Stuff about The Age

"Tell your friends, tell your enemies, never in the history of Australia has an issue been so important - WE HAVE A WIN!!," 

- it's not quite Churchillian, but from today, Australia has full-sized beer cans

The strangest things happen when you're overseas. 

The scariest is that the Aussie dollar turned into Monopoly money during the week. I'd always poked fun at those Depression-era economists who decided the solution was to print more money, but it IS very scary when stuff like this is happening to your own hard-earned. Especially when you're in another country and those currency transactions have a personal effect, instead of just being a sedgeway between news and sports. 

The silliest is the FFA's decision to ban the Eureka Stockade flag at Melbourne Victory games because of its "political" nature. If I'm not mistaken, doesn't that flag represent the little guy standing up against officious, heavy-handed bureaucracy? Somewhere deep inside the FFA, Mr Ironical must be hard at work because, before this moment, those flag-wavers at Victory games were just fans who were too cheap to buy Victory flags. 

The most depressing thing is that Aussie beer activists have forced Fosters' to change the size of their beer cans. Apparently, Fosters' wanted to downsize one of their Cascade beers from a 375ml can to a 330ml can without changing price. Now, due to public outcry, they won't. It's not the news itself that's depressing. It's that, amidst all the turmoil going on in Australia, from salinity and carbon emissions, to recession and poverty and the Dees being bottom of the AFL ladder, beer price is the defining issue for most Melbournians today. 

I should probably stop reading The Age while I'm away. 

I'm in the Carpathian Mountains, in the heart of Transylvania. It's interesting. I never thought I'd find a genuine Saxon town plonked in the middle of Romania, but there you go. It's pretty in its own weird way. Probably just have a wander around town today, and try and get on a tour to a few Dracula castles tomorrow. 

Here's St Nick's church, which looks quite nice if you like the look of spires and gilded ornaments and stuff: