First impressions.

Isn't Facebook wonderful?  You can find out who'll be somewhere ahead of time and try and get to know people.  Sometimes you even want to.  The trouble is that you only have a few words in a certain context to form an impression from.  So when the first contact you have with someone is them telling you that the place you're very thankful to be living is "crap" with a comforting "ha ha" it doesn't do much to make you think you want to spend more time getting to know them.
So lesson learnt:  Be unambiguously nice, as taking the risk could put people off you without meaning to.

The pre Deutschalnd to do list:

So with a little over 2 weeks left of preparation time I've finally written myself a list of thing I need to do.  It doesn't seem long but I'm sure that come the 16th of August I won't sleep a wink and will be having a big ol' stress about what I still need to do.
So here it is, as it stands:

• Reclaim my tax from HMRC
• make an appointment to collect my key in Konstanz
• find a German bank account and work out how to get money into it without paying a fortune
• Sew the rest of my badges onto my hoodie for Witan
• print off everything just in case.  
• Book flights
• Probably a stack of other things
• And one small word:  PACK...