Jonestralia

The Aftertaste

2010-12-16T23:05:00.001+11:00

It's eight days to Christmas. I'm sitting in Cristina's small apartment and wondering how to best end this blog. Soft snow is falling outside, almost so you can't see it, adding up a thin layer on the icy streets below. We're moving together in January, a bit outside the city center to a larger flat. It's hard to work on school assignments when there isn't enough space. Thus far, we've always lived in a single room, both here and back in Australia.

Ahh, Australia. I promised earlier to write something about what I got out of this year and what it felt like, so now I'm attempting to do just that. A lot of my friends that have been on exchange say coming back made them feel that nothing had changed in their lives, that they just returned to their old habits soon after and lived on as nothing had happened. I feel that that is not possible for me. Partly it might be because of all the new things that are taking place at this time in my life, but even if they wouldn't, even if I just returned home and everything would go on as it used to, I feel that it just can't have stayed the same. Everything changes.

"What was the best thing?" and "How has it changed you?". I've been home for more than three weeks already, and still I can't give people an answer to the two most common questions they ask me. I can't just sum it up to a few words, perhaps I can't put it into words at all. One way of doing it would be this blog, I guess. Read through it all and sum it up in a few words and you know what I'm talking about. And then there's so much else that just couldn't fit in these pages as well. All the little things.

For some reason, I don't miss Australia. I thought I would as I was leaving Geelong behind. But I realized that I don't need to miss something in order to make it important. Instead of missing all the Australian people, friends, climate and nature, I have this feeling of deep satisfaction and gratification. Of course, I'm mighty thankful for having had the opportunity to get there in the first place and being able to stay there as long as I did, but closer to the end I also got this overwhelming feeling of satisfaction, that my time there truly was everything and even more than I'd come there for. Note to you guys who are choosing about half a year and a full year there: Go with the latter. If I'd gone home after 5 months, I'd missed out on the best things.

I remember sitting in that crazy invention of wings attached to an aluminium tube as Australia was rushing past far below me. How did I change? For one, as I already said before, my thirst for exploring my surroundings jumped up to the next level. How much of Finland have I really seen? Not much. We're already planning a biking trip to the archipelago for summer. Call it increased interest and awareness or whatever you like.

Relating to this, it's rather funny(and perhaps a bit frightening?) how I feel that I learned important things by noting what I felt was lacking in Australia more than noting what was available. I feel much more environmentally aware and critical now after spending time in a country that's one of the worst polluters in the world(the sustainable futures class I took certainly plays a role here though). The whole idea of a country where climate is among the most suitable for good and sound living and then not utilizing the possibilities it offers and lagging behind in pretty much every aspect of sustainability makes little sense to me. I think it was one of my friends in Villamanta who put it like this: "I don't know but I just feel like Australians just don't care or if they do they're just too darn lazy to do anything about it". Perhaps living in readily livable conditions doesn't make you rush into improving them. Whatever the reason, I'm happy so find out the "younger" generation over there shows signs of upcoming change in that area. Har har, now I sound old don't I.

As a result of all this, I feel that I know much better now than before what I want to focus on in my studies and perhaps even in work. That's a big one, folks!

I never felt lonely in Australia. Villamanta made sure of that in the first months, and was a great way of learning to know people from around the world. Cristina arrived in the middle and the time there with her was just incredible. Not that spending item with her requires any special place, it's incredible anyways. The last few months, as both most Villamantians and Cristina were gone, I put my foot down with the locals and I can't think of a better way to have ended it. All this is definitely part of the best that happened to me over the year.

So, here we are. I'm throwing out the biggest possible THANK YOU to everyone I met over the year, to everyone I already knew before and also a personal thanks to Australia and New Zealand who both rocked my world in ways I couldn't think of before and ways I can't describe afterwards!!

A huge thanks also to all the readers of Jonestralia! The number in the visitor counter on the right-hand side there, albeit it arrived too late, tells me that my time in front of the screen wasn't all wasted.

This is the end of your favorite blog channel, dear readers. Stay tuned for possible information of what will happen next, but until further notice we are out of business.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Ps. If you're wondering about the total number of pictures I ended up with over the year, the number is 8170. Add in all the pictures initially taken without being deleted or merged together, that number probably shoots up far past 20.000.

Hallo aus Berlin!

2010-12-16T04:00:00.000+11:00

Berlin, Berlin, I've never been. Before.

After my long, but surprisingly pleasant flight(the seat next to my window seat was empty all the way!) via Bangkok and Vienna to Berlin I felt like a snail carrying his house on his back. A year worth of stuff was weighing me down as I slowly found my way into the streets of Berlin and found the apartment where Lars and Anu are staying during Lars' exchange year. Lars was at uni when I arrived, but shortly after I'd dumped my stuff on the floor and filled up the whole small kitchen of theirs, we headed out for, what else, kebab!

A positive cultural shock washed over me as soon as we got into the kebab place nearby where L & A enjoy pretty much every breakfast: It's dirt cheap. Now it might sound unhealthy to go out here every day, but trust me, these k'babs are nothing compared to the fat soups we get back home, these are actually made of good ingredients and taste accordingly. Taking in account the prices, 1-2 euros a piece, it's even cheaper eating out in this city than it is going to the store and cooking yourself! That's pretty unique I'd say as were still talking about a huge city in Europe. Even the Turka Cola tasted exactly like coke!

We passed through a lively and rather picturesque Turkish market before heading to an abandoned power station which was housing a Realstadt-exhibition filled with all kinds of architectural models. Now, some of these models were huge and very impressive, but in the end I guess what hit me the hardest was the interior of the building itself. The industrial robustness reminded me on some level of the incredible oil-industry architecture the views of the Geelong - Melbourne railway present. In the evening we also headed to the same building but down to the bunker-like basement which was a huge techno club. My ears were ringing the next morning even though I had earplugs!

Here's Lars again demonstrating the price levels on the cheaper streets of Berlin. You wouldn't get even a slice of pizza in Finland for that! That's followed by a typical street view of the city. It was certainly fascinating seeing apartment buildings again as they'd for most part been totally nonexistent in Australia. The whole street scale is so different down there because of it.

Next up was Tempelhof park, an international airport that some years ago was opened up as a public park, even though nothing essential has been added to it. Still, it's very popular. It's interesting to think about how public place that isn't designed for a specific or limiting purpose seem to make it easier for people to embrace the area for their own uses. It's quite the sight seeing people walking, cycling and running on the gigantic runways. It's also the best possible place I can think of if you have hobbies like kiting and flying model air planes. We saw plenty of those down there.

The Nazi-built airport terminal is also a sight to behold: At it's time I hear it was the largest building ever built and one of the few pieces of Hitler's megalomanic plan to transform Berlin to the centre of the world that actually were completed. Here's a short news video about those plans.

The subway in Berlin has some nice detailing as well. This ionic steel bolted column is quite an extreme example of how far some are willing to go in the name of classical architecture :)

A visit to Berlin without a currywurst is not a visit at all, so w had a mouthful of them at a place that according to Lars always have customers queuing. We also spotted these highly mobile versions of sausage kiosks. Now that's handy (or is it?)!

Next morning I grabbed not the best photo ever of Lars, but it goes to show what you get for brekkie in Berlin if you're willing to spend some extra cash (meaning 5 euros).

After brekfast we headed for a guided tour in this old gasometer that had been rebuilt into a bunker during the war. Although the tour was in German(my skills in that language are very rusty at the moment), I did pick up a lot of interesting facts about it. For example, during the war when the city was heavily bombed it transformed from a dull bunker to one of the only (and therefor very sought after) places habitable. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside, but here's a site about the gasometer in question and have a look at the different undeground tours available if you're going there some day. Check it out, I think it's a lot more interesting that many of the major tourist attractions in the city(although can't say for sure as I haven't seen them yet)!

We had a walk at Lars' university and checked out the views from the cafeteria located on the top of one of the buildings. The reflections from the window makes it almost look like some of Hitler's humongous buildings would be standing far away in the horizon, doesn't it?

If you're an architect(and especially if you're a landscape archie) Südgelände Nature Park is a must see. It's an old, run down railway switchyard taken back by nature. Tracks run through the forest where a nice walk takes you through a surprisingly small but cleverly varying path. It's also famous for it's eve-changing graffiti walls. Weather was crap as we were here, adding even more atmosphere to our urbanity vs nature visit.

The rain continued having good sides to it: As we got back the cobblestone streets of Berlin were all washed up and glistening with light. I really felt like being in Europe again.

Last sights from Berlin: An old bike with a speedometer and a good meal of goose. Thanks for everything Lars, and hope you're experiencing the rest of those great underground tour as well so you can tell me what they're like later!

The next morning I was already flying home and, yeah, you guessed it, I was pretty darn excited!

Last days in Oz

2010-12-15T05:47:00.000+11:00

Another fact I think I failed to mention before was that I'd actually left my home, 3 Coquette street, before the trip to Central Australia. Here's a small update of the day in Geelong before that trip! M&M had had a few days to spare, and decided to take a ride on the Great Ocean road. Meanwhile, I was back in Geelong getting ready to leave, and slowly started to put all my stuff from over the year into bags.

M&M had hit a bug or two (million) with their rental car when hey returned it to Geelong. This, together with our adventure in the outback definitely proves that Australia sure is a buggy land. It's quite interesting to note how the bugs actually have created patterns on the front bumper that remind me of those magnetic field patterns you see in physics books. Did you know, by the way, that there are more ants in the world than humans, in kilos? That's a pretty insane fact as well.

My goodbyes to Geelong took place here and now, even though I wasn't yet entirely leaving the town. I would return for the few days before my flight to Berlin. However, this was the last time I walked home on Villamanta st. and crossed Pako st., and while I was at it I said cheers to my four legged friends I'd made on the way. I don't entirely know how to describe the feeling I had while walking back: It's like leaving home without it being home. I had gotten attached to Geelong, but then again I'd always known all of this was just temporary. And deep within I was happy to have it that way.

It's strange how you notice all the small details of a place you didn't see before when you're expecting not to see it anymore. You're more aware, taking in everything with your senses to make a memory out of it. That's one of the big things I'm taking home with me from here: To be more aware, to live more in the moment. Combined with the fact that we never tend to travel around in our own homes and surroundings (a lot of the locals here have travelled a lot less in Australia in their whole life than I'd done over a year, and I reckon the same goes the other way in Finland), I now know what I'm going to do next year in Finland. I'm going to stay there and explore home with opened eyes.

Mari and Markus stayed at the house a few nights before, and before heading for the airport Kate came and took most of our stuff to her place. There was a lot of it. We then celebrated the last night on Coquette st. with some kangaroo steak and feta salad, and I said goodbye to Patty and Trish from the house. The next morning we got up real early and headed for the airport for Alice springs.

- Now, if you want to fill up the gap between here and the next few images, read the previous blog posts about everything we did in the Red Centre. We had an absolute blast there! -

The day we returned from Alice Springs I had dinner or went out later with pretty much every friend of mine left in Australia. First we had chicken parmis at the Bended Elbow, which, if you've been reading my blog, also was the first bar I ever went to in Australia and Geelong. Then, I said bye to Markus and Mari who continued their journey to New Zealand, and most of the rest continued on to The Nash, where we teamed up for a quiz night. It was a good last evening together, thank you all for coming!

I was staying at Kate's house the last two nights, and the place was pretty much crammed with my stuff. In the morning of the last day Kristian and Cory joined in and we went swimming to the local swimming hall, and ha, I even got to go to a sauna for the first time in Oz! Talk about getting used to home again, right? After the sauna we went by the store and got stuff to make a huge brunch which we enjoyed in the front of Kate's house. The sun was out and I enjoyed every last piece of the warm Australian summer I could!

Having packed my stuff ready for the flight next morning during the day we went over to Cory's place in the evening to watch a movie and I enjoyed a Cold Rock ice cream on the way there. The next morning I got another show of hospitality as Kate insisted to drive me all the way to the airport, and off we went. Not much later I was sitting in the terminal by myself and having the last taste of an Aussie Grand Angus burger at McDonald's I was going to have for a good while. I was going home after spending almost ten months on the other side of the world.

Thanks to all of you who made my last days in Oz some of my best!

Melbourne one more time and surfing!

2010-12-15T03:28:00.000+11:00

Seems I got a little ahead of myself with that Red Centre blog update. I completely forgot to talk about a second day me, Mari and Markus spent in Melbourne before that trip and our surf trip to Torquay as well! It's time to quickly and neatly correct that now.

Now if there was one place I hadn't visited at all in Melbourne that I wanted to have a look at, it was Queen Victoria Market. It's a huge covered market just in the northeast corner of the Central Business District. We went there to get lost in the passageways and saw a bit of it all, everything from special roo-meats, vegetables and strange seafood to the even more suspicious looking merchants with looks ranging from shady smugglers to Eastern European hairy women selling chocolate vodka! It's a cool place to just walk around on even if you're not looking for anything specific.

These donuts we bought from this van where they're baked from scratch were excellent!

Next up, we visited the National Gallery of Victoria which has a large collection of all kinds of types of art. Yeah, this is the building we tried getting into with Johanna and her friends about a month earlier. The building itself is quite interesting as well, but I think I prefer the exterior more than the interior. Those heavy walls with waterfall arch windows are neat!

The next day was reserved for surfing in Torquay. Unfortunately, while we already were in the bus they called us from the surf shop and informed us that the morning had absolutely no waves! And this is supposed to be one of the most reliable surf beaches in Australia! As we were already on our way, we went al the way and had a look at the situation with our own eyes, and sure indeed, even ants would have had trouble finding decent enough waves this day.

So, our plan changed as follows: M&M headed for the Great Ocean Road for a few days, while I went back to Geelong to start putting all my stuff in order for packing. We returned to Torquay two days later and then we finally got out waves! It was great fun, and we all managed to stay up enough to call it surfing. Mission completed!

The Red Centre, part 3/3

2010-12-12T04:59:00.000+11:00

Around 5-6 am the next morning we were standing watching the Uluru sunrise, and we sure got a nice sky accompanying the Rock.

The sun was literally smiling at us as it floated out from behind the rock.

It's quite astonishing how the piece of rock changes color as the sunlight even slightly changes.

Later that morning we headed in for a closer inspection. We did the approximately 2-2,5 hour walk around the base and came across some really weird shapes and caves scattered all around the rock. Certainly the place is much more diverse than I'd initially expected.

The half-filtered side-sunlight did it's own thing in enlivening the reddish surface every time it appeared.

And then came the total surprise that caught us with awe. It started raining, which in itself would have sounded stupid a few days ago when the forecast and all other images one has about the Red Center promises 40 degree sun bombardment. But that wasn't the thing that made us stand there like aliens would have landed from the sky. Instead it was how the water almost immediately, right in front of our very own eyes transformed Ayers Rock to a glistening, almost desaturated bluish-grey sculpture. It felt like someone was playing with the hue/saturation/lightness slider in Photoshop, but in real life!

No less amazing was the sights that appeared right after the rain stopped: Water started coming down in every little fold in the rock, and they blended together to form yet larger waterfalls. If you went to Ayers Rock, this is not exactly what you'd be expecting! It was awesome, and even more impressive when the sun appeared afterwards!

Here's probably my favorite photo of the bunch, the Rock really looks more like a giant tree than anything else here. Definitely one of the most surreal moments and views I've experienced in my life.

After the base walk we said "seeya later" to the national park and started making our way back to Alice Springs. No worries though, we still had a few goodies waiting for us along the road. The first one, digging worms from some roots of bushes for lunch didn't work as well as we'd expected: Not a single worm accepted to come out of hiding. Well, I don't blame them. What we did then to cheer up was parking the bus at a farm along the road and go for a short camel ride. Yay you heard me right, camel ride! It was really good fun, and as I mentioned earlier these creatures must be some of the funniest on earth: They're smart, very stubborn(especially so towards their trainers) and these particular ones were(if Dave is to believe) among the top racing camels in all of Australia!

Meet Goldie and another cheery camel whose name I've unfortunately forgotten by now. Goldie was easy to remember as she never did what the trainers wanted. Now, riding a camel this way is easy: Just hold on, and lean back when he/she gets up/down. When they do rise up from their kneeling position and you're on top, it feels very strange, as their legs would bend in three places like a machine! The riding itself was pretty comfortable, until we started running. I can't imagine what my lower body would say after a hour or so on these guys, nothing good that's for sure. Good fun though, good fun!

I'm also a new fan of camel feet. They look so... I don't even know how to describe them. See for yourself.

After the slightly strenuous but incredibly fun experience of the tour(and a shower) we all met in the Rock Bar in Alice Springs in the evening. As we were heading back to the motel we got word of taking the cab, even if it wasn't a long way to walk. Apparently, Alice Springs is not the safest town in the world, and we had noticed that already earlier: Windows are barred, and no house without a fence exists. Rumours of robberies are heard and "Stop the violence" -signs can be seen in the streets. I don't know the reasons behind all of this, and I won't speculate too much either.

It is clear to me though that Alice Springs is a very young town, and it is a major collision point between native and western cultures. I got the feeling when we walked the streets that many of the aborigines there, strolling around almost aimlessly on the streets and sitting in the parks for hours and hours, seemed lost, out of their own habitat, even if home might be exactly where they are. Then again, native teenagers hanging around in the shopping malls seemed fully westernized already. It seems the cultural collision of some of these people will only last for a generation, and then much of the old ways might have changed. For better or for worse, but definitely worse if we're talking about preserving valuable traditions and cultures.

Again one might ask, why are you here, Alice Springs?

The next day, our last day in Alice, we had dinner in a locally famous steakhouse where Markus and me both had the "Drovers Blowout", a menu consisting of soup, a platter of bit of kangaroo, camel, emu and crocodile meat, a big steak and some delicious apple pie for dessert. Now, camel tastes a bit like sandy bratwurst in my opinion, emu is pretty chicken-like but is darker meat, but the croc was the strangest and perhaps therefor my least favorite: it's like eating chicken and fish at the same time. Try it and you'll know. By the way, the biggest dish they serve here is a 2 kg rump steak "The mother of them all!", and the advertisement outside on the porch leaves little unclear about that.

Killing some time in Alice Springs, we headed lastly for the reptile center where we were greeted first by this goana on the floor. We got to try holding a number of lizards and snakes and these guys were all used to being handled by humans, so it was once again, good fun. I didn't even care about the snake trying to strangle me at times, it was so exciting. Wouldn't get one home though, I prefer the more usual (and active )dogs as pets instead of a 7 meter snake or sneaky blue tongued lizard who just relax all day long.

I want to end the Red Centre with the last image. Imagine walking on the streets of a small town in the middle of the Australian desert, in the middle of the summer. It's about 35 degrees outside, and you seek shelter in an air-conditioned shopping mall. When you get in, this whole Christmas display complete with tree, sledge and white kangaroos opens up in front of you. I don't know about you folks, but I just can't help getting a funny feeling in my gut...

...especially now that I'm already home and we have half a meter of snow on the streets of Helsinki.

The Red Centre, part 2/3

2010-12-11T00:19:00.001+11:00

Waking up the next day and brushing off all the nightly spiders from our underwear, we had a quick breakfast and jumped into our bus heading for Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park. On our way there, we stopped by some gloomy tourists who'd got a dromedary in their windshield. The dromedary was long gone, so hopefully no too serious injury had come to it. The tourists were out of mobile phone reach, so we called for the police to arrive at our next stop.

You usually don't think about it, but here's at least one faint similarity with Sahara: The Australian desert is packed with dromedaries. Studies say there's millions of them. That's cool, because I really like everything about them!

As I already said, the desert sand IS certainly red, but there's a lot more to it as well.

Here's a few native bugs and animals we encountered during the late morning. They're all simply beautiful creatures!

Instead of heading straight for The Rock, we went past it and went on for about half an hour until we reached The Olgas, a much less well known rock formation just around the corner. To me, initially, these dome shaped rocks actually appeared a lot more interesting than Ayers Rock itself. I mean, it's just a rock, right? Here's plenty and they form some incredible sceneries!

I know what you're thinking now. How in the world did these things form? Well, I don't remember everything about it(I was concentrating on the scenery, not so much our guide at this point), but the basics are that the land level initially has been as high or higher than these rock stretch today, and everything else around it has just eroded over millions of years. Why these formations have survived might be anyones guess, but probably they're just a tad harder rock than the rest. But who really cares, huh, just enlarge the pics below and check out the SIZE of those things!

Here's a jumping pic Dave the guide took of us three. Don't ask about my expression, I just wanted to go really high, okay?

This scenery really reminded me of images I've seen in comic books. That's how surreal they feel.

After a good two hour walk around in the area we headed just outside the formations for some additional pictures and a tortilla lunch.

The local shithouse I visited housed some interesting dwellers: Here's a giant stick insect which in my book counts as one of the more ingenious camouflage creatures, and the Red-back spider, the most venomous spider in Australia. Nothing too fancy to run into when you're relaxing on the loo, don't you think?

Now, if you don't mind me bragging for once (ehm...), I really enjoy how this image turned out. It really shows the nature around the national park and includes both The Olgas and The Rock, revealing how close they are to each other.

Here's a small warning: From this point on, this blog will transform to show and talk about Ayers Rock and little more. If you get fed up with all rockrockrock-talk and think it's not worth a gazillion of images, then you might be right, but for me The Rock turned out to be so much more than just a normal flat rock with a 8km circumference. My initial impressions of it from further away and images I'd seen before had told me a very narrow part of the whole story. First of all, compare these two images to each other: The first one is from the angle ALL postcard shots of this rock are taken from, the second one is from another direction. It changes as you move, alright.

A bit closer we got to the base where the climbs usually take place, and Dave gave us the reasons for why we shouldn't do it. I was pretty clear already before hearing about this that I'm not going to head up there, and actually we didn't even get the chance: The climb was closed. There are a number of real reasons why not to climb it, though. First and foremost: It's a sacred site for the locals, and you might wanna respect their wishes as they do own the land and have been there for a bit longer than you. More, it's actually pretty dangerous(36 people have died trying) if the climb doesn't get you then the heat might, going up there and not finding a toilet has no enjoyable ecological nor hygienic results, people steal rocks, etc. etc. The number of people climbing the rock gets lower each year, and they reckon it's going to get closed permanently in the coming times. Good choice, I'd say.

The base around the rock is also an important habitat for wildlife...

... and the smaller cave formations and textures really give the rock a mysterious nature. The cracks in the surface origin from the intense expansion and contraction the large temperature differences between day and night cause.

After the short visit to the rock base (a proper base walk was scheduled for the next day) we headed to the sunset lookout point and had noodles for dinner. It was delicious eating outside, and the rock did change color from a red-brown daylight to orange and dark red/purple pretty rapidly as the sun started setting.

The short evening was spent at Ayers Rock campground which was luxurious in that it offered us toilets and showers! After some eating and listening to Dave's singing and playing, we crawled quickly into out swags as we were going to get up after 4 am the next morning to witness the famous Uluru sunrise.

It might have been the anticipation, but I woke up some fifteen minutes before everyone else and grabbed this picture of the Southern starry sky. The Aussie-desert is one of the best places on Earth to get these amazing views into the universe.

Stay tuned for the last day of the Rock Tour, where we get close and personal with the Rock itself!

The Red Centre, part 1/3

2010-12-10T04:50:00.001+11:00

Howdy folks! My final week in Australia was filled with exciting stuff, and the 5-day trip with Mari and Markus to the Red Centre, the true red-hot desert part of Australia, was certainly on top of my waiting list. So long had I hoped to get here, and I knew a year Down Under without a visit to the centre would have been similar to going to Finland without seeing Lapland, and now was the time!

I knew already that the last week was going to be hectic. Five of the seven days I had left was going to be spent traveling, while the last days before leaving would have to suffice for packing a year worth of things and saying goodbye to a year worth of friends. At this time, however, I was so excited about what we were going to see, that I didn't really think about “small” things like “going home” or “little time”.

We were lucky and got some really cheap return flights to Alice Springs, even though it meant we had to stay there a day longer than the initially planned four days. The plan was as follows: Check out the town of Alice Springs, head on a 3-day Rock Tour including the most important sights in the region, head back to Alice for a day and a half before returning to Melbourne. Now this was exactly what we did, so just hang on to your seat and let the trip unfold!

Ahh, Alice Springs. It must be one of those cities that make little sense when you look at where they're located on the map. It's nearly in the dead centre of Australia, and as we know by now that means it's close to absolutely NOTHING. No cities, no towns, no forests, no grass, not even water. Even Alice Springs town map points out the river that flows through the smallish town, but adds a (usually dry) -label after the name. The dry sandy river bed is apparently the ground for a yearly boat-racing event, with the added speciality of people making a hole in their boat to carry it faster to the finish line.

Why, oh why are you here, Alice Springs?

Dropping our bags at our bug and ant-filled hostel room we took a long tiresome walk into the town centre. Long and tiresome because it was probably 40 degrees outside. This must have been the first time my and M&Ms shadows were this short. Trying to ignre the boiling heat we walked across the main shopping street, had a meal and started to work our way up to the Anzac Hill for a better view of the town. Guess what, it was even hotter up there.

The rest of the first day is kind of a blur: We strolled around, M&M bought themselves some essential headwear and we filled up with the compulsory 3 liters of water per head required for the Rock Tour that was going to start early next morning. Escaping the heat we crawled back to our hostel and went early to bed, but did have another meal and some crazy cheap beer at Toddy's Bar.

Next morning looked promising: Clouds had appeared overnight and the sun wasn't shooting flames straight in our faces as soon as it got up. It was still warm, but nothing like yesterday. We had an early brekkie before Dave, our tour guide for the Rock Tour, arrived to pick up 20 eager and mostly rather young, very eager people on board his bus. The 5 hour road trip to our first stop, the Kings Canyon, was quickly over as we all had to introduce ourselves in front of the bus and tell some funny stories about where we are, what useful skills we have, favourite places and superpowers, first kiss/last kiss etc. etc. It was a good way of getting to know people and heaps of fun at the same time! After introductions everyone wrote their names on the windows of the bus to help with remembering the names.

I have to say what was clear to me already after two hours of bus ride: The Australian desert is not what I expected. It's red, alright, and it's dry, but it's also helluva lot of greener than I thought! Dave revealed that my expectations were not entirely a common misconception, this year has been very wet with a lot more rainfall than usual. Even so, he added, the desert really isn't a desert at all, more just a dry bushland with bush densities varying according to yearly rainfall. So, all you expecting a red-hot endless ocean of sand dunes before coming here should know that this is not like Sahara, at least not at the moment. Further proof of this was attained a few minutes before we arrived at the canyon: Rain.

At first it was a bit annoying to have it raining right as we were getting out of the car for a 7km walk, but it soon became clear that here rain is never a bad thing. I quickly started wondering about how tourists even make over the steep hills and climbs to the end if the weather is like it usually is here in summer.

Kings Canyon is Australia's Grand Canyon. It's a beautiful place and the walk was certainly enjoyable despite a few showers every now and then. In the middle of the walk a few of us had a dip in a waterhole located between the cliffs in the canyon itself, and our guide kept telling us about ways the Aboriginals used to survive (and in places still do), and about the local wildlife and bush. Close to the end as we were standing on the highest ground something I've never experienced before happened: The hair on some of the women's head started standing straight up. Now if that isn't a sign of being straight under the static bombardment of an electrically charged thunderstorm, then nothing is! We hurried down the mountains and several lightnings struck uncomfortably close all around us, but luckily none of them hit where it would have hurt. Back down Dave the Tour guide laughed it all off with “Now THAT was a hair-rising experience!”.

Leaving Kings Canyon behind, it started getting late so after a stop to get some beer to put in our esky (= cool bag) we gathered some firewood (yeah this definitely was a hands on -experience) and headed for camp. On the way through the desert in the sunset we all spotted Uluru or Ayers Rock in the horizon and started taking pictures of it until Dave pointed out that that indeed is not Uluru but instead called Fooluru. Apparently the name comes from the fact that some stupid tourists tend to think it's Uluru and start taking pictures of it! How stupid they can be those tourists, ha!

...Waaaait a minute...!

The hands on experience I talked about got to a whole new level as we made camp just by the road in the middle of nowhere, made up a fire so our guide could cook us dinner before heading to sleep around the fire in swags. Swags are basically padded sleeping cockoons that replace a tent, but they don't stop famous Australian insects and snakes from crawling into your sleeping bag underneath. It sure was exciting times and a small shout of fear was heard every now and then. Nothing more then beetles were noted though, except a big hairy spider we spotted in the morning as soon as we'd gotten up for breakfast. No worries, folks!

Hang with me for the next episode!

Home, snowy home.

2010-12-09T06:04:00.002+11:00

I'm home. Amongst heaps of snow!

Been for some time, actually! But guess what, it has taken me ages to dig through all photos I grabbed during the last weeks and days of my Aussie adventure. I finished the seemingly endles task of looking, comparing, choosing, editing and trying out new versions of software today. What this means is: Stay tuned for a baffling Grande Finale as I start throwing in updates from the Red Centre, Geelong, Berlin and some snowy white photos from sweet little home over the coming days.

Seeya later Australia!

2010-11-18T11:46:00.001+11:00

I'm back from the Red Centre and leaving Australia today! Kate's going to give me a lift to the airport and then I'm off to see Lars in Berlin for a few days, and then I'm heading home.

I feel happy and extremely satisfied even though I'm leaving all of Australia behind today. I've sure had a crackin' time Down Under!

But more of all this later, after I get home, now I have to pack the last things and head toward Tullamarine airport.

Talk to you guys from Berlin or home at the latest!

M&M in M

2010-11-08T22:07:00.003+11:00

A few days ago M&M, Mari and Markus, my friends from back home, came down here! Mari had just ended a two week excursion in Japan, where Markus had then caught up with her before they both flew down to Melbourne. I went to spend the day with them walking around the city(I'm getting pretty good at that by now) and it felt really exciting and fun to hang around with old friends again! Most of the day we just drifted on, without any special aims, but naturally I had to show them those narrow streets, alleys and arcades that wiggle on between Flinders and Bourke St., as they are really enjoyable to walk along.

They'd be staying in a hostel just south over the Yarra river from Southern Cross station, so I walked down there and got a new view of the Melbourne Exhibition Centre. After catching up with M&M at the hostel we strolled in toward the CBD for a late breakfast.

A few delicious toasts and sandwiches later we walked through the Royal and Block arcades, which are stuffed with christmas decorations by now. It feels wrong, somehow, to be preparing for christmas as everything else outside is heating up towards full summer. And summer it certainly feels like these days, the weather and temperatures right now are nearly perfect. Nice timing, friends!

Bourke street is also decorated with heaps of stars, wonder if they melt in the sun?

But as I said, mainly we just floated around among the rest of the street life, and stopped in amazement to stare at some of the more unusual feats of the city(which there are a lot of might I add, and that's one of the great features of this city in my opinion).

Summer has also brought tons of artists, musicians and street performers out on the streets, which further enlivens the atmosphere. I'd certainly recommend November as a great time to visit Melbourne! Oh yeah, if your wondering who the international guest artist is in the pic to the right, she's already been mentioned a few times in this post.

A very enjoyable day in perfect weather, that's how I'd sum this one up!

Markus and Mari are here to stay for a few more days, before the three of us head up to the Red Centre. I'm really looking forward to that trip, as I couldn't imagine myself coming to Australia without seeing what it's really like there in the desert. I'll return to that and current affairs tomorrow in a new post, right now I'm so tired I'm heading for bed this instant. Seeya later folks!

Timezone

2010-11-08T16:00:00.006+11:00

Some days ago I had a look at my 1 kg collection of Australian coins I'd accidentally collected over time, and decided to go spend it all on something very suitable. Me and Kristian walked into Timezone, Geelong's (most unnecessary time and money spender?)arcade, Timezone.

The reason I started such a collection must be the size of Australian coins. The 20 cent is just huge and the 50 cent humongous! My wallet wouldn't have made it through the year unless I'd have emptied some of the metal every now and then into this plastic box. The filled box as then put on the counter in Timezone, which was welcomed by a bewildered look on the employee's face. 14 bucks, total.

Timezone's a bit of a crazy teen place. We don't really have arcades like these back home, only shopping center spaces filled with slot machines usually occupied by elders, so it's been interesting to peek in every time I've walked past this installation. There's heaps of games, ranging from small scale bowling and candy grabbing to speed basket balling, shooting games and air hockey. We had a try at the most interesting ones.

Kristian's strengths seem to be in basket ball, he scored crazy points...

...whereas I felt more comfortable on the shooting range. Air hockey must be my all time favorite though, and there we beat each other up pretty even in the end!

It was a welcomed no-think-just-play hour for me after a rather isolated blog-update weekend before. Now I can easily ignore arcades for a few years to come, my needs for such entertainment are fulfilled for the moment!

Halloween party

2010-11-03T16:57:00.004+11:00

Oops, about two weeks ago I attended a Halloween party at the Villamanta house, and it seems I forgot to make a post about it. Well, here are a couple of images from there, we had a good time and it was nice to catch up with friends I hadn't seen for a while!

That there is a huntsman spider that we found clingin on to the wall. It's a big spider, but not dangerous to humans, as many other local species are. It was actually only my second proper natural spider sighting here, the other one I found in Villamanta house in the first months was a white tailed spider. Have a look at this page for some dangerous and some not that dangerous spiders in Australia.

The beginning of the end?

2010-11-03T00:14:00.003+11:00

Wohoo folks!

I finally did it, this blog is now officially in an up-to-date, present in this moment, living the day, current news, reality reporting-state, and it sure feels good! No longer do I need to sort out thousands of images, edit and adjust them, upload them, wrestle with the code and layout and write about things that happened in the past. This 'being in the moment' makes it all so much easier and more enjoyable for me as well, ha!

Up until now a lot in this blog has been about the places I've gone and about what has happened, what I did, what I ate, and so on, and it sure has kept me busy. It seems to me that the deeper things, the more philosophical thoughts, or whatever you want to call all that what really can't be shown easily in images might have been restricted to a rather simple level, as the main focus has been on reporting, and not so much assessing. It was never my intention of making this a very "deep" blog in that sense, and perhaps it doesn't even need to be. But still I feel that I want to try to dig a bit deeper into my own head about Australia, about the good and the bad, about the things I've experienced over the year.

This also feels like the natural thing to do as my time and the number of new Australian places to visit are soon coming to an end. Next week Markus and Mari, my friends from home, are coming over, and we're gonna have a blast in Melbourne. I'm going to move out of 3 Coquette st. on the 10th, store most of my stuff somewhere, fly over to Alice Springs, take a tour to Ayers Rock and the sights there, jump on a camel, and return back to Melbourne on the 16th. And that is Australia for me, that's it. My flight back to Europe leaves two days later. I'm flying to Berlin to visit Lars, another fellow from home whose currently an exchange over there, for a few days, and then I'll be touching down in Helsinki on the 23rd.

So not much left to experience, no. Time to think, to value, to clear the mind it is. (Master Joda has spoken!)

Leaving this blog untouched after I get home, without reflecting on anything, would probably be a mistake. And right now, I'm just writing this so I won't forget to do it.

Now, nite folks!

Ozzie Camping!

2010-11-02T23:27:00.007+11:00

And so it came to be that Kate asked me if I was interested to go out camping for a few days with some of the people from the Geelong Cup, and other people as well, and sure I was! When doing an exchange in a foreign country, it's funny how one seems to meet a lot of people from other countries except the specific country you're in. So, it would certainly be fun to spend some time with Australians and experience the Aussie way of camping as well, whatever that would turn out to be!

It all started with Kate, Tim (whom I have no picture of, incredible) and me heading down the Great Ocean Road to Johanna Beach campsite late last Tuesday. The other's, including Colin and Nghia, had already been camping since Monday morning. We didn't have any exact knowledge of where they were, though, and as it was getting late and mobile phones were no use this far away from settlement, it took us a good while to finally get there. It was already dark when there, so that evening can pretty much be summed up in sitting around a campfire on the beach until we crawled into a few big tents Colin had brought with him.

Next morning I had a taste of a toast with a fried egg centre and bacon atop. Australians seem to love bacon(not everyone though!), and they tend to cook whatever they barbecue a lot longer than we do back home, actually until the surface is all charred. This one was cocked just right for my taste, though!

Jayden relaxing after a long night of drinking and wrestling. That's not our camp there on the right, but you get the idea. They don't have the "jokamiehen oikeus" or "allemansrätt"(Freedom to roam, meaning the right to walk, camp and pick fruits, mushrooms etc. anywhere) over here, so camping seem sto usually take place on areas reserved for it. In a way it feels different to camp like this as opposed to home, but it's not that I have too much experience of it (except camping in the army).

Johanna Beach is a beutiful, but dangerous part of the southern coast. Many rocks hide in the shallow shore water and from what I've heard it's also famous for it's huge waves and strong currents. The surfing competitions held on the famous Bells beach are held here if Bells isn't wavy enough.

At this point the beach also has a river floating through it in a S-shaped curve, making it a naturally cleaner, non salty and less dangerous place to swim if the sea seems like too much.

The camping crew featuring (from the right) Todd, Nghia, Qantas, Tim, Kate, Jayden and Colin, me behind the camera (yeah who would've guessed, right?!).

Have a look at those waves and rocks and you can confirm that the beach seems to have earned its reputation.

In the afternoon we packed the gear, left the camping grounds and headed over to the town of Port Compbell. On the way we stopped by the Twelve Apostles and some other places I'd visited already a few times before, as someone from the group had apparently never been here. Now that was unexpected!

Loch and Gorge.

A while after we'd arrived in Port Campbell it dawned upon me that the town seemed surprisingly familiar. I'd been here before, and it was on that Great Ocean Road trip I did with Cristina right after she'd arrived in May! Suddenly all bits and pieces fell together. We had a nap with Kate on the beach while the others played beach cricket, I really caught a good sleep as the night in the tent had been pretty cold as I'd overestimated the thermal capabilities of my borrowed sleeping bag. We also met a few new people on the beach who joined with us for the evening (or we joined them, however one prefers to look at it).

In the evening we enjoyed a barbecue with some salad and sausages in one of the houses some of the locals lived. I'd bought some kangaroo earlier to share on the trip and this was the time to cook it and give it a try. It was delicious, and I'm getting a bigger and bigger fan of roo meat the more I eat it. I even tried just cooking it on the pan the other day and it still tasted amazing, just by itself!

It's here where the real party began. Without going into too much detail, I'll just leave it to the fact that I sure had a really good time that whole night!

Five minutes after entering the local bar I again realized that this looks too darn familiar. It was the same bar we spent the evening in on my earlier trip. What a coincidence, I thought, until I realized that there probably aren't too many bars in town.

Colin and me (no, that's Nghia to the left) played pool against our local friends and somehow managed to win the game, even though we were pretty drunk at that point. Guess the other team wasn't exactly sober either.

As the bar suddenly closed at 1 or 2am, someone cracked the great idea of going down to the pier and jumping into the water. Now whilst I did feel the temptation of doing so, and the water probably would be warmer than that in New Zealand where I'd swam before, the house was still a fifteen minute walk away from the pier and the air quite chilly, so no, I didn't. I'll even things up back home in winter if I get the opportunity. A few others did take a dip though, and shivered the rest of the night.

So, now I know something about camping in Oz, even though the camping-part of this trip was shorter than one full day. Whether or not to call sleeping in a tent on a official camping site just outside your car and with gas-cookers "real" camping, I don't know. To be fair though, free time camping out in the nature back home is something I've never really done for real, so I will need to give that a go before I can make any comparisons. Next summer might be time for that!

Thanks y'all for the camp and the bar night, it was great fun!

Geelong Cup 2010

2010-11-02T19:56:00.003+11:00

Today is actually the day for the Melbourne Cup, a horse racing event that pretty much crowds the city once a year as far as I've heard. I'm not there today, but what I did do was attend the Geelong Cup just under two weeks ago. It was a beautiful day, real summer this time, and I put on a suit, joined some local friends for the event and made some new friends over the day as well. Good fun!

We started with a late breakfast, more of a brunch really, at Nghia's. He's the fellow playing cute under the umbrella three pics below. In the pic below, from the left it's Louise from Denmark, Holly and Kate.

Kate I originally got to know on the beach welcome trip in the beginning of my time here, via Swedish Emma who's long gone home. She and Holly here have both been in the same classes as me.

That's Nghia and Colin, whom I just got to know this very same day.

The race event itself reminded me of scenes from old James Bond movies, complete with gambling and dressed up people. The atmosphere in the crowd is quite far from it, though, much more relaxed here.

There were many races going on, but truth to be told I didn't really follow it that closely. Mainly I just enjoyed watching what happened without concerning myself too much about it. That start box was constantly repositioned as races were of different lenghts.

More of us! That's Stephen in blue. The strong sun was countered by sunscreen and sparkling.

After a long day in the sun we all headed back to Kate's, played some Trivia and later went to get some pizza. It's strange how spending time in the sun really makes you tired, an no-one in the end had the energy to continue out to a bar, but instead we all headed home at one time or another. For me, it was the best option as well, as the next day I had an early morning as that was the day we ehaded for Phillip Island, covered i the last update.

Thanks for a great day and experience all of you!

The tale of Triple J in Oz and Phillip Island

2010-11-02T11:08:00.008+11:00

Once upon a time there were 3 J's, Johanna, Jose and Jenni, who came down to the wonderland of Oz. They came to visit J number zero who took them out on a walk around Melbourne. Some days later the group of four ventured into Phillip Island, in search of the tiniest penguins in the whole wide world. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, the tale is just to begin...

It all started from nothingness. Born out of the light in the darkness were the three, at the ACMI in Federation Squirrel land.

Lost they were, new to the strangeness of the magic land, but luckily the horrendously petrified man on the street pointed out the way to the Sugar-castle. Here they feasted on sweetness so long that they transformed into adults (physically).

Having feasted for days, the magic mirror on the wall showed them their true selves, and they all laughed. This emotion changed into tears as they could not enter the Crying Fortress to see its extensive collections of Wonderful Things (tm).

They tried to flee, but the infamous fortress had already had its impact: Desperation hit them, darkness surrounded them, and hard. But alas, they quickly ran over the sea to the Schoddy Boddles -Inn, and drenched were their worries for good. Adulthood had finally arrived in its complete form.

Walking back over the sea along the Bridge of Nations, they discovered a faint whisper from their previous life, but in the end, "Kokkala" did not ring a bell. All they could remember was that they were children of the cold, and so, they decided to venture into the Little Penguin Kindgom.

The journey took many months, and dangers lurked behind every shoulder.

However, friends like the talking birds and Mr. Pushupparoo always seemed to come to their aid when things started to look bad.

The gates leading to the Little Penguin Kingdom appeared, and luckily for the triple Js and J, the guard was asleep, whilst customs was bribable.

So was Wally's Pass, where everyone wanted their own share, even the smallest ones. "We're cute, give us yer money!" Greedy bastards!

Penniless the four continued forward on the path, and the coarseness of the Penguin Kingdom started to unfold.

And there, among gazillions of white, noisy birds, the Little Penguin settlers buzzed around. Most of them had gone out spending the day sunbathing on the deck of their luxurious Oil Ship, but a few had overslept, left mercilessly among the hoards of weird looking giants called "tourists". This evening the Four saw many more Little Penguins, arriving drunk and walking from side to side from the Ship, trying to find the lairs of their mates but often ending up with their neighbor's wife. No wonder the Gods had forbidden all photography of that occasion.

Realizing that home was not what they'd though it was, they came back to the den of J zero. The mental institute had a full two patients, Dizzy and Ozzy, who entertained the Triple J's for ages, until they had to take their iron horse to some other far away country.

THE END

UCI Road World Championships

2010-11-01T13:04:00.007+11:00

As soon as I returned to Geelong after that New Zealand trip, with a heavy bag on my shoulders, I found myself in trouble getting home. The Cycling World Championships had started in Geelong some days before, and a lot of streets were closed in the city centre. As a result, the city, which is up to this day one of the most car-oriented cities I know, was filled with people riding around on almost brand new looking bikes. It appears everyone has a bike here, but they choose the car nonetheless. As the week long event came to an end, people went back to their old habits of sitting stuck in traffic. It's a shame, really.

But for the week it was on, I enjoyed it! The weather was great, warm and sunny, and even though most of this time was spent on assignments that were quite soon to be due and required my undivided attention, I sneaked out for a walk with my camera on Sunday as the men's finals had started.

The race course made quiet a long loop around central, southern and western Geelong. Pakington St is just a few block from where I live, so that's the street I had to wait at for being permitted to cross each time I needed to go into town.

My regular walk into town had changed quite dramatically. Johnstone park was packed with tents selling beer, sausages and merchandise, and it was pretty crowded all week.

I've never seen Geelong as crowded. The centre along the race start/finish was crammed with spectators and moving around took some effort.

Many different nationalities were represented, even some scandinavian colours. I waited for a while and it wasn't too long until the pack of bikers came along, all in one tight group.

I almost got a bit too excited with taking these photos, and only realized afterwards that they all zoomed by just centimeters from me bending over the fence. Would have made a nice headline in the newspapers next day had one of them hit me, I'd probably have teared them all down. "UCI disaster: Exchange student banned from Australia."

Anyway, as you can see in the previous picture, the groups were often closely followed by their coaches shouting fanatically at the cyclists what happens if they don't win. Car upon car loaded with spare bikes followed in a long carnival, until there was silence again and people could cross the streets for a while until the next lap was on. The waterfront was also packed with people and media.

Some individuals enjoyed the race from my university verandah, but most were just standing by the side of the track.

Heading home, I grabbed a few shots from Pakington street as well. Lastly, check out that video so you can see what speeds these guys really were making. It's pretty impressive, and hard to keep them in the image.

New Zealand take 2, map

2010-10-31T16:44:00.001+11:00

Click on the map and you'll see our route(red), compared to the the route we took with Cristina earlier(yellow). As you can see, much is the same way. A lot of this has to do with the fact that, especially in the South Island, roads are few and give you very limited choice. We did drive these in opposite directions though, so it all felt very fresh nonetheless.

New Zealand take 2, part 3/3

2010-10-31T16:02:00.001+11:00

The last part of our journey took us from the very southern tip of New Zealand up to Christchurch, and a lot of places in between.

In Invercargill, we got a tip to not ignore the town of Bluff, located as far south as possible in NZ. So, we headed down there and realized that none of us had ever been so far down, nor so far away from home as there. Thus, we tried to stretch that as far as possible without getting wet.

Check out those distances will ya!

As we'd had enough Bluffing, we made a full turn and started climbing north through the town of Gore where we had coffee. This region is one of the main agricultural areas of NZ, so we saw a sheep and his few million friends along the way. If you want to see newborn sheep, spring is the time to go.

Between Alexandra and Clyde we followed one of the many rivers that form between the mountain ranges. Some 70 percent of the electricity in the country is generated by hydroelectric power, which means there are lots of dams and small power plants in these regions.

Passing Cromwell and Queenstown far on the east side, a vast near 100km long road stretched ahead with nothing but dry plains and desert like scenery all the way up to Omarama.

Omarama, a tiny town with some 300 people, still houses two gas stations, a supermarket accompanied by a few hotels and motels, a church and a pub. We stayed here for the nightas no larger settlements were anywhere in the distance. Having a look around the village made us find the local police station, pub, welcome sign and cat. We had a look inside the horniest pub in NZ over a glass of wine before heading to bed.

Next day the sky way almost cloudless, perfect for us as we approached the Southern Alps from the eastern direction. We spotted Mount Cook early on, but weren't completely sure first whether it was it or not as it appeared to be too close. Last time with Cristina clouds had made us miss the silhouette by a fraction, but as we closed in now it became clear as crystal. It had a small cloud stuck to the top.

In the village of Mount Cook we paid a visit to the visitor centre and decided after coffee to have a go at a walk closer to the mountain. It was well worth the one hour walk in each direction, the scenery was breathtaking and it was a really warm day as well!

So warm in fact, that small hiking breaks were necessary.

The scenery at the end made the walk well worth it, I've never quite seen anything like it.

On the road again, we went on eastwards toward Christchurch, and once again I experienced the beautiful scenery around the pristine, deep green-blue glacier lakes and the Chruch and sheepdog statue by Lake Tekapo. It almost felt like summer this time!

Arriving in Christchurch the next day, that being the last day before our flight back to Melbourne, gave me an opportunity to have a better look at the city. As I commented earlier on in another post, the serious earthquake that had rocked the city a month before raised my interest a few notches higher. I'd never been in a earthquake aftermath like this before! First, though, we had to eat, and the meals were crazy big for lunch.

The Christchurch church had not suffered much damage thanks to a renovation some years ago where the structure was improved. We had a look inside.

Signs of damage were evident in many other places though: Roads were closed due to sewer repairs, tram tracks needed replacing and in some places whole houses had collapsed. I'm not all sure whether that pile of rubbish near the red brick building is a cause of the quake though, but it would seen plausible to think so.

We also had a peek into the Arts district and several workshops selling everything from wood and clothing to wine and food.

Heading for the gardens that the city is famous for, we stumbled upon some talking benches.

The gardens are certainly worth a visit, especially in springtime when everything from trees to flowers is blossoming. It's a huge park, we walked there for an hour and only made a pretty small loop inside it.

Our hotel was one of the highest buildings in the city, and our room had a nice view over part of the centre. Across the road was a building with a very interesting ground floor.

Our last dinner before flying back the next day was just around the corner from our hotel. That last image of the alps was actually taken by mom, so hey mom, your snap made it to my blog!

So, that's part of what I experienced in New Zealand the second time around. As I've been saying since the first time I sat my foot on the islands, they're just plain amazing. The scenery and nature actually lives up to all the hype about the country you might have come across. As of now I'm actually struggling to describe it any better, so just take my word for it that whoever you are, you will love it if you visit some day. I'm certainly up for a third go if anyone's interested, but I guess for now it's time for me to look elsewhere as well.

Cheers for reading!

Life's not easy.

2010-10-31T13:45:00.007+11:00

I had such difficulty putting up that previous post that you couldn't believe it. I actually had to remake it 3 times before it was successful, and even now I see small things that might need editing but I simply wont go in there in case it would break the whole code again. It might have something to do with the length of the post(it's certainly the longest one yet), so I'll have to try and avoid that next time. Anyway, the last part of NZ will be long as well, so just lets hope it's all coming out good.

Just needed to get this out of my head, folks.

Anyway, now I've done some backups of the whole blog so even if something went wrong, it should hopefully not destroy all the efforts I've put into this over the year. Remember, a backup is your best friend when blogging as well.

New Zealand take 2, part 2/3

2010-10-31T13:05:00.006+11:00

Welcome to the second part of our Zealand race. This starts right after we'd arrived with the night ferry in Picton on the South Island.

Here's the view from our motel there that was very high class for being a motel by the way.

In the morning we headed west along the Treasured Pathway (that what my roadmap says) and saw some incredible landscapes along the windy coastal road.

We stopped along the way in Nelson for coffee and some carrot cake (which seems to be extremely popular and extremely tasty in all of NZ) and found the town wizard inscribing enchantments on the sidewalk. Gandalf unemployed, anyone?

My parents being some sort of wine enthusiasts we homed in to some of the local wineries on the way toward Abel Tasman National Park. We found a sparkling for my sister Johanna as well and as far as I know the bottle survived the long journey home in one piece. Well up in the mountains of Abel Tasman we encountered snow, which is quite remarkable as my previous visit here in mid winter was nothing like it.

Safely down from there we went on until darkness, stopping for the night in Murchison, some 130km south from the northern part of the South Island. We fled the heavy rain into a(or more correctly the only) local hotel/restaurant and mom ordered this huge club sandwich. Me and dad tried different sorts of local sheep, and it was all tasty.

The next day we continued west through the varied landscape of lush forests and green countryside, and the one-lane bridges started getting more frequent by now. This is the place where we spotted that hide of a wild boar hanging on a fence with Cristina earlier.

Reaching the coast before noon the weather cleared up momentarily and we got some nice views of the rough, wind battered coastline of the untamed west coast. Today was no exception, it battered on hard slamming wave upon wave against the cliffs.

What turned out very interesting, a place we'd ignored with Cristina before as we drove by here in nighttime, was the Pancake rocks in the small settlement of Punakaiki. Not only were the surroundings of the village full of staggering rocks and landscapes I only thought existed in jungles of comic books, but the pancake rocks themselves were even more impressive.

Now, imagine this: It's high tide and here's these amazing, almost brick-built-like formations of rock formed over quite some time by the relentless waves. Then a huge wave storms inside the cliffs, throws itself toward the gaps and channels in the rocks and is then forced up through natural chimneys spraying mists of water like some natural steam engine. It's crazy, it's salty, it's windy, and it's all real. Surreal.

This hole spraying water was probably 20-30 meters across and at least as high, and yet the huge waves spilled over from below.

The road south certainly showed some very strange geology as well. I just ask myself, what ever happened in this place??

Further down the road dad and me took a quick and really refreshing swim in one of the small lakes close by. The water is amazingly clear in most parts of NZ, never really seen anything like it except in some places back home.

The next must-see on the coastal highway was the Franz Joseph Glacier, one of two easily accessible ice formations(The other one being Fox Glacier). We didn't go any closer than you can see here as that would have required a longer walk, but we did climb this large hill or rock to get a good view over it. Once upon a time this whole valley was filled with ice, and every year the glacier pushes a bit further down, or withdraws, depending on the winter (and don't forget global warming, folks. Recycle and use common sense in your consumption. I'd appreciate having something like this to show my kids some day as well, you know.

Did I tell you that the path we had to walk up to see the glacier went through a rainforest? Now that's some crazy nature right there, I never thought I'd be saying both rainforest and glacier in the same sentence. However, I assure you it is true.

Going on, we hurried a bit to get to Lake Matheson nearby. I'd seen so nice pictures of this lake with the Southern Alps and Mount Cook in the background that I craved to get a try on it. Well, I ended up literally running some 2-3km in the forest to find the right spot, which I by now realized probably would have needed a boat and a nice autumn to show the bright colours of the trees. A clear sky wouldn't have hurt either, Mount Cook remained hidden on the right side of the mountains.

The next morning we woke up in Haast village(I like to call this village nothing, because that's literally what there is. Even the motel owner seemed a bit off, perhaps due to the isolated location). What had ended the previous day in cold rain continued the first few hours of light this morning. It was a real shame, because this road through Mt. Aspiring National Park had been one of my favorites the last time and I had hoped to spend some more time discovering all the waterfalls and forest trails leading off to the sides. But it couldn't be helped, and must be added to the ”things to see”-list for next time.

Something good came out of the lousy weather, though, and we made several stops on our way to Queenstown all varying from power stations to local cheeseries and wine yards. The closer one gets to Queenstown, the more spectacular the mountains get. I just love it.

Queenstown. Last time we made two visits here, but both were rather short. This time we had more time and could experience the main streets of this alpine town in detail. It's a lovely place, really, situated in one of the most beautiful mountain lake spots I've ever seen, and even the normal streets seem to end in the crystal clear, pale bluish water of the lakes. This place certainly competes hard with Wellington for being the number 1 city/town in NZ, both are incredible but also very different in character. Perhaps this would be the ultimate spot for a summer/winter cabin?

The main shopping street is beautiful. It hits me as some sort of combination of a wild western - alpine - old fishing village style- main street that stretches from the base of a huge mountain to the pier at the lake. Fashion is well adapted to both extremes.

Something rather unique we tried here was a virtual wine tasting tour. First, we got pushed into this room filled with more than a hundred different smells of fruit and spices etc. used in wine making. Some of them were plain awful intentionally(iron and murky earth to name a few) to train our noses to pick up on typical errors that can be found in a bad wine. Now if I went here every day I might improve in refining my limited sense of smell, but as it was it was an interesting experience

After all the sniffing we were showed into this room where we got to taste different red wines as the virtual winemakers kept bragging on the excellence of their own wines. It's all good, but it's be far more entertaining to watch them taste and review each others productions, don't you think?

The rest of the late day was spent walking around in the town.

The view from our motel wasn't too shabby either!

Next day we went up the gondola to get a better view of the landscape. It was my second time already, and I can tell you this time was more pleasant when considering the weather. A It was actually quite warm and almost wind still. It doesn't really help to describe the view, just go ahead and have a look at the photos.

Whilst up there in the visitor centre we also had a coffee and a look at the souvenir shop.

After getting down we had a last look at the scenery, pimped our car with necessary upgrades(well no, that's obviously not our car) and took a heading south. All the way away from Queenstown I just couldn't get my eyes of those mountains.

Our initial plan was to get down to Te Anau near the Fjordland National Park and go out on a boat cruise, but for a third time on this journey we had to alter course due to bad weather. Three times is not too bad in the end considering the length of our stay and the time of the year we were visiting, so mostly we were lucky with enjoying sunny days. We now ended up continuing southwards, past Manapouri and down to Invercargill. The mountainous scenery transformed to a more archetypical New Zealand type: Fields and sheep.

As we closed in on the southern tip of the South Island, we spotted some clear signs of there rarely being days without any wind here. Have a closer look at those trees to the left below. We also found Monkey Island, have a look at this clip in case you have no idea what I am referring to.

The final chapter will be out soon, folks. Until then, be sure to listen to that legendary Monkey Island tune over and over and over again. (Damn, I used to be able to play that one on the piano, now I have no idea if I still have the skills. Gotta try that as soon as I get home, back here I've had a hard time seeing any instruments whatsoever.)

New Zealand take 2, part 1/3

2010-10-29T19:52:00.085+11:00

September 18th my parents and I started our 11-day journey in New Zealand. If you've read my previous posts from June, when me and Cristina discovered this epic country in all its awesomeness, you already know why I was as excited to go there as a 5 year kid waiting for christmas. There was still a lot for me that had been left unseen, places that we'd missed whether due to limited time, bad weather or nighttime driving. So, what we did, in order to not make it too similar, was to drive the trip in the opposite direction, from Auckland to Christchurch. And boy did we see places!

I'm not entirely sure on how to manage this post. There's so much to tell, so many details I could grab onto, so many photos I'd like to share. However, in order to save some time and not sit here in my room the next week or so perfecting this one post, I'm going to bombard you folks with around 200 carefully selected photos instead of writing too much. Now, you might think 200 photos sounds a lot, but trust me, when talking about a drive across New Zealand, it's nothing. Having said that, I've still divided this up into 3 posts to make it more manageable.

My parents spent the day before in Geelong, where I showed them around a bit. Back in Melbourne we tried out a set of beefs at you-know-where, after which I joined them at their hotel as our flight departed very early on Saturday. The next pic is already from NZ, the first café we had lunch at in the outskirts of Auckland. We never visited Auckland, as I reckoned we were there to see nature first and foremost. We picked up a small but surprisingly spacious car from Explore More. I'd really recommend that company for anyone going here and in need of a car, as the prices are very affordable.

Waitakere Ranges outside the capital was a must see for my dad, and I didn't mind seeing it again. After a few raging showers at the motorway the weather cleared and we walked around dry in the forest.

The huge Kauri trees were waiting for us. I had another chance of grabbing a pic of the nation's tallest tree, but realized again the futile attempt was doomed from the beginning. It's just too darn tall.

It got a bit cloudy as we got to Piha beach, and the tide was in much higher than last time. Foam from the ocean was literally running on the sand as the wind gathered speed.

After a sleepover at a motel in Ngaruawahia(a name impossible to remember without checking the map), the next day we drove down to Waitamo caves where we had hot chocolate and coffee by the entrance before being let in. We visited two caves, both rather similar but bigger than the one I'd explored before in Abel Tasman National Park on the South Island. The caves are among the biggest tourist attractions in the country.

Dad was amazed by the rate at which trees grow down here, which I guess is around 3-4 times faster than home.

The caves were really cool, although perhaps not entirely as natural(they'd added floors or walkways) compared to my previous experience. The first cave was a glowworm cave, where we took a boat along a underground river to see the worms hanging from the ceiling. The worms themselves are really strange creatures emitting light via bioluminescence. Get to know more about them here. They're almost impossible to take photos off as well, at least without a tripod, and my monkey-pod was naturally laughing at me back in the car. Look closely at the right-side photo and you might spot a few glimpses though.

The larger cave we visited had displays of explorers and a small underground stream.

My favorite part was the entrance to the cave, however. It's the longest ramp I've ever seen, and is mainly there for the same reasons architects have a bit of trounle back home: Disabled regulations. According to law, also in New Zealand, all places must be accessible to wheelchairs. While there's nothing wrong with that, this was a fine example of what might come out of such regulations. This one reminded me more of a scene from some science-fiction movie, though.

After the caves we drove to one of my parent's friend's Rotary fellows Malcolm who lives at a picturesque spot on the countryside near Otorohanga, all on the Western side of the North Island. There we spent the rest of the day having a look at his forests (dad) and talking to cows (mom & me), had dinner in the town and a good nights sleep back at Malcolm's house.

Next day was largely spent in Rotorua, the volcanic-activity capital and main vacation resort on the North Island. Here, at the Te Puia and Whakarewarewa volcanic valley, we encountered one of the longest words we'd ever seen(although I think they've joined many words together to give the effect, but nonetheless), and that's quite a lot said from someone with a Finnish background. We do have words like "Järjestelmällisentelentelemättömyydellänsäkään" and "Lentokonesuihkuturbiiniapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas", but they're extremely rarely used. "Kumarreksituteskenteleentuvaisehkollaismaisekkuudellisen-neskenteluttelemattomammuuksissansakkaankopahan" is apparently also a Finnish word but it's so strange I can hardly make out what it means.

Anyhow, the place had a lot to offer: Interesting traditional building techniques (reminds me of traditional Finnish malka-roof construction styles), a Maori cultural arts centre and...

...the amazing geysers and mudpools. We'd missed these with C last time as the valley we chose didn't have one of these(although it had some really exciting things itself, check out that blog post.)

In contrast to what I'd been made believe, this geyser actually pumps water and steam from the ground continuously, and when it erupts it does so only more powerfully. I always though there's nothing to be seen until it erupts, but now I know better. Perhaps there are some differences between varying geysers as well. A geyser also transforms the landscape around it quite radically. The scene below could just as well be from that same fantasy movie I talked about in the cave.

Here's a short video of the mud pools, boiling in ways that would make it appear to be full of frogs jumping around.

Looking out over the whole valley revealed just how active the area is. It would not be a very wise idea going here with a shovel and start digging around randomly!

Leaving the unstable ground behind us, we continued on past Lake Taupo towards Tongariro national park, the one with big volcanoes. Unfortunately, weather was not on our side, and arriving at Tongariro revealed nothing but grey mist and impenetrable rain clouds, and the volcanoes remained hidden. I'd gotten a small glimpse of one of them last time, but I guess it remains for another (preferably summertime) visit to actually experience them, as the road taking us closer was again icy and snowy. So instead, here's a shot over the valley around Lake Taupo I took before the rain started.

Heading south, I noticed that we were only a few days on the road and mum had already collected an armada of mostly less than useless brochures and accommodation guides, that kept eating away the limited back seat leg space. Here's also a Surf n' Turf seafood-steak mix I had in a nice restaurant called "Stellar", in Wanganui on the West coast, before going to sleep at a nice motel.

Well, well in Wellington (har har) on the next day sun shined upon us again and it was a spectacular day! We had a walk around and discovered more of the capital city than last time. We skipped the Te Papa museum, and opted for going via the harbor up to the hills with the cable car.

I just love Wellington. It seems such a perfect sized city for me, not too big to get lost or to be too hectic, not too small to be boring, and the views and surroundings are spectacular. On top of this it's in the middle of NZ, and thus a good base camp for any exploration of the country! Perhaps I might move down here for some time, sometime, who knows?

Here's the cable car, going from the city centre up to the botanic gardens, and stopping at a few places on the way including the University of Wellington. Cool way to travel to uni, I give you that!

The botanic gardens are well worth a visit, good views and really beautiful nature all around.

Stay tuned for the second part dudes!

Early September and a parent day in Melbs

2010-10-24T18:50:00.002+11:00

Ha, it's fun thinking about it. It's like I never really experienced early September. It's all just a blur of school, assignments and deadlines, sitting in my room working on it all. I didn't really do much anything else the two weeks after C had gone, as I really needed to catch up with uni at that point. But it all went well, and my biggest deadlines were still due in early October, so all was alright.

However, my parents arrived in the third week, and as we were going to New Zealand the week after that, things got a bit hectic in the last days of the month. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, first I went into Melbourne on Monday the 13th to see mom and dad, who'd just arrived the previous evening. It sure was fun seeing and being with them again, after a full 7 months away!

I pretty much took them on the same tour we'd given Jocke a few weeks before. I think I'm going to have to name it the "Jonestralia Melbourne day tour" and start to charge people. It's getting pretty popular these days.

Here's mom and dad on a late brekkie on that favorite alleyway that runs off north from Flinders st. They have some really good coffee-shops and lunch places there, be sure check them out if you ever come here!

Another place I have to recommend is the Pancake Parlour, although lately I've been there so much that just thinking about those sweet pancakes kills my hunger instantly. Handy, if i was fat. Another reason to come here is the mirror in the lounge, this must be the best pic I've ever managed to take of my parents!

Back to the corner of Flinders and Swanston, we went into St. Pauls cathedral which I hadn't visited properly before, at least not with a proper lens attached. The right photo is purposely underexposed, hinting on how daytime grandeur quickly turns into a horror story at night, which is the case with most churches. Not that it's a bad thing by ay means, just a point I made up.

Later in the day we took the free tourist tram around the Central Business District (CBD) into Harbour town in Docklands, where mom had planned on going on a shopping frenzy. In the end the place turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, or in other words, nothing special. Docklands really is one of the more boring areas of Melbourne. It's also the newest (alright I admit it, it's not nearly done yet so it might turn out better in 10 years), which might explain it. The day ended with a beef (lot of beef going on lately) in a fancy steakhouse, not bad but not as good as in that Argentinean one, ha. I have to give this place recognition for their serious starter though: 1 kg of ribs! That one 'elluva entry!

After dinner, feeling like a baseball, I rolled home. My parents had half a week to finish up Melbourne before we were flying over to that wonderful place called New Zealand. My second and last journey there for the time being, and I knew it before we even left: It was gonna be GOOD!

Next entry, New Zealand take 2!

Puffing Billy

2010-10-24T18:07:00.001+11:00

The last weekend in August, right before Cristina left Australia, we decided to have a go at the Puffing Billy, a genuine steam train puffing forward on a surprisingly narrow railway an hours drive east of Melbourne. The train makes its way from Belgrave through the lush countryside to Genbrook in a couple of hours, and stops at various small stations on the way. I'm not going to go into the history of it, but you can read more about it here.

The train leaves just outside the regular railway station in Belgrave, a far away "suburb" of Melbourne. During high fire hazard days in the dry summer, they exchange it to a diesel, but as we were there in ate winter, we could enjoy the true charcoal smelling steam that bursted out of every hole in the locomotive.

Now, it was a cold day, but naturally we had to experience the journey and scenery as close up as possible, so everyone kept sitting in the windows. It's a small wonder no people fell off in the end, but luckily, it's not exactly the fastest train in Victoria. We did end up very cold, though, as it was windy as well, so after halfway there we climbed back in.

The stations were tiny, and had that 19th Century feel to them, as did the old conductors who I reckon are all small train fanatics deep within.

The landscape that rolled past was rather flat, but occasional hills made the train work really hard which could be felt in slower speeds, heard in deeper steam puffs and seen and smelt in clouds of smoke.

Here's a short clip so you'll get the idea.

I guess were I that interested in trains, I wouldn't mind spending my last days on such a job.

Arriving in Gembrook(in one piece), a really small town, we headed for one of two cafés and had a taste at some quite delicious meat pies. The counter there in another shop had a text that sounds like something my sister would certainly agree with.

After spending some time in Gembrook, we puffed back the same way as we'd come and ended the evening in, where else, the restaurant that serves the biggest beefs I've ever seen.

We decided to try something different this time, and went for empanadas(filled dough pockets) which were really good, while waiting for the grand hot rock -meal. So, what you get is actually a rock that's been pre-heated in an oven for some hours until sizzling hot, and this huge bloody beef that you'll cut up and cook yourself! It was probably the biggest and best beef experience for me, ever, and Iäm still surprised how I managed to get it all down.

Keeping in mind the size of that meat, I wouldn't have though that we actually had dessert as well. I guess the photos don't lie, but at least we shared it.

So, that was the last weekend with C here, as she left in the first days of September. Her flight went all well and she met part of her family already in London, where they stayed for some days before going back to Finland. And, from this very moment, it's about a month before I'm doing the same, but more of that later on, folks. I've still got a lot to cover!

Jocke, Tim Burton and Melbourne zoo

2010-10-24T10:24:00.063+11:00

By the end of August my sister's fiancé Jocke arrived in Melbourne. Initially he and my sister were supposed to come here together, but they could get their vacations from work to match and so Jocke did a backpacker -trip himself Around the East coast of Australia while Johanna was due to arrive later on with a few friends. I'd just had a short break from my assignments, so we headed into Melbourne where we met Jocke at the station. The day was mostly walking around in the city, but we did visit the Melbourne Zoo as well.

After a walk in the city we headed for Fed Square and the ACMI, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. They house a free museum/interactive display that presents Australian film industry history and one can try out all kinds of weird things. We also visited the Tim Burton exhibition which had hundreds of exciting pictures and models from his works. They're pretty amazing, here's the Batmobile. Unfortunately, no cameras were allowed inside the Tim Burton exhibit(yeah I'm getting used to this by now), so you'll just better go to them yourself! Don't know where it's held now though, he's already left Melbourne.

Coming out of the ACMI we spotted some familiar faces on the big screen of Fed Square. Our 5 minute time of fame, yeah!

Next, we headed for Melbourne Zoo, and although there's a lot to see there, I'm only going to include some of the animals that I think I haven't posted up here before. Here's my first Puma sighting ever, they're really big cats!

The reptile section was exceptionally stunning.

These lizards seemed to enjoy the show their light-headed friend put up for them by hanging from the ceiling like a rag doll. More beautiful where these snakes though, resting in their apparently most comfy pose.

Another first one for me was this giant tortoise, they're HUGE and one really could imagine riding them on that big shell. Must weight a ton, too!

Oh right, might be appropriate to include a photo of Jocke as well! Here's he posing with a wombat, which in my experience are quite rarely seen out of their burrows during the day. The zoo also had a giant bird cage with full grown trees inside, something to appreciate as I don't approve of the small boxes they seem to enclose most birds in in places like this.

After the zoo we headed for a lunch and pancake at the Pancake Parlour (I have no idea how many times I've been there already), as our plan to visit my favorite El Gaucho restaurant were crushed by a sign saying they're closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. It was already getting dark so we wished Jocke a great trip (which he did have!) and returned to Geelong to continue studying.

Yet another Villamanta party

2010-10-23T22:58:00.003+11:00

A few Villamanta parties have already appeared on this blog, so let's continue the trend with a few pics from a party that took place later in August. New friends, pool, drinks and fooling around, in other words good times, that's about the best way to summarize that evening! It somehow feels kind of funny to drop by the house where I used to live, only to leave it again once the party is over.

Titanic

2010-10-23T19:37:00.001+11:00

Here's a quick post about our August visit to the Titanic exhibition housed in the Melbourne museum. The exhibition itself contained all kinds of old artifacts collected from the submerged wreck, but photography was prohibited so I haven't got that much to share picture-wise. As a funny detail every visitor got a personal, "real" copy of a cruise ticket for the ship itself when entering, and on it one could read about that particular passenger. In the last room finally was a large list of all passengers, and we could check whether we'd made it out of there alive or not. Cristina's and my characters, a model and a miner, had not.

All in all, there's a lot to see in Melbourne Museum and as a student you can enjoy free entry, if my memory serves me correct.

Disco takes a bath

2010-10-22T20:36:00.003+11:00

Yeah, it was a day in early August that Disco the dog was even dirtier than usual, so C decided to wash him. Here're a few pics from that memorable occasion. It might not come across from the pictures, but he really enjoyed it (I think). It took him about a full half an hour to become dirty again.

The other fellow in the last picture there is Ozzy. He joined the team later in August if I remember correctly, and has been Disco's friend ever since(and occasional pain in the back as well). They're both sweet dogs, and crazy about tennis balls.

My birthday

2010-10-22T16:29:00.009+11:00

I now realize I'm more behind with this blog that I initially anticipated. Looking back at the photos reveals that the earliest event I haven't written anything about is my own birthday that took place (one again, it's got surprisingly consistent timing) the 8th of August. Yeah, that's OVER TWO MONTHS ago. But no worries, it's all good because I'm gonna catch up two months in two days, yeah!

So yeah, it was my 25th birthday. 25 is officially considered the best age possible in my world, and therefore I was happy to be where I was at.

There was, naturally, a free footy game arranged in Melbourne MCG at that day(I believe it was a present from the Melbourne city) and me and Cristina headed there in the morning. Outside the stadium we met Rino, his girlfriend Romy, Mohamed from Egypt and Stefanie from Germany. The weather was superb, as it was, after all, my birthday.

The game this time was between Melbourne Devils and Richmond Tigers. It wasn't as exciting as the first game i attended some time ago, perhaps since Geelong wasn't part of it this time. However, for a more in-depth look into what these games are about, be sure to check out this blog post from earlier. These fan-folks from the stands certainly cheered their own team!

After half a game we decided to go walking in the city and enjoy the weather instead of watching more ball-hugging. We walked down along the southern bank of the river, as Rino and Romy demonstrate quite fashionably below.

All fashion ended abruptly as we saw a crowd gathered around, yet another, street artist. I don't know where this guy got the idea of squeezing through a tennis racket, but I certainly didn't find it as entertaining as he did! Actually, it was more fun watching Aussies skating in the ice rink put up nearby, they really look a bit out of their element when prodding around in the half-melted water pools of ice!

Well back in Geelong in the evening, C and me hurried up to one pretty good pizzeria on Moorabool St. for quick nourishment before going to the cinema and watch "Inception". A movie well worth watching, if you ask me. So, it was a day full of things to see and experience, and what better can one ask for when turning 25?

School's over!

2010-10-22T16:06:00.001+11:00

YAY folks, here we are. School is officially over (it's been for more than a week already) and my 3 month summer-winter vacation has started! I was really, and I mean REALLY busy with it the last weeks and had absolutely no time to update anything here, so now it's time to catch up with everything that has happened the last month and a bit more so. And I can tell you, it's A LOT! So get comfortable while I start scribbling, and you'll see a swarm of updates raining down on this site over the weekend. Today I have a little party I'm attending, but otherwise I'm devoting all my time to finally pull this thing from past to present.

Hang with me here.

Quick status update.

2010-10-09T09:21:00.001+11:00

No worries, folks.

I'm still alive and this blog is still up, that's always been the intention. At the moment I'm in the busiest time of the trimester at school, and my last deadline is next wednesday, so within a week you should see new updates start appearing.

And then, let the amazing (and final) blog-race toward the present day begin!

Bellarine Peninsula, part 2.

2010-09-11T18:17:00.005+10:00

Some weeks later our Bellarine Peninsula exploration continued. We headed for Queenscliff, which is about as far away one can get in that direction from Geelong. Queenscliff is also a very small town, but still the streets had a number of cafes and hotels along the sides. This is a touristy area in the summer. In wintertime, however, the cafe we entered had barely opened before noon.

Queenscliff beach is long, and there's a connection ferry to the Mornington Peninsula located on the other side of Port Phillip Bay. We walked along the beach and although the weather wasn't as nice as it had been in Portarlington some weeks earlier, we had a good time.

Tess found this crazy big seaweed that was actually really thick and heavy as well! Imagine using that as toilet paper, eh. Eco-wiping at its finest.

As we returned into town, we stumbled onto this very interesting tree that had apparently decided to maximize its water intake by growing additional roots from its branches. A tree like that must be able to grow a forest of its own!

It was a sweet day with lots of stopping at cafes this day. We just had to try the icecream at this Scandinavian ice cream bar, although it wasn't genuinely scandinavian any more as the previous owners had moved away some time ago. It didn't matter though, we got a touch of home outside the storewindow and the icecream was actually really good. What was to become a huge disappointment, however, was this chocolate dessert we enjoyed at The Chocolate Room for which I had high expectations. There'd been one similar cafe in Geelong that I'd always wanted to try but never did before it closed down, and now we realized why that was: The chocolate had just about zero taste. Seriously, give me any cheap chocolate from the store and let me melt it in a pot myself, and I guarantee you it tastes more. Well, on the bright side of things I already have enough favourite places to visit in Geelong and Melbs, so one less to regularly visit is most probably just a good thing.

From Queenscliff we headed to Ocean Grove, the largest township around, although large and Ocean Grove still don't really fit into the same sentance. The town was perhaps nothing special itself, filled with surfboard and swimsuit shops that are mostly empty this time of the year, but the beach nearby was impressive enough to justify their commercial existance. The waves were, once again, huge and I did get surfing urge. But, I'm still waiting for warmer, more pleasant times for that.

And so our adventure to the Bellarine localities was over. It is a beautiful place, probably even more so in the summertime, and if you have the chance to grab a bike instead of a bus so you can time your goings to suit you better go for it! Well back home C read those beauty magazines and started fooling around as shown in the picture. Why do you read those anyway, miss, as we both know very well that you're already the pinnacle of evolution when it comes to being beautiful?

Anyhow, I still have a few events to cover before actually having this blog up and running in real time, as in what is happening right NOW, so bear with me and the next adventure will come soon!

Guess what I'm going to tell you now?

That's right: Stay tuned folks!

Bellarine Peninsula, part 1.

2010-09-11T17:58:00.002+10:00

Howdy!

Youp, it's been a while since the last update (once again, huh;) bu this time there's an explanation to it. In Australia, they have these limits on internet usage. Apparently, this house's usage has been exceeded, which basically means that we're cut off for another 5 days until insternet is restored. I really don't enjoy Australian telecommunication, as apparently most mobile phone operators sell prepaid calltime only (which have very eluding and strange conditions applied to them) which often cuts off right when you need it the most. Now this is one thing I'm not going to miss when I go back home. Anyhow, I'm updating this blog from uni as we speak (and even here we have limits that we have to pay if exceeded).

Enough complaining. Now I'm finally shortly going to round up the trips C and me made to the Bellarine Peninsula, that piece of land that sticks out in the bay just east of Geelong. The Bellarine is mostly known for it's beaches, rather small townships and wineyards in between. Now we didn't go to any winery as the local bus transport isn't the greatest(and very unfrequent on weekends), but we did visit what we reckoned are the most interesting places to see.

Portarlington was the first town we went to. We were lucky with the weather, it had been raining quite a lot over the weeks (this was the last day of July) but now the sky stayed blue for the day. The township itself consists of only roughly 3000 people, mostly old retirees, and it's easy to see why they'd come here. It's peaceful, the sea's literally on your doorstep, the beach is long and well, there are just no worries.

We stayed in the town a little longer than an hour(it's basically one street and a beach) and tasted some pies and bought some bread from a local bakery. As we waited for the bus, be found this garden sale in an alley tha had all kinds of dry-climate plants and cactuses we'd never seen before, and some pretty stylish garden decorations as well(this owl is at least way better that those terribly colourful garden elves some people infest their lots with).

After Portarlington we took the coach to Clifton Springs, a small residential village that as well. We walked from the bus stop for more than half an hour before we reached the Dell, an unstable piece of ground that has created this pot like "valley" at the shore. What once used to be a pier for shipping wool to Geelong was now nothing more than lined wooden stumps in the ocean. The day was actually among the warmest since C had got here so we enjoyed every second of being there. On our hurry back to the bus a few hours later(the last one of the day) we were actually sweating quite a lot! Before leaving we even spotted a pelican flying, they look like small jumbo jets compared to other birds!

Next up, part two where we conquer the remains of the peninsula!

She's gone

2010-09-04T15:20:00.004+10:00

Hey folks!

Wednesday was Cristina's last day here and in the evening she flew away. It feels empty without her here, we really shared some great times together during the four months she stayed here with me. We had countless walks in town, experienced the incredible nature of New Zealand, washed Disco the dog, baked cakes that vanished, cooked kangaroo pasta, had a great time in Sydney, tested the poor bus connections to the countryside, dived into the depths of Melbourne and just lied in the sunlit corner of the bed the rare times the Australian winter sun warmed part of our cold room. It was amazing and it is strange how quickly time passes when you enjoy life. Soon enough I'll see her again, back home.

C, it's been the best time I've ever had when you were here, so thanks for coming all the way here to see me. I love you.

In about a weeks time my second visitors will arrive on the continent: My parents! I'll go and see them on Monday to Melbs and then on Saturday we're off to New Zealand, yeehaaw! Today I actually read the news about a 7.0 richter earthquake that had caused a lot of damage to Christchurch, our end destination over the ten days we're going to spend there. Fortunately, no one went under in the tremble but the damage has apparently been serious to the city and its infrastructure.

Check out this vid from the morning.

So now, in the upcoming blog posts I'm going to be sharing some things we did during August. We didn't make any long journeys as school has been rather hectic for me at the time, but we did experience quite a few shorter trips to the townships and suburbs around Geelong and Melbourne.

Hang with me!