NEUERBURG - long weekend

GERMANY

Thank the Lord.

This week finished on Thursday, for reasons I'm still not certain of. The gist seemed to be that Thursday was a voluntary day; in the words of those who tried to explain it to me "the kids can come to lessons and stay here, or they can go home". I don't know how educationally rewarding it was for them, but I didn't end up doing anything on Thursday.

In addition to this, Friday was also a day off, just for teachers, and Monday is free as well apparently. Sadly, in my 5 day weekend, this is the first time the Internets kicked in. 48 hours without internet in Neuerburg is a sad affair.

Thus, there is nothing new really to report. You all seem to have seen on facebook that I kicked a kid out of my class. 25 'likes' is quite a special record. Menial stuff like that suddenly becomes very exciting when you live where I do. I guess the only other thing worth mentioning is that today is the first anniversary of where the mild things are.

Happy birthday you little fucker.

NEUERBURG - no more hols.

GERMANY

I get the feeling that now the initial euphoria of "fackin' hell, I live in Germany now" has worn off, there may be sadly a little less to report on without repeating myself. Not to say that funny and interesting stuff will now cease to happen, it just feels like these times will be a little fewer. Theres nothing I can really yammer over, no real development with school. One would certainly wonder where so much of the current content has come from.

As far as strong veins of blogging ore are concerned, Neuerburg isn't really a fertile ground to be mined.

I suppose that one of the main issues is that as time drags on, expectations tend to grow on this end and the entries that I eventually end up posting seem to lose that subtle light of spontaneity that I enjoy; rather, they lose that sense of musing upon a subject that I try and cultivate.

Maybe the poison element is just inactivity.

Beyond this though, I really do find it hard to envision where the next post will come from. Having got back from France and Holland and back into the fray, I know I'll rarely have the opportunity to just do "chill out" activities anymore, or at least in a capacity that I find to be something really wicked and interesting. This isn't me being a boring sod. I like hanging out with Maria and watching films and whatnot, but I reckon I often forget that my other flatmates are real people with real jobs, and their time probably is better spent looking at their planning, rather than a half empty pint glass.

There was a time when the idea of group activity didn't mean standing before a class of unmotivated 12 year olds, willing myself to somehow blag the rules of English grammar or trying to convince them that teaching can actually be really damn difficult as a result; times in Leeds where something could energise us as a group and lead to brilliant, ridiculous conversations that we'd bring up and laugh about a month later.

I understand that working in Germany has made time management more of a crucial consideration and have constricted what I now perceive as "worth it" to a list of maybe 5 repetitive tasks. I'm just not sure whether narrowing it down like this is always correct, seeing as, in comparison to many other people, I have all the time in the world.


Enough serious musing.

I GOT PAID.

Yep, I'm the proud owner of €800 euros, which meant, naturally, that the last carton of chocomel in Rewe, which has been tempting me all week with its threat of suddenly disappearing, is now mine. The banks also found its way back into my good books as well; if you're not aware, I shot myself in the foot by entering the wrong PIN too many times on my German card, leading to recent money shortages. I was expecting something along the lines of "we'll order a new card, it'll be with you in 10 to 15 days".

To which I would scathingly reply, "And how many weeks do you mean by '10 to 15 days'?"

Then I remembered I didn't live in a country where you need a CRB check and a national identity card before you can leave your house, and was in Germany, where shit gets done. Literally, they typed the card details into a computer, pressed a button, and it was done. 20 seconds, usable immediately. Well chuffed.

And on the 'Max as freelance artist' front, It seems that they want to use some of my sketches on the school christmas card. I don't know who it gets sent to, I think its kids/parents/friends of the school. Whoever sees it, ist mir scheissegal. I'm going vaguely public, and it feels good.

NEUERBURG - back

GERMANY

Whew.

So below you have an account of everywhere worth mentioning that I've been in the last 10 days or so. I was actually in Belgium for a bit as my train went through Brussels on the way to 'Dam, but shit all happened so I left it out.

It took 7 hours to get from Aachen to Neuerburg, on 3 trains, 2 buses, and a minivan because the bus only runs during term time. It cost €50 to do 62 miles. This place is hard to reach. But, I'm quite proud and surprised because it all went so well, all things considered. And all my clothes have been washed, because by the last day in Aachen I smelt like a homeless guy in a brewery. A brewery attached to a coffee shop.

I also tried, for the first time, the little kebab shop here in Neuerburg, the only one of our three food outlets that I haven't tried yet. It was pretty awesome. Then I went to Rewe and bought milk, on a short trip thats seriously tempting me to make a video of myself walking round Neuerburg at 6.30pm. You won't believe how quiet it is here, or appreciate how small the town is until you actually see it.

Its also bloody cold here. Not in a windy way like Holland was, or rainy like Aachen. Just damn cold.

AACHEN

GERMANY

Yeah, I know there's already been a post titled "AACHEN" but it was kind of half arsed because I was so relaxed at the time. This one should hopefully be a bit more eye opening.

Thanks to Ali Clifton and Sophie 'die schmutzige' Walker first and foremost for keeping me entertained, and for Ali for letting me crash on your floor. Anywhere where you can eat Nutella toasties, Lion bar cereal and watch comedy at any time of day is a good place to stay in my books.

I think I may have appreciated Aachen the most out of all my recent travels, seeing as it had friends, it was back in Germany and thus a familiar language, and it felt like an actual city where things happen and I could buy things if I needed them. I bought a new pair of shoes, seeing as I literally walked through the last pair in the space of 2 months, as well as various baked goods.

One of the highlights of Aachen has to be "cocktails to go". Perhaps we appreciated these more since we'd already had a few at the last place, and had just eaten possibly one of the best dinners of our lives, but they were awesome nonetheless. And the idea is pretty novel as well. Sure, you don't feel too classy drinking a cocktail from those plastic cups with lids that smoothies are usually served in, but ohh, they were good. So good we went shopping with them.


I managed to put off going home until friday, which meant I was able to see a little Aachen nightlife, assist with DIY in Ali's flat (with relative success) and do a bit of exploring.

General streets and shopping bits

This one is from when I got lost. Having been left to explore a bit while the others enrolled at the gym, I walked in the vague direction of things that looked interesting and became very, very lost. I guess taking photos was all that I could do in such a scenario.

It rained a lot here as well.

And once again, I'll finish with my favourite. Probably best to view this one full size. Check out Jesus's left hand; apparently he likes Bitburger too. Someone, somewhere, is going to hell.

AMSTERDAM

HOLLAND

Since the pictures from Amsterdam have already made it onto facebook, I'll stick to mainly text for this one. Then you can look over the pictures again and see if imagination matches reality.

It was a pretty awesome few days. I guess first and foremost I should say that Holland is the country from which Chocomel comes, and they are damn proud of this. In fact, its difficult to get anything different. In vending machines, you find the usual coke, water (non-carbonated, Germany take note), iced tea, and then on the bottom 2 shelves there are cans (cans!) of chocomel.

There is even a tiny chocomel car; I'm appropriately excited.

If you want a hot chocolate in a cafe or coffee shop, what do they serve? You got it - hot chocomel. In McDonalds even, if you ask for any drink vaguely containing chocolate, well they have the fucker on tap there, in a big machine between the mcflurry maker and the little metal tray that holds burgers.

Thus, I got plenty of that down me.

As the capital city of a country renowned for smoking pot, Amsterdam was not built with this in mind. The rows of streets, divided by canals with so many oh-so-similar looking bridges, adorned with their little lights, all with strange Dutch names that are very alike .. this is not, as I pointed out at the time, the environment for some stoned person trying to go home. For the record, we weren't always sure where we were but I don't actually put this down to too much weed. Its confusing enough without.

_______________

One of the depressing highlights of the trip was visiting Anne Frank's house. Its quite an odd museum, because the place has been, generally, left as it was during the time that she and her family were hiding, but the walls are occasionally adorned with some poignant section from her famous diary, which for me killed the experience a little.

Hers is the one in the middle, museum part is on the right.

It didn't have the same feeling as the holocaust museum or Hiroshima, possibly because the family hadn't actually died in the house, but there was still a sense of awe that they'd hid here successfully for two whole years. The last part got a little heavy, with holocaust photos and footage and then, ultimately, the diary itself, with its little red chequered cover.

I think I would have found it more poignant and hard-hitting if it hadn't descended down the route of "this tragedy will sell" and had a gift-shop the same size as her entire house at the end of the tour. This contained such tasteless treasures as replica (blank) diaries with the red check cover, picture frames with a picture of Anne Frank in it, in case you're making a shrine or forget what she looks like when your filling your replica diary with your own accounts of racial persecution, and the piece-de-resistance - the diary, in the form of a graphic novel. For those among us who can't be arsed to read, and like pictures of Nazis. The shop really pissed me off.

_______________

To beat the bouts of depression that came about as a result of dropping by Anne Frank's, we hired two pedalos (€50 deposit each, the Dutch want their pedalos back) and decided to do a little sightseeing from the river. I took the "HMS Anal bike" with Ali and Pip, while the others followed behind in "HMS Dora".

Our trusty vehicle ..

.. followed by HMS Dora

I think our hour on the pedalos could have been better if it hadn't rained like an absolute bitch about 20 minutes in, meaning we had to pedal and take shelter underneath bridges, to the amusement of everyone who saw us. I think it would be fair to say that we nearly caused some pretty major accidents and pissed off a few tourist-boat drivers, seeing as we frequently got in their way.

They had no right to look angry. There is no dedicated section, like a cycle path for canals, for pedalos to go. Its impossible to predict if you're about to be hit by a boat. There are signs saying "boats cross at this point", except in Dutch, so more like "bootz kruz it thitz ponkt" (probably with more 'j's as well)

But when you're in a pedalo, you have to very tentatively creep out to look left and right through the tunnels, and then when you inevitably see a boat cruising towards you at 20 mph (which is a fair speed for these canals) you have that pang of panic and terror and either backpedal as fast as you can or risk it and try and make it past.

It wasn't really a relaxing aftermath activity

______________

As far as coffee shops are concerned, I think more of these are needed in the UK. And not in a "I want to be completely baked all the time" sort of way. More in the way of "I want to sit on cushions, drinking hot chocolate, doing fuck all for a long, long time". For those of you studying at Leeds, think Barakas in Hyde Park. Except with hot chocolate, and all the time.


This isn't to say that weed can't heighten the experience. This is certainly true in terms of artistic inspiration. Ali is now the proud owner of a picture of 'Geoffrey the robot unicorn'. Nuclear powered. And backed up with the kind of reasoning that only weed can provide - "Give him a speech bubble saying 'I'm a unicorn, bitch'. Cos then everyone will know he's a complete asshole".

I dare anyone to challenge this deduction.

The other highlight would have been the homemade bong. I'm not sure if any of us got a picture of it, but it was a crude yet beautiful work of genius. The things you can do with a bottle of water and a broken pen.

_______________

On the first night we took a short detour through the red light district, which was a bit weird. One of the things that struck me was the addition of rooms with blue lights, which have lots of people that look like pretty convincing women but are actually the opposite. There were some scary looking fuckers in those little blue rooms.

In-keeping with this theme, we also visited one of the sex museums, which was fascinating in an odd sort of way.


There seemed to be very little in the way of information, mostly just lots of unnerving animatronic mannequins doing things that look pretty creepy when done by a mannequin. There were also needless things, like a giant knob and balls. Just for fun, y'know?

And a table made of knobs. Dora is seen in this picture looking a little too happy.

"Look guys! More cock than I know what to do with!"

The best part about this table was the people who were just ahead of us in the museum. Some Dutch girl in front of us walked into this room just as someone called her mobile, and as she answered she just leant absent mindedly on this table while she spoke and held one of the knobs in her hand. She did this for about 5 minutes, occasionally switching which one she was holding onto, or running her hand over the tops of them without really looking. Then she ended the conversation and left, without even realising. I guess it was one of those 'you had to be there' sort of scenarios, but it was pretty damn funny at the time.

_______________

Thats all for Amsterdam, because this post is becoming a novel.

LUXEMBOURG

LUXEMBOURG

I think Luxembourg qualifies for its own post simply because France was inaccessible without going through Luxembourg. What with Neuerburg being only 20 minutes from the border with Luxembourg, there isn't much in the way of changing scenery, although it is enjoyable to drive over a bridge no more than 50 metres or so wide, and suddenly find that the language, road signs, and nationality has all changed.


This is us driving over said bridge. I don't know if the Germany-Luxembourg border ends at the halfway point of the bridge, which would mean this photo was technically taken in Luxembourg if this is the case, or if the border starts at the other side, which would make this bridge and river no-mans-land. I like to think this is kept as a buffer zone, in the event of a 3rd World War.



Thats Germany from the Luxembourgish side of the river. Luckily it ain't like Korea.


Possibly the best excuse to work Luxembourg into any European holiday destination list; the petrol prices decrease rapidly. Most of the students who can drive in Neuerburg will nip over the border for their petrol, because the difference is just ridiculous. Needless to say, we filled up here very cheaply, and uncertain whether to speak French or German.


Pretty much the only really urban area we came across in our Luxembourg - France route. The rest was mostly windy roads and lots of trees, like Neuerburg. Its all quite nice though.


And this is the last point of our half hour trip through Luxembourg, from Germany to France. It got very French indeed after this.

L'ISLE JOURDAIN

FRANCE

So the first leg of my mini-European tour was France. I stayed with a friend in a little village called L'isle Jourdain, which reminded me in a lot of ways of Neuerburg, except that it had more of a village feel to it, which made it better somehow. Neuerburg has the same sort of mentality, but thinks its more of a town than it actually is.

Neuerburg is a pretty, pretty town, but L'isle Jourdain wins this round. Especially since the weather was awesome as well. Check this out.


This is it from the viaduct. Its probably best to view this full size in a new tab or whatever, I think they've been a little compressed. Its also worth noting that none of the viaduct pictures actually do its height justice, it was fucking enormous.

See, its all pretty like.


This is the street I stayed on, pretty typical of the entire village. The house was the one on the left with the white shutters. Apparently in Frogland its considered very unusual for a house not to have shutters on the windows. And if you don't lock them all up when you leave the house, and you then get broken into, it can affect your insurance claim. This was news to me.


It also has a load of old buildings like this, which I absolutely bum. The house I was in was standing when old Louis was still on the throne. Shitload of history and unaltered shops and cafes in this village.


I took this while Alex went to the bank. I guess I was fascinated by the three wheeled approach to this lady's little trolley thing. I still can't figure out how it works.


This is Alex looking a little glazed after we looked round a church.

But this is the best bit! Apparently, because L'isle Jourdain has a great big viaduct, a market has opened for people who want to bungee jump. You just ring up a bloke, tell him you want to jump off a 100 foot high bridge attached to a piece of elastic et voila! He gives you a date and a time. I only found out that it works this way because I was sorely tempted to give it a go myself on the day. Like, for real. But as I say, you have to book, so I took jealous pictures of this guy instead.


I think my favourite bit was when they finished swinging about up and down and were just kind of hanging there by their legs. Some poor french guy had to sit in a rowing boat underneath the viaduct to retrieve the people that jumped. He can be seen in this photo, near the pillar on the right, wearing a white shirt. The man with the crappest of jobs.


Again, view full size. You get a better idea of scale in this one as well.

We also visited a place called Montmorillon, which was awesome. It had all the pretty and quaint and picturesque aspects of L'isle Jourdain and Neuerburg, but certainly qualified as a town as opposed to a glorified village. Those pics will be on facebook, as they take a while to upload on here. I'll leave you with one of my faves from France though.


This was in the window of the tourist office. It seems that, in a sleepy little village in central France, somebody has lost their wallaby, Harry Hopper. Aside from the fact that a family is worried sick because their pet is missing, everything about this is hilarious.

AACHEN

GERMANY

Oh man, bit of a drought this blog has undergone this last couple of weeks? My hopes of finding easily accessible internet elsewhere on the continent went unanswered.

I'm in Aachen at the moment, after the first section of my grand European tour. There are a handful of photos on facebook and posts to document the times are coming up, but I'm so chilled out at the moment that you're gonna have to wait a little longer for it.

NEUERBURG - pub

GERMANY

Last night I went to the pub with Norbert and Jochen, P.E. teacher and I'm-not-sure-what, respectively. I think that being away from Leeds has lowered my drinking threshold somewhat. Although Altenberg was an excellent introduction to Germany for the liver, the fact that I now drink more chocolate milk than, literally, anything else, has made beer a little more potent.

This became evident last night. I don't know what the measurement is, its certainly not pints. Fluid capacity is probably measured in kilometres like everything else here. Whatever the case, we started the night with a fairly small beer each, which Norbert wasn't too taken with, and then in the second pub, we started knocking back larger glasses. I'll put last nights intake at about 4 pints.

For Leeds, UK, binge drinking capital of the world, this would be of little difficulty, without consequence. Here in Neuerburg, after a sober month, I actually felt the effects a little quicker, which surprised me. Not that I was complaining, as we all know that alcohol improves your foreign language. I think my fluency may have come at the price of the conversation topic, as apparently Norbert doesn't like the Turks, and even Jochen, who is timid anyway, seemed to share some common ground here.

To hear someone say, in German, that towns were much cleaner (in every sense) before the arrival of immigrants is an awkward thing to sit through. Old habits die hard I guess.

NEUERBURG - hols on friday

GERMANY

Yesterday I registered at the Anmelderamt in Neuerburg, which means that after 3 weeks I'm an officially recognised resident of Germany for the next 8 months. Yes, this probably should have been done earlier but I was so caught up in being abroad and meeting people that working here illegally as an alien wasn't on my list of things to be avoiding.

Today I have my Nachhilfe Gruppe, in half an hour, where I will truly and genuinely struggle trying to explain how English grammar works. I tried to explain last week why in some verbs in sentences, we use 'ing' and other times we use 'to' plus the infinitive. I ended up more confused than they did, and they were pretty darn confused.

I've also got two one-on-one sessions with a couple of kids who want to improve more than other people. One of them I'm meeting tomorrow, and the other one - what sort of child is this - wants to have our extra lesson at 10am on a Sunday. On a bastard Sunday! This child will one day grow older, learn to love the weekend and ultimately live a life of regret for what he put his language assistant through. 10am on a Sunday, I ask you.

But on Friday I'm going to go and see more of Europe. Yes, this is probably news to many of you, just like when I didn't tell you I was going to Japan, but its happening and it will be awesome because my insurance covers me the world over. With a little luck, France and Holland will have internet access.

Oh, and this has just appeared. It isn't the SAR helicopter, but its flying around like one anyhow. I think Neuerburg must have a weekly helicopter-appearance quota to fill.

NEUERBURG - I have a friend

GERMANY

Last Friday, the new Russian assistant Maria arrived at the school, which means that I'm no longer all on my lonesome, which is wicked. She speaks better German than I do, and seeing as a third of all the students here speak good to perfect Russian, she's in a better position to make quick social connections than I am.

But she's pretty cool and we get on well, and we can only speak German to one another seeing as she only knows a handful of English phrases and my Russian has never really taken off. There's only so far that "Good morning" and "thankyou" can take you in a conversation where you want to get to know someone.

This is her when we explored Neuerburg.

This one has me in it too. I was there as well.

I had my first English lesson with Frau Diana John today, another member of staff who by some incredible feat of linguistic mindfuckery isn't English or American. We were doing things associated with illness, doctors, that sort of thing. They were very impressed to hear that I was a real hayfever sufferer, which surprised me. Wait til they hear that I give blood. If itchy eyes is macho, then voluntarily pumping my own blood into a little plastic bag is gonna blow their fucking minds.

I'm also starting to think I have some sort of trustworthy, open-minded look to me that makes people take me a little too seriously. A few of you may have seen my recent facebook update concerning the way staff seem to associate me with authority and organisation, which would be the basis for a pretty good joke if the educations of 600 children weren't riding on it. And in another recent post on here, I mentioned how my Altenberg tutor Stefan opened up to me on the subject of his chronic diarrhoea, during a fleeting moment in the street.

This sort of thing is becoming a regular occurence.

I met a member of staff who I've never really seen or spoken to before today, in one of my free periods. In keeping with 'Max in Germany' tradition, his name eludes me. His English was pretty good, so we played the 'you speak English, I'll speak German' game. We talked about school and England and such crap. Then, in a moment plucked from the ovaries of Satan, completely out of the blue, he says "Mmmm, but my wife died a couple of months ago."

Fu .. what?!

I responded in the universal language of mumble.

I met this guy two minutes ago. Our relationship is moving a little fast, and not in a good way. It makes Stefan's diarrhoea story look like a love poem. And just as I thought we'd passed the moment and were just about in the clear to change the subject, maybe depart ways - anything! - he continues to talk about it. With all due respect Sir, "me and my family could see it coming for a few weeks" is NOT opening-conversation, icebreaker material.

And he enriched the story once with a heart-wrenchingly placed "but thats neither here nor there".

Actually mate, it is. It is here, there and everywhere and you're killing me inside.

And then he ended this uplifting first conversation with "but I have two children, and thats the important thing."

Yes, everyones a winner.

And after this I was utterly depressed, as consolement is difficult enough anyway, let alone in German to someone you've never met. I've never known how to react in that kind of situation anyway. "I'm sorry" or "I'm sorry for your loss" is usually the winning phrase (to which the recently bereaved respond, curiously, with "thankyou"), but I didn't even know how to say that in German. I must have looked a real tosser, but what choice did I have?

And then I went to the shop with Maria and we bought German books and beer, over which we will probably discuss something which doesn't involve the recent deaths of close family members, with a bit of luck.

But that's neither here nor there.