In Chemnitz

Scheiße, it's annoying using a German keyboard. At home I can switch between English and German, but here there's just German. And I still don't know how to find the @ sign so I have to keep copying and pasting it, which "geht mir auf den Keks/geht mir auf den Geist" i.e. is also annoying. German is weird - 'It gets on my biscuits' means its annoying!

Just watched KiddieContest - a child's version of X Factor. Pretty cool actually. The kids sing German words to American (Ami) and English songs. I loved the song about not being able to survive without her mobile phone (Handy) and the winner who sang about pocket money (Taschengeld) being hard to come by in the recession (Wirtschaftskrise), but again necessary to pay for his phone and taking girls to the cinema (Kino). Not sure if it would be really sad to buy the CD of the KiddyContest. It's still rare to hear German pop music with German lyics so it would be quite nice.

It was a bit sad I guess that all the songs involved Youtube and Handys. Is the spirit of childhood disappearing to technology? Although the song I want to stay young/small (Ich will klein sein) was quite moving. It was also annoying that after the programme lots of toys and games were advertised. Do kids spend all their time on Playstations now? More annoying - do girls really want to buy Barbie on a horse and a fake baby advertised by a woman with a horrible shrieky voice. Surely they would prefer a mini remote control car that can drive over everything including someone's arm and that can sneakily be hidden in your pocket? I hope my brother doesn't see that advert...he doesn't need to hide yet more stuff!

Chemnitz is nice, the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) is beautiful and the snow covering everything magical, although my feet are constantly soaking, its hard to avoid it when the snow is half a meter deep and no one is cleaning it up. My boots don't go up to my knees unfortunately.

Went to see my first ever opera yesterday: "La Boheme" by Puccini in Chemnitz's Operhaus. It was much better than I thought, like a play or musical, just in Italian and you had to keep raising your head to read the subtitles. I don't know if it had a serious message and it lagged towards the end, but I always like seeing people that live in artistic communes, there was a painter, writer, philosopher etc. Although it was a shame that the artistic types were all men, and the only two women were obviously love interests. I've never heard of a female artist with a male muse.

Today I went Christmas shopping and was very excited to see an Adventkalendar which had neither a picture nor chocolate behind its big square doors, but instead a book for each day of Advent. This is truly awesome, but it's too big and expensive to take home with me I think. I wonder if they exist in London? Now I'm going to Club of Cultures or Club der Kulturen - CdK for a baking and pyjama private party. I am loath to leave the warm flat to soak my feet yet again, but it should be very fun.

Pass auf euch auf! (Take care!)