Handschriftensachverständigungsvereinsvorsitzendenversammlungstagungsraum

In hindsight, I probably didn’t give a realistic account of what could be considered the greatest weekend of my life (also known as Oktoberfest). It was truly amazing – the food, the beer, the scummy drunken Aussies. I wish I could

Not knowing much about this ‘Germany’ fellow other than they are the world’s leading exporters of Bavarian beer, efficiency, and Jews, I decided to do a little research. I was pleased with what I found:

World War I

Also known as the Great Music Wars. Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the Kaiser Chiefs of Germany had an ongoing battle for world chart supremacy, decades of violence had gone on between the two rivals, so Franz Ferdinand released a single called “Take me out” which was an offer of peace, asking the Kaiser Chiefs to go out for a nice Bratwurst and a pint of beer with them and talk things over.

Unfortunately the Kaiser Chefs saw this single as a taunt on their military capability and athletic prowess and this ended in the unfortunate assassination of Franz Ferdinand. This resulted in the Great Music Wars of 1914 – 1918 and the defeat of the Kaiser Chiefs.

Germany was so taken with grief at the death of their leaders they called for Franz Ferdinand to have to sit in a small isolated room listening to non-stop playback of Kaiser Chief songs. After 3 days and 4 hours later Franz Ferdinand was found dead with his hands over his ears.
(Wikipedia, 2010)

On arriving to Germany, my fellow well-travelled passengers gave me various pieces of advice. One told me not to - under any occasion, even in solitary - do the nazi salute. (“What, this?” I asked inquisitively, lifting my arms up…before very suddenly being tackled to the ground) Another told me not to mention showers or yellow stars and I’d be fine.

Considering Germany a) boarders Turkey b) has towns named ‘Hamburg” and 'Frankfurt' c) is full of fat people, you could make some serious assumptions about the calibre and importance of food in Germany. And oh my cowboy boots, are those assumptions correct. Over the three blissful days of booze-filled fun, I indulged in sauerkraut, pork knuckles, huge pretzels, gingerbread, beigels, sandwiches, paninis, crepes, many a bratwurst (sausage), pimmels (chips), and probably a lot of other stuff that’s really bad for me but I can’t remember because I was distracted*.

The beer was also brewed to an exquisite standard. Of the 6 490 600 litres of beer which is consumed at Oktoberfest, I believe I consumed at least 12L of it. I can’t be too sure, but I reckon I tried Lowenbrau, Hoffbrau, the Bavarian wheat beer with a monk on the front, a Lowenbrau ‘radler’ (which is German for ‘shandy’, which is in turn slang for ‘pissweak’), Paulaner and Augustiner, while visiting about 6 of the 14 tents. Most of them had pretty cool traditional Bavarian decorations and entertainment all day long, and to keep you in form stopped every ten minutes or so to make everyone toast. The Oktoberfest toast is sung and goes “Ein Prosit, ein prosit’, then a long word which I could never pronounce so I just kind of hummed and faked it, and then you took a swig of your 1L stein. Of course, if you were playing drinking games on top of that your stein would empty even quicker, so you can see how it’s a vicious cycle. Yeah the steins are 1L each, they’re such a challenge. Everyone had stein-related bruises on their hands from holding the steins up to their mouths all day. I can hardly imagine what the poor beer wenches go through. But they get 20 000 Euros worth of tips for the two weeks, so it would be worth it. That’s incentive enough to learn German solely for that purpose. I’M KEEN.

So other than that, I haven’t been up to much. As soon as I got back I got into jobsearching (which for the record is quite difficult when you don’t have internet access or a printer) and have about 7 job possibilities so I’m not too worried at the moment. Poor, but not worried. In fact I was at a job interview on Friday, and I found the King’s College orientation day in a series of tunnels nearby. Tunnels. Open day. King’s College. Amazing. Oh yeah so if you find yourself signed up for King’s College Gynaecology Society, I will be in the opposite side of the earth giggling into a cupped hand and admiring my own hilarity.

So I decided to detox after Oktoberfest as I felt royally sheizenhousen after putting my body through that ordeal, however it hasn’t really worked out considering I’ve been out drinking for the past four nights. I’m going to take a break this week though and preserve my liver for next weekend which happens to be my birthday weekend! Oh how lovely! Yet simultaneously depressing, as nobody will know where to send their birthday packages they have for me**. I plan a bit of a bender which may or may not include drinking by the Camden canal, club NME at Koko’s, Barfly, Proud, happy hour at the cocktail bar, dancing on tables somewhere, NRL grand final at 7am Sunday, and the infamous once-in-a-lifetime journey to The Church. Come if you can!

*distracted being synonymous with ‘very drunk’

** Flat 56 Crowndale Court Camden NW1 1TY would be an option.

Das ist life, jah!

What do the words ‘unemployed’, ‘noninterventionist’, ‘abroad’ and ‘slightly magnetic’ have in common?

Other than a shitload of syllables, ME.

Once again, I’m unemployed and off to another country to indulge in the 200^th celebration of the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig and some sheila via the four Greatest Gifts to Mankind: Malt, Hops, Yeast, and Water. I’m lugging myself into a coach (also known to the layman as a ‘bus’) to some small country town called Munich to freeze my plaits off, wear drindls, eat sausages and giant pretzels, and down one litre steins of Lowenbrau and my arch enemy Bavaria beer. With my extensive knowledge of the German language, wars, cuisine, and culture, I believe I will fare quite well, and there is definitely NO NEED* to check up on me this weekend. Repeat, NO NEED**.

And to disappoint all you sceptics who are brimming with impatience to shriek in my face with a big sneering grin ‘I TOLD YOU SO! I KNEW YOU’D FAIL!’, I didn’t get fired as such. In fact, I’ve never been fired as such. I’ve been alerted via text message to hand in my uniform, I’ve been informed that my role is no longer available, my fictitious three month trial period has been discontinued – and this time, there is simply no job for me when I return. So, as I learnt in my third ‘dismissal’, ‘London’s tough’ (a phrase containing the words “no” and “shit” comes to mind).

No use crying over spilt milk. Nod is as good as a wink to a blind man. It’s not worth a brass razoo, a cracker, a pinch of goat’s shit, a rat’s arse, a row of beans – tuppeneny or a two bob to get as toey as a Roman’s sandal, to crack the shits, to get as mad as a cut snake, a hornet, a maggot, a meat-axe! I’m onto bigger and better things. To get bleary-eyed, pickled, sauced, screwed, soused, sozzled, three sheets to the wind, under the affluence of incohol, pissed as a fart, a cricket, a newt, a parrot – as full as a bull’s bum, a fairy’s phonebox, a seaside shithouse on a bank holiday, a pommy complaint box…I’M GOING TO GET SHITFACED.

And what, you may be wondering, am I doing to ‘maintain homeostatis’ as I so gently phrase handling the mature responsibilities of paying rent and feeding myself? Well I have two interviews next week and have pestered many a pub and café on Camden High Street on my way home. I’m also writing for a music website (I’ll post it later) and looking into part time work and shit like that that Other People (who aren’t Me) do. What else have I been doing? Drinking! I had sweet shifts last week (work has been great, really) and managed many-a sneaky pint in with my various Londoner (well mostly Australian) friends who I’d love to name them all here but I’m momentarily distracted by the name “Smith”. Oh and my beloved Justine came down for a night! I won’t go into what mischief we got up to, not because it was one of those nights where I talk shit and would rather forget it, but because I simply can’t remember. Ah, the spirit and vigour of youth.

Well now my NI number has finally come through (meaning I get a whole 2 pounds off tax when I get paid) I am visiting my local GP until he (or she, I understand how this whole ‘feminism’ and ‘gender equality’ thing works) either finds something wrong with me or praises me for taking good care of myself. Either way, I’ll make a drinking game out of it. So, until I return from das land der bier und mein kampf with a head full of lead, 10kg heavier, and a great contempt for public toilets, auf weiderstein!

*As a sidenote, my number is 07583301557

**The dialling code from Australia may or may not begin with 00 and end with 11

A misst ye sae muckle!

Guid mornin, hou ar ye?

Welcome to my wrap up of the Land of the Gaels, the country which in fact shares the same island with Britain (yes I sealed my MENSA application yesterday), is abundant in ginger-topped outcasts and chlorophyll, and deep fries everything from their mars bars to their first born children.

Well before we kicked off on a lengthy, uncomfortable, and little-planned eight hour bus trip, my partner in crime Jenni of the Sky, Thane of the Pavement, and I and a few others embarked on a night out on town. Like many other of our cultivated nights in London, it started with cheap cocktails and free kebabs, and ended at a people-powered revolving dancefloor at a heavy dub and bass underground club at Shoreditch, where the only evidence of orderliness, staff, or security was a man at the door holding a shovel. Somewhere between these two extremities we danced on a bar while our friends in a band played. Totally not gloating though. But it was a bar. And a revolving dancefloor. In a club. Revolving. Ingenius.

After a swift recovery, some speedy packing and some nifty negotiating, we were soon on our way to SCOTLAND. Where the main exports are sheep, silly accents, and WHISKY. All of which I’m pleased to say we experienced in our weekend abroad. Arriving in Edinburgh in the middle of the Fringe Festival was mind blowing; I can’t believe I ever tried to defend Brisbane as ‘cultured’ and ‘refined’ when I arrived. Flyers and pamphlets were flung into our faces left right and centre in the most inventive of ways, while castles lined every skyline; and what excited me most of all was that I finally found where all the young people are hiding. Not in London, no, everyone’s old and worrying about tax and the economy and Katie Price’s new scandal. All the young people are busy in Scotland being ridiculously good looking art students. Though this is not true for everyone, we (in our good faith and sense of adventure) witnessed a bunch of unfortunate looking students performing improv for one of the most painful hours of my life. We were seduced by the witty title of ‘Edinburgh Fridge’ however it takes more than a pedestrian pun to pull off an hours’ improv about ‘The Esoteric Superior Paradise Process’ and ‘Michael Jackson Mischevious Harry Potter and the Troublesome Teletubbies’. Luckily our spirits were soon lifted by some classic Bells’ Whiskey and musical comedy. The walking tour was also really good. I thought Australia’s 200 year history of convict settlement and bogans was pretty impressive until I heard about Scotland’s history and the Scottish Enlightenment. Yeah there’s heaps of stuff about English Rule, pirates and Vikings, Loch Ness, Crown Jewels, haunted castles, and giving the keys of the city to a dog…but most importantly and notably in Scottish history (though has been overlooked on Scotland’s Wikipedia page…this may need fixing…) Scotland is where Harry Potter was imagined. AND WRITTEN. So there was pretty much no other option for Jenni and I than to spend our afternoon trawling through the cemetery where JK Rowling found names for her characters, dining at the café where she wrote it, and wondering what spells would keep us warm from the cold.

The next fine sunny day we made our way to Glasgow, which I found to be hardly as impressive as Edinburgh as it chiefly reminded me of Brisbane and Queen street too much. I think we definitely saw the ‘best of’ Glasgow though – that is, the ‘best of’ the inside of a pub where 10 pounds (10 Scottish pounds mind you) got us five pints and two cocktails. That said, two of the pints were bought for us ‘because it’s nice to see a new face in this pub’ (read: we haven’t seen a female in this pub for a few years)(the pub was similar to a TAB)(yes we drank cocktails at the TAB, what are you looking at?). But then, our main agenda in Scotland: BLINK 182. With a median age of 14, the crowd was made up of fat, sweaty, Scottish emos who seemingly hadn’t showered in a few days and all ate Chinese for dinner. It was pretty rough, a few people fell on me from the sky and I have quite a few bruises, but my God blink were awesome! They played all the classics, and for the encore, Travis Barker played drums UPSIDE DOWN. That’s like, revolving, but in a whole nother direction. Revolving. Again. Ingenius.

With that we spent the rest of the night at the very cold Buchanan Bus Station Hostel before an eleven hour bus ride home. Which was followed by an hours’ bus ride home, an hours’ frantic packing, another hour on the tube to Heathrow, a dramatic and somewhat uncalled for staged scene at the security gate, and then an eight hour flight to Singapore for young Jenni as she leaves this wondrous country of Tea and Scones. Though good effort for her, three countries in one day. She’s a woman of nerve that Jenni.

As for me, I did get fired from my Earls’ Court job. No matter how much I tried to be posh, my inner bogan shone through. You can’t polish a turd. Or you can take the girl out of Wynnum, but you can’t take the Wynnum out of the girl. But on the positive side (of my being bankrupt and unable to afford rent), I have a new job at The World’s End and the club underneath called The Underworld, where some really small local-you-probably-haven’t-heard-of-them bands have played like Nirvana, Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Babyshamles, Goldfrapp, Pete Doherty, and others. Really underground, really indie. You wouldn’t understand. Though it’s mainly an extreme metal club – this week on of my favourite bands Motion City Soundtrack are playing which is I dunno TOTALLY AWESOME! Not being good with names, plus working with a bunch of generic hardcores, I have been identifying my co-workers by their earring size and distinguishing tattoes. There’s Spiky Stud, Gaping-Holes-In-Ears-Mike/Mark, Middle-Nostril, Fat Man with Naked Girl on Arm, Fat Man With Long Grey Hair, and Dreadlocks from Melbourne.

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. Mainly getting fired, running away to Scotland, and working in a hardcore pub. And also being extremely disappointed and worried about the lack of certain and stable government in Australia. At least with a hung parliament I kind of feel that my vote actually counted in the bigger scheme of things. My vote which I threw into the ballot box while singing Khe Sahn. My vote which I may or may not have been decided by a Magic Eraser. My vote which was definitely below the line. Australia, aren’t you glad I vote?

Well keep me updated, yeah? And as they say in Scotland,

TURN UP THE EFFING HEATING, AYE!?

My vote needed to be well documented to properly count.

Like hurling in Ireland and eating in Germany, Quidditch remains Scotland's national sport. This is the training pitch.

Casually trawling through the cemeteries of Edinburgh.

Oooh...aah....well I never!

In one of the best stories I've heard in years, this dog was given the keys to the city to save him from being murdered. A real life Lassie. As you can see, hundreds of years later, people from all over the world take a pilgrimage to this statue to pay their respects to a beacon of hope in a world full of misery.

MMM DEEP FRIED HAGGIS.. marginally better than Meadow Cakes

If you're gonna buy it, deep fry it!

IT'S JUST SO. AMAZING.

Thursday

OH MY GOD. Today was the most AMAZING day here by far. It was as if all the amazing stars of the universe aligned themselves in my Venus constellation so that while the sun is in Cancer, Lady Luck could shine down shiny amazingness down on me. Here are some amazing things that happened:

- I ate a two course meal with my beloved friend Gabby

- I asked directions from a famous British actor

- I was at Edgeware on the anniversary of the Edgeware bombings

- I ran into Westminster Cemetery and some Aussies

And if that doesn’t fulfil any amazing expectations you had when you first started reading this post, GET THIS: I beat my own record and today entered into at least 33 pubs in Covent Gardens, Camden, Earl’s Court, Sheperd’s Bush, and Piccadilly. When I was informed that the pub job market in the UK was ‘very depressed’, they weren’t lying. Although I handed out 22 resumes – nay, CVs – and uploaded my details with 8 recruitment agencies, the majority of the pubs assured me that they weren’t hiring and received at least 10-15 CVs per day. HOWEVER…though you may be thinking ‘Oh, Kate, I knew this would happen, this was a stupid idea, you’ll never get a job with your wayward ways and childish nonchalance which is completely unprofessional and chaotic but I secretly envy because I’m too worried about superannuation and supporting my grandchildren to take the time out and enjoy my formative years’. And you may be right, HOWEVER, the most amazing thing about my eighth of July is that three of my dream places to work at are considering my CV!! I have been privately gushing over these places in the previous months, thinking that it would be an absolute dream to work there but there is no way in hell with my Fitzpatrick’s luck I could make it happen. But oh how far a little perseverance goes!

First in Camden, the Barfly are about to hire and I tried to make the most indie impression as possible when I went in. Though I may have looked a little too mainstream as I wasn’t wearing a band logo at all, but I guess we’ll see. Then the Walkabout pub at Sheperd’s Bush – well it’s not actually a dream job but it would be one of the more cooler pubs to work at in London with a big Aussie following and it legitimately smelt like the Royal Mail back home which is always, um, reassuring of its merits. AND THEN. OH MY GOD. AND THEN. After a big day tubing it around the city I was making my way back home – the long way because I like a nice walk – when I passed the London Saatchi & Saatchi offices. And with my wayward ways and childlike nonchalance I struck up conversation with a lady there, who happened to be the HR lady and accepted my CV. SO. EFFING. AMAZING. I think I will actually cry if I get a call from them.

Anyway at the moment it’s 10am on Friday and I am homeless, bankrupt, and unemployed. BUT IT’S SO AMAZING I CAN’T COMPLAIN.