Monthly Archives: August 2015

Day 26 – Touratech gear

We had an appointment with Evelin from Touratech Australia. She agreed to move things from Touratech headquarters to Melbourne so that we would have an easier time getting to it. It still took us about an hour with taking a bus to Richmond and then the train out to Heatherdale on a Saturday.

Anyway, we bought the upgraded panniers which are shiny and improved and I got to try the Touratech Companero suit in two different sizes and found one that fits. πŸ™‚ The jacket was available straight away while the pants were Evelin’s own so my pair has been ordered now.

Flo could probably geek out more about the gear but this is my post. πŸ™‚ I am very happy to have a) a suit that is/will be waterproof again and b) a summer suit for northern Australia as it is over 30 degrees in Darwin while it is about 15 degrees here in Melbourne. O.o

Still on the brink of being sick, I had a nice afternoon nap and then yummy pizza for dinner on an otherwise relaxing day.

I present: Shiny new gear!

I present: Shiny new gear!

Day 25 – grounded?

One thing I said a lot in the last couple of days but have not put on the blog yet is: Never again use sea freight when air freight is an option!

It has been 9 days since we last traveled the way we intended to on this trip, that is on Rocinante. One of the greatest allures of traveling on a motorcycle is this element of utter independence. If I don’t like it here, I can be somewhere else in a heartbeat. I am starting to feel grounded or trapped. Worse still, we are burning money in towns (doing the things we enjoy for the most part though) hand over fist. Continue reading

Day 24 – New York Super Fudge Chunk

It rained pretty much the whole day. Waking up and feeling like a cold was coming on didn’t help to get out of bed. But Flo still had to do some of his paperwork for the bike so we finally left the house. Just to be stranded in St. Kilda.

When we took the tram out to our B&B, we already heard the announcement that the trams won’t run between 10am and 2pm on Thurday. We hit exactly that window. BUT, in such a big city, surely, replacement buses will run and it will be well organized…not quite. We could find no information at the tram station itself and then wandered around looking for a bus, until a coach pulled up beside us and announced that it was the replacement bus. Β We got in and the bus driver let us know that he had no idea where he was going so if every passenger could please let him know where they wanted to go and he might make it happen. Leah later told us that the line out to St Kilda is one of the few where there is no street next to the line so the driver couldn’t just follow the tracks.

We managed to get closer to the city and hopped out when we could see high rises. In the city, service people told us that the tram drivers were actually on strike. Our best bet was to walk to the Southern Cross Station and just hop on the train. Which is exactly what we did. Having the trams on strike was a good incentive to get used to the trains which run underground through the city. Being on the subway made us feel right at home.

Had very tasty Indian food before we had a look around the State Library. Unfortunately, the 2pm tour didn’t run so we had a look at the building on our own. I started to feel really quite ill so after two hours, we went home, I had a nap and then Ben&Jerry”s “New York Super Fudge”Β which made it all better. πŸ™‚

The library has a very pretty core study room with galleries and a dome. If you play GW2, you might squee (as we did) because it looks very similar to a library in game.

Day 23 – Yellow paper, stamp

View to town, not far out

View to town, not far out

The Melbourne winter weather is a lot like German autum … grey, rainy and a bit depressing. We wanted to at least get out a little bit before the rain settles in fully, so we explored St. Kilda a little bit.

I like the very particular mix of this neighborhood: The weathered glory from a 100 years ago, forgotten for a while and now half way through gentrification, with hipsters, hookers and the homeless side by side. We gotΒ best feel of the new and coming on the main streets, Acland and Fitzroy St. and the flair of a bygone era down at the waterfront, completed by the the 1911 Lunar Park and the kiosk on the pier.

Photo by Adam.J.W.C. - CC-BY-SA

Photo by Adam.J.W.C. – CC-BY-SA

So we had breakfast at a cake shop in Acland St., a stroll around the suburb and were back at headquarters in time for lunch.

The afternoon was fully dedicated to paperwork for me. Find out what to do, where to go and what to bring. Temporary self managed importation seems to be something no one really knows how to deal with, but I got an address and a promise of help. Brief spoiler: I ended up needing only half the documents I was told to bring, but better than the other way around.

The customs house is out back at the airport, about 1 hr from headquarter with the expensive express buss and 1.5 with normal lines. But first I had to stop in town to find a place to print the bill of landing send to me earlier that day. I lost about 45 minutes until I found out that “copy shops” are professional printers for businesses and what I needed was an internet cafe. That at least gave me a reason to take the express bus.

 

 

The customs proceeding were then relatively painless, except for a small hickup where the local shipping handler did not post the data correctly in the electronic systems (2 calls and a 10 minute wait to fix). It should speak for itself how uncommon a private foreigner is in the customs halls that they even forgot to charge me for any of it. I got my stamp in the carnet, I won’t complain.

All that is missing now for the bike to be released to me is the biosecurity inspection. I am not worried about the success, but I want to make sure this happens as soon as possible. Just to give you a small idea of the complexities involved (and this is just a western port): I payed MCL to put the bike in a box and Mondiale to ship it, who payed AGS World transport to deal with the destination side who pay Patrick for the physical handling of the crate who I now have to broker with for aΒ Ministry of Agriculture inspector to come in at the right place and time to check the bike … and all I have done so far is pay everyone.

I made it back (yes, express bus again) just in time with Tim, who has finished pretty much the same trip as we are planning last year. It is always good to meet fellow travelers.

 

Day 22 – MELBOURNE!

Our flight was booked for the reasonable hour of 6.30am. However, for an international flight this meant a check-in before 5am. Which in turn meant, taking a cab at 4.15am. O.O That is too early, folks.

WΓΌrging Australia, a pun for our German readers.

WΓΌrging Australia, a pun for our German readers.

We got out of the house well, were at the airport in time and then things started to go slightly wrong. Check-in was impossible because we had no visa for Australia. Yes, everyone who enters gets a three month tourist visa but you need to tell them in advance that you will enter. So we rushed from the check-in to the help desk, got our visas for 30 dollars each and rushed back to the check-in queue. Now we were 30min late though and most of the check-ins seem to be closed so it took another 30min until we were checked in. At least that happened.

We then rushed to fill out our departure card, went through security and ran to our gate because we were so late. I say ran. What you have to see is us both in full motorcycle gear, running through an airport, trying to catch our flight while sweating like pigs who have had neither breakfast nor water this day so far. The plan was to have breakfast at the airport which fell through because of all our rushing around.

We got on the plane and man, it was a shitty flight. It was one of those flights where you have to pay for absolutely everyhing: In-flight entertainment, breakfast, drinks. Since we hadn’t ordered anything, we didn’t get more than the obligatory tea. Okay for me as I sleptΒ through most of the flight but Flo was unhappy, too hot in his gear and generally grumpy and hungry when we left the plane. He also had a head-splitting headache which didn’t help at all. It took us an hour to clear customs and biosecurity and get out of the terminal. By this point, we were both fed up with Australia.

Old and new, Federation Square and Flinders station.

Old and new, Federation Square and Flinders station.

Things got better from here on though. We had a bad airport breakfast but at least, it was food. Took the skybus into the city and saw advertisement for Ben&Jerry’s ice cream. Yes, Ben&Jerry’s does exist in Melbourne. Also, Melbourne is a big but quite cool looking city. Stored our at-the-moment-useless motorbike gear at the station to be able to walk around and had a look at Melbourne. Flo and I both liked itΒ almost immediately. Very cool, very hip, very artsy and full of good food. πŸ™‚ We had lunch at a Greek place where I had the best tzaziki I had in years.

Flo still had a headache so we wandered around in seach for a pharmacy and came upon the laneways. These are tiny lanes, pedestrian only, filled with small shops and many, many cafes. Flo had his pills and we hit the National Gallery for a place to sit down. That was part of my plan for Flo to get better but then we wandered around the free permanent exhibition for 2 1/2 hours and it was great! They have a floor full of Aboriginal art, old and contemporary which we visited and had a good talk about.

Melbourne has an astonishingly complete art history since the 1820s.

Melbourne has an astonishingly complete art history since the 1820s.

I walked on one of the art works that was mounted on the floor under a piece of acrylic glass because it said ‘The artist invites you to walk over this work and experience to be in W(forgot the actual place name) country’. I was then told off by a guard that I did it. Luckily, I could show him the sign and then he admitted that he didn’t know the artist had invited everyone to do so. Phew. My heart had stopped for a second.

Flo felt much better after the museum so we had coffee in the laneways before heading towards our accomodation in St Kilda. Transport-wise, Melbourne is full of trams that you can use with a myki card which is why we got two with a weekly pass on it.

Arriving at our lovely AirBnB “dream nest” reconciled us almost completely with Melbourne …

Day 21 – Chores and tears

We spent the day at our friends’ place to get as many things on our new (Nina updated it while I was not looking with more boxes to tick) list of things to do.

I guess the most important thing was to get the shipping of the bike sorted out and payed. After a little exchange to ensure that we do not have to pay a particular service twice, the final number still came out way over the original quote. The two reasons here were: MCL did a great job at packing my bike secure, but with little concern for packing it down. Compared to the crate I have build myself for airlifting the bike to NZ, this one is 33% larger with less gear in it.

The other reason is that the exchange rates of the NZD vs. USD and AUD have plummeted – something that will hurt our funds continuously from here on out. All in all, this lead to an invoice about 15% over the original quote. Not Mondiale’s fault, but painful nonetheless. I’ll post final numbers for shipping once the bike is customs and bio security cleared.


Theme song for a lot of NZ for me

And the tears: Well, this was the last step, we were leaving our new home NZ for real for a while now, leaving behind new and good friends, colleagues and amazing places (side note, saying goodbye and then going to bed is weird). It was a calm and warm goodbye this one though. I cooked for the three of us in the house, something that for me tied the last three years together quite poetically. Me cooking for friends (and getting a lot better at it) is definitively something that will forever be linked to our time in NZ.

P.S.: And just for Brendan – a new Favicon!

Day 20 – Waiheke

Sunday started as Saturday had been promised to be: Very sunny. Thus, if we wanted to go and see Waiheke, this was our chance.

The view back to Auckland's main ferry terminal

The view back to Auckland’s main ferry terminal

Nick drove us to the ferry terminal so we could catch the 11am ferry and off we went. The ferry ride in sunshine was supposedly quite nice…the rolling of the ferry made me tired, however, and I closed my eyes for a bit…and suddenly, we were on Waiheke.

Took the bus into town and walked along the beach and across rocks until we hit Little Oneroa Bay, where we had lunch. This is also the narrowest part of the island so we crossed over to the other side and then walked part of the walking track Te Ara Hura which leads around the island.

The whole track is not doable in a day so we walked from Blackpool to Te Wharau Bay, took the shortcut over the hill to Cable Bay and then continued along the west coast until we were back at the ferry terminal.

The look back over Oneroa (the town)

The look back over Oneroa (the town)

It was a great day for walking with all the sunshine and we saw many birds, a couple of horses, including a pony that really wanted to get rid of its saddle and even an ent. The ent was trying to run from the ocean but was ultimately defeated.

The west coast has some spectacular views onto the skyline of Auckland which is probably why there are estates and mansion with helicopter landing sites dotting along the coast.

Close to the ferry terminal, the sun started to set so, again, we got some beautiful sunset shots. After those, I hurried towards the terminal as I didn’t want to miss the 6pm ferry.

The ferry ride back gave us a view onto Auckland, first in fading sunlight and then in the dark with all the city lights greeting us. I think, it was the best time to come back. πŸ™‚

Day 19 – Wohoo, the Zoo

Wohoo, both of us ...

Wohoo, both of us …

This will be a very brief one with a couple of pictures. Our plan to go to Waiheke island was abandoned after the weather (and the forecast) changed on us just this morning. Instead, we decided to go to the Zoo a bit later, after we saw our friend Mash one more time as he was passing through around noon.

Auckland Zoo is nice, but nothing out of the ordinary. We were sometime not 100% sure about the well-being of some of the animals, but the staff and setup inspired enough confidence that they care and do their best.

I really enjoyed the NZ sections of the Zoo as well. The enclosures are set up so that one gets a good look at Kereru, Kaka, Kea & co.

Day 18 – Inside Out and round and round

Blinking arcade games

Blinking arcade games

We decided to hit the cinema to finally watch “Inside Out” which we had missed out on in Wellington. I loved it. Such a good and sad movie.

During our wait for the movie to start, Flo discovered the arcade of the movie theatre and although we didn’t waste any cash, we did wander around for a while.

After the film, we had lunch at a lovely cafe and realized that we had not taken the camera into town so there are almost no pictures. Which is a shame because after lunch, we had ice cream at Giapo. They do haute ice cream in home-made flavours and use decorations on the cone as well. I had two scoops (chocolate and afghan cookie) which was then dipped in white chocolate and had cornflakes sticking to it as well as a whole afghan cookie. It was amazing but also way too much. Flo also struggled with his two scoops so at the end, we both had to admit defeat after 85% of the whole thing.

We also continue to work on preparations for Australia. Since we have quite some time in Melbourne while waiting on the bike to arrive, we now successfully lined up a new rear tire as well as most of the touratech gear. We also exchanged some money already.

In the evening, our friends had a lovely combined dinner and then a round of “Lords of Waterdeep”. It is a fun boardgame and not nearly as complicated as all the parts make it look like. I think Flo will purchase it when we have a home again. πŸ™‚