In preparation for the big move

It is exactly seven and a half weeks until Mark and I take off for the great unknown. Or, as most of Australia prefers to call it: Germany.

Our plans have shifted a little, in that we’ll be moving straight to Munich and we have organised for a housemate. More precisely, the universe proved that it is one cool cat and convinced my best friend Simon to move to Germany.

Amazing, right? Thanks Universe! Now find us a place to live and get me a job.

But it turns out that when it comes to things like that, the Universe would rather just sit back, crack open a beer, watch and laugh. I can’t blame it.

At the moment this is where we stand:

Mark, who spoke German until he was five and then forgot everything, is going about his days quietly confident that when he needs them most, his German skills will return. Just like that time when I thought my bike riding skills would return when I got onto my cousin’s bicycle and promptly learned that people who tell you that it’s “just like riding a bike” want you to die in a ditch with scraped knees.

Simon is learning German and planning for his time away by doing research and other useful things. He has his visa, health insurance and backpack worked out and is tackling his SLR purchase as we speak.

Equally productively, I am busying myself with paranoid delusions. Like just the other day I got this vision of the three of us sitting frozen on a curb, begging for money with a sign that said “Das ist eine Lampe” because we didn’t quite know how to phrase: “Please feed us. We’re foreigners, we’re cold and we could only manage to knit one mitten from Agnes’ hair”.

Of course I know that’s nonsense; we could get at least two sets of mittens, a scarf and a blanket out of my hair (have you seen it lately?!), but I can’t shake the feeling that unless we begin some proper planning I might end up bold.

And nobody wants to see that.