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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

FRANKFURT

GERMANY

What up my African-Americanzzz?!

You'll be thrilled to hear that I now have a working camera and a shitload of memory card, so I've finally been able to go snap happy and make these posts more interesting.

I'll start with all the stuff from last night. It was the last day that everyone taking part in the Comenius project (mentioned in last post) was here in Germany. Apparently they'd spent the day cooking various things, the British contingent made shepherds pie and trifle which was ruddy awesome, and the Frogs had done pate and salads and other such things. The Danes won by my count, with these epic curry meatballs and rice. Oh, and there was horse sausage as well, which was also pretty tasty.

This is us eating stuff in our school.

And after this buffet carryonsky, kids from the Gymnasium did dancing and singing and general performing, all of which was wicked. Looked like this:

Dancing

A German Oasis cover.

And many more, but this takes ages to upload individual photos so I'll put the rest on facebook.

But today was Frankfurt, for more cultural learnings. There were 3 trips today, going to Frankfurt, Bonn and Cologne, which really made me wish they'd spread it out more so I could have seen all three, though I did see quite a bit of Cologne on my first day here, so the battle was ultimately between Bonn and Frankfurt; the latter obviously won.

The first part of the day was spent in Frankfurts answer to the Natural History Museum, which had a load of dinosaur skeletons and stuffed animals and egyptian mummies and stuff, which was pretty awesome, even if the German tour guide was a little scientific. Once again, pics on facebook to follow.

Then we had 4 hours free in the city, which is a hectic hectic city. It reminded me more of a crazy capital city than Berlin or maybe Cologne; it has a very London sort of feel to it. The first thing I found was a Bratwurst stall, which may just have been the highlight of the day. And then I looked round the 'old town' bit, with all its little stalls, before moving onto the more modern sections and seeing what was there.

The day took its oddest turn when I decided to go on the U-Bahn (underground) to a different part of the city. It was windy and pretty rainy on the surface, so I thought this was a good idea. Its worth noting that the German tube system is much easier to understand than the London one, which is always a plus point in my book.

The journey turned out to be a lot longer than I expected, so I took advantage of the lack of rain and decided to sketch. Naturally, being in a tube carriage, the only thing to draw was people. So draw them I did. A few stops down the line however, I discovered I'd made my first ever public nuisance. I don't know which fucker raised the alarm, but at the next stop a german policeman stopped me, just as I'd stepped off the train and was putting my book away.

"Kann ich dass sehen?" (can I see that?) He says abruptly, pointing at my little sketch book. He had a pistol, I didn't argue.

He had a flip through the 5 or 6 sketches of people that I'd just done on the tube, then asked me something which I didn't understand, so I played the 'dumb english person' card. Year abroad advice no. 2 - the 'dumb english person' card works far more effectively if you don't explain the fact in German.

He seemed to soften up at this though. In all fairness, I didn't think it bothered him that much. He explained in simple German that someone in my carriage had reported me doing something suspicious. Seeing as everyone else was just sitting doing nothing (I know this, I drew them) and I was the one hunched over a little book watching people, this was probably a fair assumption. But seriously, "something suspicious"? Did they think I was compiling a hitlist for illiterate assassins?

The general gist was 'don't do this again please because German people might not respond in the same way as they might in England'. No, really. That was pretty much his final line. There'd been a fair few people waiting for trains who'd watched this exchange, but I think I was too surprised to be embarrassed. So in the future, I'll have to be more subtle somehow.

And it was a bloody waste anyway, because I was in the wrong part of town after all. Maybe the German tube isn't easier than ours. So I walked half an hour back to the station through the really seedy bit of town, full of sex shops and strip clubs and barely disguised brothels. There was a Thai restaurant in the middle of some of these shops, advertising food "from all 4 corners of this asian gem". Which was endorsed by some ladies who looked as though for the right price would show you all 4 corners of their asian gems. It was pretty creepy.

It was in this dodgy corner of Frankfurt that I had my second cringeworthy fuck up. Yes, it was cringeworthy, but hilarious in a retrospective way. As I was waiting to cross the road, a bloke from one of the strip clubs started talking to me and trying to entice me in. He twigged I was foreign pretty fast and started speaking in English. In this situation, any normal person would have made some excuse. A simple 'nein danke' would probably have sufficed.

But, in a moment of weakness - don't ask me why, or what pushed this to the forefront of my mind, I found myself saying to the man, simply "Männer gefällt mir besser" or, "I like men better". The silence that followed was just long enough for the traffic light man to turn green and for me to cross over, again feeling more surprise than embarrassment. It got the message across anyhow.

For confirmation purpose, Frauen in fact gefällt mir besser, but not in the face of seedy club doormen.

This is me by Frankfurt train station, after more 'meeting the authorities abroad'. I'm looking a little windswept because it was windy and pretty sweepy.

This photo isn't brill because I took it quite quickly so as not to miss the moment: The guy on the left by the black car was staggering along shouting "Arschloch! Jeder ist ein Arschloch!". The black guy on the right, who looked a lot like Marsellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction, wasn't impressed. It was a pretty special moment.

And the last things I'd like to share are the names of two restaurants which lead me once again to question my levels of maturity, but which are pretty funny nonetheless. The first one was The Little Wiener Shop, which thankfully wasn't in the sex district, and, my personal favourite, Gaylord's Indian Restaurant. I think I love that one the most because its so shameless. Obviously, it probably has less meaning here than in the UK, but for all the tourists that must pass through Frankfurt on a daily basis, Gaylord's must draw some pretty hearty laughs.

TRIER

GERMANY

Gather round bitches, it's story time.

Today we went to Trier as part of the 'Comenius' programme, which aims to bring together the Brits, the Germs, the Frogs, the Danes and the Norwegians (last two probably picked out of a hat) and introduce their students to one another so they can learn about culture and acceptance and such like.

Because Germany was the venue this year, Trier was chosen because its all historical and whatnot. There were about 60 of us altogether, staff included, including the one and only Hildegard who is possibly the most awesome lady in the world ever. The pretty good thing was there was quite a big English contingent, which meant I could speak some English for a change and sound like a normal person again. I called people 'mate' again today for the first time in over 3 weeks, it felt good.

So in Trier the kids were split into mixed nationality groups and we did a tour of the ancient Roman city, looking at the walls and the bath houses (or remains thereof) and how it was all destroyed by barbarians. It was quite odd in the sense that our tour guide was a 50-something year old woman with a strong New York accent, dressed as a Roman woman, who did the tour all in English, which surprised me. Granted, all the countries present all probably spoke perfect English, but it would have thrown me if English wasn't my first language, especially with that accent.

It wasn't uninteresting, it was just offputting because she told us the history of the city as if she was a Roman herself, and made frequent references to things like cameras as "light machines" as if she didn't know what they were. Yeah, I guess it would have been a little dry if she'd just lobbed facts at us but at the same time it got a little cringy.

The coolest bit was by far the old Roman gate to the city, with all its defensive aspects, with a picture of what it used to look like. It started out as the coolest bit, until I read some Roman writing that was engraved into the stone. It started out in latin, "strength and honour", or words to that effect, except it was a much longer sentence. And then at the end, painstakingly engraved into the wall were some more words. They were a little illegible, I thought it must have just been the effects of time. But I was keen to read it, so I looked closer and made out the letters one at a time.

sean sucks dik yeah.

Please note that the 'c' is deliberately missing.

That killed the entire moment for me. Welcome to this hallowed, historical ground, where a legion of Roman soldiers defended Trier against invading barbarians, before being overrun and seeing the city laid to siege. And all we have to show for it is a message accusing Sean of being gay. Seeing that contribution after all the interesting stuff sucked more than Sean sucks dick.

Then we were let loose on the city and, what with me being all about cultural experience and Roman history, I found myself in Germany's answer to Meadowhall, where I bought a microphone (take note, you skype monkeys) and then went for a döner kebab with Christian, one of the English teachers.

I offer this as a general piece of advice for all fellow language assistants who may be dining with the staff for whatever reason: if the choice of venue happens to be a kebab shop, for gods sake have it on a plate instead of in the bread thing. Sure, it's tastier in bread, but it's difficult - nay, fucking impossible! - to eat this in a manner which says "I am fit to work with children". They pack it so full of meat and lettuce and whatever else goes in when you say "Oh, mit alle bitte" that you can't eat it without looking like a retard. Its like wearing all white to a spaghetti bolognese convention. Don't do it.

This bit is for all of you that did Haus Altenberg when I did; remember the awesome Rheinland-Pfalz teacher, Stefan May? For the Leeds contingent who were there with me, he sat at our table on the last night and I kind of abandoned you with him because I was drunk as shit. (in case you don't know, shit is drunk). Anyway, whether or not you remember him, I ran into the man himself in Trier today, just in the street!

I have no idea what the German policy on 'too much information' is, but if its anything like the British one, me and Stefan must be on some sort of very 'open with each other' wavelength. I asked him what he was doing in Trier and he said he'd just been to the doctors, to have stitches in the back of his head.

"Oh my god!" Says I, "What happened"

"Well," he explains (in German) "Yesterday I wasn't very well, I was sweating and had terrible diarrhoea and I passed out and cracked my head open"

This took me by surprise. But I guess if I can't handle the truth I shouldn't have asked. It was nice to see him anyhow, regardless of the head-splitting liquid shits he seems to have.

So all in all, there wasn't much in the way of really introducing different cultures and nationalities to one another, but it was a good day. And it was pretty sweet to be able to speak english.

Theres also a possibility that Hildegard, who seems to know everyone in Neuerburg (not the most challenging of tasks) is going to ask the little bakeries and other small shops if they want me to draw pics for them; she quite likes the sketches that I've done so far, which is awesome. If I can pull off German fluency and commisioned artwork in the same year, then I'll be a happy man.

Thats all for today. Oh yeah, and Sean sucks di(c)k.

NEUERBURG - new timetable

GERMANY

So today I had my first lesson with Herr Henkel teaching students who are probably older than me about British media. Today's subject was the TV and film industry. Their english is so good it makes me sad inside.

Herr Henkel (or 'Markus' as I should probably refer to him as) is pretty much a legend in his own right. He must only be in his early 30's but he dresses like a black gangsta rapper, with baggy jeans and a big shirt and white trainers, though he's about as far from being a rapper as you can get. His response to two girls who weren't really paying attention was "Oy. No lesbian games in my lessons".

I laughed more than most of the other people, which has probably made them think I'm a twattish little boy who laughs at the word 'gay'. It was pretty funny though. He seems to have a really good rapport with all his students, which means he can get away with accusing people of lesbianism. I'd probably be less successful.

I went to the bank for the first time this morning to withdraw cash, which was an absolute task in itself. I can't speak for all of Germany, but the bank here in Neuerburg will only open its doors for you if you scan your bank card on a little machine outside, which begs the question "how do you get in if you want to set up a bank account?". This task is easier said than done. It seems German card reading machines read cards the other way up; you have to put the card in with the shiny strip on the back facing upwards.

This was offputting, as it took me 2 or 3 minutes to realise I was doing something wrong, and a couple of workmen inside the bank occasionally stopped working to watch me struggle with this machine. I think devices like this would put hilarious new spins on bank heist films. Think the opening scene of The Dark Knight where the Joker and his henchmen can't get in because they don't have a card.

It was all a waste anyway, as when I finally got to the cash machine I realised I'd forgotten to transfer any money into the account. This was pretty nerve racking, as when you own an account with £800 in it and you're told that "your available balance is €0", the first thought is more along the lines of 'oh shit' than 'oh, never mind'.

So today I have no chocomel because funds wouldn't allow it, and even though I could very easily go back to the bank now, having transferred some pennies, and quench my cravings, I just can't be arsed. chocolate milk withdrawal symptoms should kick in shortly.

And there are still no photos, which I know a few of you are after at the moment. I have my camera which made a miraculous recovery to the tune of "I will only charge with a charger that is meant for another model of camera" but sadly forgot to bring my memory cards, which means I can only take 3 pictures at a time on the internal memory and then sit sadly and realise I don't even have the means to transfer them onto my laptop anyway. Ho hum.

I leave you with one of the finest moments of my time here so far. On the way back from Lidl earlier, a lady asked me if I knew when there was a bus to Bitburg.

"Lady," I said "There are no fucking buses to ANYWHERE."

That's a lie; I actually said "Yes, if you wait here, they come every hour on the hour!"

That was a lie too. I actually said something along the lines of "I'm a tourist so I don't know things". And she thanked me, and we went our separate ways. I've no idea where she ended up or whether she found a functioning bus service in Neuerburg, but I will say with some certainty that she is probably dead now.

NEUERBURG - the internet

GERMANY

Hey God, you busy?

Obviously, I’m God.

Sorry, silly question. Spare me a second?

Go on then, what’s up?

Any chance of making the internet here in Rheinland-Pfalz accessible for more than an hour at the weekends?

The internet?

Yeah, here in Neuerburg.

Well, I am pretty busy. A load of Afghans were just killed by a suicide bomber.

Yeah, thats bad and all, but this internet is so sporadic. It comes and goes at the maddest of hours.

Whoa, so its not like you have no internet at all?

No, but it makes entertainment and lesson planning really difficult. Its only round for a couple of hours at the weekends.

Thats still a pretty good time slot.

Yeah, but think how much fun I could be having if it were here more! How much better the lessons would be for the kids!

Hmm, well a man who I was about to bless so he could see his children again was just killed by a roadside bomb.

God, I'm aware theres a lot kicking off for you now, but I think far more lives are dependent on the internet speed and availability in Neuerburg. Think of the children.

Alright Max, just this once. The internet will now be fast in Nuremburg!

No no, Neuerburg

Ok, Neuerburg.

Cheers God, I really think that made a difference!

No problem. Aw, man.

Whats happened?

When I blessed the internet in Neuerburg, some of those Chilean miners died!

Tough times. Thanks anyway God.
________________

All of the above has clearly worked. I now get 30 minute brackets on a Sunday evening.

NEUERBURG - Weekends in Neuerburg, take 2.

GERMANY

This week has gone stupendously fast. I mean it feels like a second since It was last saturday. I never really realised before that when you only work 12 hours a week and do shit-all except food shopping otherwise, the week goes very very fast.

I had another lesson with the 11th grade yesterday, the guys I was with last Friday, except today I wasn't doing the teaching solo. Apparently earlier this week they did a vocab test, the vocab that I'd gone over with them last Friday and helped talk them through the meanings and stuff.

They all did crap, apparently.

I don't know if its right that I feel partly responsible. I mean, some of them were so poor (even by learner standards) that they can't have revised anything like they were told to, in no uncertain terms. One kid got 2 out of 30. I'm not that shit a vocab teacher. And anyway, they're doing it again next monday to improve. I regret nothing.

And man, the weather got balls here! Yesterday Neuerburg had that kind of 'long summer day' kind of feeling. There were literally no clouds in the sky; I thought that was just a kind of gay sentimental phrase that never really happened. Turns out it does, but last night we had the mother of all thunderstorms and its only just stopped belting it down 24 hours later. The whole sky is cloud now.

What with the weather being so crap, I didn't hit the town and have the wild friday night that I usually do, so I stayed in and watched Terminator 3 in German. I dunno why, but there was something terrible about it. You'd think with Arnie being Austrian, he might have dubbed his own voice, or at least found someone of the same calibre of German accent to voice him. But they didn't. It was like Arnie doing a bad impression of himself, if thats even possible. Pinnacles of robot engineering shouldn't sound like the mentally impaired.

This also meant that this was the latest I've gone to bed since I arrived here, at the grand hour of 5 past midnight. I had in mind visions of having a really fat day and not waking up early for a change. But at about half 8 this morning, the German builders invaded the proverbial Poland to build something in our building. I have no idea what it was; I can't see anything new. It certainly sounded like they were just smacking the same bit of wall with a hammer for no real reason. Hammer practise. Either way, it was a balls start to the day.

This example makes me realise once again that I seem to reach for material for this blog. When I was in Leeds, I got woken up in the morning for a plethora of other better, weirder reasons, but I never blogged about it then. This was because, in Leeds, you only had to step out of your front door and other things would practically scream "write about this, motherfucker!"

Here, when I leave the apartment for my food shopping trips and I gaze nonchalantly for inspiration, the vast expanse of forest just sort of sighs at me, and the castle looks over at me resentfully and says "What? What were you expecting?"

So the next time I'm in Germany, I will go somewhere just as quaint, just as picturesque, but one hell of a lot more vibrant. Dangerous even. I can start all my posts with "I won another knife fight yesterday."

NEUERBURG - Promotions

GERMANY

Yeah, I'm getting a little keen with the frequency of these entries, but the internet in Neuerburg is a nomadic being so I'm gonna take advantage of it whenever available.

Today Frau Kipping told me that I am moving up in the world of education. Rather than being a walking dictionary, I've now been given a class who speak barely a word of English between the four of them, and it's my new task to teach them English grammar.

I don't understand English grammar. As a general rule, native speakers of a language do not understand how their own grammar functions, nor do they know the phrases associated with it (unless of course they've have studied it to a higher level). Just as many of the German people I've spoken to here, teachers included, couldn't identify or give examples of the 'Konjunktiv II' when I asked them, I in turn have no idea what the Past-progressive tense is in English.

I don't know the difference between the Simple Past and Present-Perfect for example, which is what I watched Frau Kipping teach her kids today. These 10 year olds may be far from fluent English speakers, but they can explain how it works damn better than I can.

Pfft. We'll see how that one goes.

One good thing about this teacherly upgrade however is that I get to go to Trier with Frau Herschbach's class next Tuesday. Just as it was on the last trip when we went to Saarlouis (fortwerke, remember?) I have no idea what we're actually going to be doing there, but at least this time it's a place name I recognise. I'll regale you with stories of that one next wednesday.

I've also just realised I refer to teachers like the students here would. Frau Kipping, Frau Herschbach; even though I know their first names and was introduced to them all on a first name basis. I think this comes from my fortnight of observation, where I just sat in their classes like a student. And then all of a sudden one of them says "Herr Martin?" and eh? Whut? I realise they think I'm someone in authority. Then I remember that, theoretically, I am.

Damn, Altenberg. You didn't prepare me for this.

NEUERBURG - Tuesday was a busy day.

GERMANY

I've spent the last 4 hours with the guy who did the scary interview with me. He's part of a theatre group run by the school, apparently, and the other day he decided we should meet up today to "find music for some of the scenes" and "choreograph a couple of swordfights".

Neither of these ended up happening. Its been a long and surreal day.

To really get this into context, you need to know a little more about the guy himself. He's very enthusiastic, but with not a lot happening on the charisma front. 'Utterly monotone', you might say. Now, together, these combined aspects makes spending time with him a great strain, as he likes to elaborate on music and swordfight choreography and whatnot, but the delivery makes it a little tough to really focus on for more than 3 or 4 minutes. Consider that its in German as well.

We've spent the last 4 hours searching for a place in the school where my laptop could find the internet. We checked pretty much every room until we ran into Bernard, my epic teacher-flatmate guy, who said we could use the music room and look at some of the CD's to see if there was any music suitable for this fight scene. It was naturally a very musical music room, drumkits and music posters and a piano in the corner, y'know.

So I sat down in the room, the student begun his long, long search through the collection of CD's while I continued to sit and prayed for it all to be over soon. This was where the surreal section began.

Bernard came into the room with us, and asked me if I played instruments. Then he announced that he quite enjoyed playing piano, and, unprompted, sat down at the piano in the room, and suddenly played a perfect 10 minute long rendition of Chopin's 2nd concerto.

Words can't say how unexpected and mad it was. Yeah, he'd just said he enjoyed playing piano but that's such a limp, nothing sort of comment that I never really took it as seriously as that. Then the other bloke comes back with a stack of CD's to torture me with, plugs his headphones into the side of the laptop, gives me one of the earpieces, and we're away. And Bernard played on.

The first piece on the laptop CD was 'the circle of life', the Lion King opening theme. I never, ever thought I'd listen to it while a monotone German kid talks me, for reasons unknown, through the plot of the play Cats by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, while Flight of the Bumblebees is blasted out at 150 decibels in the background by a 50 year old German bloke on a piano. Seriously, imagine it. Actually try and envision this scene. The human brain isn't designed to deal with confusion of that magnitude.

We didn't do any swordfighting, thankfully. I managed to make my escape, after explaining in German every conceivable reason why the internet hadn't worked for us, and now I'm drinking Chocomel, and wishing I was doing this.


Courtesy of the wonderful Kellie Snowden. Lets buy a giant pumpkin.

NEUERBURG - Again, really?

GERMANY

Satan is mowing his lawn in the skies of Rheinland-Pfalz.

That is to say, the Search and Rescue chopper's back. Its making a noise how I'd imagine Satan's lawnmower to sound. A 57 foot long lawnmower with a 48 foot wingspan.

What possible trouble can you get into that requires rescue by helicopter in Neuerburg?

That takes REAL effort.

NEUERBURG - Lesson planning

GERMANY

Tomorrow, my Ü-klasse is being upgraded from doing Heads, shoulders knees and toes. We are going to play that game called consequences, the one where you write a name, then fold the paper over, pass it on to someone else, then they write what happens etc.

I just read that back to myself. If you've never played consequences before and don't know the rules, then I imagine you're still in the black, but I really can't be arsed explaining it because I'm so bored of thinking.

After consequences, if I haven't managed to drag it out for 45 minutes, we will play 20 Questions (idea courtesy of Daniel Brooks, thankyou for that one mate) probably with varying degrees of success. If both of these fail, I'm taking my laptop so I can improvise and we can look at British things, maybe songs (Thankyou to Sophie Walker for that suggestion) and see how it goes from there.

No onslaught of boredom or whingeing can't be silenced by the Internet.

NEUERBURG - flatmates

GERMANY

10 minutes ago I met my last flatmate who I hadn't met before.

I guess this means I know all of my flatmates now, though I only know the names of 2 of them. The other three I should know but have forgotten because, sadly, its not the kind of flat where you can sit about and drink and get to know each other very well.

But this last guy; we talked about Leeds, England, international football (fucking how?!) and the general gist of what we did at the school.

HIS NAME IS NORBERT.

How awesome is that?

NEUERBURG - Official first day

GERMANY

Yeah, I know I've already titled one post 'First day at work' but I did fuck all that day. Yesterday was when I actually did stuff.

The first lesson was with the 11th grade, which is like 17-18 year olds (I think). We went over homework and talked about volunteer work and political activists and gap years and whatnot. Then I turned the mini-essay we were meant to do in lesson as homework and we talked about England in a little Q&A thingy, which only reinforced the fact that I know very little about Britain. But it was pretty good. Dare I say I made friends?

And after that I went to Frau Gorjew's* lesson, the one she'd promised would be a 'team-teaching' kind of thing, but which ultimately turned out to be "Max will lead this class with the material he was expecting to use with 2 or 3 students at a time, which lasted all of 10 minutes, while Frau Gorjew sits at the front and watches like a student". Clearly the Germans have never heard the phrase 'there is no I in team'.

And this second lesson pissed me off because I'd been feeling all teachy and inspired and had spoken lots of German, and then all of a sudden I was that English retard again, not really knowing what was happening. I got asked to translate 'honeycomb structure' and 'osteointegrated' into German for christs sake.

And then I went home and drunk some chocomel and wondered if chocolate milk could induce some kind of 9 month long coma. Yasser Arafat had it so easy.

Oh, and tomorrow is international Talk Like a Pirate Day! Who even thought of this? I tried using facebook in Pirate but it pissed me off after a week. Why is there a day dedicated to going 'Arrr' and stuff?

Brush up on your Somali, people.
___________

* 'Gorjew' is a fucking misleading name. Turns out it's not 'Jew' in the sense of 'one who follows Jewish ideals' (like the Christians. OOH! controv.) but is actually pronounced 'yev'. Gore-yev. Who'd have thunk it?

NEUERBURG - new things, long post, no chocomel, gay cowboys

GERMANY

So after a week or so of going to the wrong classrooms or finding out that a particular teacher isn't scheduled to have me, I've finally started re-arranging my Stundenplan (thats timetable to some of you) so I know where I'm meant to be, at what time, and with whom. This will hopefully see an end to me knocking on the doors of classrooms that I've had to hunt down* because there's been a slight change, only to have the door opened by some teacher whose name I don't know, wondering why there's an English kid stalking their lesson speaking pidgin German at them.

*There's actually not a great deal of 'hunting' for the classrooms, seeing as the whole building is one big square, and the rooms just go round the edge on 2 levels. No corridors or anything like that, but it still throws me when I have a room change.

Today I forgot that my lesson with the 13th Grade had been cancelled, which means that I did all of the above but to a meeting of teachers and probably some important Germans, instead of just the one teacher and some kids. Unfortunately, the teacher who had told me that the lesson was cancelled was present too, and she embarrassingly pointed this fact out in front of her many colleagues. It was like the German school equivalent of being in a busy supermarket checkout queue with an unsubtle cashier - "Hey, can I get a price check on the No-More-Farts Medicine? And the Dr. Shits-a-lot Constipation Tablets?"

Ohhhhhh, I'm a retard.

Tomorrow is going ahead with my teaching solo debut; the teacher isn't even going to be sitting silently in a corner like they suggested would be the case at Altenberg. I could deal with that, but apparently Frau Biehl is off doing something else. She might just regret that at the end of tomorrow. I've been given quite a lot to work with, and it's a Grundkurs (basic course) which means that I can stretch out the hour and a half I'm with them by speaking English very slowly.

I'm pretty grateful for all the material I've got actually, some writing exercises, going over their homework, matching words to definitions, that sort of thing. It can only go better than my first 'class' yesterday, which was a fucking shambles. This is my class that I've been given free reign over; apparently I can do anything with these kids. Not in a weird way, dickwads. I mean the topics we focus on and the content of the class is totally up to me.

Now, I can't deal with that. I can't work without instruction. I need to be told something to aim toward, or I'm lost for ideas and inspiration. "But Max", you say, "this time you get to choose which topic you aim towa-" NO. No, I need a little more guidance than that. This class in particular is a difficult task for me. I have little to no teaching experience and its near impossible to pick out a topic that can suit all of them.

I've started; I'll continue: the different skill levels in this group make it really difficult to gauge what kind of material I can use. Out of 11, there are 3 whose english is good enough for me to converse with them at a pretty decent standard. The others range from 'not much knowledge of english, but just enough to get by', all the way to being able to say 'my name is __' and virtually nothing else.

And apart from that, they're all 'kiddy' kids. Theres one girl from Portugal, one who's English is pretty good, and she's great in the sense that she seems to understand I'm not a born teacher and that I'm finding all this malarky a bit of a challenge, even though she's only 11. Then theres a group of boys who are polite and want to improve, but piss about too much for me to really help them. And theres a girl from Kenya, again who speaks good English, but can't be arsed with half the stuff I suggest, because its either too simple for her or too boring.

Theres a Romanian kid about 10 or 11 who thinks he's Gods gift to the English langauge, but he's one of those kids who, initially, you think 'wow, this guys enthusiastic!' which descends quickly into 'I am gonna beat you with this dictionary. Shut up. Shut up.' And rounding off the team theres an Italian guy who looks like I did when I was 17, but with the personality of a dead sloth, and a French girl, who's a bit pretentious and flamboyant and French.

So I have to come up with something new for them for Monday, seeing as last time the only way I scraped back some shreds of dignity, by the skin of my fucking teeth, was teaching them all Heads, shoulders, knees and toes, which was .. lets not go there.

Fun. Fun fun fun fun. So that's school.

Did any of you guys in Germany see Brokeback Mountain the other night? Oh, my god. I'd never seen it in English, but in German? Theres something about it being in German that makes it so much more gay than it already is. I mean, even by English standards, its pretty gay. There's not a lot in the way of breaking it to you slowly either. The first 20 minutes or so kinda goes "Right, lets herd some sheep. Brrrr, bit cold out here. You better come in this here tent, away from the cold. Brr, still a bit cold. Spoon me, Heath Ledger. Spoon me up the bum." Then they fight and have families and Jake Gyllenhaal dies. And Heath Ledger is left with the bloodied shirts they wore that day when they fought, aww. Warning! Spoilers.

Whatever, it didn't make me cry or anything. Probably it being in German took most of the emotional whatnot out of it.

But, sadly, Brokeback Mountain has truly and utterly destroyed the 'Gay german men are easier to understand' theory, of which I so often speak of. Brokeback Mountain + German would theoretically support my idea, but it doesn't, so I'm back to square 1. Rachel Lane-Dixon, I'm sorry.

Disclaimer: Watching Brokeback Mountain alone does not make me gay by default.

NEUERBURG - More from Neuerburg

GERMANY

I did a little more class observation today, just kind of sitting about and being a human dictionary for times when the book version just won't cut it. I don't know how long it'll take them to cotton on to the fact that I am vastly inferior to the book in the way of definitions. Pronunciation fine, but not definition.

So I did that and was then interecepted by a kid who wanted to interview me for the school newspaper. It was actually a little unnerving, as he's about my height, and speaks German in a very low, thickly accented voice. And he decided we should do our interview in a little classroom on the first floor with only one very high-up window. A lot like the prisoner cells from the 80's at Hohenschönhausen prison in Berlin.

And then, in that low, German accent, he asked me questions like "What are you doing in Germany?" and "How long have you been here?". I felt like the bloke at the beginning of Das Leben der Anderen. It was scary.

Other than that, I'm helping to teach kids about the media on Friday in a lesson which I hope to God will be a 'team-teaching' sort of thing, as I can't talk about British media for 45 minutes in any language. I have a copy of The Guardian and The Times, whose political bias I'll probably exaggerate a bit for a little more food for thought. We'll have none of your moderate bullshit here.

Lidl is officially out of Chocomel. I've watched the number of cartons decrease on that shelf for 2 weeks, clinging to hopes of 'they'll have a new batch delivered tomorrow', but it never did. I have officially single-handedly veto'd Neuerburg of chocolate milk. At the moment I'm drinking the replacement, stuff called Latte Nocciola, which is pretty much liquid Kinder Bueno. This should also have been wiped from the face of Neuerburg by the time the week's out.

I'm still hunting for Hobbys while I'm here. I'm far, far from the point of 'maybe I could get a weekend job in Neuerburg!' before any of you even suggest it, but apart from sketching, theres not a lot to do. Yeah, I'm probably not doing the whole 'completely embracing the culture' thing just yet, but thats partly the reason I need something to do until then. I went for a walk in the woods today, that was a new thing. The shitload of woods that surround us for miles and miles.

I'm gonna try and bring something new to this town, something they've never seen before. Just to liven it up somewhat. Waterboarding suspected terrorists, performing abortions in the town square, riding round town on a cow dressed as a gladiator. Anything.