It's that time of week again - updates from the increasingly cold country that is Germany. It's actually amazing what a difference a few weeks can make - I remember looking across at my weather widget, and feeling quite happy that Germany was at least on par with Sydney's temperatures. Looking at it now though it's a completely different picture, with Sydney having really quite reasonable temperatures, and the temperatures in Heidelberg just dropping like a stone. I'm going to have to bring out the thermal stuff soon, and I'm not too happy about it, since I'm acknowledging that winter is actually about to arrive.

I spent my Saturday basking in the late summer weather around Speyer, which is a town just north of Heidelberg. It's known for its old cathedral, and is a nice place to check out - there was some good weather and light, so I managed to take a few snaps around there which I'm quite proud of. One thing about Speyer is that they've got this great big bowl outside the cathedral, which is filled with wine whenever a new bishop comes in. The current bishop is about 80 now, so apparently everyone is hanging out for the new guy to come in, so that they can get some free wine. We've been told to drop everything and come up to Speyer to get in on the action.

After coming back from Speyer, I headed down to the Heidelberger Herbst festival, which is actually a celebration of the beginning of Autumn. One of the autumn specialties is the Neue Wein, which is basically wine which hasn't fully fermented. I'm not too sure about it, since it tastes a bit too much like an alco-pop to me, but I wasn't going to be the one to be a spoilsport. The entire town was packed that evening - there were apparently about 100,000 people in the old city across the period of the entire day. I'd say there were about 10 thousand people in the city in the evening though, and it was nice to be able to sit outside one last time and drink some of the tasty brews. Once it gets a bit colder, I'll have to be drinking the Glüh wein.

After getting up a little later than normal, and feeling mighty fragile, I headed down to the station to meet up with Shaunak and Devang, who had come from London to spend the afternoon in Heidelberg. I used them to try out my new routine as tour guide for Heidelberg, but I quickly realised that I didn't really know much about the town. That will teach me for not studying up beforehand. One thing I definitely didn't know about was the renaissance fair that is on in the old towns on some Sundays. It's really cool, as you've got all these people walking around with swords and stuff, crazy folk-singers, bohemian types, and these old women dressed like witches. If you click on the picture of the witches, you can see the rest of the photos from our afternoon in Heidelberg and my trip to Speyer (Keep going to next photo to see them in some kind of order). I'm especially grateful to my uncle who went the extra mile and ground up some Tea masala for me, and along with the Indian savouries that came along with the guys, I can now have some proper tea and ghatia for breakfast.

As promised - a post about Pirates. It's with great pleasure that I observed International Talk Like a Pirate Day (ITLAPD) on Monday. It's not really as well observed here as it is in Australia, there was no mention of it on the media. I had to explain the entire concept to people who were wondering exactly why talking like a pirate needed its own global day of observance. It's actually quite hard to do, especially when people don't really buy into the basic idea that talking in such a manner is fun. I ended up giving up, and going through my repertoire of pirate jokes. The Captain Courageous and his red jacket joke is still my favourite.

Before I delve into why I think pirates have really proven their relevance this year, I'd like to make an observation about pirates that I realised while explaining the piratical concepts to the Germans. I don't think that anyone will argue that pirates are not funny, but what exactly is it about them that makes them so funny? I mean, they're vicious, uncouth, missing limbs, generally dangerous and cart around tropical birds on their decrepit ships, all while having a tenuous grasp on the English language. Yet they're still hilarious. I started thinking about what else was hilarious, despite the components that comprise its whole, and one example that kept popping up was the Zombie. Zombies - especially when they're going on their rampages - are hilarious. I think the hilarity can be easily assigned to how ineffective they are at doing their job of eating brains. If a zombie was coming at you, all you have to do is walk away at a brisk pace. They're slow. And stupid. Pirates are remarkably ineffective too. If they're not hobbling around peg legs, they're getting remarkably drunk, or having long arguments with Polly about what exactly constitutes a piece of eight. That's why the modern pirates are not funny at all. They actually manage to hijack ships, riding around on their speedboats. To be fair to them though, I'd guess they wouldn't have a particularly good grasp of English, and they might have a parrot, or maybe a cat on their speedboats.

Have you all noticed how expensive fuel is nowadays? It makes me glad I'm living the environmentally sound life here, catching the (excellent) public transport, and walking everywhere. I was thinking of getting a car (actually a motorbike with a side-car so I can drive around like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, humming the tune to myself and driving into fences), but given the lack of fuel to throw into it, I don't think that will be happening soon. It's been made worse by the whole hurricane Katrina situation too, and I don't think that Rita is going to ease the strain. Maybe this will provide the final push for more environmentally sound transportation. We're in trouble now as is, after a number of reports have come out recently suggesting that we're all screwed because global warming is here to stay. Nice alarmist reports saying that there will be massive population movements in south-east Asia, as temperature rises yield an increase in diseases, and general pandemics of bad stuff. (On a related note - should we all be scared about Avian Bird Flu yet? I see that Indonesia has requested a big-arse shipment of TamiFlu. Let's hope that these drugs go into mass production, so their price is dropped down to the level when I can just pop down to the chemist to pick up a flu treatment with spare change)

So let's recount my arguments here. Pirates are funny. Environmental problems are real, and we've seen some wild weather, and could be seeing worldwide pandemics of disease brought on by climate change. You wouldn't see it at first, but these two things are related. One of the other things that has been happening in earnest this year is that some people in the US have been trying to convince other people that we're not all monkeys, but that a guy often depicted with a beard was doing a bit of pottery, we sort of just happened, and he planted a whole bunch of bones on the ground to give us something to dig up. Anyway, it's an idea, and I wish them luck proving it. If I were to subscribe to an idea like that, I'd follow the more likely one, where you replace the guy with a beard with a Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). It makes sense when you think about it, even more so when you consider the startling revelation that followers of FSM believe that there is a direct relationship between the decline in the number of pirates in the world today and the rise of global warming (and by association, all environmental problems, and the eventual worldwide panic resulting from various killer diseases being let loose on the world, turning us all into Zombies like in the Day after tomorrow). The evidence is clear. We need more pirates in the world, if we are ever going to survive. It's not an easy life being a pirate, so I'm not going to suggest that we all become pirates. However, I think that the people putting the most burden on the environment should take some responsibility for their actions. I'm talking about you - Car drivers. Here's my suggestion, which has some unexpected side-benefits for you. First off, get a bandana, and wrap it around your head. Get an eyepatch, some gold teeth, and amputate a limb. Now, walk out of your house, ready for a drive to work, or the shops. Instead of getting in your car, walk down the street, and find a car which is waiting at an intersection. Hijack the car. I'll leave it up to you as to how you achieve this - you're a pirate, be creative. Now, get in the car and drive off. Not only are you helping to reduce global warming by being a pirate - but you're saving on fuel costs, since it's not your fuel that you're driving the car on. I look forward to hearing about your piratical driving experiences!

It's not that I've forgotten or anything, I'm just a bit to busy to write a full post about ITLAPD. I'll throw in an Aaar for good measure though. I'll have something a little more substantial on pirates by the end of the week. It suffices to say it's been a big year for pirates this year.

I'm back from my extended trip to the wonderful country of Italy. Officially I was there for a conference, but really it was a good chance for me to meet a whole bunch of people I hadn't seen for ages, and some other people who I'd been meaning to talk to. The conference was in Florence, and I got in on Friday afternoon a week and a bit ago. Being a conference, I had decided that I would try and look as formal as possible, so I packed a whole bunch of neater looking jeans, and a pile of shirts. On landing in Florence, I had the impression that I really made the wrong choice, with the beautiful warm temperatures, and the not so great humidity calling for numerous pairs of shorts. It was a bit like being back in Sydney.

The next week was spent bumming around Florence, turning up to interesting sounding lectures, and generally kicking around with the old crew (Niclas, Fredrik and Matt) from PSL. I think that all my talking to various people at the conference actually really helped me out, and I've even got a few ideas to explore when looking for my (new) topic idea.

Florence looks fantastic, and has a great feel to it. It's sort of medieval in it's architecture, and chaotic most of the time. The funny thing about walking around in Florence, even though I had no idea about the language, was that it was all really easy. I don't think there was a single worry for me during my time in Florence, and I can see why people enjoy going to Europe to do the travelling thing. I didn't really do very much other stuff while in Florence though - I walked around one museum, but I didn't really engage myself in the full set of historical activities that Florence had to offer. I don't think that I was really that interested to be honest. The number of statues, paintings and historically significant buildings might mean something to me if I'd done some initial research just to read up on the (presumably interesting) history, but just walking around the city with none of this background knowledge, I was little more than just another tourist. That's not to say I was completely devoid of culture whilst in Florence - I managed to get to a few gigs there, as there was an open-air stage set up just down the road from my hotel. The first gig was god-awful. If anyone is a sound engineer, there are plenty of jobs available for you in Florence. Just try to make sure you don't spend three hours setting up the sound, and then still screwing it up. The other concert was ambient electronic music - with the dude rocking out on his Powerbook on the stage.

I'd decided to make a side-trip to Rome after the conference, so I headed up there on Saturday morning. The train system is pretty nice in Italy, and I'm totally sold on their train-ticket machines, which make it easy for any old gringo to buy a ticket in their native language. The trip from Florence to Rome takes about 2½ hours, and is a good opportunity to check out the Tuscan countryside - especially with the towns that have a ludicrous number of houses perched on top of hills. Rome train station isn't as bad as I thought it would be. I had done some cursory research on Rome, reading that I should be wary of the gypsy kids running up to me getting off the train and stripping me of any valuables in my pockets before I can say "I don't understand" in Italian (Yeah, I don't know how to say it). To avoid that, I packed all my possessions into my backpack, applied a big-arse padlock to it, ready to walk through Rome with total immunity from the pickpockets. That was possibly a bit of overkill, as I didn't even have a single kid run up to me, and I was a little disappointed that I hadn't managed to outsmart them.

So the main reason that I headed down to Rome was to catch up with Sara, who has been spending the last year working at hostels in Italy. I managed to get a dirt-cheap room at the Yellow Hostel, which is pretty luxurious as far as hostels go. You realise just how many Australians, Americans (especially Texans it seems), and English kids are making their way around Europe when you stay at a hostel like Yellow. It's like a whole little world inside the rest of Rome.

Rome's a lot bigger than Florence, so I could spend a fair amount of time checking out all the major sites there. I think I managed to see most of the things to see in Rome - the Colloseum, the Vatican City, the Spanish Steps, and various other monuments. Some of them are quite impressive and grand. A lot of them have managed to steal the obelisks from Egypt, and just put them up all over the place. I wonder if the Romans actually bothered to translate the obelisks before they put them up? Were they the ancient equivalent of having a tattoo or t-shirt of some Japansese or Chinese, without knowing what it means? Is it entirely possible that the obelisks really say something like "This way to the public toilets"?

The best things I found in Rome weren't the ancient things there. I'm not denigrating history or anything - but ancient things aren't particularly interesting without an interesting story to go behind them to me. I'm also too cheap to spring for a tour-guide, so I had to settle with just oooh-ing and aaah-ing at the monuments. The most interesting and fun things were a little off the beaten track. The first was a bar I went to on the Tiber, which was the end point for a drinking session organised by the hostel. We had to get there by bus, so we all piled on to a bus going from Rome Termini to wherever this was. Now, this should have been a relatively short bus ride, doubly so at 12:00 midnight. Rome doesn't really work that way it seems - as the roads, and the bus was absolutely packed. There was a huge traffic jam across Rome, and the streets were just filled with people, as it looks like the night is just starting at 12:00 there. After eventually getting to the bar, there is a band playing some music, which I'm not particularly plussed about. However, once the band shuffles off, the DJ kicks in. The guy's name is Dylan, and he works as a tour guide with someone associated with the Yellow hostel. He's got a kick-arse taste in music, and his track selection, and the diversity of the set was great (although I think the mixing could have been slightly more creative). Plus, you've got to love anyone who finishes a set with a little bit of Louis Armstrong.

My other highlight of Rome would have to be finding this somewhat ad-hoc "gallery" set up by an artist who I completely forgot to find the name of. Anyway, you'll be able to find him (in summer at least) around the Mausoleo di Augusto. I don't have any further directions to get there - but if you're not randomly wandering around Rome looking for cool stuff to see, then you're missing out on half the fun of travelling to start with. Anyway, this guy uses pieces of rubble and waste to set up a series of little exhibits. It was really quite creative, and worked really well. I was sold as it being the best gallery in Rome. You probably need to just see some pictures of the exhibit. Just keep clicking through to the next picture to see them in some kind of order.

I capped off my trip by ticking off a visit to Pisa, and seeing the tower there. At the very least, I can say that I've been there now. Pisa was actually quite close to the airport which I had to fly out of, at about half-past ten in the evening. My plane, with Ryan-air, was about an hour late, which meant that I had missed my connecting bus from Frankfurt Hahn to Heidelberg. Now, a couple of posts ago, I had mentioned the sleeping in airports web-site, and sort of mentioned in jest that I could sleep in Stansted airport. I slept in Frankfurt Hahn airport on Sunday night. On the floor. The hard, cold, concrete floor. I wasn't particularly happy about that. Especially considering that I arrived at the airport at 1:00, and then had to wait till 7:10 for my 2½ hour journey down to Heidelberg. For future reference, you can sleep in the airport, but you'll be paying out of the nose for water (since the vending machine refuses to accept your €2 coins), and you'll need a sleeping bag for maximal comfort.

I'm back at work now, and just to prove that I'm fully recovered - How cool is the iPod Nano? I want one!

Another update, albeit a little late in the week. I was struck down with the flu at the start of the week, so I was experimenting with which cocktail of drugs would provide the best relief from the symptoms. First thing I did was go out and buy some pseudoephedrine, because that stuff does wonders. It's a pity I can't get any Sudafed here (although I got a Pfizer act-alike). The real magic came from a combination of that, some Vitamin C stuff, and the time-honoured herbal remedy of turmeric and honey. Total turnaround time for the flu (from first symptoms to being able to function mostly normally) was about 48 hours. That time isn't too bad, especially considering that the last flu shot I had (with the previous seasons flu strains) was almost a year ago. I'm still a bit congested, but all up I'm ready to head off to Italy for the week. I doubt I'll be able to fire off a blog post from the conference centre, but I might be able to scab some keyboard time from the other conference attendees if I look desperate enough.

My DSL is a continuing saga, and I really don't think it's going to be working before I leave for Italy. The company (according to their records) has tried to call me back twice. The first time - I admit - I missed their call by 5 minutes (it's a big hill to run up!), but then began the guessing game as to when they would call me back. It turns out that they tried calling me back again at 8:00 the next day. For some reason, they expected me to piously wait by the phone in the hope that they would call me at some point of time, if ever. What with my hideously unscheduled life, I don't exactly know when I'm going to be sitting around the phone, but if I say I'll be around to answer the phone, I'll do my best to make sure that I'm around to answer it. Even better, when I rang up their service line to get some answers (which costs money by the way), I got lots of placating noises saying that they will be trying to ring me on that day or the next. It's not like they can fix the problem by talking to me either - the phone line doesn't even have a DSL signal to synchronise to, but for some reason they feel that they should talk to me before harassing Deutsche Telekom to fix it. I'm hoping it will be all automagically fixed by the time I come back from Florence, but I'm not counting on that happening.

Just a quick pointer for any of you who might come back to Earth as small animals, insects, or spiders. I don't mind that you're an insect. But seriously, if you're a slug, and you're looking for a safe place to spend the night, my jeans are not the safest place, especially not when they're on the washing line, and I have a policy of reigining vacuumy death upon any insect that would dare breach the sacred confines of my apartment. I've made an example of the slug, and it's spidery brother/cousin/guy off the street. Let that be an example to the rest of you insects (That's literally, not figuratively - I'm not calling the readers of this insects, although if you are an insect and you are reading this, and even though this combination is amazingly unlikely to occur - I was talking to you.). I am an official representative of the great noodly one, so don't mess with my jeans, or my apartment.