Kristian and Frances

I have been terrible with the blog recently but there's so much going on that I haven't felt the urge to write about things. It is a problem but like some people say, just getting on with life is sometimes good. And we've been keeping in touch with family in other ways.

We've been in Edinburgh for the last week I think, now. Kristian has already got a job (yep! for 3 months), I've had two recruitment agency registrations and have another one lined up and a potential job as well with one of them, I just have to prove my typing skills and then they'll consider me properly. So we'll see. Meantime, everyone send their congratulations to K, who GOT A JOB WITHOUT APPLYING FOR A SINGLE POSITION. No kidding. I'm feeling a bit insulted right now to be honest, but I'm happy that we have a better financial position of course, and that things are looking manageable.

Last night we went to meet a guy and see his spare room in his flat. I don't think he was really planning on renting to a couple, but he seemed to think we were okay, and he was a very nice guy, a dentist from Glasgow. My only reservation was that he was the kind of guy who obviously takes real pride in his surroundings, his flat was all clear glass and white sheets and so forth. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't mean neat and clean, I mean DENTIST neat and clean. And he hadn't heard of David Lynch! So we liked the place a lot, but I think we'll keep looking. Now that K has a job we're in a better position to rent our own place as well, and it would only cost a little more (the place was pretty expensive as well). That morning we'd seen another place in Leith (think Newtown before it was gentrified) which was a decent room but the rest of the flat seemed to be covered in unwashed plates and other paraphernalia....

So Edinburgh is lovely, we're optimistic, and I have a new haircut I am not ready to show to anyone back home just yet! But K reckons he likes it. The trip up to Edinburgh from London was great, and it's a shame we didn't have the car for longer, but it sure is expensive here. We're struggling to keep to the budget, and in fact for the first week here it got completely blown (but we were buying stuff for job interviews and getting haircuts and so on).

Day Three

We woke up early on the third day of our roadtrip. It was a wonderful night, the quilts and pillows made for an incredibly comfortable sleep. We had stayed up late, mostly because we had spooked each other out with talk of the "Australian Gothic", and our experiences of it in art (books, films... Picnic at Hanging Rock, Jindabyne, The Proposition, Voss) and through personal experience (as children and as adults). In a quiet moment Frankie let out a minor shriek and spasmed, causing me to do the same. This just freaked us out more, and so we had to turn the light on and talk about something else until we had calmed down.

In the town we stayed in there are two castles, as already mentioned, and a great big cable car thing that is terrifying to behold (for someone like me atleast). We went to the castle first, got our tickets and took a bus up the mountain. It was a pretty impressive castle, and we got a guided tour in a group of five (us plus a family of three). The internals of the castle weren't particularly inspiring, nor was the fact the castle was only 120 years old! The European nobility has a very bland sense of style, and just goes to show that money don't buy cool. After we took the tour we headed back down the mountain, this time via a wonderful walk that starts beneath a waterfall and follows the creek down to the town. The pictures do it a little justice. The walk took us about 40 minutes and was a wonderful fresh start to do the day. We then drove up to the cable car site and I noticed that the people inside the cars were squished in like saradines, so that if you weren't being pressed against the window, you would have no opportunity to experience the 1000metre ascent, and so much of your hard earned 16Euros would have been wasted. Considering this factor, we decided against the whole thing (32Euros ($55AU or so) for the both of us, to be squished in a cable car with a chance at taking in the vistas - no thanks!).

Anyway, given it was a bit late in the day and we had a long drive to Freiburg, on the otherside of the country, we thought we might do the sensible thing and book a hotel from Fussen. So we went to an internet cafe and found a hotel, but the stupid internet computers were set to 2004, so when we tried to book a room, it'd only allow us to book rooms in 2004. And there was no chance we'd get across Germany fast enough to arrive in time. So we took the phone number of two places and went to the phone boot. h. I got lumbered with the German hotel, on the understanding that if that didn't work out, F would call the French hotel (Freiburg is relatively close to the French border city of Colmar, which I was also interested in visiting). Anyway, I spoke to the German hotel and arranged for a room that night, and, for some reason, came away with the belief that we had to be there by 7pm to check-in. What we suspect happened was that because of language difficulties, the person I spoke to meant that we had to be there by 7pm to check-in... otherwise we'd lose our booking. I thought it meant that they closed off reception at 7pm, which meant we couldn't ever get in! So we grabbed some good bad pizza (bad pizza that is good!) and set off for Freiburg... and a few minutes later found ourselves at the Austrian border. So we turned around and set off again for Freiburg and drove through some lovely alpine country until we reached the city of Lindau, which I thought was in Germany, and then in Austria, and then perhaps in Switzerland (our map was unclear, and the borders of all through intersected nearby). Fortunately it was in fact in Germany (Austria would have been okay, just in the wrong direction, Switzerland not so good (Visa, Passports, Border Police, Lost tourists etc). It had taken a little longer than expected to get this far, owing to the slow going through the Deutsche Alps (also kown as the Austrian and Swiss Alps). We were a little nervous, but confident that we'd get there in time, Lindau marked the end of the alpine region and the map seemed to indicate that it was just a straight line from here to Freiburg. This was more or less true. What the map didn't indicate to us was; that it was the start and/or end of the holiday season, that the road which followed a massive lake was heavily populated, that there was a billiion mile traffic jam along the length of the lake. So suddenly our arrive time was approaching faster than we were approaching Freiburg, which is always a bad thing. We got stuck in numerous traffic jams, but it still seemed like we'd make it. There is about 50kms of Autobahn along the way, and we managed to make up some time with that (at 150kph on the autobahn you still get overtaken by plenty of cars). We took an exit only to discover another traffic jam, did a quick turn about and F navigated us down another road, saving valuable minutes!

By the time we got to the famous Black Forest (which Freiburg is in the middle of) we had about an hour to cover 45 kms. That isn't usually a problem, the speed limit was 80, and so all the math added up. And then there were the traffic jams. More and more of them! Everywhere! When we finally made our way into the heart of Freiburg we had fifteen minutes to get to the hotel... which was on the edge of the city in an industrial estate... and no map! We stopped into a service station and I grabbed whatever map I could find, thinking nothing of the $10 I just spent on the damn thing (now I think often of it!). Jumped back in the car and then tried to unravel the damn thing. It was folded and cut in some insane fashion so that it was 10cm square folded and about three square kilometres when opened. Time was ticking by, and the streets were full of traffic (which we later found to be a freak event!). We sped across the city, me screeching the tires and weaving and yelling like a madman, Frankie with one eye on map, one on the passing street signs, and one preventing me from driving onto the tram lines, the wrong side of the road, pedestrians, cyclists, and the like. Tyres screeched, Germans honked and holler'd, the clock ticked down. Frankie guided us across the city in ten minutes, together we didn't miss a turn off, or make a wrong turn. We're like rally champions (this was to prove handy for today when she directed me onto a bicycle path - Why are they all looking at us strange!). With four minutes to spare I swung the car into the parking lot and jumped out of the car and raced into reception - passing the 24hour check-in machine - to give Grunter or whoever the chap was a hearty (F says it was Klaus! - but she then says she wasn't there! - but she says "He looked likDaye a Klaus though" - but how would she know, if she wasn't there!, Strange girl, can follow a map, but little else!) Guten tag! He gave me a Guten Abends! His was better, because it was evening, just as he said. Anyway, with my address where I don't live noted down on a piece of paper, and a sweaty signature, we were checked in. When we went for dinner, some time late, at about 8pmr, more people were checking in. The whole 7pm thing had been a wonderful misunderstanding, but we had enjoyed our across town dash and apologise to the Freiburg Council and hope the church can be rebuilt with as little fuss as possible!

We had McDonalds for dinner. It was pretty terrible, especially for a increasingly inappropriately self titled Vegetarian (the truth is, I'm doing pretty darn well to stick to the diet in the land of Meat and Wurst, and without any access to cooking facilities).

We watched some bad American TV (CNBC is undoubtly the most hilariously American thing ever broadcast - people angrily shouting bizarre things at each other, often in agreement, 24hours a day, the except to the hilarity is Conan O'Brien, because while he is funny, he's not actually that funny).

Day Four

Got up at about 8:30am and went to McDonalds for a McDonalds coffee and breakfast. Went to Aldi afterwards to buy some groceries for lunch (what I'd give for a Woolworths or a Banana Joes! - variety!) I'll note here that I actually typed "Coles" instead of "Woolworths", but then F reminded me that we never shopped at Coles, it was Woolworths, and that I always called it Coles, no matter how many times we went there, for, and I quote "some bizarre reason". There is a plenty plain reason, and that is I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face who likes to sniff his own butt.
But, putting that aside...

We drove off into the Black Forest, through the wonderful suburbs of Freiburg. I'll note here that the Germans in general are apparetly fanatical about bicycles. There are no old people on foot, they all ride bikes! Freiburg is even more bike dominant than the rest of Germany that we've seen. There seems to be able an even split between cars and bikes. All around the city are racks and racks of bikes, people on bikes, and doing bike things! I'll also mention the wonderful public transport system. I haven't USED it, so maybe it sucks. But from a coverage perspective! It seems to go everywhere in the city, and last night, while we were searching for dinner (no, McDonalds wasn't our first or last choice, it was our only choice!) we found this suburb under construction, several blocks of colourful apartment buildings. If this was built in Australia there would be no additional public transport built, they might widen a road. Here though, in the very centre of the new suburb, a (new?) tram line had been built, and there was also a visible bus presence, plus of course the park and ride option (and here it means park your bike, not your car). Anyway, we drove into the beautiful forest, up winding mountains, through dark woods, here and there! We had lunch on park bench, randomly placed on the side of the road, somewhere on top of a hill somewhere where we don't know where it was. The lunch itself was awful, but the sitting there looking over the mountains and trees and mist was lovely. I did a pee, and we both threw the rest of our poor meals into the thickets.

We then drove some more, and then a little more, and then found ourselves at the bottom of one of many ski lifts. This one we decided to take, even though it'd blow our budget. Here I'll have another aside, thank you very much. The price of petrol here is ridiculous expensive, and I love it. I hate it, but I love it. It's about 1.30-1.50Euros, which is almost double the price in Australia, and therefore (I'm making vauge approximations here) about four times the price of petrol in the USA. This might account for the prevelance of cycling, but it is'nt so simple! The whole trip we've seen, from one side of germany to the other, a constant stream of outdoor adventure parks. Not disney lands and crap. But places where you go to hike, to bike, to swim, to climb etc. And they were all heavily patroned! Germans undoubtedly have a culture of the outdoors, and not just visiting the outdoors, but hiking through the outdoors! When people get out of their RV's (or just as often, off their bikes!) they go hiking (no matter their age!)... in America you get out of your RV (well, if you do that much!) and sit in the Krispy Kreme on the designated sight-seeing-spot and then go off again. (Of course, there are exceptions!). And as a result, every single little german village, has at least one family home with the words "Zimmer Frei" outside, even in the smallest town we saw, which was only two houses! Anyway, we paid the 15Euros for the trip up the slope into the misty heights. It was well worth it, and when you're in a place like this, far from home, it might be a while before you get the chance to return, so better spend the money and have the fun, money will work itself out later! (within reason!).

Biking is so culturally norm here that we feel like morons (or as F says; Schelps!) for driving a car. We rarely drove our car in Sydney, maybe once a week at the very most. After three months in Prague, and seeing the cycling in Germany it's abundantly clear that the only reason we'd ever need a car would be that the Australian culture is such that governments are allowed to not build public transport infrastructure. I think it was my LJ friend RonaldRayGun who said that roads and transport systems aren't about moving CARS they're about moving PEOPLE (he was speaking of Brisbane, but the principle applies all over Australia). It is such a simple and trivial truth that it's impossible to imagine how it ever came about that the planning authorities don't seem to be able to grasp it.

So why it hurts financially, A LOT (our fuel expense is about 3x as much as we had imagined, so far), I feel happy to pay that much because it reflects a more accurate estimate of the cost of carbon fuel use.

We finished our couple of our drive through the black forest by having a look around Freiburg itself, parking deep underground! The old town is lovely and tight and bright and happy and all the good things one can expect of an old town. In fact, the whole city is just wonderfully inviting. It is a university city, so it has a good sense of youth and all the trappings that entails. It is clean, easy to navigate, bike and pedestrian friendly, green - physically and culturally (the surrounding hills have wind turbines, lots of solar panels on homes, public transport, cycling etc), it snows. I could quite easily imagine living here for a year or so (also Augsburg, and probably a number of other german cities). The one thing I didn't like was this (and it's a good example of everything I've been complaining about in Europe) In a lot of german old towns there is a big old building at each end with a big old archway which is where the main road goes in and out. they are always fun to look at and walk and drive through (and watch the trams go through). Big gatehouses or whatever. Anyway, the one in the old town of Freiburg is probably one of the nicest I've seen so far, until I noticed the words "McDonalds" on the top of the arch. And then the Mcdonalds, which was built into the arch. Now, I don't mind that there is a Mcdonalds in Freiburg (there's at least two others!) but I do mind that they sold out the entryway to their famous old town to McDonalds of all places. It just puts a strange blah to the whole entrancey thing.

And that is the end of the report for day 4.

Germany Day Two.

We leave Augsburg early at about 8:30am after a breakfast of crossaint and coffee. South into more rolling hills and greenery. No castles though, it's like the castles appear on the map only at time we're not in the vicinity. It's all a bit silly, because the romantic road is supposed to be a big tourist thing, but the sights along the road aren't signposted at all, so it's all a bit of guess work. We managed to find ourselves in a nice little town next to a lake, so we had a walk along the banks and saw families and swans and boats. We got back in the car and headed south again, managing to discover relatively little. Somewhere in the distance I spotted an array of radio telescopes, but no indication as to how to get to them, or if they were even available for visitation by anyone except aliens. Perhaps it was a NATO radar base.

The countryside is nice, always fresh and green. But eventually a little boring. In some ways there is a distinct lack of the unknown. Unlike Australia, or the USA, where there's always a creepy sense that you could go missing, swallowed up by the landscape.

We stopped at the town of Wilheim, which has a cute Old Town section, but nothing especially interesting. We ate honey and sub-par german bread next to a statue in the town square. A little kid came and sat next to us and ate ice-cream. It looked a lot tastier than our bread, that's for sure. Left the town and headed south again, and eventually ran into the Austrian/Deutsche/Swiss Alps (they are, of course, all the same Alps, but each country seems to want to declare it "theirs" in some sense, even if they only each have a portion). It got a little more interesting here. Somewhere along the way we stopped at an Audi and had a lunch of bread and antipasto (stuffed chilli's and marinated feta) in the carpark. Eventually We managed to find a castle, ruins in fact, exactly what we were after. Unfortunately they were about 600metres up a mountain side, hidden somewhere in haunted woods and defended by a moat of bears and fire breathing dragons. In the little village nearby I drove on the wrong side of the road momentaril (turning out of an intersection and thinking of how to get to the Information bay we just saw a sign for). These things happen, it happened in America once too. Once is usually enough to remind you.

Our destination today was Fussen, at the base of the alps and a bit of a tourist/resort town. The Youth Hostel was fortunately out of beds. It had a kind of scary Scouts / School Camp kind of feel to it. We went back to the previous town and asked at a few guesthouses, and wound up in this one, in an attic room (oh attic rooms!) for the cheap price of 40Euros for the both of us (the youth hostel wouldn't have been much cheaper, and possibly in a shared room, with freakish Youth Group types). Plus, this town in much smaller, and a hell of a lot nicer really. And it's got wonderful views of the two castles in the area. There is also a cablecar thing that will take us up to the top of the mountains in a terrifying way. I hate heights, but it looks like fun once you're at the top (some 1700metres). We've got a lot to do tomorrow, visit the castle, take a ride up the mountain, and cross over to the south eastern corner of Germany to stay in Freiburg for a couple of days. Frankie scores maximum points for utilising the phrase "Ein loaf of bread bitte" (K put me on the spot! - F), used when we procured dinner (a loaf of bread that was as heavy as a brick and thrice as large plus the remains of the anti-pasto, the olive oil the chillis and feta were soaking in having escaped out of the sealed plastic carton, out of the shopping back and onto the back seat of our hire car!).

A jumble of german and english got us the room for the night, since this place is more or less a family home with extra rooms converted to accomadate strangers, so there isn't a reception staff trained in thirty languages and a background in another fifty, it's quite nice though, the blankets all fluffy and snug like. It was a long day, and we managed to slow the pace down with a few stops, tomorrow will be hectic, then after that we'll spend a couple of days in Freiburg, giving us a chance to explore in a bit more depth.

This place is so country, the air smells of hay, after a horse has eaten and pooped it. Outside as I write a german band is playng "Sweet Home Alabama" it's very out of place. Imagine some Americans singing "Roll Out the Barrels" in Texas, the old time German Classic "Mein Freund".

How does it go again? That's right...

Mein Freudn ist ein gut freund
ja, herr freund ist gut fur mir
die frau fur mein freund ist ein gut freund,
ja, herr freund hast ein frau
ein frau das ist ein gut frau
ja, alle mein freund bist gut freund
sind sie ein gut freund fur mir?

Then there's the rollicking; "Ich Liebe haben ein bier mit Adolf"

ich liebe haben ein bier mit Adolf
ja, ich liebe haben ein bier mit Adolf
wir trinken im der stadt und...

Which reminds me, I had a dream the other night that I was working for Adolf Hitler as some kind of office clerk. He came to the office and asked me to make him a cup of coffee. I said I'd never made him a coffee before, so I can't be sure it'll be any good. But he was nice, and insisted. I asked him how he had it, and it was with one sugar and milk. I remember thinking that I'd spit in the coffee because Hitler was an asswipe. There was some strange termporal distortion going on, because I was in the present, yet he was (obviously) in the past. I understood this, but it didn't seem to be particularly disturbing. It's another dream I've had where I've served some kind of evil person, and plotted against them (I've had two dreams in the last few weeks where I've had to serve a mafia boss after I offended him some way (the most recent by mocking his son).

So, we're in Germany now, The Fatherland, on our way to the Mother Country, England. We are children of the colonial (I'm tempted to write; colonic) powers.

Prague didn't drag my heart away as I had imagined, but I am a little sad to be leaving. It takes me a while to put roots down in a place, Marrickville took between three and six months, and that was in my home land. It takes months to establish routines, favourite places, rituals, linguistic comforts (we left just as we were becoming competent enough to manage transactions without much fuss, apart from some mangled Ceskry in parts, mainly to do with gender agreement and the like). We were even familiar faces to some (well, at least one) waitress. I think three months is perhaps the worst length of time to stay anywhere, long enough to begin to put roots down, but not short enough to do anything with them - they're ripped out as soon as they begin to dig in.

/End Roots Analogy

On the day we left we packed up and put our things in order. My bag could hardly close now, having acquired more books and things, and Frankie had acquired a new outfit (and pet name, see!) which meant some of her new acquisitions had to come across into my bag and so on. That meant I had to carry my enormous backpackers pack, my knapsack, my camera case and the laptop+bag (which was stuffed with books and other bits). I took the key back to our real estate agent and that was the end of that. It was when I got back to Cafe Nordica, a fine little cafe and language school just around the corner from our apartment, that we realised that our bus was due to arrive in Nuremburg only fifteen minutes before the hotel checkin counter closed. We thought to send an email, but what if that didn't work? And we couldn't receive a reply, since we'd be stuck on a bus for the next five hours. So I collected up our remaining coinage, some Czech Crowns and a few Euro cents and went to the phone booth to call the hotel. It took two calls (one to a junior staff member who asked me to call back, and another one, later, fifteen minutes before the bus left to the owner). Thankfully the owner was ever helpful and arranged to leave the key hidden outside the building in a pot plant. This was to cause some anxiety as we took our trip but in the end it was just like every other potential disaster that had confronted us - it fizzled into nothing as the key was exactly where I understood it to be (Inner courtyard, side door, left hand tree).

At the Czech / German border I had the privilege of having my things randomly searched! It was very exciting. Except the guy didn't search all my luggage, just my laptop case. He didn't check my 20kg bag in the cargo hold, or the two bags I had stuffed in the overhead space. It was kind of ridiculous. It made me think about how people tend to generate randomness... When people choose random numbers (or things) they unintentionally use non-random algorithms (for want of a better word), so a random search on a bus won't be Seats 1,2,3 but seats 5, 15, 30... because we subconsciously try to "force" randomness. 1,2,3 and 5,15,30 are just as likely sequences as each other, but the later seems more random. The conclusions, if you're a bunch of terrorists trying to cross the border; sit close together in one part of the bus. A german (or Austrian) teenage girl had lost her passport, and the sole Vietnamese passanger was called off the bus for a short interview (chance or racism?). Our passports were returned to us by nation, thus I was "Australia!".

Crossing the border was like a moment out of a fairytale story. No sooner had the Czech Republic disappeared behind us than a fog began lifting from the forests and green fields of Germany. It was getting late a little dark and the clouds were low and drizzly, but across the horizon a bright orange sunset strip was visible. And as the bus drove along I looked out the window and saw a castle on a wooded hill surrounded in fog with dark clouds hanging low and stretching in all directions except the western horizon, where there was the strip of sunset and just above that, a silver fang moon. Like Croatia, I knew I would like Germany the moment I saw it.

The bus trip arrived at Nurmemburg at 10:20pm, thirty five minutes late (troubles at the border!). We had no money, so the first task was to lug our stuff across the road and into the main train station, where we were relieved to find an ATM (the alternative was to ask a stranger, which wasn't such a bad prospect since German is the language we both studied at highschool and so we remember enough for directions, introductions and numbers, plus bits and pieces more). I took out some Euros and we headed to the taxi stand. Took a taxi 2.2kms to our hotel (normally we would walk, but we were eager to get inside, fearing every second would make the finding of the key more difficult somehow (but how? It was either there to be found or not!)). I asked the taxi driver (auf deutsch!) if the 50 Euro bill was okay. He thought I meant would it be enough to cover the fare, I meant if it was okay for him to give us change of a 50. He laughs, saying (in german, again) that it was only 2.2km to the hotel. I understand and laugh too. He asks jokingly "Nurnberg, ja?", as if we might have wanted to go to WhateverStrasse in Munich. My brain thinks of some banter (What, this isn't Berlin!?!) but doesn't translate it to german fast enough, and the moment is lost. Cheesy German Folk Music plays on the radio. We see little bits of Nuremburg on our short drive, the walls and bastions of the old town, somewhere in the dark. I wonder what city it is during the day and look forward to seeing it. I remember this feeling from Madrid and Cesky Krumlov (what is this place behind the rain and darkness!). As we approach the hotel I notice graffiti on the walls, and my heart sinks a little, as it is prone to do at the sight of graffiti (I internalise graffiti as meaning a "bad" part of town, as I did in Granada, and was summarily rebuked by the city itself!), but then I see what the white paint spells out "Fight Sexism!". Fantastic! I feel better again. The car stops, and the driver indicates to the price on the meter. 6.90Euro. I gave him the fifty note, it is all I have. He shakes his head and says "Kein Klein?" and I say "Nein" he says "Smaller" and I still shake my head. I understand, but he doesn't realise, and I don't understand enough to fluently express this. I look into my wallet, six fifty Euro notes, a ten dollar Australian note and a two hundred Czech Crown note. I say "Czech Korun? Australian Dollar?" and he gives me the laugh I'm looking for. He searches about his wallet and I ask if it is okay, about to suggest that I go get change from the pizza shop down the street, he relents and I give some ground in appreciation and say "Zehn ist OK", giving him a $3.10 Euro tip, enough to please him it seems. We get out and go to haul our luggage out of the back of the car (on top of my bags, F has her big bag, her little bag, Jan Saudek and Sara Saudkova posters, and a grocery bag of... groceries)... and we find our driver has run off into the dark for a moment, just to check that we've got the right place (3.10Euros buys you a location check!). We load ourselves up like pack horses and stride to the hotel, and without a hiccup I locate the hidden keyring. On it are three keys, none of which fit the front door. A minor moment of anxiety until we realise the front door is infact open. We go inside, not sure whether this entire building is the hotel or shared. I've been told we're on the first floor, which means different things in different countries (ground floor, first floor interchange!). So I go up one flight of stairs and open a big white door, finding on the otherside, an art gallery! I have a peek around and go back downstair to report to Frances. We try the ground floor, which is locked, and open it with one of the keys. Hurrah, and inside that door is the familiar hotel thing, lounge, reception (unattended after 10pm, and it's now 11 or so). And we find our room and settle in. A bit depressed that we need a WLAN password to get the WiFi internet connection. The pillows are big. We chat for a time and then sleep happily.

That was yesterday, today we left Nuremburg, collecting our car from the extraordinarily camp Avis office. Curiously, while dealing with a telephone customer who is asking about an apparently non-existent city, one of the clerks puts his hand to the phone and says "What the fuck is fjekddijowdjburg". This is something we've picked up - 1. Germans aren't afraid to swear in the workplace ad 2. Germans swear (at least on occasion) in English, but perhaps only in the context of the English swearing being a universal PHRASE. That is, "What the fuck" isn't a set of words, but a memetic phrase, the other one we've heard is "Oh Shit!". We drove along the autobahn, between 100 and 140kph, having little idea of what the speed limit is. It seems it's a process of elimination (there are more signs telling you that a certain speed limit doesn't apply anymore than there are telling you what it is, and everyone seems to ignore them anyway). After some autobahning west from Nuremburg we hopped on the Romantic Road which takes us south through Castle Country. It was a nice drive, but a little stressful, being a new car on the wrong side of the road again and not having exact understanding of signs/directions.

We passed through some astonishingly pretty little towns, through great walled Altstadt (old towns) with twisty cobblestoned roads and bright big/little houses (I don't know how they do it, but the german buildings are regular size, but seem like cute miniatures of themselves... it's a bizarre thing!). We had to take a detour into unknown territory, but eventually found our way. Looked at only one castle, which was a bit of a disappointment. Castle needs to be refined. When I think of castle I think of stone battelements, towers and walls and keeps. Many of the things called Castles here (and also in Czech Republic; witness Prague Castle and the one at Cesky Krumlov) are just big chateau like things. So from tomorrow we've got the rule of visiting only RUINS. That'll ensure interest.

Tonight we're staying in Augsburg, which is wonderful german city, it's rather small, barely a city at all, perhaps just a very large town. It has trams. Everything is clean and bright. The town is green, with trees and cyclists and public transport everywhere. Lots of old people on bikes having a merry time. Only Dubrovnik has felt so unthreatening! We had planned on staying at the local youth hostel, but having no map of the town, nor directions to the hostel (and in short, being completely lost!), we took to the local chain hotel (Ibis, in this case) and got a room with about the sameprice as a private room in the hostel. We didn't manage to get Wifi here either, though some rooms have it enabled for 8Euro (too much!). There's an unsecure network just outside, but the connection isn't stable or strong enough to complete. (In our Prague apartment there was a secure connection available, with a good signal, but it came from the Pension next door, and so we weren't privvy to the password)

We went for a stroll earlier, and had some dinner in one of the town squares (there seem to be so many places that are the "centre" of this town!). We shared a pizza and pasta meal, with reasonable coffee, and a delicious german beer (better than Czech beer, perhaps!) when clearing up the waitress knocked the (empty) beer glass over, and it shattered on the table! And during the meal, a terrifying bee buzzed around me, causing me no end of spasms of fright... later, as Frankie is enjoying (well, not really enjoying) a coffee at the hotel bar, the waitress there drops a glass on herself, and it shatters on the floor. A sign of things to come!? After dinner we go to "Norma" discount supermarket and buy some yogurt and bread. It begins to rain softly and we find our way home. I am suitably impressed and comforted by the number of Kebab places here, a density of such Turkish places arguably higher than in Sydney. In the morning, before we leave to travel further south, we plan to have a breakfast at the closest. We have left most of our luggage in the car, will wear the same clothes again tomorrow. Why drag those bags up and down!

And so that was the first day in Germany.

Starting with some photos!

More, bigger and better ones at http://www.flickr.com/photos/colllapse/, so go there alright?

Festival forecourt

Parks and gardens

KV at night

The route we took on our big walk:

That abandoned Goethe place:

Some woodsy wildflowers

K frollicking among some ruins:

Spectacular vistas

Morbid antics

Don't get too excited, it's his son.

K molests the dead.

Day 4

Woke to driving rain and steam rising from places all over town. In fact there is always steam rising from strange places here. Last night we arrived home to a steaming doorstep! So we walked into town through the rain, bought breakfast and mcdonalds coffees so we could eat our breakfast under their shelter, and went to a cafe for teas and to write our diaries. Still raining. Bought umbrellas, 69 crowns, mine already leaking.

MOVIE 7 - BRETISLAV POJAR FILMS II

Actually a collection of short films by animator Bretislav Pojar. This is the kind of thing I love the Czech Republic most for, the aesthetic of alchemistry and fairy tales but also a ribald, almost viciously mediaeval sense of humour. All the movies are children's movies, the kind of animations I would have loved as a kid, while maybe also being spooked by them a bit (I was spooked by a lot of things). In fact I imagine a lot of the audience were Czechs who had watched the films on tv as children, by the way they clapped and cheered as different little screens came up. I imagined they were experiencing the same kind of feeling/nostalgia I get when I see or remember the Mysterious Cities of Gold, or the Dark Crystal, or any number of slightly surreal children's shows I used to watch. In fact, B. Pojar's films reminded me of animations like the drawing of a line which was animated by a disembodied hand, and those clay men who rolled around in ball shapes and turned into different creatures / objects to have nonsense fights and dialogues.

MOVIE 8 - KHOONBAZI, IRAN

The token Iranian film - there's always one. This one is kind of a standard junkie film except that it takes place in a totalitarian regime and doesn't glamourise or glorify heroin. In fact it seems like there's not a pleasant/enjoyable heroin-related experience for the character at all, in contrast with most heroin movies which portray bliss ad nauseum, followed by the obligatory OD scene and/or the going cold turkey horrors interlude. It's shot in black and white, quite beautifully filmed, and the drug addicted girl is probably the most accurate portrayal of a drug addict I've seen - it's sympathetic to her desire to escape without being at all sympathetic to her character, which is pretty much demanding and selfish. She uses emotional blackmail against her mother, and plays her divorced parents off of each other in order to find one last hit over and over again and to delay coming clean (which she has to do before her fiance comes to visit her in Iran from Canada and to take her away).

MOVIE 9 - GUE-MOOL, SOUTH KOREA

A series of awkward and vaguely humiliating experiences during the day had left my nerves a bit frayed. Then we had to wait almost 6 hours til the next movie and there's only so many things you can do in such miserable weather, so by the time Gue-Mool/The Host started I was a bit over the whole midnight movie deal.

Now, one thing about the KV movie fest is that a) it is very affordable, and b) there are a few ways for people to see movies free of charge as well. Five minutes before a session starts, the ushers check for unoccupied seats and if there are some then they let in some people who are queueing outside without tickets, so they see the movie for free. K and I have started affectionately calling these people "the vultures". But midnight movies are a particular target for vultures (midnite vultures!) because they're on so late that they don't sell out so fast, and because people know this they won't bother buying tickets if they know they're likely to get in for free. I think the affordability/free options is what makes Karlovy Vary so great, and of course is the reason why the audience is so comparatively young - Sydney Film Fest is way out of the league of most student budgets, it certainly was when I was at university - I could afford to see maybe 2 or 3 movies max at $15 a pop. But anyway, all that aside, the midnight movie thing seems to attract a strange kind of vulturish, carnivalesque audience that I don't quite understand.

First of all we had 2 free seats behind us, so two drunk vultures sat beside us. All through the movie they hooted, screamed and laughed in the fakest, loudest, most exaggerated way possible while slapping the chairs and drumming their feet. While incredibly annoying and distracting, that wasn't the worst thing about them - they STANK. I had no idea it was possible for human beings to smell so bad, and I am rarely ever bothered by BO or anything like that. I'm not sensitive to it, really. But these people smelt like they'd been chain-smoking and pot-smoking and drinking Becherovka for five days straight, sleeping on their own vomit, sweating nicotine and sweet alcohol stench and THC and not showering at all for that whole time. The only thing I can compare it to is maybe the collective stench of beer and sweat and mud and smoke and marijuana at the end of the Big Day Out or similar, except that I secretly like that smell.

But anyway, even if I had had two quiet sweet young things smelling of roses beside me, I think I would have still found the experience a bit strange.

Gue-Mool/The Host is a B-grade Korean creature feature. Although it is basically a straightforward horror flick, and not amazingly good, it's not of the so-bad-it's-funny variety. If it's funny it's because it's half a comedy, but the other half is actually a suspenseful, reasonable sophisticated horror. In that way it's a bit of a hybrid. It's Korean and if the Koreans do anything well in horror, it's the quiet, suspenseful moment in which you can almost smell the fear, the moment becomes icy and taut and epic. This is what I love about Korean horrors, even if you can generally walk through the holes in the plot.

However, the audience around me, and not just the moronic vultures on my left, committed so many crimes of interpretation I was completely lost for words. They laughed and laughed and laughed, at every slightly B-grade piece of acting, intentional or not, they laughed. In the monster-giving-chase moments, they laughed. In the silent, fucking suspenseful moments, they laughed. And not even the genuine laughter of enjoyment, but the forced, fake laughter of I-don't-know-what, ostentation. Their laughter was nothing but performance, carnival laughter.

Oh, but the jokes, the comedy, the little political asides and wordplay (which seemed to translate from Korean to English quite well) were completely lost, the auditorium was silent. I've never seen a movie where the audience failed to cooperate with its conventions to this extent. And the movie was deflated, ruined. There's no suspense without silence, and no comedy without laughter. I just don't understand.

Obviously I take my horror flicks far too seriously, but K and I were both too busy fantasising about doing violence to our neighbours to actually enjoy the movie. Afterwards we laughed about trying to explain to the Foreign Police.

"You killed him for laughing? A bit extreme, isn't it?"
"Oh, but you should have heard him!"
"Where I come from, that kind of thing wouldn't be tolerated!"

It's funny, but I think it's true. If those two shunts had been in an Australian cinema, someone would have told them to pipe down within a couple of minutes, and then about 5 other people would have joined in, and if they hadn't shut up, 10 people would have shouted them down, and someone's Dad would have helped the usher escort them from the theatre. Instead, the audience cheered them and clapped them, and echoed their laughter. And I do know that we were not the only ones bothered by them, as several people couldn't stand the stench and moved to the sides of the theatre. An usher came to speak to them, but was ignored. Where's the solidarity? They even went out once and were let back in - wtf? Do the Czechs lack respect for authority to the extent that can't even exercise it? It was all very bizarre.

Postscript: I am over this little episode now, and I even came to understand and enjoy the whole midnight movies communal experience which seemed to be a bit of a *happening* in itself, maybe not to do with the movie at all, but I decided to type out my vitriolic initial reaction anyway to record the power of culture shock! Fun times. Still I am relieved that we didn't end up seeing "Fido" in this context, because I would hate to have a really awesome "serious" (by that I don't necessarily mean not-funny, you understand) horror movie ruined like this.

DAY 5

Movie 10 - Dolina, HUNGARY

Dolina had a really wonderful visual aesthetic and texture, all dark browns and blue lighting. An allegory about a polluted town with polluted politics, is apparently a criticism by the director of post-communist culture in countries like Hungary (his own country) but also the Czech Republic and Poland, and was also a movie about the nature of totalitarian regimes in general and their effect on culture (during AND after).

From an interview in Festival Daily (English supplement) with director Zoltan Komondi:

"I was hugely influenced by the report of a French journalist, who - wearing a chador as a disguise - travelled through Afghanistan when the mullahs were in power. He vividly demonstrates the senseless madness and the illogical nature of power which at the time was apparent in Afghanistan's every day life, right down to the smallest events. Living under such terror leaves its traces in people's nature - the individual character, the way of thinking and human behaviour gets entirely absorbed and eventually incorporated by it. [...] Although we have been living under democracy for 18 years now, our instinctive basic reactions in every day life are nevertheless the same as if we were still living under a similar form of dictatorship."

Obviously these are themes close to my heart so I was really excited to see it. Perhaps it succeeded too well in portraying a culture devoid of respect for human dignity or altruism sans ulterior motives, because it was quite cold and delivered and lacking in emotional tension or sense of fear. But it was still interesting in the way it depicted totalitarianism (although it had not existed previously) as somehow a default reality, as somehow ordinary or to be expected, now it was here. Which reminds me of Zizek's idea of the once seemingly impossible becoming suddenly the only possible reality (from Iraq: the Borrowed Kettle), a dangerously compliant mentality that allows the impossible to occur (such as the war on Iraq/war on terror which was immediately absorbed (by us) into banal reality even though it would have seemed impossible only months earlier. A terrifying prospect. Would we have imagined any of this at the end of the Clinton era? Our reality and our political systems and culture are fragile and immensely corruptible, so much more than we realise. Another example is each audacious move made by the Howard govt., making the impossible possible and eroding the limits of our national im/morality. I think this is what Dolina means, and totalitarianism exists in spite of the ridiculousness of Dolina's leaders, just as our inter/national politics are corrupted although our leaders are ridiculous. The fact that John Howard and George Bush are figures of fun makes them only more dangerousl. And a banality, a lack of fear, but a need to survive by acting pragmatically within an immoral system, is a perfect totality.

An example from the movie is when a couple is kicked out of their flat onto the street in one of the first scenes and their reaction is "There is nothing we can do about it now, this is the way things are, things have changed, we can get our flat back later" and then they compliantly leave. Of course they never get their flat back, and they are progressively driven out of life. Incidentally they are the only two characters driven by morality and love rather than pragmatism or self-interest. the main character, the would-be hero Gabriel, who does help people in the town, is ultimately driven only by his need to survive and not incur the wrath of his mad brother, and also his desire to possess Natalia, V?'s wife, is the only reason why he helps him. When it comes to the crunch he throws people to the authorities in order to save himself.

So in summary Dolina didn't quite live up to its promise but was interesting because of what it tried to say.

Movie 11 - Podo-namulul be-a-ra, SOUTH KOREA

I had to look this one up cause I couldn't remember the 2nd movie for the day. That's because it's a quiet, unassuming, slow and gentle Korean film about a priest to be struggling with his faith. It's quite visually beautiful and clear and tender and gracefully told, and as always it seems with Korean films there's an element of the supernatural involved, which is sentimental without being tacky. Let's just hope they don't remake it with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves (as with Il Mare/ The Lake House)

Movie 12 - Black Sheep, NEW ZEALAND

I was nervous about this one because of the Midnite Vultures (not the Beck album) and sure enough one of the same guys vultured the seat next to us, although smelling somewhat better (I only caught a whiff or two). So as the movie started I was gritting my teeth and well ready to walk out of there, but I guess he was less drunk and maybe too hungover to be an arse. And Black Sheep seemed to be way more in keeping with the mood of the midnite vultures, and I enjoyed it a lot, maybe even more in the celebratory joyous spirit of the audience, because it was just the kind of schlocky laugh-a-minute zombie movie that deserves hearty laughter. The laughter also seemed a lot less forced than the previous night. It was great, and we walked out of there with big grings on our faces, in contrast to the night before. Much fun. I was happy to have been a part of it, a communal experience of fun gore and bad taste. I still think we got a few jokes that the Czechs didn't get through, especially jokes involving references to intimate relations with sheep. Also makes me realise how close Australian and NZ culture is, with the Maori influence being an obvious variable.

I think Black Sheep is and should be a hit. It outshines Undead (a similar low budget Bad-Taste-inspired Australian zombie movie) by a long way.

DAY 6

Movie 13 - Hranice/Marta, CZECH REPUBLIC

1 short movie and one not-very-long one, the first about a communist Secret Service scheme in which agents smuggled anti-government activists across a fake border and then tricked them into informing on their friends and co-conspirators.

Marta was the (almost) full-length movie and we enjoyed it. I don't really know what to say about it except it was tense and well-acted.

Movie 14 - Am Ende Kommen Touristen, GERMANY/POLAND

One of the movies we ended up seeing because our first choice wasn't available. It was about a young German living in Oswiecem to do his civil service. It was interesting because it was all about national memory and national shame whether the young have a responsibility to the past, and his ambivalent relationship to other Germans in Poland, who pay lip service to the tragedy of Auschwitz but simultaneously play politics and exploit the polish economy for German gain, and fail to listen or try to understand the living history of the tragedy, preferring to build monuments and to commodify them for tourist consumption. A word that several characters used was 'impact' - the German owner of a Polish chemical plant invited a local Holocaust survivor to talk to the board but cut him off when she felt his speech was "losing impact". The Holocaust survivor, a living witness to the event, felt devalued and said that if people want to find out about the Holocaust, they can watch Schindler's List, as it would have more 'impact'. In this way monuments and entertainment products become more valued than the social history.

Movie 15 - Horror, which is always with you, RUSSIA

Well, we hit paydirt with this one. I wasn't expecting much as the description was a little vague, but I think this is the movie I've been hoping for, as I've chosen a few sort of dark films from the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, and this is the film I hoped Dolina would be. It's sinister-ish but lighthearted, and packed with metaphor and symbolism. It is better than Dolina because as a parable of totalitarianism it succeeds where Dolina fails. Its characters are enjoyable to watch. Sometimes its Kafka-esque, such as when the main character goes to the police and is given the run-around, at other times Bulgakov-esque and cryptic, and other times a bit like David Lynch... (there's an old man who goes around calling inaminate objects "comrade", there are cryptic clues to a mission nobody has properly defined, and then of course there's the symbolism, the kind of symbolism where you could watch the movie for the fifth time and still find something new; empty birdcages, a makeshift church within a warehouse, salt, dolls and bears and rabbits).

Oh gosh it's so exciting. Afterwards K and I discussed our interpretations over dinner. I said I thought the main character (whose name is Marxen, a conflation of Marx and Engels, for which he is constantly teased), symbolised communism in Russia, seduced by the military complex, unable to satisfy his wife (I thought she symbolised 'the people'), unable to find real friends, losing authority in his job as academic intellectual, fearing the church and disbelieving in God while knowing he exists (something that, in K's interpretation of the movie has more weight than it did in mine). Oh yes, this is the kind of movie I could write a thesis on, and if people keep putting out parables of totalitarianism, perhaps I can and will!

How exciting! I am inspired to seek out more Russian films. K points out that Day Watch is Russian and I shouldn't get my hopes up.

Movie 16 - Lucky Miles, AUSTRALIA

Before the movie the Australian director Michael James Rowland introduced the movie by saying the following things:

"I believe that the stories you tell determine your future. This is especially important in the world that I inhabit, where so many decisions are motivated by fear."

"The Australian audience would die to be here with you" (!!!)

"The impressions I have of the Czech Republic come from literature, so I assume you are a country of poets and lovers, and there are no mechanics among you".

A man after my own heart, clearly. Watching this movie in the midst of an audience of Czechs was indeed something a bit special, and I got goosepimples over and over. It made me homesick, although of course my home is nowhere near desert, I still think my national consciousness, our national consciousness, is rooted in that symbolism and mythology.

If this movie surprised me in any way it was how lighthearted it was considering the weightiness of the subject matter - boat people and Australia's refugee policy - by implication. But I think that is what I most liked about it; it did not fail to be political despite its humour - the comedy itself dispelled a stigma, waved away bad blood and fear. I really liked it, and so did the audience. Yay! In fact this movie received the most genuine laughter of all, and the second most enthusiastic applause and also immediate murmerings of happy discussion at the end.

An excerpt from and interview with director Michael James Rowland in Festival Daily, English section.

"Lucky Miles is a work of fiction stitched together from truth. Australia's history is rich with stories of people who come here in reduced circumstances and walked inland expecting there to be hills, lakes, forests and water. The setup of this story is very familiar to Australians; the fresh thing for our home audience is the way we've updated the characters to reflect the political realities of the last 30 years".

Movie 17 - Right, Left, Forward, CZECH REPUBLIC

Was a Czech political documentary about a) the Communist Youth Union and b) the Young Conservative Party in the Czech republic. It was edited in such a way as to poke maximum fun at everyone involves, and was very funny, although it kind of fizzled in the second half, I thought. As far as it went, though, the movie demonstrated and illustrated the reasons for a national distrust of extreme politics on both sides, of ideology in general, to the point where, as someone who thinks that politics is actually pretty important, I felt it was a bit flippant and even possibly exploitative (were these people told they would be torn to shreds?) and occasionally so ridiculous I thought it must be a setup. But I liked it nonetheless.

Movie 18 - Inland Empire, DIR. David Lynch, USA

David Lynch's new movie, Inland Empire, is yet another confusing, surreal, hollywood themed epic. I didn't see Mulholland Drive on the big screen, but I think Inland Empire is possibly the most atmospheric and spooky of all David Lynch movies. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing, and I notice that David Lynch was involved in a lot of it himself.

The movie is 172 minutes long, and that's my main complaint. Watching it is like being trapped in a long night of meaningless, circular, maddening dreams that you're unable to wake up from. An added specialness of this movie was that a lot of the settings and locations look a bit like the Grandhotel lobbies and halls and theatres that abound here in Karlovy Vary. I think to see this movie alone in Divadlo KV theatre would be the creepiest possible experience I can think of. K has a photo of this theatre so you can see what I'm talking about.

Movie 19 - Voyage of the Red Balloon

Somewhat long and slow, but very watchable and natural. The characters may as well be real people. As a portrait of a little family in Paris and a homage to Paris itself and French cinema it is very lovely.

Movie 20 - Nuovomondo / Golden Door

A beautiful but slightly sanitised story of a family of Italians that decide to emigrate to the New World. It's warm and human and has some lovely sequences and images, but although I was uplifted and rated it 'excellent' at the end, it's probably not a movie I would buy on DVD or recommend to everyone I know. Nonetheless I think it will probably do very well for itself.

Movie 21 - Badlands

The American classic with Sissy Spacek and that dude. Beautiful scenes and I loved the part of it that takes place in the forest, but although it's one of my favourite genres (murdering couple on the run road movie), I wasn't that interested. We saw "Boxcar Bertha" on MGM the other week and I enjoyed that a lot more

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And 'cause we promised pictures of us, here's some goofy snaps.

Us looking like we've had very little sleep

K in the woods! (being monster-iffic)

And a couple final photos of KV, taken on the morning we left.