anywhere i lay my head

i'm baaaack.
to be honest i can't really be bothered detailing my adventures in germany, but a picture tells a thousand words, so here's a whole lot of words for you.

freiburg

on the tram in freiburg

l-r: me, janet, tina

day trip to strasbourg, france

strasbourg
mmm, apfelsaft

munich

night out in munich

day trip to basel, switzerland

bmw museum

berlin

berlin wall

cologne

our hostel room in cologne, aka the fortress of awesomeness. cleanliness is apparently not our strong point.

cruise down the rhine

the downside of this trip is that now that i'm back in australia, i'm bitterly disappointed. this is a snippet of my tirade directed towards my family in general:

me: australia is awful. if you go to the country here, there's cows. if you go to the country in germany, there's bloody castles everywhere.
mum: it isn't that bad. living in australia does have its advantages.
me: yeah but it's not exactly the hub of fucking civilisation, is it ?

anyway, my point is, as soon as school as over i'm off to europe and i'm never coming back - how i will execute this is another matter. since my grandfather was swiss my father had the chance of taking out citizenship until the age of 18, and he never did, which pisses me off even more. he regrets it now, but that doesn't make it any better, does it ?
if you're in europe and willing to marry me temporarily with the next few years so that i can gain citizenship, let me know, mmkay ?

she's got a ticket to ride

twenty four hours is a long time to spend on a plane.

but if you're going to spend twenty four hours on a plane, you might as well be flying singapore airlines. oh, and going to germany.

i am officially leaving melbourne with the other students on the study tour at 5pm tomorrow, and after our long-haul flight we will land in frankfurt airport at about 7am german time. we then get straight on a train to go to freiburg where everyone will settle in the youth hostel. throughout the next three weeks or so we will stay in munich, berlin and cologne, with day excursions to bordering regions in austria, switzerland and france.

so it's safe to say that i probably will not be updating for at least three weeks (that is, if anybody actually reads this thing). it is possible that i'll post but not likely ~ i have plenty of holiday homework to fill my evenings and i need to keep in touch with all my friends via email/facebook. hopefully i will be out having fun at some point, too.

bye for now. see you in a month or so (:

_______________________

all these things that i've done

today was my unofficial birthday. my actual birthday is on march 28, but that would prove difficult to celebrate with my family considering i will be on the plane to germany at the time.

i actually have an extended birthday ~ i hop on the plane at 5pm on the 27th, sometime during the 24-hour flight it becomes the 28th, and then since germany is ten hours behind melbourne we arrive at about 8am on the 28th again. only five days left until i leave :)

since today was the day we chose to celebrate my birthday, i got some presents: a new nikon coolpix digital camera [i can test it out on all the castles in germany], a book of andy warhol portraits, and a $50 gift card for cotton on body. i spent it on two sets of underwear, and eventually went over the $50 limit with a white bathrobe and some adorable grey over-the-knee socks.

we also went to the camberwell markets this morning, where i bought a pair of nicola finetti studded platform heels for $10, a first-edition of the edie sedgwick bio edie: an american biography for $4, and a silk scarf for $20.

i started officially packing for my trip today, and limiting how much i put in my bag is proving a little problematic. normally i'm not a gratuitous over-packer, but there are so many things i want to bring to germany, along with several things i don't really care for but have to pack anyway ~ an awful navy waterproof jacket, an ugly maroon umbrella [mum inexplicably bought one that "matched my uniform" .. ugh], etc. but whatever. i guess if i buy stuff and i have to make room, i can always surreptitiously throw things away. after all, who needs a towel anyway ?

currently listening to:

love is dead ~ brett anderson

dancing with myself ~ nouvelle vague

mersey paradise ~ the stone roses

bubblegum ~ brigitte bardot

of deep meaning philosophies where only showbiz loses

apparently record labels have just gone on an insane deleting spree. about a quarter of my youtube videos had to be deleted because of copyright. the videos are made to sync with the song so this silly audioswap business isn't going to be any help, sorry, thanx for trying. this is so annoying, i slaved over these videos. while none of my ~best works~ were deleted, there were several with disabled audio that i was quite fond of including a fred astaire and ginger rogers tribute set to "lose control" by missy elliot. edgy, i know. but now nobody has the pleasure of watching it except me. ugh. i guess i'm just going to have to start using more obscure songs for my videos. check out one of the 18 videos remaining ~ my channel is d1sintegration [named aaages ago when i was obsessed with that song by the cure, okay ?]

on a more cheerful note, i now have everything i need for germany except for boots. i have issues with buying boots because my calves are abnormally slim, so boots are always too wide and look completely ridiculous. but anyway on saturday i hit piccadilly circus in carlton and as far as successful purchases go, i got ~

~ a red wool and cashmere duffel coat, $149 ;

~ black wool/angora gloves, $24.95 [i can't find a good picture that looks similar]

~ black acrylic scarf, $24.95 [ditto].

i would post an outfit photo but tbh the webcam photo quality is just awful so i'd rather wait until i get a decent camera. [i actually do have a sort-of-okay camera, but i lost the cord that connects it to the computer. shhhh.]

on sunday i hit the camberwell markets with the family. my 11-years-old-as-of-march-6 sister, sophie, has been obsessed with the idea of busking lately so she brought her ipod speakers and sang this is me from camp rock. in case you haven't guessed, my sister and i are basically the most divergent siblings you can get when it comes to personality. anyway she bolted about 5 minutes after she started because dad was monitoring her and she wanted him to "go away", being helplessly infantile as usual, and eventually we all met up at the coffee shop.

it was pretty slim pickings at the market, clothing-wise, but i spotted a fabulous 80s party dress. it was strapless, cream and had three matching rosettes at the bust and the waist [it's a lot less weird and ugly than it sounds]. the dress is the exact same shape that i want for my formal dress and i was endeared to the cute details but unfortunately it had perspiration stains. gross.

eventually i got a pair of cute mesh gloves for $10 ~

such a small touch but nevertheless made me feel 50x more chic.

anyway i must stop writing because i have a health and human development 3/4 sac in two days and i am incapable of studying at the moment [as if i'm ever capable of studying]. it sucks because i can't dismiss it as not counting because it DOES count .. i have an english 1/2 sac on medea on friday but i'm not really stressing because i like essays and all i have to do is write notes. whereas i don't know shit about ishchaemic heart disease or w/e. so, bai for now.