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!)
