First of all, I’d like to comment on the fact that Europeans don’t know where their pockets are as they don’t provide any free Internet, although to be fair they could say the same about us. As a result, we don’t think we are going to be able to post nearly as much as we’d like.

We left Sydney airport after saying goodbye to our families and mark and junes, who made the trip to see us off, with our tear ducts starting to swear regardless of the fact it was a cold day.

In general, I have pretty shit luck with planes. The worst things always happen to me, in particular the time the fattest man alive sat in front of me, just about squishing me to my chair, along with his equally fat wife sitting across the isle from me. With about four hours to go of the fourteen hour leg, the wife of the fattest man decided she’d spice things up a bit and have a chunder. It got cleaned up and as a result of the plane ride becoming a bore for her, she projectiles at the telle screen and some chunks of the vom land on my leg. Definitely wasn’t stoked.

Expecting something bad to happen on this flight, we get on the plane and there was actually a bit of talent sitting around us. I thought to myself that this probably wasn’t going to be so bad after all. We got given a menu half in English and the other half in scribbles that looked like someone was testing out a biro. Eddie and I figured that the squiggly writing we’re just different types of spaghetti but the flight attendant for etihad airlines seemed to take offense when we asked her for one of the spaghetti options on the menu. Still can’t put our finger on why she took offense, oh well. Can add that to one of the mysteries of life.

When the girl’s telle screen in front of me was broken, meaning she couldn’t watch movies for the thirteen hour flight, this confirmed that it was becoming the best plane ride ever! We couldn’t stop laughing at her misfortune. Unfortunately karma popped by to roundhouse kick us square in the face as our telles stopped working for most of the flight. About half way through the flight, a kid down the end of our row was making an omelette in the vom paper bag for a solid hour. It was at this point, the first of the ‘battling’ aspect of ‘backpacking battlers’ came into play for Eddie and myself. We were having a feed and Eddie knocked his orange juice all over me. He yelled ‘Ahh fuck!’ as I looked at him with a blank face and said ‘you serious dude?’ We didn’t have a domestic over it though as we just swept that issue under the rug for a later date when we blow up at each other. The other flight from Abu Dhabi to Frankfurt was drama free so nothing to report there.

We were walking around the main town of Frankfurt and because it was early and raining, nobody was around so we didn’t wait for traffic lights to cross the roads. At one road, Eddie started crossing before me and looked to his right to check for cars. No cars were coming from the right so he started walking. I followed and looked the exact same direction. As I stepped onto the road I started to check if cars were coming on the other side of the road which is when I realised that we had both looked right instead of left when in fact we should have looked left first as the cars drive on the right hand side of the road. I yelled out to Eddie as a car was coming towards him ‘FUCK EDDIE MOVE!!!’ He looked to his left to see a car having to suddenly brake as he ran off the road. Hearts were definitely beating. The lesson however was not learnt as the exact same thing happened about an hour later. This is exhibit a as to why we are referring to ourselves as backpacking battlers whilst over here.

A few observations we’ve made so far are:
The people in Frankfurt are nice and are helpful but my god do they have some rude heads, it’s unbelievable !
We realised we got ripped off by buying tickets for the train which nobody else seems to do.
The thing I noticed the most about being here is that because we are Aussies and talk quite loud and are quite obviously battling, we stick out like a cold sore on an std ridden whore’s lip. I’m not sure of that’s because where we are at the moment but I’m going to take at a guess that that’s the reason why.

We’ve been here for five minutes and already have stories to tell, so no doubt when stuff goes wrong it’ll be worth a laugh after the domestic has finished or the issue has been resolved. Like I said before, Internet comes along infrequently and we’ll try our best to post about as much as we can.