Zoe is One

The photo is Struan and Debbie with Zoe
The first week back in Auckland after our rest was filled with Birthdays – mine and Struans plus wine tastings! Lorna managed to get work, but the work I expected has not yet eventuated. I am set up at Bob’s place while Lorna is staying with Carolyn – not ideal, but her job is in Morningside, only a 20 minute walk.
On Wednesday 13th June Shandy Buckley was made a New Zealand citizen. She needed to do this to represent NZ at the Yngling world championships. They will be trying to qualify NZ for the Olympics. She had a ceremony all to herself – special eh! After the function at the Dept of Internal Affairs we were invited by Raynor Smeal to go out on NZL41. For you non yachtie types this is an old America’s Cup boat that is used to take people for rides on the Auckland Harbour. Raynor, who is one of the Yngling crew, is a skipper on these boats and they had spare spaces on the charter that afternoon.
For my birthday last year Phil and Erin had given me a voucher for a cooking class at the Auckland Fish Market. I took this up on Thursday and attended a class in food and wine matching. We learned to cook three different fish dishes and tasted 8 wines. I learned some interesting facts about wine and food.
Friday 15th was Zoe’s birthday. Grandad went to the zoo with the family. Zoe showed the interest that you would expect from a very alert one year old. To cap off the excitement Dean and Michelle Ellis (very good friends of Phil and Erin) had a daughter on Zoe’s birthday.
Friday night we stayed at Struan and Debbie’s. The pad they have put in for the bus works really well. Sunday was The First Birthday Party. There were around forty people there and Zoe lived up to her epithet of “energiser bunny” – her battery just does not run down! As expected the wrapping paper was nearly as much fun as the multitude of presents. Sunday night I came back to Bob’s and am still waiting for work!

Germany and Home

This blog has been delayed because I have been tying to get photos from my new camera on to the site without loading the whole lot on to this computer. I will succeed! You will see a photo in the header which is nearly there. The photo is of a water taxi in Venice. The tour of Germany was a great experience. The other tourists on the bus were a diverse group who with only a couple of exceptions managed to have a fun trip together. There was a senior group from Spokane, Washington, five or six from Great Britain, an Australian Couple and ourselves. Our tour guide, “Buddy,” gave us a comprehensive lesson in German history while informing us about the places we visited. The ten day trip from Frankfurt through Heidelberg, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Nuremberg, Rothenberg, Neuschwanstein Castle, Munich, was all on with much bus travel. My overall impression was that each town and district had its own flavour and the whole country is justly proud of the huge effort, and expense that has gone in to restoring buildings and infrastructure which was completely destroyed in the Second World War. It gives a whole new perspective to the war stories that I read as a teenager. The towns, buildings and castles are certainly impressive, but I became rather tired of looking at “beautiful town squares/churches. Our accommodation was mixed, with some comfortable hotels and a couple of very forgettable ones. Seeing wind powered generators spaced out around the countryside in groups of five or more was far less intrusive than the wind farms of a hundred or so that we see in New Zealand. The beer was good! The people were most welcoming. Any time we ventured out on our own the German people went out of their way to help. An example of this was when we decided to take the train to the airport to fly home. A young couple spent 15minutes or so helping us get our tickets from an automatic machine at the station. We had to change trains a couple of stops on and another lady, who was obviously going to the airport too, showed us which train to catch and made sure that we were on the correct part of the train when it split to go to two different destinations. Munich Airport is really impressive with a huge atrium in between the terminal buildings. The flight home was long but made enjoyable by the prospect of being with family again. Carolyn met us and we collected the bus from Kevin Andrew (complete with new COF) and spent the night at Phil and Erins. We then went down to Whangamata to unwind before coming back up to Auckland to earn money to pay for the trip. I fear we may have the order a little wrong but the coffers do need replenishing.