a big guy in a big city

Posted by Claire at October 30th, 2005

I think that’s about all that needs saying on that subject. Poor Pawel. I’ve just spent the last 5 or so hours slagging men (and one in particular) off to him. He is a legend indeed!

On that subject, last night I saw Legend of Zorro in German. It was really cool. But the horse is blatantly the mastermind behind Zorro himself. All Zorro really did really was plagarise (that reminds me of my first essay in York…) & sign his name for all the horse’s hard work. Cheeky bastard.

Today I enjoyed a sunday lunch in Burger King (never Burger Ming) before meeting Pawel. Can’t beat a Doppel Whopper when you’re feeling blue!

And now, I’m off to sleeps as I have an 8am lecture. Is Maudie’s birthday tomorrow so me thinks we’re going to be celebrating that BIG style as it’s a Feiertag in Bavaria on Tuesday so there’s no uni! Yay! Anyone would think I’m not enjoying my time here…

Roll on Christmas Holidays!

Posted by Richard at October 29th, 2005

Well, I’m sure that Pawel tried his hardest Claire… Has he told you about the time that he sang ‘Milkshake’ by Kelis in a pub, or the time that he did the YMCA dance at the Student Union in front of about 300 people (same night..), or the time when he was kicked out from a club for falling asleep, and somehow ended at a bhangra club, when he had intended to go to a strip club? Oh, happy days..

This week has been too social by far, and I’m tempting fate by going out tonight. As Andy recorded, I managed to get completely ruined on Tuesday, being reduced to a giggling wreck by about 9pm. I couldn’t even order a cocktail called ‘Fraggle Rock’, so Andy had to do it for me. Not in a good shape.

Being the trooper I am, I went out on Wednesday and Thursday nights as well - it’s only polite - and managed to retain my somewhat fragile dignity. Our housemate Paz, however, was another matter: falling downstairs was a classic, and sitting in our Student Union Council’s first meeting of the year saying, in a stage whisper “I’m really drunk” was another.

Alcohol, when will you cease to cause amusement?

With that, I stop, as I’ve promised some people that I’d go for a few drinks with them.

Posted by Claire at October 29th, 2005

So, Bone warns me that Pawel could drink me under the table. He was supposed to look after me, but stood back and watched me do about 15 tequilas!

I’ve had a good week… from what I remember! Monday & Tuesday were spent sleeping and mooching around, still tired from our White Stripes adventure. Then on Wednesday I decide enough is enough, I have to go out! My friend from Czech Republic invited me to a party at the Audimax, and others spoke to me about it so I decided to go. I was told to wait outside the Mensa at 9pm. At 9:15, Pawel arrives. Awesome. 9:30 the rest finally turn up & we go to the Party. 10:00 - we want to leave. The only cool person there was the barman. And I’d was 3 tequilas down.

So a big group of us head over to Susie Wongs. Awesome place. Bit like Toffs in York, so I felt quite at home. There was loads of us there & met the other guys from Britain. I don’t really remember much more, just a lot of dancing, on podiums & shit… and tequila…. lots of tequila. The main problem - the boys buying me it, me buying them it back, the barman giving us free shots.

…Entire section missing… I hate the blog for not being able to post exactly what happens in my life, but sometime it’s just too dangerous! That’s what my diary’s for!

Wake up about 9am with one hell of a hangover. The rest of the day is spent sleeping & trying my god-damn hardest not to throw up. I’ve never felt so ill & exhausted before. It’s taken me until today to recover! Shamefully, I missed my 1pm lecture… but I could hardly move!

But it was a great night, had SO much fun! It’s all about Susie Wongs next week!

Other news: My room still stinks. Ilona & I have identified the positions of smell - my radiator & the shower. Last night we had to actually leave my bedroom cos it was so horrible. Off to the hausmeister to tell him my room stinks of poo. Great.

Posted by Bone at October 29th, 2005

I know, I know, that is the worst reason ever not to post for about five days but there we go. None of the free image hosts (that I know of) will allow me to upload files as big as my camera creates, so I have to make them smaller myself, amd I’m so lazy I’m not even gonna correct the spelling mistake I know is in this sentence.

Been a very tiring few days, but thankfully I’m now being looked after at home, free food and nicer scenery, and we’re going out for Hodge’s birthday tonight.

Tuesday, went out on the History society bar crawl, which was a lot more fun than the politics one, which was undoubtedly because there was more 3rd years, some I knew, some I didn’t. Richard suffered in a way that many did when they drink on a totally empty stomach, uncontrollable laughter by 9 o’clock. To be fair to him though, he wasn’t sick, which makes it an exceptional day for him!

Things did take a turn south when some random bastards decided to start on Robin, the only reason for which was apparently “he was smiling at me,” good God no! call the police! a drunk person was smiling in a club (Life, for those of you wanting to avoid a fight)! Without trying to big myself up here, I sorted things out and Robin youthful good looks remained un-punched, the power of words people, the power of words… I was a bit pissed off when the bouncer turned up and asked me to explain the situation, then told us that we should move away/leave despite the fact that we had done nothing wrong, at all. We left rather than tempt fate. It would have also been nice if there was more than just Rory to back me up, especially considering how many people were there and how popular Robin is (this isn’t directed at you Rich, I know you weren’t in the area).

I worked really hard on my Communism presentation and I think it went well, but it left me very tired for the drive home, which took a near-coma-inducing four hours and forty-five minutes. So on Thursday I slept almost as much as I drove, not very safe at all.

*Pictures soon, I promise*

Posted by Claire at October 25th, 2005

So, the Munich Music Tour begins! After moaning for ages that I was going to miss one of my favourite bands during The White Stripes tour of England, I looked on the internet and saw that they were coming to Germany! Hello Munich! Hello Jack & ‘his sister’ Meg White!

Support came from The Greenhornes, who were frankly very disappointing. I have never seen a support act I’ve liked (apart from Tyler James supporting Natasha Bedingfield maybe). They consisted of 3 guys: A lead singer (who also played the smallest drum-kit I have ever seen), Guitarist (John Lennon/Robin Gibb lookalike, who didn’t move throughout their intire set) and a Bass-Guitarist (who was just weird - he looked like one of the Green Day guys I know in York).

But luckily the day was saved by a pair of familar figures walking along the walkway, Jack in his trade-mark hat, holding a shyer Meg’s hand. “Hello Munich! I’m Jack White & this is my sister Meg on the drums.” Awesome. They began with ‘Blue Orchid’, one of my favourites, it got the crowd going crazy. The venue was really awesome, a lot like the Manchester Academy/Refectory at Leeds, just a whole lot bigger, and full of really tall Germans! God damn them.

But Jack & Meg didn’t fail to disappoint. Jack is one of the most talented musicians I have ever seen, and Meg is so under-rated, she’s an awesome percussionist & everyone was loving it when she took to the microphone for ‘In The Cold, Cold Night’. Can’t possibly choose my favourite, but I loved ‘My Doorbell’, ‘Hotel Yorba’, ‘Little Ghost’, ‘Jolene’ and of course ‘Seven Nation Army’!

As for Munich, that place is crazy. People vomit & pass out on the streets. Scary shit… Roll on Arctic Monkeys!

Posted by Bone at October 25th, 2005

Apparently the most important step in getting over an addiction is admitting it.

I’m addicted to buying t-shirts.

Yeah, shocking isn’t it, pictures would tell you toasted cheese sandwiches are my biggest worry, but no, I think it may well be t-shirts. IO said to Richard today, “I think the reason I like buying tees is the smell” you all know what I mean, the fresh yet musty (wha? oxymoron) smell of a new tshirt when you put it on for the first time, and the way it feels so much nicer than after its been washed.

I’m sat here wearing a brand spanking new Threadless tee and what am I gonna do tomorrow? Wear another new t-shirt, the day after debuting my current piece of beautiful brown cloth. Tomorrows tee arrived this morning after a few printing problems, it’s a good thing I’m wearing it for the history bar crawl rather than the politics one, since the political alignment of it might give a few people the wrong idea about me…

Vive la open source Revolution!

My Northern Ireland politics lecture was a little bit boring today, the set up of the room doesn’t really allow for a good discussion, and the lecturer just went over the stuff that I’d read about before it anyway, I thought the point of prepared reading was to prepare you, not so that you knew what you were about to be taught. And I need to be more forceful when going to answer the questions. Since I was brought up to be a polite boy I’m not too into just shouting out the answers since I usually end up talking over someone, or saying the wrong thing, which looks worse than not saying anything at all.

That’s enough of my whining (what else is a blog for though?). I’ll have some pictures from home tomorrow, if they turned out right, the weather sucked so I couldn’t get many good shots of the colours of the leaves, it was amazing though, New England look out, regular England has a beautiful autumn too!

Posted by Richard at October 24th, 2005

On Saturday our BT/Bulldog guy finally arrived to put our internet in: better late than never I suppose. Unfortunately I can’t really notice the difference between us having 8mb broadband and us whoring the 256k connection off the guys next door. If only I downloaded more random crap!

Student life this year is proving a little more taxing than last year, perhaps because I accidentally won election to the Student Union Council, and so have lots of meetings to attend, and also because our seminars/ lectures have preparation work for them that needs to be done.. Less bumming round and more doing stuff is the modus operandi. Not that I bummed around that much last year. Honest.

Posted by Bone at October 24th, 2005

Back in Leicester after my slightly-longer-than-usual trip home. The internet has managed to make its way to our house, after my anger-filled delay. It’s as quick as me making a joke questioning a house members sexuality (=fast).

Last night we went out in Lancaster for Greeno’s birthday, it was a real lads night (except for Hannah, who me and Steve decided was “a top bloke with long hair”) and I had an awesome time. Even though I only got home at 4:15a.m. We ended up in Liqiud which just happened to have ‘professionally attractive’ person Sophie Howard there, the model of Nuts and Loaded fame. Hodge was very excited (treading on very thin ice here…..eep!) and a few of the guys had their picture taken with her, so I’d imagine some of them might find there way onto here in due time. As with all clubs, there was some absolute stunning girls in there, but they were literally outweighed by the… shall we say, not so attractive ladies.

I had a thought today on the long drive back, when people (men, mostly) are in coma’s, do people trim their facial hair, or does it just grow wildly?

Posted by Bone at October 21st, 2005

Back home in the Lake District things are different, easier you could say, but Leicester always finds a way back.

I got a call from Paz at 6 saying that the phone engineer hadn’t turned up to install our new line. Which means that Bulldog have had since 27/08/05 to do…. something, anything, and they still haven’t managed it. It’s almost as if they aren’t actually a telecommunications company, becuase as far as I can tell from my dealings with them, they’re people you ring when something does’t go right, but they don’t fix things. Essentially they have a telephone number that isn’t a number, it’s a wall.

So I rang them up and got passed around various departments and eventually found out that we needed a new appointment. Which basically takes us back to where we were at the 40 day point. 40 days is incidentally the point at which you can get out of your contract and get your money back, cynical much?

It’s a bit of a pedantic point, but if we weren’t in when the engineer turned up (Richard was in the living room all day) we would have been charged £60, the same can be said if we changed the appointment 4 days before he/she was meant to turn up. Surely it is only fair that we get some kind of compensation for the repeated failures and the missed appointment from Bulldog.

Rained all day. Typical.

Posted by Claire at October 16th, 2005

Hey dudes, here’s my first REAL post from Regensburg. I was such a dang air-head and fully forgot how to sign in. Ah well, I’ve also been busy… Well kind of!

Regensburg is pretty darn grand. I’ve been here 2 weeks now & I’m tired really. I’ve made lots of foreign student friends, the majority speaking Czech or bloody Polish all the time, but I was happy when I met the British the other night. Even if they are crazy drinkers! I thought I was bad. Nah, everyone’s friendly and at the moment they seem to be coping with my poor german! But I feel it improving everyday… apart from today… I’ve seen no other person in this Halls of 700. German students aint as friendly as I’d hoped & must sleep a lot cos this floor aint what you would call buzzin’ It’s just so different to how I remember my freshers week in York. I’m missing York & all my housemates like kerrrazy, especially Ben & Chris, I’m missing them pestering me all the time… I never thought I’d say that! Lectures start tomorrow so I’ll be filling my day with work avoidance… Hold on for posts!

We’ve been doing the rounds of Bavaria recently, visiting Bayreuth & the Bamberg, next week off to Munich & Neuschwanstein (the castle in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). I’ve been trawling the internet for some awesome bands to see & so far I’ve come across The White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, Editors, Arctic Monkeys, Maximo Park to name but a few. I’ll take along my finnish friend Ilona, who is dying to be educated. Let the education commense…

To finish, I will address a STUPID german rule which makes me late for whatever all the time. At a pedestrian crossing, it is fully illegal to cross at the red man whether there are cars coming or not! So, one has to stand there looking like a dick, waiting for the green man, in fear of the police catching you & fining you!

Idiots.