Another one bites the dust

Hey everyone,
Well in two days time we will have been over here a whole year! In many ways I can't believe it has been a whole year already, but in others I really feel that a long period has past! Only two weeks now until we head home to renew our visas - I can't wait!

Thinking about it today, we have done a lot in just a year, however in many ways we have just scratched the surface. I remember thinking as we left NZ I wonder how much I will change after a year or so overseas. I think I have definitely changed, my views on the world, being a kiwi etc have all become clearer, and I feel that I understand a whole lot more now. I know that probably sounds cheesy, and it is pretty hard to explain. As a kiwi I have always been extremely patriotic, but when you are overseas this lifts to a whole new level. But in saying this, you also learn things about what it means to be a kiwi - ie we are extremely laid back, we are multi-skilled, hardworking and we are very good at thinking outside of the square, these are a few traits that come to mind - oh and being friendly!! However there are also some less attractive traits that we possess ie being narrow minded (this includes those of you that haven't been outside of NZ and OZ or you north islanders that haven't even been to the Sth Is!) and not fighting for good causes (ie just letting an issue go instead of fighting for it).

It has also been cool to see how other countrys do things ie Dutch cycling everywhere, public transport, the huge push for sustainable development here in the UK etc.

In many ways it makes me want to make NZ better - I want to invest what I have learnt back into NZ (however I am now starting to understand why Kiwis are immigrating to OZ - because my attitude has previously been - Australia - Nah, its full of Australians!!) Haha.
But seriously a huge issue for NZ at the moment is that people in my age group just aren't returning to NZ because there aren't enough opportunities or well paying jobs for us. I believe we should all do an OE, don't get me wrong, but there should also be something more than family enticing us home again afterwards. I say this, however knowing that I will definitely come home to NZ when I have cured myself of this travelling bug, but there are a lot of kiwis my age that don't feel the same about coming home to NZ. I read an article recently that said Australians get paid 50% than Kiwis! Go figure!

I think I am yet to encounter a second stage of learning/changing, and that will be coming home to visit, for example you idealise NZ in your head as being this wonderful paradise - my brother reckons when he went to Japan, the whole year he said things like "well in NZ that would never happen, things are so much better at home" etc etc, but when he got in to Auckland airport he got chosen at random by customs to have his luggage searched, and he was like "Grrr maybe annoying stuff does happen in NZ"
So it will be interesting to see how my impressions of home have changed/been altered.

Anyway thats enough of a rant and rave about that! Bev and I have made a mega list of all the things we want to do whilst home. Calling into a service station for a pie after being picked up from the airport will be one of the first things haha! Oh and going to the Mt, I am so hanging out for the beach - I don't care that it won't be summer - I just want to spend some time at the beach! Aw and hanging out with my Kitty I so can't wait to see my little ball of fluff!

Last weekend we went camping in the New Forest which was really cool - except for the shite weather! It poured with rain on our train journey to Brockenhurst, and then when we arrived at the campsite, there were giant puddles on all of the sites!(although this served us well as we could see where all the low lying areas and dips were because of the giant puddles that had formed there). So we had to pick very carefully where we were going to pitch our tents (Dee and Mark came with us). The New Forest has semi wild ponies running around freely which is really cool, they just randomly walk through the camping ground, the small village high street, everywhere! We awoke both mornings with a start, to a horse neighing very nearby! The horses are owned by commoners (haha that's the word the taxi driver used! Only in the UK!), and basically they just round the horses up once a year to count the number of foals that have been born, and check their health. So people basically own these animals to set them free - kind of an odd concept, but quite nice at the same time.

After arriving Friday night, we went out for dinner at a very cute pub. On the Saturday morning it was still raining, so we walked into town, and found a nice cafe to hang out and play cards in until the rain cleared. We then went for an extremely enjoyable 15km walk through the New Forest, seeing plenty of horses, wild deer etc on our way - very nice and relaxing.
Then on Sunday we just packed up and headed back to London - all in all a very nice weekend away, and we were very lucky that our tents proved to be very waterproof given the weather! The only soggy part of our weekend was us, as we kept getting wet when we left the shelter of our tents! So much for camping in an English summer! I had to laugh though, because all of the girls at the camping ground had Wellies (gumboots for us Kiwis) except they weren't your standard red bands, they were pink with little love hearts and butterflies and girly things like that on them! Haha it would be funny to buy a pair and come home and get a job at LIC or AgResearch and turn up to a farm trial wearing some British wellies! I don't even think the animals would take me seriously! :o)

On Wednesday night we went and saw the Feelers - it was really cool, and I even got to shake James' hand! The sad thing is James looks like he's aged 20 years, since putting on weight and now that he is balding - he made us feel really old! The worst bit was we decided to catch the night bus home (tubes stop running at 12.30am) but we just missed the bus we needed and the next one wasn't for another 45min so we got another random bus, and then walked some of the way, so it took us ages to get home - on a school night! The trials and tribulations of using public transport!

This weekend is just a quiet one, this morning I watched the All Blacks collect the Tri Nations title (GO AB's!!) - I was standing next to these Brits who came in somewhere around half time, and they were egging on OZ cos most of us at the pub were Kiwi, just to wind us up(that's what they said - kinda like a soliloquy in a play). Which reminded me of that horrid World cup quarter finals match when the Brits were all supporting France, because they had all placed bets on France winning! Grr that made me so mad esp since the Brits can't stand the French! So when we won today (I was trying to think of something clever to say to them - like "do you even know what a try is, and no I don't mean a drop kick", but I just said "and that is how it's done!" and then left - haha they looked a bit taken back by that - either that or they didn't understand a word I said haha, wouldn't surprise me!).

We so often get mistaken for Aussies over here, it drives me insane! I helped out this women at the tube station the other day (I get so frustrated with how unhelpful everyone is here, so I always make a point of helping someone if I see it's something I can easily help with ie which tube line to take - cos it would have been so helpful if someone had done that for me when I was a newbie, and I am proud to be a friendly Kiwi - so if they go away thinking wow Kiwi's are nice, I have done something good for the world, anyway I helped this lady the other day, and afterwards I thought uh oh, that lady was probably thinking dam those Aussies are helpful haha! But after thinking that, I thought this could probably go the other way too, and if I am rude to someone, they will probably think "those aussies are so rude!" :o)

Bev is currently off playing cricket somewhere and I am starting to contemplate packing up all of our stuff (but as you can see I found a valid distraction).

So that is about all of our news for now! We have 8 more days of work to get through and then a bit of packing and then home! YAY!
See you soon!

Lots of Love
Jam

Rain Rain Go Away

Hey Everyone,

Man we are getting so slack at keeping you up to date! Hopefully this blog will fill in most of the gaps!
We have been doing so many things, even though we have been trying to save lately as we have recently found out that the new changes to the visa we need to apply for to remain in the UK for up to three years requires us to come home to NZ to apply! Whilst it will be really great to come home to NZ, it is such a pain, as we could have spent the money we will now have to spend on coming home going somewhere we haven’t been before! However, we really can’t wait to go home and see our families, Jessy kitty and friends :o)

We fly home on the 28th Sept, and will be home at least a month.

So this is what we have been up to anyway:

Leeds castle
The day our kiwi friends headed off to Spain, we decided to do something a bit more exciting ourselves, so we headed out to Leeds Castle – a castle that we had been meaning to visit for ages. It was a really great day out, (except the argument that we had had with the train ticket booth lady about whether we could go out to Leeds castle that day or not – turns out we knew what we were talking about!). Anyway, we got to Leeds castle just in time for the Falconry display which was fantastic to watch. Leeds castle is the first castle we have been to with a moat (and although not very exciting inside the castle as it is all restored), the grounds are fantastic, and it was a great chance to escape busy London for a quiet, peaceful and quaint village in Kent (South East of London). We really cherish these days when we can get out of London, as you feel yourself totally relax!

Jam at Leeds Castle

The falconry display at Leeds Castle

We went to the Phantom of the Opera with a group of friends - however I was quite disappointed by this show - definitely my least favourite show that we have been to. I don't quite know why I found it so disappointing - perhaps it was our seats (quite far away) or just the story line of the show. Anyway we enjoyed a good night out afterwards so that was good.

Ben and Jerrys
Some of you may not know, but Ben and Jerry’s is a delicious ice cream brand made in America, however I think it does pretty well here in England too. As it was their 30 birthday, they decided to hold a festival, which our kiwi friends invited us to, with a great twist – all you can eat Ben and Jerry’s ice cream!! We went in with an excellent tactic – eat the ice cream but throw away the cone so that you can eat more ice cream, except Bev was quite taken with the taste of the cones too……..haha.
Lets just say we won’t be eating Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for awhile – it is a lot richer and creamier than tiptop. The day was an extraordinarily hot day – so perfect for eating icecream, and they had some great British bands playing too. I even got sunburnt - shock horror!

Bev getting Hen pecked at the Ben and Jerry's festival! (they weren't very happy when he told them he was eating a chicken sandwich!)

Greenwich
Bev and I decided to check out Greenwich before church a couple of weekends ago. It was really cool, investigating a new area of London, walking through a tunnel that goes under the Thames, and trying tasty food at the Greenwich markets. However the highlight of my day was mocking Bev because he keeps referring to Greenwich as Green Witch, and then he was talking about this thing called the Cutty Shark that he had no idea about – until I told him it was the Cutty Sark and it was a ship! Haha. Unfortunately, we ran out of time so we didn't get to see the Maritime museum but we will have to go back and see this another time.

Bev in the tunnel under the Thames River

Greenwich looking towards Canary Wharf (where Bev works)

A cute squirrel - I watched it pick this muffin wrapper out of a rubbish bin and then cleverley eat all of the crumbs off it (far more sophisticated than Steve Harcourt eating the whole thing)

Bev’s Birthday
For Bev’s birthday last week, after a refreshingly lazy sleep in, I surprised him with a trip to the British Wildlife Centre which was about an hour out of London (it is surprising how many places you can find within an hours train ride of London). I thought our plans might have been thwarted by bad weather, however it stayed fine for all bar 2mins of our day out so that was great. The wildlife centre was really cool, it had British wildlife – just as the name suggests! So we got to see foxes up close, a badger, owls, polecats, otters, stoats and weasels (its hard to appreciate these since they are such mongrels in NZ).

We also got to finally see a red squirrel – so cute and ginger! (they have been displaced largely by the american grey squirell) But it was so sad we almost wish we hadn’t – as they were showing terrible repeat behaviours (it sux to be an animal behaviourist sometimes!). We then came home and quickly got ready to go out for dinner with a bunch of friends at a posh thai restaurant overlooking the Thames in Putney – very nice!

Eastbourne camping
This weekend we enjoyed two nights camping in Eastbourne (1.5hrs train trip from London South East) with Bev’s cousin and fiancée. It was so nice to get out of London and go somewhere different. We were quite worried about the weather as it was forecast for heavy showers(have you noticed that this is a theme of this blog), but it was fine during the day, and only rained at night. This was fine as we had borrowed a tent from Bev’s workmate, and it had an excellent fly on it – so no soggy camping! YAY! We were deeply disappointed though, as my workmate had told me they had sand at the beach we were staying at, but no, just more awful pebbles! However it was so nice to just chill, go out for a yummy breakfast, investigate our new surroundings, and walk down to an airshow that was on. As soon as we got to Eastbourne we just totally relaxed – ahhh.

Randon tidbits:

London has the grossest largest slugs ever – seem to be quite a few around at the moment ewww!
You have to look at it twice to see whether it is a dog poo or a slug – that’s how big they are! No wonder their wildlife do so well over here!

I don’t recommend being in a country that is not your own when an Olympics is on – because all you hear about is how wonderful the country you are in thinks they are! Grrrr, especially when your own country has no medals for the first week of the Olympics! You won’t believe how much crap I got about that! However, my faithful American friend greeted me enthusiatically this morning to inform me that we had five medals!

I have worked out why the Brits are always so pasty white – summer doesn’t exist in the UK –so far we may have had a month of nice weather(made up of a few days in early may, a few in july and that’s about it!) – The rest have been grey overcast days and rain. Don’t come here if you want a summer!


Anyway that's about all our news - we hope to see heaps of you when we are home in NZ!

Will try to do at least one more blog before we head home.......only 6 weeks to go! (and counting)


Lots of Love
Jam and Bev

In the Summertime.....

Hi all,

It’s been a while! Summer is well and truly here. We’ve have some fantastic British summer days and some not so fantastic British cloudy drizzly days. We have been so insanely busy! But that’s how it is over here in summer, being out and about with so many things to do, and being invited to so many things too…have got to cut down on spending!

I have been busy sport wise; I’ve been loving the cricket and hockey 7’s in England. There is something pleasant about being in England and playing Cricket, it’s nice to get away from the crowds and going to a beautiful open park with well established trees and bush and spend some time in the sun chasing a ball around. We have also been hauling ourselves out of bed too early (by our standards) to watch the All Blacks’ play on Saturday mornings…well worth it when we win though!

The week after we were in Berlin, we have had my parents come over for 2 weeks (start of June). They arrive tired with barely any sleep on the flight, and also arrived with a full suitcase of chips and biscuits from NZ! Hong Kong customs questioned why they were taking so much food towards the UK. It was interesting to see my parents’ initial reactions to life in London. They initially said that they could not believe how green the place was and how many brick houses there were here. We ended up going to Chinatown for dinner on the day they arrived, because my uncle arrived on the same day to visit his mate in Manchester. However, it was rush hour when we headed back after dinner. The look on dads face was classic when a guy squeezed into the tube next to him…I’m guessing he didn’t believe anyone could fit into that space! They had to learn quickly to hop on and off the tube very quickly too, else they would have been at the next tube stop on their own without realising it!

This gave us a chance to see more of London ourselves too. They got to see the usual London sights: Buckingham palace, Big Ben/Westminster, a ride on the London Eye, Tower of London, Hampton court, Thames boat ride, and we attempted to show them some vege markets….but we were horribly late and got lost. Their favourite place was Chinatown, where they hung out most of the time!

Bev's parents outside Westminster - Big Ben in the background

At Hampton Court with a dressed up lady

We then took them to Paris for a long weekend, because we wanted to show them that in a small amount of distance, there is a huge difference in Western cultures here, ie. Food, lifestyle, and language. We also wanted to show them another country too, as they had come such a long way. We took them to the usual tourist places including Eiffel tower, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, a French perfume shop, a boat ride on the Seine, Arc De Triomphe, and the Latin Quarter for dinner. We tried to convince them that French food was really top notch, but it was not to their tastes, a lot of the food was too creamy.

Us all at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower

Behind the shoulder of the portrait artist, drawing Bev's dad (sitting in background left of photo)

We ended up tiring them with massive walks to see sights, something that Jam and I have gotten use to. But we did have one relaxing morning in Montmarte in a courtyard of portrait artists. We soaked up the relaxing atmosphere, and while Jam and I got caricatures, Mum and Dad got a portrait done. Afterwards we enjoyed delicious crepes and an ice cream. Mum and Dad thought Paris was really beautiful, and enjoyed some of the quirky French characters. However, they did not enjoy Gypsies.

When we arrived back into London, my parents went up to visit my uncle in Manchester. When they got there, they discovered that the Chinatown was not as good as London, so they came back earlier. Overall, it was nice to have them here and show them a bit of our life in London.

Two weeks after my parents left, myself and a group of guys and gals form my hockey club went to Lille for a Hockey tournament, in France. All I got to say is: what goes on tour stays on tour, and that’s all I got to say about it…..nah, kidding. We were an invitational team of 29 teams - 27 were French, 1 Belgium team, and we were the only “English” team – and me, the only Southern Hemisphere person of the lot. A friend in our club in London is a French guy who belongs to a club in Lille, who organised us to go to his French club for the tournament. This was pretty exciting going on tour to another country, especially of one of a different language. It was a great laugh for both myself and the French people I bumped into because of the language barrier and we both were a novelty to each other. Personally it was the best trip I’d ever been on. There is something really fun about turning up to a foreign speaking country, playing your favourite sport, enjoying the atmosphere of the music and sun, a bit of dress up, and really teaming up to stick it to the foreigners! Lille was a bit different to Paris, it was hard to find someone who spoke English.

Tarzan with his modern day axe

Wimbledon
On a perfect Tuesday evening during the annual Wimbledon tennis tournament, we decided to check out what the excitement was all about. We headed in after work to get cheap tickets to watch a game on court 1. We enjoyed watching the quaint etiquette of the ball handlers and pomp and ceremony of the umpires. It was a fantastic afternoon to bask in the late sun, and enjoy a very Posh British event of strawberries and cream, and Pimms. It was very amusing that every steward/ticket person/souvenir shop worker/food outlet person had a very proper posh accent. We found this very amusing because Wimbledon is only 5 minutes down the road, and we found a population of posh people pretty much next door. We found it so convenient to travel to the event down the road, because it’s probably the only place/event we’ve managed to commute to that was well below the 45minute average mark.

Strawberries and cream whilst watching Wimbledon Tennis

A few weeks on, some more kiwi mates arrived to stay with us for a week. They had been doing Turkey, Italy and Greece for the last 3 months and were here to kick off his UK visa. Their introduction to the UK was quite funny: firstly the Monopoly pub crawl the day after they arrived. And 2ndly experience of what happens when you make eye contact with tube commuters – big butch dude says to his bull dog “what’s that guy staring at!?”. The pub crawl was organised by the TNT magazine, Kiwi/Aussie/Saffa (short for Sth Africa) travel magazine. We went around 10 pubs located on the British Monopoly board. Our kiwi mates and us dressed up as cops and robbers, and a dice. We were quite disappointed that not many others got dressed up and that we didn’t get any photos of us in the magazine! But it was a great day out. With a bit of kiwi ingenuity in my costume, I was mistaken many times for a real police officer! Haha, I think I missed my calling! I made a stack of go to jail cards, to which Jam had heaps of fun handing out, especially when we walked through a market, bumping into a guy selling pirated DVDs! Jam handed him a go to jail card, which he accepted surprisingly gracefully! LOL!

A force to be reckoned with!

We’ve had a few good BBQs since the weather has warmed up, learning the difficult art of coal BBQs! It’s a horrible memory of how much of a contrast winter is every time I spot my coat hanging on the back of the door (it’s so thick it can stand up by itself!), and how we had to armour up in gloves and a warm hat!

It’s also been nice waking up at 5 (every second week I have to do an early shift for my job) with full day light and still having light right up to 10pm…..WOOOHOO! An extra few hours of light to play with. You really enjoy going out to the parks in the evening….I never thought I’d enjoy going to a park so much before! But it’s because of the well established trees that make it, and also the open green spaces are a contrast to the concrete jungle we live in. Although we have posted on our blog for so long, the amount of daylight is starting to fade. It was at its peak at the end of June, but is still the middle of summer. We’ve been for a couple of walks to explore the greater Putney area and now have discovered how swanky Putney really is! We discovered Auckland waterfront like bars and restaurants in the area….and wow!

So as you can see we've been pretty busy! Will try and get our next blog out soon!
Lots of love
Bev and Jam

Beer garden Berlin

Beer Garden....mmmmm

Sooooo Berlin - as you can tell from the title, we discovered the German beer garden! Aw we so want to have one of our own! Think hot summers night, social hub, tables and chairs, relaxing outside under big established trees and stars, drinking nice German beer and eating good food - convinced? I hope so!

FRIDAY

We took Friday off work - the day began crazily early, at 4.00am! We had to walk to find a night bus to get us to the meeting point for our tour. We then travelled to Stansted airport (approx an hour out of London), then flew to Berlin. We arrived to a sweltering 30 degree heat and soaked every minute of it up - the weather was just perfect for the whole weekend, heaven for the flagging vitamin D levels.

We knew we had flown in to Germany immediately - as we saw a guy at the airport with one of those classic german moustaches - you know the ones that are greased and rubbed together at the ends to form a straight point! Wish we'd asked him for a photo with us!

Once in Berlin we were met by a bus, and we toured around Berlin on this for about 2.5hrs or so. In this time we went to the Olympic Stadium - where we learnt that it was actually Hitler who instigated the whole running through different countries with the Olympic torch thing!

Us at Berlin Stadium

Jam at the Berlin Wall

We also saw heaps of the Berlin wall, and were shown round a number of sights. However, given the ridiculous hour we had woken up, our tour guides lulling voice soon had me nodding off :o)

Feeling extremely tired (and hungry) we checked into our hotel room, and made plans with our kiwi friends (we had met them on our Paris trip and organised to come on this trip with them). We decided that all we could handle was finding the beer garden - given the gorgeous heat and weather. So we traded our London woollies - ie jeans and sweatshirts for shorts and t shirts and ventured into town. We started with a kebab nearby our hotel - and did you know that the Doner kebab was created by Germans?? There are heaps of turkish food shops in Germany, and we were mighty pleased to discover that food is really reasonably priced in Berlin - made a nice change from Londons atrociously overpriced slops.

It was so nice to relax in the sun at the beer garden, and after a beer and some nice cake (strawberries set in red jelly on top of a shortcake base) we had replenished our energy levels.
The beer garden is situated in 300 acres of park (half my parents farm!) and it was so nice walking through all the established trees - until we happened upon a naked guy showering -(think outdoor shower like at the beach - except no togs) haha yep, one side of the park is dedicated to nudey sun bathing - heterosexual, and the other side is nudey sunbathing homosexual - further up is family bbq section - not to be mixed up!

Any, once our eyes had recovered we carried on to see a few famous Berlin sites, including "Chick on a stick" - or Golden Angel (pictured below),

the Brandeburg gate(pictured below),

a Soviet Memorial (made by the Soviets before the Allies arrived in Berlin at the end of WWII, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (pictured below).

We then decided after all that walking it was time to have some dinner, and a good opportunity to try the German sausage - or worst (pictured below left - Bev ordered a supposed meat loaf - which just turned out to be a ham steak!).

SATURDAY

The next morning after sleeping like babies, we went on a Bunker tour, which was located at the underground station closest to our hotel - very handy. It was really interesting to learn the history (as both Bev and I are very unhistoried), and I think the most interesting bit was that this wasn't from the Jewish perspective - the bunkers were made for nazi's to hide in from the bombings. I could talk about this for ages, but it was pretty interesting! Also learning how much the Germans measured - to work out how many people they could fit seated on stools in one room they worked out that the average length of the seated persons bum to knee length is 54cm.

After this we travelled to the Jewish museum -which I found incredibly interesting/moving. It had heaps of stories about Jewish families and random facts about them and their families trials and tribulations, and the most sobering of all - how many out of their family survived.

After this we headed into the centre for some lunch, and found a nice restaurant near to some monuments we wanted to see. From here we decided to try and find a tea house that our guide had pointed out on our bus tour, and successfully found it. This was very relaxing, it was turkish styles - so everyone sat on the floor on cushions and totally veged out for an hour or so.

(see picture evidence below)

The Berliner Dom (Church)

After this refreshing break we went and saw the Berliner Dom(see above) - a really cool Cathedral, then checked out the Reichstag(see below) - very cool parliament building with an awesome glass dome at the top, which you can walk up and get a nice view of the city.

The Reichstag - Parliament building with dome at the top

Overly enthusiastic Pretzel seller - Bev and I totally wet our selves laughing at this guy for ages! (still didn't buy a pretzel from him though - they taste yuck!)

At the top of the dome, you can lie down and look out the hole at the top at the sky - very relaxing especially when you have walked 10km in one day.....zzzzzzzz!

Bev and I at the top of the Reichstag dome

From here we walked back to the Beer garden

The four of us gaining a second wind thinking about the beer garden and a yummy dinner

for a relaxing evening of more German beer, yummy as pizza's made on a kind of naan bread and half a marinated chicken mmmmm! Yum.

Bev and Corey

The two Suzanne's (we hadn't meant to be name, hair colour and clothes colour co-ordinating!)

An attempt at capturing the awesome atmosphere in the beer garden!

On our way back to the hotel from here were saw a movie set that had been set up around the Chick on a stick - they had film crew and big commercial lights all set up - our tour guide said that a lot of movies get filmed in Berlin, because it can look like London, and more modern cities all in the one location. (see picture below)

SUNDAY
On Sunday, our feet were nearly ready to drop off, so it was a perfect time to go on a bike tire of Berlin. This is probably the second most highlight of the Berlin trip (after the beer garden), as again the weather was great, it was so relaxing riding around a flat city - and you can get everywhere so much faster on a bike than you can walking! We worked out that we had walked at least 10km the previous day - so no wonder our legs weren't working anymore!
We had this really cool tour guide on our bike ride - he was a german guy that had spent a few years in America, so he had the whole Californian beach bum thing going on, but was extremely good at relaxing and entertaining. Our favourite bit was his descriptions of what the Soviets decided to do with East Germany. He always gave two options for us to choose from. Option number 1 (this would always be something sensible) and Option number 2 - blow it up and concrete it over.....which one do you think the Soviets chose....Option number 2!

After this we had to quickly make our way back to our hotel to meet our tour group to go to the airport and fly back to London.

So overall what did we think of Berlin?

Berlin was really cool - it is the first city (that I Jam) actually thought - "I could live here" - after talking to my dad about this he wonders that is because my paternal great grandparents were from Germany/Poland and perhaps it is one of those random sensing where your roots are from moments - so am not sure??
We really like the size of Berlin - 3 million people, meant that there weren't the huge London crowds etc. Lots of old monuments mixed with new buildings, and cheap food. Not to mention the weather and the beer garden!!

What random things can we mention about it?
They have these really cool little men as symbols for the pedestrian crossing lights in Berlin
We found the Germans extremely friendly, we were asked if we needed help no less than three times when Germans saw us stumped looking at the map - pretty impressive considering this hasn't happened in any of the other countries we have been to - Egypt, Netherlands and Paris.

We found that the Germans weren't very eager to speak English to us - perhaps even more reluctant than the French, however we also found that a lot of them couldn't speak very much English anyway - a stark contrast to the Dutch who happily flicked between the two languages for us, and the French who are happy to if you try some French first - perhaps the Germans would have like us to try speaking in German first??

The only downside of Berlin is that it is a swamp - it therefore has bad swampy smells that you get a hint of every now and then - but at least it has a natural excuse for bad smells - London just smells!

To keep Berlin free of swamp water, it has heaps of unsightly above ground water pipes - really strange.

The Germans love David Hasslehoff - he is more famous in Germany for his singing than his role in Baywatch haha!

Berlin is basically bankrupt (hence the reasonable price of food) - it is still recovering from the wars, and the inequality that was created between East and West Berlin. And because of the East-West split that Berlin had, there is no real centre to the city as there is two of everything ie two town halls etc.

Anyway thats about all there is to say about that! Now we just have to catch you up on our 2nd Paris trip - watch this space!
Lots of Love
Jam and Bev

Dossing Kiwis

Hey Everyone,
Sorry for being so crap and not writing blogs more often - it's not for the lack of stuff to write about! It is merely just having the time to jot them down!
The few months have been extremely full on (so different from the first few months we spent here).
As we already briefly mentioned before, our Kiwi friends who had been in China came to doss (sleep on our couch - there's a special word for it cos so many kiwis and aussies do it here) at our house. After a week Mark had to head back to NZ to get his visa sorted, so we just had Mess staying. It was so nice having another kiwi friend to do things with - esp when she is your best girlfriend from home! Being the perfect house guest she even had dinner ready for us when we came home from work - what a dream! It was nice watching her be excited about the things that we had been excited about when we first got here, and also help her with the hard bits that we had been through too.

Mark is now back from NZ, and now have a flat all set up. We hope to do heaps more with these guys - it makes such a huge difference to how you enjoy a place when you can share your experiences with good friends.

Land of the Giants

Bev at Schiphol Airport - Amsterdam

On Thursday evening we left London City airport – a small airport only minutes from our workplaces, and stress free compared to Heathrow! We flew into Amsterdam, all excited looking down on the Canals and seeing the beach coastline….and thinking that we were going to land at an airport under sea level! The first thing we noticed was how tall everyone was - yep we'd obviously flown in to the right country :o)

We then noticed that people don’t know how to queue as well compared to the British, as we had to wait for nearly an hour in a disorganised line/mingling groups for our free buses to the hotel. We also noticed on arrival that it stayed light for at least another hour later than London - apparently it doesn't get dark until 11pm in the height of summer - perhaps we should move there!!!

Friday was our first big day out in Amsterdam. The weather was awesome, hot and blue skies. We met with Jam’s good friend from Holland, Naomi, who showed us around and introduced us to some of the most finest bread, cheese and Dutch foods…unlike the Egypt trip, we must of put on 20kg! We checked out Anne Frank’s house (a bit of a sombre experience) and walked down the small canalled streets to enjoy a drink in the sun and tried some yum as Dutch pastries.

We then walked all the way to Van Gogh’s museum to decide not to go in because it wasn’t really a must see for us for the price. We then met another of Jam’s friends from her trip to South Africa in 1999 for a catch up and went for a Canal boat ride, along with Naomi.

Us on the Canal boat ride

Cool old houses built really close together seen from canal boat ride - in Amsterdam

Pretty canal in Amsterdam

Naomi and Jam on the canal boat ride

Enjoying the sun, Jam and Naomi relaxing by the canal

We then checked out some tourist shops,

Jam trying out some Clogs for size - think they're a little big!

bought some cheap sunnies, and then checked out the Red light District. We then settled down in the sun to try some white beer (with the must-have 2 fingers of froth), and tried some Amsterdam old cheese with yum as croquets! We later went to dine out at a quirky restaurant that was called and themed “mums”. They had mismatching plates and cutlery and they had pictures of 100’s of mums decorating the walls.

We travelled via a double-decker train to stay the night in Utrecht. They have very interesting flats in Holland. Because of the population size (about 16 million in a country about the size of NZ), they need to make do with the little space they have. We noticed that the stairs were pretty vertical, like climbing a ladder! In the flat we stayed in, the shower was in the kitchen!

Saturday was a big day out to see the country side of Holland. The weather was again fantastic but even hotter. By left-hand drive car (so weird going the opposite way around round-abouts) we made our way to Keukenhof, a massive park and fields of tulips and other flowers. It was so relaxing in the car seeing the country side of water ways, green paddocks with good conditioned cows and spring lambs, windmills, wind turbines, families of white swans and vertical roads that let canal boats thru!(at one point we were stopped at traffic lights while the road/bridge opened up for some boats to go through). It was amazing seeing the array of saturated colours at the tulip fields, but because of the weather and holidays it was chocka with people!

Road opening up to let boats through on the canal

Gorgeous daffidols and tulips at Keukonhof

Naomi and Jam mocking people who take silly photos amongst the flowers

Endless fields of vibrant red tulips

Classic dutch windmill amongst the tulips

Bev having a cheezy photo amongst the tulips

Hanging out at the beach

We then headed to the beach nearby for a quick look; it’s the first sand beach we have seen since being here! We then went back to Naomi's flat in Wageningen - so interesting to see how students live in another country! Wageningen is such a cute little town/city, very like Palmerston North! Naomis flat was just like any student flat in Palmy, except it was a town house, with vertical stairs! Naomis room was the coolest though, because she had suspended a double bed from the ceiling - a bit like staying in a tree hut, enabling her to have a couch positioned under the bed creating a lounge facility in her room to entertain guests :o) Don't get us started on her crocodile collection!

Sunday was another big day out in the awesome sunshine. This time we headed to the Primate zoo. This was an extremely cool primate zoo as there were no real barriers between you and the animals – so it felt like they weren’t caged in any way. The highlight was little squirrel monkeys who you could actually walk amongst, as they zapped to and fro in the surrounding trees, often scampering right in front of you!

After a day at the zoo, Naomi organised for us to borrow some bikes from her friends, and we rode for about 20mins to a memorial, in remebrance of the soldiers lost in World War II (I think, much like ANZAC day). We then rode back to Naomis flat and went out to a friendly student pub for a few drinks, to listen to a live dutch band.

Jam and Bev riding dutch bikes - crazy kiwi drivers!(It doesn't help matters when the seat is too high so you can't touch the ground!)

The memorial service

Naomi and Jam sampling the Dutch version of Fish and Chips - Sausages and Chips - with curry sauce and mayonaise on your chips.

The next day, Monday (another fantastic day of blue skies!) was a day the Dutch celebrated freedom, following on from the memorial the night before. To celebrate at 12 a big festival started - much like the big day out, but for all ages, and all genres of dutch music. This was all held in Wageningen - town centre. Very cool and lots to see! Unfortunately however we were only able to see a bit of this as we had to catch a train back to Amsterdam to fly out - this meant we missed the parade of WWII vehicles amongst other things.

A couple of random things we noticed/found out about Holland:

Everyone speaks both Dutch and English, and in a matter of seconds can switch between the two in an un-arrogant fashion! We totally loved this because no matter where we were everyone was happy to help us, and could speak our language - unlike in Paris where you have to try speaking (your bad attemps at) French first. However, we did find it hard that when hanging around Dutch people, they all speak in Dutch by default, even though they are around english speakers. It was quite funny that a couple of times people spoke to Jam in Dutch, assuming that she was a local - perhaps it was the blonde hair? Everyone is blonde!

We loved how friendly everyone was - you don't realise how sterile and unfriendly London is, and how used to this you get, until you go somewhere and people that you sit next to on a bus or train start chatting to you! The effect this has on you is astounding - it totally made Jam homesick, and just reminded us what everyone says about kiwis and visiting NZ!

We found it really relaxing spending time surrounded by green, open, flat, paddocks like NZ.

Guys are fined for peeing in the street - so for festivals they have portable (open), urinals!

Their toilets are the same looking ie a seat with a flush box, however on closer inspection they are different as the bottom of the toilet is not all water - when you do your business, it lands on a shelf with no water, and this only moves when you flush into a small area of water at the front of the toilet (not the back u bend we're used to). This means no splash back (yay), but more smelly (bad) and you get a first hand idea at how much you have produced (also bad).

Anyway moving right along.............................

We want to thank Naomi our awesome friend and tourist guide for making our travel easy and fun. The Dutch have the yummiest cheeses ever!

Mmmm dutch cheese

Midget Golf anyone?