Strange place names and other bollocks

On Saturday TT had to work. But she wanted to go out on the piss after finishing so she took a change of clothes with her in her bag.

Her work bag is rather collasal, it's not unlike the one she used to back pack around Europe. I don't know how, but for some reason it always maintains the same weight too. Even on days when she says "I don't need to take this today, I don't need that today, I won't need a first aid kit today...", etc., It always seems to be the same weight.

She's not a girly girl. I'm sure I've said that before. She has no make up in it, no spare shoes, so how the hell does it maintain the same shape and weight no matter what she puts in or takes out?

So far as I can tell the only stable contents are her mobile phone, her wallet and her lip balm stick. Most days it also contains her frozen lunch. I always cook enough of any dish to feed a small army, so there is a continual supply of frozen lunches in the freezer. In fact, this has got so bad (/good?) we've just had to buy more freezer containers, and if it gets any worse we'll have to buy a larger freezer. There are currently 8 containers of lunch in the freezer and I can't have any since we don't own, and TT wont let me buy, a microwave. So she has to take them to work and eat them there.

Recently I've taken to cooking food that I can easily reheat on the stove the following day for my own lunch too. That means some goes in the freezer and some goes into me the following day about lunch time.

Anyhoo, I digress hugely. When she finished work, at 3, I met her in a bar we've named the "Brau Hausen" after a place we went to in Germany. It's exactly the same layout and it could be the best themed bar in Brisbane if only the owner had ever been to Germany/Bavaria. Honestly, if I had the cash available I'd buy it tomorrow and make it Brisbanes best bar success story.

So we went there. It was cracking. We met two funny guys called Bruce (no shit?! Bruce in Australia?!) and Rowey. I've actually changed his name there, put an "n" in place of the final "y". I just done that cos I've now confessed to TT that yes, I do have a blog, and No, I don't want her to find it.

But who cares about their names anyway? It was an absolute hoot. Bruce could do a wicked Irish accent even though he's never been out of Aus. In fact he even confessed he's never met a genuine Irishman. He was superb. The only thing that gave it away that he wasn't Irish was that he kept saying Australian things in an Irish accent.

He's actually from NSW, and down there they have different slang. For example, here in QLD a half pint is called a "pot". Down there it's called something else - I can't remember what because I was so pissed.

But also up here we have "Gold", a really common beer made by Castlemain. The rest of the world have Castlemain XXXX but here (where it's made) that doesn't exist, we have loads of sub-variants. Gold is one of them. Bruce was up here in QLD purely to find an Irish bar and ask for "a pot of gold" in his perfect Irish accent.

I know it doesn't seem so funny in written form, but you should have been there. I pissed myself every time he said it. He nearly shit himself when I told him I was of Irish descent (true), he thought I was going to try and blow up his house or something.

It really was a funny night. He asked whether I followed English soccer ( at this point his mate stepped in and tried to explain that in the UK I might know it as football. I pretended to have no idea what they were talking about and then pissed myself laughing.

I felt sorry for laughing at them as they were decent blokes, so I told them I didn't really follow football but I kept a vague eye on "Norwich", my local team. They looked confused at this and proclaimed that although they had an interest in most English soccer teams, they'd never heard of them.

After much confusion it turned out that they did know the team I was talking about but being Australian they pronounced it (forgivably) differently to the correct pronunciation. You see, in Norfolk, UK, we have a plethora of weirdly pronounced place names. "Norwich" is actually a reasonably decent one, we pronounce it "Norich", or if your Norfolk accent is really bad, "Naaarich". The W is silent.

Incase you're interested, Wynmondam is one of our worst: It's pronounced "Windam" And Happisburgh is pronounced "Hazebruh". Acle is pronounced "Aikel"

But I'm digressing again. We had an absolute fucking hoot with these guys, talking about different slang and stuff. Another thing that made us laugh was when they talked about a small country just near Switzerland, "full of mountains and shit". Austria I guessed? Nope. Germany? Nope. France? Nope. Guess where it turned out to be?

Prize to anyone that guesses. I'll honestly send you Aussie paper money if you guess. This is a "mountainy place near Switzerland" according to our to aussie mates. In retrospect their description was correct apart from the "near Switzerland" bit. It's in Europe but their geography is awful.

I've been reading some Brian Thacker books which are ok. I've decided to definitely carry on with my retrospective travel stories. This Brian guy has made a living from writing books about travel around Europe and although vaguely amusing he doesn't divulge much in the way of useful information. It probably would have been useful 20 years ago, but not anymore. We have the Euro now, these books were written recently, but refer to times when each european country had their own currency.

Sorry this post has been so boring, I'll get up to speed soon again I'm sure. I've found a bottlo that does 5 litres of beer for $8. That's gotta be bad shit but it'll get me in the mood!