Heidelberg Autumn Festival

This was our last weekend in Heidelberg and lucky for us, it was the Heidelberg Autumn Festival. This basically meant the city streets were filled with stalls of food, drinks, nick-nacks and junk. There was also a medieval stall setting setup which was kinda fun and different to see on the usual festivals around here. The eating habits were a) very german and b) not good for the body. Below I documented the food, the fun

PS. I was exceptionally mortified by the public display of pee'ing on the night of the festival. I counted 16 men (and if I wasn't so intoxicated, I would have seen more) peeing randomly in the streets. What's worse is that we live (now 'lived'!) in a small alley off the main street, which made our street #1 pee zone for the filthy buggers and just walking down our street the next day would make anyone gag from the stench of last nights pee festivities.

Entree was raw onions, pickles and fat (yes, seriously, fat) mixed with ham bits spread on bread.

Below was the main, pasta, steak with Gorgonzola sauce..

Breakfast was beer, currywurst for the hubby and steakbread for me!

Translated is the food on offer: Onion cake with new wine (basically grape juice with about 1-2% alcohol content)

Lots of live band stages were set up all round the city and that was pretty cool.

It was cheaper and easier to just drink straight from the bottle. Drinking in the streets is not only condoned but encouraged here.

Out the front of our street at 11:30pm at night, PACKED with people!

View in the other direction.

And a few of us having fun and slightly tipsy!

Dead spider

Slightly sadistic, but.... all good things come to those who wait right?
Re: previous post

Packing packing packing

Shipping stuff from Germany to Australia feels like it takes longer to pack the dam boxes than ship them! Thankfully, we are almost done.....

Wine Oktoberfest... kinda

We might not have made it to Oktoberfest this year but we certainly made it to a 'fest'. In the Hubby's region, its wine festival time so we went to the Dürkheim Wurstmarkt... or Wurstfest.... which is directly translated to the sausage fest (*immature giggle*).

http://www.duerkheimer-wurstmarkt.de/duerkheimer-wurstmarkt.html?&L=1

This isn't a great shot, but its the only one we got sitting in the 'wine halls' (instead of beer halls for Oktoberfest) where people drink huge glasses (0.5L) of wine & eat copious amounts of pig related meat products. Unfortunately it was only 2pm, so not too many people drinking, drunk or all that merry yet.
To get into the festivities, I ate a pork knuckle and listened to the folk band play their jolly German tunes.

Fleeting moments of German-ness

Most of the time, between the Hubby and I, I forget our cultural differences. I forget his accent, different taste in food and even his strange desire for Winter.... but its days like today, in fleeting moments of German-ness, he glaringly reminds me of where he is from - and I love him for it.

Spiders!

Pfffffft, not all big spiders live in Australia!!!.... (I will also be showering in the sink from now on just in case he has decided to live in the shower drains and crawl up when he wants!).

Aua! (English version: "Ouch!")

I'm a clutz at the best of times... sadly, if I fall and hurt myself, I NEVER bruise and it just seems like I'm complaining about pain in a normal looking part of my body. Today I would like to post some bragging rights to a big fat bruise I aquired whilst moving house (we are leaving our lovely home in Heidelberg to stay with Hubby's parents for a few months before we embark on our journey to Australia)...
Results of falling UP the stairs below.
Impressive huh Huh HUH??? (Well fine then, maybe not that impressive, but it is for me!)

PS. I've noticed if Germans hurt themselves, they say a different word - Aua - sounds like Owah... and if you were wondering, oops is hoppla and oops-a-daisy is Hoppala! I wouldn't have guessed but who knew pain/accident noises were internationally different?!

One year in Germany and its time to leave (5 Sept 10 - 5 Sept 11)

Lets be honest, its been a tough road living here. Balanced against a wonderful relationship/engagement/marriage without finding career gratifying work, the struggles to being accepted into the community, adapting to cultural differences, everything making me sick and coping with extreme seasons, its been definitely a tug of war to stay positive/happy. The many positives of Germany have not been able to outweigh what I'm used to elsewhere. Not saying people here don't have their own good quality of life, its just we were raised to appreciate different things and things weren't stacked in my favor.
With the love and support of my hubby, we've tried really hard to make it work with almost everything fighting us along the way. We made the decision to finally seek a new life overseas. Turns out when scoping jobs in the US, Canada, Switzerland and a handful of other locations, an Australian job offer came up the best for my man and we decided to take the leap to my side of life and give it a try in the land of the koalas.
I write this in the last days of warmth as Autumn seems to set in (below), leaves have started to fall and nights drop to jacket temperatures. Also below is us at the German version of a beach (stones on the shores of the Rhine river) and another documentation of just one of the millions of bites/reactions from the bugs (which we now know are midges that are biting) and causing our bodies not only an insane amount of itching but its also now making us feel really sick and super tired (another tug-of-war with happiness).
I am grateful for the experiences Germany has given me, but am happy and ready to start a new chapter. This will begin in January…..