Victoria Bitter - Stories from an Australian Winter - Paperback

by Alex Tannen (Author)

Beer as chief nourishment and replacment currency, lentil soup spread on bread, and an English that is still incomprehensible after four months. The reality of life in the Australian Outback surpassed all clich s. Berliner Alex Tannen worked for four months in a construction company in the Bush, with affectionate, crude, one-of-a-kind builders, whose chief activity after dark is drinking. Alcohol is the recurring theme in these stories about his maverick colleagues and their day-to-day life on the geographical fringes of Australian society. Tannen landed in Australia in June... and was in for a surprise. It is a myth, sustained by shrewd marketing, that it is always hot Down Under. He didn't freeze, but only thanks to an improvised stove made from the drum of a washing machine. A field study of Australia's white natives, the Bushies, in 15 chapters.

Author Biography

Alex Tannen (a pseudonym) is in his 40s and is a native Berliner. Since his student days (Political Sciences and MBA), he has travelled extensively, often alone and mostly in Arab and African countries. His trips have taken him from the Gaza Strip, via Libya and Timbuktu, to Germany's lake-district Mecklenburg, where he realised as he paddled in the idyll that he could do without a passport. He has published four travel books in German. 'Victoria Bitter - Stories from an Australian Winter', about an internship in an Australian construction company in 2003, is his first book translated into English.