Beertastic, sliding snow spastic....

Yesterday I experienced a true local German bottle shop and also what it really meant to drive in a snow storm. At night.

Firstly, me and G went to the shops to get ingredients for the pizza we were cooking last night (and a yummy as hell rumball mmmm), then went to the bottle shop for some beer. Yay!! I was missing the yummy brown stuf :) I walked in - and let me say this wasn´t a particularly large shop - but I was simply staggered at how many different varieties of beer there was! I mean, every colour, flavour, idea imaginable... it was awesome. We just chose some simple pilsner and went on our merry way. But man, give some respect to ze Germans for that lot!

Then, later that day, I was asked by J to drive her to her friend´s place in the next village to get some herbs for her depressed horse. It had been snowing a fair bit all day and when I started driving, the first snowflakes were starting again. Now there are several things alarming about this picture... firstly, I am Australian. I drive on the left side of the road. Secondly, I have never driven in the snow. Thirdly, the car was a piece of shit and did not have snow-worthy tyres on. So I just gripped the woollen-covered steering wheel and smiled pleasantly as I drove carefully through the slippery streets.

After some freshly baked brownie cake, "mystical" herbal tea and a fairly deep conversation with someone I'd just met, we ventured outside to find the weather had pretty much turned into a snowstorm. This shit was currrraaaaazzzzyyy. I could hardly see 2 feet in front of me, the car was slippin' a little and to top it off, it was getting dark.

Then came the hill. A truck had already given up and was slowing traffic in both directions. The truck in front of me also didn't take long to lose steam and as I stopped to let him pull over, I then had the challenge of starting my own car up the hill. It was a bloody hard thing to do! And then when J was out pushing the car, I had to stop again. When 2 German men jumped out of their cars to help, they started shouting through the window at me. Seems this time I neglected to take the handbrake off. I was just laughing as J jumped into the car as it slowly made it up the hill, and the men were shaking their heads saying, "Bloody woman". Or the equivalent in German speak.

So I made it home alive. And then we made pizza. I've gotta say, it wasn't my finest product but they seemed to enjoy it. I was STUFFED, ate so much, and then waddled off to sort out this bloody resume for South America.