A Hole in the Rock

Oct 24, 2015 | Photos, The Great Journey, Trips

Often you tell yourself: I will be here for while, I still have enough time to see everything. But from experience you know that time flies faster than you’d like. That’s why we canvass all the nice spots around Dunedin more or less dutifully.
The locals recommended driving up Mount Cargill. And oh, it was worth it! After all, it is the tallest mountain in the city area.

View on the (also from up close) all wonderful peninsula.

Dunedin from above. Behind the hill next to the stadium (bulky building in the middle) I will live from tomorrow.

And I looooove you all! 🙂

In New Zealand you can see and experience quite a lot for free. But for some things tourists are expected to pay some dime. For example to see the albatross colonies from up cose. Following the advice of the locals, we just went lurking outside and saw some specimens! So you can also have it for free, though a little less spectacular.

The albatross is an awe-inspiring, majestic animal. Up to 3 metres wingspan are easily distinguishable from the seagulls.

I went all solemn at the sight. It is something special, after all…

The albatross colony lies at the very end of the peninsula. There you find a commotion of seagulls and some lovely sights:

 

 

On a peaceful evening we went through a scenic sunset towards the Sandfly Bay.
That is how I pictured New Zealand and you are welcome to share in, because there are not many pictures more New Zealand like…

 

 

For those who have been thinking about changing their screen wallpaper for a long time: There you go. 😀

 

 

One sunny day we paid a visit to the Tunnel Beach. By Tunnel, not the extraordinary coast line is referred to, but the tunnel a rich gentleman had built into the rock to give his daughter access to a sheltered bathing bay.

 

 

The ‘secret beach’.

 

 

A small and rather unspectacular cave down at the beach.

The tunnel. This is what a healthy father-daughter-relationship looks like. 😀

The bay from above.

 

 

After a small shopping tour we had dinner, followed by ice cream. In Germany, do you get a 2 litre pack of cookie ice cream for a better 2€? 😉

 

 

 

 

In Dunedin you also find a botanic garden, which overflows with pomp.

But first photograph someone’s Coke can. 🙂

 

 

It has shown that I am a good car groomer and now I got 3 weeks to cover for a colleague, full time! That is a great opportunity, you can say out loud.
Tomorrow I will move in to the new flat and from there, life will go on…
You’ll hear from me! 😉

Down south the South Island

Oct 19, 2015 | Photos, The Great Journey, Updates

Dunedin shall be my home for the next months.
Was do you need to live, roughly: A roof over your head and a job or money.
I do have a job and a flat. 🙂

Everyone tells me that there would be many electronics technician jobs here. Haha, good one! I now have 5 temp agencies on the lookout (they have better connections than me travelling snot), but there just is no open position. Economy is on a low at the moment, so a job outside my expertise has to do.
Time will tell.

At the moment I wash cars for a rental company at the airport, which is a lot of fun, actually. 🙂 You can drive the cars (more like parking, but still) and get to know all the technical features of the new models…
On top the colleagues are just suuuper sweet, what makes it even nicer. (though there are less coffee breaks than ‘usual’ 😀 )

That’s it on the job. The roof over your had wants to be found, also. For a short term I moved in with a grandpa on social contribution, which is like..somewhat peculiar.
But next Sunday I will finally move to my actual flat. With students and a clean toilet. 😀

Well, all that goes down in Dunedin. Dunedin is a gorgeous and gorgeously old city.
Ind the 2,5 weeks I went on shooting and developed and stuck in the pictures like we are used to. 😉

 

 

Baldwin Street: The world’s steeptest street just next door…

 

 

The summit’s reward is art.

 

 

Because we didn’t find the right way to the right bay, we just left the car at some nice spot and marched towards the sea just like that. Take note: This method has a 100% success rate in New Zealand. 😉

 

 

Photography course with Tina: Portrait lesson

 

 

No streams of tourists, no wheelchair accessibility, no info boards. This is another way to enjoy.

Weather in Dunedin is changeable in a perfect way. The climate changes from day to day, you can get hourly change-ups from grey rainy outlooks to blasting sunshine. All that, repeatedly, too!

 

 

Spring in full blossom!

This is where Iive. All fur coat from the outside. 😉 (my room is okay, though)

City hall and library.

Upright for Celine. 😉

Tulips for dad. 🙂

The city centre is calles ‘The Octagon’. A picturesque place…

Another famous place is the Railway Station.

 

 

‘Parking No’

And for the finishing touch some geometry:

 

 

The Thing about the Au Pair

Oct 16, 2015 | The Great Journey, Thoughts

I am an au pair.

But just as with every au pair, the time as one passes. That doesn’t change the fact that you lived as an au pair. No matter if that time was shorter or longer.

My blog features the title ‘The Thing about the au pair and my life…’. That stays like that, but now only the thing about my life continues.

My time as an au pair was shorter than expected. I get asked often what exactly happened. As in the beginning I was quite happy with the family and living with there. And I was, no doubt; before in the last week certain cases came to light…

The cold New Zealand winter I lived as an au pair.

What I didn’t realise enough in the beginning was the fact that you inhabit a particular role as an au pair.
An au pair comes to a family in order to support the life with kids as a family member.
A family member surrenders to the regulations of the parents, by nature’s default. That can be, depending on how far those ways of life and values differ from the own, more or less difficult.
In my case there was no similarity to be found in their way of life and my personal reasoning. For I could have never adapted to their way of life, the relationship just didn’t take off.
But as long as I was sure that the host mum was satisfied with my work and effort, I was happy. The main problem, as revealed in the end, was lack in communication. In the beginning the host mum said that, if there were no improvement talks, every thing would be in order.
But seemingly I didn’t implement the hints and suggestions as precise as she wished after I approached her for advise. Thus, she took me for immune to criticism. Also, my good will was put in doubt, which led me away very very quickly.

Nevertheless I have a fully shaped life as an au pair to tell about. I now know the circle of laundry, can make extraordinary cookies, can do the dishes/ tidy up/ clean up, fry mince to prefection and know SO much more about family life.

I learned the importance of parents in kids’ lives. As kids are just the product of their parents. That applies not only to genes, it doesn’t. Every facette of the parents and the relationship between themselves and to the environment shapes the kids, the house and the life as a family.

I couldn’t stand it anymore as soon as I saw that my effort were fruitless.
And just how happy and free I felt when driving away from that house for the last time! Oh, those surges of emotion don’t come in every other day…

But aside from the bitter lesson my view on family life evolved as well. There were many many nice moments in that time, of course, and you can take something from any situation… In a few years’ time I see myself as a family man. (This information is supplied without liability. 😉 )

I have learned what it means to live with a foreign family and work for them as an au pair. That was my goal. And I reached it fully.
Even though there are some shadows above those 4 months, it has been an experience not to be underestimated and not to be forgotten.

Not least I came by some wonderful people…

Henry, me, Lea, Celine and Elena. These 5 au pairs have gone to all 4 directions of the wind… (And no, I didn’t shrink! 😉 )

Some hard learned lessons for au pairs to be:

 

  • Carefully watch the parents and how they act. Does only one get to speak or do both communicate equally? How do they talk about each other

 

  • What is important to the family and what are things the family does neglect? (what do they declare family values and what don’t they, is there decoration around the house or are medals and certificates the only trinkets, etc.)

 

  • Kids will always be a handful. But when you get word about fussiness and naughtiness in advance, you better listen up.

 

  • Milk any source of experiences you can get your hands on about the family. Carefully weigh everything you hear…

 

Maybe one day I will make listing of things that are important in general when being/ becoming an au pair and how reality and theory work together… Whoever is interested, just let me know and I will prioritise accordingly. 😉

However, my life here in Dunedin continues. Soon more about that… 🙂

The Adventure Couchsurfing

Oct 10, 2015 | Photos, The Great Journey, Trips

Couchsurfing is a great invention for travellers to get in touch with true locals.
I took this opportunity and was rewarded with some adventurous days.

After a ride through the wunderfully beautiful Catlins and some ravel road, I arrived at the house and was greeted most warmly. Tina, who I partway (in New Zealand you always say goodbye ‘partway’) said goodbye to in Queenstown, and a very nice French girl were guests there as well. 🙂

Steve, our lovely host, practically supplied us with the all of his house. Even supper was being shared.
So, amongst other things, one night we made hamburgers. But Steve, a farm manager, hunter and all, knew better than to buy mince from the store.
We ended up having deer for patties. (Venison. It’s deer, my dear. -Steve)
And it was mouth-watering!

This was not the only special experience by a long shot. Next to good meals, delightful talks and a warm atmosphere we had much to discover.
Buckle up, there’s a lot of pictures this time! 😉

Did I succeed in taking a ‘dramatic’ photograph?

See here Steve’s answer to Garfield. Stripey is so fat, he can lay on his back all relaxed! 😀

One night our calm gathering was interrupted by a loud squeal and Steve went looking for the reason of the commotion. It was nothing less than a young bunny that fell prey to the food chain in form of ‘cat’.
You might just imagine the reaction of the girls, but to save such sweet animal didn’t leave any hearts cool…

Scared to the bone and obviously wounded, there was not much hope to put into this little bunny.

We took good care and fed and bedded the poor creature. But in the morning, all life had left him.

After we finished mourning baby-bunny, Steve took us on a tour through the Catlins. It is the ultimate, to have a local for a travel guide. This tour I documented via photos, of course thinking only about you. 😉

Curio Bay.

The remains of the petrified forest in that place. A small riddle: Where else have I seen petrified wood? 😉

Funny underwater plants…

Not-so-funny surf.

 

 

All the way through the Catlins, there is one attraction after the other on the side of the road. We made, just as good tourists would do, rest at the Niagara Falls. Yes, they exist in another place, too. In New Zealand. New-Zealand-like… 😀

 

 

My legs are still shaking because of the view unfolding! 😀

Another spectacular stop we had in Jack’s Bay. There we saw a sea lion. But when it goes ‘RRrraA!’, you better increase distance…

 

 

Somewhat cuter this little boy was in appearence…

In New Zealand you see many of these odd shops. But one that specialises in teapots…

Penguins come to the shore by the late hours only. That’s why we went to Nugget Point after a short stop-over ‘at home’…

 

 

And again, one of those curiously attractive buildings…

Those are the nuggets, by the way.

 

 

Eye-catching stacked shapes…

Then we began to lie on lookout. Without Steve we might have never found this spot…
We had plenty of time and didn’t know when the penguins would arrive, so I tended to the surf again…

 

 

The Crab with the Grey-ish Claws.

 

 

After a time, a penguin finally emerged from the sea. These penguins are there rarest kind on earth and I had never seen one in the wild, so this was very exciting. At this point warm regards to Frauke. 😉

Praise the zoom!

He got closer and closer, reluctant of whether it was safe. Penguins can hardly defend themselves and are overly cautious because of that…

 

 

Who can spot the penguin?

 

 

So that was the big day when we saw the Yellow-Eyed-Penguin! Sadly he was all alone, BUT STILL! 🙂

 

 

That is what Couchsurfing looks like! For that one night two Canadian girls came visiting.

 

 

One other night, we went by ourselves to see Jack’s Blowhole. No, not Jack Sparrow! 😀
It was named after the tribe leader ‘Bloody Jack’, who was being chased and swam all across the bay.

A HUGE hole in the ground. Nothing more, nothing less!

My thermos. My thermos. My tea!

 

 

Just a few words on my current situation, we wouldn’t want to differ from the timeline. 😉

I have arrived in Dunedin and look for a job in electronics on more hope. Because the students are on their semester break, finding a flat will be easier…
Dunedin for sure is a wonderful, old city. I like it here.

A Little Lamb Went Straying

Oct 4, 2015 | Photos, The Great Journey, Trips

My halt in between I took in Invercargill. That is a somewhat bigger city than Queenstown in the outtermost south, which I looked at via Google Street View long ago in excitement.
I only spent one night there and in the morning, before moving on into the Catlins, I looked around the town a little… The early rise even gave me some of the last morning dew.

 

 

At the museum you can see Tuararas, which get more than a hundred years old. But to publish pictures is all forbidden. (and this one is just a statue 😉 )

Spring shows us more and more of its warmth and colour…

When in Invercargill, Bluff is not far away. Bluff is a little extension south of the city and is, pretty much like Cape Reinga, not the most southern point, but still very close to that…

 

 

I promised the staff that I would come back for this latte. Who wants to join me? 😉

Here I come down from the Bluff Hill Lookout. Those who want to follow my blog further, in the future will be able to decide with me, which Bluff Hill is the ‘better’ in New Zealand. 🙂

And OH, you go through meadows and forests and ALL AROUND there are those little lambs to see! Such precious time of the year, I might just steal one right of the field. 😀

 

 

A little expedition into the rainforest was the visit to the McLean Falls. Nature is just wonderful! I think there is not much more to say about that…

 

 

 

 

Also, the time change has gone through already over here. So from now on, there is a difference of 11 hours to Germany. 🙂