From Abu Gharib to Frankfurt

Well, I now know what human rights violation is all about and it happened right here to us in Frankfurt. Some surly looking lads with blond hair and crew cuts at the Irish local - O'Rileys requested "I'm too sexy" by Right Said Fred. No less than 20 secs in the song had the shirt come off, then came the shorts, then the boxers. I had recognised one of his cohorts down in the gents earlier when we were chatting about ballocks (as you do after you've had a few pitchers of larger) who it was obvious he was on leave from the army base in Kuwait. Perhaps his love, love was going to leave him wanted to woo her back with his romantic entreaties.

That Saturday night at O'Rileys was fun for a change (or "neat" if you're still teaching English after 30 years in school in New Zealand), so it's nice to know there are some parts around the Bahnhofviertel (station surroundings) which have a social pulse. I met up with three ozzie dudes, a Canadian (he said the stories of bears and moose roaming the streets are all true) and six Americans. I had also met a guy earlier that evening who was from Wellington, but he was clearly more interested in being a walking hormone than chatting with the group. I counted no less than five women in the space of as many minutes who he tried to woo. Unfortunately for them some found him as transparent as the New Zealand Police internal inquiry process, so he found some Spanish shelas to hang out with. I dubbed him the Cloonster - just about everything was a mirror image of the actor (stubble included).

The now weekly game of squash happened again this Sunday - Michael bought along a mate and played round robin tournaments. I am happy to produdly be rekindled with my hand calluses - the squash palm is back!

This week is BAU (haven't formed a process as yet for said business - I'll keep you in the loop) but I plan to hit Cologne this coming Friday evening and return Sunday afternoon. Last Friday was a sad state of affairs crashing to bed after work for a quick kip (and planning to wake up shortly for an all nighter: "Nacht der Clubs"), but waking up to my next door neighbour wandering around her room creaking with every step. She does every morning at 6.50am and I think she's like the woman off the shining. I have yet to see this mysterious woman (or even if she is a woman), but one thing I'll bet my kingdom on - she'll be headless.

One last thing before I sign off (sort of like Jerry Springers comments at the end of his show), if you're looking for a new electonic artist to get in to, see if you can find Erland Oye (the O is like a Danish strikethrough O) and the album is called unrest. It's old, but if you like a couple of songs from Kinds of Convenience, you'll most likely love Erland. Kings of Convenience are playing in Germany next month and in a couple of weeks, I think I'll be going to Rammstein in Frankfurt - aprently their live stuff is pretty good.

Take care of yourselves, and each other.

I feel like Shakespeare

I even have the authentic writers' block. Perhaps it's just the lack of food, but I'm sure that when I get back from a lunch at the Casino (a word the Germans use to call their campus cafeteria) I'll be running circles around paragraps of diatribe in dactyllic hexameter interlaced with furious bouts of Haiku.

Having settled down to some form of routine, it makes it easier to plan weekly activities. I have discovered an Irish pub just around the corner from where I am living. The interesting thing about this pub is it's not full of local Frankfurters wanting some authentic black pudding or sheeps trotters for dinner - it seems to contain the majority of the English speakers of Frankfurt. Of course, the soccer fans take up a disproportionate space in the din and hue of coversation/throat-rupturing shouts at the football on TV.

In other news, you folk back at home will be the very lucky users of a law on December 1st that will bring joy to everyones nasal and lung cavaties. As I write this outside Cafe Celona, I'm having the good fortune of inhaling someone else's cancer stick particles. They're esepcially kind to make sure they hold the offending shit stick around my nose height in the upwind direction. I wonder if they mind if I walk over to their table and fart in their coffee cup and light the remaining beverage up like a liqueor shot. Grrrrr. $#%$#%@#$%

I am still living in a hostel in the red light district - expecting to find an aparment any-day-now (TM). It's good though in that you get to meet a bunch of interesting folk traveling through - lots of email addresses and offers of places to crash if I'm in need. Not so sure if Thomas at the American army base in Kuwait City really means the base, when he said come and crash.

I have a regular partner lined up for squash now - works in a bank (surprisingly) and seems a good skill match (although I'll probably end up giving him a wastings when the fitness kicks in). Also met some people through the German and French courses, so the social scene is slowly picking up.

Well, I hope you could find the Haikus amongst the paragraphs (hint: don't spend too much time looking).

That was les vacances a l'europe for another week and, I'm Chris Hellberg. Goodbye. *tick tick tick tick tick*

Many beers, we have yes

It's interesting how easy someone can start to feel like they're a set-extra on Lost in Translation, but without the pretty blonde. I haven't mentioned it before, but I think I've discovered an understated gergariousness in myself, albeit at an inopportune time. Either that, or when you're placed in a country where few speak enough English to have more than just a utilitarian conversation, it's nice to be able to prattle on in English idioms and banter.

Working in Germany for the last two weeks has bought me to the conclusion that human conversation is an important tool for maintaining one's sanity. I feel like every time I ask a question I just get looked at with that 5 second goldfish memory look. It behoves English speakers moving to most European countries to use plenty of “Whats”, “Whens” and “Wheres” when you decide to amputate information from your conversational compatriot. Often extracting this information is as tough as a gangenous leg amputation – hacking through different sides and using several tools to try and detach the offending appendage.

This week is Frankfurt book fair, and I'm told there is an insurgence of over 300,000 book enthusiats at the event. I bumped in to a couple of people here at the fair who were going to check it out. One girl was a book binder. It took a bit of convincing before I thought you could possibly make a living from something that would be equivalent of the Save As -> PDF in the IT world. However it wasn't just the binding itself. It was the cover art, the book outlay and paper. Thus making it more of an artform... or something. I have put a pox on the book fair and all the tourists it brings. This is due to the fact that pretty much no hotels that were available that week that costed less than what Caesar would taxes from the peasants of Rome. At least they would have got some cash-back vouchers in the form of entertainment by watching hungry Lions ravage gladiators in the Colloseum. I came, I saw, I lucked out. Another was a dude from Berlin named Octavia who is a cartographer come database admin. He had come to Frankfurt in search of gainful employment, before he would embark on a holiday to Thailand for the second time. He was one of the tens of people who always point out how nice New Zealand is based on Lord of the Rings so he might try and get work in Australia or New Zealand.

I was supposed to go to France and catch up with Jaharmes this weekend, but had to get some work (actual work) and sort out my accomadation for the next few months in Frankfurt. I was too late to regress my foolishness in hoping there would be businesses open after 2pm on a Saturday who would be sympathetic to my cause of wanting an apartment for rent. If you want to buy some thongs, jandals, or pretzels on a Saturday you can go ahead. If you need to purchase something vaguely related to the greater commerce, you're out of luck. Well, luckily it's not one of the biggest money-related capitalistic cities in Germa... oh wait. It's like a preparation for the following day, which I'll launch my own private Jihad on in the next few sentences. Pretty much the only thing you can buy on a Sunday is a pretzel (chocolate-coated ones, plain rock salted-ones, or something with swine sprinkles) from the local pretz-cart. This is not the pulling of any legs (or carrying one on one's bicep as the Germans aparently say); the city is not open on Sundays. So while here in Frankfurt right out of my front door is the largest prostitution and littering of sex-shops in the world outside of Amsterdam, they drew the line of engaging in any funny business of Sunday trade. Perhaps Timaru could teach them a thing or two. At the end of the weekend, I still haven't been able to find any apartments (you've really got such a small window of time to shop around). I have been given a web site with aparements I can browse that are for rent, so I think I'll try the electronic tack now.

In other news, I've also signed up with Inlingua doing French classes on a Thursday night for an hour and a half, and German classes twice a week. It's a bit different in the French classes over here finding the students drop back in to German for a bit if they don't understand things to get some elaboration. Although, I guess you had to be there.

Today I was able to get my first game of squash in after five or six weeks of abstinence (not by choice mind you). There are three court centres in Frankfurt and at the end of the couple of hours I spend there, I've managed to rekindle lost friendships with my old mates Sore Quad and Strained Back. Hopefully by next week I would have walked it off well enough to get past the cobweb brushing stage and back to where I was before I left. It was fantasic to get back in to the swing of things - werd up to the Hane and Dairmuid massif.

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That is all.

Bienvenue a Frankfurt

After spending a week in Guildford, England, it was time to leave the land of "How, you doin' - alright?" and one of the most technologically advanced of the fiscal primates of the world - rumour has it Angola is right up there too since had received notice of my next abode of notoritety - Darmstadt. In all fairness it was a good time there. Tim, who's flat I wasstaying at had a pretty cool party on Saturday night. It was a T and P party, so unfortunately I had finished my tenure at Eagle Boys so coudn't go as a pizza delivery guy. One guy did turn up in one of his more familiar daily costumes - apostie - dissapointingly he didn't look like Newman from Seinfeld.

A town (I was to learn on the internet) boasted two squash courts and several technical training instituits. With a population of 140,000 or so, I would be assured of eventually seeing at least one familiar face on the way to work.

The flight across to Frankfurt was pretty uneventful. Aparently as we were taxing out to the runway at Heathrow, we w passed a Kiwi Concorde. I don't call it that due to the possability of it being manufactured in a small Tonan garage in Manurewa. Rather I've called it due it it's flying characteristics of the bird ofthe same name. The as we were taxing to Frankfurt/Main disembarking gate, we went past a heap-big bunch of American freighter planes on the tarmac, which are used to transport much-needed nappies and tampons to Bagdhad. For those of you who are plane watchers, they look like smaller versions of the Russian Antonv 124.

Since Darmstadt is so small, the trip to the Hotel was best made by foot. The local welcoming committe of heroin addicts and unemployed IT workers was there togreet me as I left the station. I didn't get a a frangipannie Lei, but it was just as charming. Hotel Prinz Heinrich was an attempt to look neo-Middle Age (if there's such a term), however I could feel that "ye olde chest-o-drawers" was part of a kitset that could be bought online, right next to the authentic old Irish pub kitset. However, they seemed to pull the deal off quite convincingly. "Internet, you must be crazy, we don't have that here". "You want to use an iron? What are you - a blacksmith?".

As per any first day, you were expected to know, off by heart, everyone in the internal directory along with their pet names they were called in school. "Herr Etwas" is pretty much all I can remember, for those of you who know a bit of German. The following day, I headed to Amsterdam for some internal work meetings. Istayed at the usual Hotel Annemarie, not far from Museumpleine - I still haven't been to the Van Gough museum yet. Hotel Annemaire is nice, they still remembermy name (and it's not because I ticked them off) whenever I go back. Sort of like Cheers, but more funny than the Ted Danson/John Kerry guy.

After returning to Darmstadt some days later, I went out on Friday night looking for some action. The worst I was to find was a bunch of rowdy youths in the main square having a few beers. I think the only shops open at 8 at night were thePizza Hutt, McDonalds and a couple of cafes. I even went looking in to the local dodgy poorly lit park, but it seems that everyone, vagrants included take Friday night off to spend time in their rabbit warren at home..... wherever that maybe. Even the locals struggled to point out more than one or two bars or pubs. This won't do, I thought to myself, and vowed to repatriate myself to somewhere with a nightpulse. The next day I took a train to Frankfurt to stay in the DJH for a night. More on that when I get a chance to write on the train back from work.