small stuff

A spider has built a web from the ceiling of my bedroom all the way down to my writing table, entrapping my German grammar book. The web is so uncommonly symmetrical that I don't want to remove it. It's been there for two days.

When I came home tonight my flat smelled of eucalyptus. My housemate has flu and she bought eucalyptus bubble bath to clear her head. The nostalgia almost made me cry. I remember sitting in my parents kitchen while my Dad used 'eucy' to remove 'use by' stickers from jars of boiled lollies that he was probably intending to give to relatives as Christmas presents. Tight arse.

camp

I have a new job. 'Camp Counsellor' for Berlitz (the big boss of European language schools) in their Kids and Teens English program. At camp there are usually between 30 and 50 kids, aged 7-17 and one counsellor for every ten kids. The day starts at 8am. You wake the kiddies up and eat breakfast with them. From 9.15 - 12 I'm quatsching my way through English lessons. Passive present progressive? Kid, I have no idea! After lunch we teach sports and crafts. Then it's dinner and evening activities - on a good day we chuck on a movie in English and our work is done. One evening we set up a little health spa in the classrooms and gave all the kids face packs, footbaths and manicures. 11 o'clock you make sure the last kids are in bed and not making out with the other 15-year-olds behind the skate park. Then we meet with the rest of the team, crack some beers, talk some trash, organise the program for the next day, make lesson plans and correct the kids' work. Most nights I finished at around 1 or 2am. That's an 18 hour day spent trying to maintain full-on, mental kid energy! And we do this seven days a week.

My first camp was at Ummanz, a tiny island in the Baltic Sea. I imagined idyllic surroundings and fresh sea breazes. I arrived in grey, east-German holiday camp conditions. The kids complained that it was like being in a prison camp - and judging by the food it probably was. Not to mention the horse-flies and the infestation of wasps. Anyway, the kids were cute and their valient attempts at speaking English at all times - hilarious:
"Amy, when become we a sausage?"
"Roxy, where's Inga?"
"He is in the room. I go holeing her?"

On the final night we organised a disco at the surf hostel down the road with the kids and counsellors from another camp. Everyone stuck an envelope on the wall and posted little notes for the others. Most of mine were along the lines of, "Amy, you are so grazey and funy! I love you. Love Kati." My favorite was unsigned and read simply, "Best teacher of the world!" Ah, kids and their over use of superlatives. Precious!

I arrived back in Berlin completely exhausted and promising myself I would spend the next week sleeping and detoxing on a diet of steamed broccoli and mugwort tea. I was chatting to Patryk one morning about how he thought that he didn't take enough risks and missed opportunities. (On a side note, I believe this is bullshit. Patryk always seems to be having adventures. The kid's just stuck in a rut because he's spent too much time in the outer suburbs of Sydney.) Anyway, I told him I thought he had nothing to lose and everything to gain and that he should run away and join the circus. Within the next half and hour later I got an email from the company saying that a volunteer position on a camp in Romania had become available at the last minute. I thought I should take my own advice so, with no idea what I was getting myself in for, I signed up.

So last Saturday I found myself on a plane to Bucharest with the dear Kate Davison; another fabulous old homo from Dubbo, Jon; and Lehua, a tough ass Californian punk rocker. We spent the first evening wandering around Bucharest, admiring the juxtaposition of bulky Communist architecture with massive billboards and neon lighting and a few hidden pearls of Art Deco details and Orthodox churches. The next morning we stuffed our pockets with fruit and bread rolls from our hotel's buffet breakfast before being picked up and driven through Transelvania and the Carpathein Mountains to Dorohoi, eight hours away on the Ukranian border. It was too dark to see much of the town when we arrived. In the daylight I realised that I don't think I've ever been in a place where the effects of poverty were more obvious.

We met the woman who had started the school, who turned out the be a fundamentalist Christian from the USA - a theme carried through by most of the staff. She warned us that Romanian kids weren't like Western kids. They were shy and reserved, brought up by strict Orthodox and Evangelical families. Some of them were not allowed to dance. Singing and hand-clapping were of course permitted. So we started the kids off with a few getting-to-know-you games. All good clean fun. No hip grinding or pelvic thrusting. It soon became pretty clear and these kids were NOT shy...and as for dancing, just try to stop them! Given the opportunity to run around and go crazy they went mad for it and had an excellent time. It was affirming to see that kids from such disrupted backgrounds, raised by fundo Christians are, in the end, just kids. The parents said they'd never seen their kids that excited about learning and they wanted to honour us for the work we were doing. The parents of three families picked us up one evening, took us out into the hills and fed us homegrown tomatoes, cucumber, garlic, plums and apples with homemade sheep's cheese and schnapps. One father even slaughtered a pig and cooked it a big cast iron pot over an open fire. We all had a grand old time getting pissed and dancing around the fire with the parents to the local radio playing on the car stereo. There was only one German speaker and one English speaker other than us among the group but I've never felt more warmly welcomed anywhere in Europe.

The weather was perfect. Kate, Lehua and Jon were amazing to work with and even more amazing to spend evenings with - drinking cheap beer and gazing out across the horizon into the Ukraine. On the car trip back to Bucharest, drinking homemade wine bought on the side of the road I was sad to be leaving. But I'm happy to be back in Berlin again. Chloe's visiting so I'm playing tour guide and trying to settle myself down again here. I realised that in the past 2 months I've only spent about 2 weeks in total in Berlin. I feel fulfilled and satisfied but a bit worn out and disconnected. I need a place to nest.

homing

I'm back in Berlin and waiting for the beans to boil. Beans grown and picked and dried by my housemate's Croatian grandmother. Beans braised with fresh tomatoes, tons of garlic, fennel and silverbeet. Beans soon to be sitting a top a bed of brown rice and drizzled with balsamic and homemade olive oil -also from Dani's grandmother. I wonder if I can convince Dani to travel to Croatia with me and introduce me to her culinary heritage. I heard the beaches are also nice and that Croatians are impressive drinkers.

I'm all alone in our lovely flat. Dani's camping on the Baltic Sea and our cat Kali hasn't been seen for almost a month. Grief is being delayed by the hope that she might come home, since we haven't heard otherwise. I'm really missing her. It was so nice to have a pet around the house again and we were just starting to get to know each other a little better. But it must be crushing for Dani - she's been with her for years.



It's been an emotional homecoming. After quiant, rainy Edinburgh with it's shiny, narrow, labrythine cobbled streets, Berlin feels expansive and loaded with potential. But I'm struck by the fact that I'm more alone here than I've ever been before. In the past month about half the people closest to me here have left and I'm reminded that Berlin is such a transient city. Having spent time with old friends in Edinburgh I'm realising how important community is to me - and I miss it. But there's no where I'd rather be at the moment and I'm learning how enjoy spending time alone - something I've never been very good at. I'm dedicating this week to pottering around my flat, cleaning, watching Six Feet Under and preparing myself to leave again next week.

In Edinburgh we listened to Daniel Kitson talk about 'home' in '66A Church Road.' I don't think I've ever really defined 'home' as my personal relationship with a particular building...until now. My flat on the 4th floor of Danzigerstr 136 is small but somehow open and roomy, warm, full of sunlight and completely loveable. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, just being at home in immensely pleasurable and I'm always happy returning to it. Kitson also reminded me of the 'other home' - I remember that the last time I saw one of his shows was at the Capitol Theatre with Elyse and Felix and that we nearly pissed ourselves laughing and that we ate some trash afterwards - probably steamed vegetarian dumplings and fried taro cake at Shanghai Dumpling. I'm looking forward to re-aquainting myself with Melbourne town. But for now it can wait.

While Kitson is always a sure bet for whimsy and giggles, unfortunately Edinburgh's highlights were non-theatrical.

My couchsurfing host was Lukas. A nice, queer Polish boy who volunteered in a support and out reach program for sex workers - providing safe sex supplies and legal advice, mainly. I arrived at his place on Thursday and on Friday evening we went to a rad queer party at Forest Cafe - a big collectively run cafe in the old town with a performance space and a big hall upstairs for parties. It looked like it might have been a converted Masonic Lodge - with a DJ booth in the old pulpit. Sadly the party never peaked and at the height of the evening there was about 7 people and a dog on the dance floor. Apparently the queer scene in Edinburgh is not much to speak of. I did meet some nice people though, including Nine who coordinated the program Lukas volunteers for and edits the sexuality column of the local street press. The next evening they were organising a screening of a doco from the European Conference of Sex Worker Rights. Somehow she managed to get Buck Angel to attend this little gathering in the loungeroom of someone's flat. For the uninitiated, Buck is a female to male transsexual porn star who has decided not to undergo phalloplasty and advertises himself as the porn industry's first "real man with a real pussy." Check out his blog - he mentions us in it! He had some pretty interesting things to say about the shit he went through trying to break into porn - an industry which supposedly caters to all manner of obscure fetishes. "Subversion" only possible within a certain restrictive framework? Evidence of the way mainstream porn functions to uphold normative heterosexuality? Perhaps...Either way I was pretty excited to see the show he was performing in, Jim Rose Circus. Unfortunately it turned out to be nothing but stomach-churning mysogyny packaged in tired, shitty showmanship - the best thing about it was the mediocre 80's hair metal coverband. Lame!

Enda Walsh's new play, 'New Electic Ballroom' was disturbingly hyper-real and performed with conviction but there was something unsatisfying about it. I would like to be able to say which element let it down but I guess in the end it just wasn't very memorable. On my last night in Edinburgh I ended up running through the rain on a whim to see Camille O'Sullivan. I've always overlooked her when she's played shows in Melbourne. Maybe that's because she doesn't have a particularly marketable gimick. A stunning, Irish-Frensh cabaret singer doing Weil, Brel, Bowie and Waits. Yeah, and...? Now I have to admit that this was an ignorant mistake on my behalf because she is actually one of the most engaging, idiosyncratic performers I've ever seen. She's fucking beautiful but she isn't afraid to look busted and ugly either - which you have to respect. She's wild, drunk and fucking fierce and at the same time kind of vulnerable and needy. She gets totally intimate with her audience too, she just comes and curls up on people - and it works. I guess there aren't many performers that could break down that barrier between performer and audience so completely and still be so commanding. Do I have stars in my eyes? Yes I do. I am completely in love with her.

But of course the best thing about Edinburgh was dossing about with Chloe, Adrian, Declan, Ashley, Gill and the rest. Eating vegetarian Haggis with neaps and tatties, drinking whisky, smoking too much tobacco, wandering through pretty streets, gasping at pretty views of the Castle. I miss them already.

every fucking Tankstelle looks the same

Yesterday morning Jimmy and I returned to Berlin on an overnight train from Brussels at the end of an epic hitchhiking tour of Germany, France and Belgium. In 4 hours I fly to Edinburgh. At this point I would usually be checking and re-checking my luggage, tickets and passports in a paranoid frenzy. But right now I want to document last week's adventure before I forget all of it's farcical twists and turns.

It starts early last Sunday morning. About 4.30. Annika, Jimmy and I are dancing in the street to Geri Halliwell's cover of 'It's Raining Men.' It's the last night we'll have with Annika before she moves back to Finland. Our core posse, not to mention mad bike gang, Die Farrad Schlampen, is disolving. Jimmy and I have been discussing hitching to L'Alpe-D'Huez and then to Paris to watch the last mountain stage then the finish of Le Tour de France. We decide to meet for brunch in a few hours to make plans and leave the next day.

A few hours later I'm on my way out the door when I realise I don't have my wallet. It doesn't take long to work out I must've lost it in the club. So I'm going travelling for a week with no cash and no cards. I spend hours on the phone to Australia cancelling my cards and trying unsuccessfully to get an emergency cash advance. Exhausted and broke I decide to go and meet Jimmy and Annika anyway. I'm on my bike, a block away from the Hans Wurst, day dreaming about coffee and amazing vegan brunch when a car door opens right out in front of me. I'd seen the taxi stopped in the middle of the road next to the bike lane and had slowed down accordly so not much damage was done. I didn't even come off the bike. Just flew forwards onto the handlebars – shocked and winded. (I have some amazing bruises on my upper thighs now – photos to follow). A young couple got out of the back of the taxi. It was probably about 1pm and they must've been on their way home. They were so wasted, all they could do was hug me and offer me cigarettes. They left without paying the taxi fare and walked me the last block to the cafe.

Next morning we're on the road. Took a regional train out of Berlin to our first hitchhiking spot, a Tankstelle in Michendorf. Met Gaia, a Canadian girl hitchhiking with two Polish friends. Apparently they had all spent the night before in a forest outside Berlin with only half a poncho between them for warmth! Jimmy and I had just started walking towards the exit when the first car that passed picked us up. The first leg of our journey took us via Schweinfurt (or "pig river-crossing") where, according to our driver, ball bearings were invented! Our second lift was equally quick and by the middle of the afternoon we'd been dropped at a Tankstelle in the wilds of Bayern. According to Lonely Planet, the Bavarians are said to be “...warm and hospitable, but also fiercely independent and conservative.” So you can probably imagine how a couple of scruffy looking hitchhikers were received, especially after we had been waiting almost three hours in the rain and it was approaching dusk. The only people who talked to us were the cops that came to search our bags and Roman, a 40 year-old Czech truck driver and his 17 year-old girlfriend Teresa. I'd usually be pretty wary of the dynamics of a relationship with an age difference like that but Teresa and Roman seemed like a pretty perfect match. He had a couple of ex-wives and an 18 year-old daughter but he and Teresa played like a couple of kids. And somehow it was just totally innocent - nothing dodgy about it – they were totally in love and totally cute. They gave us coffee, cigarettes, beer and home made Turkish wine and suggested we sleep in their truck until 5am when he could drive us to the next town. So we spent the evening drinking, smoking and playing with their pet rat that slept in the truck cabin with us. Roman spoke no English and a few words of German. Teresa had perfected a couple of important English phrases; “Micky Mouse, I love you, Fuck you very much!” On our way home Jimmy and I conferred that this night had been the highlight of our trip.

The next day was slow – a long time waiting for three short rides that took us to Karlsruhe. Jimmy had a friend in Offenburg, not far from the French border. There was no way we were going to make it to L'Alpe-D'Huez for the mountain stage the next day, so we caught a train and spent the next two nights with the lovely Rapheala. Offenburg is a University town and the day we arrived was the last day of exams for the semester. Our host and her friends had been drinking since 10.30am and continued until about 5am. Impressive trashbaggery even by my high standards. We drank a bottle of cheap white rum, danced to the Cat Empire (Rapheala had spent a year in Australia...and again I'm giddy with nostalgia) and learned some German drinking games.

The next morning we got a lift to the border with a local stoner kid who said he would've liked to take us all the way to Strassburg but didn't want to deal with border control because he had his stash in the car. Fair enough. So we walked across the border feeling accomplished. Hitchhiking in France seemed a lot easier and a couple of long rides with truck drivers got us to the Paris suburbs by the end of the day. As it was already dark and we couldn't find a Metro stop, we camped in a field next to the freeway before getting a lift into Paris the next morning, accompanied by a guided tour of the city – L'arc de Triumph, Le Tour Eiffel, Le Louvre.

Paris was as I expected - breath-taking, idylic, picturesque, expensive and bouergie. I did not expect however, that it would stink of stale piss. Our host was a sweet, sociable, nerd who lived in a nice little apartment in Bastille with an impressive collection of graphic novels. We spent the weekend aimlessly exploring central Paris on foot - stopping only to eat fat crepes and ice-cream and perve on fantastically plastic Parisians. There aren't enough words in my vocabulary to accurately describe Paris. Also, the city's appeal was largely scopophillic, so I'll try with images...

By Monday I was anxious to get back to Berlin, worried I would miss my flight to Edinburgh. After no less than four hours waiting at a service station on the outskirts of Paris with the sun beating on concrete and stirring up that now familiar smell of urine, I wondered if it was my over-eagerness that had put a pox on our journey. Now, this probably violates the hitchhiking code of ethics, but out of desperation we decided to take a taxi to the next toll point, which was apparently only a 30 minute walk but would involve risking arrest for walking directly on the freeway (and I'd already been picked up by Bavarian cops for this offence once before). After 15 minutes or so, watching the fare metre climb above 20 euro we asked the driver to let us out and the next petrol station. By evening we somehow made it to Leuven, Belgium - the birth place of Stella Artois and the home of it's brewery. We sunk a few well-earned cans and I enquired about busses and trains back to Berlin. With 15 minutes to spare we found an overnight but that would take us, via Brussels, back to Berlin by 9am the next morning.

So here I am with just enough time for a shit, a shave and a shower and I'm off to Edinburgh!

mai 1

an old photo from der erste mai in berlin

re-starting?

Sometime in the last few weeks, I reached the mid point in my trip and became almost compulsively reflective. Like every little detail of my day to day life demanded writing home about. For example, the fact the you can buy 'dick milch' (a kind of thin, runny cream, or 'thick milk') in the supermarket just had to be shared with all the vile and juvenile friends I left at home. This is as suprising to me as it must be to you, given that in 4 months the only communication I've had with home has been via banal facebook status updates (“amy isst vegane curry wurst,” “amy raucht zu viel gras”) a few photos early on and more commonly, “I love you, I miss you but I'm never coming back” emails, text messages and phonecalls.

Spending a lot of time with Alicia in the past two months definitely fed this nostalgia for home and made the memory of Melbourne burn brighter in my heart. Recently I've even found myself listening to Architecture in Helsinki by choice. I guess it only takes a few months away to be overcome by the kind of sickening patriotism that has you in tears over the kind of twee indie pop that would usually have you reaching for a bucket (sorry AiH fans!).

Last Wednesday was bittersweet – saying goodbye at the airport to one old friend and one new one, both headed for Australia in the space of an hour. I had totally underestimated how benificial it would be for my mental health to have Alicia in Berlin. People talk about how liberating it is to be in a city where no one knows you. Like you can totally reinvent yourself or finally find your 'true, authentic self' or some hippie shit. I personally found the process of reconstructing my identity and personality for everyone I met boring, draining and in short, a total drag. I was sick of the sound of my own voice, telling the same stories in answer to the old question, “Where are you from and what are you doing here?” I know I sound completely bitter and cynical but what I'm trying to emphasise is this: In a place that's otherwise totally unfamiliar, having someone around who knows your history along with all your insecurities and mild neurosies, who's seen you in the morning in your oldest undies and Frenzal Rhomb hoodie, who's smelled your farts and sat around with you all day in the lounge room that you share - coming down, eating soy dogs and watching the Mighty Boosh on youtube, can be your saviour. Sitting in my kitchen, drinking tea and catching up on gossip with Alicia was the first time in the two months I'd been in Berlin that I actually felt grounded and...I dunno...human. There I go – from jaded old cynic to fluffy hippy in the space of a paragraph.

The same has to be said for the dear Jimmy Cliff who, happily, has not left Berlin. It was also pretty affirming that these two friends from home got along so well with my lovely new friends here. I remember reflecting when we were all fuck-eyed at KitKat club how pleased I was with my ability to seek out and befriend all the rudest nerds on every continent!

Alicia's last week in Berlin was pretty amazingly trashy, culminating in her last Saturday night here dancing to Ramstein in a goth club with a stoner lesbian vampire we'd met earlier in the evening. It also brought about a lot of reminiscing about home. At the airport I wished I was also getting on a plane. Not to Melbourne. Not yet. But somewhere. I hoped that traveling back into Berlin on the TXL bus I would see the city like I'd just got off the plane. Like somehow just visiting the airport would be like hitting 'restart' on my trip. Instead I came home to find it all comfortingly familiar. Of course. What did I expect? You can't just erase all your experiences of a place and start again. It was a pleasant realisation. But I'm worried that this and my reflective mood might be indicative of my complacency towards actually DOING stuff here. So next week I'm on the move again – hitchhiking to France with Jimmy to see the final stages of Le Tour. Then to Edinburgh for Fringe and to see the the Sisters and their entourage.

I'm curious to see how long this contemplative mood will last. I'm not promising anything. This might be my first and only blog post. But for now, subscribe and enjoy. Thanks for reading.