So, I’ve arrived in Melbourne, and fighting the jetlag knowingly requires one to drink enough liquid to keep the spirits floating. Or something. Water is good, but coffee and beer are liquids, too, and might as well help you adjust your biorhythm. Coming from Zurich I assumed no place on earth can be as expensive, especially not one in Australia, but unfortunately, I was wrong. Especially booze in restaurant is exorbitantly expensive, which is why the Ozzies invented the ‘BYO’, the bring-your-own booze. So you can take your own bottle of wine or whatever to a restaurant and eat there, and only pay a small ‘corkage’ fee. Now you might not want to carry around a selection of alcoholic beverages on your saturday night out, so what the hell, you just order a beer.

Well.

If you’re not in a pub, this can easy come up to 8 Aussi Dollars for a small beer, which are around 8 CHF or 5,50 Euros. I got a hardattack when I first had to pay this amount for a beer in Zurich. On top of this, I am German, which means I take some pride in the German ‘Reinheitsgebot’ stating beer is to be made from barley, hops and malt, and water, and that is it.

Australians (and the rest of the world) are not that fussy about their beer, and happily add whatever comes to mind to create a distinctive flavour or colour to their hops juice. This fosters beer tastings where you can hear the connoisseurs talking about earthy, fruity or woody notes in the one beer or other, and suggesting it will go excellent with game, fish or dessert.

To top this, on my second night out I was treated to New Zealand veteran Patrick’s favourite brewery products, made by Emersons of NZ. He brought two bottles of beer, one was the ‘Old 95′, the other the ‘India Pale Ale’. I decided to go with the Pale Ale – 12 Dollars a bottle. The distinct taste of rose-tinted hand cleaner, apparently a feature not a bug, made it impossible for me to drink more than two sips. So I ended up with the ‘hoppy malty’ strong ale ‘Old 95′. 7% of alcohol and a distinct sweetness covered an odd aftertaste, which, after further investigation, was found to originate from a flavouring added to the beer ‘made from fish products’. Well, thanks. If I want fish in my beer, I’d drown one in it.

I guess I will refrain from tasting anything from NZ apart from kiwis for the next couple of years…

So many comments praising this movie as the best of its class, and me quite liking the odd Sandals and Swords flick, I thought I should see it. Glad I didn’t pay to see it on the big screen.

A bunch of Men’s Health cloned cover models running around in undies day, night, summer and winter, poking sticks through things (mostly drag queens from evil Persia) as if they weren’t there. This is, mostly, because they weren’t there, as 85% of the movie comes out of a box, and you can tell. Which is exactly why all Spartans look alike, as do all 4 different types of Persian soldiers: ‘Immortals’ that perish in the thousands like suicidal lemmings. ‘Black Widow’ style Burka-wearing Moslem females throwing bombs, the odd desert Arabs and your regular Persian foot soldier. With number is the millions. Plus your choice of weirdo generals and leaders, that get mutilated before the Queen of the Night, Xerxes himself appears. He’s got piercings. Bad thing.

On the other side, 300 slighly homosexual WASPs (well, we all know the Spartans had a thing for little boys) fight off this army of black fags, stupid arabs, monsters, freaks and cross dressers. To underline the hero is actually hetero, he does his wife porn style, 300 positions in 5 blurry seconds (hey, I think there is a nipple slip somewhere in this scene, HOT!), and back to some explicit slaughtering. And to take on yet another clichee: crippels, sissies, gays, old, politicans and essentially all non-whites are bad. Real man have to suffer only because they can not express their love, but what the hell, at least they fear no death. Is this a recruiting movie to rally up soldiers for another gulf war or what? And from how many movies does this flick borrow ideas in a pathetically cheap way? This is Troy with only 3 real actors, plus a Gollum lookalike borrowed from LotR. Jeez. Get a life, watch a real movie…