Rock in Köln

A while ago, I had the distinct pleasure of watching an all girl AC-DC cover band performing in a German prison.

More recently, I was invited to watch one of the band members, who happens to be a friend of Vera’s, perform in her own band, playing in a club in Köln, or Cologne.

The music style was described to me as being of the melodic metal variety. I am not really a tremendous expert on the various metal genres, but I have seen some pretty non-melodic metal performances involving a lot of screaming and general anger, so assumed this would be the opposite of that.

I was happily right, in that there wasn’t so much of the screaming and anger, and you could, if you tried really hard, discern the words. I couldn’t discern the words, despite them being in English, because my ear drums were in the process of being perforated by the giant speaker stacks.

I was aware that lyrics were there however, which was a marked improvement on the thrash metal concert I once attended by mistake.

Some observations on going out in Germany. One, Germany has not quite gotten around to properly outlawing smoking in public venues. Well, actually, they tried. Legislation was put in place to make it illegal. And then a loop hole was discovered, whereby a venue just had to register as a smokers club, and it was back to business as usual. Apparently this loop hole is in the process of being closed. In the meantime, depending on where you go out, be prepared for some fug. It’s all very noughties.

Second, if you’re going to a metal concert, ear plugs are a good idea. Small rooms and giant speakers result in a gigantic wall of sound that will surround the next few days of your life in acoustic cotton wool. With ear plugs, you may even be able to work out what the singer is on about. I didn’t have ear plugs.

Third, doner kebabs. If you’re going to go out in Germany, you need to have a kebab at the end of the night. I can safely say that the large Turkish community present in Köln have made it their business to ensure that kebabs are actually an almost gourmet item, featuring delicately soft bread and meat that is recognisable as such. You could eat this stuff sober, which is saying a lot for a kebab. I can only assume this is the case Germany wide.

Finally, never, ever, ever, mention the beer. Wherever you are from in Germany, your local beer is treated with reverence. Other beers are worse than mud. One of the bands playing that night was from Munich, and he attempted to discuss with the crowd the topic of Köln’s local beer (Kölsch, for those of you interested), a subject he managed to get roughly four words into before being booed silent. Mentioning the beer therefore is not a good idea – you are expected to hate all beers other than your local beer. 

And on that happy beer related note, I end. Our time in Germany is coming to an end in the next week or so – after a trip to the UK for a wedding it’s off to France and a whole new series of adventures involving, most likely, cold. Until the next time…

Today’s post was partly made possible thanks to the support of only-apartments, who provided the following message: No hurries, no stress, no waking up early to have breakfast. Just get one of the apartments in Madrid and enjoy your holiday your way.

Getting to grips with Kiwi beer

Regular readers (well, two of them at least) have been badgering me for some time to get onto the serious subject of New Zealand’s beer situation. For them, tales of walks and photos of bubbling mud pools hold little interest. No, they read the site with the vain hope that I might get round to actually talking about a subject which they hold dearly to their hearts, that being beer.

It took me over a year of research in Australia to come up with my definitive guide to Australian beer and beer drinking habits. I’ve only been in New Zealand for three months now, but, well, I’ve been researching hard, and here are the fruits of my labour.

To start with, I have learnt that drinking in New Zealand is not a cheap affair. Tax on alcohol is high, and beer, even when bought in supermarkets on “special offer” generally turns out not to be so special. Particularly if you have gotten used to buying crates of German beer for six euros apiece.

So, beer is expensive, with a box of 24 330ml bottles costing at least thirty New Zealand dollars a pop (around £15). And that’s the cheap stuff. If you want to drink anything with an interesting looking label and promises of exotic flavour, then you’re looking at at least twenty to thirty bucks for a case of twelve. Budget minded beer connoisseurs beware!

So, cost is out the way. Let us assume it is no longer an issue. What are the actual beers of New Zealand, and more importantly, are they any good?

Beer in New Zealand falls distinctly into two categories: that which is produced by one of the two major breweries, Lion Nathan and DB Breweries, and that which is produced by microbreweries. Between them the two big players account for around 90% of beer sales in New Zealand, with Lion Nathan holding the lion’s share. (Sorry.)

This hasn’t stopped a serious explosion of micro breweries from selling beer, with that 10% of the market occupied by, at last count, over thirty producers.

Which has made the task of beer sampling somewhat tricky. Most of the microbreweries produce a variety of beers, and most supermarkets carry a wide range of options, making a choice of beer pretty darn difficult (certainly no bad thing!). For today’s post I am focusing on the beer produced by the two main players, Lion Nathan and DB Breweries, as they account for so much of the beer consumed in New Zealand. Further research into the microbrewery options is ongoing.

Tui’s East India Pale Ale

Tui’s is owned by DB Breweries, and this is perhaps their best known beer in New Zealand. Despite the name, it is most definitely not an East India Pale Ale, and is in fact just a lager. A perfectly drinkable lager, I’ll give you that, best served chilled and on a sunny outdoors afternoon. It doesn’t taste of too much, and only has an alcohol percentage of around 4%, so I can’t really wax too lyrical about it. On the plus side, it is one of the cheapest beers out there. For a reason I suspect.

Steinlager
Steinlager is possibly the only beer that you would be familiar with, being New Zealand’s main beer export. As is the case with many export beers (Fosters being a great example), it’s not as popular in its home country as it is overseas. Still, it isn’t shunned (as Fosters often is in Australia), and is a very drinkable international style lager, rocking in at 5%, and somewhat reminiscent of Heineken. It is, as with the rest of the beers I will be telling you about on this page, brewed by Lion Nathan.

Speight’s Gold Medal Ale
Speight’s Gold Medal Ale, whilst being a dark and rich colour as it swirls around the glass, is also not actually an ale. I know, I have no idea what’s going on here either. This one is also a lager, although it does at least have a slightly more interesting flavour than the Tui’s. It is my current regular beer of choice, mostly for budgetary reasons. It’s a light four percent also.

Speight’s, which is owned by Lion Nathan, also produces a number of other beers with tempting sounding names, including Speight’s Old Dark, Speight’s Porter and Speight’s Distinction Ale. Don’t be taken in. They are all lagers. Still, they don’t taste that bad, so don’t dismiss them out of hand for a confusing naming style.

Lion Red
Lion Red is another major beer from Lion Nathan’s. As well as Lion Red, you can get Lion Brown and Lion Ice. The latter is an ice brewed beer - a fairly popular style in New Zealand.

Lion Red isn’t anything special to be honest. It’s perfectly drinkable, but I’d challenge anyone to tell the difference between it and a generic mid strength lager from anywhere else in the world.

Ok, so I’ve ploughed through four of the top beer brands in New Zealand, which, by no co-incidence I imagine, contain three of the cheapest beer options – Steinlager, as a premium beer, costs more.

The story so far, for the most part, is of beers that are good for a spot of sunny afternoon drinking . Beers that fill a need, but that you won’t necessarily be writing home about. Is there anything from the two major brewers that you would write home about then? To answer, here’s a tiny bit of New Zealand brewing history.

Mac’s Gold
Mac’s Gold was created by McCashins brewery – the first microbrewery in New Zealand and the place where the microbrewing craze started back in 1981. Of course, since 1981 things have changed somewhat, and whilst microbrewing is going from strength to strength, the big guns wanted a piece of this action. So the beers that McCashin’s originally produced, sold under the Mac’s brand, were all licensed to Lion Nathan in 1995.

I can’t comment how this changed the taste of the beer, but I am pleased to report that the Mac’s line of beers, despite being owned by a global beer making empire, still have that interesting microbrewery vibe, from quirky packaging through to a full flavour. Classed as a lager, Mac’s Gold has a pleasant malted taste which reminds you that you are actually drinking something memorable.

The Mac’s line of beers comes in six variants, great white, black, sassy red, hoprocker, gold and spring tide. The last of these is a low carb purely organic beer which is delightfully refreshing.

Something for everyone then, from Mac’s, which is available, like all the other beers on this page, pretty much right throughout New Zealand.

In another post I will look into the admittedly more interesting - if somewhat more niche - microbrewing industry in New Zealand. Until then, it’s going to be a combination of Mac’s Gold and Speight’s to see me through. Cheers!

Kölsch in Köln

I was hoping to be writing an insightful, witty and brilliant piece on the wonders of going out drinking in a foreign city today. I intended to sparkle brilliantly on ponderings such as the cultural differences that I noticed on the evening. Much humour would have been had.

As it is, the very act of researching the cultural differences has left my brain a soddled mush of a thing, so you are instead going to get, well, the below. I will try. Be gentle.

Firstly, I had heard it said that continental Europe starts their drinking somewhat later in the day than the UK. I can now confirm this to be true. By the time we left the house to hit Cologne, it was nearing midnight. In the UK, if you head out at midnight, you are likely to be wandering darkened empty streets from closed pub to closed pub. 24 hour drinking is, in theory, legally allowed, but most pubs still adhere to an eleven or twelve finishing time, at which point you need to find an overpriced club to drink in. For this reason most people in the UK are out much earlier, with the mindset that as much as possible must be drunk before the doors are closed.

Germany does not have such complex drinking restrictions, so the night was still young when we left the house, despite it being nearly the next day already. We had prepared ourselves by consuming a number of Kölsch’s at home, for the journey as it were. Kölsch, for those not in the know, is the beer local to Cologne. Other beers are probably available. These are not mentioned in polite company.

We wandered, remnants of our home beer in hand (another wonder of Germany, drinking on the street is entirely legal) to our venue for the night, a local and somewhat alternative venue by the name of the Underground, which, contrary to the name, wasn’t.

Upon arrival, I was quickly whisked to the on site sausage stall, and provided with a large pile of currywurst and chips. Another uniquely German idea, currywurst is your average giant German sausage, smothered in spicy curry sauce. Presumably the intention was to  give me strength for the night ahead. Strength was needed. As well as a huge outdoor seating area, where multiple parties were carefully engaged in beverage review activities, there were two dance rooms, plus a whole room dedicated to table football. Which is a game to be taken very seriously in Germany.

Strengthened by sausage and more refreshing Kölsch, we hit the dance floor. The music was skating dangerously close to grungey metal, with the result that the dance floor was less about dancing and more about trying to survive in the mass of bodies. To the uninitiated, it may have looked just like a large fight set to pounding German metal. Perhaps, in fact, it was. Memories are a tiny bit hazy.

Some carefully trying to avoid being trampled later, we retired outside. It was a fairly warm evening and the surroundings were genial. Coloured lights lit up the courtyard area, much jollity was being had. Conversation flowed, all of it, I expect, brilliantly sparkling and witty. It was a rather wonderful time.

However, as with all wonderful times, they must end, and the time arrived whence we opted to quietly stagger home. I am incredibly lucky to go out with a girl who shares a love of anchovy coated pizza (amongst other things), so we stopped off en route for a romantic pizza in a nearby kebab house. The chap who created the pizza was a genuine artist, forming the pizza base from actual dough in front of our very eyes before lovingly coating it in lashings of cheese, tomato sauce and those little salty fishy wonders. I quietly hiccupped my thanks at him and trundled home, whereupon the pizza was devoured before the bed was hit.

Later on in the day the morning dawned beautifully. I slept through this, and woke up as the afternoon was just coming around. It was a blisteringly hot day, just what you need when your skin feels like all the moisture in it has been surgically removed.

Luckily the “day after drinking” regime is no different in Germany to the UK, so we staggered to the nearest cafe and ate as much fried food as we possibly could, accompanied by strong black coffee, at which point I started to feel a lot more human.

We left Cologne in the afternoon sun, with the top down in the convertible, the temperature in the mid twenties, and some suspiciously bad German hip hop on the CD player. The green leaves of the trees flitted overhead and I wondered to myself, as I often do, how I had managed to get so lucky as to be able to experience moments like this in my life. Even if the day seemed a mite fuzzy around the edges…

Cologne Vacations

Of treehouses

There is something quite fine about a well executed party. The ebb and flow of people. The sipping of beverages. The meeting of old friends, the acquainting of new. The pounding beats and the mellow vibes from a delicately contrived playlist (well ok, Marilyn Manson during the grandparents tea and cakes was mistimed). The lights playing gently in the trees as swathes of bubbles float gently past. The swaying in huge cargo nets, suspended as a spider would weave her gossamer nets in the sky.

Admittedly, not all of these experiences happen at every party, but then not every party is held at a treehouse. It’s hard to describe the venue particularly well… I guess I could sum it up as a wasted youth. When other kids were out playing on their BMX’s, or supping furtively on a bottle of cider in a bus shelter, for some reason friends of mine and I spent happy weekends building a behemoth construction at the bottom of their garden. Literally years in the making, the treehouse has grown beyond all our imaginings, to a venue that has catered to parties of over three hundred, accommodated in areas ranging from the aforementioned suspended cargo nets, to an underground tee-pee village. Quite a surreal place really.

Anyway, the party was most excellent. Catching up with folks I had not anticipated on seeing for at least another year. Congratulating people on recent engagements, missed birthdays, new babies. Thanking people for making the journey, some from as far away as Newcastle. Sitting around, swopping tales of the past year, the adventures of life that I had missed out on, as meat was grilled over the fire and quantities of beer were imbibed. After much jollity and fun, when the embers of the fire were burnt down and the beer supplies had been steadily worn away, the lights were turned out, the music ended, and beds were sought, as the birds were preparing for their dawn chorus.

Post party, the Sunday recovery effort largely featured a walk around the area. A pool was swum in, despite it feeling roughly as warm as the Tasman sea in winter. Our walk allowed us to spy the spires of Oxford from afar, a city which is as pretty to behold from a distance as it is to wander around up close.

Today, we have conquered the quirks of the Welsh railway network, on a journey which has taken us a little under six hours to travel something pitiful like 200 miles, to the rural and mountain filled landscape of the Snowdonia national park, where I am catching up with the majority of my family (having a compact family certainly has its benefits). My parents seemed genuinely delighted to see me, and having not seen them for fourteen months this is perhaps not unexpected. The weather is looking changeable, but I have high hopes of getting some walking done. I’d like to finish this post by thanking everyone who made the week thus far what it has been, for turning up, for being fun, and generally, just for being, well, you. And everyone else who is reading too: have a smile on me.

More tales from Germany

This weekend the tiny village I am living in is hosting what I have been informed is a giant bachelor party. This would appear to be one of the villages sacrosanct traditions, involving many single men, and like pretty much all of the traditions of the village that I have been informed of, largely appears to revolve around heavy drinking. Cars are being removed from the street as I type, to avoid inevitable damage.

I am pretty sure we won’t be attending the festivities, what with me not being an eligible bachelor. I’ve also been told that the villagers are somewhat traditional in their way, and rocking up with dreadlocks may result in some kind of pitch forks and tar reaction. Although that could make it worth going in and of itself. Whatever happens, as the marquee where the festivities are occurring is about thirty metres from our front door, I am pretty sure we will be part of the action even without lifting a finger. I will let you know how that goes.

We went for a fairly extended walk yesterday through the forests around the rear of the village. I thought I was quite brave with my self belief in heading off in a vague direction and hoping to find my way back on previous walks, but it turns out that my dear girlfriend take bravery to new levels. We walked a fairly long way, largely in the rain, through forested canopies, with no real idea of where we were going or where we were going to come out. Sounds rather like my life actually. Still, often the walk is not the important part, it is the company and the space to converse. I’m not sure why, but I find walking to be an excellent lubricant of conversation, or thinking. Maybe the external stimuli wakes the brain up. Or maybe the extra blood flow sends those thoughts a-tumbling. If you find yourself stuck on a problem, I can highly recommend a good walk to tease a solution out.

So we walked. I am a tremendous fan of the activity, and it’s one of the reasons I am so looking forward to heading to New Zealand. Prior to the New Zealand expedition I am heading over to the UK for a couple of weeks, where I will say hello and farewell to many of my friends, and also introduce Vera to my parents, who I am hoping are looking forward to our whirlwind visit. The corner of the world they currently live in, North Wales, is spectacularly beautiful and quite ideal for walking in, what with it being part of the Snowdonia national park. I can only hope that the weather holds out while we are there so we can conquer a few peaks and get our leg muscles on the road to being in shape for some of those rather higher New Zealand mountains…

English lessons

Yesterday I was picked out of a crowd of literally one to provide English practice to Vera’s goddaughters sister. The theory presumably being that I speak English, therefore am qualified to impart some kind of knowledge on the  subject.

My conversational skills with thirteen year old girls are not, it must be said, entirely brilliant, (even if said conversationalist were to have English as their first language) so suffice to say, the experience was rather like paddling through thick treacle. We discussed all manner of things, none of which I am sure she had the slightest interest in discussing with me. Travel. Music. You know.. the usual.

If this continues, I would hope it would improve, the good news being I fail to see how I could get any worse at it. If anyone out there happened to be a thirteen year old girl at some point in their life, do let me know quite what it was you liked to talk about so I can enhance the whole experience for everyone involved. In good news, i did learn a couple of new German words. So it wasn’t a total disaster.

English lessons aside, life continues to be good. For example, I spent quite a lot of yesterday evening chatting with the cat. She can’t speak English either. Mostly this covered the benefits of her not eating the wax rind off the cheese that had been left in the ash tray. She seemed unconvinced as to my arguments, but restrained herself, presumably out of courtesy to my ramblings.

Vera popped out to see a friend perform some form of stand up / cabaret act recently. i was invited along, but then it turned out that a) there was no space in the car and b) it was all going to be in German, as you would expect. I am all for new experiences, but watching a lot of people laugh at the cunning wordplay of the stand up whilst I peered, confused, into a pint glass didn’t seem like the sort of life affirming experience I was looking for. I stayed at home and conversed at further length with the cat. Talking of beer, I have learnt that there is a beer festival happening this upcoming weekend in Bonn, where something like eighty beers will be represented. I think these will need to be investigated, in the name of science and erm, journalism. For you dear reader. Yes.

In other, site related news, I’ve migrated to a custom domain, so the site is now to be found at findingtheuniverse.com rather than the old blogspot address. Hopefully nothing is broken, and everything should just magically migrate across with no changes noticed (although some of the facebook like history has mysteriously disappeared), but if you do spot anything, just let me know!

And finally, a friend of mine has recently been employed by no less than the swearing chef himself, Monsieur Ramsay, at one his of London restaurants. Hats off to Martin for that. He cooked for Vera and I whilst we were out in Oz, a fine meal of steak and caramelized onion sauce, and a more deserving person to get this job I cannot imagine. Drinks all round.

German weddings

Well, it seems only natural, after two posts on German love, that I run the full gamut of the experience and attend what some would believe is the natural outcome of the silver birch and padlock shenanigans, that being marriage.

The wedding we attended this weekend was held in Dusseldorf, just under an hour away on the still scarily fast autobahn. We were driving in Vera’s brothers Audi, which is more than capable of hitting speeds in excess of that which would normally catapult you through time itself, but in this case merely transported us in comfort and speed to the wedding venue. This took place in a Church near the centre of the city, and there was, before the service even began, oodles of champagne to be had. A great start.

The wedding service was overseen by two (two!) priests, one from the Catholic side, one from the Protestant side of the Christian faith. I’m not entirely au fait with the differences in these particular sects, but I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t battle it out on the altar to see who would get to do the actual wedding. As it was they rather politely took it in turns to read bits from their books. Most congenial.

After the actual service, and my rather poor attempts to sing along to the German hymns, we all stood outside the church and drank some more champagne. At this point the main difference between English and German weddings became apparent. It seems that the bride and groom are set a number of tasks throughout the course of the day. Some of these are common to most German weddings, like cutting out a heart shape from a giant piece of cloth, and then the groom carrying the bride through it. Others are specific to the couple, like throwing darts at heart shaped balloons. It certainly gave us all something to laugh at anyway. These tasks and games went on throughout the entire wedding, and included a full on pantomime performance. Impressive stuff.

After the church the whole wedding party assembled into their cars and formed a rather raucous convoy through Dusseldorf to the actual hotel where the evening party was being held, which was a bit like a cross between a farmhouse and a castle. Here serving people wandered around with giant platters of beer, balloons were released, and then we were let into the dining room where food was almost upon us. Some speeches in German later, and we were unleashed upon the buffet.

I am aware that there are various schools of thought as to wedding dining, such as whether or not a full on table service system is preferable to the buffet system. Personally I prefer a decent buffet as trying to serve 100 people with hot food all at the same time can be a bit of a challenge, whereas a buffet is self heating. Plus you can eat as much as you want. The food was entirely excellent. Of course, the downside to eating my own body weight in duck breast and crayfish was that I wasn’t really capable of moving in any great manner on the dance floor, but given that wedding dance music seems to be even worse in Germany than the fare you get in the UK, (and my inability to dance with any form of co-ordination) this wasn’t a bad thing. I quietly slumped in the corner and drank more beer. Waiters wandered around with trays of Grappe. After a few refreshing shots, I finally made it to the dance floor to er, bust out some moves, before we called it a night and headed back to our hotel. A wonderful wedding experience. The following day I restored myself to my natural health with a giant pile of fried food. Bliss.

So that was weddings in Germany. Tremendous fun all around, with the added bonus that I may never need to eat again.

In other, completed unrelated news, in a bid to reduce his worldly possessions before his move to tropical destinations, my brother currently has a number of items of his life for sale on ebay. If you are interested in snapping up some relative technological bargains (there’s a PSP for a mind boggling £20 at the moment), head on over to his page on ebay to check them out. Enjoy your day folks!

Farewell Angleterre

I have now wrapped up my six day trip to the UK’s capital, during which time I met up with a lot of people, ate a lot of fine food, wandered around in the sunshine and, I admit, went through a veritable swathe of beverages.

On my last full day in the UK my brother and I felt it would be inopportune of us to miss out on spending at least a short amount of time in the pub. We popped out to one of his many locals in the afternoon, where I tried some of the further ale options, which Phil peered at suspiciously before continuing on with an expensive sounding premium continental lager.

Shortly before arriving at the pub, we stumbled across one of the new bicycle hire racks which are being installed all across central London, allowing people to pick up a bicycle, and for a very nominal fee, transport themselves to another bicycle stand somewhere else in the city. There are, I am led to believe, thousands of bicycles about to appear at these stands all over the city. Always nice to see more options for commuting or just cheap transport being opened up, although I have often suspected people willing to cycle on the roads of London to be a teeny bit mad. What with the buses and taxis and cars and, well, all manner of metallic objects that would usually beat a bicycle at a game of chicken. We debated the pros and cons of the bicycle hire scheme with a chap who was also inspecting the new system, before meandering our way to the actual pub.

Not a lot else seems to have changed in London since I was away. A giant new skyscraper is being erected over London Bridge, which looks like it will be suitably futuristic. One of the artistic impressions renders an almost Blade Runner-esque view of the London skyline once this spire, shaped like a  shard of glass, is completed. I expect that to be pretty impressive when finally done. Otherwise, people have moved houses, or jobs, or had kids, or got engaged. Life is, therefore, going onwards as it is wont to do. The city, and indeed the nation, had not entirely ground to a halt in my absence, which was nice.

My final few waking hours on my last day were naturally spent in another pub, meeting up with a friend to say farewell. As we were leaving this venue, we re-encountered our friend from the bicycle rack, who, to put it mildly, had clearly already partaken of more than the odd glass of something. Swaying gently, he exclaimed how delighted he was to meet us again, and regaled us with stories of his saxophone playing life. His name, interestingly, was Charlie,  the same name as the Czech chef from the now infamous buffet incident. So the visit was rounded off nicely, finishing in much the way it had started, in a pub, talking to a stranger called Charlie.

I am now back in Germany after a lovely flight with Easyjet (I can confirm that it is possible to go from bed to in-flight within two hours from central London, but I would not recommend this as a course of action if you want a stress free travelling experience), and I have to say, it is nice to be back. Absence does, it seem, make the heart grow fonder. The weather is glorious, I have a wedding to go to (suit provided courtesy of my dear brother, I promise to look after it carefully), and everything continues to look, well, joyful. To everyone I saw this week, thanks for coming along folks!

What drinking culture…

You know that relative or friend of the family that your parents don’t really talk about, who turned up every now and again out of the blue when you were a kid and you weren’t really allowed to go near? Possibly he looked fairly straggly and smelt a little, well, musty? He would usually sleep on the sofa and be regarded, overall, as a bad influence. Well folks, I’m proud to report that my first foray into being that slightly crazed friend of the family has now started, after I visited some friends of mine down in Sevenoaks who have a young son.

I will, however, start the tale a little bit earlier, as I went out to lunch with another friend who works on Whitehall, that bit of London between Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament, where our new Prime Ministers live. My other friend Craig, it turned out, despite living in London for countless years, had never seen Downing Street, where said leaders live, so it was a good opportunity for him to get a bit of the touristy thing done. Plus we were able to sit in the hour of sunshine that the weather gods deemed the day was going to have, quaffing a couple of fine ales in the process. Conveniently Kat’s lunch came with a free glass of wine, so we were all able to get started with the drinking just after midday.

Which brings me, conveniently to the title of my blog post. I had forgotten quite how ingrained the drinking is to the entertainment over here. Meet up with friends, naturally, the venue will be the pub. Want to sit in the park for the afternoon? No problemo, grab a few bottles of Pimms and pootle over. BBQ in the sun, you’ll find crates of Budweiser on hand. It’s certainly not a problem (well, quite the opposite, I have waxed lyrical about my love of English pubbery before), but I do suspect that when I head back to Germany I’ll be lying in a darkened room feeding my liver with herbal teas and the like to get over the week of excess.

Drinking aside, (temporarily, I assure you) I then popped out to Sevenoaks to meet up with some friends with the aforementioned small child. I am not, by any means, a child person. We usually circle each other warily before realising neither of us has anything to offer the other one, and then quietly leave each other alone. Said child pretty much ran screaming from the room when I appeared. A tremendous start to the relationship, you will no doubt agree. Having concluded that I was not da-da, and some time of suspicious peering at my dreadlocks later, I was presented with a Postman Pat puzzle to complete. I rather foolishly picked the twenty four piece option, and then spent quite some time flummoxed by it’s complexity while Jesse looked on, rather pityingly I suspect. A look of pity from someone under two years old for a puzzle of ages four and up is not something you really want in your life.

Still, the afternoon was mostly sunny, so naturally we headed out to a beer garden to sample some of the local Kentish ales, before returning back to the house for a delightful steak and roast potato dinner. I stayed over, which was even better, as I was then presented with a full on English fry up. Jesse had a whale of a time with the fry up, particularly with the ketchup. i am starting to think that there are advantages to being small and innocent looking when it comes to painting the carpet with tomato sauce. I just can’t get away with it like I used to.

Then I left Sevenoaks and returned to London. Sevenoaks, incidentally, is the home of BP’s beleaguered CEO, who has recently been reported in the press as having installed some solar panels in his property. I’m not sure how many solar panels you need to install to offset the carbon footprint of 50,000 barrels of oil a day pouring into the sea, but i’m not sure a back garden in Sevenoaks is really going to cover it.

Today, my brother, who has spent the last five years of his life chained to his Blackberry, is adjusting to his first week day of unemployment. He has bought himself a copy of the aforementioned Split/Second racing game, and is relaxing on the sofa in front of the 43inch TV, wondering I imagine, why he didn’t get round to retiring sooner. My dear old mum has worked out that she can buy things from Amazon via my site and earn me about 20p a go, much easier than actually sending me money. At this rate I may even be able to afford to keep travelling. I’ll drink a glass of water to that! Enjoy your day folks.

Fine afternoons and discoveries

There is perhaps a view, if you have read the last couple of entries of my blog, that I have largely spent my time on my trip to the UK imbibing alcohol and propping up bars. I can report that this is not entirely the case. My brother, for example, has learnt two new things about the flat he has lived in for over two years. Firstly, that it has a roof terrace, and secondly, there is a garden outside that you can sit in. So, some knowledge has been gained at the expense of my liver. Sadly he is only in the flat for another month.

The knowledge involving the garden area was taken advantage of to fine effect yesterday, as the sun continued it’s blistering attack on London. A good friend of mine popped around to visit and ever so kindly brought with him a couple of rather fine bottles of wine. Well, the Rioja ‘99 was certainly delightful. We will perhaps extend the benefit of the doubt to the slightly sparkling rose. So we spent the afternoon, yes, drinking in the sun. But it was a high quality of wine, sitting under the former Hartley's jam factory chimney, so the experience was a little different at least.

Following the wine we moved upstairs and watched a game of football, largely from my point of view because I wanted to ensure Paul’s winning streak continued. He had predicted a Spanish win, which was delivered in extra time, following a decidedly less interesting game than the third place play off, the outcome of which Paul had also correctly predicted. For those of you interested in the odds, the odds of Paul being correct this many times in a row were 128-1, with a couple of assumptions. Not bad going for an eight legged tank dweller. I am still intrigued as to what he is going to be up to following the world cup, and if a betting investment strategy is something to consider pursuing.

Finally Phil cooked us all a tasty dinner, green curry with prawns, and then we went and wilted quietly in the ongoing oppressive heat, which, I am told, is going to go away shortly, so we can all get back to complaining about where summer is and how you just don’t get the heat you used to. I’ll drink to that.

Technology – brilliant stuff

I am not a technology luddite by any means, in fact, I would say quite the opposite, but for various reasons, mostly involving living in a tent for a year like some sort of hermit, I have been away from changes, and in particular the rapid pace of Smartphone evolution.

I was, of course, aware of the iPhone - the book of Jobs is hard to ignore wherever you are - and certainly the technology has been available for longer than a year and a half. But quite how ubiquitous this device has become only became apparent when I got to London and met up with all my friends, where it turned out that everyone I know now seems to have one. And it was quite amazing really, a large group of people converging in London, and all it took for us to find each other was the Google maps location feature pinged between each other, and folks who weren’t so familiar with the intricacies of London parks were still able to locate us. No doubt the Google equivalent phone OS, Android, would have been just as good at this. Still, it was quite handy, and good to see that technology is moving beyond the gimmicky to the genuinely useful. The rest of the day, technology aside, progressed nicely, moving from park to bar, we even managed to take in a cocktail in one of my favourite London cocktail bars, the underground, and excessively warm Frevds. Worth checking out if you are ever in the area for the cheapest and deadliest Long Island Iced Teas known to man.

Whilst speaking of technology incidentally, I had some other encounters with its darker side. My brothers car, for example, vexed no doubt that he had left me in it whilst he went off on his final office based errand, severing his five year blackberry noose, decided to lock me inside and set the alarm off, convinced I must be up to no good. Phil returned and turned it off, naturally some time after some people had wandered past and given me odd looks. I was also nearly thrown out of Tesco's for using my camera, apparently capturing images in store is against store policy. Rock and roll folks.

The final piece of the technology update was a rapid fire walkthrough of some of the key Playstation 3 games that my friend Craig had acquired over the last year or so. I used to be an avid gamer, so it was nice to get a quick overview of what had come out. A quick blast through Heavy Rain, a game which is essentially an interactive film (and therefore hard to blast through, but we touched on some of the more interesting parts, such as where I had to hack my characters own finger off), some platforming fun with Nathan Drake in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and then a bit of a beat-em up in the massively huge scale God of War 3 (the scale really is quite dizzy in the game, as you battle the gods themselves. Also fairly violent it must be said, as I pounded Poseidon's Head into a bloody pulp.)

Finally we all settled down to some racing in the frenetically paced Split/Second, which seemed to involve less actual racing, and more blowing everything up around us. Tremendous fun.

This was all set to the backdrop of the hottest day of the year and the smells of gently barbequing meat, which we enjoyed at Craig’s new house, which was lovely. We sat outside for the rest of the day, and partook of some American beer to keep ourselves cool, before settling in for the evening to watch Germany defeat Uruguay in one of the better games of the tournament, keeping Paul safe in his tank to face another prediction day. He has tipped Spain to win tonight as I understand it, in a dramatic break from his usual role of only predicting Germany games. I expect a lottery prediction helpline to be set up shortly.

After this we had fun watching Zombieland, an enjoyable road trip movie with Woody Harrelson (and a brief cameo with Bill Murray which really made the film) and distressingly dark humour, before I hopped on the night bus back to my brothers house, and enjoyed listening to the leather capped Special Brew clutching passenger wax lyrical on a number of topics close to his heart. Night buses clearly have not evolved since I left.

Today will be a relaxing Sunday, watching the British Grand Prix, perhaps some scrambled eggs and then Phil plans to whip something up for dinner tonight. Should be good. Enjoy yours, whatever you are up to.

Who is Mr. Satoshi?

Yesterday was my first day back in London for over a year, and I think it is fair to say that the return was celebrated in style. The details are a little murky, we started off around lunchtime with a quick refreshing ale in the previously referred to Woolpack, with a vague idea of taking a wander around London and re-visiting old haunts - by the evening we had acquired a Czech chef on his fourth day in London who tagged along with us to a book launch in Angel, where I then had to extricate my dear brother from a buffet that he unfortunately fell into. Rock and perhaps indeed, roll. Or rolls. More food themed jokes to follow.

I’ve never been to a book launch before, and I suspect that seeing one through a slightly befuddled haze does not perhaps add to the whole thing (or maybe it does? who knows), but it did remind me a little bit of a wedding. There were speeches, everyone was being congratulatory to the author, beverages were being consumed and a fine buffet was laid on. Until it was laid on. (I’ll stop now.) After the buffet experience we made a fairly hasty exit back into London, where we said fond farewells to our new culinary friend, whose fourth day in London had presumably met all of his expectations for entertainment, and retreated to the safety of a local pub.

I have not as yet read the book who’s launch we attended, but the jacket did make it sound interesting, themes of self discovery and intrigue against  the backdrop of Tokyo. I think we may have received some signed copies, so I probably will read it, but I can’t give you my opinion of the actual content. Based solely on the party and speeches (this is a pioneering new technique for book review I am developing, work with me) I have every hope that it will be a winner. It is available on Amazon, and no doubt, at all reputable book stores. It’s the first novel by a chap called Jonathan Lee, and I hope it does well, because I can only imagine the effort required to actually turn an idea into a book, and then get said novel into actual print and onto shelves. If you want to check it out for yourselves, here is the Amazon link to the novel, which is titled: Who is Mr Satoshi?.

As for me, today will largely follow the same overall themes as yesterday I suspect, meeting people and catching up, perhaps over drinks. My brothers girlfriend is a saint of a person, having plied me with a variety of restorative cups of tea and delightful slices of toast to get me fighting fit again, despite the fact I wandered around the flat in the middle of the night making a lot of noise in an attempt to create toast. An interesting drinking fact for you, two slices of toast in the middle of the night do not ward off a hangover. I will leave you with that thought for now, as I go to enjoy Englands hottest day of the year to date, with a heat wave warning issued, and temperatures set to hit thirty one degrees. Toasty. Enjoy.

Lakes and castles

Having recently written about castles, I noticed that the context sensitive Google adwords system went a bit castle loopy and started offering up castles for sale. I’m not sure who, after reading a blog post about castles, casually decides to purchase one, but perhaps my readers are more financially endowed than I realised. Or Google is easily confused. Not much on the dragon sale front sadly, although the rest of the adverts are heavily preoccupied with beer. Excellent stuff.

It is toasty warm over on the continent at the moment, at least in the Germanic part. This is not too much of an issue, as there is a conveniently located lake mere minutes walk away. At weekends this becomes full of people cooling off, and we popped up there today for a dip as the thermometer is easing past thirty. Perhaps this doesn’t seem overly warm to my Australian readership, but I know it’s a temperature that would probably be culling the elderly in the UK and causing trains to fall off melting tracks.

The lake was a lot warmer than I had expected it to be. Ok, it was no Lake McKenzie (the lake in the picture, which was the last lake I swam in, located on Fraser Island off the Queensland coast), but it was clear and refreshing. It was also over half a kilometre wide… we made it about half way across before turning back, I predict that before I leave Germany a full swim there and back will be made.

Now, it’s off to a friends house with cold beer to watch the England / Germany match. I suspect I will be in the minority supporting camp, but it should at least make for an interesting game. Whichever side wins, the sun is shining and the beer is cold. Can one need more from life?

Australian beer

Even though I’ve now been in Germany for nearly a month, I do not believe that sufficient research has been undertaken yet to warrant an entry on the fine beer based beverages of this country. I know that kolsch is the local beer from Cologne, and that beer is exceptionally cheap, but perhaps the fact of the latter has restricted serious scientific research into the substance itself. So instead I will witter at you about something I did learn about on my trip around Australia, that being Australian beer.

In the UK, if you talk about Australian beer, probably only two beers will come to mind. First, Fosters, and second, Castlemaine XXXX.

The four X is a well known beer over in Oz, particularly in Queensland, although it is mostly drunk in the XXXX Gold variety, which is a mid strength lower carb beer. Fosters, on the other hand, as it is sold in the UK, is nigh on impossible to find. The company, Fosters, are responsible for brewing a large number of Australian beers, but the actual Fosters Lager as enjoyed (well, drunk at least) worldwide isn’t a common drink in it’s native land.

Some Australian beer trivia for you before the actual beer itself. Beer, when sold by the 24 pack of cans, or small glass bottles known as stubbies, is referred to as a slab. When enjoying your beverage, most people would employ a stubby holder, a sort of neoprene wetsuit for your beer that stops your hand from warming your beer unnecessarily, and your beer from cooling your hand in a vexing manner. Low carb beer is increasingly popular in Australia, with all the major beers available in a low carb option.

Enough with the beer trivia already. What beer does one actually drink in Australia? Naturally, this depends on the state you are in. The most popular (and depending on where you are, looked down upon) beer is Victoria Bitter. This is brewed by Fosters, and there are some definite similarities in the logo. It is estimated that a slab a second of this product is sold in Australia. Some people swear by it, to others it is the equivalent of Carling (an upstanding British lager to some… to others.. you get the point).

The various states therefore have their own foibles. In Western Australia a brand of beer known as Emu is popular. We couldn’t find Emu anywhere else in Australia, and to be fair, most Western Australian inhabitants looked at us a bit strangely when we cracked open the tins of Emu Export. Still, it was drinkable. If it’s not Emu then it is Swan. Both are brewed at the same brewery.

Queenslanders are big fans of the aforementioned XXXX Gold, which is usually just referred to as Gold. New South Wales is the home of Tooheys, who make the antlered beer known as Tooheys New (first brewed in 1930, but renamed to New in the eighties.) Victoria is obviously the home of that fine beverage, Victoria Bitter, one of the only beers to achieve wide spread Australian penetration. Victorians also enjoy a tipple or two of Carlton Draught.

South Australia is the home of my favourite Australian brewery, Coopers, maker of a variety of fine bottle matured beers, and the only family owned brewery left in Australia, the rest now being owned by either Fosters or Lion Nathan. The most intriguing, and almost guaranteed to give you a hangover, of the Coopers bottled beer, is the Coopers Sparkling Ale, which has to be one of my all time favourite beers. Coming with a spangly red top and red label, and an exciting sediment due to the bottle maturing process, this fine beer weighs in at a brain melting 5.8%. Not to be taken lightly.

The Northern Territory doesn’t appear to have too much of a preference for one beer over another, often VB is the beer of choice. Instead they are famous for the Northern Territory stubby, a beer bottle that hold two litres of beer. After all, who cares about the beer in the bottle when the bottle has two litres of beer in it. Right? I thought so.

Finally, in terms of beer drunk where, perhaps the most interesting beer divide occurs on the island of Tasmania. In the North of the state one drinks Boags, brewed in the town of Launceston at the North of the island. In the South, you drink Cascade, brewed in Hobart, at the South end of the island. Cascade Brewery is the oldest brewery in Australia, although the company is now owned by, you guessed it, Fosters. There is a line at which point one stops drinking the beer from the other end of the island. Across this line you shall not tread.

That was a brief tour of what beer you could expect to find where in Australia. But the story doesn’t end there. Now you need to be able to order the beer, and it’s not as simple as just meandering into a pub and asking for a pint (well, ok, it is. But there is more to it.)

Most beer in Australia is not drunk by the pint. When you’re in the outback at a roadhouse (think service station filled with cowboys) you’re more likely than not to be presented with either a stubby or a can. You would be wise to take along your own stubby holder. In pubs, and depending on where you are, beer comes in either half pint, two third pint, or pint glasses. Naturally, these are not referred to as halves and two thirds, that would be much too easy. In the majority of Australia, a half pint is called either a middy or a pot. Except in South Australia, where it’s called a schooner. And two thirds of a pint is referred to mostly everywhere as a schooner, except in South Australia, where confusingly it’s called a pint. Luckily, a pint is pretty much a pint everywhere, although you could try and confuse South Australian bar tenders by ordering an imperial pint. At your own risk, I hasten to add.

The schooner is actually a pretty clever idea for a beer glass. You don’t end up with that annoying last few mouthfuls of warm beer from the pint sitting around (unless you drink quickly that is). And you can drink more of them, making larger rounds a more feasible idea. Cheers all round.

So, Australian beer, a brief study, a years worth of adventure wrapped up in a nice cold refreshing blog entry. Oh, one last thing. Nearly every bottled beer in Australia comes with a twist cap. No more fiddling around trying to find a bottle opener or trying to work out how to open a beer with a lighter. Excellent work my Antipodean friends, any innovation that gets me to my beer faster is a winner..

Summer, elle arrive

And so, with sylph like grace summer has arriven, brushing back the clouds and warming us all with blue skies and endless hazy days, lazing in meadows eating daisies. Or, in the non fairy tale world which we sometimes have to endure, it’s grey and cold. One of these two sentences is true to my current situation.

We went to a house party a couple of nights ago, where the aforementioned spaghetti bolognaise was liberally applied. I have fairly strong opinions on the creation of spaghetti bolognaise, which comes in myriad formations (I prefer the addition of most of a bottle of wine, some chopped bacon and if we’re feeling crazy, even a dash of liver) but the chef who had created this particular blend of Italian spices and minced meat was clearly no stranger to the chopping board and hob, having created a dish of sublime excellence. Suffice to say, the party was off to a fine start.

Beer was also liberally applied, another excellent part of any house party. I have observed that the concept of a bottle opener is not really something that the inhabitants of Germany are totally up to date with, instead I believe training occurs from an early age as to the use of a lighter and ones knuckle in order to prise the bottle cap from it’s location. I have damaged many lighters in an attempt to learn this technique, I am currently relying on the “pass the bottle to the girlfriend who knows what she is doing” philosophy of bottle openage.

I have also learnt that the addition of some form of pet can really help with the whole language barrier thing. Someone on your side who doesn’t speak German either really smoothes things along. Admittedly my ability to speak cat isn’t really any better than my ability to speak German, but you can at least stroke cats rather than talk to them, an approach which doesn’t work so well on people. For the most part. There were also some dogs at the party, but they were too busy stealing duck eggs to chat with me about the weather. A fire was another welcome addition, I can stare into a fire for hours, mesmerised. So that was all good.

Today as well as Summer and her accompanying solstice, we are marking the start of Wimbledon. The ball, the flying through the air, the net. It’s just like football really, as viewed through some form of reality distortion field, with the addition of rackets. Strawberries and cream all round.

Things to celebrate

Ok, I admit, perhaps it is a tad early to write England off in their quest for world cup glory on the strength of one game. But just in case celebrating our victory in South Africa seems a bit of a long stretch away, or even our migration to the next round of the tournament, I thought we could ponder on things that we have to celebrate instead. (Incidentally, if someone could let me know which other teams play in white so I can get the pleasure of imagining it is England playing that would be splendid. Germany were a good start. My theory on following teams who celebrate the Queens birthday was shattered last night).

So there I was, lying in the sun, thinking of all the wonderful things that are not football related that we can be happy about. It is, for example, practically summer. In the Northern Hemisphere at least. The denizens of the UK do not in fact believe that Australia gets cold, or that even if they do get cold spells, it is not worthy of mention as there is always somewhere in the country that is warm. Which seems to be a fair point. Anyway, summer time in the UK.

Admittedly this can be a patchy affair, with glorious days during the week, teasing you with promise, followed inevitably by rain at the weekend. Such is life. Still, on the days when it is sunny and you get to go outside, there is nothing quite like an English summer, sitting outside, quaffing Pimms and listening to the neighbours mow the lawn. Interestingly, laws exist restricting lawn mowing in Germany on public holidays and weekends so as not to disturb the peace. How terribly efficient of them.

Other things to celebrate about the whole England and summer thing then. The cities, for the large part, and yes, there may be a hint of rose tinted spectacleness going on here, are rather pretty. Lots of old buildings and stuff to wander around gawking at. Picnics in the park, if you happen to live near a park. Punting! Well, yes, punting is restricted to Oxford and Cambridge for the most part, but who is to say you couldn’t go for a punt on the shopping trolley infested canals of Manchester? If the cities don’t float your boat, then the countryside, filled with rolling greenery and quaint dry stone walls (if you live near quaint dry stone walls that is) are nice too. 

Pubs. Beer gardens in particular. Is there a greater joy in the world than finding a spiffing beer garden in the sun, drinking oddly named ales all afternoon, and falling asleep by eight in the evening suffering from third degree burns because we don’t believe in sun cream? I think not. I’ll certainly drink to it.

The perennial British tradition of BBQ’ing is never to be excluded from this time of year. Questionably sourced meats, charcoaled tenderly over a fire that becomes just the perfect temperature for cooking about ten minutes after you’ve finished, accompanied by beer and wine that have gone a bit warm in the unexpected heat. Or all of this done indoors because it started to rain which wasn’t forecast. Tremendous stuff.

And of course, who could forget the other great sporting event of the year, the strawberry and cream filled spectacle of Wimbledon, where we can all get very excited about having a decent English British player for the first time in ages, who will probably get right through to the final and then lose to Federer. Wonderful, gripping, media frenzy stuff. Secretly, I think we prefer losing at stuff, it gives us something to gripe about as we bask on our punts sipping Pimms as butterflies waft pass in the breeze. Now I have lost the plot.

I will be popping over to the UK a couple of times this summer where I hope to recreate all of the above before scurrying off to New Zealand to see what their summer is all about. I have also recently learnt that the Hobbit is in need of a new director, so perhaps a new career option could open up for me. Here’s hoping. Anyway, I hope summer will be a wonderful time for everyone, football aside :

Fast cars

Yesterday evening we popped over to a friends house for a birthday party. The trip to the party involved a drive on one of Germany’s autobahns, a wonderful motorway system where speed limits do not exist. There is something fairly frightening about this - high spec vehicles whizz pass like fighter jets at over 200km/h. You are veritably encouraged to perform any overtaking manoeuvres rapidly and to scurry out of the fast lane as fast as you possibly can so people with real cars can get to their destinations on time, whilst you bobble along at a pedestrian 130km/h, wheel shaking with the effort.

Surviving the autobahn aside, I can also report that my German is not massively improving, in fact some would suggest it has not improved at all. I was responsible for navigating us the sixty or so kilometres to the party location, a bit of a challenge what with the Google Maps instructions being printed out in German, but I did learn on the way that we live pretty close to the Nürburgring. Which was nice. Legendary race tracks and minor diversions down tiny side roads aside (in the name of exploration, naturally), we succeeded in our mission to get to the party, mostly on time. Hurrah.

At the party, I learnt that there are some advantages to being a non native speaker of the local language. For example, you can happily avoid that bug bear of mine, largely involving small talk. I think I’ve mentioned it (well, whined about it) before, what with the travelling thing, and the scenario is the same when you meet new people at a social event, it’s just that the questions change slightly. Instead of the travellers favourite of where have you been / where are you going, small talk in more polite society involves quizzes about what you do and where you are from. The problem currently is that my answers to both of those questions are largely empty of helpful meaning, and the result is that the conversation can often rapidly tail away if desperate measures to steer it on a correct course are not taken. Still, I am able to share a top tip - if you want to avoid small talk, put an unsurpassable language barrier in the way.

Don’t, however, get the impression that I am no longer my usual sociable self. The party we attended last night was certainly good. The food and beer in particular were of the highest quality, and I made friends with a chap for whom the punk movement was clearly still very much au fait. I want you to think bright pink mohawk and multiple piercings. He seemed incredibly bored, and as I had complemented his hair, we chatted. Admittedly as neither of us could really speak the others language, the conversation was largely sign based, but I learnt how you achieve that spikey mohawk look (sugar water it turns out). Sadly the conversation stalled after I enquired about football, he didn’t have an interest, and I had run out of hair based conversation.

Speaking of football, I managed to miss the first half of the England / USA game. I did find a TV set at around the half way mark, where I discovered that the game was a 1-1 tie, and therefore I had to watch the second half, party be damned. The party was not full of people who were overly interested in watching England play terribly, in fact only one other person took a passing interest, and he watched bemused as the chaps in white all failed in the primary mission of getting the ball thing into the net thing. I think perhaps the most interesting part of the game was the facial hair on one of the American players.

Tonight is the Germany / Australia game, and having concluded that England are unlikely to be raising the cup anytime soon, I have decided I may as well expand my support to other nations for whom the queen’s birthday is still an important day. So I expect to be lynched later on tonight as I cheer Australia on to an inevitable victory. Football punditry is not going to be a career move for me I suspect.

Finally, if you have made it this far through my ramblings, here is your reward. It’s not much of a reward, some in fact would not see it as that at all, but what can you do. Anyway, if for some reason you are sitting at home with a peculiar hankering for a surreal journey through the Nevada desert with guitar playing samurais and Death, check this out. As always, continue to enjoy yourselves.

Bonn voyage

As the incredibly humorous title would suggest, we popped into Bonn for the afternoon, which was rather jolly. Some tasks had to be performed first, and then we were free to wander the city at our will. I erroneously described Bonn as a town earlier, this was certainly not correct. Anywhere with a university building quite as large and impressive as Bonn has certainly should qualify for city status.

Bonn, I also learnt (culture was literally oozing out of the walls today), was the birthplace of Beethoven, and some relevant Beethoven knowledge was laid down upon us. A plaque marked the house he was born in, a statue of the man himself was found in one of the squares. The city overall was incredibly pretty, with large parts of it pedestrianised, featuring cobbled streets and wonderful buildings, as well as large park areas. People were  basking in the sun outside the huge university area, some of them even going to far as to remove their t-shirts. The wonderful rule allowing you to drink freely in public places was obvious, with people happily quaffing from bottles of their favourite beers. No attempts at loutishness were observed.

Today also marked the start of the world cup, so it felt only right to find ourselves a spot at an outdoor area which featured numerous screens as well as large glass pitchers of beer to watch the start of the tournament. Even for a non-football fan such as myself, the location was tough to argue with, and the game worth a watch. There were even some Mexican fans who I suspect were probably disappointed not to come away with a win. Such is life.

Finally we left Bonn, having taken a number of photos, drunk a bit of beer, and seen a number of churches. It’s not too far away, so I suspect we’ll be popping back. Tomorrow we’re heading out to a birthday party somewhere,  where I can only pray someone with a TV set won’t mind me watching the England game. On Sunday, we’re heading into the nearby town to watch Germany vs. Australia. I’m currently undecided as to which team to support ;)

Life without fridges

When I travelled in Oz, mostly on the move and living out of a tent, one thing we pretty much didn’t have was a decent fridge. I thought some information on life without fridges would be useful if you are considering this sort of trip, and wondering if you need this option.

First off, I admit we had a fridge. But it was a totally crappy thermoelectric jobby which was basically a glorified coolbox. It ran off the 12v cigarette lighter which meant, as we didn’t have a funky dual battery set up, that it only ran when the engine was running. Really we only used it to keep beer cold between purchase and imbibing, usually not a large span of time later. If I was going to do the trip over, then perhaps a second battery powering a slightly more advanced electric fridge, or a gas powered fridge, would be an option.

When we started the trip I was so used to living with a fridge that living without a fridge for came as a bit of a shock. How, therefore, does one cope?

You need to realise, straight away, that there are some things that just aren’t going to feature in your new fridgeless lifestyle, unless you happen to be travelling somewhere excessively cold with the windows open all the time. And who wants that?

Butter, for example, is pretty much a no-go, as is most dairy. You can get UHT milk in small cartons, if you are desperate for milk. It’s easier however, just to get used to milk free coffee/tea/breakfast/life. Cheese could be kept for short periods, if you happen to be into sweaty cheese. Nice.

So what else is there? Most vegetables can survive without refrigeration, just stick them in a cardboard box with some newspaper or something like that to stop them getting squished. Don’t leave them in their plastic packaging, they tend to go goopy quickly. Onions and garlic in particular last for ages, and having a few fresh things in your food makes all the difference when cooking.

Otherwise, it is time to embrace what we lovingly referred to as the apocalypse diet. This largely consists of tinned food. It’s pretty amazing how many varieties of tinned food you can get hold of these days, not even counting the slightly dodgy pre-made meals. We were travelling with a pescatarian, so thankfully we were not really getting involved with the strange pre-made tinned meals, but my Dad swore by tins of Irish stew on his trip round Oz back in the mists of time, so that’s certainly an option for the meat eaters out there. However just a few basic things, with a good combination of spices, can be thrown together to make a fairly wide range of tasty food.

Things you probably want to keep stocked include tins of tuna, (all kids of fish come in tins, get whatever you like) tomatoes, vegetables (peas, corn and mushrooms were all deemed fine, asparagus was not the most tinnable of items we learnt), as well as pulses like kidney beans, chickpeas or lentils. You can get tinned fruit as well. With a good selection of spices, from the essential mixed herbs, through to paprika, Chinese five spice, curry powder, chilli, and that old favourite, Tabasco, it’s quite amazing what you can make. Dried foods travel easily, like pasta, rice and noodles. Eggs are an option, but need to be securely packaged, particularly if you happen to be travelling off the beaten track.

From a relatively simple base of ingredients you can chuck together meals ranging from tuna bolognaise, to three bean chilli, curries, goulashes (paprika, despite my travelling companions best efforts, is not a replacement for every missing spice), and even simple Chinese dishes. Mix it up a bit. Get some tinned coconut cream, some tinned pineapple, add lentils and curry powder, and voila, some kind of dhansak dish magically appears. Sometimes imagination is admittedly required when your travelling companion presents you the same mashed up pile of reddish goo you’ve been eating for the previous two weeks disguised under a different name, but with a bit of creativity you really can have enough variety to avoid meals becoming static.

When you do go shopping to re-stock, which we did every two or three weeks, buy some fresh stuff and cook it that evening. Get some steak for the bbq, or some fresh fish and fresh veg, the kind of stuff that you can’t keep for too long normally. Bacon for the following morning breakfast is a nice one too. Obviously baked beans survive forever. Bread should last up to five days without going mouldy.

So, that’s surviving without a fridge, the basic guide. It’s also a pretty cheap way to live. There are probably some environmentally friendly credentials, if you don’t happen to be navigating in a 4.2 litre diesel monstrosity. Hopefully it was either useful, of interest, or kept you from doing something you really didn’t want to do for five minutes ;)

German love

Fear not folks, I’m not going to wax lyrically and embarrassingly about  personal experiences here. Rather, I thought I’d cover some more of the customs that they have over here that I’ve noticed, this time, pertaining to love and the month of May.

The tree in the photograph is a silver birch (currently attached to a lamppost I admit), and it is somewhat full of ribbons (ok, it looks like a lamppost covered in ribbons. I promise there is a tree in there). There is a reason for this, which I will now make clear. If you were, say, an amorous young (or, indeed, old) German lad, with intentions for a girl in a village, you would think that there would be a multitude of ways to tell her of your burning desires. Here, as the month of May approaches, one of your options is to hack down a silver birch tree and tie it to her house. Then festoon it with ribbons.

Naturally, this comes with more challenges than you might expect. Love isn’t supposed to be an easy road. The window of opportunity for this arboreal amorosity is limited, the act must be accomplished during the night of the 30th of April, before May arrives fully. The assistance of friends is required, as the trees are no mere saplings (why express your love with a few bits of twig when a towering monstrosity is an option), and someone must remain sober and in charge of a tractor for the whole procedure to go swimmingly. If your love is in a neighbouring village, you can expect the male inhabitants of that village to try and stop you from wooing their wenches. All in all, a night of fun and possible danger to be had by all, except perhaps the intended who probably sit indoors and wonder what the fuss is all about.

If one is already in love, and the intentions are known and have been reciprocated, then one just places a large heart type device on the house. Although it is not unknown for a tree to be placed anyway, as a giant bit of twiggery is far more impressive than some silly bit of heart shaped paper.

All of these efforts do not go entirely unrewarded. At the end of the month the chap in question pops around to the house of said maiden and is rewarded by the father of the maiden through the medium of a crate of beer. The tree is then removed by the young chap. The more cynically minded amongst you might suggest that it is in fact the crate of beer that causes all of this forestry activity, and not the purity of love, but I like to have some hope that romance is not totally dead. Whatever the cause, it is certainly a popular activity, with dying chunks of silver birch festooning all of the villages around us.

That, therefore, was love. Now for football. The world cup fever is definitely starting to grip Germany now, little German flags are waving from all of the cars, and there is a real feeling that some football is going to be played. A ball will be kicked. Teams will win, teams will lose. Clearly, I have no idea what I’m talking about so I’ve asked my friend Craig who does to send me over some knowledge on the subject of football and let us know how quickly England are likely to go out. This will appear soon.

Additionally, I have made a couple of minor changes to the layout of the blog, so you can get around it slightly easier if you so wish. The changes are not huge (merely the addition of the next and previous buttons below each post) but hopefully will save you from the tiresome scrolling you may have been having to do. Were you actually interested in reading more of course.

Other options are available to you. The full archive of all my ramblings and conjecture is displayed on the right near the top at all times. Popular posts have all revolved around food for some reason. Maybe I should give up on everything else and focus on giving the audience what they want. There are other buttons under each post, which allow you to use a variety of social tools to share this content if you so wish. An RSS feed is available, so you could use that, to whatever nefarious purposes you require. The old fashioned e-mail subscription option is there, although I’m not sure anyone uses that technology any more. You could comment on posts with your thoughts and musings. Essentially, feel free to do whatever you like. The back button in your browser still works effectively as a means for escape I am told. Coming soon.. an explanation of how easy it is to fall off a bicycle. So you do not die from anticipation, the answer is: very.