Some festive season cheer!

Here is a big merry Christmas and happy new year to you all! Asia and I have returned from New Zealand, where we went to my parents place for Christmas, feeling refreshed (although not yesterday after catching the 6:15am red-eye back to Melb) and ready for the new year in Melbourne. It was great to catch up with family and friends and put on about six kg eating all the great food on offer.

I am quite excited about the festivities tonight, it will be my first new years eve outside of New Zealand and Melbourne looks set to hum tonight. We haven't decided definitively where we will go for new years, although friends of friends of ours are having a BBQ at their place in Williamstown, which looks like the best bet at this stage. It is a 'wig party' so my mission for today is to go and find Asia and me a wig for the evening. Okay, well I won't write too much more, here are some pics from NZ over the last nine days...

Christmas Day...

A day trip to Cheviot...

seven days until christmas and my true love gave to me...

One crazy vege garden! Check out the latest pic of our vege garden.
The courgettes and tomatoes are going ballistic and the cos lettuce is not far behind! The saddest thing is that we are leaving for NZ on Thursday and it is unlikely that they will get any water while we are away :(, meaning that we will probably get back in Melb to a brown shrivelled garden - and just when they were nearly ready to eat. Oh well, it was fun to watch them grow anyway. Melbourne goes on to stage 3 water restrictions on new years day which means that gardens can only be watered twice a week anyway. That probably wouldn't have been enough for our thirsty tomatoes, so they would likely have died anyway.

Okay, well I'm really looking forward to getting back to NZ on Thursday and starting all the Christmas merriment - food, beer, food, beer, wine, food, beer, beer you know how it goes :). This will probably be my last post before Christmas, so here goes a big merry Christmas to all the faithful out there. I hope you all get as stuffed and full of food as I intend to get.

lucky number 13

Today is December 13 and I just realised that today is exactly 13 years since I busted up my arm real bad on a nasty driveway back in my hometown Christchurch, NZ. I was 12 then and spent a couple days in hospital after getting my arm bolted back together by this fantastic surgeon. Also, big ups to my Mum whose famous quote in the car on the way to the doctor's surgery I will never forget:

"Brad, it will be okay it might not even be broken."

This was despite the fact that everyone, me included, could quite clearly see the bone sticking right threw my skin. I'm sure it was just meant to try and reassure me and calm me down and the funny thing was that it kinda worked. Anyway, I ended up spending that summer with a cool black fibre glass cast and living just over a year with a semi-robotic arm half filled with titanium. I still have some very mean scars left over from the whole ordeal, ask me and I'll show you someday.

What's been happening in Melbourne town? Well, it's been crazy business hot - 38 on Saturday followed up by a rather balmy 42 on Sunday. We went down to St Kilda beach on Saturday and had our first swim for the summer (well the southern hemisphere summer anyway). The beach at St Kilda gets a bad rap from Melburnians, but I think it is severly under-rated. I made the comment to one of our friends, that if this was NZ there would be hundreds of people down at the beach and in the water, as it stood there were only a couple dozen and I think that was more just to get away from the relentless heat.

On a more somber note, it would be wrong not to make a mention of the bushfires that are currently gripping this fine state. We woke on Saturday morning to the acrid smell of smoke and discovered that the city was suffocating under a blanket of smoke from the fires that were raging more than 150 km away. The ES were batting away the 000 calls and smoke alarms were blaring away - quite a drama really and just highlighting the fact that what we all really need is a damn good dumping of rain. The winds were more favourable on Sunday through Tuesday but as the wind turned today we were again in the grip of the smoke. Anyone know a good rain dance?

A new theme for a new season

Some of you may have noticed that I have changed my theme. It has moved from the rather dreary black onto something a little more cheerful and summery, and thereby somewhat reflecting my mood about being back in the southern hemisphere summer.

There is much debate about when summer actually begins (in my mind at least anyway). Some say that it begins at the start of December, while others say that it actually begins at the summer solstice i.e the longest day. From a strictly intuitive point of view I always thought that summer should be distributed equally either side of the summer solstice, therefore beginning sometime in November and ending sometime in February. My theory was - shouldn't it be the hottest when the day is at it's longest and the temperature decline roughly symmetrically around that date? Well, if we lived in a simple world this might have been the case and indeed as it turns out if it wasn't for that tricky old bugger the ocean, it would be like that. You see apparently the ocean has a delaying effect on the seasons so that it takes sometime after the ocean has absorbed the heat from the summer sun until the peak temperatures are reached. This effect is obviously most pronounced in island states like NZ and rather weak in central continental areas such as the middle of Europe or Canada. So the peak summer temperatures are more of a combination or when the sun is giving the most energy to the land and when the ocean has heated up enough so that it starts warming the surrounding air.

So the answer to when summer begins is not such a simple one, and I think depends on where you live. For that reason I am going to stick with summer beginning at the start of December and ending at the end of Feb. Too easy...

Gee, sorry for that rant. You might have gathered that I am sitting alone at home on a Friday night in the gathering gloom halfway through a six pack and having just downed a large pizza, doing what is effectively talking to myself. Asia is having a girls night out - I think it's in retribution for all those crazy insults in my last post, Ha!

Christmas is nearly here! Again! Man, what a crazy hectic year it has been. I'm looking forward to having a decent break at Christmas and catching up with friends and family...bring it on!

Okay well, I'm over talking to myself, on with other more important things, like beer for instance.

To bait or not

Slugs, the scourge of the modern gardener. Asia is annoyed at me because we managed to inherit some perfectly good slug bait - although it is expired the slugs I think still don't know any better, and I decided to lay it out to protect our beautiful lettuces. Guess what? Now we don't have lettuces that are half chewed to bits - the marigolds had their chance, they were tried tested and failed, on with the chemicals I say...

Asia is sitting over my shoulder right now, saying things like what about the dogs and those Marigolds, well well hmmph they never had a chance. Dogs I say, we don't even have a damn dog - it's straight to the pyschiatric unit with you girl. Ha! Seriously it's all good fun and the lettuces were never really chewed that much anyway, those slugs well they just bug me...

Now, the rantings are really getting serious - "We do have a dog, I have a lead!!! I want to write in your blog, these people will think I'm crazy... " Oh dear, well I'll let you make up your own mind about that one...

Melbourne, four seasons in one day it's true. I mean nothing like Wellington, with forty gails, seven hail showers, a removed roof and a sucken ferry in one day, but four seasons nonetheless. Yesterday it was 37 degrees or something and today just scratching to get over 20 with a biting southerly.

Actually I'm not even supposed to be here at the moment. Bit of a botch up at work (by the client) meant that I had nowhere to stay in Karratha and had to come back from Perth three days early, cap in hand and nothing to show for it. I'm not complaining, it's nice to be back in Melb with my crazy girlfriend.

ciao

On a more positive note

Okay well after a bit of a rant in my last post, apologies for that because I do get carried away in my own thoughts sometimes, I decided to add a more friendly post to my blog. Also, it's been far too long since I last posted. The reason for this, pretty much same as always - combination of being far too busy to write semi-creatively and a case of mostly just wanting to sit back and have a couple of beers/wines rather than spend 20 mins in front of a computer screen.

So time for a quick update...

I have been pretty flat tack at work - many long hours in preparation for giving training. Firstly for software that I know well and have been using for years and secondly for software that I've only just learned - this was pretty scary. With a combination of smooth talking and some long hours of crash learning I managed to pull it off and the client was reasonably happy - although there were some nervous moments when I crashed their server with one of our known bugs.

Asia has been busy hunting for a job but it's been pretty hard going and now that it is getting close to Christmas I think it might be harder still. Our stuff from NZ finally arrived during the week, only about six weeks after we were expecting it. Nice to have it back now though, felt a bit like xmas with all our forgotten clothing arriving. Finally now I can start wearing a new pair of undies each day - gets a bit hard streching each pair to last for three days, ha :).

The vege garden is going great guns, nearly everyone who comes to visit, says wow! your veges are going great, you must have green fingers. Well, I can tell you that it is not me, the man who can barely tell a turnip from a potato, rather Asia's very green thumbs and skills that are responsible for the green bonansa in our backyard. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we will be able to sample some of the produce, the lettuce in particular is starting to look very tasty.

G20, oh yeah how about a protest

Okay,

so we went down to have a look at the G20 protest on Saturday. Here is a brief summary - saw a bunch of mostly peaceful protesters, don't agree with many of the protests but hey that's another story, then saw some retards (yes I'm not going to mince words) completely wreck a police riot car. You know these are the people who claim to be simultaneously non-violent, righteous and above the law, yet perceive they are fighting a just cause by destroying other peoples property. These are the type of retards who think that we should all go back to living in the jungle where we were so much better off, mainly because it means that they could beat each other up for the sake of it and with impunity. Man it really makes my blood boil.

These anarchists, as I prefer to call them, have no concept of civilisation and what made it what it is today, they have no concept of property rights which are the fundamental basis for a fair and liberal society. Instead, they believe in rule by force and would love nothing better than a modern dictatorship where they get to choose what everyone should and should not do.

Despite this, we did have a rather pleasant and relaxing weekend - needed it to after an incredibly busy week at work.

Camping!

You really start to feel like summer has arrived when you get to go camping. Well, that is exactly what we did this weekend. We headed off to a place called Creswick nature park, which is about 1hr30 north west of Melbourne. We were invited by our mate Nick, who was celebrating his 30th this weekend and decided to invite a few mates camping. In any case, our journey started with being picked up by Brendan and Pete (two other friends of Nick who had kindly offered to give us a ride), in a huge old holden kingsford - and what a fine old car it is too, DIY air conditioning and all!

My first impression of rural Australia (the bush as they affectionately call it), was incredibly dry and empty - you know a gum tree here a gum tree there and everywhere tinder dry yellow scrub. I asked Brendan if it is usually so dry and he seemed to think it maybe slightly drier than usual but that it always looked like this anyway. I'm pretty sure it is damn dry though - drought or no drought. I guess I'm just used to lush damp countryside coming from NZ, well the Australian bush is sure a contrast.

Anyway, we arrived at Creswick nature reserve to find Nick and Mike, who had both arrived the night before and were anxiously awaiting our arrival and not too coincidentally the arrival of our cold carlton draught slab. No need to say, three hours later, a slab by the way side and plenty of political rantings, we were all feeling ready for a nice bush walk. This was about the time that we had an invasion of flying termites. These were the most incredible (in their numerosity) and annoying insects you could find. Luckily, they only tended to hang around in the period just before sunset until slightly after. We still managed to roast a few thousand on our camp fire though, dumb buggers. At this stage, a full on headache had set in for me - a result I think of too much beer, not enough water and a baking dry Australian sun. In any case, I turned into the tent for a couple of hours to sleep it off while the others rendered in front of the fire, guitar in hand, such classics as, Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he...and There was a moose, the moose's name was Bruce. Obviously my headache didn't recover all that quickly.

Not long after the headache had receded, a bit of rain set in (setting in in Australia is something akin to a mild shower in NZ), and pretty much everyone decided to turn in for the night. By this stage I had also been intimately introduced to half the wild insect population of Australia. In no particular order:
Flying Termites (by the thousand),
Pesky blowflies (also by the thousand) and with a particular fondness for licking my eyeball and flying up ny nose.
Bull Ants - Luckily I was warned not to get too intimate with these fellas because apparently they pack a nasty punch that can leave you sore for weeks.
Huge flying beetles - these fellas were actually quite cute and harmless
Cicadas - with a particularly ear piercing chirp reminiscent of finger nails across a blackboard and just the prescription for a headache.

Despite all this, and you are forgiven for thinking otherwise, I had an awesome time and can't wait to go again. This really is the lucky country.

Cup Day

Today is Melbourne Cup day, something I have wanted to be in Melbourne for for a long time. We are not actually going to the races, but I think we will head down to Federation square to soak up the atmosphere and place a couple of bets. Traditionally, when big sporting events are on Federation square is the place to be. They have what is called a live site, with a huge big screen and a big area for a crowd to gather and watch. Federation square is quite new to Melbourne, in a Archaeological sense, and I think people are just now starting to make good use of it. It's a pretty great facility, kind of sums up Melbourne though with lots of great things to do and places to see and eat.

We are starting to get a bit more settled into our house now, and apparently fingers crossed our stuff from New Zealand will arrive on Thursday.

Asia has terraformed our outdoor area and we now have a very cool vege and herb garden. We should be able to sample the produce sometime around December...

Some house pics

It was derby day in Melbourne today, which in case you haven't read a newspaper this century, is a big horse race and part of the annual Melbourne spring racing carnival. We headed out to Williamstown with our friends Mark and Claire avoiding the massive crowds of people heading to the races. It was quite cool seeing everyone dressed up to the nines though and then extra hilarious later in the evening seeing some very wobbly walks from those returning from Flemington.

Anyway, what I really promised to do was post some pics of our new house, so here we go...

From the street...
Living room 1...
Living room 2...
Kitchen...

ADSL2+ is my friend

Hmmm,

perhaps because I have no others but probably just the fact that I'm a geek - I now have the fastest internet on the planet, downstream 20 Mbps, yes that's right I'm not making this up my connection speed is incredibly fast.

Okay about other things, I have been meaning to take some photos of our new place. In fact I might get onto that tomorrow and upload some pics shortly thereafter but now it's Friday night I have guests and the pub is calling.

Ciao
Brad

We found a house!

Hello all,

It seems our flat finding missions have finally paid fruit and we have found this amazing place to rent in Flemington near the racecourse, in Wellington Street ironically. It is an older style three bedroom brick house with polished wooden floors throughout, a log burner amazing kitchen/dining area with huge north facing windows - it will be extremely hot during summer I'm sure. I'll post some photos when we eventually move in. We have the keys and can move in now but we are still waiting for most of our belongings to arrive from Wellington, so will probably wait a few more days before we spend our first night there.

Today we have to go bed shopping most importantly and also try to pick up a fridge and washing machine at some stage.

On a more negative note my damn luggage never arrived - I blame some dodgy baggage handler in Europe. It's more of a hassle than anything else, I mean a should get a good compensation payout from QANTAS/insurance but it is a pain having no clothes at the moment and somewhat of a chore going shopping for more.

I am going to Perth this week for a job. I have never been to Perth before, so that should be quite interesting although I'm not sure how much time I will actually be in the city. We are doing a modelling job for a huge industrial mining network, six power stations - 1000 km of line - quite big by mining networks standards. I think the job will be quite straight forward, although I'm told getting the required information might be more difficult.

Okay all bye for now, some picks of our house will follow over the next couple of weeks.

Melbourne you beauty

Hey team,

time for another timely post. Well, we are starting to settle down in Melbourne now and have started the mission of looking for a place to live. I mean starting because Melbourne is so bloody massive that it is hard to narrow down your search and say, hell I'd like to live in this area. We have at least narrowed it down to the local "Melways map" area, which, although it only covers the inner Melbourne suburbs is still pretty massive. At the moment we are staying with some friends in North Carlton. I quite like this area so we might concentrate on finding a place somewhere around here. We have some good friends, M&C and M&K who have been kind enough to put us up while we have been here so far. Although we have been kinda playing musical flats, but hey I'm not complaining about the free accommodation and good company.

Work has been good so far, although a little quiet. We are waiting for a whole heap of jobs to come through and then I will be burning the midnight oil - that's the nature of consulting though, seems you are either crazy busy or dead quiet...

We are going to head out and catch some comedy from the fringe festival tonight so that should be interesting. One of the great things about Melbourne (well I guess this applies to big cities in general) is that there is always something interesting going on meaning there is always plenty of choice for something to do.

Hello from the sporting capital of the world

Well we arrived back in Melbourne yesterday morning, only to find that yet again my baggage didn't arrive with me. Man what is it with this suitcase, it must be cursed or something - I mean twice in two journies now it has gone missing. I checked before and they still hadn't found it, so hopefully it turns up.

On with more positive things. It's nice to be in Melbourne, 20 degrees C, sunny, not a breath of wind - this place is magic! We are staying at our friends place, Claire and Mark, right in the centre of the CBD. It's an absolutely mint location, big ups to them for finding such a cool place and for offering to put us up until we sort out something for ourselves.

Asia is sleeping now. I tried to convince her not to, to stay in synch with Aussie time but alas tiredness has overcome her and she is not in the land of the conscious...

Been doing some of the mind numbing things today, setting up bank accounts, applying for tax file numbers etc etc. Now I think I might go and buy some more undies as I have only two pair with those b**#$$#s misplacing my baggage.

Okay everyone, peace out and keep the fan mail coming.

Brad

And so it was...Deutschland

Okay so it’s been a while since I updated this puppy, sorry all you fans out there. I just haven’t felt in blog writing mood for a while now, lets call it writers block, although I’m not really a writer though am I, more of a hack with his own website, ha.

I thought I would write a final update before I return to Melbourne on Tuesday. I can’t believe how fast the three months has gone for me. It’s been an awesome experience and I look forward to returning again sometime soon. I think next time though I will come back with a better German language repertoire and maybe in the winter so I can test out some of the famous ski resorts in the Swiss and Bavarian Alps.

So what have we been up to? The weekend after Munich, we went down to the border of Switzerland and visited a work colleague’s parents in their tiny village. It was nice to see some more of the real Germany and real cool of my friend’s parents to put us up for the weekend. Not to mention the amazing BBQ that they put on for us on the Saturday night. On the Sunday we went for a huge walk in the German countryside, which was nice. The great thing about walking in the countryside in Germany is that you can be in the middle of the forest one minute and the next you come across this great village where you can go to a restaurant, have a beer and a great feed – this is my kind of tramping! Although it might not appeal to you ‘purists; out there…I really didn’t expect Germany to be so green before I came. In many ways it feels so much like New Zealand.

The next weekend we packed our bags and headed to the U.K to visit Asia’s uncle in Cornwall. We flew in to Stansted airport in the north of London. We then had our ‘London experience’ by catching a train to the nearest tube stop and then catching the tube to visit Asia’s sisters ex-boyfriend in Stockwell which is somewhere near the center of London. London is absolutely colossal, I mean big like nothing I have ever experienced before. To be fair my first impression was not a good one – I mean compared to Germany it felt big, cramped, dirty and unfriendly. Although in Germany you are probably more likely to spot a U.F.O than a piece of trash on the side of the road, so it’s probably not a fair comparison. Hey, what the heck I might be being a little harsh – besides it was nice to speak English again for a weekend. The next day we hired a rental and did a mission down to the south-west of England to visit Asia’s family. Their hospitality was second to none - we had a great time and managed to visit some really interesting places in the English countryside. It was a bit of a speedy tour of England and I definitely have to go back sometime, if only to change my impression of London.

Okay so here I am sitting here at home on a Friday night writing what is probably my last blog entry while I am still in Germany. It’s nice to sit down beer in hand and have a quiet Friday for a change – it’s been fun and hectic for the last three months and it’s been a blast. I have quite enjoyed writing this blog so far, I think I might keep it going when I get to Melbourne – at least for a little while anyway until I get some friends…

We have had a slight change of plans and are not coming back to NZ before heading to Melbourne now, so I won’t be able to catch up with you NZ peeps in the immediate future. I plan to head to Christchurch to be with the family for Christmas and maybe a short holiday in the Nelson area – nothing concrete yet except for Christmas but we will see how things pan out. If you are around the chch area over Christmas give me a bell it will be good to catch up.

Otherwise, take care, keep well and I’ll see some of you soon!

Muenchen

Well, what can I say? Muenchen lives up to everything its reputation would have you believe. From the enormous beer halls serving up huge 1 litre ‘pints’ (yes they are one litre and they taste so good…) to the amazing architecture riddled with history and the quirky Bavarian sub-culture, Muenchen has it all. There is also a fare smattering of World War II history here as well, if you know where to look. After all, Muenchen was the birth place of Nazism and the Third Reich. Hitler staged his first attempted uprising here in 1923 but was shot down and imprisoned for eight months where he wrote that infamous book, hmmm what was it called again? Anyway besides its darker history, Muenchen is a blast – if there is one place to visit in Germany I think it has to be this.

We left early on Saturday morning for our weekend adventure to Bavaria. Despite one of the usual German ‘phantom’ traffic jams we still managed to arrive in Dachau, the oldest and most famous of the Nazis concentration camps, (our first stop and about 20 km out of Muenchen) about lunchtime. I won’t spend too much time describing Dachau, it’s one of those places you most go and see for yourself to truly appreciate the significance of what went on there during the war years. Suffice to say, the one real gem or piece of advice that really struck home with me while I was there was this quote from one of the tour guides. “We will probably never know what makes people do such horrendous things to each other…However, what we can say is that we do know what political conditions allow for such things to take place.” Sadly, while Germany has learnt the hardest lesson from world war two it appears much of the world has not. Once you take away individual freedom, things get bad very fast.

Anyway, enough politics. After an afternoon at Dachau , we arrived in Muenchen feeling tired and ready for some of the famous Bavarian brown stuff. We checked into our hostel ‘Easy Palace’ (the place is much better than the name suggests), a recommendation from Lonely Planet – never leave home without one. So we hit a local pizza joint grabbed a quick feed, which turned out to be not so quick because the waiter took six years to get our bill for us, and then walked down to the ‘Augustiner Brauhaus’, one of Muenchen’s famous beer halls. This place was full of everything you might expect in an authentic beer hall from hidden courtyards to stags heads on the walls, not to mention the lovely women waitresses serving huge beers, all decked out in their local Bavarian outfits. Then things got interesting, we happened to run across, (or they ran into us) a local Bavarian stag do. The guys, there were six of them, promptly ‘educated’ us in local Bavarian custom. Things such as ‘schultz’, where if someone burps they say ‘schultz’ and everyone must respond by also saying ‘schultz’ and putting their thumb on their forehead. The last one to do it gets a slap on the forehead. I’m not sure if this is an actual Bavarian tradition or if these guys were having us on – I seem to remember getting more than my share of whacks on the forehead. These guys were pretty good company though and we ended up having a pretty good time with them.

Okay so we woke up reasonably early the next day with the intention of having a good look around the various sights of Muenchen. Our first mission, or rather Asia’s, was to go and have a look at the ‘Glockenspiel’ a giant motorized play half way up the new town hall, which incidentally is a pretty amazing building, with or without the Glockenspiel. One of the most amazing things about Muenchen, despite appearances to the contrary is that almost the entire city was destroyed by bombing in world war two. So everything looks like it has been there for centuries but actually is probably only 60 years old. While waiting for the ‘Glockenspiel’ to kick into action we managed to stumble across a free tour of the city. Anyway the best bit about this tour was the Canadian/Bavarian tour guide ‘Oz’. This dude was hilarious and the three hours that the tour took went by like a few minutes. After the tour we grabbed a quick coffee and a bite to eat before the three hour drive back to Gomaringen.

Another superb weekend in the land of beer and bratwurst.

Europa Park and Ascent to Rosberg

We started early on Saturday morning, well we managed to get away from Gomaringen at about 7:30am. Our mission – to head to Europa park for the day and have some crazy German theme park fun. For those of you who don’t know, Europa park is a theme park situated just north of Freiburg in south western Baden Württemberg not far from the French border. We took the scenic route to get there, right through the centre of the black forest on highway 28. Well, it’s not really a highway more like a road that connects a whole series of villages every five or so km. It took us almost three hours to get to Rust (great name for a town) where the theme park is located. I thought that we would get there sooner as we were out of the black forest after about two hours and onto the A5. I thought nothing could stop you on the Autobahns but we managed to get stuck in our first ‘phantom’ traffic jam, so named because nobody really understands what causes them. One minute you are cruising along at 180 on the A-Bahn and then all of a sudden its virtual stand still for the next 10 km. When you finally start moving again, you keep thinking when am I going to see the massive accident up ahead but it never comes, and you are left none the wiser as to what really caused the slowdown. Apparently these mysterious traffic jams with no apparent cause are quite famous in Germany, so much so, that the government has even funded a study to try to determine what exactly causes them. Anyway we arrived at Europa park at about 10:30am ready for a full day of rides and entertainment. If you haven’t already guessed Europa park’s theme is…yep Europe! It is actually really well done, with about 10 different European countries to stroll through each with authentic houses, shops and loads of crazy rides from roller coasters to swinging pirate ships and giant plunges into water. The ‘silver star’ roller coaster had to gain the prize though as the best ride with a couple of incredible almost vertical plunges at huge speed. After almost ten hours wandering through the park, they finally shut up and booted everyone out at 8pm, everyone (us included) leaving happy, tired and keen for bed. Unfortunatley, we had a three hour drive to get back to Gomaringen but it all went by pretty quickly despite a few tense moments when we weren’t sure where we were – a reasonably common occurrence among German villages that all seem to look pretty similar at first glance.

Our weekend adventure wasn’t done with the trip to Europa park though. A couple of work colleagues invited me and Asia to go for a small hike through the back blocks of Gomaringen to a little restaurant at Rosberg on top of a small mount with pretty great 360 degree views out over the general Gomaringen area. It took us about 6hrs for the return trip after a couple of 'rest stops' at the local watering holes - I think I already mentioned how good the German beer is...We finished the day with dinner at our local Italian pizzeria in Nehren and then it was back home to bed after a great but exhausting weekend.

I’ve decided that I really must make the most of the time I’ve got left here (which sadly is now only just over a month) by getting to some places a bit further afield in Germany each weekend. Top of the list are Munchen and Berlin. The plan is for Munchen this weekend with a visit to the Nazi concentration camp Dachau.

Crazy Snails and Slugs

_{Went for a walk around Gomaringen with Asia on Tuesday night and we managed to spy this crazy snail. No wonder these critters are on the menu over here, I mean that is one seriously huge snail.}

_{How about the cost of fuel eh? I don’t think I’ll moan about it again though after being over here, check out the prices in the picture below, that’s Euros so basically you are almost paying twice as much as back in NZ. Here is a picture of my latest wheels, a black smart car. Despite my initial misconceptions, they are actually quite fun to drive. Hmmm, well I thought I had lots to write about today but it seems I’ve got a brain block, so until next time...}

Freiburg

Asia and I went Southwest yesterday to check out a place called Freiburg. It is a city nestled in amongst the black forest close to the French border, and not too far from the Swiss either. Freiburg has the typical German historic village/city feel with wide open paved roads mainly designed for pedestrians. As usual, there was some amazing architecture and the weather was a very nice 25 degrees. Speaking of the weather, it is has been decidedly shabby for the last three or so weeks (by shabby I mean shabby for summer, so somewhat like a Wellington summer I suppose, haha). It is often been rainy, gray and overcast with the temperature struggling into the early 20s. Apparently this is more typical of the German summer and quite a change from the 30+ degrees the first few weeks I was here. Anyway, so Asia and I stumbled around Freiburg most of the afternoon checking out the various sights, downed a quick cappuccino and then headed into the mountains for what turned out to be the highlight of the trip.

We drove up to the top of this hill just outside of Freiburg. It tops out at about 1250m but still high enough to get some pretty amazing views and judging by the ski lifts also plenty of snow in the winter. Apparently on a clear day you can see the Swiss alps in all their glory but alas we were not so lucky. Nonetheless, it was still pretty cool and I even managed to spy a couple of wind turbines. After a little wander around the summit and to this viewing platform we cruised on down to this amusement park, we you must give over you left arm and a couple of toes to get on each ride. Me being a stingy bastard, we only went for a few trips on this thing called the space runner which was quite cool. Unfortunately, they shut down the luge just as we were arriving, as it looked like it would have been even better than the Queenstown one. Just as we were leaving the heavens opened in what was pretty much the most torrential downpour I have ever witnessed in my life. I mean the roads were covered in water at least two inches deep, despite their being plenty of drainage. Of course, rain like that can’t last for very long and within 30 mins the storm had passed leaving the area a few degrees cooler in its wake.

Did I ever mention how good the German beer is? Well, you have to try it to believe it and I’m not kidding. It is damn cheap too. You can pick up a crate of 20 500ml bottles from the local bottly for about 12€, amazing stuff!

I'm back, with dialup...

Okay so I'm back in action with the blog. I managed to sort out some kind of makeshift dial up deal from the hotel room which seems to be working okay if a little slow. There a like a million providers in Germany and all pretty cheap which is good. So hurrah, I can start blogging again with fervour.

Thought I'd post some pics of our trip to the burg Hohenzollern in the weekend, some quite good shots I must say...

It´s been a while

Okay so it has been a while since I last made a post. The main reason I have been such a slacker is that I lost my free internet connection about a week and a half ago. I had somehow managed to pilfer the internet through the wireless on my laptop, but I think they are on to me now and so I haven´t been able to get online, apart from at work and I don´t think it is such a good idea blogging from work.

Anyway, this post is taking me three times as long as usual to write because I´m in an internet cafe using a crappy german keyboard with the keys in different places...Okay enough moaning, what have I been up to?

Well, Asia arrived on Wednesday, so it was pretty great to see her again after about a month by myself. Today, we went to check out the castle that I took a photo of a couple of weeks ago. Man, it was even more amazing up close, we spent about three hours just looking around it. We had intended to go to Freiburg this weekend but by the time we got organised in the morning it was practically lunchtime, so we decided on the castle and a visit to Tübingen instead. Quite good anyhow since Asia is still feeling a little jet lagged. I took some great shots (as did Asia), I will get round to posting them at same stage but for now you will just have to make do with your imagination.

How about that bomb threat at Heathrow? I think Asia just missed all the commotion by a few hours, so that was pretty good timing...

Hmmm, what else? I went into Stuttgart last weekend to check it out properly for the first time. It has much more of a big city feel than either Tübingen or Reutlingen but it still manages to retain some of the charm of the smaller places. I have got a trip back there planned probably for next weekend. We are going to go check out a Bundesliga game, with a few of the guys from work so that should be pretty interesting. Apparently Stuttgart has quite a good team, they finished fifth in the league or something last year.

Work has been really hectic, I´m still feeling pretty overwhelmed by how much I don´t know but hey it´s great to be learning some really interesting stuff. I have been working with the Australian system quite a bit a that is a nice change from the central North Island (Auckland...). For you lads at Transpower, I hope things are going well. I think I will be back in New Zealand for a week or so on the fifth of October, so I will try and pop in for a visit.

As for this blog, well I don´t know know how often I will be updating it from now onwards, the lack of internet connection at home is a bit of a drag. I will at a minimum try and post at least once a fortnight maybe more often we will see how things go. Okay everyone, keep well and Ciao for now.

Brad

The week that was

Okay so this is my first post in six days - my apologies I've been tied up with things at work and haven't had too many exciting things to write about. I decided to do a bit of 'local' exploring today and I visited the nearby city of Reutlingen. I say local with inverted commas, because to me as a kiwi used to wide open spaces the whole of Germany, with its densely populated countryside, feels like one big village with lots of seperate town centres. Gomaringen is considered a 'rural' area even though it is less than 15 mins drive from both Reutlingen and Tubingen, cities of over 80,000 a piece each. In NZ what I'm used to rural meaning, is that your next door neighbour (also a sheep farmer) has a residence 40 km away and your nearest population might be a raging metropolis like Taihape. Reutlingen is also very nice, I'm a bit of a stuck record so far with my accusing all German towns of being very nice, well it's true they all have a certain 'villageness' about them which I'm coming to quite like. Reutlingen is probably the biggest city I have visited so far, (not counting Frankfurt and Stuttgart because I hardly saw them in my brief transit through) I think it has over 115,000 people so I guess about the size of Dunedin. I managed to catch the end of a really cool fruit and vegie market in the city centre, so I will be definitely making use of that again in the near future.

Only a week and a half to Asia arrives now, which is pretty exciting. Hopefully, the nice weather continues for another month so she can have a nice break out of the NZ winter.

Another reason for the sparcity of posts this week is that I received this new German language linkword learning CD-ROM. It takes the chore factor out of learning a new language and uses a kind of mega memory word association technique to help learn the language. For me, it is working really well as I'm starting to recognise alot more written words and also pick up a litttle more of the conversations. Although, it's still a slow process. Oh for a language brain implant.

Okay, so no photos today. I haven't taken any since my journey down south last weekend.

Tschus,
Brad

Autobahnen und Konstanz

How do you know if you are on an autobahn?
A) You are driving at 100 kM and cars zoom past you as if you were standing still
B) You are driving at 130 kM and cars zoom past you as if you were standing still
C) You are driving at 160 kM and cars zoom past you as if you were standing still
D) All of the the above
Of course the answer is D. Yes, on my way down to Konstanz today I had my first autobahn experience. There is nothing quite like the feeling of driving at 160 kM an hour in a 1.2 litre car, hey it could even have gone faster - maybe next time...

Saw this crazy cool Schloss (german for castle/palace) perched up on a hill when I was driving along the B27 (which is not an autobahn but you can still go 130 in places). Anyway, I pulled over and managed to get this shot although it is still a little hazy at this distance. It is not too far away from Gomaringen, maybe 20 mins, so I might go and visit it sometime soon.

So I took a trip down to a town called Konstanz which is perched on the edge of a lake also called Konstanz and right on the Swiss border. In fact, in one corner of Lake Constanz there is an intersection of three international borders, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, which is quite cool. The lake is fed from the Alps and is drained by the Rhein.

Konstanz is a beautiful town (pop 65,000) maybe even more so than Tubingen. I think the lake is the decisive factor there. I had a good look around through the AltStadt (old town), which even had some old Roman ruins dating back to 300 AD. I also managed a swim in the lake, didn't have my togs so had to strip down to my undies. Not that the continental europeans seem to care much about public nakedness. Spied some breasts (didn't have to look hard) while I was sitting on a park bench in the sun (like a sifty old man), so that was a bit of a laugh.

I'm starting to get by a little better with the language now. I mean I still can't follow a conversation but I seem to manage okay when buying stuff (food mainly). Oh yeah that reminds me. Everywhere in Germany they have Turkish food, apparently there was a lot of turkish immigrants in the 60s and 70s. Anyway, they do this amazing thing called a doner (the o has an umblat so you say it like dooner). Ummm, the best way to describe it is kinda like a pita bread but better and filled with really tasty meat, salad and sauces. I could live on doners, well I kinda have been because they are cheap, quick and tasty. Although I can feel the kgs piling on. Well, it's now 1810 local time and I feeling a bit peckish, might go rustle me up some dinner. I'm going in to Tubigen tonight with a few of the guys from the office. Apparently, there is this nice Bier Garten by the Neckar so that should be nice. Okay Ciao.

Where are all the cats?

Haha,

I meant to mention a funny conversation I had with this Turkish girl at the party on Saturday night. Anyway, she was like "oh you are from New Zealand, you are so lucky you have no cats there right?" I was like "sorry what did you say, no cats?" She was like "yeah, you have no cats in New Zealand right..." Haha, I laugh. "No we have lots, more than Germany I think". It took me some time to convince her. "But you have so many birds" she says. "Not as many as there used to be", I say. "Damn cats..." and so on. That reminds me, I haven't seen a single cat since I have been here. Hmmm, where are all the cats?

Tubingen and party

I had an interesting weekend. The city tour of Tubingen was pretty good, even though I didn’t understand a word that was said. Tubingen is an amazing city, some of the buildings were constructed in the 11^th century! Truly amazing to a NZer, when you consider our oldest building is probably struggling to nudge 150 years. The area down by the Neckar river reminded me a lot of the Avon river in Christchurch, with the punts, the willow trees and a meandering shallowish river.

Their was one interesting story that Martin Schmit translated for me. If you look at the photo you will see that on the second floor of the building on the left, the window frame on the right most side is painted white, unlike all the other windows which are painted brown. Anyway, as the story goes their was a game of cards and one of the guys lost all his money. Wanting to keep playing though, he decided to put up his room as collateral and sure enough he lost it to the guy who owned the building beside his. So, a door was put through from the building on the right and the poor saps room became legally part of the building on the right. A distinction that remains even today!

After the tour we went back to the office for the annual company party, where a huge BBQ feed was put on plus champers, and bier. I also managed to scavenge some of the left over food – I’m still a student at heart even though it’s been years!

Okay, I’m sitting in my apartment chilling out in shorts and a singlet, it’s 9:15pm and still real warm. One thing I have noticed about the buildings in Germany is that they are damn solid. They really keep the heat in. NZers could learn a thing or two about insulation from these guys. Although judging by the number of heaters in my apartment, I think they need it in the winter!

A picture of my 1.2L L Renault Clio. Oh well, at least it’s a manual and economical…

The Gym

Went to a spin class at a local gym yesterday evening. It was interesting going to a class where the instructor speaks in Deutsch but without exception every track that was played was an English/American song. Also, finally got around to having my first Deutsch bier after the spin class. The gym has this cool little Italian restaurant attached to it. Every second store in the south of Germany is an Italian restaurant, not that there are many stores where I’m staying. Anyway, the bier was a Fufstenberg (I think or something like that) pils. It was pretty good. I got this incredibly huge Pizza for 5 euro, which I thought was cheap at the time but I keep forgetting that I have to multiply everything by two – this is going to be the bane of my life while I’m here, things that appear cheap but which actually aren’t.

I’ve got the annual DIgSILENT work party today starting with a city tour of Tubingen at 3pm. Will definitely get to try a few more of the biers afterwards. I might go into Reutlingen tomorrow for a look around, plus I need to try and get a german simcard for my phone.

Thunderstorms and Studenplan

Well, I’ve had four days in my new job so far. Things have been a little slow so far but that is because most of the consultancy team is away. It should really get cranking on Monday.

A massive thunderstorm just passed through about an hour ago. The thunder was so loud it shook my apartment. In all my time in NZ I have never seen or heard anything like it. It came and went real fast, maybe all over within an hour, crazy…

Tried to catch a bus to Tubingen in the weekend. Tubingen is a university town similar in size to Dunedin. Well, I thought I managed to read the german timetable but the bus never came. Oh yeah, trains do run late in germany, despite the myth!

Arrival and more transit blues

Blog entry 09/07/06 – Brigette’s Guesthouse

It’s now 8am Sunday morning in Germany and I have just woken up from a great 12 hour sleep. I’m still struggling with a bit of jet lag but I feel much better today than I have for the last couple.

Hong Kong, what I saw of it, seemed pretty amazing. From the air at night it looked truly spectacular and that bridge, well I forget the name of it, so huge! I have heard that the Chinese have a strange propensity for producing funny English slogans. I’m not sure if they do it deliberately or because of their poor English skills – I reckon their just taking the piss though. As you can see from the sign I saw in transit at Hong Kong:

I had a few dramas getting to my final destination once I got to Germany. For a start, my baggage never arrived with me at Frankfurt so I didn’t have a change of clothes after traveling for about two days total. I was then supposed to pick up a rental car at Stuttgart and drive to my final destination in Gomaringen. However, apparently it is mandatory for the driver of a car to submit a valid credit card. Anyway, they were trying to charge it for €849 which is about $1700 NZ dollars which exceeded the limit on my card. Therefore, I couldn’t pick up the rental. So, I ended up having to get another train from Stuttgart to Tuebingen, where I got a short taxi to Gomaringen and Brigette’s guesthouse: Brigette, pronounced bree-get-a, was really nice and helpful and despite not speaking much English we managed to communicate pretty effectively. She showed me around Gomaringen, pop about 8500, so not much bigger than Taihape in NZ. It is a pretty small but friendly little village:

I think I definitely underestimated how difficult it would be not speaking the local language. It gives you a whole new perspective on life when you realise how much harder life is when you can’t effectively communicate. I mean even a simple thing like going down to the supermarket becomes a bit of an ordeal and takes you like twice as long as it would back home.

I went for a walk yesterday around the village and to check out where the DIgSILENT office is. Turns out it is only about a 20 min walk from where I am staying so that is pretty good. Although, it will still be a lot easier once I get a car sorted out.

Okay, I’m going to go and start practicing my deutsch now.

Auf Wiedersen

Sydney Airport

Blog entry 06/07/06 – Sydney Airport

Well, it’s currently 0941 local time and my connecting flight to Hong Kong doesn’t depart until 1425, what a drag. This is my first international travel experience, so I now understand why people say transit sucks. I just want to get there, damn it… I’m plagued by the dilemma of whether to cruise into Sydney for a couple of hours but then I have to drag my god damn laptop around the city with me – well I’m bloody glad I got the light weight Toshiba at least. Plus, trying to save the coin at the moment since it has been a bloody expensive time the last week or so. To make matters worse, it looks like a beautiful day in Sydney – isn’t Australia great!

Oh well, enough moaning – it is good procrastination though since I should be studying German, die Deutsch. Pretty scared about getting to Germany, not only do I have to try and communicate but I have to try and work as well.

Hmmm, starting to get bloody hungry. My body still thinks it is 1200. I might go get that $12 burger. Damn it better be good!

Where am I going

Well,

On the 6th of July I set off on my journey to Germany where I will be staying in a little town in the south west of Germany called Gomaringen - this is where DIgSILENT is based, check out the map below. I'll be pretty close to France and Switzerland...

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=gomaringen+germany&ie=UTF8&ll=48.459718,9.102173&spn=3.395291,10.986328&om=1

Welcome to my blog

Hi,

I am the original wind crusader - I have set off on my mission to Germany to learn all I can about wind farm modelling and development at a German company called DIgSILENT. I will update this site, hopefully often with details of my travels and hopefully some cool pics!