The One in which We Went Back in Time, and I Noticed Some Things

Things I have noticed since travelling to Germany:

(1) The keyboards on computers are different. Thankfully they have keys for all the umlauted letters, but the 'Z' and the 'Y' have swapped places. Some of the punctuation marks are in different places too, such as '?' and apostrophes require one to hold down shift, which is way annoying. Paul's keyboard was recently attacked by coffee, and is still recovering. Any spelling mistakes are mostly due to buttons not recognising that they have been pushed.

(2) The pedestrian crossings do not have buttons to push. The lights are always active, whether someone is there or not. Also, they don't make much noise to alert you that they are green, so you had better be paying attention.

(3) The German phrase for breaking up with your boyfriend or girlfriend is "auf der Mond schießen" or "shoot to the moon." In Germany, you flick them to the moon when th relationship is over.

(4) Broadband is super fast. You can load up a video page, push play and be certain that the video will load faster than you can watch it.

**FUN FACT** As I type this, I am drinking Sprite and eating Nutella with a spoon.

(5) Burghausen has an "American Shop". Guess what it sells?

That's right Weapons. Lots and lots of weapons. And lighters, NY caps and naturally, guns.

(6) The rumours are true. You can buy beer everywhere. Vending machines, petrol stations, movie theatres, McDonalds. Pretty much anywhere. At the petrol station, there are mini bottles of Jägermeister right next to the chocolate bars and packets of gum. And they cost about NZ$10 for 300ml. 750ml costs NZ$20. In NZ, 750ml of Jägermeister costs around $35. 500ml of beer, when bought from retail stores, costs aout NZ$3. They better have strict drunk-driving rules.

(7) Spaghettieis is available in Burghausen, but they only do the simple version (without the chocolate icecream 'meatballs'). It was good. The texture was a bit strange but it looked cool and tasted great. It was vanilla ice cream, raspberry sauce and white chocolate shavings. And a wafer.

Paul and I got up early on Wednesday morning to go to Munich. Set us back €30, but it was for both there and back. 'Twas all very easy except for the part when the train was going to leave in five minutes and we hadn't yet bought our tickets, and there was a man in front who couldn't have taken longer if he'd been a turtle with arthritis. But we held our tongues. We're determined to be foreigners with ettiquette.

The tour to Dachau left at 12:30pm. We took the bus to the town, which is twenty minutes from Munich and houses about 40,000 people. The sky was growing darker as we approached and rain eventually fell upon us, setting an appropriately dreary mood. The camp itself retains quite a few of the original buildings, including the gas chambers and incinerators. The camp site and museum were thought-provoking and respectful, although I had to wonder at the poor taste of a "No Smoking" sign outside the crematorium building.

I also learnt that it is compulsory in Bavaria for German students to visit a concentration camp at least once during their schooling. It is recommended for students in other states to do so as well, but is not compulsory as of yet.
More photos can be found on facebook. None of the photos have me in them because I thought it would be in poor taste to 'pose' at a memorial site such as this.

The guide was informative and everybody seemed appropriately contemplative, except for one fat man who kept getting in the way of everyone's photos.

Heading home, we were playing 'Last Card' on the train. We were sitting next to a blonde girl and lamenting the fact that we hadn't made any travelling buddies to whom we could teach our game. Said blonde girl revealed she could speak English, her name was Theresa and that she came from Tanzania. Apparently 'Last Card' is almost exactly the same as a German game called 'Mau-Mau'. So we played card games on the train together.

On June 8, we are going to Berlin for four days. This weekend we may be heading to Salzburg, via Fucking. I promise to buy and photograph the light beer from the area, "Fucking Hell".