Schwelmo's Welt

I am already back since a week. Time is running fast as older you get shocking! Even with a big personal disappointment I enjoy my time. We had about 30C for a week! In Germany! Well, was supposed to have a summer holiday anyway! The World Cup is fantastic and after the Poland game I also think we have a real chance..but time will tell.

I have been in Berlin for a few days as I mentioned before. Beside that the fantastic Wellingtonian Fred Freddys Drop a played a great gig I was glad to see friends which I haven’t seen for 3 (or 1 year). Nothing changed, it was as you never have been away. Even we all had different lives, joys and problems. In a way it is weird but very good to know.

But some things are strange in Germany. First, people are friendly. I don’t know if it is the weather, the world cup or my bad expectations as everybody told me (and I completely agreed) how rough we are. But maybe they got special classes before the World Cup. I was really surprised and confused when a visit a shop and the clerk didn’t stop talking to me. Still having a jetlag at this time I couldn’t deal with it and kept it short.

The country (including cars and Kebab shops) is full of Schwarz-Rot-Gold (yeah gold not yellow Dorothee).

Soy milk is available in every shop but in nearly no Café; except in Berlin. Apropos Berlin. I actually spent allmy time in Kreuzberg and Charlottenburg, but if the weather is great Berlin is beautyfull. So I made plans to open my live-gig-vegan-(local beer)-restaurant-pub there. But they already had 50 restaurants/pub providing vegan things. So I better finish my studies until I find another place. I might check out Cologne this weekend (where I also hope to get a ticket for Ghana: Czech).

I know, I said that in Germany we would never put artificial flavours in beer. But to my horror every brand has a lemon, apple, lime and/or cola mix! Blasphemy! The ads are all with beautiful young slime woman in bikinis. The typical beer drinker (in Germany)! So you know why they put the sweet stuff in good beer. That’s directly led me to the world cup and Brasil. A great number of girls chose to become Brasil supporter. This is thanks to the Nike advertisements! (Some are Italy supporters as they apparently look better and that is David Beckhams fault who brought all the Womens weekly readers into the Soccer world). But luckily the world cup is not (yet) a Nike TV spot where Brasil is allowed to do everything and the opponent is due to stand, watch and admire the ballet. After the problems Brasil had with Croatia I think they will lose against Australia. Australia will tackle them hard (hey they even injured two Dutch in a test match before) and Ronaldinho & Co. will be surprised that somebody doesn’t show the respect they are used to from the TV clips and play station games.

Enough football! Gonna watch the All Blacks against Ireland on Sunday as well!

Let me know when the weather is better in Aotearoa than I come back!

# posted by Schwelmo @ Friday, June 16, 2006