Christmas is approaching, and on this like on the continental side of the Channel, shops are flooded with gifts, Santa Claus hats and christmas sweets.

Nick's housemate Cat was nice enough to buy him a chocolate advent calendar:

A spring of joy on first sight, the gift transformed into an object of contempt upon further inspection. Exhibit A:

Found it? It's in the centre of the picture: "25 festive milk chocolate shapes"

TWENTY - F I V E ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !*

How unfair is that?!? Every single year of their rain-swept lives, British kids (and full-grown choc addicts alike) get one piece of chocolate more than their German peers!

May they choke on their undeserved choc abundance or get fat and ugly! How!

(*Did you really just count whether that's 25 exclamation marks? You sicko!)

B-Day

Dear friends and family,

please grab a firm hold of a solid object within your reach and prepare yourselves for a painful moment.

This is to officially announce that Michael Morawski, who we all love and appreciate as an entertaining and caring young lad, has ceased to be exactly that: young.

Only very slowly did this frightening insight dawn onto the ex-whippersnapper on the fateful night earlier this week, but when it arrived, it freaked the sh*t out of him

while Nick looks pretty glad to still have quite some months to go until the day that will see the materialisation of Blink 182's statement on old age for him as well.

Is if by an unvisible hand, Embrace Club fittingly played Blink 182's "What's My Age Again", and there it came, in the chorus: "Nobody likes you when you're 23."

'-( '-( '-(

Krissi offered a consolation prize that was bound to cheer the jubilarian up again

so we ended up having a really good night out with Mike's housemates as well us some of the people we've become friends with in the last couple of months.

A little reminder to those angels of death who called to congratulate Mike one hour before his actual birthday began: it's supposed to bring ill luck. Just in case you didn't know.

It goes without saying that you guys were very much missed on that night - like on every night out here.

We are very, very much looking forward to seeing you all again in a few weeks. On that note, let us clarify that there is absolutely no excuse from hitting Ulen with us on Friday, the 18th of December. To make this perfectly clear - we intend to catch up on a huge number of nights out we didn't spend with you guys in the last months, so yes, it's gonna be wild...

One week after our Manchester trip, we again fled Sheffield, this time to Stratford-upon-Avon, better known as the great William Shakespeare's place of birth. We were joined on the trip by Nick's mum and two German girls we met in Sheffield, Julia and Eleonora.

The presence of a grown-up as well as two people we didn't know that well yet didn't keep us from

doing all kinds of schabernack and kokolores - at least the four brave soldiers who had to endure whole days of solid shit talk in Mallorca know exactly what we're talking about here.

However, Nick's mum hasn't disinherited him yet, and the girls still spend time with us, and, above all, you guys are still our friends - provided you haven't found cooler people in Giessen in the meantime, but, I mean, haha, please...!? - so we can't have been all that bad after all:-P

In Stratford as well as during our own little after-trip party at The Old House, an amazing bar in Sheffield (music like at Ulen on Mondays, but more varied), there were things that...

1) ...we didn't understand

2) ...we would never have thought

3) ...had to be done

Starting with 1), can someone please explain to us why

smoking should be prohibited in a gift shop?

Moving on to category no. 2), Things We Would Never Have Thought, please have a close look at the following picture:

We still haven't figured out how this, we're sure, extremely interesting and varied game works. That must be due to a lack of imaginative power, for we also found something else hard to do that the Brits had no trouble doing whatsoever, namely trusting that the flutist on the next picture did already play the flute outside that window on the day little baby William was born.

Another thing we wouldn't have thought is the fact that the pun on the following picture was actually made in the master's hometown:

(Note Mike's smashing performance as the leading role of The Barkeeper in Shakespeare's most famous play, "As You Shake It".)

The last entry in category no. 2) is a contribution by Nick's mum, for until that day we had kind of thought there was a certain age people stopped imitating statues at. Will wonders never cease!

Proceeding to category no. 3), Things That Had to Be Done, her full reintegration into youth and folly followed later that day at The Old House and has been documented by means of a Bravo Photo Story:

Nick teaches his Mum

the most important

gesture in popular

culture: the high-five.

Mike is angry

because his beanie

was nicked

by Nick!

All is well again.

Last weekend, we finally made it to another city for a couple of days and put our manly chests on the train to Manchester.

Sorry.

That one was bad.

So we got to Manchester (can't stop thinking about that incredibly witty pun up there? - Same here) Friday night and went to a house party with the girl Mike knows from school and who we were staying with, plus her friend and housemates. The party was officially the smallest house party we've been to, but, as if for compensation, the place was a great attraction in itself. With a Maserati outside the door, we were expecting to see some luxury indeed, but still were surprised once we got inside.

The house had pretty much everything you'd expect in a yuppie place: a humongous screen instead of a regular TV, a fish tank embedded into the wall

an illuminated shoe rack

and, of course, flat screen TVs everywhere. We spotted five of them, but there may have been more (didn't check under the bed or in the oven, for instance).

Saving the best thing for last, though: the guy had a smoke machine in his living room. That's right: a smoke machine! Unsurprisingly, the smoke in his living room was no less annoying than it is in clubs. Plus, the guy had cherry flavour added to it, which didn't quite make it better. But somehow matched his pink t-shirt:-P

To all this openly displayed wealth we preferred the comfy dosses at Birte's place

On Saturday we went downtown to find out Manchester is a much more urban and truly big city in contrast to the rather provinical Sheffield. Our trip around the city centre confronted us with a number of peculiarities: firstly, a German shoe shop

and secondly, a rather off-mainstream shopping centre with, let's say, rather curious policies towards shoplifters.

sign on 1st floor:

sign on 2nd floor:

(We don't know about the 3rd floor. Didn't dare go upstairs:-P)