Summer!

June 19, 2010

Turns out the hostel I’m staying at offers free internet. That is as long as it works. Yesterday one of the IT guys told me “yeah, we’re having some problems here but we’re defragmenting the internet right now. Should be up and running soon.”. Great, that’s total nonsense but as long as it works i’m fine with it. Anyway, Cairns has been really nice so far. The weather is warm and sunny and the hostel (Tropic Days) is just marvellous.

Soccer and Cairns

June 16, 2010

Now that was new! I’ve never before gotten up at 2am in the Morning to watch a soccer game. When Germany played Australia we went to a British pub in the CBD to get some public viewing feeling. Monday was a holiday (Queens Birthday) so the location was quite crowded. The mood of the cheerful and excited crowd (“The national anthem, everybody rise … come on you lazy pricks!”) got worse as the game progressed.

Casino Time

June 9, 2010

The weekend promised to stay interesting, a visit to the SkyCity casino in Adelaide was planed for Saturday. We met with a couple of people at some fancy lounge bar in the city center. The place was quite nice but the crowd was a little too high society for my taste. Next stop was the casino. All of us manged to get past the bouncer and we dove into one loud and colorful maze.

Nightlife in Adelaide

June 7, 2010

The last week’s been pretty relaxed. We stayed home for the weekend, just chilled and watched movies. Not much more to do with the rainy weather outside. On Tuesday it was cinema time. My friend and some people from the company worked on the special effects for Prince of Persia and we wanted to see the results on the big screen. We started the weekend with a night out in the pubs on Friday.

Adelaide Activities

May 28, 2010

As the weather is still quite unstable I had time for some indoor activities. Since of recently I’m proud owner of an Australian bank account, an Australian phone number and an Australian Tax file number. When the weather allows it, I’m exploring Adelaide city. There are a lot of small shops and I’ve got the feeling there are much less big chains here compared to Germany. The CBD itself is surrounded by large park areas and the river Torrens in the north.

Barossa Valley Winery Tour

May 26, 2010

On Sunday some people from my friend’s company went on a wine tasting tour to Barossa Valley and I was invited to join them. There were around 30-40 people and we had a coach organized for us. The bus driver was a really relaxed and funny guy: “Hey everybody, welcome to the tour. My name is Dis but if you forget that, ‘Hey you!’ is totally acceptable.”. Barossa Valley is a major wine producing area in Australia and located around 60km north of Adelaide.

The Journey en detail

May 24, 2010

Thursday, May 20th 15:30 CEST: Leaving home by car. We decided to start early as we expected to hit the rush hour in Bremen.

Thursday, May 20th 16:30 CEST: Check-in at Bremen airport. I was hoping my luggage wouldn’t exceed the weight limit as the scales at home showed almost 23 kg (the max weight for the Qantas flight) for the bag and the backpack combined. Fortunately with 22kg it was within the limits. Lufthansa didn’t even charge me for the 2kg I was exceeding their weight limit. My father and me passed the waiting time at the airport bar and on the visitors terrace. About an hour later it was time to say goodbye for a year and board the plane.

Thursday, May 20th 18:10 CEST: Timely take-off to the short 45min flight to Frankfurt.

Thursday, May 20th 20:00 CEST: Check-in with Qantas in Frankfurt. Lufthansa forwarded my luggage directly to Qantas so I just needed to get my boarding passes. For the flight to Singapore I had already reserved an exit row seat. When I asked for such a seat on the flight to Adelaide I was told that since recently Qantas always charges an additional fee for these seats. Well, for a mere 6.5 hours a regular aisle seat will do.

[caption id=“attachment_30” align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Qantas 747-400 at the Frankfurt airport”][/caption]

Friday, May 21st 00:10 CEST: With a slight delay of 15 minutes I’m leaving Germany. My examination of the onboard entertainment system

Stopover in Singapore

May 21, 2010

Now that’s what I call a nice airport! Just took a swim in the rooftop pool on Terminal 1 and enjoyed the view from the pool bar over the airport. WLAN internet access is free - makes Frankfurt look like third world. The journey has been without trouble so far. We left home around 15:30 on Thursday and reached Bremen airport less than an hour later. Pleasant surprise at the check-in: Lufthansa can forward my luggage to Qantas so no pickup and transport necessary in Frankfurt.

Sold!

May 6, 2010

There was still an open todo on my list: getting rid of my car. It was approaching an age and a mileage where expensive repairs where to be expected and leaving it standing around for one year surely wouldn’t improve it’s condition. For two days I visited the dealers in town and finally found one who was willing to pay almost two grand for the car. That’s a really good price.

Leaving Home

May 1, 2010

Friday 11:30 - the flat is empty, the cellar full and the car cramped. After days of packing and cleaning I’m ready to go. The last week was really nice, a lot of people dropped by to say goodbye. Gonna be a year until I see them again. Surprisingly many people are convinced that I’ll like Australia so much I won’t even come back. So far I’ve waggered €200 that I will come back.