Life goes on as normal
Work, home, friends, family. The routine of everyday life.
It's almost a case of "lights, camera, action!" - I now have vegies in my garden, and lights!
The vegies have been growing happily over the last several months - potatoes, beetroot, spinach, zucchini, cos lettuce, capsicum, carrot and tomatoes. In addition I have some herbs including thyme, basil, parsley, corriander, chives, chamomile and oregano. Some have even popped up a little wild (tomato, potato and oregano)! The beetroot is finished as is the spinach (I'm seeing if the spinach seeds will be useful next season). The tomatoes are going nuts which is providing plenty of salad and sandwich input. Capsicum plants are numerous and the tiniest, cutest fruits are starting now.
Recently my best friend and I installed garden lights (which have been in the boxes for over a year!) and they look awesome!! It really has complemented my hard work in the garden well. No pic at this stage, but I'll try to put something up very soon.
Before all of this though, I did rejuvenate my whole courtyard with new paving. That was an effort - but glad to say I did it all by myself so I feel a real sense of achievement and pride. Unfortunately the cost was more than I expected - my knee was worse for wear and kneeded (hehe) to be operated on - knee arthroscopy. I'll post another blog about that soon.
All I need now is some friends to help me enjoy my garden :-)
Okay okay - I'm slack! What more can I say. It's been a really long time since my last post, but I won't bore you with all the details.
Basically I got back to Oz, started working again at the start of the year, and am now working as an Internal Auditor. A different experience, that's for sure. I have been training new recruits for the local SES unit that I volunteer for, and getting satisfaction out of that. I painted my rental house and am nearly finished with rejuvenating my backyard with paving and a new garden. Compost is setup, lights are still to go and when the weather warms up some vegetables are on the cards.
Life is just plodding along really.
more to come soon...
Ok, what can I say - I'm all travelled out!! and still got two weeks of it left!!
Currently in Prague, but have been to San Francisco, New York, Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, Berchtesgaden, Salzburg, Vienna over the last few weeks. Have seen soooo many places its all a bit of a blur, but I have plenty of photos to remember it all by. The bad part is that with the digicam I have gone a bit crazy with photos so have proly too many - hopefully I can pick some goodies to show ppl.
Only another two weeks till I'm back in OZ and travelling basically the whole time.
Hope I can adjust to life back home well enough...including finding some good work!
As usual, its been far too long since I last wrote in this blog.
At the end of September I went for a day trip to Oktoberfest in Munich. The beer 'tents' are massive temporary tents housing about 6,000 guests and smelling of stale beer and grilled chickens. Not particularly pleasant from that perspective, but each tent was grandly decorated. Each tent is presented by a different beer brewery and decorated in a particular theme. Apart from the beer tents, there were plenty of other food stands and heaps of rides. A bit like the Melbourne Show, just 10 times bigger! Of course there were thousands of people there too. Every few minutes I would hear Aussie voices somewhere...and wander off in the other direction. I was warned they can be dangerous and make you get spastically drunk ;-)
After seeing the fest, I took a walk into the centre of town. I wanted to see the Glockenspiel at the Munich Town Hall, and of course with my luck the Town Hall was under renovation so the Glockenspiel was not completely visible, nor did it work properly. There was no sound...ie no Glockenspiel - just he movement of the figures in the clock. Bit disappointing. What was very nice though was the walk I took through the Englischer Garten (English Garden) which is meant to be the biggest city park in Germany. It was a fantastic day with blue sky and sunshine, about 20 degrees and autumn colours in full swing.
Last weekend I took a trip to London to visit some friends for a few days. That was awesome. I saw plenty of the usual sights, including the London Eye - expensive but a great view. The highlight of the weekend was seeing my friends, and seeing the musical "We Will Rock You".
This week has been spent with Dad visiting his old workplace and where he used to live a few years ago. The last couple of days were spent visiting friends in Regensburg.
Tomorrow I go with Dad in a hire car to visit various relatives all over the south of Germany over the coming week. Then I'm off to the USA for a wedding of one of my best friends - that's in San Francisco. 10 Days in San Fran, then a few in New York before heading back to Europe for three weeks and then back to Oz. It'll be a busy few weeks, but I'm looking forward to it all.
Can't wait to see my family and friends again soon too.
Again its been a while since my last entry.
After visiting my cousin in Berlin (last entry) I went with my aunt/uncle/cousins to Zillertal in Austria. There we collected wild mushrooms called "Pfifferlinge"....and cooked them up with roast deer meat....yum yum yum!
Last four weeks have been spent basically working and going to school. I've now finished my German courses and probably get about 10% of the language right!! At least my German has improved heaps and I can write an email or letter and have a conversation without too much drama. The grammar still isnt the best, but hey - cant have everything ;-)
As part of our last German course, every Friday afternoon we would go on an excursion/outing. We have been to the Fembohaus (a museum about Nürnberg), Felsenkeller (underground tunnels under Nürnberg where they used to collect water and store beer and vegetables), Lochgefängnise ("hole jails" - basically cells under the old council building where prisoners were held during the middle ages), and a nature walk up a local hill with an old tower on the hill. Each outing was coupled with a beer drinking session which was loads of fun.
Work is still pretty good, except now that the weather is getting cooler and the leaves are changing colour, I will get less work. Basically when its too cold or raining the beergarden isnt open, so I dont need to be there.
Went out drinking with my 2nd cousin the other day. Only had about 5 or 6 beers in about 2 hours, which was enough to give me a stomach ache the next day. In any case it was good to finally catch up with my cousin because we've been wanting to do it for the last four months but never found a mutually suitable time.
Tomorrow is my birthday (although as I type this it is already my birthday back home in Oz) and I am invited to lunch with some school pals, and then dinner with my cousin and his girlfriend. I'm looking forward to a lovely day.
Next on the cards is more German grammar practice, local museums, swimming, visiting relos, London, USA, Austria, Czech Republic. So plenty to do in the next couple of months before I'm back home....and looking for work.
