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…

Amendment to my last post: the coldest I have ever been in my life was not while I was canyoning in the Swiss Alps, but rather approximately 15 minutes after that, when I discovered the base shelter showers had no hot water.

My feet were frozen stiff and I literally could not bend them at all, and in those flimsy little wetsuit booties every tiny pebble I’d stepped on (which was a lot, given that I’d been walking through a river bed) opened up new worlds of pain.

Naturally, though, all four of had fallen instantly in love with our guides (you know these rugged extreme sports types!) but of course no-one really looks at their most attractive with blue lips and snot all over their faces.

In one part of the canyon a waterfall came down into a narrow opening between two cliffs into a small pool that can’t have been more than three feet deep, but was called the ‘washing machine’ because the waters were churning and swirling around so much it was impossible to stay on your feet. We had to cross through this one by one, and one by one every one of us inevitably lost our footing and started thrashing around wildly in sheer panic, which, when it’s happening to someone else, is absolutely the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, but when it happens to you all you can think about is the fact that someone will have to tell your parents you managed to drown in three feet of water…

…meanwhile the guides, who somehow always manage to stay on their feet, are pissing themselves laughing at your ineptitude for a good couple of minutes before they finally show mercy, pluck you out with one hand and set you on your way again.

Never in my life have I needed a cup of tea and a hot shower so badly.

…the leaders of an adventure company who run all kinds of activities like hang gliding, para gliging and bungy jumping, so at least our hangovers are productive this time. After some serious bacon and eggs we set out in the rain in search of some serious adventure (that is, we eye the price list warily, carefully select the cheapest thing available and even then finger our credit cards with the guilty expression of someone frittering away grandma’s pension money).

It turns out to be a half-day canyoning in the Alps. What be canyoning? you ask. Turns out it’s just like white-water rafting, only without the raft (hence the multitude of scrapes and bruises at the end of the day).

We’re suited up from neck to toe in wetsuits, wetsuit jackets, bright blue wind-cheater thingamajigs and finally life jackets. The helmets are so tight I worry my brain cells (what’s left of them) might start oozing out of my ears, and all have names scrawled acorss them in texta which we’re told is to help the photographer compile individual folios, but really I think it’s just so they can laugh at us. All the extra-large helmets read things like Sunflower and Daisy, and the small ones Tiger and Tank, that sort of thing.

So, with my comrades Starfish, God, Cock, Player, Single and Osama (appropriately, I was Princess), I spent the day launching myself head first into waterfalls, abseiling down cliffs and generally being the coldest I have ever been in my life.

Swiss trains are notoriously high tech, but en route to Interlaken today I’m certain this one was put in place specially to confuse us embattled foreigners, because it took all four of us to figure out how to flush the toilet without simultaneously setting off the hand dryer, the hot tap and the water filter.

This didn’t faze us so much, as we’ve all been painfully aware for years that technology is the enemy: what was more distressing was the sudden discovery by Stephi and Laura that neither of their palms bear any trace of lifelines. Now not only is technology against us, but nature is too.

Naturally enough, we arrive in Zweisimmen five minutes too late to meet our connecting train, so we have no choice but to board this rickety old cattle carriage with bench seats and a squat toilet to take us to some out-of-the-way village were we could meet up with our intended train.

Finally, after taking about seven hours to traverse a country the size of a big toenail, we arrive in Interlaken: a playground for rich snow bunnies during winter, in spring and summer it is the home of extreme sports in Switzerland.

We dump our bags in our hostel dorm, cringe at the number of American accents around and make straight for the bar, which is underground and resembles nothing so much as a dungeon due to Swiss noise regulations, which see the ’shush police’ hanging out the front all night to ensure that no-one who steps outside the door speaks in more than a whisper. But it is here in the bar that we meet…

Given that at time I find the kitschiness factor unbearable, I promised myself I wouldn’t bang on too much about Christmas markets - be they Dutch, German, general Euro or whatever. So I’ll limit myself to a short comment on someone else’s attempt at doing them justice. This post is making me nostalgic, and I’ve actually got a Dutch Chrissie market right down the road…nothing like lots of fairy lights and a bucket or two of Gluehwein to help you get into the spirit of things!

It really is a momentous occasion. Unprecedented, in fact. This is a big day, a big day indeed - the first ever Christanzalia. (That’s Christmas in Konstanz for Team Australia).

There were no holds barred when we stormed the supermarket early this morning in search of much sought-after supplies. Not willing to brave the age-old battle between turkey, inexperienced kitchenhands (us) and the most disgusting oven the world has ever seen (that in our residence hall) we settled for a roast chicken. Didn’t hold back on anything else, though, no indeedy - we’re talking fresh cream puffs from the bakery at two euros a pop, none of that frozen 79 cent rubbish.

After careful deliberation we select Lozz’s kitchen as the scene of our roast because the cleaning ladies have allegedly made an appearance there at some point in the last five months and, shockingly, it’s equipped with slightly more than one rusted pot with broken handle.

Our white plastic Christmas tree with only two of a dozen flashing lights in working order is undoubtedly tacky but erected with love and a liberal helping of vodka - hey, it’s cold out. With the classic Mariah Carey Christmas Anthology in the background, we whip up a meal unparalleled in the history of the world, providing you’re not fussy about soggy vegetables and solid gravy.

Merry Christmas. Oops – Christanzalia, that is.