Ich bin dann mal weg - off we go - doei doei

Hey Everyone, I just hijacked this Blog. And I'll use it to blog about my holiday-before-work holidays. Although Sabine plays an important part in these holidays, it'll be more of my perspective from here on. Apologies to all of Sabine's friends, but she'll be back soon! Today we are back in Christchurch and the following weeks look promising as well. I like that holiday before starting to work idea ;-) Cheers, Alexis

Time to practice our new snow-skills came sooner than expected, as we delayed our westcoast-trip to the next weekend and decided to head to Mount Cook Village instead. We got all the usual gear from the gear locker of the tramping club although we couldn't be sure whether we could use any of it. There was about 50 cm of fresh snow and the avalanche danger was set to high and reduced to moderate on Saturday morning only. But we had wonderful weather and having started early morning we were able to head for Mueller Hut, following a group of five that left earlier that morning with snow shoes, which made the track visible and accessible for us. Still a hard and steep track in deep snow with us arriving at the ridge shortly after sunset. Quite exiting and even more rewarding. So finally, I made it up to Mueller Hut, only about three years after my first try.

The day after I had sour legs, although we relaxed quite a bit on monday. The evening brought some Squash matches that made my legs hurt even more. What a holiday. We made some plans for the oncoming weeks, ranging from a West Coast Tour to some further hiking. Besides I was mainly enjoying my holidays and tried to catch up with some friends on mine which was not too successful so far.

On Sunday night we returned from the weekend snowcramping course. Snowcramping means hiking in really cold and icy conditions, equipped with crampons (hence the name), ice-axe and helmet. We went up Craigieburn Skifield and learned how to walk in deep snow with and without crampons, then extended that to walking on ice and learned about self-arresting techniques. Pretty cool. And the next day, we exercised by climbing Castle Hill Peak. Quite challenging, as we seperated into one keen and one not-so-keen group and I decided to join the keen group. A challenge that ended very close to the peak for me...

The first week, I adjusted to life in a students residence again. I met a lot of Sabines friends which I liked with no exception. On Wednesday we went to the UC-Tramping club meeting. I became a member and we signed in and paid for the oncoming Avalanche and Cnow Cramping Weekend. I can't remember any more but the ones who read all the above might be not too sad about that.

After safely returning to New Zealand, we stayed for another two days in Auckland and had a marvelous trip to Rangitoto, a vulcanic island close by. Finally, we made our way to Christchurch and I moved in with Sabine. She's staying at Ilam Village, which is a students residence. It's nice and we share a comfortable 10 sqm room and a 1,6 sqm bed. Her flatmates are really cool, Meleana of course, Ericoh, the new German Arndt and the exchanged Chinese Shelly. Long story but it's a good place to stay.

Back in Nukualofa we had another week to spend and did so by beeing part of real Tongan families which was quite a cultural experience. Here a short account on the family structure: Meleana was the first child of her parents, and was adopted by the unmarried brother of the husband and the mother of both, who she now refers to as (grand-)ma and father. Her parents had another four children (Lavenia, Polohiva, Lavelua, Make) and lateron adopted the neighbours son Mikivai who had spend most of his first two years with them anyway. That is quite a common Tongan family structure, with the extended family beeing the social unit. Nicole stayed at Meleanas place in Longoteme, while Sabine and me were staying in the Bungalow at Fanga. In Tonga, hospitality is the number one feature, so we were looked after quite thouroghly for the remaining time of our stay. I think we both gained some weight, having meals three times a day, attending a 90th birthday with a traditional Tongan feast and having...

About two hours after having left by ferry around noon the next day, we arrived at Eua port. The island a more elevated than all tge other islands at around 15 metres above sea levels compared to two for the rest of Tonga. Hence vegetation and soil is quite different and beautiful. We stayed at a Hostel called "The Hideaway", basically the only Hostel on Eua, close to the coast and quite well built. After one afternon of relaxing and some chicken-or-fish-dinner (but no fish that day ;-), we had a quiet night with wave-sounds from the nearby beach. The following day was full of adventure with a 4WD Tour across the Island, and this time you really needed that four-wheel drive. We visited wonderful places and had a sunny day. I mention sunny, because the oncoming two days were more of a wet experience. The day after there was heavy rain all day as a small cyclone passed by and the ferry we were supposed to be on never arrived the next day. Hence we had another day relaxing an...

Early morning of the next day Sabine and me went to the Airport again where we returned our rental car, waited quite a while for the rest of us and checked in to Tonga. It was probably the most hilarious flight as one of the crew members was obviously a former comedian. Or have you ever heard a steward say: "Please be careful opening the overhead lockers. We all know: Shit happens...". So we arrived safely, enlighted and early at Tonga Airport on the main island. When we tried to pass customs and immigration, the customs officer just ran away and didn't return until fifteen minutes later. Funny. Finally we made it through, got our bags and met the father of Melana outside. The family structure of a Tongan family is sometimes more complicated than ours back in Europe, but I'll get into that later. We were driven to Longoteme a village in the island center where Nicole was staying and on to Fanga a suburb of the capital Nukualofa where Sabine and me were situated. We...

There we rented a room at the "Verandah's", which is close to the city center and walked into town. There we met with Nicole, a german LLM student and Meleana, Sabines flatmate from Tonga. As expected, both turned out to be really cool and we had quite a nice day in Auckland and later Devenport, only a short ferry trip from Auckland. In the evening we had dinner with some of Meleanas extended family from Auckland at a place called "Valentines". Ist a buffet-style restaurant, very Kiwi I might say, with very good food indeed. Nicole was staying with them, we drove back to our hostel.

Once beeing so close, we decided to drive all the way up to Cape Reinga, the northernmost part of the north island. It is a long drive along 90 mile beach and giant sanddunes, followed by about 20 km of gravel road. Cape Reinga itself is mainly the nice lighthouse and a signpost to some of the major landmarks quite a long way away. After another long drive, we finally arrived at the "Tree House" in Kohukohu. Ist a purpose built backpackers with a large garden and we had our own cabin overlooking a nice pond. No one else was there at this time of year. The day after we took the Hokianga ferry and drove down to Helensville where we stayed another night in a spa-equipped Hostel named "Malolo House" before returning to Auckland the following day.

We had prebooked an Hostel called "Farms Hostel" in Kahoe run by an Italian owner. I'm pretty sure I've been there before but couldn't find my scribbles in the Guestbook. The weather was really bad, when we arrived, so we didn't see much of the surroundings that were said to be beautiful. The special thing in that particular hostel, besides the good pizza the owner made, was the garage. It was full of flags and equipped with sofas and a flatscreen TV. People there slept during daytime and got up at two in the night to watch the first game, then the replay of the second, after that the third game at six and the following replay at eight. We got up as well to watch an Italian game, which turned out to be quite bad, but the enthusiasm of the owner made it interesting. I wonder how watching the final would have been like over there.

After the usual 23 hours in the air, passing Singapore and Sydney, I arrived at Auckland Airport. Sabine had arrived an hour earlier, so she was waiting at the gate. We decided to get a rental car and start driving north instead of staying in Auckland. There were five days to waste, and we covered quite a lot of the area. We started off passing Whangarei and got our first Hostel "Bunkdown Lodge" in that area. On the following day we drove on, passing the Bay of Islands and KeriKeri in beautiful weather.

Hey Everyone, I just hijacked this Blog. And I'll use it to blog about my holiday-before-work holidays. Although Sabine plays an important part in these holidays, it'll be more of my perspective from here on. Apologies to all of Sabine's friends, but she'll be back soon ;-) Cheers, Alexis

Dann war es also plötzlich wieder 13.Mai und mein 24.Geburtstag stand vor der Tür. Für die meisten hier ist das ja schon ziemlich alt (zum Glück gibt es aber auch noch ein paar Ältere, ich bin also fast nie wirklich die Älteste). Ich habe mich dazu entschieden dieses Jahr gemütlich reinzufeiern, ein paar Leute in meine WG ei nzuladen und gediegen mit Kissen auf dem Boden, einer Kleinigkeit zum Knabbern und ein leckeren Bowle einen schönen Abend zu verbringen. Es sind sogar alle gekommen (außer David der zu seiner Familie geflogen ist) und es wurde ein richtig schöner Abend. Wir hatten viel Spaß und wenn man Leute aus ca fünf Nationen an einem Tisch hat ist Flüsterpost echt ein lustiges Spiel. Um zwölf haben wir dann angestoßen und ich hab ne Megatolle Torte bekommen (Schwarzwälder-Kirschtorte). Die war super lecker, zwar nicht ganz so wie ich sie ke nne, aber laut Thomas ein Originalrezept. Schon praktisch einen Konditor im Freundeskreis zu haben J . Ich hab dann auch ganz viele süße ...

Am Ende der Ferien war es e ndlich so weit. Ich bin mit 19 anderen L euten des Tramping Clubs in den Süde n aufgebrochen. Die Kurzfass ung des Trips ist wie folgt: 10h Fahrt nach Te Anau in Fjordland, Übernachtung in einem Backpacker Hostel, 3 Tage Keppler Track, Übernachtun g im Backpacker und dann wieder 10h Fahrt nach Hause. Für die f aulen Leser: es war toll, i ch habe teilweise schwer gelitten, allerdings nicht v ergleichbar mit den vorigen Trips , Wetter we chselhaft (eigentlich ziemlich gut, ers t e r Tag leider Regen, zweiter T ag bewölkt also kaum Aussicht von den Bergen runter, dritter Tag Sonnenschein) . Tolle Gruppe, habe nette Leute kennen ge lernt und richtig vi el Spaß gehabt. So, jetzt die ausführliche Form: Die Fahrt nach Te Ana u war ziemlich lustig, da wir einen Van ge mietet hatten und 12 von uns also zusammen im Van saßen. Das war zwar tei lweise ziemlich ungemütlich ab er insgesamt ein lustiger Tr ip mit Stopp b ei einer Bunj ee -Jumping Brücke. Der Aben d...