NEUERBURG - Christmas activities

GERMANY

Facebook informs me that the coke adverts have hit our screens once again which means that anything to do with christmas is now acceptable and encouraged. This is certainly the case chez Eifel-Gymnasium Neuerburg, where a fuck-off christmas tree has been put up, right in the middle of the building. The words "safety", "major" and "hazard" were the first to spring to my mind when the caretakers were putting it all together; if it doesn't collapse, then someone will be killed by a falling bauble, I can just tell.

Other folks out here in Deutschland seem to be getting snow already. Neuerburg was scheduled for snow today but none so far, with highs of -8 predicted for next week, which I'll be thrilled to roll out of bed for at half past 7.

I'm also starting to think that constant exposure to shameless German bluntness during conversation is desensitising me to everything. I've been subject to a nice spectrum of material that would probably be considered antisocial in the UK, such as Stefan and his diarrhoea induced cracked-skull incident and the bloke who's wife had recently died, which I discussed in previous entries.

Yesterday I was doing some theatre group work with a guy in the equivalent 6th form, fairly serious, not sarcastic, who announces in the middle of our work session with far too happy a face that "the chicken I had for lunch has gone right through me" and went to the loo for 10 minutes. Upon returning, he explains that he'll probably have to go back in 5 minutes or so. Translated roughly as 'I've had a nice big shit but ohhh, I'll be darned if there isn't plenty more to come!'

1 nil Germany, you and your big chicken shits.