A Short Interlude in the Fatherland

Well as you may or may not know over the easter weekend I decided to take a small jaunt to Germany. Correct, not your average weekend away, but thanks to the power of the Lords of Qantas we can make it so. 48 hours of traveling, 5 days of chilling. What more can the international man of leisure want??

Wednesday - Primed for Launch
A normal morning, aside from the fact I am sporting a suit bag and my camera backpack. Was going to walk to the station, however the sweating and immense load dictated otherwise.

A small taxi ride, a little working, another taxi ride, and the next thing you know I'm meeting Kat's dad to pick up the weird Staff Travel paper thingy they sent him. He looked very official in his overalls and shiny vest thingy. I was impressed.

Next stop the check in counter at which I was handed straight off the bat a shiny business class boarding pass. Yay for the Global Financial Crisis.

The next thing you know, I'm at Changi Airport in Singers. Smells the same, looks the same. It's a smell I will always associate with SE Asia. I stop past the transit counter (never had to do this before) and the kind bearded man after about 10 minutes gives me my second business class boarding pass.

A quick trip to the chemist for my favourite Singaporean product, melatonin and voila, here we are in Frankfurt!

Thursday AM - Frankfurt to Dortmund
Ahh Germany. Land of sausages, techno, the autobahn and fast trains. It's good to be back. For some perculiar reason it feels familiar, like home away from home. My bag flies out of the plane, my shiny EU passport lets me fly through immigration, and I totter down to the DB office which feels like it's heated to 35C.

I get myself a ticket to Dortmund, and head down to the station.

Interesting fact #1: In Germany they sometimes have two trains that are going to different destinations (in this example Brussels and Amsterdam) joined together.

I only discovered this because I got on the wrong end of the train. Thankfully the nice conductor lady told me that I could get off the train at Koln and go down the other end. Phew.

Interesting fact #2: The ICE travels at over 300km/h. That's kinda cool.

At Duisberg I changed to a strange overnight train for my final two stops to Dortmund.

Herr Marcial met me at Dortmund Hbf and we returned to the freshly decorated Schloss Marcial to be greeted by Eva and a very excited Bruno. Someone had told him that presents were coming from Australia. He was cheekily peeking out of the window and waving as we arrived.

Thursday PM - Chillin' in Dortmund

First things first. The presents must be delivered! Kat had kindly bought a kangaroo and a koala (which played a small excerpt from "Waltzing Matilda") for Bruno. At first he wasn't keen on the presents, but this would change later on as he got used to them...

Having a shower with fine German water was luxurious. We had some lunch, and then headed out to the shops for some groceries.

I suppose we were in the equivalent of David Jones, but the selection of charcuterie, cheese, organic and fine foods was amazing. I've never seen so much delightful fat in one place!! When ordering gruyere we were asked whether we wanted "normal" or "cave aged". What kind of a question is that.. pfft!!

For dinner we made schnitzel served with potato salad. In the potato salad was a vinagrette of white balsamic and a funny herb called bear's garlic. Oddly enough it tasted extraordinarily like garlic. I would like to try to grow some, as it was a great flavour combined with the fact it was leafy.

After dinner a little photo shoot. First up Mr. Koala, Mrs. Kangaroo, Bruno and Daniel:

Secondly, the happy family:

Surprisingly I was still feeling OK. We headed down to Dortmund airport to pick up our rental car, a grotesquely underpowered E-Class. A supercharged 1.8L is NOT big enough to power this car let me assure you!! Still it was a relaxing drive, although the tiredness and tight streets were a bit hair raising at first.

For our final stop for the evening, Big Dan and I wandered down to Domicil - some gay bar (kidding) that the crew hang out it. We were joined by the one and only Herr Borgmann of the famous Borgmann Industries. That was pretty much it for Thursday. As you can imagine, quite a long day!

Friday - Spring in Germany
Glad I packed my shorts ladies, as the weather was faaaaaaaaantastic. Trees were blossoming, the sky was blue. Ahh.. this is the life.

First stop here. Schloss Cappenberg. There was supposed to be a wildlife park. It was closed, despite the website saying otherwise. The old manor was pretty cool though. It's strange for us children of a young country to just wander around buildings that were put up before the white man even arrived in our country.

Second stop was Münster for some zoo action with Bruno.

Was a great day to be walking around, although the sun (and my poor selection of lense) deprives you of the animal pics I just KNOW you were hoping for...
After returning home I prepared the menu for Friday's Asian Feast:

1. Hainenese Chicken & Rice (with firey chilli sauce that will feature again later on!!)
2. Char Sui
3. Ants Climbing Trees

Amazingly even in Dortmund there is an asian grocery (with the silliest website in the world) so we took another stroll to grab some supplies (including some Tsingtao!).

The rest of the afternoon we drank our Tsingtao, some Franziskaner (awesome!), roasted pork...

...and prepared for dinner.

Served with only the finest of champagne and wines (I forget what they were, Dan can add in the comments).... Here we see Dan and Ene contemplating the meal ahead...

Rockin. After dinner whilst the grown-ups chatted, Bruno and I retired to his castle to play Duplo. The young fella kept talking his native tongue to me, so I smiled a lot and nodded. By this time he was loving Waltzing Matilda. Again... and again.. and again.. and... again.. and again..

After many drinks, it was bedtime. Ahh... bed...

Saturday - Shoppin', Drinkin', Chillin', Grillin' and Spinnin'
We got up relatively late and dropped Eva and Bruno at the hauptbahnhof as they were heading up to the North Sea for a little break. Bruno took Mrs. Kangaroo with him. Hope he didn't go swimming!!

Dan and I grabbed some breakfast and headed down to the market to grab some meat for the BBQ.

Second cool shopping experience - Dortmund market.

All the produce you can imagine, and plenty you can't. Lamb? You want lamb? I'll give you three kinds of lamb young man! "Normal", "milk-fed" and "salt bush" (I think). Rabbits, hare, more kinds of poulty than you can think of. Lots of shit I have never even seen before. Awesome. We grabbed some lamb (to be marinated in the leftover chili sauce) and pork.

For the rest of the afternoon we sat in the sun and drank beer. I squeezed in a quick nap, and then it was off to Uwe's place with two crates full of Detroit classics.

I met Uwe (second from left) back in the day when he used to work for Dan, so it was good to catch up after so many years. What transpired was an evening of drinking, grilling and techno. What more could you want? Good times... must get some of those records sampled to mp3..

A couple of spliffs later and we were heading down to see the famous DJ Dash. Steffen is first on the left in the above pic. Many more drinks (well a couple I think?) and it was time for bed.

Sunday - Dortmund to Eltville
To the soundtrack of Marc Romboy, TLBJr and the Wighnomy Brothers (all Germans by coincidence!!!) it was time to tackle the famous autobahn.

We took the A2 down to the A45, briefly hit 200km/h and did 275km in a couple of hours....

Strange autobahn fact: most are 2 lanes each way for most of their length. 2 lanes children, "unlimited" speed in the left lane. Germans know how to KEEP RIGHT.

Next stop: Eltville and our hotel - Schloss Reinhartshausen.

Well this was all pretty spiffy being next to the Rhine, and in amongst the vinyards.

So what else to do but some fine dining and a lot of drinking. By the time we went to bed we were both a little loose.

Monday - Seedy, Wandering, Departing
Needless to say the next morning we both had ferocious hangovers. I really felt mostly on the verge of puking for the whole day. We tried the brunch buffet at the hotel, sadly this was wasted on me I'm afraid.

Dan and I wandered for a bit:in the delightful olde town set by the Rhine River....

Special Teutonic Pigeon:

Ahh springtime in the Fatherland.

We showered, checked out, went to a couple more vineyards (here and here) drank a lot of apple and grape juice (gosh was I dehydrated) and ate some of this. A tasty non-Italian pizza analogue!

Sadly it was time for us to head back to the airport, which we did. Dropped the car off, checked in and had some dinner. Then it was time to say au revior... until next time.

So the week drew to a close. It was amazing how much we got crammed in, but the strange thing was that not once did we feel rushed or busy. Such is the magic of Dan and Leigh.

Thanks to Mark, Kat, Dan, Eva, Bruno, Ene, Uwe, Dash and of course the fabulous crew of Qantas.

And there you have it. Next thing I was at work, living the dream. Little did I know the weekend would have something a little more dramatic in store for me... but that's a story for another time!

(P.S. FUCK THIS BLOGGER INTERFACE IT SUCKS BALLS!!!! THANKYOU!!!!)

Short Leigh

Just arrived back in Melbourne today. Will process images and post a Germany wrap-up shortly!

Germany 2009

It is official, I will be heading up to Germany next week for a short interlude with Dan.

I hope to take a few photos and such, so there will probably be a flurry of activity here for a week or two. Await with bated breath...

The thing's hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God—it's full of stars!

Something's in the air children. Stay tuned for a small reactivation....

Upgrade Workstation to 64bit

If you're a Lightroom user and you're ever upgrading your image processing workstation, I urge you to think about where you've stored your catalog file and to back it up before you format your drives.

I am apparently not that bright, therefore forgot to do this. I have to go back and re-import everything again. Thankfully I'm not silly enough to have deleted the source catalogs from our trip, so all the metadata is still there, just somewhere else.

Other than that my upgrade went very smoothly.

Happy New Year

We both hope 2009 is a great year for everyone.

Lots of love to all our friends out there.

Leigh & Kat

Some People Are Losers

[removed]

Suffice to say, you know who you are and what you have done.

Do not be surprised if your balls are in your mouth one morning.

My favourite album title ever (so far):

VA-Irritating_Music_for_Discerning_Snobs-(Soleilmoon)-2006-DPS

Well hello there...

Obviously not that much musing going on here in Melbourne.

There are a few things I find that I'm not interested in now we're back at home.

1. Facebook - why on earth do I need to know what people are doing online when I can just ring them? I guess it's good to see what our O/S friends are doing, but they don't seem to be doing much either.

2. The blog. Nobody wants to hear me whinge about work do they? It's boring huh. Yes.

For those that are not with us here in Melbourne - we think of you each and every day and the good times we had.

So what's news here...

We have Gus the Dog staying with us at the moment who's actually been very well behaved. We may even keep him, but we'll see how he goes - poor guy must get a bit bored at home while we're at work during the day...

Work is still trundling along - Kat has started a new job which seems pretty good so far.

My hot Swedish Internet Date Kamil has been in town – nerds across the world unite!!

Until next time.

Lots of love...

r!

Things I love

1. Abusive comments
2. Work
3. Hard drive failures

That is all.

Geez it's been a long time...

It's all this working business - it leaves no time for the simple things in life - for example, blogging. Thankfully the new place of employment is silly enough to leave blogger.com unblocked! Perhaps a new series of thrilling tales from the workplace is coming. Perhaps not.

So a few things to tidy up - of which I do have photos, but obviously not at work.

Firstly: Congratulations to Nick and Erica who got married a few weeks ago. Whilst I've been slaving away at work they've been on their honeymoon. DIE!!

Secondly: We are nearly fully in our new place. We picked up couches last night, and have also been hitting up our favourite Swedish store, Ikea. I love Ikea. Almost as much as I love Sweden. Ahh Sweden.

Thirdly: I am back to living the dream at work. Let me tell you it absolutely rocks my world to work for a world-class organisation like AIG. Remember that 120 billion dollar bailout, I can tell you first hand why they need that...

Lastly: Thanks to the lazy bundi in my team whose gross incompetance and laziness is an inspiration to all around him...

Peace.

Net!

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Operational Mode	G.Dmt.BisPlus
Annex Type	ADSL2M
Upstream	1021200
Downstream	23312100
CO Vendor	BDCMa
Elapsed Time	0 day 2 hr 37 min 8 sec

There is much to report, but not tonight...

xooxoxox

No net!

No net for a couple of weeks kids, so no me.

I started work today. Awesome.

Um.. WTF?!

I've rarely been known to say that George W. Bush is smarter than anyone, but I think we have a winner!! Sarah Palin, the Governer of Alaska, and John McCain's running "mate".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxAO7cH-xrE

She's no mate of mine, mate!!!

Photography, Things I Want and Cannot Afford, Indian Food

I had a weird dream last night about shooting with an off-camera flash. Then Adam mentioned a photo competition, which I cannot enter because it has closed. Welcome to the first of many boring and random things you will see here which hold no interest for you.

I want one of these and two of these. You may send donations via PayPal to lamaison at iinet.net.au. Any donations over $500 will receive a free mix-cd prepared exclusively by me, for you.

Last night we tried our hand at some Indian cuisine. The good: Palak Paneer. The good, but not hot enough: Beef Vindaloo. The good, but not the flavour I expected: Achari Gosht.

It was a fair bit of work actually. We now have about a kilo of spices, so I think we'll be ripping out some home style Indian a bit more once we move house.

Mother, Docklan, Giuseppe, Arnaldo & Sons

Yesterday afternoon I had a coffee with Mother. It was very pleasant.

After this, a couple of cheeky brews with Ben & Campbell @ Docklan - which you'll be pleased to know is still as characterless and windy as ever.

Next up, courtesy of Goldman Sachs JBWere Nick and I attended Giuseppe, Arnaldo & Sons @ the Crown complex.

A restaurant with no bookings is an excellent marketing strategy - breeding exclusivity from the get go. Thankfully arriving at 6pm was the perfect time.

The space is truly fantastic, although the noise levels leave a thing or two to be desired. What was that you said?

We opened with a couple of selections from the Salumi menu - an excellent Enzo Salami and Prosciutto. Paired with a fabulous Gorgonzola and a litre flask of the chilled De Bortoli house red, this was a great start to the meal.

Next up we shared a 1kg T-Bone steak - served with anchovies and a salsa that was perhaps a little to heavy on parsely for my personal taste. The meat was right up there with the best meat I've had, and I could swear it was larger than 1kg, as we didn't even make it through the whole thing. We tried. Honestly. But my gut was really beginning to strain at the belt. Mmm.

Service was attentive, except for a small faux pas with our second caraffe of wine - it had to be asked for twice, and came in the wrong size when it did.

As Nick said - this is really just great, old style, wog food done perfectly. It's not breaking any new culnary ground, but for a rewarding meal it comes highly recommended.

This is what's wrong with the media...

This story published by The Age has got to be the dumbest story in the universe. Based on nothing but some bullshit facebook group started by someone who only knew this girl for a week. COME ON!!

The Fat Man Rides

So this week in addition to applying for jobs I thought I would start riding my bike.

I have but one word for you: U N F I T.

It looks better when you type it like that.

Rock on!

SF Fine Dining, Final Musings

There's not much to say (or should I say there's not much I can be bothered saying) about the sale of the turd and the journey back to San Francisco.

Whilst there was still a bunch of screwing around, the fine team of Marcial/Clark achieved everything on time, and under budget. I realise that I've gotten pretty good at timing and sequencing events and journeys - I should move into logistics.

It was surreal to be out of the desert and back amongst civilisation - so we celebrated by stuffing our gullets full of fine food and wine.

2 Minute Food Updates
Spork - A curious name for a curious restaurant. Situated on the site of an old KFC outlet this was obviously a place for the young and hip to dine. Noisy, warm and small - the food was excellent, and the service atrocious. Cue waitress with bad attitude. Remind me why we tip again? Not bad enough to put me off though. Would definitely dine here again. Recommended.

Paul K Restaurant - "Only 14 blocks away" - we were glad we didn't try to walk (or should that be run) for our reservation. Once seated we were the only patrons. Perfect. Fine mediterranean influenced food. Excellent cocktails. Great gay service. Highly recommended.

Hang Ah Tea Room - Advertising themselves to be the oldest dim sum (or yum cha for us Australians) house in San Francisco and sporting fabulous flourescant decor. There are no trolleys, but the dum sum are excellent, and the prices will leave you wondering whether they left half your order off the bill. Of course you could find better yum cha in SF, but at this combination of price and quality why would you bother?

Boulette's Larder - There is something perculiar about food in the US - there appears to be no good food at the middle price level. For example, Dangerous Dan and I each had a terrible plate of Mexican food at a small restaurant - total cost of meal, over $40. Or you could attend Boulette's Larder and feast on the excellent lunchtime fare, for not much more. Housed in the SF Ferry Terminal (an excellent building for gourmet ingredients) the Larder should not be missed if you are in downtown SF.

Sushi Ran - A short ferry ride over to the opulence that is Sausalito will deliver you into the hustle and bustle of Sushi Ran. We opened with a sake champagne cocktail, which I think we all agree was terrible. There is no doubt that Sushi Ran delivers excellent Japanese food, although I felt that this was in fact the weakest of the restaurants we dined in - perhaps it was the preppy crowd, or the hurried service - I'm not sure. Still if Japanese is your thing, then you can't go wrong here. The lobster gyoza should not be missed.

Whilst it wasn't a dining place, I should mention the bar at the Phoenix Hotel. Excellent happy hour cocktails, albeit slowly and in a surly manner.

The End of SF
As they say, all good things come to an end. On Friday the 5th I farewelled Dan, Ene and Frank and headed down to Alameda to wrap up the trip. I can honestly say that the Burning Man/SF experience was overwhelmingly positive, and I find myself yearning for a bit of dust in my hair.

The next week or so passed pretty quickly. I finally sold the Jeep (for a pittance) packaged up all our remaining stuff and had it shipped, and ate up a storm at my Aunties place. Finally, it was time to say goodbye, and head out to the airport.

The flights went smoothly, and I arrived in Melbourne safely. It was pretty strange to be back.

Final Musings
It's so hard to sum up 15 months of travel and experience. By now you've seen lots of photos and put up with lots of words, so I hope this has given you some insight to the wonderful experience it's been. Some quick notes and thoughts:

The Awesome

• Waking up every day and seeing something new. OK we woke up every day and saw the same brown decor, but you get the idea.
• Snowboarding five times a week. It's unreal. Really. You should try it sometime. Unless you're Wilma and you break your wrist. Don't do that.
• Crater Lake - 30 foot of snow and the sun shining on a polished blue mirror. Doesn't get much better than that.
• Photographing a bear cub in the woods @ Yellowstone. More scary than sharks at night.
• The Playa - endless heat, dust and irritation. Somehow though, the little dust particles change your brain and you find yourself yearning for dust. DUST I TELL YOU!!
• All the great people we met. Tom, Barb, Bob, Robyn, The Swiss, Ian & all the gang at Riverside RV, Dan G, Prewitt, Jeff, Luke, Mason, Clayton, Paul, Tunnel & all the other boys at BSM, Booker, Claire, Rich, Alex, Zoe, Ene, Bill, Harry, Rich2, and last but not least, my fake relatives everywhere - being chinese world over. You can't buy these experiences....
  

The Excellent

• The Turd and the Jeep - Despite the odds, our machinery came through when we needed it most. We miss you, but you will live on in our hearts.
• Every single park we visited. There was something different at each one. As I drive through the concrete jungle I find myself missing the outdoors and being greasy all the time. Mmm.. grease.
• Mechanical repairs in the bitter cold, or the searing heat. Having a workshop will seem like working in heaven.
• The Weber. I hope the hippies who have you now get as much use out of you as we did. Blackened chicken aside, a reliable partner in our gastronomic adventures.
• Free WiFi at RV parks - why can't hotels do the same?

The Average

• Working for crappy pay. Really, it's not that good.
• The price of booze in Canada. Also see above.
• Breaking down and waiting 10 hours for a tow truck.
• Changing an alternator in the ice. Replacing fuel-rail o-rings in the snow. Actually all mechanics in the cold and hot. It only makes it into the "excellent" because I am deluded.

The Shite

• The entire Bohannan family. Enough said.
• Losing money to churchies. See above.
• Did I mention David?
• Andrew - the dog who broke my lenses. Yes, you are a dog. A spineless dog.

So that's it I guess. Time to relabel and repurpose the blog. Until next time....

Back...

Well here I am, for better or for worse, in Melbourne.

I flew Virgin America from SFO/LAX - very nice. Even though you have to pay for your food, you just order it on your touch screen, swipe your credit card, and minutes later it arrives via the cabin staff.

LAX was as fascinating as always. As I wasn't sure whether I was going to get into Business I made the mistake of eating a burger at a diner there. Apparently they "serve satisfaction, daily". Must have been their day off for satisfaction, because all I got as a shitty, tasteless burger.

To my disgust I also discovered that Kirin in the USA is brewed by Anheuser Busch (of Budweiser fame) and tastes perculiarly similar to their other beverage.

As I approached the gate with my stinky Economy boarding pass, the red light went on, and I was told to hang back to wait for my upgrade. After 30 minutes of nervously looking on, I was handed the magical black boarding pass, and jumped on the bus for the plane.

Very Short Plane Movie Reviews
Harold and Kumar - Escape from Guantanamo Bay - pretty funny, worth a look, even if it's only to watch Neil Patrick Harris eating shrooms and branding a whore with his initials.

Stop Loss - A pretty solid film about soldiers in Iraq. Not as good as Jarhead in my opinion, but still worth a look.

The Square - Nothing like celebrating a return to Australia by watching some Australian cinema. Not a truely great film, but a pretty good crime/thriller.

I had a little snooze, some breakfast, and next thing I was hanging around at Melbourne Airport waiting for my bags and standing in a line for customs.

And thus is is over. Still a couple of items left to wrap up blogging wise.

If you're bored head over to Ben and Rose's Blog.