emmaville

2007-11-28T10:54:00.000-08:00

Ding Dong! The Bastard's gone!

I followed the election crouched around my laptop with 3 other Aussie expats, all desperately hoping my somewhat shaky broadband connection held up to streaming ABC 702. It was only 10am here when the first results came in, and even four days later I am still bursting with satisfaction that I got hear Howard concede live.

I thought Kevin Rudd's speech was utterly pedestrian. I know it was a careful pitch to first time ALP voters, but come on! There are people, exhausted true believers, who had worked so hard and waited so long for Saturday night and it belonged to them. It was the swing voters in marginal seats who delivered the election, but wasn't it the people who hung in doggedly through eleven horrible years of howard-beazley-crean-latham, who get up at 5am to set up the booths and stuff envelopes, who held the party together?

Most of the coverage on Howard's legacy talks about Workchoices, and that and the housing crunch probably cost him the election. But I haven't much talk of the biggest victims of the Howard years - Cornelia Rau, David Hicks, Shayan Bedraie and all the others who suffered because the Howard government found it politically convenient to exploit the worst in the Australian polity.

Mungo MacCallum has an excellent piece in Crikey reminding us all what we lost here.

For more than eleven years, John Howard led us on a voyage driven by greed and fear, into parochialism and paranoia, selfishness and racism, bigotry and corruption, and other dark places in the Australian psyche where we never should have gone. It was a mean and ugly trip, and it will take us all a long time to recover.

It's been called a humiliating defeat, but it's easy to imagine that Howard is packing up the Lodge whistling My Way, for not having handed over to Peter Costello. In refusing to hand over to a whining weasel like Costello he might have screwed the Liberal party for the next ten years, but it must seem preferable to have prevented Mr "It's my turn now" from any place in the history books.

The ABC must be already celebrating. This story is relevant, but there's a healthy amount sneering in their choice of clip (the link is an mp3). It certainly gave me a thril. Investigate that Richard Alston!

2007-10-08T14:12:00.000-07:00

I've got an ohrwurm (ear worm). That's what they say in Germany when you have a song in your head. I watched Hillary and Jackie on the weekend and now I have Elgar's Cello concerto in E minor rolling in my head.

We are having a last little summer. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live here, but Sunday reminded me. I had been out late the night before, to Cologne, to a tiny, smoky bar, and didn't get to bed till 6am. My flatmate woke me at midday and we wandered over the Rhine to have coffee in the Old town. They had run out of bread, so we couldn't have breakfast, went on to another cafe.

Then our lazy afternoon journey took us to the Hofgarten in front of the grand university buildings, before leading us back to the Rhine again. There was a Boules tournament in progress, and a huge spreading Plane tree in the centre of the beer garden. My flatmate tried to be too clever with his Berlin drink names and accidentally ended up with half beer, half fanta. It was disgusting.

There is an old man who regularly comes up to people at the beer garden and in outdoor cafes. He always wears a suit and offers to draw your picture, very quickly, for just 3 euros. If none at the table want a portrait, he argues quite fiercely.

I couldn't do this at home.

2007-09-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

I am still in Bonn. I went to Dresden, then I came back, moved into a flat with three German people, started working in the radio section and went on a little trip to Amsterdam. Home internet is now officially buggered, owing to a faulty router we think.

I am sitting in my office now, which I have to myself because I am on the late shift, and watching CNN. I have finished a story on paedophile priests and watching Dubya address the UN General Assembly. In the main office an energetic discussion is taking place on Burma v. Myanmar - what is it called? The BBC says Burma, but the German Foreign Ministry says Myanmar.

I quite like the late shift (4pm till midnight). It is very quiet and you are often sent home early, and paid extra for working late. The 7am shift is hell - rush, rush, rush and some urgent thing to report on for 9am and I never get away on time.

I have a secret, a good one. I hope I can share it soon - until then, a giant head from Münster Platz in Bonn.

2007-09-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been away. But I'm back now - proper post coming soon. In the meantime, Amsterdam.

2007-08-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

Slack blogger! I've taken some pictures though.

2007-07-26T09:04:00.000-07:00

Jesus Wept! I receive a visit from the departmental secretary, whose spies have informed her that I have rebooked my flight without letting her or the company travel office know. The travel service says I have to pay 90 euros to change the date.

What can I say? I am an adult, it is my ticket and the Emirates are doing the flying and they said it was fine, and mentioned no charge. Clearly I have not followed correct procedure and there it much shaking of heads.

It is this kind of thing that makes people I work with say “Oh, that is so fucking German!” Germans are exceptionally well organised, but they do like their forms and their processes.

After further consultation, it seems I do have to pay the travel service 90 euros for doing nothing, but my blood pressure was up and it was only 11am.

I have lunch with another Australian intern, recently arrived, who is also trapped in a nasty German paperwork vortex. She can’t get paid until she has a visa and bank account, but she can’t get a visa until she had registered with the town hall and got a health insurance card and despite applying for all these things it is taking time. In the meantime she is bring her lunch (cabbage and carrots) and feeling rather unmotivated at work.

2007-07-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

No, no news. Well, there is some, but it has only lead to more uncertainty so I will save it for later.

In the interim, I do some person admin. Having previously been assured that my very expensive ticket is fully flexible by the Emirates call centre in Calcutta some time ago, I call them again to change my return flight. I don’t actually have a return date in mind, but I know I don’t want to go home next Tuesday, which is when the booking is currently for, so I need to change it.

I call the Australian call centre number, which puts me through to India.

A very, very quiet, far-away voice answers.

“I can hardly hear you,” I say.

“HelloemiratesairlineshowcanIhelpyou?”

“I want to change my flight date,” and I give the booking reference.

Long Silence.

“This is not possible. Your ticket expires on the first of August. You need to go home on Tuesday if you want to use this ticket”

“WHAT? I called before and was told it was fully flexible”

“This ticket expires on the first of August.”

“Well, why was I told it was flexible when I called before?”

Long Silence.

Extremely bored tone. “This is what it says. Your ticket expires on the first of August.”

I throw myself full throttle into middle-class strop mode. [I learnt how to do this from watching my mother, who is excellent at it. One day when I have time I will tell the fabulous story of unsatisfactory dishwasher installation.]

Me, firmly, “I want to speak to someone else in your office about this.”

Long Silence.

Bored with a hint of snide now. “Well, if you hang up your phone, then call this number again, you will probably get another staff member taking your call.”

Long Silence.

I do not think my call was being recorded for quality and coaching purposes

I hang up, then freak out about having to pack up and leave in 6 days. Then I call the Frankfurt office of Emirates. Such is my state of nerves that I just start speaking in English. A nice man in reservations with perfect English confirms that my ticket is indeed fully flexible and rebooks it for me, for October.

2007-07-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

I am under a supreme amount of stress, due to doing nothing. I am in limboland until Monday and it is doing my head in, although thankfully not as much as yesterday when I was trying to analyse the significance, if any, of Gordon Brown’s visit to Berlin.

It is like this. My contract here ends on July 31. I have friends to visit in August, and an air ticket back to Australia.

However, I have also received an email from the head of radio, giving me some feedback on some work I did for them a little while ago and asking if I would be interested in doing more work for them. I am interested. Very much so. She wrote this email late on a Friday night, and then promptly went on two weeks holiday.

I can not discuss my interest and any potential future employment, if indeed that is what is on offer, until next Monday. Which will be 10 days before I am scheduled to leave Bonn forever, having chucked out or given away half my things, confirmed return flights and trains to Frankfurt, got my bond back from Evil pseudo-landlord, had a last fond look at the Rhine and bought a whole lot of souvenir tat to give to people at home.

I can do none of these things now because there is this tiny possibility that I am staying. I have phoned German friends who have invited me to stay and I have phoned Emirates, provider of the most expensive economy airfare ever sold, and they told me that my flight is fully flexible, so I will not be stranded and homeless.

Now I just have to wait. I am finding it very difficult. Currently the only firm plan in my life is going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in Cologne on Thursday.

2007-07-16T07:19:00.000-07:00

I need to be more careful what I wish for, it was 37 degrees yesterday, and only cooled down marginally at night. I also need to stop trusting my own employers weather service, which is currently reporting today's temperature as 16 degrees with a strong possibility of rain, when it is in fact 36 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.

My office faces west and is not air-conditioned, although we have been provided with portable fans. I haven't worked like this since I was at school - I can't help feeling I should be going out at lunch time to run through the sprinklers in a school mandated hat and buying a 25cent Icy pole from the mothers canteen.

It reminded me of a strange thing the teachers used to do at my school when it was hot, which was to periodically switch the ceiling fans off because they claimed that having them on "made us talk." This always seemed like a implausable, we got in as much trouble for chattering in winter, and now I wonder if it was a threat to try and make us shut up. It never worked, and anyway little kids are less exhausted by hot weather than adults in my experience, so they were cutting of their nose to spite their face, which is another expression I could never understand when I was a kid. I mean, why would you want to spite your face?

All last week, when we were freezing in boots and thick jumpers, an ice-cream man with an esky would come around and no-one ever bought anything because it was so cold. But today, definitely a day for ice-cream, he has not come. Perhaps it is too hot to hauling an esky around the local offices.

2007-07-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

I went to Drachenfels (Dragon Rock) in Königswinter on Sunday. It was beautiful, green, there was a castle and when I finally made it to the top I found stunning view of the Rhine.

The Drachenfels is where, according to legend, Siegfried slayed the Dragon and then bathed in its blood to become invulnerable. The castle was used as both a Catholic Boys home and a then an elite Nazi Youth Academy. It's now a museum, and still has some of the china with swastikas painted on the base.

It was beautiful and oh, the green. There is no drought here, no water restrictions or lawns dying. The grass is soft and downy, nothing like the hard couch stalks interspersed with prickles at home.

So why then, am I looking at these pictures of poisoned trees in Perth, victims of the local council's unauthorised sump napalming*, and feeling homesick?

*My mother has turned into Perth's own Erin Brokovich over this, conducting her own soil testing, requesting documents under freedom of information and complaining to the Department of the Environment. She even has her own website.

[Essentially the local council contracted a firm called Turfmaster to spray and kill weeds at sumps (storm water drains). The firm used an industrial herbicide which has been killing, not just weeds, but valuable old trees in nearby gardens. The council is now offering tp pay for some damage repair and the replacment of some trees, but asking residents to sign confidentiality agreements. They have also renewed Turfmaster's contract, despite their apparent inability to read the labels of very powerful chemicals.

Anyway, you don't screw with people (and their property values) in the western suburbs like this and get away with it. Strongly worded letters to the local paper have been published, written complaints made to government departments.]

2007-06-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

It has been raining for days and days and look like continuing to rain for days and I am sick of it. Isn't it supposed to be summer?

2007-06-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

On Saturdays I like to sleep in late, often until midday. But then I have to get up and got organised, because the shops here are not open on Sundays, and I quite often have to go to three or four shops. One stop shopping at huge supermarkets is not a part of life here.

Today I went to the discount Aldi-type shop, just to get milk. No matter how crowded this shop is they never have more than two tills open. They set a fast pace though. The checkout women (they are not teenagers earning extra spending money) sit while they work, and they don't pack your purchases in bags for you. Bags have to be paid for, and then you have be a fast packer, because they just pile everything up on a tiny shelf at the end of the checkout, and if you haven't finished packing when they start putting the next person through, well, they just let it all pile up.

Most people just frantically pile their stuff back into their trolleys and then withdraw to a corner and pack in peace. These women are tough. They invariably pretend not to understand me when I ask for 50 cent pieces in my change (I need it for the washing machine) and they couldn't give a toss about what people think. Last week there was a mini riot when one announced she was going on a break, despite fact there were twenty people in her line, who were all off-handedly told to join the other queue, which already had twenty people in it.

Then I had to go to the Drogerie, which is not a Pharmacy. Drugs come from the Apotheke. The Apotheke is staffed by serious medical looking staff wearing white coats who give you a complimentary packet of tissues or lemsip with your panadol. Unlike Australian pharmacies, they are not massive shops selling toiletries and cosmetics as well, which is where the Drogerie comes in. They sell everything you normally see at a chemist, except drugs. I have to go their for toothpaste, and shampoo, and washing powder, because they don't sell that stuff at the supermarket. This week I was seduced by packaging, and bought Persil man.

See? One arm is a handle, the other the spout and the head is the measuring cup.

Then I had to go to the stupid Sparkasse Bank where I never should have openned an account, because it is so inconvenient. This visit was fairly unremarkable, apart from the woman at the service desk being dressed in a full, traditional dirndl, for no reason that I can see. All the other staff were wearing normal clothes.