27-7-06

I went for a wander around town after lunch, just seeing how people live, stopping off at a few pubs along the way.

After a couple of minutes in one of the pubs I noticed a huge wooden phallus sticking up (excuse the pun) next to one of the beer-taps - a quick look around - aha, gay bar.



Maybe the firehose on the sign should have tipped me off?

While I was finishing my beer, the only other person in the bar asked me where I was from and of course this bloke had been to Australia. I say of course because it does seem to be true that just about half of all Germans have been to Australia, and whereas one in a thousand Australians has been to Alice Springs - all of these Germans have been there. And it's also universal that for whatever reason, Germans just rave about Australia.

Anyway, this bloke (in English), starts telling me that he couldn't go to Darwin because the air is too dusty - no, no, there is too much water in the air. To show that I understood I wanted to throw in the German word for humid. Only problem was that it immediately occurred to me that the word for humid and the word for gay are only a diaresis apart - namely schwühl and schwuhl respectively. Who knows, perhaps you just don't use the word for humid amongst gays. Anyway I couldn't resist showing that I knew the word for humid. He came straight back with Ja, genau, schwuhl ok, schwühl nicht ok. Then we both laughed - me, politely - he, rather lasciviously.