I think I am slowly becoming interested in taking photos again. I am also working on ways to actually see some of this country (other than the W place) while I'm stuck here and maybe make the most of the month I have left, without actually spending too much money. These two facts combined with a vague uneasiness I correctly assumed meant I should probably buy my dad a birthday present and hurry up and send it if I want it to beat me to australia by any margin led me to fill up the Porker with the liquid gold they call petrol here and head west. To Cologne.

There are lots of things to photograph in Cologne and not all of them are hobos. This is why I decided to take one of the Far Too Many cameras I schlepped with me from the other side of the down-ball (all in carry-on: "yeah," *huff*, "of course it's less than seven kilos." *sigh* *pant* ). Of course, having shown one of the obscuras the outside of my room exactly once and once only since returning from the Nürburgring at the beginning of July I am a little unused to the whole 'photographers need cameras' concept, and forgot the bloody thing. This cheesed me right off when I got there and discovered I had parked near a square you aren't allowed to walk accross because some Wilhelm put a concert hall beneath it. This necessitated the employment of about eight men who looked like hobos, but were actually there to make sure noone disturbed the performance by walking across the roof of the auditorium. German Efficiency #1.

I did my shopping and found some things, ho hum. no gift for my dad (damn) but at least a card. I did find something that cheered me up immensely though; a stack of Bill Bryson books in the English section of one of the large bookshops there are a few of in Cologne, that have interesting things in them, like English sections. Also, and I don't know why this is noteworthy, a children's science book about the history of the universe co-authored by Brian May as-in-the-guitarist-from-Queen. Anyway, when I was in the planning stages of this trip I reread Bryson's account of travels in Europe (Neither Here Nor There) which helped motivate me immensely to actually see this whacky old continent again. So I bought his book about australia because, true to my travel philosophy, I've been away from the Brownest of Browns for long enough to be nostalgic, and a bit of a laugh and some eagerness to see straya again are 2 things I could do with right now. Of course, in the event I basically got to Europe, got the shits and then, well, here we are, so maybe my expectations for my slightly odd "holiday from a holiday" shouldn't be so high but hey, a gal can dream, right?

Cheered by the thought of laughing along with Bill's bumbling adventures through a land that I call home only when it thoroughly isn't, but anti-cheered by the thought that my shopping cum photographic trip to the home of the world's slowest growing (and now shabby looking, thanks to the "renovations" It's Not Black Anymore!!!) church had failed on both counts, I headed for a camera store. I figured that even having forgotten to bring one of my cameras I could at least take the opportunity to buy some film for one of the others, a medium format Mamiya for which you need a Proper Serious Photography With Expensive Shit store. And Cologne, it so happens, is the prime habitat for such stores in Germany. So there I was in Photo Gregor; the sort of shop where you can buy a mint Leica M3 in your choice of finish, they've got six of each. The sort of place where you can ask for 120 roll film by stock name and the only query is "which speed". The sort of place where you would expect, of all places on this stupid planet, to be able to pay by credit card. I could even sort of grapple with the idea of them not accepting Visa because they'd been wined and dined by MasterCard, or had Amex lay down a fee-ultimatum or some other arcane plastic-fantastic backroom deal but no: not a single international credit card. Only the pez local EC card, which has to be tied to a local bank account, or cash. Cologne is the home of Photokina, THE photography trade fair and people seriously come there just to go camera shopping. Also, this shop, and forgive me if I'm sounding a little whiny and incredulous it's because I am, has medium format digital cameras IN STOCK. You can buy a Hasselblad auto everything digi tastic 39 mega pixel (that's a picture more than 100 times bigger than my photos on here) camera OFF THE SHELF and you can't pay by credit card? Last I read just a digital back for an existing Habla camera body was listed at over A$60000, so what do they expect, someone to walk in with a briefcase cuffed to their arm? They are, of course, not alone. The parts shop where I'm forced to go for bits for the car (cos it's both the best AND good) also snub the visa and all its rivals. The biggest online computer parts store in germany does accept Visa (and only visa), but only when the card is issued by a german bank. What? It's an ONLINE FUCKING SHOP!! And it's a COMPUTER shop. surely somewhere along the way someone would have let them in on the meaning of the inter- in "internet". German Efficiency #2.

So I had to pay cash, big deal, I've had my rant, it was only a couple of films. I made my way back to the car (shock horror, people walking on the no-walking-on-the-square square, either the performance was over or that's what they get for hiring hobos as guards). Then I attempted naiively to drive back to, ugh... here, but being foreign and not having an acceptable credit card I natuarlly found myself forced in the oppisite direction along the Rhine (which stinks a lot less now that they've stopped dumping untreated effluent into it and wondering why no one swims in it). Happily I discovered after playing "lets see where this goes", a game I learnt in Stockholm and perfected in Lübeck, that I could head to the same gloomily industrial autobahn by going this way too, so I just kept driving. It was then, after a brief but charming interlude where I attempted to judge how deep the grass on the median was and whether it was feasible to u-turn accross it in a sportscar to avoid the traffic jam, that I found The Final Proof. Let me splainyou.

I have long believed that each nation has its own facet of the conveyance of persons in automobiles with which it just can't get to grips. Everyone has their own little bit of motoring practice that, try as they might (and often their accomodating governments force them to keep on trying), they just can't manage to grasp. In Australia, it is the indicator stalk, which in most cars also contols the high beam headlight. Not indicating, or indicating something that you have no intention of doing are the norm in most parts of Oz, as is driving 2m behind someone at 130 with the full 120 watts going straight into their rear view mirror, or in a built up area, should a pedestrian cross the street 200m ahead, zapping them with the phasers to make sure they can't see you accelerate to try and get those bonus points.

In Sweden it's the emergency services that confounds everyone. And I mean EVERYONE. I was on a single lane on ramp to a bridge in Stockholm when the slow moving traffic was joined by a fire engine in Battle Mode. Imagine one lane of traffic, a four metre wide breakdown lane to the left and at least three and a half metres of footpath to the right, with me and a lady with pram who both hug the railing and wait, leaving the firies ample room to one wheel on the sidewalk if they need to. The slow moving traffic simultaneously slammed to a halt as everyone simply stopped where they were and looked nervously in their rear vision mirrors. OK, the casual observer would think, these guys are obviously wondering where the instructions and the allen key are, firetruck, it's your move. Nothing. It just sat there, siren going the full permanent hearing loss 120dB and everything and the guy just sat there, looking angrily at the line of cars. I, no idea why, but I guess I felt someone should do something, even waved to the bastard in an "over here, mate, you can fit between us and the cars" way and he just looked at me like I had made a rude face and went back to glaring at the petrified sod in front of him and making pram-lady's baby deaf. In the end I shook my head and walked off as the cars very slowly diverged to both the left and right of the lane, allowing the firetruck to slowly inch onto the bridge. Do not catch fire in Sweden.

Norway is the easiest one, in Norway what no-one understands is that they are not alone. Everyone drives as if the mere idea that other people might also have driven a ford lately is as laughable as not eating fish all day. They react with uniform perplexion when another car materialises on their road and do their best to get the experience over with as quickly as possible, one way or the other. It's a big country, seriously, who's going to miss one german porsche?

Speaking of Germans, to the point, I am a coming. What germans don't get is roundabouts. Just the other day my aunt did exactly the same thing she did when I drove her home once last time I was here. We came to a normal two-road junction with roundabout and I said "left or right?". She, with much the tone that one uses when a dearly loved child begins pouring mayonnaise on the cat, patiently explained that I couldn't go left because "you have to go through the roundabout". Proving that no-one learns from history, and because she'd only managed "you have..." before I was already in the roundabout, I started to turn right, which she quickly no-noed, leading me to make quizzical look (I knew the answer was not straight ahead) before realising, just as she told me to turn off the roundabout, that I should just not have used the word "left" in the presence of the Maximum Confusator. I can't have you all thinking that this was some sort of Kingsford-Five-Ways in which there would be time to make lots of thinking or conversation, or which would otherwise warrant some sort of unusual roundabout behaviour, it was, just as the roundabout 4 years ago had been, no more than 2 metres in diameter, just a pissy residential area roundabout and she sees it as some sort of elaborate one-way ring-road on which it must be remembered that one must first put up with ALL of the PMs offices and DFAT buildings before you can finally exit to the south-western suburbs. But Cologne. Whoa. Cologne houses the finest example of Germans Just Not Getting Roundabouts. If you, like I did, want to turn from Militarringstrasse onto the A4 at Bonner Strasse you will encounter this monstrosity known by its Frankensteinian creators as "Am Viertelkreis". It is a roundabout of considerable diameter, perhaps 20-30m, lapped by two lanes and containing, within its roundaboutness, four sets of traffic lights. On the approaches entering the roundabout also, four sets of traffic lights. And the coup d'grace? A ninth or "bonus" set of traffic lights on one of the exit roads. German Efficiency #3