You should never go to bed craving sushi. Pau learning to make sushi at our ‘movie night’ a couple of weekends ago. Any excuse to sit still for hours on end and stuff our faces with food. Two nights ago I had a dream, featuring one of my most beloved Aussies: Ashlee. She was in Germany, and we took her to an asian restaurant. Andy and I were super excited. We miss asian food like crazy here, especially places which sell good Thai or Vietnamese food. Or Rendang, there are days when I would kill for a good rendang. Many of the aisan-style food places here still sell very westernised cuisine and ‘asian fast food’ – nonspecific noodles with salty sauce and a bit of chicken thrown on top. Many more restaurants, even when selling a higher quality of food (and I’ll admit, some of it is super tasty), still tend to be ‘asian themed’. These places have a generic name, or claim to be ‘Thai’ but somehow still manage to have sushi slipped into …

Our first day in Sicily looked a lot like this: Shall we go in for the close up? We had to wake up ridiculously early to take the boat from Malta to Sicily and suffered for it during the remainder of the day. Maybe you can’t tell from the fine details of his face, but this is sleepy-face, not queasyface (I feel, sadly, that I am at a stage in this blog where I would like to acknowledge the fact that I did not heave up my food on the way over). Possibly there’s some hunger in there too. Of course, at some stage in the morning, someone fed him caffeine, and he spent the rest of the day yo-yoing between super tired and super hyperactive. I’m not pointing any fingers here mother, but I’m pretty sure that someone wasn’t me. I know not to feed the gremlin after midnight. Anyway, we arrived back on Italian soil, and spent 20 minutes discussing with the taxi drivers the fact that it was Sunday. We wanted to take a train from …

One of my plans for this shiny new year is to do more ‘art’ to balance out the science. You know, because sometimes pippetting thousands of samples, and then lather, rinse, repeat unto infinity, just doesn’t feel like it’s fulfilling me in every way possible. The wonders of youtube taught me the most basic of basic stitches (behind, hook, pull through)- and how to stitch in a straight line. So here’s a scarf I made for Andy. Now to learn the stuff that requires actual skill!

The next day in Malta began with the traditional ‘coffee and proof of life photograph’. The coffee, which came with a shot of burnt expresso on top of syrup, was horrible. Perhaps as expected. I really wanted to try the one they had with pistachio syrup because a) odd and b) awesome looking coffee.. but they didn’t have the pistachio, and then I panicked. On the plus side, I was able to pull funny faces and force Andy to drink the rest of it. And here is Andy, proving to his Mother that no, we haven’t drowned or lost him. The morning began with full breakfasts, and-for some of the more decadent of the group- cake. Would you like to see some photos from a day spent wandering, posing, acting like lions and wishing we were Santa Claus? Here goes: Andy is Peacocking, but this Pigeon is doing it much better. Who’s a pretty boy then? This will be our Christmas card next year. Andy thinks I am taking a photo of him. He is …

Here’s why I wanted to go to Gozo. http://images.summitpost.org/original/325684.jpg I mean- seriously! Che Magnifique and all that! This, my friends, is the Azure Window- filled with prettiness and light. This is what we got instead… Man- it’s supposed to be Auzure! I’m pretty sure that Malta sees good weather about 364 days of the year. The day that we went to Gozo clearly coincided with their ‘wet season’. The trip to Gozo itself was fairly horrible if you are pathetically weak sea-dog like myself. The ferry ride from island to island was fairly simple- only about 20 minutes.. doable. But Maltese streets are some sort of windy horror out of the mind of Escher and Dante’s love child, and our bus stopped and started up and down all the little hills and all through the alleyways and… Well, to make a long story short, it was a good thing I didn’t have any breakfast, because not all of my contents made it to the smaller island. I am a delightful travelling companion. We got off …

On the only weekend during Mutti’s visit that we weren’t a) feeling very very sick to the stomach or b)Roaming through Rome, Meeting Malta, See-silianing Sicily and Visiting Venice, we headed to the Big City. And introduced Mother to some of Berlin’s ‘Cuisine’. We headed East to the gallery, to see the pretties and bathe in the sunlight. Last time we visited the wall with Andy’s fold we found this rather racist and hateful message: ‘We want the Wall back’. Classy.This time the word ‘don’t’ had been added, the whole message scratched out and the pleasing rebuttal of ‘you stupid meanypants, get the bumhole out!’. I am paraphrasing to make this blog ‘G for my Granddad reads this blog’ rated. But you get the point. Also ‘frigg you!’. For Adam: I spent about 3 minutes trying to work out what exactly this meant in English. Then Andy pointed to the left where they had the translation. Still, I was very proud of myself. ‘Those who want the world to remain how it is, don’t want the world …

Once, many years back now, my family on my mothers side squatted on the Island of Malta for a couple of generations. Which, really, was our sole reason for traveling there. Since that time, possibly only in the last few years, Malta has been trying to reinvent itself. It wants to be the cool hangout for the super (or at least moderately) rich. You can buy yourself citizenship (for just over 600k plus extras), and will be rewarded not only with a passport to the EU, but also rather pleasingly low tax rates. The magazine on the airlines (Malta Airways of course) was all about pimpin’ the Island. Which came across as slightly desperate, and just a little bit tacky. Not what they were looking for at all. We were looking for this: As my people (kind of) come from Malta, certain things have leaked into our fantastically Mongrel Aussie-hybrid customs. Example 1: Mushy Pea Pies Firstly, let me say that it is amazing to be in a country that understands the concept of a …

On our final day in Rome, we visited the Vatican. We didn’t prebook tickets (which I hear you can do online), so it took us about 40 minutes to get inside. Which was not too upsetting- Andy read, I pretended I was a dinosaur who like to eat fruit- and was much less time than promised to us by the assorted men trying to sell us overpriced guided tours (‘2 hours’).  We spent a bit of time flouncing around the courtyard. It was pretty cold: So we headed into the museum. First stop- slightly creepy creepy room filled with heads and busts: My sister was really into Greek myths when she was younger. Ella chose Artemis- the hunter goddess, as her goddess, a slightly odd choice for one who has possibly not owned a flat shoe (and definitely not taken to running) since forced to do so in high school. My goddess was Athena- goddess of wisdom, and goddess of war (she had a temper that I respected and could identify with). We’re practically the …

Sometimes, when I start writing this blog, it feels like coming to confession. Not that I’ve ever, to my knowledge, been to confession, but because they always start it (in the TV shows and movies) with ‘it’s been six weeks since my last confession’ So. ‘It’s been four weeks since my last (Roman) holiday’. Rome day 3 started in the Piazza del Popolo, and with honest intentions to get a bit of culture into ourselves by visiting museums, art galleries and the like. But the sun swayed our souls, and we ended up swanning through the streets, marching through marketplaces, and checking out cats. Plus there was some magnificent fence leaping thrown in there. There was supposed to be a market ‘just around the corner’ from the Piazza, but of course, we couldn’t find it. So we wandered the lands instead: The wandering of course involved some eating and posing. The icecream was of the ‘ok but not fabulous’ variety, which means I’m not entirely sure what the top flavour I’m chowing down on is. Possibly …

New Year, New Blogging Resolution. We’re 9 days in and it’s not looking great eh? This last week has been filled with the type of exhaustion that can only come from coming back to work after getting a little bit too used to holiday life. Luckily, we’ve been pleasantly surprised on return to The Deutschland to find that Autumn is lingering (which frankly seems deserved after it stubbornly refused to get into Spring for so long last year), and the weather is hovering at a rather pleasant 10 degrees. But shall we travel back to Rome anyway? After the trials of the colosseum, the Man and I needed some meat. And what better place to eat said meat, than at Ducati? (which after a quick google I can very confidently say ‘is a company that sells motorbikes’). We both opted for beef burgers, because a) there is no beef in Deutschland and b) Germany burgers tend to be ‘American style’. Oh yeah, and c) mine came with blue cheese! I had such high expectations, I mean, just look …