Ever had one of those days when you get up in the morning, and just for the hell of it, decide you are going to leave the country?  Yeah… that happened the other day…March 6th 2007 to be exact.  Here I was, meant to be planning a holiday to Thailand with Cathy, when out of the blue I decided to go to Germany as well.  I had heaps of holidays up my sleeve this year which the boss wanted me to take.  Finally I am working somewhere where they encourage you to take holidays!  So I booked off all of June, flicked off an email to the family in Hamburg and within hours had a positive reply from them telling me to come and visit.  This has been one of those ‘I’ll get around to it’ holidays for years, so I already had the Lonely Planet guide, and thanks to preparing for Thailand in January, I already have my backpack and other gear, so this trip is actually going to be quite simple.

I last saw my Aunt and Uncle in 1992 when they visited us in Australia, and ever since then I have been promising that I would get around to visiting their country.  Needless to say, they were quite surprised when I sent an email telling them I was coming… and do I speak German?  Nope… and with 12 weeks to departure, and working the shifts we are at the moment, I can not see myself learning anything more than ‘yes’ and ‘no’ before I depart.  I guess I am going to get a crash course when I get there.  Thankfully most of the family speak english!

Auf Widersehen

Cass

March 7th - Today I booked my flights on line, and paid for them.  Everything is fitting together nicely.  I fly from Kalgoorlie to Perth, spend a couple of hours in Perth to get any last minute shopping, then Perth to Singapore.  I opted for a 6 hour stopover in Singapore as I have not been there yet and am sure I could amuse myself in that time.  Then it is off to Frankfurt, where I will catch a train (the train station is attached to the airport.  How conveniant) to Hamburg.  I stay in Hamburg and surrounds for about 3 weeks before I have to start heading home again.  The trip home is the exact opposite of going there.  No special detours and only enough time in Singapore to catch the next plane (thus the choice to spend 6 hours there on arrival).  The fares were much cheaper than I expected.  Less than $3000 for the whole trip from Kalgoorlie to Hamburg and return.  I also purchased my travel insurance on line so am set with that too!

March 8th - Went to Kalgoorlie today and got my international drivers licence.  YAY!

March 12th - I discovered Commonwealth Bank Travellers Money… a card I can purchase Euro’s on and use in their ATM’s… How easy is that?  I purchased a couple of thousand Euro and am almost set!

Bis spater… (see you later)

Cass

I can’t believe there is only one week to go… time has flown.  Work has been keeping my mind occupied with plenty of overtime and trips away… Not exactly what you want when you are trying to organise a trip away.  The thing is, that if I need anything for the trip, like re-newing my passport, buying travel stuff etc, that I have to travel at least 200km to get to a town that has these facilities.  I found that out the hard way when I decided to renew my passport before I went on holiday.  I travelled 200km to Esperance, to have them tell me that they can’t do passport applications on that day as their camera was broken… they suggested I go to Kalgoorlie… which from Esperance is 400km… Great…  Fortunately I still have 8 months left on my passport and that was enough for the Germany trip.  I will, however, have to renew it before I go to Thailand… I will cross that headache when I come to it.

Then there was the language thing… I had 12 weeks to learn German. No worries, I thought as I dragged out the dusty cassettes (yes, back when I bought them there were no CD’s! I could almost sell them as antiques now!). Well… I am up to cassette 3 out of 16. That work thing got in the way again and every-time I started to make head way on the language, I got sent bush for a couple of days. It got to the point where I was walking around the office trying to learn, but the guys didn’t appreciate the noise.

Then I tried my new language out on my father… who is German of course. He burst out laughing. Enough said. Last week I got a grudging… “I think they might understand you a bit now, but you better stick to English…”

Then there was that budget thing I was meant to do… Yeah… right. As you can see from the blank entries… no budget. Is this a good thing, I wonder? Perhaps if I really worked out the cost of this trip I would balk and not go!

And did I mention the changing time tables for my flights…. Got to love it when you are trying to juggle everything on the same day. My domestic flight changed, which meant I had to change my international flight as there was no longer enough time between them to get on the plane… that cost another $300 and instead of spending 6 hours in Singapore, I now get two… not to worry. I still land in Germany at the same time and from there nothing has changed. These are all part of the experience of travelling over seas….

I am sure there was other stuff I was meant to do too… like work out how to post photos in the Journal, but time is slipping through my fingers rapidly. I have not thought about packing yet and have only a vague idea of what I will be taking. Fortunately it is summer in Germany. We are four days into winter here and I have had enough of being cold!!

My cats (all four of them!) have been booked into their holiday accommodation and will travel with me on Sunday for the first 200km. The horse has enough feed to last the month and has an excellent carer… The guys at work are looking after the house (they really are sweet!)... All that is left is to organise me…

The relatives are very excited that I am finally visiting them, and have taken holidays so that they can show me around. Fortunately they speak english and will interperet for me I arrive in Frankfurt at 6:00am (German time). I will then take the ICE train to Hamburg - Altona station, which is the closest one to the family. After a quick phone call, they will pick me up and the tour begins. The scary part is that apparently the train is just as fast as the plane…

I am expecting to have plenty of opportunities to sample the amber ale in true Aussie fashion… Ahhh… I can almost taste it now….

Until the next entry… Tschuss (Bye!)

Well, the bags are packed (I hope!) the house is clean, and I just have to round up the four cats and put them in cages to transport them.  The family are ringing me constantly to make sure I have everything…

This is my last entry before I leave the country.  What a week it has been.  Work suddenly became really intense and I was still trying to finish my files yesterday, as well as organise a send off party for my boss…  This has been good, because it has kept my mind off travelling.  Today I got everything organised and now am really excited… Tomorrow I will be on a plane flying out of the country and starting my holiday!  I am pretty nervous about meeting my relatives, and keep wondering if I have learnt enough German to get by, but there is only one way to find out!

I forgot to mention that I absolutely hate flying… minor problem that will be solved with copious amounts of alcohol and the subsequent passing out… heh heh heh…

Well, that is it for now, until I find an internet cafe overseas… stay posted.  The best is yet to come!

Cheers

CJS

I made it… I am sitting in an internet cafe in Hamburg, near the suburb of Altona… I think I have the keybord sussed out now, and if this is the second entry fom here, you have my apologies, but I think I wiped out the first entry somehow, so here is trying again!

The plane trip was long… that is about all I will say.  I don´t like flying at the best of times, and 20 hours in the air was… well… I am sure you have all been there at some stage.

I had no trouble at Frankfurt airport and managed to get through customs and onto the shuttle bus from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 without any problems.  Buying a train ticket to Hamburg-Altona was easy and cost 102 Euro.  I called my Uncle from Frankfurt and told him what time to expect me in Hamburg… This proved to be an interesting conversation as I don´t speak German well and he does not speak English well.  Still we worked it out and my Aunt and Uncle met me at the train station.  They do not live too far from the train station so it was a quick drive to home.  It took four hours by train from Frankfurt to Hamburg.

The afternoon was spent in the Garden block, lazing in the sun.  The weather here is fantastic!  The evening was dinner with a group of friends in one of the gardens.  Everyone has wonderful gardens.  All the apartments have balcony gardens and there are flowers everywhere.  We ordered take away for dinner.  Everyone at dinner spoke a little bit of english so I was not left out of conversations.  People here are very friendly and very polite.

The sun sets at about 10:00pm so it was quite a long day for me.  I had very little sleep on the plane.  By the time I went to bed, I crashed and had a good sleep.

Day 2

The morning started at about 8:00am with breakfast.  My Aunt and I then went for a walk down the street to the markets and the shops.  We were gone for a couple of hours before I felt the first signs of jet lag and needed to return to the house.  After a short recovery, we then ventured down to the harbour and walked along the Elbe river for the afternoon, finishing the walk with Italian ice cream… yum.  Upon returning home, my Cousin, Steffan joined us for dinner and the rest of the evening… It is taking a while to get used to it still being daylight at 10:00pm…

Day 3… today.

I have been left to my own devices for the morning so have come down town again and found the internet cafe… a good bit of luck as there are not that many here and we do not have a computer at home.  It is easy to find your way around here.  Where we are is not the city, but a ´small´suburb.  Everyone speaks at least a little bit of english, so it is not hard to be understood. 

Cass