i finally registered to make claims online to medibank (I AM SUCH A GROWNUP) and goddamn i'm nearly tempted to change insurers because they keep talking about my new ability to "claim extra's online".

in other news, i got the car serviced and i am not nearly as broke as i feared i would be. officeworks here i come!

I was all cranky at easy jet, as they cancelled our flight from vienna to gatwick but insisted they couldn't refund my gatwick to edinburgh flight as they "don't sell as connections" but only individual flights, and bugger you if you have to buy two flights because there is no direct flight. And then they cancelled the gatwick to edinburgh flight anyway! refund woo!

(am ignoring the fact that they cancelled the flight on the day of the flight. does that mean it was for the weather? does that mean it will be intensely difficult to get to edinburgh tmw? and our new flight might also be cancelled?
have decided IT WILL BE FINE.)

Today it was Mum's birthday. So we visited Kutna Hora, where they had a chapel and a pile of skeletons, and said, hey, we can make a chandelier out of these bones. So very unlike the modern mindset. They also have a gothic cathedral and an italian restaurant. photos when i have uploaded them.

we took an express train from Prague, and in the only stop between there and there, three czechs came in to our compartment. they didn't have much english, and we have virtually no czech, but apparently the fact that we come from Australia, where it is summer, was the FUNNIEST THING EVER. And then they put a statue of the virgin mary to our faces so we could kiss it goodbye.

When we got out of the train, an american woman came and asked if we speak english, and if we knew how to get into town. yes to the first and i think so to the second, and so she came with us to the bone chapel and to the old town and then back to prague. was nice to speak to someone new! also i gave her my german stamps that i forgot to affix to postcards and send.

I have many postcards, some even written, and maybe i will remember to buy stamps and send things from edinburgh. but maybe not! you'll never know.

tommorrow i will be in an english (well, mostly) speaking country! and i will no longer feel like an idiot tourist who expects everyone to speak english! hurrah!

So if you plan on leaving st petersberg, LEAVE LOTS OF TIME. No, an hour more than that.
But lo, we are in Vienna. I can only hear out of one ear but I have beer and pizza AND I HAVE SHOWERED.
And I have Internet!
Life is glorious.

As Clare noted, overnight Berlin did not go down in a massive fireworks incident. though for a while it sounded like it! Me and Louise burnt our thumbs and made things go bang.

Now i am having breakfast. The circus hostel has some of the best breakfast ever! I have eight kinds of cheese! excuse me.

I'm not going to blog because louise is writing things much better than I could. I just wanted to say, hi! so far, germany is as lovely as I hoped and I want to move here when I am done moving to vienna.

(still: i reckon the frankfurt christmas markets and by extension most christmas markets other than nuremberg and vienna are more worthwhile: the nuremberg markets are very touristy and thus only sell gingerbread, gluhwein, and christmas decorations while the frankfurt markets sell excellent scarves!)

we went to the circus last night in Munich (which was brilliant) and then stayed at wombats in munich (which was just the same as wombats in vienna three years ago) and then came back to nuremberg which was noticably colder(!) so that we could go to the "documentation centre" which is a museum dealing with the nazi party - specifically the nuremberg rallies. i looked at it all quite fast and then waited in the shop for a while, because I can only cope with a minimum of records of humans being awful to each other.

tomorrow we are going back to munich and we will meet up with lachlan so that we can have christmas together. right now I am going to duck into the markets again and get some cake for christmas.

just so you know: eierpunsch, which is like eggnogg, is extremely strong and full of rum. none of us could finish the small mugs we bought. feuerzangerbowle is a rum punch which involves pouring rum over a cone of sugar and setting it alight and pouring all that into red wine. i still prefer gluhwein.

(apparently "not going to blog" really just means "not going to use capital letters")

We are in Frankfurt! It is snowing! The Internet is slow! Planes are boring!

I got made permanent staff! In only 7 years I'll be eligible for long service leave.
Also, we have Russian visas. I checked the sunrise sunset times and the sun rises in st petersberg at all of 10am. eek.

oddly when i type "HI BETH" firefox wants to autocorrect it to "hi MYSELF". bizarre caps an all.

why do I have three separate pairs of 3.25mm circular needles? I have never needed any 3.25mm circular needles!

more importantly, why did i not read the pattern properly before working on it for two evenings? huh? WOULD IT HAVE BEEN SO HARD?

excuse me while i rip everything out.

QUICK, A QUESTION:

is there a significant difference between "whilst" and "while"?

Dear Coles, when I said I didn't want any free samples, what I meant was I didn't want ANY FREE SAMPLES. I do not want your free "my first tuna!", I do not want your free hollandaise sauce, I DO NOT WANT YOUR FREE FROZEN KIPPERS.

For godsake. free hollandaise sauce is one thing. FREE STINKY STUFF is an entirely other, deal-breaking thing. We shall now be using Woolworths.

Anyone want some frozen kippers? One day only deal!

And also, greater dandenong is hiring both librarians and customer service staff. There's a chance that all those jobs have someones name on them, i admit, but dandenong and springvale library are both excellent places to work at - the pay is decent, the co workers are almost all excellent, and there is good food nearby.

hey someone was looking for library type jobs? Korowa is going to advertise a library tech shortly, I believe.

And someone wanted to stalk me on tripit? I am there, with my (gasp) real name. That is, the name on my drivers license rather than the one on my passport. Though I don't believe you can stalk me effectively without signing up and asking my permission. I've imported a bunch of the details of our trip to europe and it made it very clear that i fucked up one of the flights and so we have one day less in edinburgh. if i never post again, louise has gotten annoyed about this. oops.

from craftzine's review of savory baking:

"This is great for the intermediately skilled home cook looking to expand his/her repertoire of favorites. The tart I made required that I know how to toast walnuts (dry in a pan is how we did it), separate eggs (crack the whole thing into a bowl and pick up the yolk with your fingers), handle fancy cheese (remove the foil but let the food processor handle the rind), and work with delicate dough (I used a big cake mover to transfer it to the tart pan)."

Really? separating eggs is a skill for an intermediate cook? Toasting walnuts is not a beginner skill? Using a "big cake mover" is a remarkable achievement? This is a dough one makes in the food processor and then kneads - and then the recipe points out you can patch the dough with scraps. Yes. They are all identifiers of a delicate dough. One that needs special tools.

Remove the foil from fancy cheese. Goddamn. The reason she doesn't specify you should remove the shell from the walnuts is that the recipe only asks for walnut pieces.

Man, I must have been an advanced cook when I was nine! I'd never even heard of risotto, but I could separate eggs!

Reasons I may be the youngest person who lives on my block:

Today's junkmail consisted of an ad for really small and extremely comfortable hearing aids.

also,
when is caity coming homeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Did I tell you recently how glad I am that I never had to go to high school in America in the early 60s?

This much.

cake for breakfast.

at noon.

but i am dressed. i even have plans to leave the house today.

What is this? Is this hayfever? i have sneezed more today than ever before!

Hayfever is awful! I totally actually sympathize with all the hayfever sufferers I used to insincerely sympathize with.

sneeze.

but on the bright side, HOLIDAYS. now I can sneeze at home!

beth is being congratulated by KING KWOK

So we've got plane tickets and a hotel booked. Louise and me are off to sydney for the weekend!

---look caity! I booked a hotel room before I got to the city! more than 24 hours before I'd need it! It's almost like I knew I would...