For those of you who haven't heard and are still diligent enough to be checking this blog... we thought that you might like to know that we are having a baby. Due date is around New Year, so plenty of time to book you all in for baby sitting duties!
xxxr
I know it is a little overdue, but out of regard to those of you who have been diligently following the blog, I have decided to add an entry about our time in Boston….
So, the last leg of our trip away was a stopover in Boston on the way home. Marty had been to Boston some years ago and really liked it and, well, I love Boston Legal… so it all made sense :)
We managed to book ourselves into a very average (actually, probably below average) hostel. We think it is probably a student hostel during the academic year. On the plus side, however, it was very central and we were able to walk most places we wanted to go.
It was very warm in Boston (being mid-summer and all) and we really enjoyed wandering around the city, and particularly enjoyed being near the sea again… hooray! We did the obligatory ‘Freedom Trail’ tour and heard a bit about Boston’s colonial history. Unfortunately, our American history is pretty rubbish and so we had some trouble filling in the gaps for ourselves. Much to Marty’s joy, Boston has an aquarium, so we were able to fill in a morning ogling fish. The aquarium is a seriously popular attraction- there were about 200 people lined up for tickets the first time we tried to go- and there is advertising for it all over town. Despite this, we still think that the Berlin aquarium is far superior. Our friends Josh and Angelika live in Boston so we went for a visit and were treated to Josh’s excellent burgers. One of the real highlights of this trip has been catching up with various friends around the world and it has been really cool to see people who we haven’t seen for some time.
Overall, we had a really great time in Boston. It’s a very accessible city and it’s compact enough to be able to walk around the central city. It’s also a very attractive city- a gorgeous mixture of old and new buildings and history mixed in with development. It’s also by the sea. Did I mention that? There’s just something so fab about cities by the sea…
17 different beds
12 cities / towns (13 for Marty)
3 continents
10 train trips
8 plane flights (10 for Marty)
6 airlines
300km cycling
60kg of luggage (darn laptops and assorted electronic equipment)
69 blog entries
100000000 embarrassing-idiot-I’m-a-tourist-in-a-foreign-country moments
Priceless.
Well, the moment has finally come and we are about to depart Germany. It's hard to believe that we have been here for almost 4 months... So, tomorrow we head off to Boston where we have 4 days to seek out Denny Crane and James Spader and then HOME! Those of you who took my virtual apartment tour may appreciate that we are REALLY looking forward to getting back to our own bed... our beds here have been little more than stretchers and the distance between the beds (when rolled out) and the desk is about 1m.
Thanks so much to those of you who have emailed / written / called /visited etc- it has been great to keep in touch with home a bit. I look forward to catching up on all the goss when we get back,
xxxr
We have been lucky enough to have Mum and her husband Roger with us for the last few days and have taken the opportunity to see some more of the tourist sites around Dresden. We’ve had a very busy weekend, so I’ll just give you the edited highlights:
ElbHangFest
Every year a festival is held along the Elbe River. It stretches for a number of kilometres and runs from Pillnitz Castle to the local icon, the Blue Wonder bridge. In many ways, the festival was like festivals everywhere- food, music, bric-a-brac etc… however, one of the really interesting things about Germany is the way in which Germany culture is embraced. People still wear traditional German attire and local food and traditions are very much celebrated. We did manage to sample some of the local fare and Roger was very happy to test the beer and sausages.
Grosse Garten
A large public park runs right through the middle of Dresden and, to our shame, we had not managed to organise ourselves to visit the park. So we made a special point to visit with Mum and Roger. The park is lovely and, like everywhere in Germany, has beer gardens conveniently located throughout. A highlight of our visit to the garden was the model train which runs a loop through the park. I think there is about 15km of track and it takes around half and hour to do the loop. A really cool aspect of the train is that it is predominately staffed by a volunteer crew, made up largely of boys aged between about 9-16. There must have been a couple of dozen of them stationed around the park and they performed the roles of conductor and station master etc… The all wore uniforms and seemed to take their positions very seriously…
SemperOper
One of the most famous buildings around Dresden is the Opera House. Like most of the AltStadt (Old Town), it has been completely rebuilt since WWII and is astonishing, both inside and out. Anyway, it is quite difficult to get tickets as the shows get booked out months in advance, so we were quite excited when we managed to get tickets to the Wagner opera “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” (“The Master Singer from Nuremburg”). Now, the opera-knowledgeable amongst you will already have warning bells ringing in your heads, but we were slightly ignorant when we booked tickets and did not realise that this particular opera runs for around 5 hours!! Yikes! There were two intermissions, but it was still a whole lot of opera! The opera itself was, of course in German and using the subtitles we managed to make out some of the finer points in the first act. However, a change to the lighting rig in the second act meant that the subtitles were obscured and were left to our own devices to try and figure out what was going on.
Actually, the most exciting part of the night was when several members of the audience began booing very loudly at the end of the second act!!! The opera was quite a modern interpretation of the original and was set in the 1930s-40s, rather than the original 16th Century. It also took a very modern approach to the staging and set design and, we gather, some of the music. Anyway, it was clear that some of the audience were less than impressed and by the beginning of the third act (which ran for a bit over 2 hours…) at least a third of the people on our level (who’d presumably paid around $130nz to see the show) had left, never to return. Interestingly, when the performance did finally finish at around 11pm, those left seemed to love the show. There was lots of ‘Bravo’, plenty of cheering and clapping, and not a ‘boo’ to be heard.
We managed to time our walk home from the Opera House with Germany’s loss in the European Cup soccer. Needless to say, it was not a happy crowd as Germans seem to take soccer almost as seriously as Kiwis take rugby! Whilst it was not an angry crowd, as such, we did make haste when a smoke bomb was thrown in our general direction.
Königstein Castle
In an earlier post, I wrote about our visit to Bad Schandau in the Sächsische Schweiz. Along the same route, is a fortress castle called Königstein. By now you all know that Marty has quite a penchant for castles, so we decided to take a trip with Mum and Roger to see it. And Marty was not disappointed. Königstein is all a good castle should be, complete with turrets, walls, dungeons and armouries. It also has the most magnificent views right across the region. I'm sure he will write his own description of the castle in due course.
We took the train up to Königstein, but decided to take one of the paddle steams back to Dresden and it turned out to be an extremely pleasant experience. The boat takes about 3 hours (as opposed to the train which takes 1) and really just meanders down the river. It was lovely to be able to see all the villages from the water and Mum and Roger really enjoyed seeing the different types of buildings.
Phew! So we have had a very busy time of things and have really enjoyed doing some of the things we keep saying we will do while we are here. It’s been great to have Mum and Roger here and it has given us a wonderful opportunity to play tour guide for a change.
Just when you thought I was over traffic lights.... Kate has informed me that the mysterious Danish headings of the traffic light articles read: 'New imaginative traffic lights are illegal' and the other one says 'traffic lights change sex'. Cheers Kate!!
Yesterday I went to BASt, in Cologne. Within pavement* circles it's very famous so it was amazing to get to go there. I got to see their test track, which was similar in some ways to CAPTIF in Canterbury but, rather than having a circular test track that can be loaded with a large number of vehicle passes, they drive real trucks across the pavement. The experimental pavement is highly instrumented and so they can record the stresses and strains as the trucks pass. They'd also just completed some interesting experiments but for the sake of the younger viewers, I'll spare you the details. You might however be interested to know that they did experiments with using expanded polystyrene as a foundation for a pavement –conclusion, it's not so flash. BASt also do crash tests there but unfortunately there were no tests being performed the day I was there. The building itself was also amazing; built onto a hill, and nowhere more than 2 stories high, it's essentially four very long corridors connected by walkways. The design intent was to allow everyone to have their own office, access to natural light and a view of the gardens.
As I said the other day, these people are fußball (soccer) mad. This guy (photo) was in the entrance to the BASt building. I arrived at BASt the day after Germany secured their place in the Euro final. The previous night the screams and celebrations went for hours after Germany won. The streets were filled with cars honking continuously and one of the BASt people said that his trip home after the game, normally a 20 minute drive, took one and a half hours (he was honking his horn with the rest of them).
*one person I know thought that I worked at research on foot paths. This is not correct: my work involves looking at how roads are built and how to build roads better so they last and perform better.
**note from Rochelle:... but for some reason, those involved persist in calling them pavements- a reasonable misunderstanding, I think (btw- the person wasn't me :) )
So, our accommodation in Dresden has been in a 'studio' room in a 17 floor apartment building. For the first 2 months, we lived on the 11th floor and faced a quiet street and a loud church. It took us a while to get used to the church bells going 3 times a day for 5 mins at a time; the drunk students on the street; and the very loud emergency vehicle sirens from the adjacent intersection. However, it was colder then, and we could close the double-glazed windows at nights.
Yesterday I bought kiwifruit from NZ in the supermarket here. They cost E0.19c kg (around 40c at the moment- the dollar is not being kind to us). And they were still green. I don't think I can buy kiwifruit for that price in NZ... CRAZY!!
We are in a new room now, so consequently, our address has changed a little... I haev updated the address on the right but to be honest, the mail here is not that reliable, so if you are burning to send us a letter, let me know and I will give your m's work address. Otherwise, you can just send it to us in Welly :)
xxxr
Marty has just brought to my attention this new, er, politcal 'party' in NZ http://www.icount.co.nz/
I cannot actually believe that anyone thinks it a good idea to drive your policies with an internet poll... hello?!?! Especially when their polls seems so well considered (please note the sarcasm- hard to show clearly enough via text)... Current example: Does early childhood education require more funding? Eh, why don't they just insert any health, education, justice, infrastructure etc etc issue? Whatya gunna say? No?
Rant over.
I know I have mentioned this before, but Marty's collegue Sabine has been amazingly kind to us while we have been here. Our latest adventure with Sabine, Robert and their little one was to Spreewald- a 'wilderness' area about an hour from Dresden.
thinking wilderness-NZ-style, and it wasn't quite like that...Regular visitors to this blog will know that I have become a touch obsessed with traffic lights in recent months (here and here)... Anyway, knowing my fascination, while we were in Copenhagen, our friend Kate clipped these articles out of the paper for me....
Kate did tell me what they were about but I have forgotten, so I am hoping that she will read this and post a a comment reminding me... Still- thought you might like to see what they are doing with traffic lights in Denmark. Anyone seen any other cool traffic lights around the place?
And on a related note, my excellent husband and the wonderful Sabine recently colluded to buy me this t-shirt:
I'm luvin' it!!
You find out that there is only one pub in all of Dresden that shows rugby.
You write to them asking if they’ll be playing the All Blacks vs England game (Sabine edits your email and the only original words that remain are ‘All Blacks gegen England’) and they reply that the game will be shown.
You arrive at the pub at 9:20 am expecting a few England supporters and, just maybe, another Kiwi.
You realise at 9:40 that you will be the only person watching the game, indeed you will be the only person in the pub except for the four staff cleaning up after last night.
Your cheers celebrating the first All Black try echo in the empty pub.
The game finishes before the pub actually opens and there is nobody to ask the question "why didn't that team turn up to the world cup?".
Meanwhile, the lawn of the university has sprouted a marquee that is playing all of the Euro Cup games; surrounding the viewing area are beer caravans like circled wagons.
Many cars are bedecked with German flags
Many apartment windows are draped in German flags
At the gym this morning four out of the seven channels were playing football footage.
Prior to the German games starting, the streets fill with young German men, carrying beers, draped in flags, German hats, scarves etc all wandering towards a pub to watch the game.
Ngaire has just informed me that I was engaging in a bit of literary licence when I said that it rained in London.... I could have sworn it did but she says it was no more than a clouding over (and I was inside- what would I know). Maybe we just made rain jokes!!! Sorry London- let your reputation be restored.
Phew! After two weeks on the road, we are back in Dresden- and summer has arrived! It's 27 degrees and our new room gets evening sun! Next investment might be a fan!
Anyway, we have just returned from 5 lovely days in London. Particularly nice was the fact that they spoke English there, but it was also great catch up with some friends and family :) We were lucky enough to be collected from Stanstead airport by Jacqui and we also got to meet son Luke and hubbie Matt. From Cambridge, we took the train to London where we were hosted by Marty's sister Ngaire and her hubbie Paul, who were extremely kind- Paul went as far as vacating his office so that we could have somewhere to sleep!!
We spent most of Thursday at the Tower of London with Marty's friend Jin and her friends Donna and Joe. I'd have to say that I wasn't that excited about the trip, but it turned out to be fantastic and well worth the £16 (I've come to accept that you just need to close your eyes when paying in London). Once again, Marty enjoyed ogling the armoury, but the coolest part of the day was chatting to one of the Beefeaters who happened to be a Kiwi, and was the first foreigner to be employed as a Beefeater at the Tower.... It was also 
brilliant to have Jin showing us the sights and we had a fab lunch at the Borough markets- foodie heaven, through and through.
After a lazy day on Friday, we hiked across London (at rush hour) to see our friends Mark and Anita and their small fry. It was great to catch up with some Kiwis and hear a bit of news....
On Saturday, Ngaire organised a bbq with Paul's sister and her hubbie and they even managed some good old English rain for us. I'd have to say that generally, the weather has been amazing while we have been away, so the few drops of rain were a bit of a novelty for us! I also managed to get to the supermarket with Ngaire and we have been feasting on things we have missed- like yummy crackers and salt and vinegar chips :)
Sunday included a good old pub lunch (although we were too early for a roast, which Marty was a bit sad about) and a rest in the sun by the Thames.
So. Now we're back in D-town... 5 more weeks here, a week in Boston and then home. It all seems to be flying by, really.
Hope you are all well, thanks for your emails etc... (it's nice to hear from home- hint, hint).
Well, we have just finished a glorious week of cycle touring. Last Sunday, we took the train back to Lübeck (about 45 minutes north of Hamburg) to begin our tour. Lübeck is a gorgeous little chocolate-box town and the buildings in the old part of the city have UNESCO heritage listing. Apparently Lübeck is also famous for its marzipan confectionary, but we didn’t manage to find the shop in our afternoon wandering- I am hoping to try again when we pass back through :)
From Lübeck, we set off on the first, and also the longest day of our trip- to Wismar. I’ll say at the outset that this trip was certainly at a ‘cruising’ pace, and we thoroughly enjoyed stopping off lots and seeing the sights… I’ve made a Googlemap with our journey on it, so you can check out where we went.
Fortunately for us, the weather has been perfect for the whole week and, consequently, we are both brown as berries from spending all day out in the day. The only fly in our cycling ointment has been the prevailing easterly wind (we have been biking west to east) which has been with us all week. Still, we have had blue skies every day and lots of opportunity to laze around in the sun. 
From Hamburg, we took the train from to Copenhagen and it was an excellent way to see some different parts of Germany and then Denmark.
military area. We are told that the residents refuse to pay city taxes and that no-one owns property within the community. I love the rebellious spirit! 
Copenhagen is, however, breathtaking expensive. It's just as well we're getting tax cuts when we get home- Copenhagen has made a serious dent in our pockets! Just to give you an idea- a cafe lunch set us back around $80Nz and cheap-and-cheerful Asian for 3 with 3 soft drinks came in at about $120NZ. Ouch! Even the supermarket is mindbogglingly expensive- a bag of rice was about $4nz....Anyway, we had a great time and I want to say a particularly big thanks for Kate for her kind sightseeing- we really appreciated having a 'local' to show us around and it was also great to be able to speak English!!! Thanks also to Lilian who hosted us for Risk- Marty is still gloating over his victory :)
On Sunday, we took a round-town bus tour to get a sense of the city and then spent some time wandering around the river front. Hamburg has the largest port in Germany and it's water front is full of sights and sounds- from buskers to enormous tankers. Marty's highlight for the day was going on board a genuine German u-boat :)We are heading off for the next three weeks and so contact might be a bit intermittent. If you have the urge to write us a letter, please put it off for a few weeks, cos we won't have an address until we come back again.
See ya, see ya!
Thanks to Tim for this week's poll suggestion: Castles or palaces?
PS Marty has sprained his ankle :(
One aspect of the trip to HAMM that I didn’t mention was that we drove there on the Autobahn. Another life long ambition fulfilled. We went in a pretty new fau vé (VW) and it wasn’t until the return trip that I realized we were averaging 160 km/hr! So all of those cars that were overtaking us and totally leaving us behind must have been doing close to 200 km/hr! But these speeds are expected, to calculate the trip time Google map had estimated the average speed for the trip to be 120 km/hr. I’d been thinking that the Autobahn was rougher than I’d expected but at that speed it’s not a surprise I could feel some of the undulations. Potentially the only criticism I can come up with was the speed transitions from 160 down to 80 km/hr seemed pretty dramatic. Then last weekend we went to Frohmut and Gudrun’s weekend home for a weekend away. I’d heard Frohmut teasing Sabine about how slow she drove so I knew it would be fast. This trip we were in the 200 km/hr car. Using the LTNZ ad as an inspiration, that’s a speed equivalent to falling down 65 stories (compared to 16 stories at 100 km/hr).
We also visited Schwartzenberg and Marty was very excited to see a castle. We then returned to F+G’s house and met their daughter Anya and her partner Uwe who had come down from Berlin for the weekend. In a little taste of home, we had a bbq for dinner with plenty of beer for Marty. It was wonderful to sleep in the country for a night- our building in Dresden in on the corner of a major intersection and right in the middle of studentville… between the sirens and the drunks, it can be a little noisy!!!
On Sunday, F+G took us to a wonderful little village called Seiffen, which is famous for its woodcraft- particularly Christmas woodcraft. The entire village seems devoted to these products and we succumbed and bought a little Christmas windmill. The village was lovely but I’d have to say that I felt like I visited at entirely the wrong time of year. I could just imagine it all lit up at Christmas and I’m sure it would be glorious.
The final stop was Freiberg. If you have ever played Thurn and Taxis with us, you might recognise this building… (right)I think someone in power must have seen my earlier post about traffic lights here in Dresden ... Check out this article from stuff today:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4513442a11.html
Well, Spring was the clear winner in the best-season poll... I'm certainly loving it here :)
I've been planning our trip away so have been investigating modes of transport. So here's your question for this week:
Plane, train, boat, bike, walk, car, bus... how do you prefer to travel?
Well, it's been a while since I have talked about what we have been doing so 
here's a quick update:
Last Thursday was a public holiday. Because we are going away soon, Marty and I decided that we should work for the day. However, Sabine and Robert did lure us away in the late afternoon in order to visit Radebeul- a vineyard area nearby. Like all good vineyards, there were lovely grounds and a beautiful restaurant (looked, didn't eat- E20 mains!).
This Saturday, the Dresden fire service celebrated 140 years and marked the occasion with a display of firetrucks through the years. It made Marty very happy. The week before last I had a bad week. When we visited Tirschenreuth, I bought a gorgeous Rosenthal Dresden mug. Two days later I dropped it on the floor and smashed it. I also managed to wash (and almost totally 
destroy) my year card to the Dresden museum :( This weekend we wanted to go to some more museums, so I mustered my courage and took the remnants of my card to the museum. The woman didn't speak English so I had to cobble together some sentences to try and explain what had happened. I felt VERY pleased with myself when I actually managed to communicate my problem and although she couldn't give me a new card, she did give me a free day pass!
So we spent the rest of Saturday in a couple more of the galleries. A real highlight for us was the Old Masters gallery. It is the most amazing collection of art from about the 1500-1800. The painting they are most proud of this one- you might recognise the bottom of it.
Sunday was a beautiful day here- possibly the nicest we have had to-date- so we decided it was a good day for a bike ride. The Elbe River, which runs through the middle of Dresden, has purpose-built bike paths on both sides and you can bike from Prague right the way to the coast following this path. And on a sunny Sunday afternoon, it felt like most of Dresden was out on the path! Conveniently, there are beer gardens every 5km or so you if you need a wee break... However, you can lose your driver's license if you're caught riding under the influence... so beware!
There was a really interesting interview on RadioNZ yesterday about gender and schooling.... look for the interview with Leonard Sax
http://www.radionz.co.nz/podcasts/ninetonoon.rss
This was on Campbell Live a while ago and lots of you probably saw it but I thought it was worth putting on the blog.... Hope you enjoy :)
http://www.tv3.co.nz/Video/Elaboratemarblemazeenchantsthousandsthroughtheworldwideweb/tabid/367/articleID/51230/cat/100/Default.aspx
Well, the people have spoken and 7/11 of you want to spend your time cruising in Eurpoe (yes, I saw the spelling mistake but couldn't change it without resetting the poll...). You will be surprised, I am sure to hear that Marty voted for Antarctica and I voted for Asia (probably b/c I am already in Europe...)
It's been getting warmer here and we have been able to venture out without quite so many layers. In light of the change of season, this week's question is: Which is your favourite season?
Ok, the voting on my current polls is a bit slow but you still have 17 hours to make your pick... don't be shy, now :)
After much anticipation, we finally got to Prague this weekend. It’s a 2-and-a-bit hour train ride and is a common weekend visit spot from here. We left first thing Saturday morning and decided that rather than take a tour, we would simply follow our noses and wander. I’d have to say that it took us a moment to adjust to being in the Czech Republic and for the first couple of hours we kept forgetting to speak English, rather than German (not that we speak much German, you understand- but enough to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘a cup of coffee, please’).
The Czech Republic is certainly the poorer neighbour of Germany and 
everything in the city has a film of dust and dirt over it. It’s one of those countries that has come under attack from just about all of its neighbours at some point in its history and despite its obviously glorious past, is pretty run-down in many parts. It is also the 6th most visited European city and was absolutely swarming with tourists- and we’re told that tourist season hasn’t got underway properly yet! Consequently, there were plenty of opportunities to part with your dosh. The big tourist items in Prague are: Russian dolls, crystal glassware and, weirdly garnets. No-one seemed to be able to really explain why, but Prague is awash with cheap garnets in a plethora of forms.
On Saturday, we really just got a feel for the city and mostly wandered around Old Town. We did manage to see the 12 Apostles in the town clock on the hour (one of the to-dos in Prague) but, like the guide book I read, we really thought it was overrated. I think every tourist in town was there to see it, and there was a general 
feeling of ‘was that it?!?’ when it was over. The buildings in Old Town are stunning and you could spend a whole day just looking at the architecture.
On Sunday, we walked back through Old Town, and across the Charles Bridge- which I’d have to say, was one of the highlights for me. It’s a beautiful old bridge for foot traffic only and gives the most fabulous views up and down the river and towards the castle. It also has about 20 glorious statues all along the 
bridge. From the bridge, we walked up to Prague Castle and meandered through the associated grounds before heading into the castle itself. The cathedral on the grounds was stunning and was well worth the 10 min queue (sometimes I think when you’re a tourist, you just join the queue because there is a queue there… ). It was wonderful to wander through the various parts of the castle grounds- many of which had fantastic views out over Prague.
Spending a weekend in Prague certainly didn’t do it justice. We didn’t get to any of the museums and the brilliant weather meant that we were pretty happy to wander in the sun. We certainly 
don’t feel that we have seen all there is to see in Prague but did get a nice taster of the tourist hot-spots. The Czech crown is also a little easier of the Kiwi $ and that always makes things seem better somehow! Quite a few people I know rate Prague as their fav city and I’d have to say that I probably wouldn’t go that far at this point. But it was lovely and there is certainly plenty to keep the tourists entertained.
Anyway, it’s Sunday night now, and having made that classic tourist mistake of buying new shoes just before a trip, I have really sore feet, so I’m off to bed. By the way, I’m reading ‘On Beauty’ by Zadie Smith and it’s fab… a great reason to get off the internet and lie down :) I can’t be bothered posting any pics now, but will sometime tomorrow.
Today we went to visit with HAMM a major player in the manufacture of compaction equipment (http://www.hamm.eu/), i.e. lots of very big toys. We went there to discuss the loads applied by compaction equipment on the granular materials used to construct roads. What we expected to be a two hour meeting turned into a five hour event. They were very keen to discuss what we’re trying to do and provide us with what information they could. However, when we 
asked for the data from one of the graphs I discovered that “Top Secret” means the same in both English and German. Unfortunately, we ran out to time to visit the factory but I did get a photo of the compaction equipment in their yard waiting to be finished and delivered to customers. Big ups to the guys at HAMM- they were awesome.
Due to the tremendous feedback from my last poll, I have decided to make it a regular event :) So. This week's poll question: If you could choose a continent to spend a month on, which would it be? Feel free to add any comments about what you would particularly like to see....
Thanks to those of you who responded to my poll- I had some fab stories about awful airlines :) Check out the comments for stories of woe.
It seems that the winner on the day was 'some other airline' and I have particular nominations for Airs Egypt and India as well as KLM. I'm interested that 2 people voted for AirNZ- the international branch of which I actually think stacks up quite well.... Although I voted for Olympic, I'd have to say that it was a tough choice with Lufthansa coming a close second...
Over the years, the term 'Fräulein' has dropped out of use in German. You can still use it for small-fry but it is considered rude to use it on an adult... in much the same way that Miss has varying popularity in English. The consequence of this is that German websites and forms in translation often only give one option for titles for women- either only Mrs or only Ms...
On a vaguely related note, Dresden seems to have gender equity in their crossing lights....
Boy-lights
Girl-lights
Nice, eh?
We've spent the weekend doing a bit more sight-seeing around Dresden. On Friday evening, Sabine took us to Pillnitz castle- another of the royal palaces. August the Strong (King of Poland) had a penchant for things oriental and consequently, parts of the palace are Japanese-styled. Apparently August also had a bit of a 
penchant for the ladies and built some nice private spots into the castle grounds :) This castle is out in the country a bit and sits on the banks of the Elbe River, so is lovely and peaceful. It is also home to the only camellia plant in this area of the world. It's around 240 years old and lives in a very large glass house....
The good people at the Technical University of Dresden where Marty is working have been extraordinarily generous to us in the last month or so. I have already mentioned fabulous Sabine (who is taking us to another castle in about an hour :) ), but the Professor, Fromut has also been outstanding and has lent us a laser printer for our room and, most recently, a rad (bike- see right).
Biking is very popular here and there are bike lanes alongside all of the major roads. Oddly, cycle helmets aren't compulsory, but having a bell on your bicycle is! For a girl from NZ, it feels very daring to speed along without a helmet. We're off on a week's cycle tour along the Baltic Coast next month and it's nice to remember what a bike feels like. I'm kinda hoping that my touring bike will be a girl-bike (see picture on the left), which the germans seem much keener on than NZers are... I think they are fab!
Before we left NZ, I ended up talking to a couple of people from overseas and was quite surprised at their perspective of NZ. In particular, they both commented on how NZ seemed to be quite a dangerous place. This got me thinking and I have been reflecting on it since we have been in Germany and getting all our news via internet sources (big ups to TV 3 who stream their news bulletins and RadioNZ who have a gazillion podcasts as well as streaming). I'd have to say that if you just listened to the news, you'd have to conclude that NZ is a pretty grim place. I'll leave the drownings aside- an awful tragedy by any standards and completely a-typical, but here's a list of the top stories currently on Stuff:
Waimakariri body taken to morgue
Kahui had wanted to hand himself in
Police arrest tourist attack suspects
Thousands of poppies stolen from RSA
F&P shares jump 15pc on job cuts -Three factory closures see 1070 jobs go
I'd have to say that we have really noticed the apparent safety here in Germany. Perhaps we are somewhat immune to what is happening because we can't read the newspaper but people barely lock their bikes, people seem to wander all over the place night and day (admittedly we're in studentville- maybe it has a different vibe....) and several times we have been astonished at what the shops leave outside over night... 'Wouldn't happen in NZ', we say to ourselves.
So here's my question (and I'd love to hear your thoughts, hint, hint): Is NZ really a dangerous, depressing and violent kinda place or is there something skew in our media?
So. You know how there are all those cheap airlines around Europe? Well, today I went on the Ryanair site to book and flight and it listed the price as..... FREE!! Woo hoo, you might think, as I certainly did. Sure, they added some airport taxes (sum total is now E20), but I expected that. BUT THEN they also added: E13 for checking in one person and one bag; E4 for checking in another person; and E8 for using my credit card! Overall total ended up at E45! THAT, my friends is how Ryanair make their moo-lah.
Annoying-tourist-warning...
(In case you were wondering, we are flying from Hamburg to London, having visited Copenhagen and cycle toured along the baltic coast...)
In order to develop a little audience participation, I have added a poll (look right) go on and vote- you know you want to! Feel free to add any airplane horror stories while you are at it.
We now have a phone here... it's a cell phone, so call at your own risk... +491743576426
Yesterday we spent a very pleasant afternoon at Schloss Mortizburg with Sabine, her husband Robert and their little one. The castle is just outside Dresden and proved to be excellent for an afternoon wander. The castle itself was originally built in the 1500s but became the hunting castle for 
Augustus the strong in the 1700s. Although it was not a defensive castle, it is in the middle of a lake and consequently looks like it's floating. There are also a whole lot of walks around the castle grounds and we enjoyed imagining ourselves as royals. Oh, and it was sunny! We were beginning to wonder when the sun was going to come it (or indeed whether if ever would) so it was nice to get some vit D.
It’s time for the other named party to have their say on this blog. Not that I have any complaints about Rochelle’s posting, they’re great and I even log in occasionally to see what I’ve been up to. However, they lack the Marty perspective so, presuming somebody wants to hear my perspective here it is.
“Ich bein Feuermann aus Neuseeland” and not much else I went up and asked to look at their equipment. Communication was difficult but I got the idea that they wanted me to return at 7:30 am on Friday. So not knowing what I was turning up to I arrived to discover they had found a firefighter who spoke a little English and they expected me to attend their training. It was great fun, very different gear to New Zealand: no Breathing Apparatus, no Level Twos (high temperature protective clothing) and no water tank on the truck. In fact they had no pump running off the truck engine; instead they had two portable water pumps, the larger one being an adapted microlight engine. I guess this might be because they have to manoeuvre amongst a rabbit warren of buildings many dating from about 1910. As might be expected, running out the hoses and setting up a standpipe were pretty similar to NZ. At the conclusion of the training they presented me with a jacket which was awesome.
As Rochelle has earlier said “they don’t all speak English”. It’s amazing what this has done to me; I just keep quiet and hope nobody talks to me, which obviously doesn’t help improve my German. The phone often goes in my office for either Alex or Sabine and I’ve started answering and faking it for as long as possible before I’m forced to say “Mine Deutsch ist nicht gut, sprechen English?” One caller had the grace to sound surprised when I said this, which was nice.
