Home Smelly Home

A full load

For the first week we lived at Maciek’s parent’s house.  Luckily they were away in Bali.  I say luckily due to the fact that we had suitcases and stuff strewn all over the place, and we couldn’t pack anything away.  When they returned after a week expecting us to be moved back in to our own place, it only took a couple of days for Babcia to start tearing her hair out.  There had been problems with the tenants, and a delay for our house to be returned to us.  Finally we got the keys and were shocked and disappointed to walk into a smelly grimy mess.  Our move in date was further delayed by another week as we hired a professional cleaner, replaced carpets and painted walls.  Eventually if felt fresh enough and we moved back in on the weekend just before Amelia was due to start school.

We thought she’d jump at the chance to attend an English speaking school and lap up all the conversation with new friends that she could after the troubles in Austria, but her poor teacher was met with a crazy child screaming out for me (as I walked away with tears in my eyes), and octopus arms and legs gripping the door frame to the classroom!  Definitely unexpected.  But after a few days she was much more settled.  I decided to keep Noah at home with me as I’d not spent much one on one time with him during his short little life!  It proved to be a very long 10 weeks.  He was bored to high heaven!

After fourteen days back in Australia, seven of those taken up conquering the effects of jet lag, and the next seven re-decorating and sorting out paper work, Maciek got stuck straight back in at work, buying a van and organizing all his tools the day before he started.  Talk about exhausting.  But at least the house smelt nice!

Haven't we seen something like this before?

A Bit about New Holland...

The Swan River with Perth City in background

In the early part of the 19^th century a short little man with black wavy hair and a moustache accidentally stumbled into the western part of Australia on his boat via the Swan River due to an unexpected gust of wind in the wrong direction.  Actually, that’s not true.  I made that bit up.  I’ve no idea what Captain James Stirling looked like or if he suffered from wind, but nevertheless, there he found himself.  The silly little man chuffed off back to England and told the Queen what he’d found – a great land full of beautiful natural attractions.  What?  Was he blind aswell? 

Before him the French and Dutch had passed by, named the place New Holland just to stamp their authority, snubbed their noses, and called out Au Revoir with a click of their clogs to a land they declared ‘sterile, forbidding and inhospitable’!  It should have been left at that.  The aboriginal tribes would have continued to live peacefully and in harmony with their land (well, not everybody loves green grass and rolling hills and non-murderous insects and reptiles, do they?). 

But no.  The Brits went and brought out shiploads of criminals that they didn’t have room for and set up camp and colony along the Swan River.  And that’s where it all began.  I’m inclined to agree with the Dutch and the French.  But let’s just imagine us as New Holland for a bit.  Riding around on bikes with bells and baskets, wearing clogs and berets, eating croissants for breakfast and painting pictures of it all while sipping on espresso alfresco style, in one of the many hundreds of cafes selling ‘pain au chocolat’ and chocolate brownies which aren’t really chocolate brownies, saying  ‘Bonjour Ca Va?  instead of  ‘G’day mate’ and not a barby’ to be seen!

Anyway, I digress from the topic which was meant to be ‘jet lag’.  Have you ever experienced jet lag with two young children after crossing an 8 hour time difference?  I highly recommend it not!  As I said, we arrived home in the early evening and in an attempt to align ourselves to local time, went to bed as usual.  Two in the morning we were up, bright as buttons, hungry for dinner.  A very eerie feeling: being up and about as if it’s the middle of the day, when the rest of the neighbourhood is fast asleep.  By 6am we were back in bed, sleeping, till 2 in the afternoon.  This went on for about three days, about the amount of time it took for mine and Maciek’s body clocks to adjust while the kids’ did not.  And we were exhausted and desperate for normalcy.  So we gave the kids some drugs.  Don’t judge us.  It’s travel sickness medication, and the problem was related to travel, was it not?  With the added bonus of ‘may cause drowsiness’.  Sshhh!  But it didn’t work.  In fact it had the opposite effect and caused hyperactivity.  The only solution was to ride it out.  Which took a full week.  Just around the time we were about to check ourselves into a mental asylum!

Same again, complete with black swans

 

That first week was a culture shock.  We enjoyed novelties like being able to get any manner of take-away food, from KFC, to fish n chips, to Chinese, which we did, nearly every day for that first week.   Disgusting to think of it now!  It was brilliant to be in the shops and understand everyone, and have conversation with strangers without having to explain that you can’t understand them.  The amount of choice in the supermarket and just the amount of ‘stuff’ in general in the shopping centres was overwhelming, as well as the number of cars, and bizarre people wearing bare feet and pyjamas out in public!  We were surrounded by concrete.  And shops.  And people.  And to be honest it was all a bit frightening!  It was like George of the Jungle.  It felt like we’d been living in a bubble in the forest for so long we’d forgotten what civilization felt like.  We ached for the mountains, and the country-side, and space, and as much as we enjoyed seeing our family and friends again and being surrounded by familiarity, we wanted to run away back to Austria.

But we had a giggle one evening while watching a comedy festival on T.V (yes!  T.V!  We could watch T.V!).  An American comedian called Arj Barker, very popular here, was discussing the not so popular tourism campaign Australia came up with a few years ago, which featured a bikini clad Lara Bingle frolicking around on a paradise beach, before pouting into the camera and saying in a perfect Aussie accent “Where the bloody hell are ya?”  It didn’t go down so well.   So Arj Barker had come up with some of his own possible jingles.  Obviously aimed at an American audience, the best one he said he could think of was this: 

‘Come to Australia!  Twice as far as Europe - without all that pesky culture!’

And so it was, that clogs were replaced with flip flops, and croissants with the humble sausage sizzle outside Bunnings on Sundays. 

(But, you don't go to Europe for the beaches!)

Cousins re-unite, Jakson, Ollie and Noah

Posing at the beach

Going for a mini surf!

Milly posing at the beach

 

It's a long way to Tipperary....

The person who wrote that song a hundred years ago had obviously never travelled to Perth from the middle of Europe.

From St Johann via Worgl in a car (30 mintues), to Verona on a train (4 hours), then on to Milan in a hire car which was too small (2 hours), an overnight stay in a hotel, a flight to Dohar (6 hours), a seven hour wait in the airport, another flight to Perth (12 hours), and then two hours to get through customs due to our wooden souvineers.

Now that’s a bloody long way!

Our last view of the mountains

 Why did we fly out from Milan, I hear you ask?  It was the cheapest flight we could find.  But a schedule change on our Munich to Milan flight meant that we could no longer make it to Milan by plane.  And so goes the journey!

Lucky for us, Sam gave us a lift

In the mad rush that was leading up to our departure, we didn’t have time to pack our suitcases suitably for the flight, and just did an ‘it’ll do for the train journey’ pack, which meant two of the suitcases were 30kg, the other two were 20kg, and we each had a rucksack weighing about 8kg each, a small pull along suitcase and the kids car seats.

Our dear friend Samantha (also known as ‘unlucky Sam – bugger!’) was lovely enough to drive us and our huge amount of cargo to the train station in Worgl.  I was choking back tears taking in the beautiful scenery for the last time during the drive, and felt saddened that our journey with all its emotion and ups and downs was now over.  

Waiting for the train

Sam got us into Worgl without going the wrong way down any one way streets, which is what she is renowned for!  And too soon we were on the platform exchanging hugs and saying goodbyes with tears flowing.

Our attention then had to turn to how we would manage to get our 11 pieces of luggage plus two children onto the carriage on our own before the train pulled away!  Just then a family of Indians came and sat beside us, and as friendly as they were, offering around a packet of chocolate eclairs, the fact that they also had 4 big suitcases with them was not good news for us.  The last thing we wanted was a fight for luggage space on the same carriage!  So Maciek inconspicuously moved one bit of luggage at a time a few metres along the platform and we decided that when the train arrived we would get onto an empty ‘cabin’ carriage.  However it didn’t really occur to us that we wouldn’t  get a choice of carriage to board, and when the train arrived the empty ‘cabin’ carriage was at the front of the train, miles from us, and the doors to the FULL one arrived just at our feet.   With no time to ponder Maciek began loading our luggage aboard while I took care of the small pieces and the kids.  A number of people offered lots of help and soon there was a production line of people passing our luggage along the carriage where it all finally came to rest lined up along the outer wall of the train.  Me and the kids were stuck up one end near the exit doors, where a lovely old German couple took over the role of ‘Oma and Opa’ and chatted to the kids and gave them sweets and made sure they were safely seated on the littlest suitcase. 

Cramped in the carriage

Stuck this way for an hour until the train arrived at Innsbruck, right in the way of other passengers moving about the train, gave us time to ponder how we would negotiate ourselves and all of our luggage into a cabin once one became available, before new embarking passengers stole it from us.  Cut a long story short a lovely Italian man who spoke some German and ‘a little’ English bagsied a cabin for us and then helped us rescue all our luggage from the corridor trapped between groups of passengers.  He was a little shocked to see the luggage keep coming, and even more surprised when he attempted lifting one of the suitcases up onto the overhead storage racks!  The poor guy spent most of his journey in the restaurant carriage, but for us, the remaining 3 hours were relaxing.

Relaxing for a bit

After crossing the Italian border we noticed once again the contrast between Austrian train stations and Italian ones in the general appearance and lack of amenities, including luggage trolleys.  How would we manage all of our luggage and the kids from the train station, to the car hire venue, without a trolley?  We told ourselves that Verona is a big place and surely its train station would have luggage trolleys, especially with an airport transfer departing from it. 

How wrong we were.  The friendly Italian man had told us that we would be able to get one for about Eur5.00, and so after he once again helped us with our cargo off the train and bid us farewell, Maciek went off in search of one.  He came back with nothing.  And so with each of us towing two massive suitcases plus our back packs, and Maciek also with the car seats, and Milly pulling along the littlest suitcase as well as her own back pack, we trudged along down the elevator and into the station, dodging hundreds of people, out the front and around the corner, where I waited with Amelia while Maciek went to sort out the car. 

The car was too small.  They’d given us an ‘or similar model’ which looked the same from the outside but the available boot space was not helpful at all!  With lots of jigsaw puzzling, quite a lot of swearing, an hour and a half later and with Noah ending up having to travel with his legs pushed to one side to allow room for a suitcase across the back seat, and my legs not much better off, we began the two hour drive to Milan.  Our task now was to re-arrange all of our luggage to comply with airline weight restrictions, and after dinner we spent all evening doing it, having to throw out more stuff that we had wanted to keep.  Quite a few freebies left behind for hotel staff anyway!

The final leg home

We’d packed our cabin luggage to the maximum, thinking that no-one ever weighs your hand luggage anyway.  But what do you know, Qatar Airways does!  Much to our relief it was all allowed through, and with that massive stress off our minds, we were able to relax knowing that in hundreds  of hours’ time we would be home!  All we had to do was survive the horrible torturous plane journey!

Lots of movies later, with not very much sleep, bloated stomachs and swollen feet, after surviving a 7 hour wait at Dohar airport with no money, we arrived in Perth.  Another two hours later through customs, where the officer kindly chopped off my lovely pine cone from my Christmas ornament, finally we walked through the arrival gates and were greeted by our welcome home party, and 12 degrees, which was a bummer considering we’d left all our warm clothes behind thinking ‘we won’t need those at home’! 

Home to bed.  Only to be up again at 2am!

And the horror story of jet lag begins……

(A journey of this magnitude requires a very long post!  I even cut loads out!  So, apologies.  The ones to follow will be short and sweet.  Promise.)

CHAPTER TWO - BACK 'OME!

Months have passed since the last post because I’ve been debating back and forth whether or not to continue with it.  My intentions were always to keep it going, but then time got the better of me, getting bogged down in settling back in, and it seemed too late.  But what the heck, I’ll do it anyway.   The main reason is to stay in touch with all our overseas friends, enlightening them on life in Oz, and hopefully in the process coax them over for a holiday (or frighten them off it for good!).   It will provide a platform to air out our own thoughts about coming back here to live and give us a chance to see life in Australia from a new perspective, learning about bits and pieces that we never gave any thought to before.  I heard a quote the other day, not sure where it was from now, but it said something along the lines of “You must immerse yourself in another world/culture/life to fully understand your own”.  Don’t quote me on it!  But that’s the gist.  And we definitely feel that living in Austria, even only for a year, has changed the way we see and deal with things, altered our perception of what is truly important to us, and given us a new understanding of ourselves.

So, to our friends and family here in ‘Straya’ (as the die hard true blue aussies call it), you’d be forgiven for not being too interested in reading on, since we are just here around the corner and can talk to you everyday.  But to all our chums far and wide, here is a lovely picture to start it all off…..

One of our lovable native creatures - The Red Back Spider !

From one season to another

Balloons from the balcony in Spring

 

The time has come to say so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye!  The two weeks since we returned from Italy have been crazy, sorting things out, trying to sell our furniture, our car, moving out, cleaning the apartment, tying up all the loose ends.

Amelia and Noah had their last day at Kindergarten on Friday.  They had a little leaving party and I became quite emotional saying goodbye to all of her teachers and the other staff.  We are also madly trying to have last minute catch ups with friends.  We have met such lovely people here, all of whom have been so helpful and supportive along the way and some special lifelong friendships have been made.

The decision to return to Perth was not an easy one, and we mulled over it, on again off again, for months.  There are many little reasons that contributed to the decision we made in the end, but the biggest one is family, and the fact that Amelia has struggled so much with communication and making friends which was heartbreaking at times.  Now we are looking forward to going, we still have moments where we look around and think how can we leave a place as beautiful as this, but life is life wherever you live.  A friend of mine who writes fantastic emails like short stories recently told me that she and her family have also been very busy, only in a more mundane kind of way.  What I can say is that it doesn’t matter where you live in the world, the mundane follows!  Noah is still toilet training and weeing on the carpet and pooing in his pants!  Food shopping and meal planning still needs to be done, as does cleaning the toilet and bathroom (ugh..worst job in the world!).  You still worry about money, and stress when your kids are sick.  All of these things still go on, even if you live in Barbados, or on a Greek Island, or in the Austrian Alps!  You just have a different view from your kitchen window while you’re washing the dishes.  And the only important thing is that you wake each day and be grateful for it, be grateful for your health, and for your family and friends.  So no matter how mundane you think your life is, everybody elses, deep down, is just the same.  I’d like to include a famous (??) quote from a great man called Maciek – “The grass might be greener over here, but the amount of shit that needs to be piled onto it really stinks!”  True in every sense!

 

River paddling in Summer

We will miss the lush green meadows, the mountain air and delicious perfect temperature tap water; the clear rivers and babbling brooks and waterfalls; hiking through the woods and all the cool outdoor sports on the doorstep; all the things in the sky we can see from our balcony like the light planes and rescue helicopters, hot air balloons, and paragliders, the clouds whispering past the forest in the distance; the green ‘bubble’ at Steinplatte and one euro icecreams in town.   We will also miss the lack of traffic and graffiti; the cleanliness; the quietness; the wildlife and the changing seasons; the simplicity of just being, watching the cows chew away at the grass below or the eagles hovering above; not having to lock the door or worry about the kids wandering around the supermarket alone; the limited choice in the shops which started out as a negative but now feels like it’s just enough. 

 

 

Kicking up leaves in Autumn

We will definitely NOT miss the overwhelming stench of cow poo at certain times of the year!  Neither will we miss having to translate every document, and every bit of correspondence.  We are looking forward to familiarity, being able to understand everything and everyone, watching telly and watching the kids play happily with their cousins and friends.  And we are looking forward to babysitters, going out to dinner and having some time off! (brace yourselves, there’s almost a year and a half worth to make up for!)

 

This has been a fantastic experience, and even with all the difficult and stressful times, we have no regrets, only gratefulness at having had the opportunity to do it.

 

Christmas in the snow

These mornings are misty and cold, snow has fallen at the tip of Noah’s ‘Hot Chocolate Mountain’, and the trees are already beginning to turn to shades of Autumn, but as the leaves gently fall on the final days of this journey, we return home to the Spring and the beginning of a new one.  A fresh start, new perspectives, and new dreams to be dreamt up….

Forget me nots...

 

Please close the gate - the 'necklace of conkers' Amelia made in Autumn left behind for someone to find..

As we are preparing to fly home soon I just wanted to note down a few things that have been part of our stay here, small insignificant things, but nevertheless things I want to remember…

The Mercedes in the school courtyard appeared just after Christmas and remained until just before Easter.  It was green, with GB plates and by February was the only car buried in snow as it hadn’t moved for weeks.  In this case at home the police would be notified and a big orange sign placed on the car to let the general public know that the car had been reported.  An email from the school office was circulated to all the parents asking if anyone knew who the car belonged to, but that was it.  Some poor British soul could have been missing up on the mountain and no-one even bothered to investigate!  We had a parents evening in April and I was asked if it belonged to my Dad.  I wish! I replied!  We did briefly consider stealing it and actually hatched up a few plans but it wasn’t to be, for as mysteriously as it arrived, it disappeared, and that was the last anyone ever saw of it!

In Perth everyone complains about the amount of junk mail they receive and most people plaster a great big threatening ‘NO JUNK MAIL’ sign onto the front of their post boxes.  If you think you’ve got it bad there, you should see this lot!  This must be the junk mail capital of Europe!  In our tiny little silver letter box, 3 times a week, every week, we find crammed in a huge pile of mini magazines from all the shops in town.  Actually for me it’s been quite good, as I was able to ‘shop’ without being hassled by shop assistants who I couldn’t understand!

 

 

Noah's favourite bin, the 'green bin'

Everything here must be recycled.  You must separate all of your paper, glass, plastic etc and then take it once a week to the recycling place in the village and put it all into the massive container in which it belongs.   First you have to find out what goes where by learning to read the German signs as things that you think would go in the paper container actually go into the carton container, and coloured glass must be separated from normal glass, and so on.  There is a big container for old clothes and a smaller container for old shoes.  You’re not allowed to put them together and they must be in the correct bags or you can’t put them in.  Plus, it’s only open on Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons, not too convenient if you’re working or going away on holiday, as you get a huge build up of it in your house, as we always did.  Food leftovers must be taken to the ‘green bin’ which for us was down the stairs and out the front next to the old man’s garden.  The green bin is a metre and a half tall, and in winter was covered by a metre of snow, and there was so much snow underfoot that the lid was ground level, and you had to bend down to empty your food scraps.  Normal rubbish goes in the black bin, this is a normal wheely bin only teeny tiny, which is kept down the stairs and outside in the ‘shed’, and it was only collected fortnightly.  A problem if you forgot (it happens) or away on holidays.  Not very interesting, but I wanted to add it because it was a ‘right rigmarole!!’

You wouldn’t think it but there are so many weird and creepy bugs here, I’ve never seen so many species of bug!  And flies!  I thought Australia was bad.  But the really crap thing is they don’t have fly screens, so everything with six legs gets in.  That’s why we had three fly swats in the house, and Noah became an expert with it (p.s you can’t buy fly spray).  Also, I’ve lived in Australia for 25 years and never seen a snake except on the news.  Here I’ve seen two.  One big black water snake in a lake on the top of a mountain, and one little brown one on the track while I was hiking with my friend!

 

Park between the lines people!

Drivers here are very courteous.  Someone will always let you in.  There is no confusion on the roundabouts and people stay in the slow lane unless overtaking.  I’ve never seen an incident of ‘road rage’ or of anyone driving up someone else’s backside!  And hardly ever heard anyone beep their horn.  But their parking is atrocious!!  The white lines are there for a reason people!!  They are called parking bays, and you are supposed to park within them!  Not half your car in one and half in the other, not across them sideways, not ‘just a bit much over one line so no-one else can fit in next to you because the car in the space but one has done the same’!  Honestly, it’s ridiculous!  And the worst bit of it is, one afternoon I arrived home and parked my car outside the apartment in the only space available, next to a German holiday maker, at quite an awkward angle, but I had no choice as I was aligned with the cars on either side of the free space.  I came out the next morning to find mine the only car left, everyone else had gone to work, which left my car looking like I’d parked at a ridiculous angle by choice, and an A4 size note on the windscreen, telling me off, telling me to learn to drive, complete with a diagram of ‘how not to park’ and ‘how to park correctly’.  All in German of course.  Are you serious?  Have you not looked around EVERYWHERE and noticed how badly EVERYONE here parks!  And the one time I park ‘out of order’ you leave a condescending note on my windscreen?  And it wasn’t even my fault!  Needless to say I was livid, and by golly if I could have written up a quick note in reply I would have, but I had no paper or pen, and I didn’t know how to write what I wanted to write in German anyway!!  Maciek had a good laugh out of it at least!

 

Keep off the grass in 4 languages!

Keeping off the grass.  When you see photos of Austria all you notice is vast acres of lush green meadows.  Well that’s what we noticed, and we imagined the kids being able to run to their hearts content.  And have you noticed, because we didn’t, that you never do see kids running to their hearts content in those pictures?  That’s because you’re not allowed on it.  It belongs to the farmers.  The growing of grass during summer to be cut and collected into hay bales for the cows to munch on during winter is very important business.  And you could be shot at for trampling on it.  Of course in winter you can wander wherever you like.  But that’s no good because you sink to your shoulders in the snow!

 

 

Our little friend

And finally, to the little deer who first made an appearance on the misty morning of Good Friday, wandering out of the woods below our balcony and meandering across the field, and who has been a regular since, we will miss you!!

Milly and Noah's leaving party at KG and Milly's birthday all in one!

Language and Maths

A quick lesson in German and Austrian dialect here.  And also some little embarrassing mistakes we’ve made along the way!  First of all, there are loads of different greetings.  The official greeting and the most formal is Gruss Gott, which you would definitely say to an elderly person, and I think it actually means ‘greetings from God’ which is to say you’ve been to God’s place and he’s said “oh by the way when you see so and so, give him my greetings would you?”.  A less formal version of this is Gruss Dich, or Gruss Dir, which I think means ‘greetings to you’, but if there’s two of you the person would say something which sounds like ‘Gruss Tyke’, or ‘Gruss Dink’, don’t know how to spell either of those, never seen them written down, that’s just what they sound like. You could also say ‘Servus’ to a person your own age or a friend.  And then when you say goodbye, the main saying here is ‘Pfirti’ (sounds like Pfee-tee) but then if there’s two or more of you they might say ‘Pfir-tyk’, again apologies about all the spelling, I’m just trying to write it how it sounds!  Formally, people say Auf Wiedersehen, or without the ‘Auf’, or often shop assistants say Wiederschauen which means the same thing but in a less formal way.  Or ‘Tchuss’.  Some might also say Ciao.  I like that one.  Nice and easy. 

So as you can imagine, going for a walk, you can pass quite a number of people, all of whom will greet you in one of the above ways, and often in a way you’re not quite expecting, so it can throw you off and many times we’ve responded the wrong way or even not at all as we’re too flustered!  If in doubt though, you could always just say ‘Hallo’ which sounds like ‘Halloo’.  The kids know the difference between an English Hello and a German Hallo. Sometimes I’ve said “Gruss Dir” to someone after they’ve said “Pfirti” to me, and then I’ve realized and tried to shout the correct response after them but it’s all too late.  On a mountain climb Maciek passed an old lady walking down the hill, and as he was in the zone and could see the top, wasn’t thinking about formalities and yelled out ‘Servus!’  Gasp!!  He could have been hanged for that!  Confused?  Don’t worry, so are we!  If all else fails, you could just do what my friend Sam did not long after she moved here and didn’t know the language.  Greeted by a friendly lady on a walk along the river, she responded with the first German word that came to her head, which was Scheisse!!  True.

In German ‘I am’ is ‘Ich bin’, but here they only pronounce the first syllables (this is true for many words so you can imagine how difficult it is to pick it up!) so they say ‘I bi’.  In German ‘me too’ is ‘Ich auch’, but here they say ‘Ee ar’.  Like a donkey.  ‘Fast’ in German is ‘schnell’, but here they say something like ‘schnoi’.  They also pronounce ‘A’s’ as ‘O’ in its short vowel sound.  So ‘Tag’ (day) is ‘Tog’, ‘Bad’ (bath/pool) is ‘Bod’, and in German if you want to say ‘a little’ the word is ‘bisschen’, but here they say ‘bisl’.  Still confused?  Just so you know, as it’s been mentioned a fair bit in this blog, ‘see’ is lake, and ‘ride/drive’ is ‘FAHRT’!

Three words I always got mixed up with is Kuche (kitchen) (with the dots over the U, called an umlaut!), Kuchen (cake) and Kuken (chick, they fluffy yellow kind),(with an umlaut over the U).  I know for a fact that a few times in the kindergarten I asked a child to “go to the chick and bring me a glass”, or “Happy Birthday, is this your kitchen?”, or “Can you go to the cake and help Angelika bake the chick?”.   And another thing, when there is an ‘st’ together, or an ‘sp’ together, it’s pronounced ‘sht’ or ‘shp’, for example ‘Stein’ (stone) or ‘Spargel’ (asparagus).  I got so used to speaking with the kids in the kindergarten as much as I could in German, mostly yelling out ‘SHTOP!!’, which is what I had to do when all else failed, that this one time, I was alone with the kids at lunch time, and I wanted a child to sit down.  I’d asked him a few times and he was completely ignoring me, so I raised my voice a bit and said very sternly “WILL YOU SHIT PLEASE!”  I had a bit of a giggle, luckily none of them understood me, and the teacher wasn’t there.  But at least the said child sat down!

You can’t get a sense of what people are like, as you can’t understand them.  The person in the queue behind you chatting to their friend, could be a complete and utter idiot, or really intelligent with interesting opinions!  The old lady who is having something to say to your children as they pass you in the supermarket, could be saying how cute they are, or could be telling them to behave themselves and stop being little brats!  You wouldn’t know.  You just nod and smile.  It’s been quite nice being in our little bubble not having to overhear everyone else conversation in the café, or in the queue in the bank.  It will be interesting to find out how that feels again once we get home.

So, on to Maths…

Australians, complain no longer about the price of petrol.  We pay here on average Euro1.58 per L, and in Italy we paid Eur2.00 per L!!  And consider the difference in wages, here and in Oz.  I think Oz is probably one of the cheapest in the world.  Don’t quote me on it.  But having travelled around here a bit, it’s certainly much more expensive.

It might be a bit boring but I’m interested in comparisons to Perth, so I know what to expect when I get home and don’t faint in the supermarket aisles!  So if anyone cares to let me know how these prices compare (remember to convert!)…..

Huggies nappies are E10.00 for a pack of 58.  Kids face wipes pack of 40, E1.00.  1L of fresh milk, E1.00.  Pack of 10 fresh from the bakery white bread rolls, E1.00.  Loaf of freshly baked white bread, sliced, E1.19.  Bananas, E1.99 kg.  Carton 10 Xlarge free range eggs, E3.49.  Kg of organic potatoes E1.59.  250g punnet mushrooms, E1.00.  550g pack of turkey E4.64, or chicken breast E6.38.  Pack of Cevups, E1.99.  Packet of Gouda cheese slices, E1.98.  Breakfast cereal is expensive, at about E3.50 for a 500g box (and all of them have chocolate bits in, good luck with your diet!)

Speaking of diets, a bottle of Yellow Tail Australian wine (I think this is quite expensive at home) E5.99 for one bottle, but you can buy two for E10.00.  Bottle of Baileys Irish Cream, 700ml, E10.00.  Equivalent of a carton of beer is between E10-15.  Bottle of Jack Daniels, E15.00.  We’ve recently been enjoying a whiskey that tastes just like Canadian Club, for E7.00 a bottle!  And you can bung it all into your trolley with your apples and biscuits, same checkout.  BTW, you don’t get your bags packed at the checkout, and it’s like a race against time, your groceries get pushed along and if your trolley isn’t lined up to catch it it ends up on the floor, your problem!  Hofer is the worst, MPries a bit more relaxed.  The next person doesn’t wait till you’re all finished either, and neither does the checkout chick, she’ll start serving the next person even if all your groceries are still on the counter while you’re madly trying to get it all into your trolley without smashing your eggs!