Odd how even the most accident-prone of us seem to stay safe in our own countries but once abroad, cut loose on the gumbiness. Sure, I managed to stay safe on the ice the other day, but I’ve lost count of the number of bus driver’s side mirrors I’ve copped in the head due to to looking right first. Similarly, I’ve heard endless tales of Europeans downunder being assaulted by various moving objects. Aside from the usual sharks, footballs and beer bottles, here’s one that cracked me up about Melbourne’s trams…

Not everything lost and gained when overseas is abstract and intangible. Some of it is very much material. Like my friend’s toenail, for example.

And I don’t mean just any toenail: we’re talking the Toemaster, the big fella. Okay, so it hasn’t quite fallen off yet, but it’s rather an interesting shade of mottled purple and it would appear that its dancing days are over. (The wound was sustained sometime in the course of a particularly huge night, possibly run over by the beer scooter?)

Being a bit of a rough and tumble country girl herself (well, as far as one can consider a private Catholic girls’ school in Terrigal ‘country’), Laura has no qualms about whipping out this monstrosity in the presence of perfect strangers and inviting them for a close inspection and a blow-by-blow account of its various bloody phases - always, of course, to our disgusted cries of ‘God, girl, put that thing back in its Ugg boot!’ What we have learned from this episode: falling up a flight of stairs can be just as physically devastating as falling down them.

In terms of abstract gains, here are a couple of other miscellaneous acquisitions:

1. An overly crude sense of nationalistic pride. My bedroom is swathed in magazine cutouts of Oz - who cares if I’ve never been to Uluru or seen the Devil’s Marbles? Details, people!
2. A newfound appreciation for those proficient in the English language. Sure, it’s satisfying to converse with people in a language other than your mother tongue, but it’s also frustrating, demoralising and a downright pain in the bum. My German tutor in Sydney failed to mention that.

There are a few things you tend to lose after having lived abroad for some time. Here’s two of the important things.

1. Tragically, all knowledge of current gossip from Aussie celebrity circles. Um, hello - Princess Mary’s popped one out? And Bec Cartwright too? How is it possible I did not know about this? Steph’s mum sent her a copy of the latest Who Weekly and it’s become our bible, tattered and worn as it makes the rounds of our four bedrooms, clutched to our chests at night and the first thing we lay eyes on in the morn….

2. My grasp of the English language; yes, despite the woes of my previous post, because I’m like, so fluent in German now. (Ha! Sarcasm detector on overload.) Instead of coming home with two languages I’ll probably be left with half of one. Virtually the only English I hear spoken these days is from the other three Aussie girls, and I don’t suppose that could really be called ‘proper’ English! I tried to email my tutor in Sydney the other day and for the life of me could not think how to spell ‘house’ - all that came to mind was the German ‘haus’. And all of our sentences are starting to be in the German way constructed, because we that all the time hearing are.

Thankfully, I’m not the only one who sometimes has - well, let’s call them…little issues - with the language barrier in places where English is not altogether prevalent. Or is spoken in it’s sister-form, Engrish. Check out Getting cozy with the language barrier for some embarrassing examples…

The joys of learning a new language mean that one is left oftentimes satisfied and proud, at other times more than a little red faced. I’m told that it’s all about learning to laugh at yourself. (And be laughed at by others.)

One morning the task fell to yours truly to speak for 10 minutes in my German class about ‘Mein Heimatland’ - my home country. This was not difficult in itself: it’s facing question time afterwards that can often leave you open to catastrophe. After explaining that yes, we do eat kangaroo, and yes, this does make us the only country on earth that eats our own icon, and yes, chicken tastes better, and no, I haven’t met Kylie Minogue, and no, you can’t get kangaroo burgers at McDonalds in Australia (yes, that one was from an American guy), my tutor threw one way out of left field.

‘Alison, warum ist die Sonne in Australien so gefährlich?’ (Why is the sun in Australia so dangerous?) Given that ‘ozone layer’ is not really a term that falls into the category of everyday conversation, I naturally had absolutely no idea what it was - come to think of it, I didn’t even know what the word for ‘hole’ was. (For future reference, it’s ‘Ozonloch’.)
So after a number of mumbled ums and ahs and possibly a few Aussie curses as well I blurted out something along the lines of ‘Wir haben eine große Fehler in unsere Himmel’, which loosely translated means something like ‘We have a big mistake in our heavens’. I have a feeling this is something I’m not going to live down for a while yet.

Have to say, glad I wasn’t out and about on the roads on this day…check out this vid for crazy truck drivers on the Autobahn - no fear!

It was a seminal moment in the life of any foreigner living in Germany.

Today, a German flatmate – one who speaks excellent English, and thus is a most excellent friend - presented his car keys with a flourish and informed us that it was high time we took our first spin on the infamous German Autobahn.

Hell, yes! Given that there was an abnormal growth in his car that he referred to as the ‘clutch’, I passed on taking the wheel myself but Lozz didn’t hold back, whooshing us down the speed limit-less Autobahn at a hearty 180kmph.
(Is that all, you say? Well yes, considering the wheels of his little Golf had already started rattling in a most threatening manner.) And that was fast enough for me - I swear that over the sound of Robbie Williams on the radio I heard the sonic boom as we broke through the sound barrier.

All credit to Maz: he played it cool despite Lozz keeping up a running commentary of ‘Shit. Roundabout. Shit. Traffic lights. Shit. Merging traffic. Shit’ and switching on the windscreen wipers every time she needed the blinkers. In fact, I think he only physically ducked once, and that was fair enough given that due to her mysterious penchant for the left hand side of the road she came within inches of giddy-upping several taxis and a semi-trailer.

It seems not everyone appreciates the true nature of the Hausmeister. Or rather, overappreciates them. Sure, Germans behaving badly, it may be true that ‘Hausmeister’ sounds significantly sexier than the somewhat beleaugered ‘janitor’, but anyone’s who’s ever lived in Germany knows just how painful they are. Not when they’re present - that’s when you’re in luck - but more because of their conspicuous absence just when a tap has burst or your roof caved in. By contrast, ‘landlord’ sounds almost…well…lordly.

Today my window fell out of the wall. This was rather problematic because it’s quite a large window and I’m not really a very big girl. Naturally I was standing right below it at the time and managed to catch the two panes of glass (or rather, they fell on me but somehow didn’t shatter, and I held on out of pure shock) and shoved them back in the general direction of the the window frame (that is to say, I leant them against the same wall then went looking for someone bigger and stronger to fix it).

After consulting my dictionary to make sure I had the terminology down (ie. ‘my ‘window’ is now just a large gaping hole in the side of my room’), I went in search of the Hausmeister.

Insert David Attenborough nature channel voice here: ‘A rare and enigmatic breed, the Hausmeister, a German native but also occasionally found in northern Switzerland and parts of Austria, is seldom spotted and has certain consultation hours that effectually mean there is a six minute window of opportunity only during the equinox when there’s a southerly blowing, or in the midst of a meteorite shower, that he is available for consultation. You can see by the way he scuttles about with his nostrils flaring and ears to the ground that there will be, in fact, no electricity today, or indeed, for some time yet…’

Ok, so I’ve just spent two posts boasting about my adventurousness. I felt the need to take the liberty of stringing it out since it’s rare I do downright adventurous things and when I do I’m more likely to be wetting myself than to have the presence of mind to take pics of them. Unlike me, there are people like D. Bailey who do that. Check out these Switzerland images…