Well, that's another day over with. I finished my shift at 7am and am now in the ZDV computer rooms updating my webpage whilst waiting for the personnel department to open so I can sign my new contract.

You will have noticed that the web-address has now been changed. This was due to me exceeding the permitted space on my student account, so I am now in charge of the organisation calling itself "erasmus". The old address will work, it will just forward you on to the new address, which is http://www.uni-mainz.de/Organisationen/erasmus.

Have added links to some of the photos I've put up - namely the striptease, luca's present, and birmingham.

Jordi and I fly off to Valencia this evening, so if I don't have time to write any more today it's because I still haven't started packing !!!

Best set off to sign my contract...

A very short goodbye, as no-one seems to be interested in me anymore (I haven't received an email from anyone I know for about 3 days).

I am slowly recovering (enough to be able to eat Tortilla made by Jordi) and so hope to be well again in time for the Falles.

But, as I said before, no-one cares, so I'm not going to write any more :(

A big sorry to all my readers (especially as we seem to have reached the big 500) for not being able to write over the last few days. I do have a good excuse however. I have been really ill, not being able to eat, drink, or speak (to many of my friends delight).

Taking all sort of funny coloured tablets, ones with different flavours, and all variants of the ...caine family. But to no avail. I am now consoling myself with the fact that I am stuck in bed all day with only a soft animal for company. Unfortunately it doesn't speak back to me - very often.

Also, as I have been having time for dreaming (about 10 different dreams a night), I thought I might start up a page for people to put their dreams on. I know there are lots of weird and wonderful ones that should be explained, so tell me what you think and I'll set it up if there is enough interest (ie at least one person).

Well better get off to bed, Good night.

OK, the weather changes a bit here, I admit that I forgot to tell Jordi that, but it's generally a lot better than Mainz. So all of you claiming that we're here freezing - you're wrong !

We are making tortillas for the people we are living with now, so will have to go to buy the potatoes and eggs.

Have a good holiday.

Update from good 'ol England.
Arrived here to find sandbags up against the doors of the houses nearby, to protect them from the floods. Most open land/fields/woodland are now barred from entry because of the foot and mouth disease, and the train crashes keep happening, and there was a bomb in london outside the BBC offices. So, all in all, a very good time to come back to my country.

Never mind, I'm here safe and well (except my throat sort of hurts). Am going to show Jordi the delights of Birmingham tonight (no, not "Legs-11"). However, as we are both very hungry now, and need to find some people, I will have to leave you and update tomorrow.

Hope everything's well with the rest of the Mainz crew, and keep in touch.

Well, alas, everyone is disappearing. Ethel and Gonzalo have started their interrailing (if they ever catch the train, that is), Jordi and I fly to England this afternoon (good riddence, I hear you say), on thursday Gloria, Pili, Mavi and any other people I've forgotten about are leaving as well. Only Luca will be left here in Mainz. Alone. So, if you have any spare time, and the inclination, send him some SMSs or give him a ring.

And if anyone wants me to give them a ring, send your messages, and once I've read them I will be able to phone you from England (it's a bit better than sending an email that says "I'm in England").

Well, for those of you I won't see in Spain these holidays, have fun wherever you may be, and I'll see you in April when I return. For those of you in Valencia, watch out, I'm coming to visit all of you !!!

Signing off from Mainz until April (will sign on from the UK as well, probably).

Tschüß !!!

Suddenly realised I haven't written anything in my diary throughout my time at work today.

Luca had his birthday, whereby he cooked us an excellent meal.

We are slowly getting all the photos back from the carnival time (they should be up on this site on monday).

My email message to Radio 1 was read out at 6.10 this morning (0510 GMT) by Vicky. Definitely worthwhile.

New pictures are up on the site (need shrinking a bit first, though - I'll do that later): Lad's night in, Dressup, Luca's birthday, and my haircut.

Two more days to go until I'm in my homeland once again. Yippeeeeeee !!!!!

3-0
Need I say more?

He's alive !

Well, at least someone is sending an email from his address. Yep, Geir is alive and well, apparently. However, I have yet to hear his excuse for not writing sooner or updating his website.

Nothing much to say really, so I'll leave it until tomorrow.

Short but sweet.

Now I can at last update my log. I had written a huge entry, which, even if I say so myself, was the best and funniest yet. However due to problems with the Blogger, it got deleted, never to be seen again. So I have decided I am going to go and build an anti-computer device to stop all the errors and mistakes that they bring into my life.

Still no sign of Geir yet. I have already checked that there have been no airplane crashes between Germany and Iceland, and I was going to write an email to the icelandic police, except that I don't know how to call for help in icelandic (although I hope that Geir does). Perhaps the weather is so cold there that the electrons can no longer flow through the cables to power his computer. Maybe he's using potato power, but as he hasn't managed to go shopping for a while he doesn't have enough potatoes to allow him to access the internet. Maybe I'll send him a vegetable to his address so that he can once again get online. Well, if anyone does hear from him or sees him anywhere, please tell me so that I can call off the search party. I don't know how he'll survive in Yemen if he get's lost on his way home ! As long as he doesn't swap Laurent for a camel (you should be able to get at least 4 camels and a sack of corn for a specimen like laurent...).

Helau !!!
Yes it's the time of year when people start acting like they've got mad cow's disease and dressing up funny and playing music in the streets. Yep, it's Fasching at the moment, meaning that all along the Rhine there are parties going on non-stop for about 4 days. On sunday we went into town and saw all the floats and lots of people marching through the streets in what seems to have been the prelude to "Rosenmontag". The day also happened to be the 24th birthday of Jordi, and yes, I was working again (but this time only in the afternoon). Luckily at work we've got speakers connected to the computer now, so I logged onto the BBC Radio 1 website and listened to the radio in realtime. I was in such a euphoria of being able to listen to some great music for once that I didn't bat an eyelid when I received a phonecall asking me if the three witches of Hechtsheim could dress up as little girls, neither when they suggested that I did as well. Only when I finally came home to find Luca and Jordi desperately trying to get their skirts on straight did the reality of it all hit me. Before I had time to unpack my bag I was cornered into my room where I was told what I had to wear that night. It didn't stop there. Oh no. One thing about girls, they always seem to have an excess of makeup that they are just waiting to be able to put on a guy. And now they had three locked up in a room. Needless to say, when we emerged into the street we caused quite a stir. In fact, what with the walking and swinging of handbags we became the highlight of many people's nights. When we happened across a band dressed up as mexicans, we knew what to do. As we were singing and dancing mexican songs in front of them they started to play and we ended up making a procession down the small streets with people coming out of pubs to have a look at us all. What a night. Monday saw the arrival of about 600,000 people on the streets, and the carnival was happening for real. Only one word can sufficiently describe what it was like - packed.

Due to a certain person's opinion that their country did not appear as a prominent part of the CIA factbook of Spain, I have been forced/persuaded to link to a page about Tenerife as well. I hope that keeps them happy.

I can't remember if there was anything else I wanted to say last time, but if I remember I'll try and update this site.

Speak to you soon

Just a very quick update today (and sorry for not writing yesterday). Had a lot of work to finish for my final lecture (Quantum Computers) and didn't have enough time to update my journal.

Also the email provider I use wasn't working yesterday, so I couldn't read any emails. This meant that when I finished the class today and went on the internet I have spent all my time just trying to read all the emails I've received over the last few days.

One more thing, I don't know if anyone has seen him, but Geir has dissappeared. He hasn't updated his website, nor has he responded to emails or SMSs. If anyone sees him could they please contact me, because tomorrow I will have to send out a search party.

See you then.

Tuesday. How quickly time flies. Maybe I should buy shares in a clock company. Tonight is the night, though. Football. Manchester Utd. v Valencia. Kick-off at 8.45 (GMT +1).

I'm sure there was something else important to say, but I can't remember, so I'll have to leave it for now.
Until tomorrow.

Only a quick note today, to say that last night there was a party for Blanca at the ESG because she has now gone back to spain to finish her degree.

I am doing another nightshift at the moment, and sometime soon I hope to get photos of my work up on this site.

Note: Chocolate seems to work just as well for keeping me awake during the night. Must remember to buy another 3kgs !!!

It's now 4 o'clock in the morning and I haven't taken a coffee yet. Yep, that's right, I'm on another nightshift at the MAMI.

Made fajitas tonight. Very nice. Getting back into the old habit of cooking some really good meals. Maybe I'll even do some english food sometime.

Whilst planning for these holidays I happened across a car-sharing scheme based here in germany called the Mitfahrzentrale. It works by people saying when they are travelling, from where to where, and then people who want to go to the same place email them to sort out paying petrol, dates, etc... Am presently looking into it for getting back to england on the cheap.

OK, just realised I had been staring at the computer screen thinking about what to write for about 5 mins. that the walls and furniture started to deform. Can hallucinations be caused by high radiation levels? Maybe I should start a study. Maybe Not.

Might have to start the second Snickers bar soon, as that's all I remembered to pack for tonight. Well, maybe I should round off this entry with a little question: Does anyone want to climb mountain with me this year? That's it, I'm signing off to the music of Santana on SWR3.

Last day of the semester today. That means no more classes until mid-april. Well, it would do if the professor of Quantum Computing didn't decide to move a class to next week. So I've got work to do and a lecture to go to. Never mind, as long as I get the shine.

Well, not much more I can say at the moment because I'm being forced to leave the computer room right now.
Will update more tonight when I'm at work.

Til later

Missed day. I have been stopped from continuing my online diary by a server failure yesterday. So what happened that I couldn't write about? I honestly can't remember (could be something to do with what happened last night).

Onto today. Last night was the Pizza Party. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, so have no photos to put up on my website of it. The food was excellent (don't think I'm ever going to go to Pizza Hut again), so was the drink, and the night was finished off (quite literally) in the bar. Tequila, Feigling, Hefe, Whiskey, you name, it was drunk. Hence the tardiness in waking up this morning, and only just making it in time for the Mensa.

What else is there to say really? I have to wait here until 5pm when my class is, and afterwards (7pm) I'll go back home.

Ah, there was an interesting thing yesterday that happened to me that I just remembered, in fact there were two. Firstly, whilst I was surfing the internet looking for bits of computers to buy I found that the Asus motherboard site had been hacked at that moment when I was viewing it.The probability of finding a hacked site before the system administrator of said site knows it's been hacked is very small, so, feeling priviliged, I promptly went about emailing him to warn him about what had happened. Looking at it today, it has been recovered, but there is no mention of it anywhere that I've found, and I have had no reply from the administrator. How ungrateful.

The other thing about yesterday was that it was Valentine's day. So did you go out and send your loved ones flowers or chocolate? If not, are they still your loved ones? Are you sure? I was 'forced' to get a present for somebody before the day went (I did it with one minute to spare). When I say 'forced' I mean threatened with not being spoken to again (in some people's books that's a good thing).

Well, looks like I have spent enough time catching up on all the events of yesterday. I'm going to get off to class now. Goodnight.

I'm feeling weird today. I know this is an unusual way to start my entry but it needs to be said.

Not very eventful day yesterday. Found out that Geir and Pili passed their german Sprachkurs tests. Well done.
Went down to the bar and met someone I haven't seen for a while (like since december). Unfortunately my old self showed through again, as I had forgotten her name (Sandra). Also met another Irish girl called (looks up spelling on mobile) Aoife (pronounced Efa, by me anyway). Reminded me how long it's been since I have been with non-spaniards. Decided I would have to do a re-run of the beer-crepes for them as they missed out the prvious times. Thought Geir should come along too as he is leaving on thursday.

Decided to go to see what was happning with the italian quarter of Hechtsheim, by visiting Mavi and Daniela. Watched an italian version of Risk being played (exactly the same as the other versions, just the armies have to retreat instead of attack - only joking). Just had a thought (yes, I know they don't happen too often to me) why does risk exist? Surely it is a communist/revoltist aide in teaching young children how to overthrow the goverments and take over the world. But then again, I can't imagine many people going out to buy a game called "appeasement" even if it was endorsed by Geir (see his entries in the guestbook.

Well, the spanish girls have now got a oral test about the book "Mary Stuart" which should be fun (not). Wish them luck, or "suerte".

Off to the best class of the day now (Mensa), adios.

New week, new news. Saturday night saw the first instance of la cuisine nouvelle in the form of Crepes a la biere. Yep, that's right, I put away that weakening, fatty white stuff (milk) and brought out the manly yellowy bubbly stuff (beer). A bit dubious at first, I mixed a little up as a test phase. After 2 mins I realised it was working beautifully, so made the whole lot with it. Mmm. And here comes the recipe:

Ingredients: Flour (white is best), Beer (pils/lager is best and also cheapest), and eggs. Butter for frying.

Preparation: Put about 250g of flour into a big bowl. Mix in about half a can of beer (if still very dry, add more). Using a fork or a whisk beat up the mixture until it is smooth and runny. Add a couple of eggs and beat it up again. The mixture should start getting a bit thicker now. Add some more flour (mixing in well) and then beer and again an egg. Keep on repeating until you have enough mixture for the amount of people that are coming. Put a frying pan on the highest heat and when hot put in a knob of butter, whilst it is turning to liquid, pour in enough of the mixture so that it covers the base of the pan. Let it fry for a bit, occassionally shaking the pan so the pancake doesn't stick. Using a spatula turn over the pancake to cook on the other side (or if you are feeling adventurous flip it into the air). Allow it to fry for about a minute longer (ie before it starts to smoke) and then serve on a plate with icing sugar, lemon, sugar, chocolate, or whatever you have available (tip: beer pancakes are best served savoury, ie with fish, meat, salad...). Put some more butter in the pan and repeat. Bon appetite.

After the crepes a large percentage of the spanish and italian population went off to a pub to play table-football, darts (albeit electronic), and billiards. Note: for any of you who get challenged to play 2 germans at any of the games for the price of a drink, say no unless you are REALLY good. They have the upper hand, which you won't know unless you stay there til closing time: they work there !!!

The majority of these people then went off to Caveaux and had a good time (so I heard).

Sunday was spent cleaning our bathroom (mmmm) before a friend came over from Würzburg to be shown around Mainz. Well the tour took about 40 mins but then there was a very good choral concert in the Dom. This was sung by about 300 singers and attended by about 1200 people. Needless to say the rest of Mainz was devoid of people during this time.

Learnt some new words to the song "Mana mana..." :)

The evening was spent by "la familia" with a delicious meal, plenty of wine and port, and a lot of discussion. Needless to say, some of the female aquaintences were not best pleased about the "lads night in" but hey it comes with the turf.

Will have to see if anything happens in the bar tonight, seeing as many people have tests on Tuesday.

Over and out.

Another night to remember. Laurent, Ethel, Gloria and Pili came round and we cooked 2 tortillas, made a salad, and drank a bottle of excellent portuguese red wine. This was followed by an explanation of a "Donkey Punch" (courtesy of Leanna), which appeared in most of the conversation thoughout the night once we got down to the bar.

A normal day, you would say. No. We have an exam at 9am on the saturday morning. In fact, it is still going on. I came along for it just so that I would get up early, but knowing that all I wanted to do was see the questions before I left. I made it to the door and then my legs refused to let me go any further. Jordi made it in there for about an hour, before the invisible anti-gravitational field of the exam forced him to leave the room and join me in the computer room. Lets just say that it was a good job I hadn't made it any further into the room. The questions were ridiculously hard and there is no way I could have written any more than my name, and perhaps, "I am a fish".

So, now it's time to get back home to have some breakfast. It's a great feeling to have finished your last exam, you know :)

Oh, for any of you wondering, next wednesday is going to be an interesting day... for many of the inhabitants of hechtsheim. (think about the date...)

Wow, what a day. Got home yesterday at about 8am with the 18 rolls I bought so we all could eat together, to find out that everyone got very drunk and so switched off their phones and also would not answer their doors at 8.30 in the morning. Well, I had a good breakfast anyway. Anyway, I spent the whole day feeling worse and worse, most people assuming I was in a really bad mood, which I wasn't, I was just dead tired that whenever I spoke to anyone I was very short because each word was a lot of work for me. So I stayed at uni for my classes until 7pm falling asleep about 20 times during the lecture, and when I returned home slept an hour before going to Laurent's for his guacamole, nachos and a great drink recipe (Gluhwein with Rum and sugar). Well I slept well last night anyway, woke up at 10.30 feeling as fresh as anything and am now spending the day helping other people with their work they have to hand in.

Just got an email reply from my professor in england. oh dear. apparently, the exam I have tomorrow morning at 9am (!) is necessary for me. I suppose I should start revising now. There's no way I'm going to understand anything in it, but hey, at least I get to see the questions for about 3 mins before I do a big fainting act :)

So I better get back to sorting out other things. Have a good weekend (I know I will after my exam !).