the past is a different country. So is Bayern.

We have arrived in Bavaria for Christmas with Katrin's family. We've hardly been here 12 hours and already we are stuffed to capacity with food from the ample "World War 3 Preparation Pantry". Here is Katrin taking some internet respite from regional culture:


But the thing I really love about her family home is the heater that stands opposite where she is sitting. It is a big, beautiful tiled oven complete with relief sculpture tiles at the top:


It basically functions as the glue of the household - not only does it heat the entire house from its strategic central position, but they dry their shoes by it, the towels from their showers, keep food warm as they eat (last night katrin's mother put the tray of pizza we in it while we ate the piece on our plate, to keep the rest warm for second helpings) and a range of other handy things.

But it will be nice to take some walks in the forest that backs onto the house...


Pretty huh?

In other news, I finally moved this week into my new house. My room is lovely, but sadly there is a rather unhinged woman who lives downstairs who has been complaining for two years about the fact that the floorboards are too noisy - her bedroom is directly underneath mine. The new landlord therefore wants to put in carpet and cover this beautiful floor.


I haven't really set it up yet as you can see, but the windows look out onto a nice central courtyard in the middle of several houses. The great thing about living here will be that I only ever speak German with my new housemates, one of which is a good friend. There is also a cute cat who lives here, but I am told that she takes a minimum of two weeks to get to know someone without committing violence on them. Hmmm.

bloody mary anyone?

Last night I worked behind a bar for the first time in my life. It was obvious that I had no idea what I was doing... but I was working with a nice German woman and a nice Danish man. They were very friendly and patient. Hopefully I can get a few shifts there to make some pocket money, but given that the boss was sitting at the bar watching all night, I'm not incredibly hopeful. While they only have bottled beer (phew), most of the clientele prefer cocktails, and it's the kind of place where people end up when the bars they were in earlier have closed or become boring. Luckily for me, they were therefore so drunk that they weren't too fussy about whatever was in the glass I was handing to them. Ahem.

It's funny that I've actually made it to this age without having worked a bar before. But in the world of underpaid jobs, I have always been on the other side of the great border that divides hospitality and retail workers. My first job as a teenager was in a department store. For 6 years I learned how to run a check out, put things in bags, cut my hands on packing tape dispensers, and smile when customers threw objects in my face when they couldn't buy that incredibly shoddy excuse for a child's toy at christmas time. I didn't learn how to pull beers and serve drinks with sticky hands, sweep up broken bottles between the legs of sleazy drunk people, cut my hands on broken cocktail glasses and inhale secondary smoke. So I was actually pretty nervous about the whole thing. But it went off mostly without a hitch. And I figure it's high time I learned anyway.

Unfortunately, getting home at 6am this morning meant that I slept through my 7.30 alarm and was late to work at my other job as a receptionist in a call centre. Oopsy.

***

Sneak Preview

I have also pasted directly below here a contents list for two upcoming posts that I am constructing with photos. There are heaps, so it's taking a while. But you can get a sneak preview here:

drafted in February... Berlin Bumper Edition #2
1. Lesbian Koalas and other German news items
2. Hysterical Brisbane pair land in Berlin
3. Quotidian Cultural Experiences #1: Opera
4. My first demo - yeah yeah, it took a while
5. Miss Gulag, Gay-bashers in Moscow, and other berlinale highlights
6. camp counselor kate, or, How I learned to stop hoping and love the unemployment situation in Berlin, or, How working for a Siemens-commissioned call centre destroyed my soul
7. ALB: Antifaschistische Linke Berlin (my new temporary political family)
8. ....

drafted in August/September/October... Berlin Bumper Edition #3
1. London, New York, Paris: springtime! (plus Boston & Toronto!)
2. Skip Bloc and the G8
- lead-up
- the camp
- the blockade
- reflections
3. Alice moves in!
4. Queer historians meet for tea in Swansea, Wales
5. The only gay in the village? Driving through Wales with my sister and Dan
6. Summer camps & missing Berlin
7. The sad end of summer
8. Bathing in Budapest and Conferencing in Cracow
9. Swiss Alps, kids and cows
10. My mother's birthday
11. The Davison Elterns hit Berlin
12. The daily grind - I wish

Yet to be drafted...
1. My new house (it's great to live with a Heilpraktikerin!)
2. Christmas in Bavaria
3. Photos of the Stasi Prison at Hohenschonhausen and other tourist adventures
4. friends come, friends go - goodbye Alice & Claire
5. other things that I can't remember right now...

buried alive in a year of photos

So as promised I finally started to go through my photo collection today and found it completely overwhelming. I didn't think I'd been that snap happy during the year! I have started compiling a selection for your perusal, some of which actually make me laugh out loud. But at least those back home will get a sense of all the folks who have been passing through this pocket of the world.

Today I have had the most gloriously lazy Saturday in ages. Out of bed at around 11.30. Breakfast with a friend at home at around 1pm. Wandered around the neighbourhood in a less than half-arsed attempt to find a costume for the birthday party I'm going to tonight. Got jack of it around 4.15 when the sky turned dark and since then have been sitting on the sofa doing some German revision (ahem, for the first time in MONTHS... my German is really crap for someone who has been here a year already).

My musical choice for today is the Sommersturm soundtrack (a teen gay film from Germany about a boy from a small town who loves another boy in his sport team). I have just discovered The Hidden Cameras (Canadian) and I'm totally in love with them. Check them out here.

Tomorrow I'm going to have to get out of bed early and make a beeline for the flea markets to see if I can buy a new bike. Not sure if I mentioned this to anyone, but my bike finally got stolen a few weeks ago. I was soooooo grumpy about it. But it's just the way things go here - the more bikes being ridden = the more bikes being stolen.

So, anyway, photos are on the way. But here's one to keep everyone happy in the meantime:



Mama and Papa Davison with a very Stalinist Papa Marx and Papa Engels... a likely match?

Til next time,
kd.