Berlin

Berlin is as cool as ever. Braved the cold today for a good 4 hours or so to take a walking tour of the city, then visited a museum where they've got the Gates of Babylon, taken apart piece by piece and reconstructed inside the museum. Visited a chocolate shop-cafe-restaurant at the Gendarmarkt and had THE best chocolate mousse ever, along with chilli hot chocolate (I could have happily died, feeling my life complete after that snack) ... unfortunately they have a wedding booking tomorrow night, otherwise, guess where I'd be having dinner! If I ever come back to Berlin again, it will be because of that chocolate shop! Spent the latter part of the night waiting in line to get into the Reichstag (Germany's parliarment house) to see the view from the cupola (worth the wait and the climb and the cold). Funny though, even though I've been living a fairly stable existence for the last 6 months, playing happy families in France for 4 months andin Sweden for 2 months before that, the whole tourist thing has become just that, a thing, a fatiguing thing, and not an imperative the way it has been in the past. Could this be the end of my nomadicism?? Homebody tendencies aside though, Berlin really is cool, full of history, culture and science: one could live here a lifetime and not discover everything!

Christmas 2007

In general, I can pretty safely say that I love Christmas, but this year was something entirely different ... being away from home for my first Christmas ever, being in a foreign country and what's more, not the foreign country I'm living in ... I didn't really know what to expect. But what I got was just lovely: spending lots of time with people I care for, warmth, pretty lights in the city, gorgeous Christmas markets, good food and a traditional Czech Christmas celebration. Material gifts aside, Christmas 2007 was the best present I could ever receive -- díky moje Rybicko!

Boo Hoo Olympics

An e mail I got last week after unsuccessfully trying to get tickets for the Olympics in the Phase Two sales. Wah!

CoSport Australia was pleased to be able to put our allocation of tickets for the Beijing Olympic Games on sale on 26th November.

Australia has fully embraced this opportunity and after only a few days we have sold out of tickets to almost all sports.

Our website will continue to show “currently not available” signs in our website as we look forward to adding any tickets which become available to us.

At this point we don’t envisage having tickets for the “sold out” sports; however we at CoSport would like to be prepared for any opportunity that may present itself in order to meet our commitment to providing the best possible service to our clients and will maintain the “currently not available” tag for this purpose.

You may have seen Olympic Games tickets for sale via the web in Australia or other countries. CoSport advises our clients to purchase only from those companies who are officially licenced by the Beijing Organising Committee.

A list of the official licencees can be found in the Beijing Organising Committee website:

http://media.tickets.beijing2008.cn/en-cn/img/static/docs/GSANOC2008.pdf

It is recommended that you check out website regularly in order to find out whether any tickets for any events have become available.

At this point it is unclear as to the availability of tickets at Gamestime in Beijing. As more information becomes available will be happy to share it with all of our customers either through our website or by a call our office numbers below.

As a sponsor of the Games, CoSport is entitled to provide hospitality packages which comprise accommodation and tickets to many events. These packages are currently available in our website. These packages are drawn from our sponsor inventory and not from Australia’s allocation of Olympic tickets.

Finally may I apologise for the late response to your e-mail, during the last four days our office has been inundated with emails and calls from the passionate Australian public once again demonstrating their commitment to supporting all sports at all levels and taking this opportunity to take part in what will be a unique Olympic experience.

Thanks again for your interest in taking part in Beijing 2008.

Bad Day

What are the chances of:

1. Me going to bed very late last night
2. The baby waking up at 6am on the same day that
3. I'm supposed to take him playgroup, which is a 25-minute walk away, however,
4. Playgroup is closed today, resulting in a 25-minute walk back home because
5. His mother didn't check the opening times of the facilty thoroughly.

Well, of today, the chances of all five things happening are 100%.

I am SO tired...

An Entirely Unnecessary Clothing Purchase

It's a cute little mohair cardigan/jacket, black, open knit, knee length, vaguely Buffy-ish in nature... SO cute! I've just spent the last hour trying it on with various different articles of clothing (the most girly hour that I've passed for a good 12 months or so, if not more) and come to the conclusion that I don't go clothes shopping anymore because I always end up buying the same things, things that I already have (guess what's hanging up in my wardrobe in Perth, exactly the same style but in a different colour?)

National Geographic Photography Competition

My friend Karel is one of the top ten for animal photography in this year's Czech National Geographic Photography Competition !!! Click HERE to see the photo and HERE to see other winners and other categories. Go Kajo!

The Fuzz

The mother of the child that I'm looking after works for the Gendarmerie, which is like a regional police service, and apparently part of your training is to be exposed to hard core drugs, like cocaine, herion and crack!! One afternoon, police trainees are taken to the hospital and a doctor injects them with small amounts of each substance... She joined a while ago and I don't know if the policy is still in action, but all the same... it's pretty far out!! I could NEVER imagine such a thing happening in Australia, we're far too conservative and afraid of the dark side.

And how did she feel after her afternoon of (albeit state sanctioned and medically supervised) drug trippery? She replied, with a grim look on her face, "Not very good."