There's an awful lot of weirdos in our neighbourhood

Enough of the academic stuff (see that's what happens when you keep asking me about my studies!)

I got back from uni the other day, busting for the toilet, to find the flushing mechanism in a dismantled state, various parts of the toilet spread around the bathroom and a strong smell of vinegar. Hmm, I thought. What on earth have my crazy German flatmates done now. Well, Matthias didn't know anything about it (incidentally his befuddled response didn't surprise me one bit). We hunted Kathi down (well, knocked on her door) and demanded an explanation (well, asked her what the deal with the toilet was). We walked en masse to the bathroom and stood around the toilet. Kathi then proceeded to give a rather complex and incomprehensible explanation as to why she had dismantled the toilet and poured vinegar down it and then explained how now, whenever we used the toilet we would need to turn the water flow on and make a note of the time and level showing on the water meter. Needless to say, I returned to my room in a rather dazed and confused state. What on earth had happened to normality and why, oh why, am I living with people who find it normal behaviour to request that everyone makes a note everytime they use the toilet?

Well, when I returned to the flat today I found Matthias in the bathroom with a puzzled look on his face. It would seem he had taken it upon himself to be Mr DIY and to put the toilet back together. 30 mins later there was little sign of progress and I was starting to get impatient. He said he's be 5 mins and sure enough, 5 mins later he was done and the toilet seemed to have returned to normal. 5 mins later, I found out (5 mins too late) that the flush was in fact still not functioning properly. Well, I had an appointment with Chryssa about our presentation on Poland (don't ask) and so had to explain the situation to Matthias and leave him to deal with it. I made it back home a few hours later (after having emailed our Prof and having gotten 4 books our of the library :-) I'm v proud of my achievement) to find everything back to normal and a clean toilet. Thank God for that. I am now wondering what's going to happen next. Living with Germans is very different to living with Helen and Ruth (my über cool and über laidback flatmates from Edinburgh). We certainly had no dismantling of toilets in our flat in Ed, in fact, mere cleaning of the toilet was deemed almost too OTT...





Anyways, enough about toilets. Last night was Thursday night and alternate Thursday nights is party night at the FH. The night started with Ragil cooking up some scrummy (if somewhat spicy) Indonesian food for us which was accompanied by the standard amaretto and apple juice. From there we hit a house party and then went to Halle 8 for the main event. It wasn't a patch on the last Halle 8 party but got some photos... First pic is the house party peeps walking/stumbling to Halle 8 (Stelios, Solange, Lalang, Katia and Bec), then there's me, Bec and Ragil, then me with Saskia and Susi, 2 German mates of Bec's, then a group mug shot of Anne, Chryssa, Bec and me and then finally, Anne and Chryssa doing a cracking ad for Becks beer and FH parties.