Es war in Oberwinter....

Nicht davor und nicht dahinter,
Es war gleich mittendrin, als ich damals auf dich reingefallen bin.....

These corrupted lyrics form the basis of an old-Volksmusik song heard on a train (original title "Es war in Königswinter") on the way from Koblenz to Köln, sung not only by a group of drunken Germans......but by a group of drunken Germans on a stag do, who we had met randomly in the centre of Koblenz, bought us an entire night's worth of drinks and had even after all of that then invited us up to Köln on the train with a free ticket that they had already bought. We passed quite a few stations en route, and Oberwinter was one of those which sparked an enormous amount of singing and cheering from 10 drunken men on the train. It was awesome.

Me and Liam (who i'm currently staying with until I find a fucking apartment grrr) only went out for a quiet drink and a shisha in one of the bars in the Koblenz Altstadt. 12 hours later we were still drunk and wandering around Köln after one of the best nights of my entire life.

I realise that it's an enormous cliché to say that, but really....the bizarre way that the night had panned out and the warmth and friendliness of almost everyone we met that night was a credit to the German people and a great starter for the third (and not necessarily the last) part of my Erasmus-Auslandssemester's adventure of awesomeness.

And we were surprisingly dressed for the occasion, as we ended up in an exclusive bar in the Rudolfplatz area of Köln with a surprisingly tight dress code on entry. Liam had his entire outfit scoped out, but we got in nevertheless. There were cocktail dresses and suits everywhere and without wanting to draw out my already enormous posts on here, it was fab.

After all of this we then stumbled upon a squat bar (?) underneath a growshop covered in graffiti, smoked a bit, drank a few, listened to the now-stoned DJ play some light jazz-house and then we made our way back home on the Bahn.


To go into stereotypes and to make stereotypes of Germans without mentioning strict following of rules and a no-tolerance attitude from the 'establishment' would be unthinkable. And not to mention schwarzfahren translating loosely as fare-dodging, it is one of the crimes punishable by execution by the German rail network Deutsche Bahn and can cost you quite a large sump of money if you're caught without holding a valid ticket, stamped and verified twice or three times (just to make sure) by the conductors.
so drunk and with minutes to spare until the next train back to Koblenz we decided it would be fine.

It worked. 3.50€ each later and a whole load of pretending to be drunk, stupid English tourists without any money, ID or other means of getting home to Koblenz, we were back where it all started.......

The Train Hotel

At the risk of missing out on a potentially bizarre epic travelling adventure, I booked myself onto a 12hr overnight train from Barcelona to Paris.

Now I'd heard that overnight trains can be a bit hit-as-miss: you share a 4-bed cabin with total snoring strangers, the train speeds along at max speeds of like 300km/h giving you a bit of a bumpy ride and an unsettled sleep, the only escape from this close-encounters of a foreign and slightly awkward kind is the bar, where, you may have to remortgage your home before ordering anything or at least just sit, take photos and talk with random Americans like I did and get drunk with them and not think about the bill so much haha.

Actually it was almost like that, although i've never had as much fun on a train at night time. It was so communal, so social....almost like a hostel on wheels.

I was sharing with 3 other guys, 2 French, 1 of which was ghetto, parisian and just oozing cool, the other slightly quieter and slightly more timid; the other an older guy from Austria who wanted to spend more time in the bar than me.

Just by walking up and down the narrow corridors of the train I met a group of 40+ American high-schoolers on tour, who loud and interesting, but still unfortunately as stereotypically obnoxious as portrayed everywhere else. They were though, bless them.
Also met one girl who I'd already met in Salou at the Cos Blanco confetti party through a friend of mine. We saw each other at the bar, had a few drinks together and sat talking how small the world is, and how aawesome the experience was, what we were up to and where we were going.

As I wrote all this I was hurtling out of a grey, dull, unpretty Paris at 8am or so after making my connection with about 5 minutes to spare after having to throw my 5 rucksacks around the Paris Metro a bit first.

I then got into Köln Hbf and made my connection there to Koblenz, knocking over my suitcase on poor unsuspecting guys who walked past. Oops.

Living in Koblenz is an exciting prospect and from what I've seen of the place so far, it's lovely, but i'm terrified to install myself in for some reason. I need somewhere to live duuuuuuuude. Also the forecast for Tarragona is about 25 degrees Celsius, where I already caught the sun, whereas here in Koblenz the forecast is about 5 degrees C, where i'm more likely to catch a cold. Nooooooooo........

Crisis of Confidence

I'm a secret worrier.

Everything that can go wrong will go wrong and it will go wrong in true Sod's Law style: when I least expect it and least need it.

Or maybe nothing will go wrong, which will make me think SOMETHING HAS TO FUCK UP SOON, or it's too good to be true, or there's something I'm not doing and I'm just being too god damn relaxed about everything as usual. Maybe I should just continue being relaxed about everything. Nothing will go wrong, I'm being soft.

This, this annoying constant battle goes on in my head whenever I've got some grand impending plans, and it's a thought that is certainly cropping up recently.

Faced with multitudes of people asking me, quite normally, what my plans are and how I'm gonna get there and telling me how it's gonna be an amazing experience, I am struck with this dull aching reminder that, as of yet, I have hardly anything sorted. Nada.

Probability of everything going tits up: close to 1.

I'm talking about my fast-approaching move to Germany. As of when this blog was posted, it is only 72 hours until the big day when I take my 14hr overnight train hotel to Paris, then onwards to Koblenz.

When i'm there I need to find an apartment. But how much can I afford right now? I have to put a deposit down and undoubtedly the first month's rent and I'm unsurprisingly skint.
I want to move in with locals but I don't want to be the English outsider and I'm scared that I'm not going to be able to communicate as well as I will be expected to because my German is piss poor at times.
I also want to find a job to subsidise my travelling, but not something which will restrict my travelling to one day per fortnight.
Finally, I'm worried about having to take extra credits at the uni because I fell short of a few in Aix, and then I'm thinking about how difficult uni will be, and whether I'll even make my original set of credits nevermind my extra classes.

Hopefully I will look on this big grey cloud of a blog post in a few weeks time with good feelings with the oh so awesome 'you silly scared child' hindsight, but right now I'll be honest: i'm quite nervous and it's getting me down.

Where I've Been

Apparently I have been to 5% of the world, and I specifically want to visit another 9%.
I really want to visit America and Québec!

Bon dia, em dic Gareth i parlo català

Monstrously late into my time here before schlepping off to Germany for the beginning of my second Erasmus semester, I have decided to really ramp up my knowledge of Catalan (the co-official language of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, as well as the sole official language in Andorra), despite my lack of Spanish fluency.

With around 11 million native speakers in 2009, I recently found out that i'd been completely underestimating it as a language, in favour of Spanish, down to my complete ignorance of its far reaching historical footprints throughout a lot of Southern Europe. It is an interesting and potentially easier language for me to learn than Spanish, too, since it has semantic roots from France and the Pyrenees area in Europe, as well as Latin. Quite a lot of the vocabulary is similar to what I already know, from French, just with that beautiful Iberian twist that is such a bouncy, passionate and lovely addition to seemingly everything on this peninsula and further afield.

So, after hearing countless amounts of people saying 'Molt bè' and 'Adéu' in the streets, I'm giving it a good go.

I've started with the basics, of course. I can now ask someone how they are, where they live and tell them my name, albeit with a Geordie accent lurking deep throughout, but I'm proud of my achievements already. Hopefully I can keep it up and practise a bit while I'm out of the area!

So, wish me luck!