Bavarian Horror Story: Youth Hostel

… okay, slightly dramatic, but still.

On Sunday, my friend and I left from their place in Gottingen for a retreat for the PhD students at IMPRS, in Rothenburg, Bavaria. It took, barring breaks and traffic, more or less four hours to get there in the world’s most hellish bus driven by a man who had a very tenuous relationship with his indicator. He narrowly avoided a lot of people.

Narrowly.

God, the Autobahn is a fucking hair raising experience for me as a person who is used to dangerous roads and very strictly enforced speed limits. I know that Germany is generally lacking in the kind of wildlife and road hazards that make Australian driving so dangerous, but my brain is still like ‘that person is driving at 200kmph what the fuck what the fuck‘

Anyway. The retreat.

It was cool. The people Ruth works with are cool — funny, laid back, really nice bunch of nerds. My people, you know?

The town was ancient, and awesome. My fucking phone ate most of my pictures, though — here’s a couple I managed to salvage.

The perfect town, right?

Wrong.

What you are looking at right here is The Town With No Fucking Cigarettes.

By this morning, affairs were desperate. Everyone was out of cigarettes, except for two of the girls who found themselves suddenly with many more friends than they thought they had. It was a hell of a situation. Thankfully, we stopped at one of those highway-side pit stop places on the way home and we all bought cigarettes. The world is in balance again.

Well, kind of. Because it fucking snowed here today.

For those of you not in the know, that’s… that’s not supposed to happen. We’re not even arse deep in October yet. Almost all the trees are still fully-furred, if varying shades of gold and red now. But it snowed. It snowed so much in some parts of Germany that people were stuck on the roads.

God dammit.

Actually, I’m being dramatic again. As someone from Australia, snow is still a massive novelty to me. Everyone else is suffering, and I just think it’s certifiably The Best Thing Ever.

And, of course, true to form as a certified hard cunt, I was like, ‘oh it’s fine, it’s not that cold’ when there’s literally frozen water on the fucking ground.

Apparently we’re supposed to be delving into the negatives beginning next week, so I’ll take snow pictures.

Ah well. Good times.

Maxil