Little things like there being no differentiation between a married Frau Hambrett and an unmarried Frau Hambrett, means I get called Mrs a lot. Yesterday I was even called Mrs Hamster, which was a magnificent collision of my oft-misinterpreted surname and the lack of ‘Miss’ or ‘Ms’ in German.

Last night, during a class with a Spanish student of mine, let’s call him J, we laughed like drains for the entire 90 minutes. This is largely because, due to fatigue, J’s Spanish accent was wildly thick and he was quite unable to say the word ‘zone’ without sounding like Antonio Banderas. Every time he said ‘zooooorrrrrhn’ I started laughing and he said ‘why you lath’ and I would laugh some more. It was mildly unprofessional and I am usually very restrained when my students speak of their childrens, or things coming out of TVs or of ‘putting off their trousers’ after a hard day’s work, but J has an excellent sense of humour, and soon we were laughing together at Antonio Banderas, the Spanish, French and Italians. ‘When the French speak English,’ J said, ‘it is truly terrible. It is like they are kicking the dictionary.’

Learning a language is exactly like kicking the dictionary. Putting a language on the floor and booting it around, so words and meanings fly out and rub shoulders when they shouldn’t, wreaking havoc on meaning.  Sometimes the results are stupendous and original, because, often, as one scrambles for the best word, in the heat of the conversational moment, the most simple, direct route is best. Hence my class describing a woman the other day as having ‘canyons all over her face’ instead of, perhaps, ‘deep wrinkles’ or ‘notable crows feet’. And often translating one’s own idiom directly, rather than searching for an appropriate alternative, is less time consuming and allows the conversation to continue flowing – which is why the same poor woman with canyons all over her face, was also accused of looking like an old box.

Sometimes tiny omissions – like an ‘e’ – result in nonsensical claims like ‘I can’t breath’ or using the wrong pronoun makes you far too familiar and bordering on rude (I have since stopped attempting to translate ‘you too’ into ‘du auch’ and thus insulting people when they wish me a good day, by being far too presumptive and casual). Often verbs with similar-but-not-quite-the-same meanings get confused and a lot of ‘renting’ goes on, when it should be ‘lending’ – SG often rents things to people – or SG provides running commentary on the process of ‘watching for a parking lot’ instead of looking for a parking spot.

The only good thing about it all is we are all in the same boat, kicking the dictionary together. Thank God languages are generally sturdy creatures and the damage is (not always) irreparable. And by the way boat in German is ‘das Boot’ and ship is ‘das Schiff’ which, when I am having a particularly bad day, I also get confused with pen and boot. And that is the English boot, not the German boot.

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The other day someone asked me if Australians are patriotic. In and of itself that is a loaded question and I made some sort of strange ‘yyyeeeaaaahnooooo’ noise which swiftly ended when the second part of the question was posed, ‘to England or to Australia?’  I was quick to assure the lovely man that we display little patriotism to England, despite the Union Jack on our flag, despite the fact we voted against becoming a republic and despite the fact half the bloody country will spend a year in London at some point, and that in fact there exists an age old rivalry between us and the United Kingdom. I didn’t delve any further, because it was not the time or place to embark on a lengthy monologue about it all, but I have been mulling over the question for a while. There is but one take home message in this well-intentioned but completely bizarre question and that is a take home message I encounter time and time again in Europe, and that is – no one really gets Australia.

That’s fine. We are very young, very far away and are largely known for two things 1) our unconventional start as a Western nation 2) our unconventional flaura and fauna. In between grappling with the idea of England sending boatloads of (petty) thieves to a vast, unknown land at the bottom of the globe (and establishing, in an extremely short amount of time, a thriving nation) and an enormous marsupial that bounces and keeps its baby in a pocket, there is little space to attempt to come to grips with the Australian culture. To be fair, Australians themselves have difficulties defining what this culture is – we simply inhabit it, identify with some or most of its complex, woven facets and fail miserably when trying to present ourselves to the world.

I blame several things. Paul Hogan – you have no idea how many people say ‘that’s not a knife’ to me, sometimes in the most obscure of ways simply because they are so desperate to reference it – Australian Tourism for its bizarre penchant for embarrassing campaigns in which people wear a lot of shorts and hiking boots and hats, and us. We tend to shoot ourselves in the foot because a) we aren’t fully comfortable with who we are and therefore what image to present to the rest of the world b) we love telling stories, regardless of the amount of truth they contain. So what happens is we end up fulfilling the world’s expectation of us, by sitting around in shorts and thongs, telling outrageous stories about snakes and spiders with a thick, exaggerated accent for effect because, well, it’s just easier than being serious. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – the rest of the world walks away from the experience with all assumptions truly confirmed – we are friendly, funny, talkative and routinely wrestle venomous snakes.

What we fail to explain comprehensively are the finer details of a truly wonderful, rich, complex culture that has formed in the most unique social, environmental and historical circumstances. Of an ever evolving identity that, despite its constant evolution, despite its youth, despite the constant debates that surround it, really does have a strong foundation, built on commonalities, shared histories and shared values. We have an indigenous history and we have a white history. We have a strong immigration history. And these disparate, varied, unusual collective histories have combined to produce a unique shared culture. We have a shared way of speaking, a shared way of interacting with each other, a shared sense of humour and lack of pretension. A shared openness, a shared stubbornness. A shared sense of adventure. A shared social code. A shared love and awareness of, reliance on and respect for the outdoors. We are commonly afforded and commonly expect a shared freedom to be heard, to express. We have a shared understanding of what it does and can mean to live in Australia and to be an Australian.

But we cannot expect the rest of the world to understand that, if we don’t tell them.

I love a good snake/spider story and I derive a sick amount of pleasure from telling wide-eyed Europeans about the presence of sharks in our waters (having never actually seen a shark, or experienced a shark alarm or anything remotely shark-related) and what they say the best way to evade a crocodile is (despite never actually having seen a crocodile outside of a zoo). As a beach lover who wears thongs and routinely says ‘no worries’, I play into many a stereotype and for the most part, that’s fine. Because stereotype or no stereotype I am a beach lover who wears thongs and says no worries and enjoys a venomous snake story.

But I also love, and make a concerted effort to do so, explaining what we are also about, beyond the crocs (animals, not shoes) and kangaroos. I want the rest of the world – or at least the people I meet – to understand my culture like I do. Or at least, at the very least, to know that we do have  our own, collective culture, despite our youth, despite how un-serious and casual we claim to be about it, and it’s an interesting, complex one that – despite how unfashionable it is to say this – we are quite and quietly proud of.

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You see in some cases, and in some countries, teaching English may well involve 2 hours of teaching kids how to count, or a few hours of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘I would like a coffee.’ But not here. Here, people start learning English at school. By the time they have finished, they have been learning English in a school environment for ten years. Most of them know the grammar, many of them better than English speakers themselves. (I shudder to think of what teaching English in the Netherlands or Scandinavia, where they don’t dub film or television and where the people speak near perfect, accent-less English is like.) Most of them don’t really want to know how to order a coffee, they want to know more. They want to perfect their grammar and move onwards and upwards towards total fluency. Or even worse … they are totally fluent and want to get even better. They want to speak like native speakers.

To be a language teacher means you really have to get inside your own language and know it inside out. It is to be intensely familiar, on a whole new level, with your mother tongue. Your grammar has to be perfect, or close to, all the time because your students are going to write down and repeat what you say, or catch you out, or prove you wrong, or double and triple check to see if you are absolutely sure that is the only preposition you can use in that sentence. Sure, as native speakers, we should all know the basics – although many of us don’t, including those with journalism degrees writing for daily nationals – but knowing the basics isn’t enough. You need to know the answer and you need to know why it is as it is, or why, out of several possibilities, the answer you are giving them is the best possible one. Why this tense now and not that one? Why this preposition here, but in an almost identical situation, that one? Why should I put this word in this position in the sentence, and not in that one? Why can’t I say this? Am I wrong, or is it just not ideal? What makes it less ideal than your suggestion? Are you sure?

Beyond the complicated, bendable, nit-picky, sometimes bizarre grammatical basics of the fluid, flexible (and fantastic) English language, there are other things you will be called upon to do as a language teacher. You may have to help bankers understand legal documents; write a speech for a company’s CEO; teach suits the terms and systems specific to the business world; teach civil servants the language, terms and processes specific to the sector of the government they work for; make people aware of cultural differences and how to deal with them in different situations; teach pronunciation in the ‘how now brown cow’ kind of way; prepare students for university entrance examinations that consist of data analysis and essays. Often you must maintain the energy necessary to keep one single class interested and informed for 5 hours straight, or coax someone to speak, as grammatically correctly and as clearly as they can, for 90 minutes.

To be a language teacher is also to be something of a trivia vessel. You have to know a lot about stuff (or at least hoard facts as you go along). Stuff about your own culture, stuff about places you have been to, stuff about literature they studied in high school, films they have seen, songs they have heard, historical moments they are curious about. Not only because, quite often, you need to encourage people to speak by speaking yourself, but also because when it comes to one culture’s curiosity about another, people ask the strangest things. And then, of course, they almost always ask ‘why?’

And finally, to be an Australian language teacher – or indeed to be an Australian anywhere in the world – is to be constantly asked if you have eaten, ridden, seen, touched or owned a kangaroo.

Fucking kangaroos. And yes, I do teach my students how to swear. Sometimes. And only in a grammatically correct and socially appropriate manner. It is a valuable English language skill.

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- It has a population of around 41,000 people.

- It is 35 km from the Czech border.

- The city has been around since 1241.

- The US Army has a base there.

- Weiden means ‘pasture’ or ‘to graze’ in English.

- It has long, hard winters. Which is great, because Lord knows I love winter.

Here is a handy map that I borrowed from the internet and defaced:

I actually think Weiden is further south. Geography was never my strong point.

When I have told my German friends where I am bound for, most of them have looked at me strangely and repeated ‘Weiden’ slowly and clearly, a few times, then admitted to not knowing where it is. Upon hearing where it is, they have all warned me, without fail, about the following:

- the dialect.

- the fact that Bavarians are, essentially, not Germans.

And after this, they have all said, ‘but … why?’ This is perhaps the best question of all. Why Weiden? Why a town of 5 people with an unintelligible way of speaking when, for the past few months, I have been missing my town of 4.5 million and can only just muddle along in a conversation with clear, ‘high German’ speakers? Because I am mad? Because I have completely relinquished any control over my life? Because Weiden is actually one of Europe’s glittering, unknown gems? Because I am being paid millions to write a novel set in Franken and Oberpfalz?

Yes, yes, no and no.

For a little while now, I have been feeling that a new adventure is in order. I love Münster (on particularly rainy days when the bus driver is an arsehole to me, I have less positive feelings towards it) I have some extraordinary friends here, and I love my job. Münster has been the host city of the original Big Life Veränderung/change. It has officially lodged itself in my heart and I hope to return to it time and time again. But I didn’t move to Münster to settle down. It was the first stop on an adventure that, sure, had no specific stops beyond it, but stops nevertheless. The UK was in the running for the next stop, as was Berlin or Hamburg, somewhere in the Mediterranean and Shanghai. Even home, for a little while. The marvellous thing was, I didn’t know. I would make that decision when the time came.

But the time, when it came, coincided with the SG and I beginning to talk seriously about what was next for us. He had to move to Weiden for three years. What was I doing to do? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I wanted to try a new city, that my time in Münster was up. But, as it became more and more clear, my time in Germany wasn’t. Suddenly Shanghai, with SG in Bavaria, lost a touch of its lustre, particularly when the idea of flying back and forth regularly for the sake of our relationship entered the equation. No problem, it would have to be a German city. Hamburg? Berlin? I could move to one of Germany’s bustling metropolises and we could take turns travelling back and forth to each other on weekends. 600km between Weiden and Hamburg and about 100€ one way on the train in in petrol, so 200€ and about 12 hours round trip every weekend, for one of us. Berlin was a couple of hundred kilometres better. We could do it – we could bank on having every weekend free to travel to one another, bank on not being too tired or too poor to make the trip. Where there’s a will, quite often, there is a way.

The more we spoke about it, the more living 600km apart in the same country sounded pointless. Expensive, stressful and pointless. SG is what is keeping me in this country – why orchestrate it so we are so far apart and it is so costly and exhausting to maintain the relationship? Why not try living together in Weiden. Sure, it’s in the back arse of beyond, miles from nowhere, it will be another culture shock and difficult to find work for me. But we would be remiss not to give it a go.

Weiden isn’t as bad as it sounds. It is actually a pretty little town, and because it isn’t a bustling metropolis, the rent on a very spacious, very central apartment is very reasonable. And it’s 2 hours from München, 2 hours from Prague and in a whole new area of Germany I have never explored. It will be, as we have come to call it, The Weiden Adventure. Who knows what it will hold? Most likely a lot of Czech beer and even more meat dishes, but also trips to Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic. New people. New friends.

So A Big Life will soon become a Big Bavarian Life. I am as terrified as I am excited. I will not understand a word anyone says to me and probably eat schnitzel everyday. But I am so, so ready for something new and this tiny little border town is just the ticket.

* Read about the First Big Life Veränderung here.

A couple of years ago, I came to a simple, obvious conclusion. It is always easier to do more rather than cut back. ‘Stop eating so much shit’* sounds so confining and bossy, whereas ‘eat more good things’ is encouraging and kind. It also deals with the tedious psychological issue of immediately not wanting to do something if you are told to do it. If I am told not to eat more shit, I will defiantly eat more shit, even if it is my own list of resolutions, penned by my own hand, telling me not to do it because it is in my own, self-acknowledged interests. If that same list says, ‘eat more!’ I will think to myself, ‘pffft, no, I won’t eat more.’ I am my own worst enemy.

One might suggest I avoid making any sort of resolutions altogether, but I feel far too shiny and new and resolute not to. So in the spirit of compromise, here is what I resolve to do more of in 2012:

Read More

Three books a month. And not just crime fiction. Preferably a touch more historical fiction.

Write More

Finish two of those scrappy manuscripts.

Finish at least three short stories.

Write more feature articles.

Blog more.

Watch More Films

At least two a week. I fell far, far too far behind in 2011 and spent far, far too long unaware of Melissa McCarthy’s excellent comic timing.

Travel More

Make the most of Germany’s borders and, when I am home for December, see more of my own backyard. Like, for example, that reef the rest of the world bangs on about, but I have never seen.

Cook More

My Mum gave me Neil Perry’s The Food I Love for Christmas. We will be getting a new kitchen in March. I need to expand my repertoire beyond Greek food and (excellent) Thai curries. All of this means I must … cook more.

And live more with this in mind …

* But I really must stop eating corn chips, Berliner donuts and wine gums. And on a totally unrelated note, I really must wear eye cream more often.

It started with Calvin Klein’s Truth, a gift from a lovely friend, and my little collection now boasts a handful of eclectic scents including La Martina’s Mujer, Christian Dior’s Dolce Vita, Cacharel’s Scarlett and JPG’s Madame. As of today, I can add three more to this burgeoning bunch and I find this tremendously exciting. Tremendously.

Armand Basi’s Lovely Blossom

Top – apricot and orange blossom

Heart – plum and jasmine

Base – wood and heliotrope

I found this little baby on sale for 17€, whilst Christmas shopping. Obviously it became a gift to myself. Soft, floral and a little bit juicy, Lovely Blossom succeeds where Elizabeth Arden’s conceptually similar Pretty failed a little for me – it isn’t too sweet. It is a lovely little bouquet that stays quite nicely and gives one the sense of walking through an English garden in full Spring bloom, when one is really traipsing down a rainy street in a German winter.

Guerlain’s Aqua Allegoria Jasminora

Top - galbanum, bergamot, cyclamen

Heart - Calabrian jasmine, freesia and lily of the valley

Base - musk and amber

I have long lusted after Guerlain’s Aqua Allegoria range, each scent designed to pay homage to a certain strain of nature, and despite always thinking I would go for the Mandarin and Basil, today I opted for 2011′s release, Jasminora. The former was a touch too mandarin-y. Jasminora is your classic, well made, warm, sensuous jasmine number that gets better every second it develops. By the time it has dried down to its amber and musk base, the creaminess of the jasmine has well and truly taken hold and suddenly, like magic, you’re in the Mediterranean on a balmy summer’s eve.

W’eau Sea

Top – lemon, tangerine and lime

Heart - jasmine, rose and lily of the valley

Base - musk, vanilla and amber

Simple and fresh, this Spanish made bottle of zest is the ultimate beach fragrance and shall be duly taken to Santorini and splashed about with gay abandon.  There are no pretenses with Sea, no fancy notes; just a dash of citrus, a floral heart and a nice, steady dry down. Invigorating and refreshing, just like its namesake.

As a lister, I am inclined to list the big things of 2011, purely to get it all straight in my own head. And to remind myself to stop, take a deep breath and have a glass of wine before a new year bursts onto the scene. And when I say a glass of wine, I mean 4.

This year I …

Turned 26.

Lived in a foreign country.

Spent a third summer on Santorini, and during it a night in this extraordinary hotel.

Visited Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Dublin, Sonderborg, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Kiel, Köln, Fürth, Weiden and London.

Spent 5 days in hospital.

Continued writing professionally for a handful of independent, quality publications.

Taught English as a second language, to all kinds of people, from all over Germany.

Began learning a second language.

Fell in love.

Decided to move to a town of 40,000 on the Germany/Czech border, in the new year, with said love. Here goes nothing.

Started thinking about the likelihood of living in Germany indefinitely. Holy shit.

Wrestled valiantly with snow. And lost. But I have come around, slightly, to the cold.

Ate far, far more than one person should ever eat.

Have been more homesick than I ever believed possible.

Have missed my mother more than I ever believed possible.

Kept doing what I want to do.

Weihnachtsmarkt in Münster

I felt sorry for myself for quite some time. Spent a little while martyring. And slung some vitriol at the weather, to lift my spirits. But then, inevitably, the sleigh bells started ringing. The Christmas markets popped up in the city and the much dreaded snow never came. The world’s best Advent calendar was strung up on my wall and St Nicholas struck on December 6th, with boatloads of chocolate. The gluhwein began to flow. Judy Garland’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas was popped on repeat and I started Christmas shopping. Faced with a list of presents to buy was like being told in a gentle yet deservedly firm manner, ‘look at the people you have here who love you and who you love.’ It was breakthrough number one; the warming realisation that, as much as I will always call Australia home, I also have a home here, one I have built, one where I belong. And one I must remember to treasure.

If Christmas is good for anything, it is heightening sentimentalism and yesterday afternoon, I had the second breakthrough. I was around at Silke’s, wrapping presents and assaulting her ears with my lusty carol singing, when I spied two little red squirrels chasing each other around a tree, scampering about without a care in the world. Bear with me, I am not making this up. As I stood with a truly wonderful friend, drinking coffee and watching squirrels frolic, the Christmas medley from Hanson’s under-appreciated album, Snowed In, came on the radio. My little heart exploded with festive spirit. Nothing spells Christmas for me, like a three-part male, adolescent harmony.

On the walk home, my fluctuating, Christmas-spiked emotions struck again and  I made the mistake of thinking about Mum, which is like my method acting trick if I ever need tears on cue. I just have to think of the words – not even verbalise them –  ’I miss my Mum’ and the tears flow like I’ve rubbed my sockets with raw onion. Quite amazing. But just as I was glancing skyward – a trick I perfected during blood tests to stave off the tears, because needles also make me cry – my phone rang. It was my German Mum, calling to say that she and my German Dad were coming  around to see me. What timing. What delightful timing.

Sitting in our tiny kitchen with tea and biscuits and my German parents, people who have loved and cared for me as if I am one of their own, was the final breakthrough. I am now through to the other side. I am knee deep in Christmas spirit. I am thrilled to be here. I am hand-rubbingly excited about spending Christmas with SG and his family. I may not be in Australia, I may be away from my beloved friends and family – people I will always miss – my Christmas may be devoid of Pa’s pavlova, Nana’s Christmas cake and the sheer noise of my extended family but that’s okay. Because my breakthroughs, however small and however saccharine, have delivered to me one simple conclusion; that I shouldn’t think of what I don’t have, but what I do. That it is better not just to miss those on the other side of the world, but to make room to appreciate the people I have here. Because, and this is the final and most lovely fact – I am lucky enough, so very lucky, to have two homes and all of the comfort, warmth and love they bring. And that will always make for a very Merry Christmas, wherever I happen to be.

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To be fair, this year has been a little kinder. Nature has backed off a little and allowed me and winter some breathing space. Some time to get to know each other a little better. It is mid-December and it has only ‘snowed’ twice and both times for 5 minutes. It hasn’t rained that much (for Germany’s Rain Capital) and most days have remained above 5 degrees. Some have even snuck up to 9. There isn’t any ice on the streets and the nights aren’t so cold one’s nose detaches from one’s face. All in all, this has been a bearable start to winter. Debbie Downers may, at this point, mention that winter hasn’t technically started, that it starts on December 21st. Whatever. The weather has dropped below 10 degrees and it’s pretty much dark by 4.30pm. That, by my standards, is winter. End of.

There are several coping mechanisms I have employed – apart from repeatedly ordering boots and jackets on H&M online – to retain my sanity, embrace this icy beast and see the positives in spending another 4 months wearing half my wardrobe at once. The main one is to pretend I am in a movie, namely one set in NYC or London. One in which the women wear amazing knitted hats from which tonged waves of hair protrude,  and cup mugs of coffee or cocoa whenever possible. One in which menacing grey skies and rain seem romantic and whimsical. I have also taken to you-tubing some classic Christmas carols and reminding myself, whilst lustily singing along, ‘you are experiencing what they’re talking about’ … as a child, the lyrics of White Christmas fell somewhat on deaf, sunburned ears. And then, of course, the final coping mechanism, the food. The sheer abundance of chocolates, cakes, biscuits, lollies and nuts; the raclett; the impending Christmas fondue. It helps, it always helps. As does the advent calendar hanging on my wall, which yields something delicious everyday.

Of course, this optimism will last up until the first true snowfall, at which point all I have been repressing will surface in a wild moment of likely reckless abandon. But, and this is important to remember, when all else fails, there’s always the gluhwein.

Hold that image for a second and allow me to take you back to a cold, dark night a couple of weeks ago.

I was walking home from work and came to a one way street with a crossing at which the walking man was red. I looked both ways, despite it being a one way street – I am just a careful jay-walker – and noting that, short of walking on my hands across the street, I was going to make it across the 3 metre crossing at least 3 whole minutes before a car made it to me, I crossed.

On the other side, a man stared at me as if I was casually skinning a squirrel and, as I passed, hissed, ‘bist du blind?‘

I raged the whole way home. The whole way. Am I blind? No, you gnarled old fuckwit, I am not blind, but I’m not going to stand on the side of the road for 5 minutes in the freezing cold twiddling my ice-block thumbs whilst waiting for the green man, when there is genuinely no traffic in a 2 km radius. It is my decision to do something so daring as to nip across a 3m side street and I am making it with my eyes wide open. Bist du ein dickhead?

Clearly, when I barged in the front door at home, I had a meltdown and boomed at SG, ‘I am so sick of being disapproved of when I break a rule, what is wrong with you people?’

I’m not sure if I have mentioned it before, or if the above makes it clear, but Münsteranians (and I suspect, based on SG’s behaviour, many other Germans) don’t jaywalk.  Oh you will see the occasional daring citizen leg it across an empty street, but they will be judged. By God. Who has long been fattened and feted by the German church tax. For me, jaywalking is a logical action if the circumstances are fitting. I’m not saying I do some Sydney-style running at slow moving vehicles and then spring bokking across their path, but I do cross the road if there is no oncoming traffic and it is perfectly safe to do so.

Anyway. Hold the image of me raging and allow me to tell you this little tale.

A friend of mine the other day was pulled over by a policeman and fined for riding his bike on a cobbled street before 4pm. Think about that.

Sometimes, Germans are so relaxed, so laidback, so ‘leave-it-to-mature-decision-and-discretion, we’re-all-adults-here’, it’s quite marvellous. Sixteen year olds can buy beer and wine.  There’s the autobahn that, for large stretches, has no speed limit. On game shows, if the contestent is a nude lads mag’s model, then it is no problem to flash through her, seemingly, entire portfolio on screen, as she jogs into shot. On prime-time variety shows, it is no problem to prance about in a dirndl and moon visiting celebrities (Jessica Biels’s face was funny). On that same game show, it’s no problem to host genuinely insane stunts that can and have put people in wheelchairs.

This is the same country in which you can get fined for giving someone the rude finger whilst driving. Oh sure, slip on a pair of kangaroo boots and try and jump across some ungodly stretch of cars, in the name of Saturday night entertainment, but don’t give a driver the rude finger!

Sometimes, when they’re not getting naked, drinking beer and enjoying a game of dildo pool, they are such sticklers for the rules it makes me want to scream and start breaking every single one I can. I want to ride a bike on cobbled streets repeatedly for the entire hour of 3-4pm whilst giving everyone the rude finger and swearing in people’s faces (fineable offence as well, apparently) and then I want to just go and stand in the middle of a road, point to the red man and shriek ‘you did this to me Germany.’

The great thing is, I would probably receive the utmost psychiatric care. My compulsory insurance premium’s high enough.

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