Week 3

As I come into my fourth week in Europe I have fewer stories to tell. Perhaps this is because I'm getting the hang of the place, perhaps I'm getting lazy.

Goethe
My German is improving! Slowly. However it has been really great meeting all the new people in the class. We all battle through our German. Often we lapse into English to get our stories across and add some humour to the discussion but everyone does their best to get back into the German groove where possible. Last week we all visited the local brewery - Groninger Beer- and had a meal. The beer was good and the meal, fantasticly German with lots of meat, sauerkraut and mustard! A litre beer is also a novelty and definitely required to help hydrate after all the salt in the meat! As I mentioned in my last email, we have people from all over the world so everyone has a good story to tell.

Hamburg
We had great weather in my first week here but last week it was pretty miserable. Luckily it wasn't too cold. This morning back in Hamburg it's a lovely 24 degrees and getting warmer through the week. I'll be able to get back on the bike again to keep my training going for Mont Ventoux!

Living in a share house has been brilliant. For starters Sabrina and Oliver are great value. Oliver is studying (History) at the moment and has his last exam of the semester tomorrow. Sabrina is a lawyer for Tesa (sticky tape and also owns Nivea). Whenever she heads out she lets me know and I can join her and meet her friends. Although I sometimes then forgoe doing my german homework, speaking with people teaches me far more anyway!

Germans
I'm developing a hypothesis that Germans are actually relatively lazy and this drives their appearance of efficiency. Very few shops are open on a Sunday. Banks and supermarkets have random opening times so that they can do stocktakes and maintenance in their work time not over-time. Due to continued pressure in the economy many companies are reducing the working week to 4day working weeks and reducing pay. The employees are surprisingly happy about this!

After a weekend at the Schutzenfest I am starting to develop a good knowledge of the cross section of people here. The contrast is not dissimilar to Australia: from the rich investment bankers who dine on the Aussenalster in Hamburg to the Double Denim wearers at the schutzenfest. It's great having time for people watching!

Hannover
Once again a visit to Hannover including catching up with Crissi, Gabor and Gunni. This time, although delayed by one day, James Hay came to visit. I played tour guide through the old part of the city before heading into the Schuetzenplatz. Although our photos don't do it justice (it had been raining and it was the last day) the Schuetzenfest is the biggest in the world and this year they broke their own record by have 1.6 million people come through the gates in 10 days!

The great bit about the Schuetzenfest is that there is a mix of people just there to drink beer. Grandmothers cruise around in groups of 4 or 5 going into each tent to drink beer. The Schuetzen-Vereins or Schuetzen clubs were also a novelty. Groups get together, organise uniforms and then luanch into the booze. Some uniforms look very formal with jackets and bling! Sadly we didn't see any lederhosen. They are probably more famous in the south of Germany. German genius organises things such that the kids would be off playing on the show rides while the parents are sucking down half litre beers with their mates.

When in Rome...

For James and I, there the games began! Our assault on the Schuetzenfest was really a tent crawl trying all the Franzikaner, Herrenhaueser, Astra, Gilde beers. In one tent we discovered a Hannover speciality the Dark Beer + shot of Corn spirit. There is a fine art to drinking this drink. You need to hold both in one hand and as you pour the beer into your mouth you have to pour the spirit into the beer such that is cascades down into the beer and into your mouth. Hay and I become professionals at this. It helped that we had made friends with the barstaff who ensured our table was never empty of drinks. Constantly we were being stood up by oldies smashing these beer shots or half litre beers around us. Hay and I were not game to tackle the show rides. They looked as though they could do some serious damage to a stomach full of beer.

Doing everything in traditional style, we ate Schnitzel and numerous wursts. A standard order of wurst gets you a sausage and a piece of cardboard to hold your sausage with. Mostly you get a piece of bread and some mustard but these are optional. I came hugely unstuck trying to tackle the many Wurst shops. The half metre wurst at the end of the night really put me in my place. Eyes were clearly bigger than my stomach. My poor stomach suffered all the way home and in class on Monday! James headed off to eastern Europe while I hopped on the train back to Hamburg for school. Bloody good fun and great to hang out with Jimmy.

Photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ajoest/Hannover_Weekend#

Food:
I've found a back street along which there are numerous turkish shops. The bread is magnificent, the meat is cheap and the fruit and veg is very good. So I usually am able to get once a week a good load of food for 15 Euro and have enough to last me the week. I'm getting the hang of cooking in a small kitchen but because Sabrina and Oliver don't really cook I have it mostly to myself. They eat their 'warm' meals for lunch and then snack in the evening. I'm still on the Australian eating regime!

This week will be relatively low key. I'm keen to ride to Luebeck and see the Ost See perhaps later this week.

Hope everything is going well wherever you all are around the globe!

Oest