Wellington

At first I didn't look forward to Wellington. It's just a city, it's gonna be like Auckland i thought. I had to go to Wellington though because it's the only place where you can take a ferry to the South Island. So I was skeptic when I arrived but after half a day the city had won me over. Wellington is awesome. There are great coffee shops and great pubs everywhere, a lot of young and creative people hang around, so there is fashion, live music and street art on every corner and the city isn't totally filled with concrete like Auckland is. Wellington has forest belts around it's city center and they are there by design, not just because the hills are too steep to build suburbs on. Almost everywhere you go in Wellington you can see at least 1 forest ridge on the horizon. It just is the greatest capital in the world.

The first day I did a little city trip around the small city center and I went to check out all the big and old buildings. The old government building looks like a massive classical stone building but it's actually entirely made out of wood. When it was build in 1876 (that is very old to New-Zealand's standards) there just wasn't enough money to build it in stone. Now it is the second biggest wooden structure in the world and the first building ever to have an inside smoking ban. I also went for a tour of the current parliament complex. It exists of a modern building called the Beehive, a neoclassical house of parliament and a Victorian Gothic building that houses the parliamentary library. It is a weird combination of buildings and especially the Victorian Gothic style I've never seen before. It looks like they have let a gay hairdresser choose the paint for a Gothic church. Afterwards I went to old St-Paul's cathedral, a wooden church (again, no money to build it in stone) that's about 200 years old. They used native timber that has wonderfully darkened with age.

The second day I decided to release my inner-Hobbit again and I went to the Weta Caves, out in the suburbs of Wellington. Weta is the special effects company that worked on Lord of the Rings (but also Avatar, Tintin and the upcoming Halo movie) and their cave is marketed as a museum but it's actually just a shop full of movie collectibles. You can buy a miniature of Rivendel there but also an actual Orc sword, posters and books and of-course the ring. I was tempted to buy the one ring to rule them all, and in darkness bind them but those collectibles are very expensive. So I only bought a piece of chainmail. This chainmail is a Weta invention, it's made of plastic but it looks like real metal on screen. So it's light to wear and cheap to make when you have to dress 200 actors in it. In the afternoon I went movie location hunting again in the southern forest belt around Wellington. Scenes from the outer Shire were filmed over there and I spent 3 hours there but I just couldn't find them. When it began to get dark I gave up and went to the pub. There were local bands playing and one of them was actually pretty good.

My last day in Wellington I spend almost entirely in Te Papa, the national museum of New-Zealand. It's a very good museum. It tells the story of Aotearoa New-Zealand, all of it. It's about the native animals and plants, about the Maori and the pakeha settlers, about volcanoes and earthquakes but also about New-Zealand in more modern times. I learned that the first man on Mount Everest and the first guy to split the atom were Kiwi's. Funny actually that New-Zealand now is radically opposed to nuclear power. Very interesting and interactive, it has an earthquake room that simulates a 5.0 earthquake, you can play bio security officer, searching a container for pests that aren't allowed to enter the country, and you can make traditional Maori music by touching the right buttons in the right order (or make Maori dubstep by touching them in the wrong order, like I did). After about 6 hours in the museum I met up with Michael, a German backpacker I met in Gisborne and who just arrived in Wellington. He is even more Tolkien crazy then I am and with a doubled amount of persistence we went looking for the movie location and eventually found the exact spot where the Hobbits hid under a tree root when they first encounter the nazgul. How were we sure that we were on that exact spot you may ask. That is because we found a group of tourists on a guided movie tour and we spied on them a little.

After 3 days it was time to leave Wellington and go to the South Island. The first time in New-Zealand that I was sad to leave a place. I really liked Wellington and I could actually live in that city ... if it wasn't so damn expensive. It is probably best for my bank account and my heart (with all these home roasted coffee shops around I drank about 5 espresso's a day) that I left the city.

 

The old government building: 100% wood

 

The parliamentary library

 

Legolas weapons on display in the Weta Cave

 

The tree the hobbits hide under only excists on Peter Jackson's computer but all the rest is still there

 

 

Street art in Wellington

 

The closest I will probably get to a Kakapo. In the endangered species section of Te Papa

Napier to Wellington

After my 4 days Woof job in Napier I decided to make south for Wellington, the capital of New-Zealand. I wanted to stay along the east coast because the weather is better over there and that way I could avoid Palmerston-North. That is a boring metropolitan area where I have to pass through anyway when I go back north at the end of my trip. Avoiding Palmerston-North meant I had to be creative about my means of transport. And that I had to take it slow.

First I took the local bus to Hastings, the smaller twin sister of Napier. It's only 20 km from Napier and it suffered the same faith as Napier in the 1931 earthquake. Hastings was also rebuild in art deco style but they incorporated Spanish mission style in their city design. And that just looks as ugly and out of place as it does in Belgium. I arrived in the hostel in Hastings when there was a dress up party planned to celebrate the managers birthday. So I dressed up as the bearded lady, got drunk and smoked way to many cigarettes (I hadn't smoked in 4 days remember). It was a fun party with lots of different nationalities to talk to. Not just 10 Germans and 2 British guys as in most hostels around New-Zealand. The day after I had a massive hangover (like everybody in the hostel) but I still went to the Sundays farmers market. And that was a good idea, it was a sunny spring day, I sat there on the grass with strong coffee, listening to a really good guitar player and I could taste all the good stuff the farmers were selling. Lovely cheese and sausages, whole grain bread and all sorts of jams, chutneys and pastries. It was a really nice way to get over a hangover.

My next stop was Waipawa, also by local bus. Waipawa is a really small farmers town in the middle of New-Zealand's sheep country. There are maybe 40 houses over there but still it has 3 churches (Anglican, methodist and catholic), a pub and a campsite. And the last one is the reason I went to Waipawa. (Going to Waipawa for the pub is stupid because it was closed at 8.30pm, as my British neighbors told me the day after). The campsite was almost empty and very cheap but real nice. Located next to the river and planted with cherry trees. The cherry trees are blossoming at the moment since it's spring over here. As you all know it can still be very cold at night in spring. That night a nearly froze my nose of and I couldn't sleep anymore in the coldest hours before dawn. It was a good thing I went to bed at 8pm because it was dark and I couldn't do anything else.

The next day I went to Woodville, for this trip I could use the intercity bus again, my usual means of transport. Woodville is a dead town, still in sheep country and located near the hills that catch the rain before it gets to the east coast. Woodville is close to Palmerston-north and most people left Woodville for the city. But I think it is beautiful over there. It's quiet and everywhere around you see green glowing hills. Many Maori (and some backpackers as well) think their country went to shit when the Europeans arrived, they brought pollution, alcoholism and McDonalds with them. This may all be well and true but it were also the Europeans who cultivated the land for their sheep and they created the green hills that I find so beautiful. Woodville isn't used to travelers, the youths I asked for directions couldn't understand why I came to their town. It also has only 1 hotel and a backpackers hostel that's actually closed. Because the hotel was very expensive I decided to try and persuade the owner of the hostel to let me stay for a night. And it worked. Maybe because he was German or maybe because he felt sorry for me that I ended up in Woodville. I could stay in his hostel, off-course I was all alone so I basically got a giant hotel room for the price of a bed in a dorm. The hostel has been empty for a long time so it was a bit dirty and full of ants but I guess most hostels in Asia are far worse so I slept in my liner with my own blankets and I tried not to dream of giant ants. (That night I regretted playing Fallout 3 so much fallout in the past).

From Woodville to Masterton there just isn't any public transport. That meant I had to hitch a ride. I met a few backpackers who had been hitchhiking and they told me it's easy enough to flag a ride over here. But they were all female, I had a feeling it wouldn't be so easy for a scruffy looking bearded guy like me. I gave myself the entire day to get to Masterton. But in just 45 minutes I found me a ride that went all the way to Masterton. (the girls could do it in 15 minutes though). A former Dutchmen picked me up. He had been living in New-Zealand for 32 years and he did really good for himself. He has a high executive function in a custom made carpet business. Auckland airport, the biggest casino in new-Zealand and the national museum are some of his customers. But He got really rich by buying farm land on the edge of growing towns. In only a few years his farm land became residential land and that's when he sells, for 7-8 times the price of his original investment. He has been doing this for 20 years and now he just bought some land near Tongariro national park, with view on the volcanoes, where he plans to build a lodge for the rich and famous. We are talking 1000 dollar a night accommodation. That lodge is going to be his retirement plan. The guy liked to boast about how well he has done in life and I gladly indulged him. As a hitchhiker you are entitled to give your driver a good time and laugh with all his jokes, because when you are bad company he might not stop for the next hitchhiker he sees down the road.

Because I got to Masterton earlier than I expected I had some time to kill. So I went to the local sheep museum. In Masterton they are crazy about sheep shearing. They host the yearly Golden Shear competition and the winner of that competition represents New-Zealand on the world championship. Yeah, I didn't know there is a world championship in sheep shearing either. And it is no laughing matter, the guys who compete are professionals, build like rugby players and they shear 20 sheep in under 15 minutes. The museum is located in a shear shed from the 19th century and I learned a lot about how it was done in those days. It was a tough live to say the least. Long hours, low pay and always on the road. Shearers were a special breed of men, a bit like truckers or circus people these days. I also learned that there is sheep in much more products then you woeld think. Besides the obvious wool clothing and lamb chops parts of sheep are used to make condoms, glycerin, hardened steel and even milkshake thickener.

After 3 days on the road in sheep country I had enough of grass hills and sheep. I took the commuters train from Masterton to wellington and got dropped back into the modern world. Commuters have to get to their office by 8am so the train leaves Masterton at 6:30am. Getting up at 5am wasn't so bad as it might look. Masterton doesn't have a hostel so I slept in my tent again. The cold woke me up at 5am anyway. Because I got an early train I had time to make a stop in Upper Hutt. That's a satellite town for Wellington, some 30km up north along the Hutt river. There is nothing much to see in town but the Hutt river is better known by Tolkien geeks as the mighty river Anduin. There are actually 3 movie locations on a 10km stretch of the river. So I went hunting for them. The first one I found were the fields of Isengard. That was pretty disappointing because in reality it's just a grass field where Peter Jacksons special effects crew placed the tower of Orthanc on top. After that site I walked along the river. It was raining pretty hard and I had my backpack and all my stuff with me so that wasn't so nice. But the journey of the fellowship was pretty hard as well so that only added to the magic. I walked to the spot where they filmed scenes of the fellowship sailing the Anduin river in their elven boats. The land alongside the river is amazingly beautiful compared to the gray suburbs that lay just 200m away. It was still raining, my backpack was getting soaked and my heart grew weary. But after a lunch stop where I ate some lembas (a chocolate cookie and a smoke) I fell strong and light again and I found the courage to head on. I didn't make it to the last location though. After 3 hours in the pouring rain I gave up a went to look for a train station where I could catch another train to Wellington.

So now I'm in Wellington, this great nations capital. And it's actually a really cool place. Not like Auckland at all.

 

Spanish mission style in Hastings

 

The camp site in Waipawa where I celebrated Philippe Gilberts rainbow jersey

 

Beautiful grassy hills in Woodville

 

The shearing shed in Masterton

Unfortunately I can't show you any pictures of the Hutt valley, when I was transferring the pictures to my tablet I screwed up and now they are all gone. When I go back north at the end of the trip I'll just have to go back there because it's very beautiful. And maybe I have better weather the next time.

Gisborne & Napier

Gisborne is the most eastern city in New-Zealand and therefore the first city in the world to greet the sun every morning. This is also the region where Capitain Cook first sighted land and set foot on New-Zealand for the first time. He named this region Poverty bay because his first landing provided him with nothing more than a bit of fire wood. That was partially his own fault. Not familiar with Maori customs he misinterpreted the traditional welcoming challenge and instead of accepting the peace offer following the challenge he killed a bunch of Maori warriors and made a run for it.

Beside a few monuments to honour Cook and his crew and a sun that comes up way to early to enjoy it there isn't much to see in Gisborne. This is small town New-Zealand and it moves on its own pace. This feeling is stenghtened by the fact that there is a large Maori community in the east cape. 50% of the citizens in Gisborne are of Maori decent, compared to 16% nation wide. Maori like to live in touch with nature and they don't care so much for the rat race of our modern society. Here in the east cape you can see people going to the shops on horseback.

I went for a walk on Taihi hill, once a Maori settlement and now a natural reserve. Maori still live on the base of the hill where there is a beautifully carved Marae (meeting house). It is still in use so I could not take pictures since that is seen as disrespectful. On the hill I had some nice views over the bay and the cliff of 'Young Nick's head'. That cliff is the first piece of New-Zealand spotted by a crew member of Cook, Nicolas Young. Young was the surgeons assistent and he got 5 gallons of rum and the cliff named after him for his discovery.

The day after I went to the local museum, not only because it was a rainy day but also because the museum is free on Mondays. The museum tells the story of the east cape, from its first discovery by Maori tribes to the arrival of the first Europeans. And how both cultures clashed at first but soon lived with, and learned from, eachother. There is also a section of the museum dedicated to the 28th Maori battalion that fought in WOII. Most boys in the battalion were from the east cape.

After Gisborne I headed south to Napier, the main city in the Hawke's bay region. Hawke's bay is the location of New-Zealands biggest natural disaster. In 1931 a massive earthquake struck Napier that flattened the city and moved the entire bay up by 8m. Napier was completely destroyed and the city centre burned for several days. After the earthquake they had to rebuild te city from scratch and they did that in the architectural style of those days, art deco. The region lies in the rain shadow of the Tongariro volcanoes so it's a sunny place with a mild sea breeze. Perfect for growing wine and other fruits and vegetables.

Here in Napier I did my first Woof job. Woofing is a system in which you work 4-6 hours a day in turn for a bed and 3 meals. The jobs mostly consist of farm work, gardening or general jobs around the house. In Napier I lived 4 days with Rosemary and Gary. Rosemary is a busy lady. She goes to a bible study group, does community work, plays the contrabas in almost every ochestra in the wider Napier area and she runs a household with 2 teenagers in it. She can use a bit of help around the house, so in turn for 3 meals and a comfy bed I kept their pool clean, stacked their fire wood, vacuumed their living room and helped with making diner. It's a pretty easy job and every day there is still plenty of time to be a tourist. Rosemary asked me to join here for Thursday morning tea and she considered that as Woofing hours. So I had tea & biscuits on the good porcelain with her and a few old ladies who asked me a lot about Belgium. It was a fun experience. Less fun was that I had to stop smoking for 4 days.

After my Woof hours I still had half a day left for myself. The first day I went for a bike ride along the wineries of Hawke's bay. I slightly underestemated the map I had with me so I ended up riding close to 50km on and old bike that was way to small for me. The worst part of it was that I only got to see 3 wineries and only one of them would let me taste their wines. The second one was closed for a private event and the third one was so posh they wouldn't let me taste anything because they could see by my looks that I wasn't going to buy their expensive wine. The second day I went for a pleasant scroll around the art deco centre of Napier and up Bluff hill. Napier is a beautifull city and almost all the art deco is still intact. My last day in Napier I went to the national aquarium. Not only to see the fish but Rosemary told me they have a Kiwi reserve over there. Kiwi birds are notoriously hard to get a look at. They are going extinct so there aren't many of them in the wild, they are night animals that sleep up to 20 hours a day and they are afraid of light and noise. Seeing one in the wild justends on luck, especially since it's illegal to go out and search for them. Even in captivaty they are hard to get a glimpse of. I had to wait 15 minutes by it's reserve before it would come out. I also got to see a diver hand feeding the fish in the big aquarium. And you can take 'hand feeding' quite literary.

The nicest house in Gisborne. Needs a bit of paint though

Statue of Cook with 'Young Nick's head' in the background

Guess what this guys hobby is

New-Zealands countryside between Gisborne and Napier

One of the many wineries around Napier

The youngest cathedral I've ever seen. It has 14th century nails in it, all the rest dates back to 1965

 

 

 

Art Deco in Napier

 

I know an oxymoron when I see one

 

The kiwi bird, bad picture because no flash allowed (kiwi's don't like light)

Dead kiwi bird, they don't mind light

Diver hand feeding the fish

 

 

Tauranga & Rotorua

Tauranga is a nice coastal city in the western Bay of Plenty. It attracts a lot of tourists during the summer months but at the moment it's pretty dormant. Most backpackers over here are looking for work. The Bay of Plenty is the kiwi fruit region of New-Zealand so there is a lot of seasonal work over here and the harbor has a fish factory and a recycle factory. Unfortunately I came to Tauranga at a bad time. There was a major sports tournament going on for school children and every hostel in town was packed with kids. I had to go to the only hostel that had beds left and they also had 30 kids running around. 30 kids can make a lot of noise. But it's a nice hostel and I met some good people over here.

Tauranga itself has a lot of history. 1 of the 7 waka (ocean travel canoe) in which the first Maori settlers arrived landed here and there were lots of early Maori settlements in the area. A replica of such a canoe is on display in the city center. It's actually not that big, I find it hard to comprehend those first Maori traveled a few 1000 km of ocean in these canoes. Tauranga also was home to one of the first missionaries in New-Zealand. From here Archdeacon Brown christened the Maori tribes in the region, halfway the 18th century. He also taught them to read and write (Maori had no written language) and he learned them the newest agricultural techniques. But the Archdeacon will probably be most remembered because he tended the wounds of both British officers and Maori warriors after the battle of Gate Pa. That was a major battle in the land wars between Maori tribes who wanted to keep their land and the Crown who wanted to confiscate as much of it as possible. The Missionary house still exists and the garden around it is a weird mix of native trees and European pines and oak trees. I was delighted when I found out that Tauranga has a Belgian beer house but when I got there I was in for a disappointment. They only had Stella, Leffe and Hoegaarden. I'd rather drink dish water to be honest.

My last day in Tauranga I visited the neighboring city of Mt Maunganui. It's a beach side resort with a spa, long golden beaches and surf breakers. The city is named after the mountain that lays next to it. I climbed the mountain and from the top you have a spectacular view
 of both cities and over the Pacific ocean. On the way down I walked through a meadow full of sheep. There were lambs that couldn't been older than a few week (their legs were still to big for their bodies and they were all wrinkly) but still they were out there in the cold rain and heavy wind. They breed some tough sheep here in New-Zealand

After my stay in Tauranga I headed inland for Rotorua. This city is a big tourist attraction because of all the geothermal activity that can be seen around here. There are hot springs, bubbling mud pools and fume holes with sulphide gases coming out of them practically everywhere you go. Because of all the sulphide it smells like rotten eggs over there. This landscape is what Dante's hell must look like. Many names around there refer to hell one way or the other. Despite the smell many people came to live there. Maori used the hot pools and various mineral pools to cook food and to cure diseases or heal wounds. They even found use for the most toxic pools where they would bury their fallen warriors so the bodies wouldn't fall into the hands of their enemies. European settlers opened spa's here in early 1900, as was the fashion at the time. That's why in Rotorua beautifully carved Maori houses can be seen next to English garden and Victorian architecture.

You can see a good deal of geothermal activity in and around the city for free, but for the most spectecular stuff you have to go to one of the thermal valleys, 25 km out of town. And buses don't go there so I thought I would miss out on them. But luckily I could hitch a ride with 2 German girls who stayed at my hostel so I went to Waimangu thermal park. There you can see the Inferno Crater Lake. The lake steadily rises for a certain weeks until it overflows. After that it drops again to its lowest level and the cycle starts all over again. During the cycle the lake changes color from gray/green to bright blue.For a brief period in time Waimangu had the biggest geyser in the world. It would shoot water and rocks up to 400 m and that for up to 6 hours. But in 1904 the geyser stopped working all of a sudden.

The next day I went to a Maori cultural evening. It is quite the commercial affair, many busloads of tourists were dropped of in a Maori village (well, a Maori movie set rather) and it's not cheap. But it's the only way to see pre European Maori rituals and habbits. The show wa performed with lots of humor and the hangi feast (traditionally cooked meal on hot stones in a covered up hole in the ground) was tasteful. I got to see a fully carved war canoe in action, the tribes sacred cold water spring and some glowworms. I learned that glowworms aren't actually worms. They are larvae that can't take a shit so they burn their poop. But larvae-with-glow-in-the-dark-poop doesn't sound merely as good as glowworm and that's why they changed their name.

The last day in Rotorua I went to Whakarewarewa, also know as Redwood forest. It's called Redwood forest because that is easier to pronounce and because the forest was used as a test site for trees. In 1902 they planted over 100 tree species over there to see which species could be used for timbre production in New-Zealand. Most of the trees didn't make it but the Californian Redwood did exceptionally well. They even grow 3x faster over there than in their native California. Redwoods are giant trees that stand 70 m tall in the forest, between native fern trees and various other foreign trees that managed to survive. The walk through the forest was great, I fell like a little Hobbit wandering through an Elven forest and except for some birds and 3 mountain bikers I didn't see a living soul.
 

The missionary house in Tauranga

The garden of the missionary

View from Mt Maunganui (thanks to Eric, an American student, there is at least one picture of me)

view from Mt Maunganui (it rains a lot over here did you know?)

Watching the sun come up on the smokers deck in the hostel in Tauranga. I had to get up at 6am for this, but well worth it.

 

The Inferno lake in Waimangu thermal park

The Crater lake in Waimangu thermal park

Mud pool in Rotorua, the are actually very hard to take pictures of without a multi shot function on your camera

Sulphide fume hole in Rotorua

My Hangi meal. Chicken, lamb and potatoes. Yummy!

Redwood forest. This river looks chemical but I can assure you the water is as clean as can be. Rotorua is a weird place.

Redwood forest

Victorian style museum in Rotorua

 

Auckland & Hauraki gulf

Auckland is the biggest and most populated city of New-Zealand. Roughly half the population lives in the metropolitan area that stretches between Auckland and Hamilton. Auckland is full of skyscrapers, Asian food courts, fast food restaurants and busy people. It's crowded, it's loud and I don't like it a bit. This isn't what I came to New-Zealand for. The fact that I'm new here and that I don't understand New-Zealand yet has something to do with it as well I guess. Maybe I'll appreciate this city better when I return here in 4 months. But for now the only good thing about it is that they serve great coffee. There are loads of small independent coffee shops here and they serve brews 5 times better than Starbucks (and 20 times better than McDonalds, no free wifi though).

The fact there isn't much to see wasn't that bad because I lost an entire day doing paper work. After the IEP (International Exchange Program) orientation session, where they talked about living, traveling and working in New-Zealand, I had to go get my drivers license translated, I had to apply for an IRD number (so I can legally work over here), I opened a bank account, got a new phone number and I got myself a bus pass. Not everything is sorted yet. I might have a bank account but there is still no money on it. I still have to figure out a way to get my money on it without losing to much on exchange rates and bank fees. But the bank is closed over the weekend so it will have to wait until Monday.

My last day in Auckland I was desperate to get out of the city so I took the ferry to Rangitoto Island, just half an hour into the Hauraki gulf. Rangitoto is actually a volcano that emerged from the sea only 600 years ago. There were Maori tribes present on the nearby island of Motutapu to witness the eruption. Because of this dramatic display of power (imagine a volcano erupting only a few 100m from your doorstep) Rangitoto became an important part of Maori history and culture. Therefore the volcano crater is considered wahi tapu (sacred place) until today. However the island is less than 600 years old it's completely covered with trees. The native Pohutukawa tree adapted best to the harsh conditions on this lava rock island and is the dominant species. Rangitoto has the largest remaining Pohutukawa forest in New-Zealand. The forest was almost completely destroyed by possums and wallabies, introduced by European settlers at the end of the 17th century. That's why the Department of Conservation started a massive pest eradication program on the island in the 90ties. They removed all the not native species from the island and since 2011 Rangitoto is considered a pest free natural reserve. Now the Pohutukawa forest flourishes again and the island is a wonderful place for a walk. It has a summit track that takes you to the 260m high crater, it has lava caves to explore and a coastal track that takes you through the forest. The narrow coastal track is quite the adventure, it took me nearly 2 hours to walk the 5km track. At some points it was more like rock climbing than walking. But I was alone on the track and surrounded by nature, it was the best fun I had since I arrived. This is what I came to New-Zealand for.

 the lava caves I crawled through. Luckly the DOC ranger told me to bring a torch. 

                            View from the crater summit. The island in the background is Motutapu.

 the coastal track walk, can you see the track? I couldn't sometimes.

View from the coastal track



At the moment I'm in Tauranga, a nice town by the ocean in the Bay of Plenty. I'll tell you all about it later

save and sound in Auckland

I made it, after 30 hours in plains and airports I'm finally in New-Zealand. the trip in itself wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be. ofcourse, being trapped in a small tube together with a few 100 people, barely being able to move, isn't the most fun imageable but the airlines do their best to ease the pain. for 1 thing there is lots of alcohol available and the longer flights had personal entertainment systems in the head rests. I watched a lot of Futurama, about half of the 5th season of Big bang theory and I listened to the new Alabama Shakes album and the new Jack White album. that last one I listened to several times, it is realy good. I also discovered that Portishead is better to fall asleep with than Tom Waits. who would have thought?

the airports I visited aren't worth mentioning, duty free shops look the same everywhere you go. but the fondest memories I have from Changi airport in Singapore. the staff is super friendly, it has a beautifull outside smokers balcony and everything is cheap. I bought 5 packs of tobacco for 13 euro. for about 1.5 euro I had the best meal since I left home ( I can't pronounce the name of the dish but it contains boiled eggs, tofu and 2 entire green pepers). also in Singapore I met Simon, a laided back Ausie who lives in Bali. we had a few beers together and had a nice chat about travelling in Asia and about formula 1. Simon is a huge fan and turns out he knows more about Spa-Francochamps than I do. I was sad to leave Singapore.

after Singapore it all got a bit blury when the jetlag properly kicked in. in Brisbane I couldn't follow the security guys who were joking about the Scotch whisky in my hand luggage. I also had to ask the local time 3 times because I couldn't remember it long enough to set my clock right. On the last flight I was lucky, I was seated at the window and on the right side to get a good look at New-Zealand when we circled Auckland on our descend. the countryside realy looks like Hobbiton from high above. green and hilly. at Auckland international airport I passed imigration without a problem but after that I had to tell a scary looking bio security officer I was bringing used hiking boots and a used tent into the country. he looked at me like I was personally responsible for the kiwis going extinct ( the bird, not the people). my boots were clean but my tent had to be checked for pests in the lab. after 15 minutes I got her back, she was save and I was let into the country.

at the moment I'm writing this it's 6am, I'm already awake for 2 hours and I'm sitting in McDonalds drinking coffee, it's the only place that's open and they give you free wifi with your shitty coffee. the sun is coming up and I can finally go explore Auckland. in a few days I'll tell you about the city.