Here's my building from the outside. Its not too bad working there. the ppl are nice and they all speak english. I kinda wish they didnt though cos then i'd have to learn german. At the rate im learning it now its gonna take a long time. I admire the ppl i meet here that can speak 3 or 4 languages (thats actually pretty common here). I feel kinda stupid struggling away with German. Meine Duetsche sprechen ist kaput aber ich sehr langsam lernen. I can also say "Ein Pilsner Bitte". Very helpful that one.

What is strange about Germany is that dispite being strict with stupid things like crossing the road when the red man is flashing, its perfectly ok to have a few beers on a break at work. Its also perfectly to have a cigarette in an enclosed space. Ppl will spark up on a crowded bus and nobody complains. I dont do this cos Im not comfortable with it. Having said this, most Germans still have a bit of "the N word" in them just in their general attitude to most things. It's a bit different to Australia I suppose in that respect which is why its hard to get used to.

You find sometimes that ppl are complete squares for most of the time but they will have one thing that they do which is completely wild. For example, the guy i sit opposite to at work, Reimond has a Phd in fracture mechanics or somethin, writes political articles for some newspapers and drives a citroen berlingo. This is obviously fairly boring so to compensate he is a regular base jumper! his favourite spot is the old gas tower in Oberhausen which is 117m tall!

I tried to take a photo of a deer in the park the other day. This is close to the road so I can get away from the crazy men from Koln more easily. I think the shutter speed was a little slow on this one.

Ok, this is where i work. This is just after we moved from level 2 to level 4. I've asked pretty much everyone and no-one can tell me why we move levels so often. I think they just like spending money on stupid shit. I like the new floor though, better view than before.

This is my neighbour James or Jhaunzhenningsing or somethin. As with most of the ppl in my building he is Chinese. Good bloke with an unnatural liking for green tea. I enjoy beating him at pool. German pool tables are much easier than australian ones so u can feel like a champion every time u play. This is good for me.

This is Lakshita my othere neighbour from Sri Lanka. He is wearing some skirt thing that apparently all the Sri Lankan gangstas wear. He likes Kung fu and thinks he is good at it. Im not too sure though.

I took some fotos the other night in the thunder storm. Quite happy with this one. Again, not bad for a canon powershot 400.

This is a WW2 bunker that is right next door to my old accomodation. They are too expensive to pull down so they just use them for concerts now. Pretty strange to see this sort of thing right next to houses in a residential area.

U can tell that we are a fair way north at the moment. It gets properly dark at about 11pm and gets light at about 4am. Its pretty strange. Its easy to come home from a party and find that its getting light already. Its only gonna get worse for a while too. Gotta learn to sleep before it gets dark. Not really getting enough sleep during the week cos its too easy to stay up beyond midnight. Anywho. Post again soon.

Just thought I'd back track a few months and give everyone an idea of where Im living.


This is the view from my room. Im on the 3rd floor which keeps me marginally fitter having to walk the stairs all the time. When this photo was taken I think Melbourne was about 10 degrees and raining.



This is the park which is about a 5 minute walk from my place. Its pretty huge so u can just wander around for hours and check out all the local flora and fauna. Ive seen a few deer in there but apparently there's a wolf or two occasionally. This combined with the strange man from cologne that i met here means that i dont walk in the park anymore.



This is the Ruhr river which is about a 5 minute walk in the other direction. Its pretty big but nothing compared to the Rhine.




This is the Rhine as seen from a cafe in Dusseldorf which is about 20mins on the train. You pay about 3 to 4 times as much for a beer here because there are heaps of tourists. The water is flowing so quickly that the barge is doing about 40km/h while the boat thats coming the other way is barely moving.

Looks like this is all the photos that blogger is happy to upload so Ill post this and try to get some more up later.

Hey every1. Visited a country outside of Germany for the first time last weekend. It took just under an hour to get from Dusseldorf to Prague which is a bit different to air travel in Australia. I have to say that the Czech Republic was absolutely amazing! Like nothing I've ever seen before but I'm a rookie when it comes to traveling so I suppose that's to be expected. It was a bizarre mix of east and west Europe. The old town is full of quasi Mediterranean style architecture and the new town is all mother Russia. There's statues pretty much everywhere and HUGE cathedrals.
I didn't really check any of that out the first day though. Went to a hostel to meet up with Julian and Danielle and had a few beers with Gunny while we were waiting. We ended up having so much fun just drinking and talking s#!t with other travelers that we stayed there all day. I passed out at about 7, woke up at 9 and kept drinking. Absinth is not for the faint hearted. Budweiser is excellent (original Budweiser before the Americans bastardised it) and beer is cheap there. 20 Czech whatevers for a half litre beer which equates to about 1 aussie dollar.
The picture there is Saint Nicks Cathedral which was much bigger than it looks. I don't have a fisheye on the canon powershot 400 though. The pic on the right is the view from the open air bar at the top of the hill. Needless to say, we spent a fair bit of time up there just takin in the view and the beer. There was a palace type thing pretty close to this bar too which was fairly impressive. There were little men clothed in blue out the front which Julian and I both thought were just cheap plastic statues until 2 hours later when they did the changing of the guards!

Again, more statues here. They all seemed to have a theme of killing which is a bit disconcerting. Even in the cathedrals there were statues of biblical characters skewering demons and that sort of thing.
















Here's a pic of julian savouring a real beer (VB is not real beer)

















I make it look easy though













They had a big screen up in the old town square for the soccer so we all gathered on the cobble stones to watch Australia v. Brazil. For some reason I thought that because we beat Japan so convincingly that Brazil shouldnt be too hard. I was in the middle of chanting "Ronaldinho needs braces!" when they scored their first goal. Damn. Had a few beers, (suprise suprise) and soaked up the atmosphere while trying to ignore the fact that we were going to lose. Those of you who are wondering where my sudden interest in soccer has come from, its a combination of a few things. One, being in germany for any period of time makes you realise how much better australia is, hence u become a little patriotic and 2, soccer is the only sport you can watch in Germany. Most of them have never heard of cricket or AFL and despite my best efforts it seems to be impossible to explain the rules to them.
Just felt like adding this shot in here. Its dusseldorf before summer began and the leaves came out. This little point and shoot camera does a pretty decent job really.
Alright Im tired now but in summary:
I wanna live in prague
Australia rocks nearly as much as Prague and Germany is so la la

Tschus, Bis spaeter
peace out