I know, what you've really been waiting for is a panoramic photo of my flat.

Last night we went to architecture department party, which is supposed to be one of the events of the year. It was utter pants. Student parties here have this stupid, stupid system of buying beer credit tickets with cash at one desk, and then buying beer with the tickets at an adjacent desk. The drink was horrible, warm Rothausbrau pils, which is a terrible insult to German beer, warm vodka with no ice and Desperados, the inexplicably popular drink made with 'beer,sugar,flavourings (75% tequila), citric acid'. Or urine, to you and me. The beer ran out at 1am forcing me to try this horrific brew. I didn't finish it.

The other ridiculous thing is you pay 1.50 for a drink and 1 euro Pfand (deposit) on top. Even if you have drink in a disposable plastic glass. So people nick your glass if you put it down for a second to get themselves free beer, forcing everyone to dance holding glasses and bottles which is riduculous. There was nothing that could be called a queue for a bar, there were scrums at the rugby world cup that were less tightly packed. And Germans have absolutely no manners when they queue at a bar - maybe because they're used to table service in pubs. People are shouting at the barmaids, who are just students, the barmaids moan that they've been working three hours, people don't have sufficient beer tickets but refuse to leave the bar area anyway, wholesale theft of beer tickets goes on, enourmous amounts of unpaid-for Pfand is collected, and at the end of the evening you have to get in another scrum to reconvert your beer tickets to money. But of course there's no useful coins left, so you end up with a euro's worth of 5 cent pieces. Brilliant.

The music was another disaster. DJing was by a 5 man committee of nerds anxious to show each other tricks they could do with their laptops. For an hour, they played Spanish third-generation ska music, which would have Roland Alphonso spinning in his grave, then they moved on to some genuinely furchtbar German dance music. Here's how to make it: first, record the sound of a car factory or similar heavy industrial plant. Then record the sound of someone complaining about how bad it is to work there. Put this vocal track over the soundtrack, and release the single. This is terrible because there is great German dance music (anything on ladomat is worth a look), but no chance of them playing it last night. Uurgh. The party just never happened, maybe 30 people danced all night out of an overcrowded hall with maybe 500 people in. A terrible party. Not to say Potterow in Edinburgh on Wednesday nights is any better, but I guess I'd been lead to believe that this would be a good one..

Anyway, tonight Edu is making a big La Rioja dinner in his residence, which should help to ease away the pain..