I know I am ugly, but I glow at night

Berlin is bathed in colour. It’s the Festival of Light and all the major landmarks are lit up with the hues of the rainbow. Such a simple idea but it completely changes the atmosphere. You walk around in the cold smiling with glee at each new building, dodging amateur photographers and wayward screaming children. The title of the post was written on a building, and I think it describes it perfectly.

I left Berlin in a t-shirt and arrived back to chattering teeth and breathing fog. My dream of avoiding cold weather this year through timely hemisphere changes has been shattered. Autumn is full of crisp days and outrageously beautiful clouds, or spattering rain, bitter wind and oppressive cloud cover. The trees look amazing though – explosions of red and orange and yellow against the grey.

But colours don’t keep you warm at night. I’ve learnt that 2 skivvies, 2 t-shirts and 3 jumpers does not equal one winter jacket, and if you pay 4 euro for an umbrella it works better in inverse form as a rain-collector.

For the last week or so I’ve been staying with Andrew, a good friend from Melbourne Uni. He’s doing his final semester in Law at F.U., the same as me. Last week was Orientation week and it was a whirlwind of early hours and hectic Erasmus student parties, the latter I tagged along to (and the former I gave my fondest regards to from the comfort of my 10-hours-a-day sleeping habit).

The exchange crowd is full of Spanish and Italian students this semester and it’s got a different flavour – not just more Mediterranean, but crazier and more reckless. It takes a bit to get used to the 2am – 7am nightlife but we had some great nights on the d-floor.

The only downside has been the construction workers at Andrew’s flat. His whole building is covered in scaffolding. They start drilling and hammering at 8am with what must be the very tools of the devil – they sound like they’re chipping away on the inside of your skull.

The last week has been full of farewells. Most of the people I knew have left so this time around there’s been a lot of farewells to the permanent fixtures. I’ve been revisiting places where legends were made and doing those things on my to-do list that never got done.

Berlin is home to Spreewald, an abandoned amusement park a couple of stops outside the city. The details surrounding its demise are sketchy but rumour has it that the owner got in trouble, fled to South America (as naughty Germans do) tried to import drugs back to the country, and somehow his son is now shacked up in a prison somewhere, serving time for the crimes of his father.

The park has been sitting there unused, rusting up and growing over, for the last 10 years. But there still must be something of value there because two full-time security guards patrol the fence.

On the day we broke into Spreewald we didn’t get out of bed until 2.30pm, so by the time we reached the fence it was almost dusk and the rain had started. Not ideal but too late to turn back. We found a hole in the fence and squeezed in and went for a wander.

All the rides were exactly as they were left – the Ferris wheel, the spinning tea cups, the rollercoaster, the floating swan boats – except with a decade’s worth of weather damage and evoking a skin-crawlingly eerie feeling, rather than one of unparalleled joy. We would be walking along through a forest and then suddenly stumble across a dinosaur zoo or a squat inside a former planetarium.

Suddenly it was dark and we started to feel miserable so we made a beeline for where we thought the fence was. Guided only by Andrew’s phone flashlight and ever-watchful for the guards, the atmosphere were tense. We were passing behind a couple of sheds when we heard a menacing growl, followed by a bark. Followed by the sound of something big running towards us.

Being the unflappable adventurers that we are, we immediately lost our shit and leapt up onto the fence. Out of the darkness came the horrible visage of a foot-high, overfed pug dog. It continued to growl and slobber at us as we beat a hasty retreat, making disparaging comments about its size. We scrambled (I would like to say “vaulted” but it simply isn’t true) over a high fence and I ripped my trusty black jeans beyond repair, but it was worth it. A true Berlin experience.

For the last 8 months I’ve avoided the authorities, but my luck has come to an end. On my second day here I decided to buy a weekly ticket for the public transport, as my free student pass is now a thing of the past and my heart isn’t up to the low-level adrenaline that comes with constant fare evasion.

In a gesture of goodwill towards the not-so-fortunate Berliners, I bought a crumpled second-hand ticket from a scalper at the station at a price that was a steal for me and a jackpot for him. It looked legit, he was happy, I felt good about myself.

But barely 24 hours later I was ordered off the train by a grim set of BVG ticket inspectors. These guys are the definition of black letter. Pleading, flattery, emotion, the stupid tourist trick, appealing to their humanity – nothing worked. They handed me a 40 euro fine with a shrug of the shoulders and told me that it was my problem.

After discussing it with Andrew over dinner we decided that the best option was for us to promptly burn it on the balcony. I don’t think the debt collectors are going to hound me when I’m overseas. All I need to do is clear the border tonight and I’ll be free.

This last week of Berlin has gotten my head into the right space to come home. Putting aside the question of money, all signs indicate that it’s time. The planes in the sky are always Qantas. Crowded House and Nick Cave are on unusually high rotation on my ipod. I’d got the feeling that I’d run out of people to see and things to do in Berlin, which, as it is technically impossible, indicates a prepared state of mind.

As I count down the hours until my departure, I’m feeling happy and peaceful. But it’s been a tumultuous eight months. I’ve struggled a lot with what feels like a lack of direction and meaning, of having too much time and not enough purpose. But being forced to stop and look around has made me think about what these things mean to me. I haven’t taken time to do that before.

On my last exchange, I grew up. This time, I grew out. I mean, I’m not talking about physical size (although two weeks on pastries and felafels definitely qualifies me for a few brisk jogs in the upcoming months). Out in terms of breadth. It feels like I have more space in my mind and in my heart. And I feel like my life is a closer fit.

As I wandered through the duty free this evening at Tegel Airport, I realised that I don't need to buy myself anything to remind me of Berlin. I already have my most important souvenir.

Griechenland

I arrived into Greece around midnight in a jet-lagged stupor (quite possibly the worst I’ve experienced) and went straight to my hostel, where the complimentary shot of ouzo and a few cheeky beers did nothing to put me to sleep. The next day was just as grim. You know you’ve got it bad when you arrive in a brand new country and your only thoughts are of sanctuary in the touristy part of town, where you’ll pay treble normal price for bad coffee and the privilege of sitting among people as disorientated as yourself

But a few pastries later I was feeling greatly revived, and went for a wander around some pretty spectacular sights. The Acropolis, with its outstanding view over Athens; the Parthenon, covered in scaffolding; the Temple of Zeus with one pillar toppled over like a stack of pikelets.

Athens to me resembles an eastern European capital city, which I guess technically it is. Commenting on the poor reviews that the town gets, a friend said that people come expecting a stylish and cosmopolitan Western-style capital (which it actually calls itself in tourism material) when it’s really a chaotic, unpretentious and polluted city with, you know, some of the greatest relics of civilization spotted here and there. Often in train stations. Or in the middle of roundabouts.

This leg of my journey I’m doing solo, and given the recent history of single Australian women travelling in this part of the world I’m particularly on my toes re: personal safety. The overly affectionate manner of some Greek men hasn’t helped. Many women resort to wearing a ring on their wedding finger. That seems like overkill to me – I’ve just reinforced the frostiness of my fuck-off face instead and am grateful that as far as the language goes, it’s all Greek to me…

Athens gave me an unforgettable welcoming. It was shortly before 8pm and I had dragged myself out of my room and into the bar area to make talk with the punters. Just when I was wondering how to extricate myself from a conversation about the relative merits of Melbourne suburbs with the typical Aussie crowd, there was an enormous !!!!BOOM!!!! The entire building shook and the sound of breaking glass was everywhere.

There was total stunned silence before someone said “That’s a bomb”, and suddenly car alarms were going off outside and people were yelling. We hurried on up to the reception area. The receptionist was ghostly white and on the phone with another two ringing nearby.

Being the stupid souls that backpackers generally are, we snuck down the stairs for a look around, but the police were onto us and shouted at us to get back inside. A couple from America remarked dryly that despite spending six months in Israel, they’d had to come to Athens to get close to an explosion.

Eventually we found out that in reaction to the massive election rally happening at the end of the street, someone had put a bomb in a bin down the road and timed it to go off just before the President’s speech. Apparently the police got word of it and had cleared out the street, so no-one was hurt. But it aptly captured the frustration of the population, expressed in a markedly more democratic way a couple of days later when the government was sent packing.

My next stop was a few days of Total Relaxation on the island of Santorini, a piece of paradise about 7 hours from the mainland. Peak season has ended and October is the last month before the place effectively closes down for the winter. Many parts of the island resemble a ghost town. Deck chairs are vacant. Restaurants are lonely places. Even the happy hours look depressed.

But this skeletal quality made the place even better. I’ve never known such peace or happiness doing so little. Most days I would wake up late, eat breakfast and mosey on down to the pool, where I’d spend most of the day swimming, reading, eating and drinking Pina Coladas. If I was feeling energetic I could stroll down to the famous black sand beaches for a dip in the ocean, or go hiking in the hills around the town, or take the bus to the other side of the island to watch the most beautiful sunset in Greece and get giddy from the romantic/sexual tension exuded by 200+ couples.

Santorini could have had me in its clutches for weeks, but I was destined for greater things. So 24 hours and a ferry, a taxi, a hostel and a train later, I met my friend Eleni in Thessaloniki, Greece’s 2^nd largest city. Eleni is a curly-haired, perpetually smiling Greek lass who I met in my language course. For the last 2 days I’ve been living at her family home and being lovingly pampered by her mother, who spoke no English but force-fed me Greek pastries and coffee, showed me how the shower worked, and slipped tissues, water and a spare jumper into my bag when I wasn’t looking.

A two-day visit is ridiculously short, but we fit a lot in. There was a late-night Erasmus party beside the harbour (bringing back all types of memories not yet committed to nostalgia), a language exchange and birthday party at a co-op bar, drinking icy frappes, climbing up and down ancient fortifications, hanging out with her beautiful and funny friends, learning some rudimentary Greek, and my personal highlight, eating four types of cheeses at one sitting.

And before I knew it the time had come and I was back on a train to Athens, and now I’m on the plane back to Berlin for one final week in Europe. My visa inconveniently expires on the 15^th and I’m leaving on the 18^th – I’m sorely hoping this is overlooked by the powers that be so that I can spend my final days climbing the Reichstag and going to the top of the Fernsehturm and having other touristic delights, rather than disrespecting myself in the immigration queues.

A more formidable obstacle to overcome before my departure is War and Peace. I haven’t touched Russian literature since Crime and Punishment got me into the few conversations I’ve had with sober strangers on Melbourne trams, albeit because they mistakenly believed me to be enigmatic and learned, with a masochistic kink.

I bought War (we’re on a first-name basis now) for 2 euro, knowing that the page:cent ratio was probably the best on the market. That was 10 weeks ago and the score is now 1094 pages to me and 480 to Tolstoy’s long-winded genius. The cover is long gone, the dedication and table of contents pages ripped off last week, and I’m rushing to finish it before I lose the introduction to the dark forces at play in my hand luggage.

If I don’t finish it now, it’ll never happen. There’s no way I’m taking that literary anvil in my checked luggage and forfeiting precious kilograms better suited to snow domes and beer steins. 

I wanna be a part of it

Something about New York sets my heart a-flutter like nowhere else on earth. It could be the sheer number of people, the way that you have to keep moving or get swept under in the torrential pedestrian traffic. It could be the communities of every stripe crammed into every nook and cranny of the city. It could be that allure of raw power - that a handful of skyscrapers in the downtown area can make or break entire economies. It could simply be Central Park, or how art sits hand in glove with ordinary everyday life. It could be a million things. And it probably is.

New York breathes ambition. I’m not talking about the grasping, backstabbing ambition, that ugly kind that comes from greed and fear (although I know that’s here in spades). I’m talking ambition that comes from people wanting to “better themselves”, to follow their dreams, to think big and see it through. And that buzz that comes from putting all these people together.

But I don’t know if that’s just me projecting. New York is so ingrained into my cultural subconscious that I’m not sure where my imagination ends and reality begins.

Manhattan is also a temple of consumerism. Women skitter around in must-have heels made famous by gratuitous references in Sex And The City. Abercrombie and Fitch employ identical baby-faced male models to hold the doors open at their Fifth Avenue store. In this megacity of 12 million consumers, it’s a matter of survival to express your personality through the stuff you have.

I get the feeling that if it were allowed, advertising would expand to cover every spare bit of space. And it isn’t like the Henty Field Day ads on rural Victorian TV, constructed using little more than photos of tractors, a $50 budget and a creative application of Microsoft Powerpoint. It’s the frighteningly clever stuff that’s been focus-grouped to death and hints at a multi-million dollar budget behind the glossy and uncomplicated final product.

It’s designed to hook the professional earners with too little time and too much money. And it gets you down. On one train carriage I counted three ads that used the concept of “happiness” (and your desperate lack of it) to flog nighttime philosophy classes, long-term storage and (of course) whiter teeth.

My cousin, an Australian engineering graduate, has been living and working in New York for a year. During that time he’s swung from loving it to hating it and is now languishing somewhere between apathy and affection. He’s not quite sure how he ended up here - sharing his Greenwich Village apartment complex with celebrities, watching hard-won deals collapse during the financial crisis, working punishing hours week after week. I think he misses Australia’s somewhat slower pace, where the stakes aren’t as high and the games aren’t as crafty.

Last Friday was Grand Final Night, and we did what thousands of expats the world over do – go to a bar with hundreds of other expats, drink excessively, swear filthily and generally get their Aussie on.

Back home the importance of football was lost on me. The strongest allegiance I can claim is a disposition towards Geelong, inherited from my grandma. But Friday night was no night for fence-sitters.

The crowd, mostly St Kilda supporters, erupted at every goal and groaned at every point. The game was streamed over the internet and very poor quality: slow, pixilated and occasionally interrupted by Skype messages (such as “Oh hey boss! I didn’t know you were still up”). The fare was meat pies and slabs of Coopers Pale. The uniform was distinctly Australian: shorts, printed art t-shirts and thongs for men; long straight hair and denim skirts for women; and team colours everywhere.

And after it was all over and final insults exchanged with the screen, we went home and ate vegemite on toast, and then went to sleep just as the sun was rising. It was a surreal cultural experience; a preparatory taste-test three weeks out from my return home.

“Cheap”, or even better, “Free” have been my key words. So I got my jollies from walking a lot. In Brooklyn I saw a free production of The Tempest against the backdrop of decrepit Coney Island theme parks and the beach that European explorers landed on 400 years ago this year. It was Yom Kippur and there were Orthodox Jews reading their prayers out to sea and families dressed going out to dinner to celebrate. We caught the Museum of Modern Art’s Free Friday and jostled for space with the thousands of others.

I watched the Masters of the Universe on their lunch breaks at Wall Street, where things seem noticeably more subdued than they were in 2007. Counted the number of romantic dates underway in the rowboats in the Central Park lakes. Took the Staten Island Ferry to get out on the water and came straight back once I’d got there (I’d made the mistake before of thinking there was something on Staten Island worth knowing about). Caught up with Kate and her family for the third time and third location in a month, and said our final final goodbyes.

Everywhere I went in New York – and throughout the entire States – I saw people’s names attached to things. Private donations seem to make the world go round. The wildlife exhibits in the Natural History Museum are adorned with bronze plaques bearing the name of the patron in a font just as large as the name of the actual animal. The UC Berkeley campus is covered with sentimental, cringeworthy posters designed to get wealthy alumni reaching for their wallets.

Giving is next to godliness, and the virtue of the benefactor is celebrated loudly. It seems to me that this type of thing would never fly in Australia, since a) governments are expected to pay for projects in the public good; b) private donations often signal private interests, with strings attached; and c) this type of recognition would be seen as self-aggrandising ego-stroking and would be torn apart.

But perhaps this culture is worth cultivating. The USA has some incredibly cool shit because of it. Readers? Instead of celebrating great people by naming freeways after them, should we be celebrating the millionaires whose generosity got it made?

So I am leaving North America behind after nine hectic weeks. It’s been epic and amazing, rocky and blissfully calm, like it is now. Thanks to the generosity of family, friends and complete strangers, I’ve only paid for about a week’s worth of accommodation. I’ve got a glimpse at the trends Australia will be infatuated with in a year’s time, such as FREE wireless everywhere - in cafes, laundromats and chinese restaurants. And the rise to fame of the space-age Kindle, the electronic book from Amazon.

My love and hate relationship with the USA continues, but despite our differences our partings are always sad.

Next stop – Greece. Then Berlin. Then home. Two weeks left of Eliza Goes To Germany. Requests, faithful followers?

West coast dreaming

I was certainly lucky to land in Berkeley. It’s one of those towns that revolve around the university. The radical edge that made it famous worldwide in the 60’s is still around. There are hundreds of students shamelessly wearing the blue-and-gold merchandise and there are spooky restricted-access buildings high up on the hills where the secret experiments are carried out. But there is something young and electric and slightly wild in the air. I’ve spent the last two weeks of lovely Californian weather with no plans and time in plentiful supply.

Leah is currently living at the Cloyne Court co-op. Co-operatives are a type of student accommodation that sit shoulder-to-shoulder to the Berkeley fraternities and sororities in the hills behind the campus. But that’s where the similarities end. Co-ops are student run and student owned and there are as few rules as possible. Through buying food in bulk, sharing rooms and weekly work shift for cooking, cleaning and other essentials, they’re hands-down the most affordable way of living. They’re not exclusive and will take anyone without demanding initiation rituals or family connections. But they end up attracting easygoing, open-minded kids who are as fiercely dedicated to partying as they are to studying.

The freedom that co-op living brings can be seen everywhere. There are giant art murals and literate graffiti on every wall. The open kitchen is buzzing at every hour of day and night. When dinner is served, there is no such thing as queuing, only a survival-of-the-fittest type rush with 150 kids elbowing to get a serve.

There are band nights, hula-hooping in the courtyard, drinking and dancing on the tables and bongs made from plastic flamingos and didgeridoos. There are also naked pizza parties, watching sunsets from the roof, flea outbreaks, broken crockery in the bathrooms and lots of happy hooking up. Leah reckons co-op living is the answer to Australia’s student housing situation. I think she’s right.

The other half of my time in California I spent on Frances’ couch in Oakland. I met Frances when I was a fresh-faced exchange student in Sweden in 2006. Only days after returning to Australia, I’d bought a ticket out of there, this time to the States. Exactly two years ago, my friend Nikki and myself spent three glorious weeks on the Cali coast.  2009 was the sequel.

And it was a blockbuster. We spent our time together raiding Berkeley’s thrift stores, eating Nikki’s baked goods, scoring free coffees from Frances’ work and drinking at student-discount prices. We occasionally took the train across to San Francisco for photo shoots, glitzy late-night museum visits and high-octane tourizm at Alcatraz. But all good things must come to an end. Nikki left for a conference in Niagara Falls and Frances has flown to Las Vegas to see Britney Spears with a hand-made “Toxic” costume in her carry-on.

And I have left the East Coast with a thwarted vegetarian burrito addiction, a worrying dependence on Mad Men and my heart in my mouth. I’m writing on the downward descent into La Guardia Airport, New York. My goodbye hangover has finally slithered off and I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. 

I’ve waited two sweaty-palmed years to get back to New York. It’s a cliché, but it feels like the centre of the world – like everything is happening here all the time and anything is possible. I can’t wait to get outside and see what will slap me upside the head today.

Afterglow

Now that I’m here, let’s get down to business...

Myself and my travel companions drove from Vancouver to Nevada in Betsy, a massive van masquerading as a colourful moving mural. Betsy looks like she’s straight from Woodstock and, we were convinced, a moving target for the US Border Security, especially when driven by Yossi, its dreadlocked owner. Yossi spent the last few hours before our departure Spray-And-Wiping the interior clean after hearing news that the border guards had sent another Burner packing after discovering smoke residue on her vehicle’s windows.

Despite being completely clean and technically having nothing to worry about, we’d heard about the border guard’s capriciousness and so it was a tense crawl up to the boom gates. Marti had told us that they had high-tech surveillance that could pick up conversations from miles away, so we stayed suspiciously quiet. The border guard asked the driver whether he’d ever smoked weed, and after he was answered in the negative asked sarcastically whether the driver knew what weed was. But within moments our passports were back in our sweaty hands, the guard had bid us farewell and we were free and clear into the USA.

My fellow road-trippers were a group of Kate’s friends – a friendly bunch of self-proclaimed hippies. Despite their easygoingness and positive vibe, for the first half of our road trip I was squirming in my seat as the conversation flowed from personal contact with extra-terrestrials to shared consciousness to the benefits of crystals to theta meditation (which, I scoffed to myself, was a trumped-up version of Socratic questioning at $50 a session). But as the hours ticked by and as I bit my tongue on another logical debunkment, I started to question why I was so stand-offish to these ideas I’d never heard of and why I was refusing point-blank to understand them.

I hate to use my formal education as my whipping boy, but more and more I’m seeing how it’s shaped me. Studying law makes you a sceptic. You crave logic, demand proof, destroy arguments and dismiss concepts that you think don’t stand up to criticism as half-baked fuzzy thinking. It makes you a finely-tuned adversarial machine, but it also closes your mind and can make you a righteous little shit. I realised that if I was going to get to Burning Man and get through Burning Man, I would have to leave my prejudices behind. So I did. And it was so easy.

Burning Man is impossible to explain without using a mass of seemingly contradictory and hopelessly inadequate descriptions. It’s a hedonistic visual and aural extravaganza in one of the harshest environments on earth. It’s radical self-reliance within a generous and selfless community. It’s both art expo and orgy, yoga summit and dance festival.

It’s summed up by the experience of standing alone in the centre of the city in the hours before dawn, in the middle of a kilometre-wide empty space called the playa. In the distance there is wall after wall of sound and light and humanity, but where you are is the quietest, darkest and most solitary place on earth. If you go looking for something at Burning Man, you’ll find it.

The physical side of Burning Man is what most people baulk at. Every day is a battle against dehydration – you have to drink at least a gallon to keep the hallucinations at bay. While portaloos are plentiful, there are no showers – you either bring your own or, like myself, you do without for a week (beating all personal records, thank you, thank you). Dust storms strike frequently and fiercely, gritting up your eyes and ears and depositing a fine layer of dust throughout your respiratory system. The alkali ground causes a condition called “playa foot” where the feet get painful cracks and can only be prevented through daily bathings in vinegar and liberal use of moisturiser. But within a couple of days it becomes normal, and you get down to the more important business of living.

The beauty of Burning Man is that it’s user-produced, a kind of Life 2.0. The residents are also the artists, the performers and the gurus. Integral to this is the idea of a gift culture - that everyone comes to Burning Man with something to contribute. Apart from ice and coffee, nothing can be bought or sold. Despite this, there’s hundreds of bars, restaurants, clothing depots, massage therapists and bicycle repair shops operating out of tents, running on nothing but generosity. When you head out to party at night, all you need is a warm jacket and a cup.

But my favourite part of the festival was the people I met and the connections I made with them. Recently, the process of meeting people has made me weary. I’m sick of small talk, of having shallow, seemingly pointless conversations with people who will leave my life for good tomorrow. But, as Leah pointed out to me during a particularly eye-opening night, the content is up to me. So I started asking questions that I really wanted answers to. And I got answers I’d never dreamed of. People were so open, so willing to discuss deeper issues, so generous with their views and so accepting of mine. I think it’s ruined me for the world of employment-based networking, but I don’t really care.

Nakedness has featured prominently and exponentially since my last post. The first thing Kate and I did in Vancouver was go to Wreck Beach to drink beer, catch up and get naked together for the first time in our six-year friendship. At Burning Man clothing is optional and in the desert heat, honestly a bit of a burden. No-one stares and no-one cares. One of my favourite parts of the week was CRITICAL TITS, a 3,000-women strong topless bike rally through the festival in celebration of empowerment and beauty, ending in an all-female dance party with women hugging each other, laughing and screaming “WE LOVE OUR BODIES!”

On the way home we took the joys of skinny-dipping to blissful new heights at the Harbin Hot Springs, spending an entire day hopping in and out of hot and cold pools, lolling around in the sun, making friends with the regulars and enjoying having dust-free skin for the first time in a week.

I know there’s a time and a place but, you know, I reckon there should be more times and places. It’s not just how free it feels, it’s also the education you get from realising that nudity is separate from sexuality, seeing that everyone looks different, hardly anyone looks like a porn star or underwear model, and that everyone is beautiful.

The Burning Man ole timers (“Lifers”) nod sagely when you explain that you’re a “virgin”, and inform you that your life will never be the same. People have moved cities, quit jobs, ended relationships and changed their beliefs after their first time. It was definitely an epic experience for me and probably the best decision I’ve made all year. I hope that I can hold onto this feeling as I adjust to the “default world” which is significantly less colourful. But I’ve landed Berkeley, California, one of my favourite places in the States, and I think my chances are pretty good.

Pre-burn

Tomorrow I'm getting in a van and driving for two straight days to the Burning Man festival in Black Rock, Nevada. Burning Man is a 50,000 people week-long party/alternative art festival/community/nudist camp/mutant vehicle racecourse/spiritual awakening held in the middle of a desert, with temperatures regularly reaching above 40 during the day and below freezing at night. You have to bring everything you need for a week, including 7 litres of water a day, every single bit of food, every last splash of facepaint. There is no commerce there - nothing can be bought or sold. There are frequent dust storms where you can't breath, can't see and everything is covered in a fine powder dust for months afterwards.

I have spent the last part of this week, and a hefty chunk of my time in Vancouver, preparing for it. I'm sick of shopping, and I wouldn't have the faintest clue about anything touristy here. But I have a camel costume. I have German volkslieder to unleash upon the unsuspecting public. I have a guitar that I got off Craigslist for a song. I have rebar stakes two feet long to stop the tent blowing off into the distance. I have a bike that consists of mostly replaced parts following my 3 hour stint in the community repair shop yesterday. And in between everything I've caught up with Kate, my ex housie, for lovely times. She feels like home in the midst of this chaos.

So I'll write again in a week and let you know if I came out alive. Until then, mes amis!

Southerly

With Georgia long gone to Argentina, Leah’s eventual departure from New Orleans on Friday and myself awaiting my flight to Vancouver, the epoch-defining Ginnivan Sisters Adventure has come to an end. We did so much and saw so much that the thought of trying to do justice to it makes me queasy, even more so then the lukewarm serve of Red Beans n’ Rice (the only vegetarian meal airside at the Louis Armstrong International Airport) has already done. But I’ll see what I can do.

For the last week I’ve been in New Orleans, Louisiana. We took the Amtrak (a luxurious step up from Greyhound) from Memphis, and walked out of the station and into a humid inferno. Most of what I know about New Orleans I learned after Hurricane Katrina, aside from some vague prior understanding that it was important for jazz and blues. Birthplace or some such. But I was really looking forward to stopping for a while, and the Lonely Planet entry said that New Orleans had it all – good music, astounding food, an insane party scene, touristically orientated, multicultural, history by the buckets. And it’s been great, definitely a highlight of the trip.

The best thing about couchsurfing is that you have an inside guy from the moment you arrive in the city. On our first night, our host Justin (artist, thinker, sometime-conspiracy theorist and burrito maker) placed us in the back of his friend’s ute - apparently legal in Louisiana - and drove us to the best music venues in town. We left him to do the more touristy things – a swamp cruise to see alligators and other wildlife, eating beignets (weird donut things laden with icing sugar) take the ferry across the river, walk around the touristy French Quarter, avoid the trashy Bourbon Street. After the sisters left I couchsurfed with a chemistry PhD studying Russian couple, who entertained me with red wine, fresh watermelon and Russian comedy classics.

New Orleans is fighting a losing battle against the forces of nature. Across town, tree roots push up the footpath or simply break it in two. Houses abandoned after Katrina are entirely covered in ivy. Some are half-sunk in canals. Spanish Moss appears out of nowhere and hangs from the trees like a greenish-grey mist. The town is crawling with little jumping geckos, squirrels and cockroaches. And when it rains, streets become rivers, rivers become seas and umbrellas become farcical. But we got used to it. After Leah and I got caught in a deluge and soaked through to underwear, we left our valuables somewhere safe, I waited for Leah to put on her bathers and we went for a wet and wild adventure through the newest parts of the Delta.

At some stage during the last week, the Ginnivan Roadshow suffered a casualty. My much beloved Macbook, which has seen me through almost 2 years of commutes to university on the back of my bike and an entire season of Guilty Radio, is inching closer and closer to meeting its maker. There’s a nasty crack in the top right hand corner of the screen which is currently outlined in pixilated blue and black. With every keystroke the screen ripples and the crack grows ever so slightly. Twice repaired under warranty and that safety net long gone, I think our time together is almost up.

Before New Orleans, there was Memphis. Memphis is named after an ancient Egyptian city, and about 20 years ago some rich crackpot took this to heart and built the world’s 3rd largest pyramid there. Unbeknownst to us, we’d rolled into town in the middle of Elvis Week. It was creepy spotting impersonators around the town in casual dress, but not as weird as the cash cow that is Graceland, Elvis’s former private residence. We did the tourist thing and went on a tour, were amazed and repulsed, bought a mug.

We stayed with Jeremy, a generous and slightly disenchanted college graduate halfway through his Teach for America program at a disadvantaged school out of town. We caught busses everywhere, much to widespread disbelief. Went to the National Civil Rights Museum and got inspired. Explained to some sceptical country kids from Mississippi that the earth had two hemispheres, and it was actually winter where we came from. We were told quite frankly that the white people lived in the good parts of town, the black people in the bad parts, and felt like we’d offended everyone and crossed some invisible social boundary when we found ourselves in the wrong place.

And before Memphis, there was Chicago. Our couchsurfing requests had come to nought – our one almost-certain guy pulled out a couple of hours before we arrived at his place because he was, as he explained in a barely intelligible text message, “cooking soup”. But using Hotwire we scored three-star hotel rooms for a cheaper price than hostel dorms. While it was a pain in the arse to schlep our luggage all over town each night in the humidity, watching The Colbert Report in overconditioned rooms with crisp sheets, sucking on ice-cubes from our private ice bucket, swimming in rooftop pools and checking out at noon was more than enough recompense.

The world’s first skyscraper was built in Chicago and the skyline is crowded by them, giving the downtown a constant air of industry and progress. The great Sears Tower was the biggest in the world for a while until the Asian countries started getting all uppity and prosperous and decided to show it in phallic displays. Chicago’s skyscrapers rise straight up from the banks of the river, which cuts a winding aquamarine path right through the city, criss-crossed by rust-coloured bridges and patrolled by tour boats.

I am a great believer in public spaces, particularly if they are grassed, and I was deeply impressed with what Chicago had to offer. Between downtown and Lake Michigan is an incredibly stretch of parkland, which was being cleaned from the revelries of Lollapalooza the morning we arrived. This park became our base. On one night we joined thousands of other Chicagoans in Grant Park (the Grant Park of Obama victory speech fame, swoon) to watch a free screening of Psycho; on the next we took a bottle of wine to Millennium Park to listen to an open-air orchestra.

The people that inhabit the US of A must surely be this country’s defining feature. Last time I travelled the States, my contact with natives was pretty much limited to friends of friends, family, and members of the service industry. But this time has been different. Couchsurfing has taken us right inside their homes. Budgets have placed us right on their public transport systems. Accordingly, I feel better equipped to make a few observations (or denigrating generalisations, depending on your allegiances).

Americans love to talk. With anyone, about anything, at anytime. For the first couple of days I was taken aback by this friendliness, particularly since Germans will only talk to strangers if the situation absolutely demands it (such as if someone is standing on your toe or the imminent death of a bystander). And their favourite topic? Themselves.

In many Americans that we met, there is this anxious desire to be listened to and understood – a need to define themselves as individuals. Often, you’ll ask an American a question and they’re off and away. Once they’ve squeezed all they can from the topic, there will be an uneasy silence while they wait for you to ask the next question. If the conversation happens to swing to something else, their eyes will glaze over and you can tell that they’re waiting for a chance to direct it back on course. I realise that this may sound a little bitter, but it does get tiresome. My love of asking questions has definitely taken a battering. I just don’t want to know anymore.

Last time I came to the States I was taken aback by the weird politics surrounding race and how monolithic cultural groups (mainly White, Black, Hispanic or Asian) are a key source of identity and stereotypical indicators of socio-economic status. Travelling through the Mid West and South and learning about segregation and slavery and the horrifying relationship between white and black Americans cleared a lot of things up, but left a lot of things cloudy.

For instance, I never got around to understanding why black men on the street (and no-one else) would invariably greet us with a “Hello ladies, how’s it going?” – not in a sleazy way, just as an acknowledgement. And how racial divisions are still so strong in Memphis and New Orleans, even though they both claim to be centres of black empowerment. And what appears to be the undesirability of integration from all sides. It’s frustrating to be classified as “White” on sight and being inevitably dragged into the fray, even though I’m Australian and had nothing to do with anything.

I definitely prefer Australia’s approach, which seems to embrace multiculturalism by bringing everyone into the fold, rather than leaving groups on the margins. Well, with the glaring exception of our indigenous population, which probably disproves this argument entirely. Thoughts and comments, readers?

As I finish this post I am high up in the air somewhere above North Dakota, where the Ginnivan Sisters Journey began all those weeks ago. I’m on my way to Vancouver to spend some time with my ex-housie Kate, check out her new life and ply her with duty-free alcohol (as yet unfound). Reading back over this post, I’m realising how much I’ve left out and how it really doesn’t do justice to what’s happened. You may have to use your imagination.

Plan B

Hello everyone!

In lieu of a much overdue blog entry, I've got some visual candy for you. Click here to see the photographic evidence of the Ginnivan Sisters USA Extravaganza. 

I'll write soon, and it'll be worth it.

Panic and peace

Well, our epic Amtrak journey started off in a most unsettling manner. We left our little hostel early in the morning after a cosy day of playing chequers, drinking Montana boutique beer and feasting on huckleberry pie. But amid all this fun, I’d somehow managed to lose our tickets. Slightly worried but confident in the ability of modern ticketing systems to re-issue them without the world coming to a halt, we set off for the station with a spring in our steps.

But on our arrival we were told by the grim-faced attendants that tickets could not be re-issued and if they were indeed lost, the only way out of East Glacier was to buy them all again, all $750 of them. And the train was leaving in 20 minutes.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more ashen-faced, and that’s saying something for a pasty-skinned creature like myself. After turning our bags inside out, Leah and I sprinted the 2kms back to the hostel to turn that inside out too. We eventually found them hidden down the back and around the corner of a sofa. After sprinting back (well, Leah was sprinting, I was shuffling along gasping for air/praying for forgiveness) we found out that the train was late anyway, so the day was saved. A little later we schlepped our bags onboard the train and our adventure had begun.

It sounds a little strange but taking a train across a third of the breadth of the States was incredibly enjoyable. We sped past ghost cities and abandoned houses, across big-sky prairies and misty pine forests, past hundreds of towns with spherical water-tanks with their names painted on them, rising up above the streets like grounded UFO’s.  

Onboard, things were just as eclectic. We shared a row with a grizzled old farming man in denim overalls who barely spoke and clearly preferred to grin. An Indian guy with an entourage of animal fur and feathers gave educational talks in the lounge car and played his hand-made flutes. The Amish people spent hours on a thrilling game called “10,000” – as Leah discovered, the winner is the first person to reach 10,000 by rolling the dice and adding up the numbers. We tried a few times to find Wifi as we rolled through the larger towns, but the only signal we picked up was from a server called “Don’t Fucking Touch It”.

Our destination was Minneapolis and we were booked in for our first couch-surfing experience as a family – staying with two college guys, Kevin and Nick. It was also their first couch-surfing experience, and I think that we are all definitely converts now. Nick spent a lot of time showing us around, and his company was fantastic. We did a whole raft of fun things with him, including seeing theatre at the Minneapolis Fringe (does every town have a fringe these days?) and Bat for Lashes at the Varsity and going tenpin bowling at an organic-vegetarian restaurant.

 On the last night Kevin and Nick and his cousin Briana took us out on the town to Prince’s old club and other riotous places. This is where we learnt about a technique called “baby-birding”: when you feed an under-ager alcohol by taking it in your mouth and, when pretending to kiss them, spitting it into theirs. Not particularly tasty, but apparently necessary when alcohol laws are so strict.

Minneapolis is a great city and this was a complete surprise to me – it’s so much better than what it appeared as viewed from the airport two weeks ago. There are mind-bending cafes, world-class op-shopping and, as Leah and Georgia discovered, punishing, pay-by-donation yoga. Nick and Kevin were generous hosts and we were sad to leave them. Bunking with a local makes a heck lot of difference to visiting a city.

Our next destination was going to be Iowa City, but after finding some incredibly cheap Greyhound tickets to Chicago and absolutely no other transport option that we could stomach going any other way, the decision was made. So here we are in Chicago, Illinois, home of Barack, Kanye, Jerry Springer and Oprah. Lollapalooza finished up last night and since then it’s been tricky finding hostel accommodation, or anyone to couch-surf at such short notice, so we’re staying in a proper 3 star hotel tonight. Hopefully we’ll be on a couch where we belong by tomorrow night. 

Canmore, do more, see more, be more.

Ever since I was a small girl, folk festivals have been an annual part of my life. Many holidays have been spent drinking hot mulled apple juice at the National, surviving the climatic extremes and wild partying of Woodford, and, when very young, waiting patiently, often for hours, for my parents outside the Guinness Tent at Port Fairy. Folk festivals are part of our family history. With this in mind, Mum proposed that we make the Canmore Folk Music Festival the destination for our week together, and we all agreed (with a fair amount of good-natured eye rolling).

Canmore is in the Canadian Rockies, just next door to Banff and an hour or so out of Calgary. And it’s one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. In Berlin I was dreaming about nature and wild open spaces - towards the end I was getting sick of seeing people and concrete and commerce every time I opened up my door. The Rockies are the complete opposite. Lush pine forests, aquamarine lakes, snow-capped mountains that tower above the town, horizons and sunsets, icy blue glaciers and a thrilling selection of North American mammals - you felt wholesome just breathing in the air. A stunning, if distracting, backdrop to a festival.

On the day we arrived, Canmore was strangely quiet. Mum was disappointed by the lack of buskers and bunting on the main street. But as the hours passed the town filled with middle aged couples in comfortable shoes and capris - the party had arrived! The actual festival targeted this bracket squarely, although there were a few small children, reluctant/embarrassed teenagers with the parents and a couple blissed-out hippies. The festival was also a dry event, news which was met with a collective groan from our family. And it was surprisingly touristy – when an enthusiastic performer exhorted “all those born in Canmore, raise your hands!” two stragglers up the back were the only ones who represented.

Even though “folk” hasn’t been my thing since I first tuned into Triple J and attending three days of it without a compelling reason isn’t something I’d usually consider, it provided a great environment to relax and spend time with my family. I had a great time sitting in the sun, dozing, chatting, reading, eating and occasionally passing judgment on lyrical quality or recent trends in baby-boomer fashion. We saw some good gigs and did some good dancing and gorged at the free pancake breakfast at the Senior Cits Hall. And it wasn’t all folk – on one night my sisters and I snuck away to the local establishment to watch Canadian Pub Rock in all its tight-panted, cowboy-themed finest.

But Mum and Dad weren’t just there for the bodhrans. They were also ambassadors for the Australian folk scene on a fact-finding and partnership-making mission. At first I laughed at Dad’s rotating selection of “Yackandandah Folk Festival” t-shirts, believing it the epitome of sartorial laziness. But I realized that they were actually the ultimate ice-breakers, starting conversations everywhere from the information booth to the Perogi queue. Due in no small part to his wardrobe, Dad wrangled the entire family VIP tickets. As the heavens opened up on the final evening, we stocked up on free coffee backstage, scoffed banana and peanut butter burritos and chatted with Canadian folk royalty.

It’s now Tuesday evening and we’ve left Canmore, Canada AND our parents behind. Leah, Georgia and I are embarking tomorrow on an epoch-defining Ginnivan Sisters Roadtrip Extraordinare starting from Minneapolis, following the Mississippi down to New Orleans and stopping in at a heckload of fun places on the way. Mum and Dad have graciously driven us down to East Glacier Park, Montana so that we can get onboard the Amtrak Train when it comes through first thing tomorrow morning. We will spend 20 hours on a train going through some of the most remote parts of the USA. We’re keeping an eye out for glaciers and moose. I’ll write when we make it to Minneapolis alive. 

Transit

I left Edinburgh on Sunday afternoon to undertake the most ambitious transit journey of my life to date. As the train sped through the Scottish countryside, I consulted my notebook, packed with confirmation numbers and flight times. My itinerary: train to London King’s Cross, 2 hour bus to Heathrow, overnight in Terminal 3, trans-Atlantic flight to Toronto and then on to New York, connecting flight to Minneapolis and then another connecting flight to my final destination: Calgary, Canada. Added to that, about 15 hours in stop-overs in terminals on the way. It looked crazy but it looked possible.

Things came unstuck at New York’s La Guardia. I arrived to a monsoonal downpour that evolved during the afternoon into a full-blown tempest which prevented all inward and outward traffic. Hallucinatory from my lack of sleep, I heard whispers around me of planes circling overhead being sent back to Pennsylvania to refuel and hurricane warnings to the south of Manhattan. My flight was eventually delayed for two and a half hours, meaning I’d miss my connecting flight from Minneapolis into the awaiting arms of my family. The desperation of the huddled masses was my own.

But things worked out okay. I got my ticket changed and the airline staff gave compensation vouchers. A generous stranger lent me his cell phone to make an expensive international call to the parents to let them know not to wait up for me. And once I got to Minneapolis I spent the night in a heavily discounted four-star hotel room with fresh fruit and about 10 pillows on the king-sized bed. By the time I got on the next flight to Calgary I was freshly showered, rested, coffeed, CNN-ed and in a much better frame of mind for a reunion.

Rather than erecting a shrine and pining for my return at home, my entire family have jumped on the bandwagon and left Australia behind. My sister Leah is spending the year studying and living the wild life at Berkeley. My other sister Georgia is heading to Buenos Aires in a few weeks to teach English at an orphanage. Mum and Dad have been travelling North America for the last two months as part of their “Gap year”, visiting old friends and West Wing icons. Now is the first time we’ve been together for the whole year, and the last time for the next six months.

When I finally made it through the gates in Calgary I was greeted by a sisterly hug attack that was so violent it had the security guards approaching, walkie-talkies armed. And with this auspicious greeting, so began my North America Family Adventure. I was a bit worried about fitting back within a family - about being a daughter and sister again, after five months as a free agent. But as I write from our hotel room, sipping on Alberta alcopops and watching crappy Canadian TV after a hard day of breathing fresh mountain air, things are great.

Gone

Lots and lots has happened since my last post. I guess the biggest thing is that technically, the name of this blog is now redundant. The Germany leg of my adventure is complete. I am now writing from within a doona on a couch in Edinburgh, Scotland.

For the next few days I’m staying in the apartment of my friend Murray. He’s out of town for most of the weekend but gave me the keys so I could have a free run of the place in his absence. From the window there’s a view of the castle, but I’m more impressed by what’s inside the apartment. It’s cosy and beautiful, full of paintings, posters, cactus and palm plants, Turkish rugs, stainless-steel pots and pans, an austere spirits collection and an enormous bookshelf stacked with titles. I feel spoilt being in such lovely surrounds.

Perhaps I’m feeling nostalgic for “things”. To get to Scotland I had to comply with Ryanair’s 15kg limit for checked-in luggage, and as I bought almost 30kg of miscellaneous from Australia it’s been a harsh few days of culling. I sold my books to the English Language bookshop. I stood on Hermannplatz with a handmade sign saying “Gitarre – 20 Euro” and offloaded it to a passer-by within minutes. I schlepped my winter clothes to a charity bin, along with the heels that I never once wore in five months and two of the three scarfs I ambitiously packed. A year of almost entirely summer makes for light travel.

The last week of Berlin has been very administrative. I happily passed all of my exams and the process of getting my subjects credited is now in the hands of the Student Administration/the Gods. But alongside my administrative to-do list was my Berlin to-do list, and sadly only one list got itself completed. Much to my dismay, I never made it to the top of the Fernsehturm or visited the Bundestag or made it into Berghaim. As a tourist, I am a failure. I don’t know where all my time went.

But last week was not all work – I still managed to make it to another German music festival. Melt is a blockbuster festival like Hurricane except it’s mostly electronic and held in a former iron mine. It’s got massive drilling machines that provide a very eerie backdrop and the mine itself is now a lake surrounding the camping grounds. Using Mitfargelegenheit, I hooked up a lift with a car full of German women and met up with my posse there.

Germany, and in particular Berlin, is famous for its love of techno music. You either learn to love it, people say, or you stay at home. With a willingness to put my prejudices behind me, I’ve been trying for the entire semester to get my head around it with the aim of perhaps enjoying it. But I’ve only managed to learn to tolerate it. I can’t understand how people can dance to a single sound or beat for five hours (and they swear it’s not drugs). But it’s indisputable that it sounds better after several vodka and oranges, and this, plus the company of my friends, is how I had a great time at Melt.

Perhaps my favourite moment of Melt was the morning after, when we awoke at midday after being steamed alive in the tent and wandered down to the lake for a swim. We did manage to somehow take a route that led us directly through a communal outdoor poo toilet, which was a bit of a dampener. But all was forgotten when we got to the banks of the lake and joined the others chilling out there, with some Eastern-European types playing some techno from their speakers and some naked guys cavorting around and a soft forgiving breeze.

Last week was also packed with goodbyes. Because I’m coming back to Europe in a few months and will see a lot of my friends again it wasn’t that teary, but just that kind of strange heart feeling when you know a time in your life is ending. There were so many goodbye beers and goodbye meals. This is probably a reflection of my hedonistic lifestyle, but it appears that food and beers have been my main areas of expenditure during Berlin. My wardrobe is stagnant, but my belly is full.

The last goodbye was last night at this wonderful place called Bar 25 on the Spree. It’s a famous outdoor club with a pit fire and a discoball and swings strung up from the tree. All my favourite people were there and it was perfect. I managed 2 hours sleep and then dragged my life down the steps and out of Berlin. The entire day has been a succession of happy and sad feelings. My eyes are bloodshot, my nerves are shot and my grammar is almost gone. Bed (even if it’s not my own) has never been more appealing.

One of my main aims of coming to Berlin (and this may sound a bit melodramatic) was to learn how to just live - to stop being so busy and eager to fill in all the spaces of my life with trivia. And I have led a simple life - my only commitment was university but apart from that, I had absolute freedom to do something or not do it.

And I have done some really good things. I’ve read books that I never had the patience for, I’ve started drawing and writing and playing guitar again, as well as running and yoga. I’ve gone from basically zero knowledge of German in March to reading German newspapers and conversing entirely in German at dinner parties. I’ve met many many great people who have made my time in Berlin (and hopefully onwards) happy. And the parties – oh, the parties!

But I’ve missed having direction in my life, something long term and meaningful. So much choice sometimes made me feel a little trapped. There is this strange lost feeling that quite a few people I’ve spoken to have experienced during their exchange. It’s not routine that we’re missing – it’s a solid surface to build the framework of a life on.

Three and a half more months on the road before I return back to Australia. What do you reckon, reading audience, should I go on with this blogging thing?

Abgeschlossen

After five and a half years, 24 grey hairs, a looming HECS debt and a crease between my eyebrows that I blame entirely on Corporations Law, my undergraduate degree is complete.

In Australia, half a decade is a long time for an education. But in Berlin, the word on the streets (i.e. statistically unverified information, most likely heard in a pub) is that the average graduation age is 30. There’s not that pressure to suit up and make something of your career by the time your wisdom teeth are through. Education is meant to be a long and winding road – you’re actively encouraged to take many jaunts into the bordering hedges/rosebushes along the way.

Apart from the, sigh, burden on the taxpayers, I can’t see anything wrong with this system. While it may take longer for students to “grow up” - tick the boxes on the way to adulthood (job, mortgage, partner, promotion, children, death etc) by the time they roll out the other end of the education system they’re certainly more rounded, with a clearer idea of what they want in the long term. I think this is what education should be about – less of this customer-orientated, short-sighted focus on exams, more emphasis on the education that lies outside the lecture theatre.

But my experience of the teaching in German universities has actually been pretty disappointing. There are many extenuating circumstances: I didn’t study any law classes in German, the subjects were all optional and results weren’t matters of life or death, and as they were all aimed at English-as-second-language crowd (Erasmus students and Germans needing certain credits) the reading was minimal and expectations low.

But the content was dry and poorly taught. One lecturer read his summarised notes from a legal commentary, heading by heading. Class participation from anyone other than native English speakers was rare. Mostly, there was no set textbook and scarcely any internet resources – if you missed a class, you could pretty much fail a quarter of the exam.

But I definitely have some souvenirs to take back to Australia. I’ve learnt the nuts and bolts of Jewish Law and could have a fair crack at interpreting the Midrash Halakah or the Talmud if required. I’ve come to terms with the centrality of the concept of “fundamental rights” which in Europe pervades every area of law and gives any mildly interested basket case a cause of action. I know the punchiest parts of the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution.

And if I’d stayed in Australia, I have no doubt that I would have had another stressful, boring and blinkered semester busting my ass over marks in boring and stressful law subjects. Even if it hasn’t been perfect, being here has been worth it just because of that.

Small change

In Berlin, there are lots of beggars, homeless people, crazies – all those people that belong to that category which doesn’t really have a politically correct title. And even if it did have a title it wouldn’t fit in Berlin, such is the nature of this genre-bending city that evades simple classification on a day-to-day basis.

Berliners-from-birth say that the ones in their Kieze are as familiar as the Post or the doner shop. And I’ve started to notice the reappearance of some in my life. There’s the crazy tree-bike man. Every Sunday he attaches half an elm to his bicycle and pedals it through the heart of town to Mauerpark. Here, he takes to the stage to dance along with the open-air karaoke, play games of hide-and-seek with thoroughly confused children, or simply ride his bike into the petrified crowd.

Then there’s the guy who boards my 7.30am train with me, staggers through to the middle of the carriage and strums his heart out on a battered guitar missing half its strings. It’s clear that he’s never played guitar before, doesn’t know any songs or lyrics, and has absolutely no sense of timing – it seems like it’s better than just flat out asking for money.

And the woman I saw today on Hermannplatz: wearing a sari, gold shoes and jewellery, wandering towards me with her arm outstretched, hand cupped - and a doll in her sling with a babybottle stickytaped to its plastic hands, masquerading as a real-life dependent.

I like noticing how the others – the ones with the homes and the jobs and the required medication – interact. Drinkers of all stripes leave their bottles on the sides of the rubbish bins, rather than putting them inside, so the people who collect them for the recycling deposit (pfand) don’t need to go picking through the scraps. There are commuters who, at the end of their journey, hand their not-quite-expired ticket to a man standing near the u-bahn entrance so he can onsell it for half the price and pocket the profit. Small, understated acts of consideration that make a big difference.

Red Right Hand

So a week has passed and I’m sitting in my new aesthetically pleasing, Scandinavian-influenced temporary room. Temperatures hit 30 degrees in Berlin today and everyone’s having a sook, but here inside lovely. My room overlooks our courtyard and the place is entirely silent except for the faint sounds of a woman singing soprano a few streets away. It’s rather moving, actually. As the Mayor Klaus Wowereit said, “Berlin is poor, but sexy”. The most beautiful things in Berlin come for free.

My exam angst has begun and my contact with the outside world, let alone correspondence with those living outside Berlin, has stuttered to a halt. So because I’ve got nothing really interesting to say about my life at the moment (which revolves entirely around the constitutional sovereignty of Afghanistan) I’m gonna tell you about my festival attending adventures.

So it’s summer in Europe. Finally, I’m on the same continent at the same time as the music festivals I’ve been dreaming of ever since I was a So Fresh/Smash Hits adolescent. Glastonbury, Roskilde, Sziget – überfestivals, with headliners the likes of which The Big Day Out has yet to see; with lineups so potent the sight of them makes your ears ache and your feet ska-dance around all on their own.

Germany’s version is the Hurricane festival: a 3-day, 70,000 people musical bloodbath held in a paddock somewhere to the north of Hamburg. To miss it would mean a lifetime of regret. So carrying a tent, gumboots and about eight litres of vodka, we made our way there to be a part of it.

We decided to travel in style so we took the ICE train there. ICE is the super-fast train which reaches speeds of 250km/h when it’s really fanging it. It also has an alarmingly high suit-to-casual-clothing ratio. I’ve mentioned before that Berlin is an exceedingly dressed-down city. There’s one square block in Mitte where you may occasionally spot a suit on her way to lunch, but that’s about it. On the ICE, we were the only non-suiters in a sea of cheerless commuters. Not exactly a good pre-festival atmosphere, but it didn’t matter to us. And it mattered even less on the return journey, after 4 days without showers and negligible sleep.

After arriving, finding a place and (embarrassingly, for the Australians) struggling to erect our tent for an hour or so, we went for a wander around the campsite. The campsite of Hurricane is vast. Kilometres across. Most people looked like they’d done it before – many campsites came complete with tarps grills, tables, chairs and musical equipment. There was an ever-threatening storm overhead. And there was an astounding number of men urinating in public. At all times of day and night, against anything at all (often just towards other people) and sometimes when the designated urinal was two metres away. By the end of the 4th day, the situation was toxic.

The festival itself was overwhelming. 70,000 attendees may be pushing the upper limits of feasible. And it was very commercial – you couldn’t look anywhere without seeing a sponsor’s logo. But it was great fun. I saw heaps of great music. I consumed obscene amounts of fat and sugar and met friendly Germans. I had my life turned upside down and inside out and my definition of joy exploded by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. We barely felt the rain (maybe thanks, in part, to the 8 litres vodka). And I had a great time with the people I went with, especially the Dutch – every jolly, always up for fun, fantastic festival companions.

I have less than a month left in Berlin. I had a list of things-to-do, but I’ve lost it somewhere in the move from my last address. What should I do, reading audience? Is there anything I’ve missed?

Home and hosed

This week has been hectic for all the wrong reasons. I’m two weeks out from the last exams of my degree. Hopefully, also the last exams of my life. My first closed-book exams since I was 17. I should be spending time becoming acquainted with Red Bull and other dangerous substances and learning the library hours off by heart. But instead, I’ve spent four days at the biggest festival of my life and have been sidelined by last-minute housing panic. And in 30 minutes I’m going to Munich.

I have so much to write about, but I’m gonna keep it short and snappy.

It’s pretty cynical, but when things seem too good to be true, they usually are. This was certainly the case when the house I had seamlessly and effortlessly organised for July fell through a couple of days ago, 6 days out from the 1st, that all-important D-day for Berlin relocations. In a decision of startling rudeness, the tenant decided to give the room to her friend instead. And because I’m going to Munich in 30 minutes, that left me about 2 days in which to find a new place to live.

Luckily, the housing situation is rather fluid here in Berlin. Websites like wg-gesucht and studenten-wg list hundreds of short-term rentals from a week upwards in almost every part of the city. But the problem is, there’s also heaps of people looking. Most places will have about 20 or 30 replies from a single ad post. I had to act quickly and decisively. So I got on the phone and in the end lined up 6 inspections for 24 hours. An early night and plenty of carbohydrates were on the menu.

At 9pm on Wednesday night they were all finished and I was sitting on Gorlitzer Bahnhof station, beer in hand, waiting for the train home, reflecting on the very unique experience of inspections. How most houses have a shoes-off policy. How I can’t seem to escape the German “shelf-toilet” which seems to serve no other purpose than review. How most students live on the 4th floor, because it’s only the temporary residents who can be arsed climbing up and down all the stairs every time they want to go to Lidl.

And how my favourite part of inspections is meeting the tenants. The disenchanted scientist, who quit his high-flying management consultant career because he couldn’t fake it any more. The retired teacher who develops educational programs for the German voluntary gap year. The cello student from Spain. The hung-over thesis-writing students, obviously awake 3 hours before normal.

But my most favourite part of inspections is when I get the room. And I have. A beautiful big room that belongs to a photography student, a suburb away in Neukolln. It’s on the 4th floor and it has a shelf toilet. But happily, blissfully, it’s mine.

Diplomatic relations

Thursday mornings are indisputably the lowest point of my week. The bane of my Berlin existence - Comparative Constitutional Law at 8.15am. This wouldn’t be a problem if I could join the ranks of normal society and go to sleep before 1.30am. But that’s quite clearly impossible. And because it takes 45 minutes to get to uni, I’ve got to wake up by 7 at the latest. In my old life I could survive that level of deprivation. Not any more.

On days like today, my half-asleep self rationalises an extra 20 minutes slumber. This means I have to skip my life-giving shower to make it out the door on time. And because my last class finishes at 4, I spend the whole day with greasy hair, crusty eyes and a bad temper, propped up by bad coffee. Not pleasant. But I get the job done.

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last week and a half. Things have been a bit upside down. The indestructible Courtney and James have been staying in my room for the last few days, stopping by on their world tour of almost everything. As well as having a great catch-up, it was a fantastic excuse to do some quintessential Berlin things such as the Badeschiff, the Soviet War Memorial and Drinking Four Bottles of Red At Dinner Then Speaking Very Bad German. But they have gone, I’ve just spent a small fortune on stamps for my first batch of postcards, and it’s time to get back to business.

The EU Conference was held on Thursday and Friday last week. Already fatigued from diplomatic rhetoric I’d come across in my preparation research and deeply suspicious of the inherent wankiness of “Model” things, my expectations were low. But those expectations were quickly exceeded. I think it was a combination of our Poland flag, stationary and nametag, the self-important thrill of speaking into a desk-microphone or the political wheeling and dealing with the other delegations, that made it a fun couple of days.

It was a privilege to work with Afghan diplomats and find out what they think about the direction of their country. They are very proud of Afghanistan and wanted to make it clear it wasn’t all suicide attacks and opium. Getting to know my colleague from the Polish delegation, Alibaba, was particularly excellent (even though at the reception I was gobsmacked to discover that he’s the same age as me, even though he looks about 50). Although it’s hard to forget eight years of violent news footage, I now know that Afghanistan isn’t a complete basket case of a state – that it has a future and intelligent, capable people working towards it.

This week we also got a new German teacher. Due to some EU-level regulation, our old teacher Doris could only teach for a part of the semester. When we found out that there’d been an administrative mistake and we could keep her a little longer, the Spanish students started dancing on the tables.

Doris was great. With her double-denim outfits (a combination that former residents of the DDR are particularly fond of), her dyed red hair, cuddly physique and recurrent problems with wild pigs in her garden, she was an excellent storyteller and entertaining teacher. We were sad to see her go. So it was with apprehension that we turned up to class on Wednesday to meet her replacement.

WELL. He’s no Doris, that’s for sure. He’s excitable, quick and hilarious. And he’s loud. So loud that my Estonian friend Birgit had to discretely block her ears beneath her curtain of hair. And he has an aversion to learning the “boring” way. I don’t quite know what to make of him yet, but it looks like he’ll be a good teacher. If we go deaf, at least we’ll be laughing when it happens.

On that side of the brain

I was quite creative when I was young. I used to write songs, make clothes, paint pottery and draw everything I saw. The highlight of my career was Year 12 when I gained fame through my drawings of “Man Of The Week” pro bono in classmate’s school diaries. These sketches were tailored to their personal preferences (Cobain, Depp, Di Caprio, Prinze J – it was 2003, remember), were invariably half-naked (in the PG sense) and were saucily aligned on the right hand side, steaming up Thursday through to Sunday.

But when the time came to make life decisions, I couldn’t justify pursuing art when I had the chance to do law. So I packed away my pencils and got serious. And, sadly, things have remained relatively serious and packed away since then. Until this week, when my Search for Meaning led me to Prenzlauer Berg, up four flights of stairs into a loft and behind an easel for my first life drawing class in years.

Air’s “Moon Safari” playing softly from the sound system was the first thing I was aware of when I walked into the room. An excellent omen. A model lay sprawled on the platform in the middle of the room surrounded by an eclectic mix of artists, some who were painting with oils, others drawing with coal. Everyone was silent, off in their own worlds.

So I picked up an easel and sat down on the ground and started to draw. And even though I couldn’t get the perspective of her legs right and her head looked like it belonged on another body, it didn’t matter – it simply felt great to be drawing again. In the break I felt a little dizzy, but I still managed to butcher the German language with a newly-arrived Korean exchange student and indulge in the pastries and peppermint tea. I am definitely going back.

On another creative tangent, I’ve also started preparations for the Burning Man festival. It’s a long story, but basically I received a scholarship ticket on the condition that I bring a guitar and contribute to the festival by teaching the other attendees German folksongs. While, um, wearing a camel costume.

As my knowledge of German folksongs currently totals zero, the German people in my life have thrown their support behind my endeavour (after having a good ole chuckle, mind). My German teacher Doris burned me her 3 CD collection of 100 Deutsche Volkslieder and circled her favourite ones. My housemate Yvonne has sent me an email full of links to musical/comedy gold from the 1950’s and 1960’s including my personal favourite, Im Wagen vor Mir. This weekend I’m biting the bullet and buying a cheap shit guitar. The camel costume will have to wait until I get past the US customs.

Apart from these happenings, the last week here in Berlin has been stellar. On Sunday I joined 700,000 other Berliners on the Kreuzberg streets for the Karneval der Kulturen, a celebration of multiculturalism which could, in all its beauty and craziness, only happen in Berlin. The best parts? Dancing along the streets as part of a massive portable dancefloor of at least 500 people that followed a float that housed some hell big speakers and a famous techno DJ; an afterparty on a roof high above the festival; and the unforgettably punchy raw-sugar, lime and cachaça combination of Berlin’s signature cocktail, the Caipirinha.

Following the success last week's Audience Participation segment, I have a few more questions for yous:

1. Why is being creative so much fun? and why don't we do it more often?
2. Suggestions on ways/means to make a camel costume? (designs appreciated)

Bitte nicht von der Seite springen

When one has the luxury of expansive amounts of free time, one also gains the patience to do things that take time. Cooking, for example. Reading dense literary classics. Learning to appreciate classical music. Travelling vast distances without a second thought. It was in this vein that I found myself early on Wednesday morning at a swimming pool in Spandau, a suburb at the very end of my train line (read: the very edge of the earth) a good hour and a half away from my apartment.

The Spandau pool was certainly worth the trip. The pools are the centrepieces of a massive green park with trees, valleys and several food outlets. Wearing a bikini for the first time in months, and ignoring the wind, the cold and the purple sky in the distance, Cat and I did leisurely laps of the Olympic-sized swimming pool. Being a cold, windy weekday, our only companions were an elderly couple and a family of ducks. We snuck down the waterslide when the lifeguard wasn’t watching, then showered, got dressed and dutifully went to Uni.

The Berlin spring continues to surprise. Recently, the air has been thick with white fluff that whoosh around with the wind and collect in furballs in stairwells. The stuff is everywhere and it gets everywhere. My German teacher said it comes from the poplar trees and creates all types of hell for allergies.

But I haven’t seen it since the Great Downpour of Tuesday. When we began our International Criminal Justice seminar, the day was muggy and hot (by “hot” I mean about 28 degrees – it’s embarrassing how pathetic my thermostat has become). When we finished, it had started to rain in a heavy and tough-looking manner. Being too impatient and probably too stupid, James and I decided to make a break for it and sprint to the station.

It was wild. I lost my shoes a few times on the way and by the time we reached cover my I was soaked down to my underwear. It’s very lonely, travelling home when you look like the proverbial drowned rat – avoiding the piercing, smug stares of the umbrella-wielding locals and making your own puddle in the middle of the carriage.

A part of spring that I’m having considerably more success with are the public holidays. April and May have been chock-full of them – it seems like every second week we’re celebrating Labour Day or Whit Monday or something equally as wonderful. Last Thursday was Ascension Day and Tessa and I took advantage of no university to get out of Berlin and check out Hamburg. While I’ve been to Sweden twice, in my three months in Berlin I’ve yet to leave the city limits for another German location. Good to put my city-slicking to an end.

My housemates described Hamburg as the ‘grown-up Berlin’ and it’s true, there was a marked increase in sports cars and pastel sweaters. Hamburg is a lovely stately place. Like Berlin, it was almost completely levelled in WWII so most of the old things that we saw were reconstructions. It’s also a harbour town, as we discovered on our ferry ride to nowhere in particular with hundreds of other German tourists. And, of course, it also has an underbelly – a seedy street called Reeperbahn where you can buy guns and ginormous dildos from the same shop.

But Tessa and I both admitted that our favourite parts of Hamburg were the ones that reminded us of Berlin. A bit sad, but the truth. While it was refreshing to get out of the city and fun being a tourist again, there’s nothing like seeing the Fernsehturm on the skyline again.

This has been a really long post but there’s something else I have to tell you. At the end of my studies here I’ve decided to go to North America. My family is going to a folk music festival in the Rockies in Canada, and I’m going to join them for a family reunion. I guess it’s not as daggy if it’s in another country, right…? After that, Leah and I will be travelling around the South (mostly for the mint juleps) eventually ending up at the Burning Man festival in Nevada. After that? Hopefully, California bound. After that, back to Europe for a month and a half, then back to the Motherland.

I now have two questions for the studio audience:

1) Is it okay to be absolutely, completely broke?

And, more importantly

2) Will I need to change the name of this blog??

When a German Stares

In Germany, there is no social convention that limits a stare to the time needed to register another person’s presence. The German stare is harsh and unforgiving. It’s like you’ve accidently left a boob hanging out in the complicated process of getting dressed; like you have an entire spinach plant stuck between your teeth. It’s not appreciative, nor is it a neutral appraisal. When a German stares, you feel a pressing need to justify your existence.

The stare, and how to live with it, is a hotly debated topic in expat forums. In most countries you just need make eye contact and the starer will quickly look away or pretend they were looking over your shoulder. But here, staring back will only ensnare you in an uncomfortable game of chicken. The loser blinks. You save your pride and sanity if you just ignore it.

But getting used to the stare means that you are completely disarmed when a starer takes things the next level. It was Tuesday, around 11am, and I was in between trains on my way to H.U.. I was somewhat distracted by my iPod (more specifically, Prince’s not-so-subtle double entendres) so I didn’t realise the man in a straw hat walk towards me, place his face directly in front of mine and stare intently at my head. I was startled but, like a good Berliner, pretended that everything was normal.

A minute or so passed. I realised this situation was going nowhere quickly, so pulling out my earphones, said:

Me: err…Ja?

Herr: (long pause, leans in) Incomprehensible German.

Me : <thinking: am I being propositioned? Is this guy 100%?> Ahh, es tut mir leid, ich spreche nur ein bisschen Deutsch.

Herr: (long pause, squints) What do you in Berlin study?

Me: <thinking: I don’t even look like a student today! I’ve brushed my hair! Do I finally have my own stalker after 23 lonely years of being ignored by the crazies of the world?> Law. Jura. Er, Rechtswissenschaft?

Herr: Kommen Sie aus U.S.A?

Me: Nein, ich komme aus Australien

Herr: (pause) Ahhh! (walks away and steps immediately onto the next carriage)

I know this isn’t a remarkable conversation, but in the three months I’ve been riding the U-Bahn, it’s the longest I’ve had. Back in Australia, staring is just plain rude. But I’ve gotten so used to the silent, socially acceptable communication that the whole exchange left me weirdly unsettled.

Perhaps it’s because people treat other people differently here in Germany. The Protection of Human Dignity is the most important concept in German Basic Law, sitting pretty in the very first article in the very first section of the German Constitution. But it’s no secret that Germans can be a little abrupt. Apologies, even when fault is clear, are rare. As someone remarked last week, it’s one of the few countries in the world where “No” is a complete and acceptable response to a question.

At first, this all seemed a little hypocritical. But it’s becoming clear that brusqueness does not equal disrespect. At least it’s the truth. It seems that people won’t ask you how you’re going unless they actually care, and if they don’t feel like going out, they simply won’t. I find this streamlined approach refreshing. It’s better than being drowned in our social niceties. Perhaps human dignity is better protected by being honest.

What to do?

So I’m back. Last week was a tricky week for me. Earlier on in this blog I wrote about how liberating it felt to have so much time on my hands. Last week I experienced the flip-side of that.

I’m not used to doing so little, to being so free. For example: I haven’t organised an event since my farewell party. I went from working 50 hours a week to working none. This blog is my only extra-curricular activity. Studying is a leisurely pursuit, requiring a very minimum time commitment (unlike my Australian counterparts, who at this very moment in preparation for exams are cutting off all contact with the outside world and buying Red Bull in slabs).

But nature abhors a vaccum, and the void has quickly been filled by dancing, drinking, partying and general merriment. Which, of course, is lots of fun. But while it’s helped me to deprogram myself from the pace of life back home, I don’t think it’s enough to structure my life around. God forbid, I think I’m looking for a little more meaning in my exchange. I’ll let you know what I come up with.

In the meantime, I’ve decided that I should take my studies a little more seriously. And it doesn’t get much more serious than a meeting at the German Federal Foreign Office on the topic of „Committing to a New EU-Afghan Partnership – Review of the EU-Afghanistan Joint Declaration”.

I’m doing a subject called Model European Union. It’s also known (to exchange students) as a “jackpot” subject – it counts for a massive 10 ECTS, the equivalent of two and a half normal subjects. Model things have never been my thing, but this offer was hard to refuse. Also, as my knowledge of the EU is limited to the Euro, the Schengen Agreement and incomprehension regarding the legal ‚Pillars’ of the ‚Temple’ I thought it would be a great way to learn.

The dress code was “Business Style” and since the most businessy thing I own is a pair of skinny black jeans, an urgent shopping trip was required. An indecisive hour in H&M later I stepped out onto the street in corporate attire, not quite believing that I was wearing sheer stockings and a crisply ironed shirt a) in Berlin, capital city of casual comfort; and b) almost a full year before I actually get paid to wear anything as dour again.

A retired German diplomat, who looked like he was born to wear a safari suit and sip English Tea at some colonial outpost (AND had Baroque music as his ringtone!) chaired the session. Half of the attendees were students from F.U., the other half trainee diplomats from Afghanistan’s equivalent of DFAT. I ended up with Poland, and I’m working with an Afghani gentleman called Alibaba. My homework is to acquaint myself with Afghanistan’s history which is no easy task. I’m taking it slowly.

As my bike is now plumbing the depths of utter uselessness, I’m turning to other ways of fitness. Jogging is one of them. I live right across the road from Volkspark Hasenheide, one of Berlin’s phenomenal green spots. As well as containing fields and forests, lakes, a dog paddock, a petting zoo and, at present, a medium-sized fairground, it is also criss-crossed with running tracks. Most mornings I roll out of bed, tie on my runners and do a bleary-eyed lap before I wake up enough to protest.

Hasenheide is also full of drug dealers. From the break of day tracksuited men take up their positions around the park, whispering „Alles klar?“ to startled pink-faced joggers. If you wait long enough, you can watch straight-laced Germans walking determinedly off the path and into the shrubbery to meet their Man. A police wagon routinely does a crawl around the perimiter but I’ve yet to see them make any busts. I’ve never felt unsafe, but the contrast between the beauty of the park and the seediness of its internal commerce strikes me every time.

interlude

This week has been pretty extraordinary on a number of fronts, including:

• May Day in Kreuzberg.
  
• Baumblutenfest with the lovely Inga and her hilarious German friends.
  
• Traditional German Feast with Inga in her bitchin' apartment.
• 3 separate foosball ("kicker") games with assorted Germans, at each occasion losing comprehensively.
• First episode of quintessential crime show "Tatort" watched with housemates in reverential silence. 

Sadly, on the blogging front things are grim. Motivation and inspiration, once in abundance,  have fled for the hills. But I didn't want to leave the regulars (all four of you) hanging, so this is just a temporary update so you know that things are still chugging along here. If you think you've got the goods to write a decent substitute, please feel free to utilize the comments box. Back soon, yous. 

Australians

Last weekend myself and four other Australians travelled to Stockholm for no other reason other than four months ago, Ryanair was having a sale. But despite this inauspicious beginning, a fantastic time was had by all. Every aspect of Stockholm is beautiful: the people, the various old things, the boats, the dogs and the parks. It was also fun to spend time with a group of home-grown Aussies: your humour is understood and your cultural references recognised. And so this is an opportune time to write about a topic that’s been bothering me for a while: Australians.

Meeting Australians is the last reason that any Australian travels overseas, but it’s inevitable that you will - despite your best efforts to avoid them. We dominate the backpacker trail – thanks to the culturally encouraged rite-of-passage that is Overseas Travel, we are a permanent fixture in hostels across Europe. You can find us by following the trail of spirit bottles, loud voices and Havaianas.

There are Australians lurking around every corner in Berlin. Leaving wine-cork hats, ug boots and flannel back in the homeland, they’ve managed to blend into the environment so their presence is mostly unfelt. But once an Australian says anything in English anywhere in public, if another Australian is in the vicinity odds are they’ll come and introduce themselves. This has happened in nightclubs and bars, in every one of my law classes, after a phone conversation on the street. Even in yoga class, where silence is mandatory!

Sometimes, I really hate Australians. With the broad, lazy, nasal accent, it seems impossible that anyone could take us seriously. Entire conversations are sometimes spent locked in a cultural cringe. When Australians get drunk the talk becomes parochial and they carry on with little regard to the fact that Australia is actually both insignificant and boring. Sometimes we forget that no-one outside the citizenry cares about Australian politics, university structure or whether Home and Away or Neighbours has superior plot development.

So every time I meet a new Australian, I have this double feeling of happiness and guilt/shame. Mostly, good things happen. The last time I met new Australians it was on the U-Bahn home from uni and we ended up having dinner that night of pizza and house red streetside near Nollendorfplatz. It’s easy to become friends with someone when you share a background. Bluntly, you have things to talk about.

But I dread ending up cocooned by ‘Strine. It’s comfortable, sure, but it’s silly and it’s not what I want. And (with respect to all concerned) I don’t want to become like the Americans. I know the university is lousy with them, but I haven’t met any kids from the US yet. Apparently they hang out always together and don’t mix much.

Yet some of my closest friends are Australians I have met overseas. And some Australians here I can do without. As time goes on people become friends simply because they’re awesome, rather than due to relationships of nationality or convenience or obligation. Being “Australian” doesn’t matter. I guess Stockholm provides a weird illustration of this: we spent ANZAC day - one of the most patriotic days on our calendar - on a pirate-themed gay bar on a ship in the middle of the harbour.