!

2007-12-24T18:47:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the intermittent service but I am currently lolling under a jolly pastry mountain of mince pies, and efforts to drag myself from the cheering smell of warm mulled wine wafting up my nose whilst ensonced cosy and warm on the couch in front of The Great Escape have been minimal.

Regular service will be resumed soon but meanwhile Merry Christmas alles.

2007-12-11T19:53:00.000+01:00

I am struggling with some German gym issues.

Call me a prude, but I cannot come to terms with the absolute and outrageous nudity in the changing rooms. I am simply not used to it.

I am British. Back home they build cubicles into the changing rooms to preserve one's modesty and to screen unsightly horrors such as body hair and verrucas from those of us who are of a delicate nature and would prefer not to be visually assaulted by the sweaty nakedness of strangers, thank you very much! Hmmph!

In English gyms, and obviously I can only speak for the women, so afraid are we of exposing even the slightest hint at nudity that we will go to extraordinary lengths to remain covered. The transition from clothing to swimsuit can be excruciatingly slow, involving more manoevres than a military operation and will likely as not at some point see the woman wearing two bras simultaneously and concealing at least one bum cheek in her own locker.

Another point. The German-towel stereotype, which I wasn't all that convinced actually exists, extends to gym equipment.

2007-12-04T21:32:00.000+01:00

Mannheim’s Christmas market was in full swing when we arrived on Friday night and in true German style the hut with the boot-shaped cups was in the exact same location as last year. I drank two glühweins in quick succession, burning my mouth and necessitating multiple visits to the toilets in the Englehorn department store opposite.

We wandered around getting cold for a while, looking at the hundreds of different stalls and stands that all sell things made of wood, except one, which you will find at any German market, that sells dustpans and scrubbing brushes made of baby-reindeer eyelashes or something equally exotic and expensive.

I began to sway under the influence of two mugs of gluhwein and turned my attention to food. There were many tempting and lip-smacking options available (Krustenbraten or Hähnchengyros, anyone?)

but quickly settled on Dinnetes, pizza bases topped with potato, onion, and cheese (and the ubiquitous Speck but that goes without say), which are served straight from the oven on the end of a shovel by a huge sweaty bald man in a string vest and that I’ve only ever eaten at Christmas markets. Yum.

After waking up on Saturday morning and eating up to 6, plus 19 and all the 20s, on my Advent calendar, I compiled a Christmas card list. Last time I was in England, my sister gave me a packet of Christmas cards that she had designed. All the children in her school submitted a picture to go on Christmas cards, packets of which were then printed and sold to parents at cripplingly expensive prices.

I remembered that among the various bits and pieces Cara left me when she moved away was a box of Christmas cards. I found it on a shelf in the understairs cupboard (which isn't actually under any stairs but serves the same purpose). The back of the box promised eight unique and exciting designs but upon opening it this proved to be a rather bold exaggeration as they are essentially all the same. I'm no artist but I don't think that just moving the writing should count.

Still, never one to waste a free packet of cards I wrote them, posted them, and went to work on Monday feeling contentedly merry to find that work had also entered, somewhat less wholeheartedly, into the spirit of the season and erected in the lobby this beacon of miserly nod towards festivity:

If you look very closely, I believe you can just about see the aching disappointment of the Herald Angels as they pack up to go hark glory to the newborn king elsewhere.

2007-11-28T20:19:00.000+01:00

It was Friday evening and the rain hadn't stopped. I was still at work.

"I'm debating what to do tonight," said Brid, leaning against a filing cabinet and staring out at the rain. My office has something of a view, all the better for seeing your life saunter past and kick back without you.

"What are your options?" I asked.

"It's a difficult choice between nothing and nothing."

"Good, we can do nothing together."

I found the boys huddled conspiratorially in the kitchen, Guido making a coffee and Zoran putting the fifth sugar in his tea.

"What are you two doing later?" I said, squeezing past to reboil the kettle.

"We're going to Ikea. Wanna come?" said Guido.

"Mmm, maybe. What are you getting?"

They both shrugged. "Don't know yet," said Zoran, stirring in the sixth sugar. "Maybe a wardrobe."

"Well Brid and I are going to a bar in Mannheim. Do you fancy that instead?"

After tramping up and down the same street in the rain a few times the boys and I found the place and hurried inside. It was small and cosy, with benches along the walls and round tables and chairs filling the rest of the room. We shook off the umbrellas and sat down.

An hour or so earlier Brid had shot out of work, shouting over her shoulder, "Someone wants to buy my car, I'll meet you there!"

We'd ordered drinks and had just begun to look hungrily at the food menu when the door opened and Brid came in followed by a shifty looking man, who hung back by the door.

She dumped a cardboard box full of junk onto the bench next to Zoran, said “Won’t be long, just need to take care of business”, and they disappeared off towards a shady corner.

A little later we ordered food and while we were waiting the boys began to root through the cardboard box. A pair of registration plates was sticking out of the top. Guido picked them up and passed them over to me. In Germany the plates belong to you, not the car.

“Brid can I have one of these please?” I asked as she came over, folding up her paper work and pocketing cash.

“Sure, but what for?” She caught the waiter’s attention, ordered a crepe (it was that kind of place), and sat down.

“I’ve got fond memories of that car," I said. "The way you had to talk it into gear and promise it a carwash before it’d go on the autobahn. You took me to Ikea in that car a few weeks after I’d arrived in Germany.”

“Yes, I remember that, it took all night!"

Nine fishbowls of wine and three milkshakes later Zoran and Brid sauntered off to their respective Wohnungs and Guido and I caught the tram.

Shortly after arriving home I fell into bed but apparently not before phoning Adam to tell him how much I love him and texting Brid to tell her how much I love her, something I had no recollection of until we were having dinner at Zoran’s on Sunday evening and Brid happened to comment on the number of spelling errors in my last text, which, as an editor, I should be ashamed of. Predictive text can be a curse.

On Saturday morning I managed to drag myself out of bed to the Penny Market, where I spent €25 on absolutely nothing that I wanted to eat and then got the train to Heidelberg. It is almost time for the Christmas markets to begin in Germany and the wooden huts and stalls were being assembled last weekend.

I had gone to Heidelberg with the intention of purchasing all my Christmas gifts, each one chosen effortlessly yet thoughtfully and perfect for its recipient, and returning home easy of mind and content of heart, to count how many days are left until I can open my Advent calendar. Sadly, for the thirteenth year in a row, this wasn’t to be, and I left Heidelberg with a single yellow elephant and one very small person ticked off the present list.

On Friday we are going for the first glühwein of the season at the Mannheim Christmas market. The very smell of glühwein makes me want to burst into a verse of Oh Come All Ye Faithful, which I can’t help but tunelessly hum throughout December, something that Cara had to endure last Christmas and that Lorna, who has recently overtaken her desk, will shortly be finding annoying.

You can buy gluhwein at practically every hut and stall in the Christmas markets and it costs around €2. It comes in small mugs of varying shapes and colours depending on the stall and city in Germany. There is a deposit that you get back on returning the mug, which you can otherwise keep (or buy a clean one).

My personal favourite

The words twee and naff would not be amiss here but this Christmas I will buy yet more as they remind me of standing huddled against the cold, the smell of mulled wine and bratwurst in the air, hymns drifting by, and Christmas tree lights winking.

Right now I don’t want to be anywhere else. Well, not for another three weeks anyway.

2007-11-15T15:21:00.001+01:00

At €160 for 48 hours in The Homeland it hardly seems worth it but thirty minutes after landing at Manchester I was sitting at the dining-room table, rain pouring against the window, a bowl of soup between myself and the Saturday Guardian, and I remembered why I do it.

In the evening Mum drove me forty miles up the M62 to Leeds, where Adam threw wide the front door and welcomed me into his house that boasts new brown carpet and no light bulbs. It was good to be back.

Jenko and Johnny were in the lounge when I arrived and amid the greetings and taking my coat off we managed perhaps a full eight seconds before Jenko’s regular comment, “Johnny’s seen you naked Soph. Cup of tea?”

Will arrived and sat hunched in a grey cloud of misery with the face of man that knows the only thing he has to look forward to after these accountancy exams is the monochrome life of an accountant. I tried to cheer him up with talk of his likely earnings and exactly how many golf balls he can buy with a five-figure salary but he waved me away and returned to contemplating his life by holding his head in his hands and groaning.

Adam and I left for the theatre shortly after and owing to some small misdirection of the taxi on my part arrived fifteen minutes late and had to watch the first half standing at the back with Adam dangerously close to a bad mood. This wasn’t helped by the stifling heat as the theatre seemed to have thrown in a free sauna experience, but the removal of a few winter layers, two pints of warm beer, and the claiming of our seats made the second half much more enjoyable.

After the play we went for a curry at Akbars where Adam again swallowed a mouthful down the wrong way but as this time we were in a proper curry house, his display earned nods of respect from other macho diners.

On Sunday afternoon my sister treated us to a demonstration of trumpeting delights, belting out Oh Come All Ye Faithful so loudly that I was shocked so much noise could issue from a single ten-year-old. I have all the musical skill of a deaf mute who has recently died so I am always impressed at anyone's ability to play an instrument. She kindly let me and Adam have a go (not at the same time of course), which made me even more in awe at her playing, as all we could manage was to blow raspberries over the mouthpiece and cover ourselves in spit. Sister was in stitches.

In a month I swap Deutschland for the Homeland for a whole two weeks, a thought that makes me say something like WHOOP!!

2007-11-14T19:38:00.000+01:00

Let me just say: I like Germany. This country has welcomed me with open arms, a loan of its slippers, and a puff on its pipe.

But.

There are some things that I just can’t get used to. Germans are so very strict: they have a lot of rules and the people that are entrusted to enforce them are old ladies. My landlady is a sterling example and terrorises me from the comfort of her overly ornamented living room.

To illustrate the Germans' poker-up-the-backside, jobsworth approach to law abiding and life in general, I will use the example of bin day.

Bin day in England sees the neighbourhood’s wheelie bins dragged willy nilly to the curb and arranged such that a dot-to-dot pattern drawn between them would trace a similar path to one Scouse Mark might follow after a heavy night on the shandy.

People paint on their bins the number of their house in enormous white figures, so rife is wheelie-bin theft among the British (I am chiefly drawing on my own experiences of Manchester and Leeds living).

Examples:

In this last example, ignoring the lewd purple colour (another antitheft technqiue?), note the irregular and haphazard arrnagement of the wheelie bins; note that, apart from the first one, the bins have taken up position in the exact centre of the pavement, causing maximum inconvenience to wheelchair users, blind people, and pedestrians in general. A typical example of an urban street on bin day in Britain.

For comparison, this is bin day in Germany:

Note the small, neat numbers painted on the front. They are the same size on each bin, which suggests to me that when Jürg decided to paint his house number onto his wheelie bin (as recommended in the council newsletter) he offered to do his neighbours’ at the same time. Considerate.

Note how, although the bin further along the street stands alone and is thus free to take up a jaunty, carefree stance not regulated by the immediate presence of other, more uniform bins, it is nevertheless perfectly aligned with the curb and the other bins.

The pile of rubbish next to it (a special council pick up; the green bins are for recycling and anything not on the list must be collected by prearranged appointment; I have lived here this long) has been thoughtfully positioned so as to occupy as little pavement as possible, and doesn’t look as if someone has upended a skip and poured some canal scum on top.

They may be very keen on regulation but note the corner of paper protruding from the bin in the forefront of the picture; I mean, come on – they’re not freaks.

These things I can deal with. Admirably righteous in principle and achingly tiresome in practice, I sort my rubbish into four different bins and wrap food waste in newspaper or paper bags (the correct size, of course) because it’s the rules and I’ll get fined if I don’t, warned my landlady though it was unclear whether it was her or the state that would be fining me. I’d rather not find out.

It is on pain of death by battering with a zimmer frame and shopping bag that I cross the road on a red man, and heaven forbid I put the washing machine on in the middle of the day. Fine - I can live with that. But some things are too much.

It was recently my mother’s birthday. I purchased and packaged a gift and went to the post office, being ever wary of the Handelstrassers lurking nearby (I will get a photo one day, I promise). By absolutely no chance at all I got the same woman as always, and no doubt her heart sank as much as mine when she saw me approach.

“Hello. It’s me again. I’d like to send this,” I said, putting my parcel on the counter, “to England please.”

She looked at me and then at the parcel. It was almost as if she was trying to think of a reason not to help me. She looked up.

“Sorry, we can’t. It’s the wrong shape,” she said sharply.

“I’m sorry – wrong shape? What do you mean?”

“We don’t take things with three corners.”

I couldn’t. Believe. My ears! Was this the OCD branch of the postal service? She was winding me up again, surely.

“Why not, what’s wrong with three corners?” I asked, trying to keep the rising frustration from my voice.

She said something about not being able to price how much it would be due to the irregular shape and it not stacking properly in the van. By the time I’d fully understand she was already peering behind me, indicating the next person in the queue to move forward.

I went home, cursing this land and its anal regulations and ridiculously pedantic natives. I emptied a cereal box, shoved the present and an explanatory note to Mum inside, and caught the tram to a different post office at the Rhein Neckar centre; I now had the required quota of right angles and was able to post to England a box of Special K with only the meanest of questioning glances from the cashier.

The outrageously shaped package that does not conform to the German postal pricing or transportation system.

Got im Himmel.

2007-11-12T19:13:00.001+01:00

The long-awaited, much-protested sonnet: I was sitting up in bed, a tray of champagne, coffee, juice, croissants, and roses balanced across my knees, and Adam by my side when I read it. Until Sunday he had been insistent that he hadn’t written it and that I shouldn’t be expecting anything because I’d be disappointed and Jesus Christ who even asks for a sonnet?!

He has absolutely forbidden its publication on Paradise Deutsch so you will have to accept my word that it was a hundred happy memories retold in comic and rhyming form with the perfect subtle message of love that I had unreasonably desired. My eyes blurred with tears, which spilled over onto the card.

Laughing and crying at the same time produces some horribly unflattering snot-nosed noises and I hurriedly reached for a tissue lest I shock my love into realisation that his girlfriend turns into an asthmatic warthog upon reading his poetry.

Bemused at my reaction, and secretly a little bit pleased with himself, Adam moved the breakfast tray and pulled me into a hug; I tried to keep my tear-stained face and choked-back sobs away from his ear, silently hoping that the cold he’d arrived with had made him a little bit deaf.

He told me his worries that all week his carefully laid plans had begun to fall out of line and that by Sunday morning he’d have nothing left. The first of these undoings came three days before the anniversary, standing on the platform at the Hauptbahnhof.

Mum and sister were waiting for their train to take them to the airport. As we stood stamping our feet against the cold and peering through the fog for signs of the approaching train, Mum wished us a happy anniversary and said that she hoped we’d have a nice day.

“Thanks! Mum’s bought us some champagne,” I said, turning to Adam.

He looked at Mum, his face blank. He looked like he might say something but just stood there in silence. Eventually it became clear that he wasn’t going to say anything.

“Oh,” said Mum. “He’s underwhelmed.”

Suddenly he came to life. “No no no, thanks very much! I’m not underwhelmed, it’s just…..well, I bought champagne,” he finished in a small voice.

“Oh, well mine’s nothing fancy; I just saw it and thought it might be nice for you on the morning!” said Mum quickly, glancing at me. “I’m sure yours is much nicer!”

Adam looked crestfallen.

“I was going to do champagne on the morning,” he said quietly.

“Here’s the train!” I cried, before Mum could say anything else.

Mum and sister departed for the airport and Adam and I went for a curry, he insisting that his surprise was ruined and that was it, we might as well not bother now.

“Come on,” I said, as the waiter came over, “we’ll still have a wonderful day and whatever you’ve got planned you know I’ll love it.”

He cheered up slightly and ordered an extra hot vindaloo; the Germans like curry but not in the same way that a Brit does. It certainly isn't spicy and if you're not sweating whilst eating it it's not really a curry is it. Adam asked for his to be “sehr scharf” (very spicy), which raised first one then the other of the waiter’s pair of large caterpillar eyebrows. Adam’s thorough repetition of the word “sehr” made the waiter call for his mother, who came over to confirm that yes, hot meant hot please.

Of course, although it was delicious, the curry we ate that evening could have been mashed up in a bowl and served as dessert on the kiddie menu at the curry houses we eat at in Manchester and Leeds. The German staff were shooting us sly glances as we ate, trying to detect signs of tongue-singeing distress.

Adam ate his curry with the casual nonchalance of a man who eats this every morning on his Weetabix and was happily chatting away when he accidentally swallowed a mouthful down the wrong way.

Loud, full-chest, red-in-the-face, thump-on-the-back coughing and spluttering engulfed the restaurant; the vindicated staff, with satisfied looks of “Ha! You English types, we show you!” playing on their faces, looked round to see tears streaming down Adam’s red, wide-eyed face as he threw a glass of water down his neck and clutched the edge of the table trying to breathe.

“I’m alright!” he wheezed out in a hoarse whisper, turning to the amused staff and trying to mime “down the wrong way!”

We could still hear the laughs when we lay in bed that night.

Concerning his anniversary plans Adam was further incensed when the flower shop delivered his roses a day early. “Great!” he said, throwing his arms in the air. “That’s it now. Seriously, we may as well not bother. Sunday, I specifically asked for Sunday!. Jesus.”

He woke me in the middle of the grey, wet morning with a sleepy kiss and crept out of bed. “Wait here,” he whispered, “I’ll be ten minutes.”

I heard him banging about in the kitchen, putting the kettle on and opening and closing the cutlery drawer. I had just turned over to doze in that pleasant interval before awake meets the qualifier wide when he put his around the bedroom door. “Got any scissors?”

“In the desk drawer in the spare room,” I mumbled from beneath the duvet. He went back out. I closed my eyes and thought back to the day I met Adam. It was September 2002; we were both 18 and, not as geeky as it sounds, physics undergraduates at Leeds University. We met on the first day, outside the library. I remembered thinking to myself….

“Got any sellotape?”

Wait. That wasn’t it.

“Soph? You awake? I need some sellotape. And a tray.”

I woke up. Adam was standing impatiently in the doorway in his boxers. Rubbing my eyes I told him where he could find what he was looking for and then arranged my pillows so that I might recline in a suitably delicate and feminine position such that upon reappearing with breakfast, Adam would be met with a picture of such elegant grace that he would be helpless but to devote himself to me ever after – a sound plan I thought but one that I was unable to effect with panache, knocking over a glass of water and banging my head on the bed frame in an attempt to plump the aforementioned elegant grace out of the uncooperative pillows.

Enter Adam. With an air of seductive manly romance he set the tray down on the bed and slid beneath the covers. After the sonnet he gave me a beautiful bound poetry anthology and we toasted the past five years.

It was sickeningly romantic and if it were anyone else I’d be the first heaving into a bucket and passing it round for others to do the same but on this occasion, I sank back into the pillows with easy delight, with nothing to ruin the moment save the incessant church bells and Adam tuning in the football on the bedside radio.

It was a happy anniversary.

2007-11-07T18:38:00.000+01:00

Readers: today is an important day in the history of Paradise Deustch, for November 7th 2007 marks one year since I began this blog. It was 365 days ago that I wrote my first ever post about German yoga (and no, I haven't been back) and began to document my experience of moving abroad.

Not only that but today Paradise Deustch is also celebrating its 100th post! T o mark this doubly momentous occasion I invited a very special guest blogger to appear in the main text (not relegated to the sidebar like my guest columnists - sorry guys!): none other than Mr. Your-Blog-Is-Just-An-Opportunity-For-You-To-Abuse-Me himself, my lovely and badly-done-to boyfriend of the past five years, Adam.

"Can I write whatever I want?" he asked when I put this suggestion to him.

"Of course!" I replied. "I want this post to be special, that's why I'm asking you."

A slow smile worked its way across his face. "Ok," he agreed. "I'll do it. When do you need it by?"

"November 7th please."

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Adam's Guest Blog, November 2007

“Have you done it yet?” she demanded.

“Done what?” I replied, trying to recall the latest on a long list of tasks I'm routinely handed.

“You know what - your guest-blog article for the 100th and first-birthday post! The one that really means a lot to me, emotionally; the one I felt you, as my boyfriend, should write.”

“Oh. That. Well, I've been busy, working and just kind of, well, being busy. You know how it is.”

“Adam! Please write the article. I'll be upset if you don't and I'm sure you don't want that....?!"

“Sorry Soph, I haven't got time, Im not doing it.”

So here I am. Devastated by the ever-effective tactic of guilt and, I should add, blackmail. Or blogmail as I now call it. You see, this blog is the bane of my life, and I’ll illustrate why.

A classic example concerns Cara’s wedding - in her account of the event Sophie portrayed me as a layabout, who left getting ready for the wedding ridiculously late, and only just made it to the church on time. Having read this particular blog entry I called Soph to vent my frustration.

“You made half of that stuff up. Don’t you ever feel guilty portraying me in a false light?”

“Sometimes I do, yes. But Ad, you have to understand that small lies and exaggeration are sometimes a necessary part of blogging - they make it more real.”

More real?! Unbelievable! Contrary to Soph's version, the true path of events is as follows, and details the morning of the wedding.

10.30am Ridiculously, Soph decides to start getting ready. The wedding starts at 2 o clock. She gets up and heads into the bathroom; there is silence for a minute and then a series of curses issues from the bathroom. This I choose to ignore on the grounds that surely any intelligent woman can operate a simple shower.

10.45 An elementary error on my part. Soph still calling for help from the bathroom. Leap into action, enter bathroom to find Soph soaked through, half clothed, and with water erupting from four orifices in the wall. I fix shower and leave bathroom. Soph expresses horror that there are only three and a quarter hours left until kick off.

11.30 Soph exits bathroom. Appears stressed - time is pressing.

12.00 Turn on TV to watch lunch time kick off. Soph commences phase 8 of wedding prep, which coincidentally involves loud use of hair dryer next to TV. Outrageously, Soph suggests that I now get in shower. This suggestion comes with a warning: “If we’re late, I'll go mad.”

12.15 Despite a two-meter thoroughfare, Soph insists she cannot get to the wardrobe unless I move from my position watching the football. Also, she cannot walk past a TV that is on. Switches it off.

12.20 I turn TV back on. Soph asks if I can go find an iron; she doesn’t specify with a board, but I think better of playing this little prank. Find iron, return to find TV off. Turn it back on.

12.40 Whatever Soph is doing to her hair creates a lot of steam; coincidentally most of it wafts in front of the TV. As her next move in this tactical battle she requires me to fetch her jewellery bag from the car; as I leave the room I hear the TV wink out.

12.50 Arrive at car, no sign of jewellery bag. Return to room. Switch TV back on.

1.00 Soph demands I get ready. Decide to comply. It is my fault Soph couldn’t find her jewellrey bag - it was in her case but the presence of my clothes nearby appears to have obscured her view.

1.10 Showered, shaved. Put on trousers and iron shirt. Soph mutters “I told you we’d be late and now look at you.” We are not late.

1.20 Finish ironing shirt amid much mirth from Soph. Apparently she is a better ironer than I am. My pride can deal with this particular blow. Put on shoes, ready to go. Soph attaches a couple of bamboo shoots to the bottom of her shoes, and wobbles toward the doorway.

1.25 I can not move slower. We have only managed to move ten meters from our room. Apparently I am moving "far too fast to expect a lady to reasonably accompany me." We are now in danger of being late and I am naturally 100% at fault. Had we set off at 12.00, there may indeed have been time for Soph to make it to the lobby.

1.27 Must act. Pick up Soph and head toward lift. The author of this blog, who credits herself with a comprehensive grasp of the English language, utters curses the like of which you have never heard, and can not be repeated. This instantly stops and transforms into a radiant smile as we round the corner to meet the others.

In truth I admit that Paradise Deustch makes me laugh and certainly Soph has a gift for ~~exaggerating~~ writing. I object only to the amount that it dominates our lives. Whenever I make a silly comment or say something Soph considers funny, I hear her mutter under her breath "blogged!". She isn’t joking.

Now the situation is so severe that whenever I speak to Soph I put out a disclaimer - “No blogging this” – to cover my back. Given the chance, or ordered, depending on your perspective, to write this article I considered just writing

LIES, all of it LIES!

but in writing my article I realised how tempting the odd exaggeration is. This taught me a lesson and so I removed all of them, and returned to the original, and true, version of events.

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Hmm. As sole owner and editor of Paradise Deustch I reserve all rights to refute any slanderous allegations declared by the author of the above but as today is a celebration I shall postpone my sharp redress of Adam's more imaginative claims until I've had time to prepare a devastating and firm rebuff.

So a year on: Vielen Dank to my readers, my many (sometimes unknowing) suppliers of blogworthy material, my guest columnists, all those of you who have left comments over the past twelve months, and special and particuar thanks to Adam, for being (mostly) such a great sport.

Speaking of which, next time on Paradise Deustch: The Anniversary!

2007-11-06T16:43:00.000+01:00

My original idea was not the zoo but after I’d asked my sister if she wanted to go to Frankfurt for the day (the reply: “What for?”) I decided that it was a better idea.

The three of us, Mum, sister, and I, stepped off the bus at Heidelberg Zoo. In a pen next to the front gate lazed a couple of grubby threadbare polar bears separated from the gawping public by only three feet of murky water and a knee-high fence. My expectations were not high.

Inside we wandered past elephants, camels, monkeys, zebras, seals, lions, and tigers (not in the same enclosure of course), and meandered the afternoon away.

At one point we stopped in front of a pen containing large, black birds. On the roof of a small shed inside the pen a huge bird with a brightly coloured head was flapping its wings and pacing up and down. It was clearly agitated and was squawking aggressively. After watching it for a couple of minutes, we had just turned to move on when three members of zoo staff came hurtling round the corner carrying nets and sticks and shouting to each other in rapid German. We stood back to let them pass and watched as two of them leapt over the fence while the other hung back and hurried up and down waving his net at the bird on the roof.

Slowly and carefully the two inside the pen crept up to the shed and stood beneath it. The bird continued to pace back and forth flapping its wings. After a whispered consultation between the two workers one threw his net over his shoulder and clambered on top of his colleague.

Mum, sister, and I were enthralled as we watched him cautiously grab hold of the roof and raise himself up. His head slowly appeared above the edge of the roof; the bird, catching sight of him, ran shrieking towards him, flung open its wings, and stepping on his head launched itself into the air and soared up into a tree. The two men fell tangled in a heap and the third ran after the bird.

We three continued down the path, looking in at the remaining birds, who were following proceedings with casual interest. One got the feeling that the bird had tried this before. If you are a zoo and prefer that the animals don't escape, I would have thought it prudent to keep winged, flying creatures in an enclosure with a roof. For Germans, who are usually so precise and thorough, this struck me as an uncharacterisitc oversight.

We reached the end of the path and stood below the tree in which the red-headed bird was now sitting. To the left were the zoo workers, busily engaged in dicussing possible ways of retrieving the bird and shooting me black looks as I took pictures of it up in the tree.

It seemed a decision was made and a volunteer was thrust forward to try his best. I was hoping to see some ancient and mysterious bird-whispering techniques that would enchant the animal and have it swoop gracefully from its branch, land softly and obediently upon the zoo worker's arm, and coo in his ear with adoration in its lyrical song of thanks.

I was a little taken aback to see that the subtle method of coaxing down a frightened bird was rather primitive and involved nothing more mysterious than firing a catapult at it.

Pelting the poor creature with bits of bread or rock or whatever it was had little effect and Mum, sister, and I decided to move on. A little while later we heard a commotion coming from the pond; the bird had apparently found its way over to the other side of the zoo and was causing a fracas among the flamingoes.

I spent the rest of the afternoon glancing over my shoulder and hoping that they had a more rigorous and immediate procedure in place if any of the lions ever got out.

2007-11-04T11:35:00.000+01:00

1. I can read braille.

Although I suppose technically I can’t as I cannot read it with my fingers, only my eyes. A genetic disorder meant that my father began to lose his sight in his late teens and was totally blind by his early twenties, before I was born. Dad tells me even when I was very young I knew he couldn’t see and would take his hand and say “Look at my pretty dress, Dad.” He taught me to read Braille using an egg carton. Unless you are blind it is not a terribly useful skill but is an interesting one.

2. I went to stay with someone I’d met on the internet

This is a shameful tale but at the age of fourteen I inexplicably became besotted with Rik Mayall after watching The Young Ones. I collected his videos, books, pictures, CDs, and made regular contributions to a fan site. During the summer of 1999 my family and I went to Cornwall for the solar eclipse. The drive took us through Devon, where Rik Mayall lived; I begged to be allowed to at least drive past the house and root through his rubbish bin but Mum said no and wondered why I couldn't have a normal teenage fixation instead.

Through the fan site I met a girl my own age named Ruth, who was equally obsessed. She lived in Shropshire and we wrote to each other twice a week for a year. Her letters were funny and lively and we discussed the usual teenage issues of friends, boys, and perhaps not so usual, alternative comedy actors of the 1980s. She invited me to visit for a weekend. Understandably, arrangements were elaborate as both sets of parents were anxious that the other girl was not mentally unstable (the Rik Mayall evidence seemed to go unnoticed) but I was allowed to go. It was the first time I travelled on a train alone and I was excited to finally meet this girl whom I already felt I knew so well.

I’m sorry to say, readers, she was awful! She was irritating, bossy, patronising, and spent much of the weekend playing the flute for hours whilst I sat on the couch aching with boredom between her painfully posh parents, who expressed surprise followed by disappointment upon learning that I don’t play a musical instrument. “This is why they warn you not to go meeting people on the Internet,” I thought to myself as I jerked awake during another four-hour-long musical odyssey. I fully admit that the Rik Mayall obsession was odd but she was weird.

3. I am a morning person

I go to bed early, wake up when it's light, and dream vivid and detailed.

4. My first trip to casualty was in Rome, aged 18

My friend Emily and I were backpacking through Europe in 2003. It was a painfully hot summer. I was very soon covered from head to toe in insect bites. I tried various methods of prevention, including dousing myself in repellent and retiring fully dressed and zipped into a sleeping bag in 30-degree heat but each morning I arose with fresh bites. After three weeks the bites began to swell into yellow marble-sized blisters and I decided enough was enough.

Emily and I took the bus to the hospital. In A&E I slapped my passport on the counter, pointed to my pustulous skin, and was hurried into a back room.

"What seems to be the problem?" asked a large smiling man in a thick Italian accent. I rolled up my trouser leg. He started, then leaned in and beckoned over a colleague. "Urghh!" they eclaimed, which I found unsettling and a tad unprofessional. "How did this happen?"

"Well!" I began, and launched into a rapid tale of woe with much gesturing before being interupted by the doctor who said, "Slowly, slowly please!"

He gave me a steroid injection and prescribed three sets of antibiotics. I went out and found Emily in the waiting room where she had been sitting among fierce glares from other patients; apparently I had pushed in front of a baby and a man with two broken legs.

5. I went to Mexico to cure a broken heart

I went alone, for a month. The adventures that happened on that trip require its own blog post (the fling, the leg amputation, the abandonment at the cinema -- stay tuned) but the cure worked. Apart from a guilty hour spent rolling with laughter watching a program about Tourette's Syndrome (like narcolepsy, a tragic, yet hilarious disease) I had barely smiled since being unceremoniously and utterly dumped by a grubby vegetarian environmental scientist with sweaty hands, long toenails, and three dogs too many. Lord knows what I was thinking.

6. I have been to three rocket launches.

I was a volunteer member of Starchaser for four years.

7. I am a book snob.

I trust very few people's opinions on books and have almost entirely rejected the fantasy genre based on limited experience and unfounded prejudice. I collect hardback books, remove the dust jackets, and arrange them alphabetically on a bookcase in my living room. I like my books to be looked after but they are meant to be read, and if someone gives me a book as gift I like them to write the date and occasion in the front.

2007-11-02T15:37:00.000+01:00

Readers, I apologize for the derth of updates on Paradise Deutsch recently. Two busy weekends of guests have left me little time to blog, which is poor timing as November is National Blog Posting Month. Thirty posts in thirty days is probably a bit ambitious especially considering I'm already behind but the Urban Cowgirl has tagged me to tell you seven previosuly unknown facts about myself; as I am currently sitting in the internet cafe in town, which is as dim and depressing as a Thatcher-era dole office on a bank holiday, inspiration is short, and so I shall think on this until tomorrow.

In the meantime, I am working on acquisitions for the Guest Columns page. I recently asked my ten-year-old sister if she'd like to write something.

"What should I write about?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "How about your visit to Germany?"

"Ok, maybe. How long should it be?"

"Ah, around...two hundred words?" I suggested.

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Two hundred different words?"

I didn't want to stifle her creativity and have given her artistic freedom. I'll see what she comes up with. I'm still waiting for news of the sonnet, of which, two days from the anniversary and with Adam currently sitting at a neighbouring computer fine tuning his fantasy football team, there has been suspiciously little mention.

2007-10-19T16:57:00.000+02:00

To end the week, two things:

First: a few nights ago I was putting the rubbish out. The green bin was being guarded by an enormous spider web, in the center of which sat the biggest, ugliest spider I have seen outside of a specialized display facility. I found it threatening. I carefully dumped the rubbish and ran back up stairs for my camera but must have disturbed The Spider as when I returned it had gone. This was even more threatening. I hurried back inside, convinced it was going to suddenly whoosh down on top of me like a SWAT agent abseiling in from above and begin eating my arm.

Three days ago I returned from the supermarket laden with shopping; struggling to get my key in the front door I looked up to see The Spider creeping along the door frame. I leapt back with a sound that would be described in letters by "Argghh!" and sent the shopping tumbling across the drive.

Obviously, nobody would believe any description of this giant arachnid monster without photographic support. Very slowly, my eyes not leaving it for a second, I reached for my phone and captured the following:

I would have liked to have got my hand close to the spider to better indicate scale but, I'm sorry to say, I daren't. I hope that it is sufficient to say that the door frame is of a standard door-frame width, whatever that may be.

I snuck into the hall one limb at time so as to prevent entry to The Spider. I wondered how this would look to the neighbour who, watching from her balcony, would have been unable to see The Spider but had a clear view of me exercising an acute degree of flexibilty in getting through a doorway without opening the door by more than an inch.

Despite frequent and fervent checks I have not seen The Spider since. I am undecided as to whether or not this a good thing.

Second: Happy birthday and congratulations to my brother Dom, who this week met the age of 21 at a party and woke up with it the next morning feeling rather rough.

2007-10-16T12:38:00.001+02:00

Contrary to what the woman on the flight from Frankfurt said, five years is a long time. Adam and I met and fell in love at University in autumn 2002.

“So how shall we celebrate?” he asked on the phone last week.

“I don’t know. Maybe you could…..write me a sonnet?” I suggested cheerily.

“What?! No……a sonnet? Why?”

“Because it’s our five-year anniversary and it’s important. It’s significant.”

“So we’re taking it seriously then?”

“Well aren’t you?” Did he mean the anniversary or the relationship?

“Of course!" he said. "I just meant are we doing, you know, presents and things?”

“No, no, I’ll be happy with a card please. And a sonnet….” I added quietly.

“A sonnet about what?”

“I don’t mind as long as there’s an underlying message of love.”

“Underlined?! Jesus, let me get a pen.”

I heard him searching through his desk drawer and scribbling on a piece of paper.

“Underlying," I said, smiling. "You know, a general theme of devotion and adoration throughout.”

“Devotion….adoration….general theme. Love….underlined. Got it. Look, why don’t you just write it and I’ll sign it?”

“No, not this time! Why are you embarrassed to show me your love?” I teased.

“I’m not! I’d just prefer not to do it in such a girly way!”

“Girly?! Was Shakespeare girly? Was Byron?”

“He was gay! And incestuous, he slept with his own sister!” he said, indignant.

“Half sister. But he wrote beautiful verse.”

“A role model for all men then. Fine, I’ll do it."

He paused. "You won’t put it on that blog will you?!”

“Adam! Of course not!”

2007-10-16T09:39:00.000+02:00

Understandably, I wasn’t looking forward to last week’s compulsory one-on-one hour-long meeting with The Pensions Man. I am 23 years old with thousands of sterling debt that, while my back was turned for four years doing a physics degree, massed itself into an overwhelmingly large sum and the menacing black shape of which still lurks at the bottom of my bank account gorging on any money that miraculously finds its way in there.

Surely this was not the time to talk old?

“Of course it is!” said The Pensions Man. “The earlier you start the better. Now bring me a copy of your payslip so we can work out how much you need to save.”

In HR I saw Mary studying a printout of her monthly wage. “I knew I was poor,” she said, looking up, “This just proves it! Am I underpaid or am I overspending?”

“Possibly a bit of both,” I answered, finding my own sheet and scrutinising it. The gross wage is printed at the top, the net at the bottom; in the middle are numerous deletions and big numbers with minus signs in front. I know German tax is high but where exactly does all my money go? I wondered this out loud. Mary leaned over and pointed at the various figures.

“Two hundred and forty euros – that’s your healthcare.”

“Two hundred and forty?!” I exclaimed, outraged. “I’ll have to live in Germany for four hundred years before I get my money’s worth! Can I opt out?”

“Nope, compulsory,” she said, pointing at the next vanishing figure. “This three hundred is your contribution to the state pension.”

“Well no wonder The Hoff is so rich--every month I’m paying her twice!”

“Seventy euros is unemployment tax.”

“But I’m not unemployed.”

“It’s in case you ever are,” answered Mary. “And if you aren’t, well, then it goes to someone who is.”

“What’s this thirty euros for?” I asked. If any more disappeared I’d be better to stay at home and make use of someone else’s seventy euros.

“That goes to help build up East Berlin.”

“What’s wrong with East Berlin?”

“I don’t know but it costs thirty euros a month.”

“Right.” There didn’t seem to be much else to say to that. One thing was certain: there were no unused funds available for a private pension.

“Nonsense!” cried The Pensions Man. “Of course you can afford it. Look, I show you.”

Using my wageslip and a new recently passed German pension law for which he didn’t know the English name and instead kept worryingly referring to as “The Judgement”, he typed some numbers into a program and showed me that if I continued to work at the company until I’m sixty seven – sixty seven! – then through this pension scheme I will, by this time, have amassed a pittance, to be paid in equal monthly amounts of one fraction of a pittance each until “You die. Or you reach one hundred forty years old”.

“What happens if I leave Germany?” I asked. “Can I still get the money?”

He frowned, lowered his voice, and leaned closer. “You gotta be little bit tricky. But it can be done.”

At the end of the meeting we shook hands and said I would certainly think about it. He’d been very convincing and I’d actually begun to panic about financing my old age; according to him I should have been frugally allotting a sizeable slice of my salary to a pension scheme for the last twelve years. I did point out that at 23 and in full-time work only 18 months this would be, to use his own word, “tricky”.

On reflection however I choose not to tie myself into a German pension system, particularly one that involves “The Judgement”. To provide for my bus-pass-and-blue-rinse years I will simply have to make a lot of money. I'll talk to Cassie, she always has a couple of schemes on the go. Her latest business idea, which she explained to me over dinner last week and which she was going to present to the bank the following day, is, I'm certain, illegal. But hopefully there's a workaround.

Irish Wedding 2 (Part 2)

2007-10-11T18:03:00.001+02:00

To continue: we were leaving for the church at half past one. Rather than the bracing walk around the lake we had planned on after breakfast, we returned to bed.

The following occurs between 11.30am and 1.30pm on the day of Cara and Marek’s nuptial ceremony.

11.30: I get up and get in shower. Shower is vicious and unruly; cannot get it to work properly. Can only get cold water, which sprays all over bathroom. Shout into bedroom for Adam to come help.

11.33: No sign of movement from Adam. Wedge shower head under toilet seat and go into bedroom. Top of Adam’s head visible beneath duvet, heavy snoring audible.

11.34: Poke Adam awake and direct towards crisis situation now developing in bathroom.

11.35: After assessing situation Adam, in boxers and socks, climbs into bath. Curses aggressively as sprayed in face with needles of cold water. Takes hold of lever and turns clockwise. No change in temperature or pressure at which water is bursting out of shower head into nose and mouth. I look on. Adam continues to turn lever clockwise with left hand whilst trying to keep water out of face with right.

11.36: Some progress. Water two degrees warmer. Adam continues to turn lever.

11.37: Lever breaks off in Adam’s hand. Brown dirty water now spraying out of hole in wall. Adam curses some more, wedges lever back on. Angrily wrenches all taps and levers anticlockwise and throws bathmat out of bathroom.

11.38: Hot water arrives. I thank Adam and get in shower. Adam stomps off to bedroom.

11.55: Get out of shower. In bedroom find Adam sitting on floor watching football.

11.58: I suggest Adam shower now. This idea dismissed as ludicrous – we aren’t leaving for another hour and half.

12.00: I blowdry hair. Adam turns up volume on TV.

12.15: Step over Adam to get suit and dress out of wardrobe. Ask Adam if he will find iron. Adam cheerful, says of course.

12.20: Step over Adam to get to mirror. Begin curling hair. Adam puts kettle on.

12.25: Finish curling hair. Remind Adam that he said he would find iron. Says he will go when drank tea.

12.37: Adam goes to find iron. I turn off TV.

12.40: Adam returns with iron and ironing board. Props against dressing table and turns on TV. I suggest he get in shower as time is now twenty to. Adam sits back on floor.

12.42: Step over Adam to get to makeup. Ask if he could maybe sit elsewhere.

12.55: Step over Adam to get to ironing board. Iron dress and hang up. Clean teeth.

1.05: Put on dress and shoes. Get present out of case and write on card. Tell Adam it’s five past.

1.10: Cannot find bag containing jewellery. Have small fit. Send Adam out to check boot of car.

1.13: Adam returns without jewellery. Says best man is running round hotel looking for iron. I volunteer to iron Adam’s shirt while he goes in shower as it’s now quarter past. Says we have plenty of time and he can manage. Whacks iron up hot, begins ironing shirt.

1.15: Burns hole in left cuff. Curses. Turns down heat on iron, burns finger, curses, gives up, and returns iron.

1.17: Adam goes into bathroom. I find jewellery behind curtain.

1.18: Adam puts head round bathroom door, asks if I have any shaving foam.

1.20: Hear a yelp in bathroom. Adam cut himself on chin.

1.22: I check batteries in camera and directions to church. Adam shouts through that there is no hot water left.

1.23: I lay out suit, pants, socks, shoes, tie, belt, cuff links, watch, and aftershave on bed. Adam shouts through for a towel.

1.24: Adam out of bathroom. Flings clothes out of case looking for underwear and socks. Curses that he can’t find anything and I’ve moved all his stuff. I indicate outfit lying on bed.

1.26: Adam dressed. Socks on inside out and blood smeared on collar from cut chin. Everything somehow my fault. Goes into bathroom to clean teeth.

1.27: I am waiting by door. Adam emerges from bathroom holding damp flannel and wiping toothpaste stain off jacket. Ask if he has everything. Says yes, throws flannel in bathroom, opens door, we leave. Ridiculously high shoes necessitate slow walking down corridor towards lobby.

1.28: Adam runs back to room for phone and wallet.

1.29: Adam returns and amid protestations picks me up and throws me over shoulder. Runs down corridor while I yelp that dress better not crease. Puts me down at top of stairs.

1.30: Descend stairs hand in hand, arrive in lobby. Greet Jose, Preeti, and Mary, and depart for wedding.

The church was at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea; the views and scenery were stunning. Adam and I sat next to Chief and Mrs Chief; it was while waiting for the bride that Adam realised that his position in the church, at the end of a row facing the door, meant that the very first person Cara saw as she entered would be him. He asked if I wanted to swap places but just then the music began and she walked in on the arm of her dad.

She was smiling and looked beautiful in her mother’s wedding dress. As well as English the service was also partly in Irish and Polish; Marek is Polish hence so were many of the guests.

Afterwards the wedding party was lined up outside the church to greet the guests and I introduced myself to Cara’s dad, who was everything you’d expect from a proud Irish father giving his first daughter away.

“Hello! I’m Sophie, I worked with Cara in…..”

“Ah Sophie! Sophie, of course ye are, of course ye are! Great to meet ye, Sophie! And who’s this strappin’ fellah than, how are ye?!” he cried, clutching Adam’s hand and smiling broadly at us both.

At the reception his speech was one to remember and to repeat any of it here would never do it justice; twice he had to leap back up, having forgotten some important point, the first being to talk about his new son-in-law.

"Jesus, I forgot about Marek!" he cried, grabbing the microphone and hurrying back up to the front of the room.

It was an evening of eating, drinking, dancing, aching feet, and ringing ears, and we fell into bed that night at the end of the 2007 weddings, happy and exhausted.

I hope they got our gift; we left it on a windowsill.

Irish Wedding 2 (Part 1)

2007-10-10T18:27:00.000+02:00

Five a.m. on Friday morning: the first trial was to locate the bus stop. We were flying with Ryan Air and the coach to Frankfurt Hahn airport, which as you will remember from my last trip is over a thousand miles away, was due to arrive any moment with Mary already aboard and if I wasn’t there to meet it I would miss the flight and all chance of a pleasant weekend.

It was dark and it was cold. After hurrying up and down among the numerous bus shelters in front of the train station amid taunts and gestures of a nature you’d expect from those members of society who occupy the small hours loitering outside train stations and leering at passers-by I was no closer to finding where I needed to be. I eventually met a taxi driver, who claimed he’d no idea what I was talking about but waved vaguely in a direction I’d not tried; I crossed the road and in front of the post office saw a group of about nine people huddled together and surrounded by suitcases, stamping their feet against the cold and checking their watches.

“Thank God!” I thought, as I hurried across the street, trundling my case behind me and pulling up next to an elderly couple.

“Morgen!” I said breathlessly. I leaned my case against the wall and looked round.

“Been waiting long?” I asked the gentleman standing beside me. He looked at his wife and they both gently smiled at me.

“Bloody Ryan Air eh, why don’t they have flights at a normal hour of the day?!”

No response.

“Had a bit of trouble finding this place actually. If it hadn’t been for you folks standing here I never would have guessed there was a bus stop here at all!”

Still nothing. Doubt began to creep over me.

“Sorry, you are waiting for the Ryan Air coach?”

“Who?” said the wife and they looked back at their group and shook their heads.

Just then the coach loomed out of the dark and swung noisily round the corner, brakes screeching and hissing, and disappeared down the road.

“Arghhh!” I yelled, lunging for my case and shooting off in the direction of the bus.

“Gute Reise!” called the old couple after me. I cursed them as I ran, suitcase bouncing off the pavement behind me and wishing I hadn't worn these heels. At the end of the road the bus had stopped and a small group of people had begun to get on. I arrived just in time; I hurled my case into the hold and rushed up the steps onto the coach. I sank into a seat next to Mary and closed my eyes. It was going to be a long day.

At Kerry airport, which is essentially one room simultaneously serving the twin purposes of arrivals and departures, there was the usual scrum crowded around the baggage carousel. Some people are under the impression that they have one chance to reclaim their luggage from the belt and once it disappears behind the partition it is gone forever and their only hope is to assert force and thrust themselves forward whilst ramming anyone nearby in the ankle with a trolley. This was even more unnecessary than usual at Kerry airport as whenever the flap lifted you could see the plane outside and a man throwing the bags on; should yours be somehow missing you could shout through, “Hey fellah, is mine out there?!”

There was a sniffer dog to welcome all passengers, which automatically prompted me to adopt my guilty face and begin to walk as if I may be intimately concealing several small packages. Fortunately the dog wasn’t interested in my facial expression and Mary and I were shortly on our way to Kilarney. It was noon and we had eight hours to mooch about, drink gallons of tea, and accidentally park illegally for the best part of the day before heading back to the airport to meet Adam.

For our long-awaited reunion I had decided to opt for a cool and sophisticated grace; I stood at the arrivals gate with what I fancied was a rather sexy and smouldering poise, until I caught a glimpse of Adam, at which point all finesse evaporated and I began leaping up and down, clapping my hands, and whooping with delight. I threw my arms around him and kissed him excitedly. Having flown from Africa and endured an eight-hour wait in Stansted airport he looked tired but was happy and beaming, and he held my hand as we walked out to the car where two sausage rolls and four pork pies awaited him. We chatted animatedly during the journey down to Waterville; he told us about the climb up Kili and his time on safari and I described to him the nightmarish dental work I’d undergone since we’d last been together.

It was, by this time, quite late. We arrived in Waterville but drove around for an hour looking for the hotel, which, it transpired, had no website or directions and no locals had heard of (“The Waterville Lake Hotel? Ah yes, the one that shut down a few years back?”), and was beginning to look worryingly nonexistent. After a fruitless call to Jose and Preeti, who we assumed were already there but were actually on the other side of town also driving round looking for the hotel, we eventually found our way.

We awoke slowly on Saturday morning. Today was Cara’s wedding day and the weather was beautiful.

2007-09-27T10:03:00.000+02:00

We left at 3am and shared the driving. It was the first time I had driven a left-hand drive car but after only a couple of times of banging my left hand into the door in search of the gear stick I got the hang of it. Zoran had the same problem and he’d never driven a manual car before.

At a service station I came back from the bathroom to find him sitting in the front with Guido in the passenger seat with the look of a man who fears he is facing death.

Zoran grinned. “Thought I’d have a practice round the car park.”

I climbed nervously into the back and strapped myself in with two seatbelts.

“So,” he said to Guido, looking down at the pedals and pushing them up and down with his feet, “Run me through it again. Which gear do I start off with?”

Guido and I exchanged looks in the rear-view mirror. We simultaneously turned to Zoran and said, “Get out.”

I ran around to the driver’s side and hauled him out. “What?!” he cried, looking hurt. “I’ve been driving for ten years!”

“I know but now’s not the right time to learn manually. Maybe when it’s light we’ll give it another go,” I said, climbing in behind the wheel and slamming the door shut.

We had quite a smooth journey to the centre of Paris but got lost looking for the campsite. The boys stopped at a hotel and asked for directions (I was stunned into silence for a solid five minutes before I remembered that Guido and Zoran are not like other men) and we eventually found our way, though what with Guido's speeding ticket, Zoran's "Is this the clutch?", and my swerving across the motorway in search of fifth gear, it's a wonder we made it at all.

We were told where to park the car and that we could pitch our tent "on the grass area" adjacent. I think this was rather an ambitious title for a patch of ground that was so bald I could count the blades of grass individually.

I was told to stand back and with an impressive display of gusto Guido and Zoran set about erecting the tent. They shunned all ridiculous suggestions of consulting the instructions, which I found in the boot of the car, and I was forced to conclude that perhaps they are normal men after all.

The ground was dry and hard and the tent pegs could not be persuaded to sink themselves in and get comfortable for the evening. By this time we had been there for around twenty minutes so naturally Zoran had found a fellow Australian; with the help of his handy paving slab (which I am certain I used that night as a pillow) the tent was soon finished and it was time to see Paris.

The first stop was of course the Eiffel tower, which was celebrating France's hosting of the Rugby World Cup by displaying a giant inflatable ball and a scoreboard. We spent the remainder of the 30 hours in Paris viewing other notable tourist sights, sleeping (Zoran slept in the car - it was just not physically possible for three of us to fit inside without destroying Brendan's €300 tent), watching Zoran munch his way through a merangue almost as big as himself, and photographing such sights as this girl, who must surely have been dressed like this for a bet:

We spent Sunday afternoon separately as we each wanted to do different things. Zoran spent his time perusing the pricey goods in the stores on the Champs-Elysees and Guido got lost amid some parliament buildings before heading to the Jardin du Luxembourg. After walking from the Arc de Triomphe down to the Place de la Concorde I sat for a long while on a bench in the sun and enjoyed the conversations of the people who sat beside me. A group of Americans spent so long arguing as to whether or not the two-day pass for the bus tour of Paris was worth it that when they moved off with the matter still unresolved I almost followed them, anxious to know the outcome.

After dozing for a while in the Tuileries I went to the Musee d'Orsay. It's a beautiful building, a real shame that is no longer a railway station. I didn't like the modern feel of the museum so much but I did prefer it to the Louvre, which is simply too big and overwhelming. It may also have something to do with when I went to the Louvre, two years ago with Adam, I was continuously berated by the security guards for taking my shoes off (we had walked a very long way that day and it was very hot). They do not like the visitors to admire the art barefoot. I got the feeling it would be less of a problem in the Musee d'Orsay but time was too short to put it to the test.

In summary the road trip was fun but exhausitng, and certainly an experience. If we were to do another, in say five or six years, it may be better not to drive all night to a huge and vibrant city, sleep in a tent two sizes too small next to some Irish rugby fans after a win in the world cup, and dash around the sights eating nothing but merangue.

We should have gone to Marseille.

2007-09-21T12:24:00.000+02:00

"So that's settled then? Paris?" I asked, sitting on Guido's desk and watching Zoran wheel himself over on his chair.

"Yes," said Guido.

"Definitely," agreed Zoran.

"Although...." said Guido, "Maybe not. How about Marseille?"

"Yes! Marseille! A road trip to Marseille!" cried Zoran.

"I thought we'd decided on Arc de Triomphe as the destination?" I asked. We'd been going round in circles for four days now.

"I know but Marseille would be good. There's a beach." said Zoran.

"It's further away though," Guido pointed out. "We'll only have a few hours. When are we leaving?"

"Friday night, after the ice-hockey game," I said. "We won't have a lot of time."

"What about Prague then?" suggested Guido.

A text message appeared on my phone so I wandered back to my desk and left them examining a map of eastern Europe.

It was from Adam. He had safely made it to the summit of Kilimanjaro! It sounds like it has been difficult. He said he suffered from altitude sickness but they all made it to the top (including Stew). I was very excited to hear this news and shot off back to the other side of the office.

"He made it! He made it to the top!" I shouted, waving the phone about. "Shall I call him? I'm going to call him. Will it cost a lot?"

"I don't know," said Guido absently, staring at his screen. "What about Bratislava?"

I managed to speak to Adam briefly but the reception was poor and we weren't able to hear each other very well. Knowing that he made it and he's safe is a relief and I am so proud of him. It must have been immensely tough.

By this time the boys had hired a car and between us we managed to scrounge a two-man tent (cosy), three sleeping bags, a four-foot-long inflatable mattress, a pillow, and a box of grapes. We were set. Apart from a destination; it seemed Prague was back in the running.

"Come on Soph! We've never been to Prague, you've already been to Paris."

"Twice."

"Twice?! Right, definitely Prague!" said Zoran determinedly. "We're going to Prague, no more arguing, that's it, done. Prague."

Ten minutes later we had a pitch booked at a campsite fifteen minutes from the Eiffel Tower and Zoran was in a sulk.

It is now Friday afternoon and we have something approaching a plan. We will collect the hire car, fill it with nonperishable food, attend an ice-hockey game at the SAP arena (this kind of gets in the way of things but it's too late to back out) with Brid, Brendan, Jennifer, and Christian; we will then return home to sleep until 3am, argue for a further half hour as to why we aren't going to Prague, and hit the road with an aim of arriving in Paris in time for breakfast.

We leave in twenty minutes. Bon voyage!

2007-09-19T14:45:00.000+02:00

This blog entry comes from the second of my first-ever sick days. It is still too soon to talk about Monday’s hellish dental encounter but now that my hands have stopped shaking I am able to update Paradise Deutsch on events as far as Sunday evening.

On Friday afternoon I said goodbye to Adam. The boys were spending the night at Stew’s house in Bedford and travelling to Heathrow the next morning. Jenko answered the phone when I called and I wished him good luck and implored them to look after each other when they are on the mountain. Especially Stew. He promised they would and then handed the phone to Adam. We exchanged a positive and cheerful farewell, which is unusual for me; normally there are deep rivers of snot and mascara both flowing excitedly over my cheekbones in a glorious bid for the hallowed promised land of Chin where they could forever enjoy facial freedom if it weren’t for that perpetual and merciless enemy, Tissue.

I operate under a bizarre inverse emotional system whereby the more I’ve enjoyed myself the louder and wetter are my heart-breaking lamentations afterwards. It got so that at the end of a holiday if I wasn’t wailing and inhaling a box of Kleenex Adam thought I hadn’t had a good time. After moving to Germany our partings naturally became more regular and frequent and fortunately I’ve adapted well.

Later that day we began the celebrations of Clara’s hen party, kicked off with cake and sekt in the big office downstairs. I had brought back from England a variety of hen-party tat including this balloon, which, upon inflation, was startlingly phallic but both Mike and Mary insisted that was likely the point.

Clara was reluctant in the extreme to wear the veil but caved to the pressure of the moment. I was surprised to find that not many people understood the significance of the L plates. It seems this is a chiefly British thing and perhaps making a girl from Singapore living in Germany wear them at a party of guests of mixed nationality was slightly presumptuous.

In the evening I went to meet Donna at the Hauptbahnhof in Mannheim. She was coming to stay the weekend but had never flown or travelled alone before and was nervous about the journey. She called on Thursday night.

“Soph, how do I say in German ‘I am English and I am lost.’?”

“I don’t think you’ll need to say that. Everyone in the airport speaks English. You’ll be fine!”

“Do you want me to bring anything?”

“I wouldn’t mind some orange squash please if you’re checking your case in?”

“I don’t know, am I? Where do I do that?”

She arrived safely and we hurried to my flat to dump her bag and head out to Heidelberg for Clara’s hen night. I generally dislike going to Heidelberg in an evening as it is a long and tiresome journey home with a very limited window of opportunity regarding public transport. We went to a club called Grad 8; Mike had consumed enough alcohol such that he was considering performing the Carlton dance owed to me since my birthday but was still a couple of beers short by the time we left.

On Saturday I enjoyed my fifth visit to Heidelberg’s castle and Donna tasted her first German food in the form of schnitzel, with which she was most delighted and took several photographs of.

The weather in the south of Germany this weekend was warm and beautiful and almost delayed purchase of this year's first (let's face it, there will be others) pair of winter boots. But not quite.

On Sunday evening Brid, Guido, Zoran's parents, and I had dinner at Zoran's new flat. We ate lasagne made by Zoran's mother and drank the scary Macedonian grappa coutesy of Zoran's father (except me -- I'm still filling my system with antibiotics). I enjoyed what was possibly the last meal I'd ever taste, Guido inadvertantly expressed doubt as to whether Zoran's father really was Zoran's father, and I departed around 10.30 to endure a restless night of torturous nightmares.

My subconcious tried hard but nothing could prepare me for the horrendous reality.

2007-09-07T11:31:00.001+02:00

There was a drum roll, followed by “My new rucksack’s arrived.”

For weeks Adam has been anxiously awaiting the arrival of his new rucksack, the TFX Extreme Full-Load Max Journey Fox 9000 Senior with all-new containment technology and comfort engineering.

“It feels like you have a beautiful angel riding on your back and she’s simultaneously massaging your shoulders and whispering sweet sweet words in a soft lyrical voice into your ear,” he said with dreamy reverence.

“How much was it?”

“Hundred and twenty quid.”

“That's a lot.”

“Wait till you see it. It’s got more zips than you can possibly imagine!”

“I don’t know Ad, I can imagine quite a few zips.”

“Not this many you can’t. And pockets! You won’t believe the pockets, I’ve been finding new ones all day!” He began excitedly explaining all the unique and wonderful features of the new bag and exactly how and why it was better than any other ever made, especially Stew's.

“Why don’t you send me a picture of it?” I asked, beginning to wonder just what kind of rucksack could incite such passion in a grown man.

“Can’t, it would never do it justice. A picture just couldn’t capture the sheer majesty and brilliance of this bag. You’ll have to wait.”

“I’ll try my best. What colour is it?”

“Bear-hunter red.”

I did ask whether it was a good idea to buy a new top-of-the range rucksack when it would be carried up Kilimanjaro on the head of an exploited local native but he seemed to skate over this point.

“Are you taking a camera with you to Africa?” I asked, when he’d finished intimately describing the stitching along the underside of the lower left panel of the inner lining of the comfort-engineered shoulder strap.

“No," he replied, "I can’t afford a good one so I’ll just rely on the others.”

“You could buy a fairly cheap one. That way you’d at least have some photos of your own.”

“I know but the cheap cameras don’t take high-quality pictures of mountains and scenery. They wouldn’t look good,” he insisted.

“You could get the others to take the scenery pictures with their expensive cameras," I suggested brightly, "and you could photograph people and the camp and the journey.”

“No, seriously, it’s not worth it. I don’t want to end up with rubbish pictures.”

“So instead of rubbish pictures you’ll have....no pictures?”

“Look,” he said, getting irritated. “Don’t try and trick me with logic. I’m not buying a camera. But I am thinking of buying a buff,” he added.

“What’s a buff?”

“It’s a piece of material that you can use to cover your head or neck or use as a headband or sweatband.”

“So it's a handkerchief?”

“No. It's a buff.”

“Why not just wear a hat?”

“I don’t look good in hats. I haven’t got a hat face.”

“Have you got a buff face?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ll find out tomorrow when I buy one.”

“Well as long as it stops you getting sunstroke.”

“It will. It’s 95% UV resistant. At least, the UV buff is.”

“There’s different types?”

“Yep, there’s lots.” He went on to list the full range, of which Polar, Thermal, Visor, Biker, Equestrian, Chef, and Summer buff were but a few of the extensive varieties but said that he would be opting for Orignal buff. A wise choice I thought, as conditions on the trip are liable to range from hot and dry to cold and bitter. Polar buff may only be useful in the higher regions of the mountains and Summer would surely be the buff of choice for the plains of the Serengeti. I can't help but think Chef may not be as versatile as the others.

The boys leave for Africa in one week.

2007-09-06T14:32:00.000+02:00

First some good news: a note from The Hoff:

And now for some bad news. Yesterday I went to see the oral surgeon. In stark contrast to last week’s, his practice was sleek and smart and boomed “Make no mistake: I’m a dentist”. He was a short and simply enormously fat man, with thick fingers that crushed mine in a stern grip when he introduced himself. He spoke quickly and sharply in gruff German and was extremely matter of fact.

He put last week’s X-ray up on the board and stood back, frowning. He beckoned Guido and I to look closer and for a worrying moment I thought he was going to ask me to show him what was wrong. He explained the operation to Guido, who became paler as the detail got more minute.

“I’ll take the wisdom tooth out,” he said, pointing at the X-ray, and then, running his fingers along the rows of teeth in the image, stopped at another. “Hmm. I’ll have this one as well,” he said, as if he were in the pie shop perusing the options for that evening’s dinner.

“Oh…is that necessary?” I asked nervously. The prospect of twice the trauma, discomfort, and pain in both my upper and lower jaw was most unwelcome.

“Yes,” he said by way of explanation. He then went on to outline the procedure.

“First you will need to take some antibiotics to clear the infection around the tooth.” I didn’t even know there was an infection. How horrible.

“Ok,” I said, smiling. “That’s not so bad.”

Think again. I have to take this elaborate combination of drugs for a full eight days beforehand with the double whammy of no alcohol during this time. Not ideal but still, at least it wasn’t an injection.

“Then you will need four injections.”

“What?!” I cried, horrified. Last Friday’s had been bad enough. “He didn’t say four, did he?” I looked pleadingly at Guido, who nodded his head gravely.

“Two per tooth, to numb your mouth.”

“Fine,” I said, resigned. It was too late for any second thoughts so I might as well get used to it. And it couldn’t get any worse, surely. The dentist was now speaking in a low voice to Guido and pointing at the nerves visible in the X-ray. I looked anxiously between the two, not knowing whether to curse my wretched inability to follow the German, or be thankful that my blessed ignorance meant I didn’t hear the gruesome intricacies. Guido would sugar coat it. He turned to face me, and swallowed.

“There’s a chance you'll lose your sense of taste. And all feeling in your chin.”

Perhaps the Dutch notion of sugar coating is different to the British.

“But,” he hurried on, “It’s only a very slight chance and the dentist is only mentioning it as a legal precaution. So don’t worry.”

The dentist went on to explain that I would be sedated beforehand and that due to there being gaping holes in my gum following the removal of the teeth, I should avoid snorting any substances for a week or so afterwards as this could cause serious damage. I fervently assented, a little concerned as to how he judged I spend my recreational hours.

Actually this is the not the first time this has happened. During my third year at University I went to the medical practice but wasn’t sure which building I needed. I asked someone coming out of the main door.

“Excuse me please, is this the medical practice?”

“Drug rehab is it? You go around the corner, take a left, cross over the road, and it’s the next….”

“Er, no actually. I just need some vaccinations.”

“Oh. Right. Well then you’re in the right place.” And she hurried off, no doubt wondering where a busy young drug addict such as myself might be going on holiday.

Back at reception we stood waiting while the nurse prepared my prescription. I pondered the situation; I had come in to have a wisdom tooth looked at. I was leaving with no tongue and no chin and a second, seemingly innocent and healthy tooth was being punished simply for looking at the dentist in the wrong way. This was grim.

I looked over at Guido, who was white and appeared to be battling back a dry sob. He took a deep breath. “I’m not looking forward to this, Soph. It’s going to be pretty horrendous.”

“You’re not looking forward to it?!”

“Might ask Zoran to come with me. You know, moral support.”

I shook my head in disbelief. I collected my prescription, booked myself in for the operation (Guido suggesting a date next week when he’s out of the country), and was told to eat a hearty meal the morning before.

“Do think it’s because they know it could it be the last thing you ever taste?” asked Guido as we walked out to the car.

I certainly hope not but I've been racking my brains ever since as to where I get a bacon sandwich at 8am on a Monday morning.

2007-09-03T13:46:00.000+02:00

It’s nothing personal, but nobody likes dentists and last week I remembered why. Since returning from Berlin I have been suffering toothache in the lower right-hand side of my mouth. After careful investigation with tongue and mirror I decided that perhaps it was an ulcer and it would go away soon. However, the pain worsened as the week went on and the possibility of a visit to the dentist loomed around the corner, menacingly cracking its knuckles.

On Wednesday, using a blend of an usual angling of the head, two splayed hands, and a mirror, I was attempting to show the guilty tooth to Mike (who insisted he didn’t want to see and could I please stop using the word abscess) when my mouth began to bleed. Perhaps this wasn’t an ulcer after all and whatever it was couldn’t be cured by eating a tube of antiseptic cream, something I was hoping would have begun to work by now.

On Friday morning I asked Guido to call the dentist. I reasoned I’d have the weekend for the situation to improve or deteriorate; if it was the former, great, I could stick with the favoured treatment of two teaspoons of ignoring followed by a large dose of it'll go away by itself; if it was the latter I could begin mental preparations for a visit to the dentist.

Though I am not afraid of seeing the dentist I am squeamish in the extreme and in my experience dental treatment almost always involves spit, blood, a high-pitched drill, particles of teeth being sanded off, and a masked man showing me something hideous that was recently residing in my mouth.

It was something of a surprise when Guido put the phone down and called across the office “Ok, got you an appointment, let’s go!” The German health-care system may not be free but it is certainly efficient.

I began to get nervous as we drove round to the dentist and this feeling wasn’t helped when we pulled up at the address. I have never before been to a medical practice set up in a block of flats and words such as “back alley”, “unlicensed”, and “dodgy” sprang into my head. I looked over at Guido, who also looked dubious.

Inside it looked, thankfully, more like a dental practice, complete with chair, drill, and waiting room. I filled in three forms, choosing “nein” for the extensive list of maladies on offer and handed over my insurance card. As far as I can tell, over the last year I have paid enough in health insurance to warrant an entire body transplant and extra limbs grafted on; the percentage of my salary hoovered up into this category every month should at the very minimum cover a new set of gnashers that Jaws himself would be proud to flash on the red carpet at the premiere.

We were shown to the waiting room, where my feeling of the questionable credibility of this practice was further intensified. There was something makeshift about the stark bland room and lack of light fittings, although Guido thought this was perhaps an attempt at modern in a less-is-more sort of way. Increasingly uncomfortable I turned to sit down and came face-to-face with this:

That was it. Anyone who thinks a giant red plastic jelly baby in a surgical mask is suitable decoration in a medical practice is clearly unfit to administer treatment. Before I could climb out of the window however, the dentist appeared and we were led into the treatment room.

Nervously I climbed into the chair and lay back. The dentist leaned over me and introduced herself. “Zahnschmerz? Toothache?” she asked, inserting three metal instruments into my mouth. I thought this was a rather pointless question but perhaps she was just making sure that these foreign types hadn’t confused dentist with hairdresser or icecream van. “How long have you had the pain?”

“About as long as you’ve been a dentist,” I thought to myself, as she was clearly only seventeen years old. I was now feeling very nervous and slightly sick as she examined the painful area and identified the problem. Guido, seated at the opposite side of the room on a stool shaped like a giant tooth, translated the dentist’s diagnosis.

“It’s your wisdom tooth,” he said. “They need to take an X-ray and clean the area. She’s going to give you er…an injection!” This last part came out as a girly high-pitched squeak but before he’d finished speaking the dentist had whipped out a needle from behind her back, thrust my head back, and poked it in my gum. My lips began to tingle and my tongue felt too big for my mouth. I sat up and looked over at Guido, who was a pale shade of green and looking at the door.

The dentist took an X-ray of my teeth and held it up. “The tooth needs to come out. Normally I would do this but it is very close to the nerve. You need oral surgery.”

There are some phrases that you hope never to hear in your life—ten years no parole, amputate at the hip, we can’t wait any longer for the groom—and oral surgery must surely be among them. I anxiously asked Guido for clarification; perhaps she hadn’t said “oral surgery” but rather “You’re fine, you can go.”

I was back in the chair and staring up the nostrils of the dentist and the assistant before the prospect of surgical dentistry had time to fully sink in. By now my mouth was completely numb; I no longer felt pain from the tooth and the only sensation as they worked on the area was of pressure on my lower jaw.

The dentist explained that she had put some antibiotics on the tooth and covered it over with gauze. The assistant took out a mirror and held it up in front of me and the dentist showed me what she’d done. I thought this was odd—was I expected to comment, like at the hairdresser? Very nice thanks but can you take a bit more off the back?

My mouth was so swollen and full of blood that a wave of nausea rushed over me and I felt faint. I pushed the mirror away but they held it up again and made me look at the tooth – the dentist was showing me where the gauze was as I would have to remove it myself the following morning. I tried not to look too closely and then sat up to rinse out my mouth. Guido, sitting on the giant tooth with his head between his knees and breathing deeply, looked up and recoiled disgusted as he watched me dribble blood, spit, and mouthwash all over myself.

I stood up on shaky legs and tried not to think about what oral surgery involved. On the way out the receptionist handed me the number of the local specialist and, as a souvenir of my visit, a printout of my X-ray. Keep smiling Sophie!

2007-08-30T11:56:00.001+02:00

Last night's text from Mum, cuurently holidaying in Spain with sister, Grandma, and Grandad.

Hi Soph, having a fab time! Weather hot, got sun, wine, not many clothes, and no work. Your book is falling to bits though. I'm loving it!

Several things about this message struck me as odd. Firstly, the not many clothes. Did their suitcase get lost? Were they in a nudist colony? I didn't think Grandma and Grandad would be keen on that though no doubt sister would find it very amusing.

She is at the age where the word "willy" is completely hysterical and she and her friends like to subtly weave it into conversation at any opportunity. I remember when I was her age a very naughty boy named Liam took to looking up rude words in the dictionary and repeating them loudly and impressively in the playground. He focused mainly on words relating to the human reproductive system; unfortunately, he often failed to read the accompanying definition and consequently he deemed "uterus" (with the first two syllables pronounced as in "utterly") to be a suitably offensive expletive to hurl at dinnerladies.

Secondly, what has happened to my book to cause it to be dropping to bits? She asked me a couple of weeks ago if I had any good books for her to borrow.

"Try The Book Thief, it's excellent," I said, having recently finished it.

"Is it suitable as a holiday read?"

Ah. She hadn't mentioned that bit.

"Well it's a Nazi war story told from the view point of Death. It's 592 pages, hardback, and weighs a stone. So I'd say probably not."

I gave her instead To Say Nothing of the Dog, another member of the exclusive Top 5. I adore this book and no matter how many times I read it I still find myself, in a cringingly cliched way, clutching my sides and houling with laughter. I lent it to Mum a while ago but she wasn't very keen and gave it back after chapter 3. If I'm interpreting the message correctly the book has improved on her the second time round.

Of course, and this is a third point, she could still dislike it and is perhaps lobbing it into the pool, causing it to fall to bits, and this is in fact what she is loving. It was unclear, but I was more concerned about the lack of clothes, so I sent her a message asking for clarification.

The reply:

Are you drunk? Don't need many clothes in this weather. Forgot to wear shoes today!

I don't know how much sangria she's slurped but I bet you can measure it in barrels.

2007-08-29T17:18:00.000+02:00

“Scouse Mark can’t make it,” Adam said to me on the phone a couple of weeks ago.

“Why not?”

“His parents are fed up with him sitting about wasting his life doing nothing. His dad’s paying for him to go to Vegas and meet up with his brother. He's leaving at 5am the morning after the game.”

“So I can have his ticket?”

“Yep.”

“Yes!”

I had never been to Wembley and a friendly between England and Germany, and Scouse Mark’s ticket, was the perfect opportunity. I packed my case and, for the fourth time in a month (massive carbon-footprint guilt!), headed to the airport.

Adam was there to meet me in Manchester, holding the Saturday Guardian like another man would hold a bunch of flowers, closely followed by Mum and sister, who were both soaked to the skin having come straight from the dog shelter and England’s foul weather.

We spent much of the weekend watching films, walking dogs, and listening to sister’s Disco Dave impression – it’s not bad.

Adam left on Monday morning and Mum, sister, and I went for lunch at Slattery’s, a mouth-wateringly delicious patisserie in a huge old building that has a glass wall between the shop and the bakery so that you can stand with your nose against the window and watch the dozens of bakers making the magnificent cakes. Walking back later in the afternoon we passed a bridal shop.

“Let’s have a look in the window!” said Mum, hurrying over. Sister and I looked at each other and wandered over wearily. The three of us stood in a line and stared. “What do you think?” asked Mum. We all agreed that the dresses in the window weren’t particularly nice and sister and I were ready to move on.

“What about that one?” said Mum, pointing at something silky and beaded.

“That one’s not bad I suppose…but Mum, listen…..”

She shot me a mischievous grin.

“Do you want to go in and try a few on?”

“What?! Mum, no! I’m not getting married and I definitely won’t be if Adam finds out about this! Let’s go!”

That evening I went to see Dad. We ate pizza and I admired his new very old encyclopaedias from the Victorian era. They are beautiful books, kept in a glass-fronted book case along with the works of Charles Dickens and Shakespeare. Also in there is an enormous dictionary, which had tempted Dad into purchase using its attractive price of £6 reduced from £30. We looked up the word pachyderm (thick-skinned animal) and checked the pronunication of frisson (freezon), I played with the baby (now fully mobile) and departed for Leeds.

Adam’s new house is little improvement on the old place. I'm sure green lino was never a good look for walls, even in the seventies when it was last decorated. The house's saving grace is its proximity to the train station and Adam’s bedroom sharing the same floor as the bathroom. Last year his bedroom was on the ground floor, which led to the now-infamous Jonny-seeing-me-naked incident.

It was early morning and I was half asleep. I loathed going to the bathroom in that house, not just because it was a hygienic nightmare but because it was so far away, necessitating a dangerous weave around various bikes in the hallway, trying not to trip over football boots and tv wires walking through the lounge and up the stairs to get to the bathroom. I always left it to the last possible moment before groggily dragging myself from the warmth of the bed and pulling on Adam’s dressing gown.

“Fasten it up,” came a sleepy voice from under the quilt. The belt was missing so I pulled it round myself and crept out of the bedroom. It was 7am on a Sunday morning so I quietly snuck through the lounge and up to the bathroom. Coming back downstairs, still half asleep, the dressing gown had fallen open but I didn’t take much notice. Rubbing my eyes I got half way across the lounge when I looked up and saw Jonny; he was sitting on the couch, eyes wide staring straight at me, spoon frozen midway between cereal bowl and mouth, which was hanging open in shock. I screamed and hurriedly pulled the dressing gown around myself. I burst into Adam’s room and shot into bed, waking him up.

“Wassup?” he asked sleepily.

“Nothing!” I said, turning over and trying to block out the mental picture of Jonny aghast at seeing a nude girl striding through his lounge on a Sunday morning. At the time I didn’t know it but he was working that day; being barely awake I hadn’t heard him come down the stairs and make breakfast. I couldn’t be blamed for Jonny catching me naked, I had no idea he was there and I certainly didn’t do it on purpose. I protested this to Adam later that day when I had explained that there was a very slight chance I may have accidentally exposed myself to one of his housemates.

“What?!!!”

“Sorry! It was an accident! And Jonny probably didn’t even see anything anyway.....”

“Not Jonny? Great, he’ll be loving this - we’ll never hear the end of it!”

He was right. For a good few months after that, each time I visited Adam in England Jonny would greet me with “Hey Soph! Seen you naked. How’s it going in Germany?”

Adam demanded that this automatically gave him the right to a glimpse of Jonny’s girlfriend Helen naked. I, Jonny, and Helen disagree.

In the new house Adam and Will and the bathroom are on the same floor, with Jenko and Jonny above. The dressing gown belt miraculously rematerialized after being lost for months and it is thus far less likely that the incident will be repeated. Shame for Jonny.

On Wednesday I met Adam and Lucy, Disco Dave’s girlfriend, at the coach station with a picnic so huge that the driver was under the impression I was feeding the whole bus. We set off on the four-hour trip, surrounded by burly England fans, some of whom were bordering on the territory of thug, though thankfully not hooligan (it's a fine line). Lucy was blocked in at the window by a large bald-headed man, to whom his friends referred by the ominous-sounding nickname “Blackout”. She stayed behind her book for most of the journey and co-ordinated on the phone with Disco Dave where we were to meet when we arrived.

“Dave says the Bobby Moore statue,” she said, turning round to face us, phone to her ear.

“Good idea,” said Adam, “Nobody will be meeting there.”

There were still two hours of journey time left and Adam was getting restless.

“Do you want to play a game Soph?” he asked, shifting in his seat.

“Ok, what shall we play?”

“Right: Euro 96, England 4, Holland 1 – name the goal scorers.”

I looked at him. He was serious.

"Ah, how about I Spy?" I suggested, but we didn't get very far with this either as after Adam's something beginning with I (integrated hydraulic retarder) I gave up. He's very competitive. One Christmas he introduced me to the concept of triominoes and after a brief explanation of the rules and promises that I would pick it up as we played, went on to absolutely annihilate me in 345--2 whooping. Merciless.

The bus dropped us outside Wembley and we battled our way through the crowds and the rain to the pub, where we met Disco, Sam, and Henning for some prematch standing on the street drinking beer and booing the Germany bus as it drove past. Even when it is fully deserved (pantomime baddies, for example) I don't like booing; it's bad manners and unsporting and I am especially uncomfortable when it is towards Germans. We didn't join in with the booing and there was none on the part of the Germany fans. I can see why English football fans have a bad name.

The stadium was amazing and packed full. While the atmosphere wasn't quite electric it was definitely buzzing and apart from being sat next to some racists (nobody likes racists but racism against Germans? I couldn't deal with it) and getting beat 2-1, it was a great evening. England scored first, after only nine minutes, and I'd got halfway through a text to Mike along the lines of "Tell Denis he's not singing anymore" when Germany equalized. The German fans got considerably more vocal after this and broke out into a chorus of Football's Coming Home. I found this quite amusing but the general feeling of the England fans was "cheeky bastards!" The Germans must have been smugly content safe in the certainty that there was no way the English would be able to sing a German song back to them in retaliation.

I arrived back in Germany late on Thursday night, unpacked my suitcase and repacked it for Berlin. Cara's hen party: stay tuned.

2007-08-17T11:09:00.000+02:00

Warning: some content may not be suitable for grandparents.

For the past year if my life, I have lived alone. I find it suits me. My IBS isn’t limited to travel situations and indeed the worst outbreaks have been triggered due to shared living, the first occasion of which was when I went to University.

When you apply for accommodation you are asked to indicate hobbies and interests, religion, diet, preferred bed time etc. so that you can be housed with people who, statistically, you will get along with. A few weeks in and I was shocked to find that apparently I am a lazy, reclusive, egotistical, Spanish-speaking, vegetarian Jewish poet. They do say University is a learning curve.

My flat of five people consisted of myself, Helen--a girl a year older than me with whom I hit it off straight away--Kieran, an almost entirely silent boy of large dimensions who spent all of his student loan in the first week on trainers and a Playstation and the rest of the year selling drugs out of his bedroom; a slightly effeminate Persian American from LA who had come to study in Leeds because he wanted to be European, and an international student from Slovenia who spoke not a word of English except when it was time to argue why it wasn’t her turn to take the bins out and spent a lot of time boiling cabbage and sweetcorn in the kitchen with other international students from Slovenia.

She was only in Leeds for one term and was replaced in the flat by Jen, an outgoing Australian girl who was painfully thin (“I used to have an eating disorder but I’m fine now”) with ten teeth too many and who liked to pass comment on anything Helen or I ate, particularly when Helen came back after Christmas with a toastie maker and was putting anything and everything in it –pasta toasties can be delicious if a little heavy on the carbs.

In second year I moved into a large house opposite the rugby ground. This time I lived with Chris, a generally ok, occasionally irritating and nasal computing student (whom I still owe £43), Ali, a short, lesbian, theatre-studies masters student who couldn’t make a meal without using all four hobs at once, a trainee actuary named Mark who looked exactly like the Nazi baddy from Indiana Jones but infinitely less interesting and much more creepy. He had definite pervert tendencies, evidenced by his habit of unloading my washing before it was done, dangling a pair of my pants in front of him and saying things like “don’t get much for your money with these do you, snort!!” This was in contrast to Paul, who would quickly leave the room with his fingers in his ears if anyone even mentioned the word “knickers”.

There was another girl called Sophie. This caused some confusion among friends when they phoned the house and it wasn’t me that answered.

“Is Sophie there please?”

“Which one?”

“Er….”

It was quite alarming to discover how few of them could recall my surname. Even Adam was caught off guard at first, answering “my girlfriend”.

The other Sophie was a postgraduate English literature student; she had two boyfriends, one middle aged whom I mistook for her dad, who didn’t know about each other but collided one night in an explosive episode that involved two broken windows and car tyre, and she was actually nuts in the real medical sense and had herself committed to a psychiatric hospital by the end of term.

Then there were Paul and Amelia, who were, thank God, wonderful. In third year we moved into the smallest house ever built, a back-to-back terrace of which the entire downstairs was one room. It had seemed like the perfect place when we went to sign up for it, though I can’t remember why now, apart from the witch in the estate agents. Just before me moved in I’d gone to speak to her as I was concerned that there was no window in the attic bedroom, which was mine.

“Concerned about what?” she snapped, nostrils flaring.

“Well,” I said, noticing not for the first time how much she looked like a hairy toad, if such things exist, “It just doesn’t seem very safe. What if there’s a fire?”

“You’re talking about a third-storey room! You wouldn’t survive a fall that high even if there was a window.”

“Still. I think I’d take my chances rather than burn to death. Wouldn’t you?”

She shot me a look that said she was going to make my life hell for the next twelve months. She was a woman of both her word and acrid breath.

Apart from the horrible estate agents, the bathroom that was smaller than a train toilet (and I measured), and the bars on the windows third year’s was a great house. Paul, Amelia, and I got on brilliantly. Adam always claims that we girls bullied Paul and made him run around after us, which is partly true but at the same time he never lifted a finger towards the cleaning.

Grandparents look away now.

He was a keen movie buff and had hundreds of DVDs on a bookcase in his room. One afternoon when he was out I called him and asked if I could borrow Lord of the Rings. He said it was with the copied discs as this was before the film had been released (apparently this is illegal, readers). Paul had the basement room in our house; I went down there to search through his copied DVDs and was rather stunned to discover the biggest porn collection ever! This was an archive. I couldn’t believe that blush-at-the-word-knickers Paul would actually turn out to be the underworld pimp daddy of West Yorkshire.

Naturally I told Amelia of my shocking yet hilarious discovery and we left a note amid his DVDs to the effect of

“Careful Paul—if you watch this lot in one go you’ll go blind!”

We didn’t mention anything to him at the time –what would we say?

“How was Uni today? Found all your porn by the way -- quite the range!”

and so we were never sure when or if he found the note. Paul and Amelia graduated at the end of that year and we moved out. He has never spoken a word to us since. We have tried countless times to get in touch with him—it really wasn’t a big deal to us but obviously he can no longer look us in the eye and his innocent façade is razed.

End of unsuitable material

During my masters I lived with Holly and Charlie above a post office in Hyde Park. This was the best of the four places I lived in even though we were burgled twice and it was on the same road as where the 7/7 bombers were hiding. The whole street was shut off for days, and again three months later when an armed robber, having held up a bank in the centre of town, routed his escape along our road and fled past the window.

After such experiences in shared living I was looking forward to having my own house. Having the Hoff as a landlady means I’m never more than a faulty toilet away from trouble but at least this way there’s no greasy perverts to haul my underwear sopping wet from the washer and I’m less likely to be raided by the bomb squad --unless the Handelstrassers have shifted their base of operation, but after that passport business I think they know I’m watching them.

2007-08-16T13:27:00.000+02:00

In September Adam, in the company of Jenko, Ryan, and Stew, is going to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I am much in awe of his drive and strength and determination. I’m the outdoor type in an amble-through-an autumn-park-followed-by-a-punt-on-the-lake sort of way; his type of outdoors is trekking up a mountain and white-water rafting back down. The sort of thing that requires "kit".

To test their fitness and begin getting in shape for the expedition (and I feel that the magnitude of the Kilimanjaro trip warrants the term expedition – it’s not often one can use it without sounding like a nineteenth-century natural philosopher) they undertook some training exercises, beginning with the Yorkshire three peaks, the three highest hills meant to be climbed in twelve hours. Adam, being experienced in these matters, as I know from countless nostalgic reminisces from his boyhood in the scouts, was prepared with suitable clothing (warm, lightweight, waterproof) and sufficient food to power the walk.

Jenko, although seemingly prepared, had come in trainers, which lasted exactly seven minutes before being saturated with bog, and Aneesh, for reasons quite unknown, turned up for a twelve-hour hike, in this:

He didn’t even cut arm holes. He explained this using the cunning logic that arm holes would let the rain in. He fitted the binbag over his rucksack so that from the front he looked a standard insane person but from the side he was also a hunchback. For sustenance he had brought a box of Jaffa cakes. Even a limp snail with a weak chest wouldn’t get far on Jaffa cakes.

Consequently, after ten hours and with twelve miles still to go only Adam was in any fit state to keep walking and needed a thorough stream of rousing encouragement to coax the others the rest of the way round. Stew’s legs were aching so much that he walked the last four miles sideways.

Incidentally, all the outdoor wear featured in today’s post is available from the boys’ online catalogue:

It is Stew that concerns me regarding the Kilimanjaro trip. To begin with, he is afraid of heights. Mountain climbing, though the final objective is to achieve a large amount of height, is not the same as staring into the blank void over the edge of a precipice and seeing Death himself waiting for you at the bottom – if there was a net he’s moved it.

I myself do not like heights and I know that the unsteady, unsafe, sick nervousness in the stomach is edge related. If the height is tapered, such as in a hill situation, it is entirely different and you do not feel as if you might suddenly plunge through open air, gravity snatching you back to solid Earth, and life spiralling away from you.

I was not born with a fear of heights and neither did I aim to achieve it; it was thrust upon me quite suddenly one day and as a short aside I will relate the tale.

Abseiling should be a sport in favour of the vertigo sufferer because the more you do it, the closer you get to the ground. The difficult part is the beginning.

When I was 16 my mother, father, and I decided to take part in an abseil down Manchester Town Hall, to raise money and awareness for the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB). This was a big deal for Mum as she already had her fear of heights – mine, little did I know, was awaiting me at the top where it would introduce itself and pledge never to be separated from me from that day forward.

I signed up to do the abseil as the RNIB is a charity close to home. I’d done abseiling as a child and barely gave it a second thought until the day in May dawned bright and clear. We arrived at the Town Hall, which was thronging with participants, spectators, organizers, St. John’s ambulance, the police, and the press. My first mistake of the day was to look up. Manchester Town Hall is 285 feet (87 metres) tall. I could barely see the platform we would be descending from.

An overwhelming rush of nausea gripped me and all colour, nerve, and hope for the future left my body. Before I knew what was happening I was in the lift with ten other people, my parents included. Dad was completely relaxed and actually looking forward to it; Mum was in some kind of calming trance that she had been practising for weeks beforehand and was channelling her energy and aura into her positive zones or something like that. So nervous was I that I had to stop the lift halfway up, where my ears had begun to pop, to suffer five minutes of dry heaves over the toilet.

I can only think that it was some element of machismo that pressed me back into the lift and out onto the ledge for it was certainly not for the cause – all my do-gooding instincts had got back into the van while we were still on the ground being ticked off the list at the registration table.

Out on the ledge, we were harnessed up and lined up to climb onto the platform, which was jutting out over the edge of the building, on some entirely precarious-looking, or so it appeared to me, scaffolding. I was behind Dad, who was clapping his hands together and urging the queue forward, and in front of Mum, who was pressed back against the wall inside her circle of safety. In a regretful, unthinking moment, I made my second mistake: I looked down. The people on the ground were tiny dots and I could see all the way to France. I believe I began to swoon at this point but the two guys running the operation, whose names floated past my ears, took this movement as an indication of my eagerness to begin and pulled me up. They planted my feet on the edge and leaned me out. I think I must have been resisting as they laughed and told me to relax.

“I don’t feel safe” I stammered out. My legs were shaking so violently that they pulled me back in and told me to take some deep breaths. I suppose he was trying to reassure me when one of them said “Even if you wanted to kill yourself now you couldn’t. Look!” and yanked the rope up and down to demonstrate how securely fastened I was.

There was only one way down from this point and I had to hurry up and come to terms with it. I leaned back out over the edge and breathed deeply. Just then I heard “Sophie! Are you coming or what, I’m waiting for you!"

I looked down behind me: Dad was paused some thirty feet below, clutching his rope. “Ok! Er…coming!” I managed to call back, and that was what made me go. The two guys looked quite relieved and gave me smiling encouragement. I don’t think they’d had to deal with anyone breaking out a panic attack on the edge and weren’t sure what to do. They saw me set off, glad to see the back of me, or the top of my head at least, and turned to begin preparing the next person –which was Mum.

I made my way steadily down the wall, thinking about nothing but what I’d been told about paying out the rope. I caught up with Dad, who was on a rope parallel to mine and we slowly descended together. I was breathing hard, my heart hammering in my chest. I began to descend quicker and quicker until finally I could hear people and traffic and dogs barking and police sirens, and cheering and clapping. I hit the ground with a thud. I stood up wobbly, untangled myself from the rope, and burst into tears.

I’ve had a fear of heights ever since.

A few days later we were in the local paper as the brave family trio doing our bit for charity. The photographer wanted action in the picture and so set up a shot in the garden, which involved us clutching the ropes of my sister’s swings whilst wearing bicycle helmets and trying to look as if we were suspended off the edge of the Town Hall. I did point out that had the photographer actually come to the Town Hall last Sunday he could have taken a real picture like all the other newspapers but he ignored this, instead snapping away and barking orders:

“Come on, make it look as if you’re abseiling for christsake!”

“How do we do that?” asked Mum. It was hard to keep a straight face. Rather than looking pumped full of adrenalin and rearing to throw ourselves over a legde, which I suppose is what he wanted to see, we felt immensely silly, a feeling not helped by him zooming in and out and trying to keep the sandpit out of the shot.

“Smile like you’re high!”

“Like on drugs, you mean?” asked Dad, contorting his face into an arrangement he imagined portrayed him as suitably spaced out. The photographer heaved a resounding sigh that suggested his artistic integrity was being compromised, and departed.

The abseil down Manchester Town Hall was over six years ago now but I have never got over it.

Reasons why I would not climb Kilimanjaro are manifold but fear of heights would not be among them. Stew, however, suffers even on mountains and I commend him most highly for confronting his fears so completely. However, I’m not sure it’s entirely wise as this is what happened when they went climbing for a few days in the Alps.

Stew did not cope well with the altitude and the incline and spent much of the trip on his hands and knees, not daring to stand for fear of bobsleighing to a slushy demise at the bottom of the mountain. The others strolled up as if scaling a steep hill and left Stew at the bottom when things got serious in a way that necessitated the use of crampons and a pickaxe.

Stew, having bought a £400 rucksack and a pair of boots handmade by Edmund Hilary’s grandma, seems to be taking it very seriously even though, as we discussed one evening in the pub, he isn’t aiming for the top.

“Surely you’ll want to make it to the top? You’re going all that way!”

“I know but in a way it’s more satisfying not to get to the top. Do you know what I mean?”

I didn’t. He then went on with his latest insistence that the less healthy the climber, the easier the climb.

“Seriously, it’s easier if you’re not fit. That’s why I’ve stopped going to the gym.”

“What happened to your personal trainer?” I asked. Stew had been paying £30 a session for someone that he insisted wasn’t a personal trainer—he didn’t need one—but a health advisor.

“She was a health advisor, not a personal trainer. And it got too expensive.”

“How can it be easier if you’re not fit? That makes no sense at all” said Adam, looking at me and mouthing the words the book.

“Well it is according to the book.”

“What book?” I asked. There’s always a book.

“This one!” He pulled out Kilimanjaro: The Gentlemen's Route and passed it to Adam.

“Page 48.”

An exasperated sigh from Adam. “Stew, it says that often people who are really fit tend to rush and do too much too quickly. People with a lower level of fitness pace themselves better and consequently have a smoother climb. In no way does it claim it’s easier if you’re unfit.

“I’m reading between the lines mate.”

He’s incorrigible! I really hope he makes it to the top – I feel as if my own fear of heights is somehow tied to his and that if he makes it, it will be a triumph for both of us. Which will save me a trip to Tanzania.

2007-08-15T09:53:00.000+02:00

Last night’s conversation with Mum.

“I’ve done your room.”

“Done my room?”

“I’ve got rid of all the junk.”

“You mean the brown carpet?”

“Not just that. Lots of stuff. I took Friday off work and I spent three days.”

“On just my room?! Half of that stuff wasn’t even mine,” I said, remembering the piles of my brother’s belongings wedged behind the door and under the bed.

“No, the whole house! I did four tips to the skip. Your room looks great now, like a proper bedroom!”

“It was fine before,” I said. In truth I didn’t mind Mum clearing out my room. The upstairs bedroom I have periodically occupied since starting University never really felt like mine. As a child my room had been the one across the landing that is now my sister’s and after that, up until I left to go to University, I’d had the long, thin downstairs bedroom that had previously been the garage.

The understanding was that, when I left, my brother would move into the big room and I would take his old room when I was home at weekends and during the holidays. As soon as I’d been accepted into Leeds University, my brother began packing up. One afternoon, sitting at my desk and swamped under A-level revision, I looked round to find him stretching a tape measure across the width of the room. I watched him for a while as he wrote his measurements on a piece of paper; he stood back with his hands on his hips, looking up as if gauging the height of the room.

“What are you doing?” I asked finally, putting my pen down.

“Thinking of building a halfpipe down this end,” he answered, without looking at me.

“Are you serious? This room’s only eight feet high.”

“I’m thinking about it. Or maybe a stage,” he mused, snapping his tape measure shut and turning to look at me. “What’s the problem?”

“Does Mum know?”

“Not yet. But she won’t mind.”

“Why are you doing this now?” I asked, as he took out a piece of chalk and began making marks over the radiator. “It’s only April and I won’t be leaving until September.”

“These things need planning Soph,” he explained with a withering look. He ran his finger along the door frame, paused as if an inspiring thought had just occurred to him, and left.

Five months later Mum arrived home from dropping me off at my halls of residence, having sobbed all the way back, to find my brother in a crisis situation with a wardrobe utterly and immovably wedged on the stairs and my sister, accompanied by various teddies, shouting directions from the landing. Mum said it had taken her mind off things.

I stayed in my brother’s old room when I was home. It didn’t feel like mine. It was dark blue and rather gloomy. I thought it would help if I redecorated it. At Easter I got halfway through painting it and wished I hadn’t bothered. Being a student I had little money to spare on such things as paint and consequently I bought B&Q’s cheapest, nastiest, thinnest, and most noxious of their Cheap Nasty Thin Noxious range of white emulsion. It was like painting the walls with milk. After the first coat Mum came in to check on progress. “Have you started?” she asked brightly, gazing round.

Couldn’t she see my handiwork?! After scrutinizing the wall with her nose practically touching it she admitted that actually yes, the blue did look a shade paler.

Four coats and another tin of the watery paint later (by which time, as Mum pointed out several times, I could have bought one tin of the more expensive but infinitely quicker and easier one-coat paint and have finished nine days ago) and I was almost at breaking point. I suffered a severe lapse in mental capability, went mad, and painted one wall orange. At first I was quite pleased with it; orange is cheerful. Mum was less pleased as when we’d first moved into this house, three of the walls in my brother’s room had been decorated with motorbike wallpaper. The fourth had been orange.

This puts me in mind of a story about Cassie when we were very young, perhaps two. Her parents had redecorated her bedroom with some farmyard-animal wallpaper and bought a new bed and new curtains. When they moved Cassie back into the room she suffered horrific screaming nightmares almost nightly. They didn’t know what was causing the nightmares and tried everything to get to the bottom of it. They tried bringing back her old bed, moving the bed, using a nightlight, soothing music, but nothing seemed to help.

Then one evening, Cassie’s mum, at her wits’ end, sitting on the end of the bed trying to soothe Cassie through another of her terrible dreams, noticed the wallpaper that Cassie’s dad, Barry, had bought on Salford market. She put the crying Cassie down and stood up to take a closer look.

Some of the animals had three eyes.

Or four eyes. Definitely more than the usual two and it was these mutated monsters that were causing Cassie her horrible nightmares. Even when she was telling me this story, years later, she started to get uncomfortable and hurriedly began talking of something else. She swears she is mentally scarred. I probably don’t need to say how much trouble her dad was in for buying cheap knock-off wallpaper from Salford market.

Cassie’s dad has been in trouble more than once for his botched DIY, examples of which include the use of chewing gum and blutack to put up wallpaper and, before moving house, repairing the leaking roof with a beach ball and a coat rack. Shortly after the new owners had moved in the beach ball deflated and the roof began to leak again. Barry had to pay to have it repaired properly and correct the extra damage caused by a protruding coat rack.

“It wasn't fine, it was a mess,” said Mum. “And I’ve moved your bed.”

“What about the carpet?” I asked. “Is that gone?”

“Yep. It’s in the spare room now. I feel as if I’ve waged war on the house and won! There are just two areas of guerrilla resistance remaining, in the spare room and the cupboard under the stairs. Do you want to know what I found in your brother’s wardrobe?”

“Er…do I?”

“Fifty seven odd socks, fourteen pint glasses, twenty three pounds in loose change, a receipt that says ‘heroin’ on it but I don’t think it’s real heroin as I’m sure they don’t give receipts for that, a half-eaten chocolate monkey, a pair of women’s knickers, and a gun.”

"What?!" I cried, outraged. "I gave him that chocolate monkey—why’s he only eaten half of it?!”

A trip to the Homeland beckons.

2007-08-13T12:34:00.001+02:00

Another weekend and another sojourn back to The Homeland for two more weddings. Adam’s cousin Angela married on Friday, though I only went to the party in the evening, and Saturday was his friend Louise’s wedding.

The bright warm day was perfect and the sun shone all afternoon. The ceremony was a little different to the Catholic weddings I’m used to and it seemed to me that the vicar harped on too much about whether anyone in the congregation had objections to the marriage (“Seriously, this is very important. I’ll say again, does anyone have any reason why they may not be wed? Anyone at all? What about at the back? No? How about down the front here…..? No? Well. Ok then. Good).

Attending so many weddings this summer draws my thoughts towards my own wedding, something I’m sure would be very unwise to voice in the hearing of my mother and grandma, who is apparently disappointed that her brother, despite being younger, is to achieve the hallowed status of great-grandparent before her.

It is worrying to contemplate that thoughts of this kind are appearing unbidden in my unprepared mind. It seems that this happens to us all at some point. I remember being cornered by Cassie during a night out last year who, drunk, asked me if I could hear her biological clock ticking as she could hear it thundering in her ears and, even though she had no desires of motherhood, its ticking was keeping her awake at night. “Like Captain Hook and the crocodile!” I said, grinning and passing her another gin and tonic. “Mmm” she grunted, and spun round on her bar stool and began jabbing Adam in the chest amid threats of what was likely to happen to him should he not treat me the way I deserved.

On Saturday the football season kicked off and with it the fantasy football league. My team Fanta Elf suffered a poor start and currently occupies position 19 in our league of 23 teams. Guido’s team Brilliant Orange fared rather worse though and after Saturday’s games he had sunk to bottom place with -1 point. The points drawn from Sunday’s games allowed him to claw his way back up to zero and I believe he is now regretting his premature display of bravado in the preseason banter, which involved assertions of “If it ain’t Dutch it ain’t much”, a catchphrase that is sure to return to haunt him.

2007-08-08T12:14:00.000+02:00

A Thinking Blogger award – how exciting! I must graciously thank Urban Cowgirl for the honour and for writing such a fabulous account of her move to New Zealand. If I had a links list in my sidebar, and there is absolutely no reason why I don't, she’d be at the top.

As I understand it I now have to choose five other blogs that really make me think. This may take some time as most of the blogs I read come from the coveted Blogs of Note list and they of course have already achieved recognition. I will put some effort in and keep my eyes meticulously peeled for any particularly thought-provoking waffle that I might happen across.

To other business then. Last night was my third stint in the babysitting of Son of Guy. I was first introduced to him when he was two and a half; he is now three and can pronounce my name properly (I was previously known to him as Sofa, which, hilariously, Guy started calling me at work) but occasionally we still have some communication issues. He has a German mother and an English father and is being raised bilingual but living here means he speaks mostly German, including to me. I am supposed to speak to him in English so as not to confuse him and problems only arise when, forgetting who I’m dealing with, I ask him questions that he can’t answer, not because he speaks German, but because he’s three:

“Do you need a clean nappy?”

“Clean nappy.”

“Is this one wet?”

“Yeh.” I check. It’s not.

“No, you don’t, you’re fine!”

“Fine.”

“Now then, do you normally sleep in this vest?”

“Yeh.”

“Under your pyjamas? Are you sure?”

“Yeh.” I stand him in front of me to better consider the options, critically examining the situation from a few different angles.

“Won’t you be a bit warm? I don’t think we need the vest. But wait, doesn’t the vest keep the nappy on?”

He throws his duck onto the floor and begins playing with my necklace. I don’t think he’s taking this seriously.

“Ok, look. I say we stay with the vest for now and if you get uncomfortable just give me a shout. What do you think?”

“Yeh.”

“Ok then, glad we're in agreement. Have you cleaned your teeth? Of course you haven’t, you can’t reach the tap. Shall we go clean your teeth?”

“Yeh.”

The rest of the bedtime routine continued smoothly and he was tucked up and fast asleep long before his parents returned. I had just begun a peruse along their bookshelf when I heard the key in the front door; they crept in as if in fear of waking the devil himself after a hard day’s torturing the damned in a burning eternity of hellfire.

Discussing the evening in a low whisper at the exact opposite end of the house I said he was sound asleep and had been as good as gold. They jokingly said I should come round every night and I jokingly said sure! Then ran for it.

2007-08-03T12:32:00.001+02:00

“So. Have you actually packed…..anything?” I asked, glancing round Zoran’s unkempt, overcrowded apartment. Unless you knew otherwise, there was nothing to suggest that he was moving out that very evening.

“Well,” he said shiftily, weaving around the living room picking up socks and opening the windows, “I didn’t know where to start. So I didn’t.”

“So I see.”

It was 5.30pm. Guido, Zoran, and I had left work at 4 and taken La Voiture to the car-hire place and procured a large van that had all the conveniences of the modern vehicle plus this novel device, which, as I was sitting in the middle and it was right before me, attracted my attention.

Zoran, being the shrewd economist, and having discounted the practicalities of the car company’s absolute barebones cheapest rate allowing use of the van between the hours of 4 and 8am, had taken the option of hiring the van for a maximum of 100km. He had calculated to the last meter that the move could be done within this range, which left little room for error, and encouraged Guido, who was driving, to shrink his turning circle and to reduce his manoeuvres to as few as strictly necessary.

The first stop was to take delivery of a red flat-pack kitchen from the back of a warehouse that might be described as dodgy. This was the scene as the boys arranged the oven and six boxes in the van.

If we hadn’t already been round to the front of the shop it would be reasonable to imagine this is the kind of place you could engage the services of an hitman (I was going to say assassin but that makes it sound more glamorous than the likely reality) or dispose of certain incriminating items of a nature that may attract attention if dumped in a canal.

On asking for confirmation that Guido and I were here to help Zoran move, and not pack, he assured us he was all but ready to go and we’d be back on the road in an hour. Guido’s not unfounded lack of faith suggested we capture video evidence of the level of organization Zoran had managed to achieve:

Guido and I exchanged weary glances. In truth, we had expected no different but this was the Zoran we know and love. “Let’s get started then!” I said cheerily, and began throwing things into a bag. Zoran disappeared into the kitchen and I heard cupboards opening and closing. I emptied the wardrobe and took all the clothes off the drying rack on the balcony and stuffed them into a rucksack. There was no time to sort any of his belongings or identify rubbish; I swept all the papers and magazines and tickets and receipts off the desk into a bag. I turned round to find Guido standing in the middle of the room looking utterly overwhelmed. “I don’t know where to start!”

“Not you as well! It doesn’t matter, start anywhere!” I said, gesturing towards a large collection of coins and books adorning the shelves. I handed Guido a holdall and went into the bathroom where bottles of shampoo and toothbrushes were hurriedly packed (into a bag that began to leak around two hours later). Back in the lounge, Guido was sitting on the couch, Zoran’s laptop propped on a box in front of him.

“What are you doing?” I asked disbelievingly, looking round at the still considerable amount of packing to be done.

“Just thought I’d check my email….” he said innocently, looking up, “Why?”

“Why?! Because we’ve got to pack this whole place up and clean and tidy it and be out of here at some point tonight!” I whipped the laptop out of reach and packed it away.

Having moved house five times over the last five years I am used to packing and leaving in a hurried, haphazard way but it seems the boys were less experienced. At one point the two of them were standing before a cupboard in the kitchen with Guido holding open a carrier bag and Zoran sniffing each item from the cupboard, putting it in either the bin or the carrier bag. I pointed out that this wasn’t really a two-man job and suggested that Guido begin loading the van with what we’d already packed. He sloped off downstairs carrying a guitar stand, a snowboard, and a cakebox. Questions as to why this last item was included among Zoran’s possessions had to wait.

At some point during the packing Zoran pulled out this enormous suede coat and, finding it too bulky to pack comfortably into a suitcase, decided, in spite of the August warmth and the exertions of the evening, to wear it instead. It was shortly after this that he conceived of an excellent time-saving measure that involved throwing anything that was light enough not to break, or cause serious injury to anyone accidentally struck, off the balcony into the waiting arms of Guido below.

Around 8 o’clock Zoran proffered a plate of microwave cuisine and we stood out on the balcony and reviewed the progress as we ate. Just before Christmas Zoran, in anticipation of his moving to a larger place and taking advantage of work’s relocation allowance, had bought several items of furniture from Ikea, which were currently being stored in Brid’s basement. We were due to pick them up at some point over the course of the evening but we still had a way to go. This flat was furnished when he rented it but as well as all his belongings, Zoran was also taking a sofa, the fridge, and the washing machine.

To say that the washing machine was not ready to go does not do sufficient justice to its present position. Not only was it yet to be unplumbed and removed from the kitchen, it still contained Zoran’s washing. He was at least graceful enough to be embarrassed about this but it was decided that wasn’t time to remove and dry it so Zoran’s laundry journeyed to his new flat still in the moist drum of the machine.

Finally, at about 10.30pm, we set off for Brid’s house, being ever wary of the 100km maximum driving distance. We parked outside, where Brid and her cat Beag were waiting for us. After a slight delay due to Brid forgetting the combination of the padlock on the basement door, the boys emptied the basement while I guarded the van from the less savoury citizens of Mannheim (though as a rather wussy young female alone in the dark I’m not sure I was the ideal choice for this job. If a passing criminal had approached with “I’m taking this TV”, my likely response: “ok then.”)

The van was, by now, very full and, accompanied by some rather ominous clanging sounds from the back, we drove round to Zoran’s new flat. It was now after 11 and some noisy manoeuvring of the van around the narrow space outside the building attracted the attention of the Hausmeister, who took exception to three shabby foreigners wanting to unload a van into one of his apartments at this time of night. He told us to come back at 8 the next morning. This was disappointing so close to the end and we drove home in a tired silence, passing La Voiture still at the car-hire place. The boys dropped me off, saying goodnight and forbidding me to join them the following morning in driving back to Mannheim and unloading the van, which I was rather glad of when I woke up exhausted and aching all over.

They say that moving house can be one of the most stressful experiences in life. Zoran’s moving day served to remind me that, providing The Hoff doesn’t take it upon herself to evict me again, the next time I move is very likely back to England. I’ll ask Zoran if he knows where I can hire a van for the 987km back to Manchester.

A Weekend in The Homeland

2007-07-31T11:57:00.003+02:00

I arrived in Manchester late on Friday evening and got into a taxi outside the airport. The driver said it would be £55 so I got back out again. Mum came down to pick me up.

Once home I took my bag upstairs and opened the bedroom door with thoughts of “Ah, my old room, just as I left it!” to find my brother had put all the junk he didn’t want cluttering up his room in there and, for reasons known only to Mum, two rolls of brown carpet.

I managed to carve a pathway to the bed, where I lay down and closed my eyes before my sister came in and told me it was 8 am and we were going to walk a stray dog.

I was willing to give it another go. Apparently Sam is fully recovered and has stopped biting the arms of all the female members of staff, and Jack has been rehomed. Sister chose a Dalmatian-cross puppy, Bernard. He was a few months old, and the last remaining of his brothers and sisters, who had all been rehomed. He was full of energy and bounded round the yard, jumping up to everyone and chasing after the other dogs, but once we got out onto the road he lost all his enthusiasm and preferred to lie down in the grass.

It quickly became apparent that he wasn’t going any further and so sister offered to carry him. He leaped into her arms as if he couldn’t believe he’d been forced to walk. He was so used to being carried that when sister put him down again, he wouldn’t put his feet on the floor and lay on his back with his legs in the air.

When we got back to the sanctuary the life suddenly returned to him and he raced into the yard with us tearing after him as if he’d just had the walk of his life. Sister and her dad took him on the following day but this time he wouldn’t go further than the carpark. Still, Bernard was an improvement on the last dogs'-home experience.

I went to Dad’s in the afternoon. The baby can now crawl (but won’t on demand for an eager sister who’s only in the country for 48 hours) and cries as if one of her tiny chubby legs is hanging off if Dad laughs too loudly. It is still strange to see a baby in Dad’s house but nothing has really changed in terms of me visiting Dad – we still drink coffee and talk about books.

This time it was The Diary of a Nobody, by George and Wheedon Grossmith, and (inevitably) the new Harry Potter, which, as Dad is blind and doesn't yet have it on audio, he hasn’t read. And he couldn’t remember if he’s read book six.

“Is that the one where something happens to whatshisname…..Grumbly Bimbly Bor?”

“Who?”

“You know….main-bloke wizard.”

“Main-bloke wizard?! Do you mean Dumbledore?”

“That’s him."

It seemed he has indeed read book six, if not closely.

On Saturday night me, Mum, sister, and Cassie’s mum went to see Transformers – the first half was very funny but then the humour died away during the second half, but I suppose that tends to happen during epic battles, of which there were plenty.

I am always slightly worried about going out to public places in my hometown during these visits back home. Unless Adam is there, I generally adopt a style based on whatever I can rustle up from the long-abandoned items of clothing lining the bottom of my wardrobe. These are clothes that have never hoped to see the light of day again, and I’m sure at one time I thought it would an assault to the eye if they did, but now I find myself happily pulling any combination of them on and sporting an outfit that an outlandish mad person might think a bit much.

I spent, for example, much of Saturday in a pair of blue-and-cream checked pyjama bottoms that got half way down my shins and decided that was far enough, and a bright pink t-shirt with a picture of a camper van and the words “Newquay Surf” across the front that was too small when I bought it eight years ago. I also had the kind of hair I’ve come to expect the day before it receives a much-needed cut and after a six-hour journey home. I wasn’t, let’s be honest, looking my best. I worry that someone from school or college may spot me in one these ensembles and think bloody hell, I went to school with that girl and now look at her, insane and homeless in a few short years, well it just goes to show what drugs’ll do to you…..

This weekend I decided to take over my sister’s reading program. She is not as well read as she ought to be at ten years old and I aim to set that right. She showed sufficient interest in Terry Pratchett so I’ve started her off with A Hat Full of Sky, which she seems to be getting along with, getting stuck only occasionally with words like “tyrannical” (how to explain –pocket money: your dad).

However, she is extremely intelligent and very quick and chats amiably to adults about anything they happen to be discussing. Donna dropped by during lunch on Sunday and sat at the dining table with us; sister engaged her in a conversation about golf, asking who her favourite golfer was and if she ever has to shout “fore!” (she does).

Earlier in the day I had suddenly been utterly unable to recall Mark Twain’s real name (I’m sure this must happen to us all every now and then) and ran up to the computer where Wikipedia eased my mind. I called down the stairs to Mum “It’s Samuel Langhorne Clemens, that’s his real name!”

At this point sister appeared behind mum and, being at that nosy, have-to-know-everything age, said

“What? Whose real name? Who are you talking about? Samuel who?”, to which Mum replied,

“Nobody you know, we’re just talking about an author.”

“Who though? Which author, author of what?”

Mum and I were laughing. “Mark Twain, do you even know who he is?”

“Yes!” said sister, indignant.

“Who then?” said Mum. There was a pause.

“Steve Twain’s dad!”

She flounced off, leaving me and Mum in stitches over what I think is quite possibly the best answer ever.

Leaving on Sunday was the usual wrench. I always think it is a good idea to go home for the weekend but it is never enough time. I have been away for a year now and it isn’t getting any easier. I feel I am missing so much with both of my sisters and I can’t get this time back.

I had a visit from one of my flatmates from University. He moved to Berlin for an internship that recently ended and he has since been touring the country until his visa runs out. I hadn’t seen him in two and half years so we had a lot of catching up to do. The large majority of the evening involved him saying such things as “How’s your German? I’m fluent (and the really annoying part is he is!).

I wanted to show him round where I live so we went to the Marktplatz in town, which I’ve described elsewhere on Paradise Deutsch and is really very picturesque indeed. On a summer evening it is usually thronging with people out for dinner and drinks but the weather has been cool of late and on Monday night there was barely another soul around. He said he couldn’t bear to live anywhere with fewer than 10,000 people (my town has 40,000) and it was too quiet for him. I said nonsense, there’s plenty of people about but then we walked into yet another empty bar.

Afterwards we took a walk round town and I told him how beautiful it is, especially in summer. We stopped to look up at the castles. I heard my friend say “Oh”. I turned to see that he was looking at the gutter by our feet, where rather unfortunately there was a dead squirrel having its brain eaten by various insects and maggots. We hurried on.

The next morning I went with him to the train station; his impression of the town wasn’t helped any by the presence of eight hundred old people on the bus. In a whole year of taking the bus between my house and the centre of town and of living for 23 years on this Earth I swear I have never seen so many pensioners on one bus. He didn’t say anything, just raised his eyebrows and looked out the window. Then he turned to ask if I’ve read the new Harry Potter book.

“Of course I have!" I replied, getting excited. "Have you?!”

“No. I was intimidated out of reading it.” This seemed a very odd thing to say.

“What do you mean ‘intimidated’ out of reading it?!” I asked. “Who intimated you?”

“It was my flatmates - they said it’s a kids’ book and I shouldn’t read it. So I stopped after book four.”

“Well you’re missing out! Do you want me to tell you what happens to main-bloke wizard?”

“Who?”

“Nevermind.”

Irish Wedding 1 (Part 2)

2007-07-27T12:20:00.000+02:00

After some emergency reorganization of funds in collaboration with my wonderful Mum I had the car keys and was able to find a cafe in which I bought an all-you-can-drink coffee and turned round to find myself face-to-face with an old man.

“Do you know where I can buy a ticket to fly tomorrow morning?”

“I’m afraid I don’t, sorry,” I replied, backing up slightly, the coffee burning my fingers through the polystyrene cup.

“I’ve missed my flight you see, because of the floods.”

“Oh dear. Well, I’m sure if you ask at the…..”

“They lost my baggage too. All I’ve got is what I’m carrying.”

This consisted of a rucksack, a holdall, two carrier bags and a briefcase so I don’t think it was all that bad.

“Feckin’ Aer Lingus.”

“Yes, well I hope you get sorted out! Goodnight!” I said and hurried off, grabbing a handful of napkins and sliding into a booth.

Usually I carry a notebook with me for just such occasions as this. My current favourite was a birthday present from Guido – the cover says It’s going to be a colourful day, something I find very cheering and inspiring. However, I had left it behind for this weekend as I hadn’t expected to have time spare to update Paradise Deustch – hence the napkins.

I drank my coffee and wrote the above and then just before 1am went back down to arrivals, where I mooched around the bookshop, being careful not to stand too close to the table of Harry Potter books that had sprung up sometime during the last hour (temptation is even harder to resist at this hour of the night), and thirty minutes later Adam and I left the airport behind and headed for County Wexford.

Adam had phoned the B&B to say we would be arriving late. We got there at 3.30am (which was 4.30am German time) to find a note and a map to the bedroom pinned to the front door. We crept through the house like a pair of burglars and finally collapsed into bed. It had been a long day.

The day of the wedding dawned grey and cold but it wasn’t raining. We drove to the church, where Chief was hopping from foot to foot, clapping his hands together and saying “I’m actually not that nervous, I thought I would be but I’m actually fine! I thought I’d be nervous but I’m ok, I’m fine actually….”

The wedding was due to begin at 2.30pm and at 2.10, at Chief’s suggestion, we all got in the car and drove down the road to the pub for a very swift Guinness. I had just enough time to introduce Adam to Chief and to Guy and Mario (Cara and Jose he had already met) before dashing back up to the church just as the bride’s car came round the corner.

The wedding was beautiful and simple; the guests lined up outside the church afterwards to shake hands with the bride and groom and Chief had a smile so wide you could have hooked it over his ears like a fake beard.

It had just begun to rain at this point so the wedding party went down to the beach to take some photographs and we made our way to the hotel for the reception.

The day passed quickly amid food, wine, and dancing. I went to say goodbye to Chief just before we left. He said “don’t let them get you down over there.”

We went to the beach on Sunday and to a bookshop, where we bought Harry Potter and wondered who could last the longest without reading it (me -ten hours). That evening we went for dinner at the golf club of the hotel the night before. The landlady had told us it was a nice place to go as it has a terrace that overlooks the sea and it serves bar food rather than the expensive restaurant food in the hotel.

It certainly was very nice and it did have a beautiful view of the sea but our definitions of bar food must differ somewhat. The food was expensive but we decided that since we were there we may as well stay and anyway, it’s about time we started eating in some nice places.

Upon getting the bill though we found we’d been undercharged. We looked at each other: the message of RUN!! passed silently between us. We left the money on the table and hurried out, thinking that perhaps we aren’t ready to join The Quality after all if we still leg it when undercharged by a tenner…..one day though.

The next morning we left for the airport. Adam’s flight was at 12 and mine at 4, so our 10.45am arrival meant a very long wait for me (I arrived one and half hours before the checkin opened) but I had Harry Potter to read and that saw me through to Frankfurt airport.

I got home late on Monday night thinking that I thoroughly enjoyed my first adult wedding and I am very much looking forward to the next two.

Irish Wedding 1 (Part 1)

2007-07-26T10:40:00.000+02:00

It was 10.30pm and, even after the issue with the hire car was sorted out, I still had another three hours to wait in Dublin airport. Due to the flooding in England, Adam’s flight had been delayed. My own flight from Frankfurt had been thirty minutes late. I'd been waiting at the gate when a loud voice came over the speaker and said that actually the flight wouldn’t be going after all as the pilot had had enough for the day and they would set off in the morning instead.

A cold wave of panic washed over me as thoughts of Adam, stranded in Dublin with no car, nowhere to stay, and with an invitation to a stranger's wedding rushed into my head followed by images of me dashing to the wedding the next morning, crashing through the back of the church, a hundred heads turning in unison to see who was responsible for the flagrant ruin of the wedding, and Chief giving me a look that says I’m about to be sacked and arrested in the same instant.

Fortunately, before I could get too carried away, a scrum broke out at the Budapest gate and the Dublin passengers, who had all been looking at each other with large amounts of angst weighing heavy in the atmosphere, sunk back into our chairs with relief and were able to direct sympathy to the poor sods who were now following the hurried and harassed rep towards a coach.

I boarded my flight a short while later; the plane was busy. There was a passenger with a vicious twitch and he was, of course, sitting next to me. This was very unfair on him to have been seated next to me; a delayed flight on a Friday evening with a stressful rush from terminal 1 to terminal 2 (this was my first time on Aer Lingus instead of the usual trusty Lufthansa - I hope it will be my last) triggered a severe attack of IBS but the less said about this the better as worse was to come. And here it is:

I went to collect the hire car, which, as far as I knew, I had paid for and was ready to pick up the keys. How naïve. I had to pay the same money again in insurance and again for being under 25. Feeling immensely annoyed and fleeced but also tired and wanting to get it sorted as soon as possible, the woman asked me for my credit card; I handed her the card I’d used to book the car, which was refused exactly one minute later.

She looked at it.

“This is a debit card. We need a credit card. I’ll explain the difference to you in a minute” , she said, typing my details into the system.

I thought this was a rather unreasonable comment and bit my tongue over a sharp retort; after the card was refused a second time and I’d explained that I didn’t have a credit card she raised her eyebrows in a look that clearly said “Well I guess you’re walking tonight then”.

“What about my boyfriend’s credit card, can we pay with that?” I asked suddenly as a spark of inspiration hit me.

“Does he have a driver’s licence?”

My heart sank. “No”, I replied meekly.

“Why not?”

Again, another unnecessary and unreasonable question and by now there was a queue forming behind me. Peering round me at the increasing line of irate passengers she indicated a phone at the empty desk next to her and said

“Look, call your bank and find out the problem”.

I already knew the problem – no money. I’d been able to afford the car no problem before they whacked more hundreds of pounds on. I called the bank anyway and listened to a short list of possible solutions, each of which got more ridiculous -- the most sensible was the suggestion that Adam transfer some money to my account. Sounded promising. “Ok, let’s do that” I said, hopeful.

“Certainly. It will take five working days to clear”.

I thought I’d explained my situation in no uncertain terms but apparently not. I put the phone down and thanked God that Adam wasn’t there yet. He has a series of long-winded lectures on how I improperly handle my finances that he was been delivering to me steadily over the last few months and now would have been the perfect opportunity for the next instalment.

I took a deep breath and did the only thing you can do when you find yourself penniless in a foreign city in the middle of the night: I called my mother.