Entries by Merten

Finally, the oven got installed, just in time for the cold days to come. Just the reindeer skin missing to curl up in front of the fireplace

While our heating starts to make you feel as if you were in the tropics, we still used the Sunday to get the first paint into our utility room, before even more technical appliances start to fill up the walls...

Our staircase got installed on Thursday. It is not yet finished, but much nicer than the ladders we used before!

Guess what we found on Saturday, when we checked our mail - eastereggs from the building company. I think they look nice together with the sample stone from our future roof:

Also it seems the Easter bunny visited our construction site, where the surveyors already set the first markers for the earth works which start Tuesday:

So happy Easter to everybody, the next months will be very exciting And before this exhausting time starts, we used the nice Spring days to explore some first bits of our new home and explored the vast apple and cherry orchards, on skates of course.

So, we are back from our little trip for quite some time now. But the photo album is not yet started... as we are fully occupied by our next life changing experience - building our own house. The last weeks were crazy with finding a building company, contracting, planning, selection of stones, roof, colors, tiles, kitchen, ... and we are quite a way already.

So next week, works will start on this section of dirt, which will be our future home!

Yes, we do have the first bit of our garden already I just hope the company who sold the land will take care to water these bushes in the first summer.

Watch this space for updates on our progress and the little "catastrophes" encountered along the way.

So, we are back from the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Actually already 24 hours ago, but we were a little too tired to look though the pictures and post ...

Some quick facts on the trip:

Total distance hiked: 19.4 km
Total climbing: 800 meters
Total descent: 1100 meters
Time spent on the hike incl. breaks: 8 hours

The Alpine crossing is basically a oneway mountain pass, that goes between the summits of two volcanoes, so we booked a bus shuttle to take us to the start and back home. Once in a while the weather was perfect for us, and the many many others that were hiking it as well...

After some tough climbing, including the "Devil's staircase", the scenery and surroundings were stunning. But the hardest bit was the long descent, we were quite happy to be down again. So we are looking forward to spring and some good old skating on flat North German roads!!!

After two nights in a superb B&B with our hosts Margret & Kenneth, we are now near New Plymouth in the "Villa Heights", hosted by Rosemary & John. This is a 1900 Victorian villa, and also very nice.

Pictures show us up on the main plateau with "Mount Doom" aka Mount Ngauruhoe, some of our many co-hikers at the "Emerald lakes" and the steep (!) descent from the crater, look for the small coloured dots!

We are only here for a week, and already we have seen so many things. Today we had a glimpse at the wild life and got within a few metres of wild penguins and sea lions!

This is the main attaction of local city of Dunedin, which does not look too nice, but has a few more things to offer like the Cadbury chocolate factory which we will tour tomorrow morning Also the hotel is nice and has a washing machine in the room, so we could do some laundry as well. Tomorrow we will continue further north for a second attempt to see Mount Cook (maybe with no rain, as we will be camping the first two nights of this trip...)

Sorry for not updating in a while. Something still unknown crashed the site, and only a full re-upload could repair it. No idea what happened, it was not us definitely.

Anyway, our trip along the Southern Alps was marked by loads of rain, which meant no panoramas yet interesting driving conditions...

Today, upon leaving this region the weather improved, so at least we got a glimpse at what we should have seen the past few days as well:

 For all our endurance sports friends - apparently cycling around here is also quite common. But watch out that your front tires do not get trapped, when our Kiwi friends put up this sign:

Today is our first day on New Zealand. Actually we arrived yesterday but were too tired to see much. Gladly we are coming back to Christchurch later during our trip to get a better impression of the city - yesterday we only got to the icecream-van in the park

Well, today we started our journey towards the west coast of the south island. Crossing the "Arthur's Pass" was quite impressive. We did two nice short walks to start with where we got an impression of the plants living in the Southern Alps. We also got to know the animals quite well - in this region you find a lot of "Kea"-birds. They are not shy at all towards people - we had to watch out that they do not tear our small red car into pieces, as they are really fond of tires, wipers, and the radio antenna *oops*

Midnight fireworks and dragon / lion parade on new year's day...

The trip has started! We are now in Hong Kong and have spent the first full day. After a quite pleasant flight the first tired and jet-lagged evening was harsh, but now we have already settled in! Our hotel room has a panoramic view over most of the bay. Yesterday we literally climbed on the "Victoria Peak" where you have a stunning view over the city.

Next to the views we also started to spend some cash, and made first contact with proper Chinese cuisine

Today, Hong Kong will celebrate a huge New Year "Countdown" with fireworks launched from the skyscrapers. Something that we will definitely not miss. We never imagined to celebrate the New Year in a temperature of 23°C - this feels more like summer not like 31st of December! So to all of you "guten Rutsch" and take care!

Well, now that the Christmas days are past us, let's get ready to depart. We'll take the next two days to ready all the small bits like currency cheatsheet (powered by OANDA.com, great site), packing list, last shopping, etc etc.

Fingers crossed the weather will not cause us any trouble leaving Europe. Hong Kong already has 20° forecasted, so this will be a nice start to warmer climates.

 Any friends in London, if you want to wave at us passing through Heathrow, let us know But we'll have only about two hours for transfer, so it'll really be waving, nothing more.

Kind of an informal entry to see if this blog and Facebook integration are still working. But watch this space for updates again, as Michi and me will be posting news from our world trip here!

Stay tuned from 28th december