Australia - Back Home

27th January 2008

A welcoming committee of family and food in the fridge from generous friends made the homecoming much easier despite no sleep on the flight - too busy watching movies. Aside from the car breaking down on the way home, and the overwhelming quantity of bags to unpack (made worse by all the extra bags we had to collect from friends and family who had looked after the boys before we left), it was certainly nice to be back to the comforts of home and even more importantly, back among friends and family.

We had an incredibly hectic first month back with multiple family birthday celebrations, many catch-ups with friends and straight back into the school year. Our little niece who was only a couple of days old when we left enjoyed investigating the new growth on Rob's chin - he looks quite different - I like it, some don't!

Life is so much more complicated and hectic that I feel constantly tired. Start to wonder what's wrong with me, but think that it is simply the pace we set ourselves and the amount of "stuff" we own that needs to be constantly accessed, searched for, put away, cleaned, sorted, dusted, cleaned, and moved from place to place. And then the information overload of mail, bills, e-mail, magazines that need to be dealt with in a timely fashion or the world will come to an end....

Rob and I set to with a vengeance to de-clutter and simplify and spent the first couple of weeks pulling every item out of the kitchen and bathroom cupboards, scrubbing all surfaces to within an inch of their lives and trying to determine what we could give away, sell, or discard. Have to say that although it took a lot of work (amazing how much stuff is in a kitchen!), it has been great being able to easily see and access all our things, and is certainly a great incentive to keep up the process throughout the house. Energy is waning though, and everyday life is taking over again.

People have asked about the highlights of the trip. It is a tough question to answer, as every country had its highlights and some of the tougher times become the most memorable. All in all, it was so worthwhile, and I think will be something we will always remember. I actually miss Rob now that he is back at work, and I think that consolidating our own relationship with each other was an added bonus that we hadn't really thought about - it had been more about giving the kids a family experience to remember. And it is the intangibles that really count - the fact that our kids are willing to try new foods and new experiences, and that they are so capable of putting up with difficult situations. James left for China with school a few days ago, and I am absolutely certain that his past experiences of travelling will help him to make the most of this trip. So these are the bits that are priceless, and mean so much more to us than having a big house and the latest plasma TV.

My Aunt said it all with a card with a picture of a kid in a cardboard box aeroplane and a caption that said - Give them roots and wings to fly.

Well Gatt kids, I hope that you feel that you have both!

Singapore

18th-26th January 2008


Normally we don't like to impose ourselves on other people for too long - visitors are like fish, they go off after 3 days! But Colin and Cathy and family made us very welcome and we stayed for the whole 8 days with them, and had a thoroughly enjoyable and relaxing time. Even though we weren't quite home in Australia, being with such good friends make it feel like coming home and being looked after. Being able to celebrate Australia Day at the Australian International School made it even more like being home.


It was also great to catch up with Andrew and Rebecca, who I know from my university days.

We all loved Singapore, especially the food - Asian food remains our favourite cuisine, although we love trying all new foods and have some great memories of good European food. The advantage of Melbourne is that if you like a particular type of food, you can almost guarantee that you can find either a restaurant or a stall at the market that sells it.


We can thoroughly recommend a walk around the reservoir where we saw monkeys in the wild and did a treetop walk, as well as Jurong Bird Park and the Night Safari. We saw a most unusual religious festival involving strange and painful looking body piercings (click on photo for a close-up), and went for a boat ride on a "bum boat", and of course did the inevitable shopping - Mp3 players were the popular purchases.


The kids loved the hotel-like feel of the condo where Colin and Cathy live, and Rob wants me to find a job in Singapore so that he can be house-husband and relax around the condo pool!


A great finale to a great holiday. Thanks again to Colin and Cathy and family.

Germany-Rust, Moehrendorf, Bad Kissingen, Duelmen, Gescher

4 January - 14th January 2008

Visiting Germany is a little bit like coming home - speaking the language and visiting friends and my host families from my time here as an exchange student. It was so good to see everyone again, and of course I have grand plans to be better at staying in touch than I have been in the past - and I'm always thrilled to have visitors and e-mails, so please visit or write.....

We started our (second) Germany leg with a drive towards Europa Park in Rust (near the French bordertown of Strasbourg. On the way we stopped at Titisee (Rob likes the name) - a ski town with big frozen lake, which we took a very pleasant stroll on. The kids found it fascinating (and so did we!) to be walking on water, and took great pleasure in running and sliding along on the surface, and found it amusing to see an apple frozen just under the surface of the water. Black Forest Cake was a must, and of course we visited the local cuckoo clock shop as well, but no purchases.

Arrived at Europa Park campground late afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed the luxuries of real showers (although they never seem to have them hot enough with the push button versions!). The campground is part of Europa Park, so next morning was just a stroll to the gates, and the fun began. Europa Park is set up with themes around various countries or regions, so it was a good chance to see whether the stereotype version matched the real version we had seen, or to visit the countries we hadn't managed to get to in real life! Of course the rides tended to dominate, but we did enjoy the "typical" buildings and food - Greek souvlaki for dinner, and not too far off the real thing. Despite poor weather, we had a great time on the rides, our only problem being that we did not have enough time to do everything. Did fit in some gluehwein and some delicious sour cherry liqueur tasting (and buying) at the German Christmas market, and it was great to see a Christmas market (even if it was staged) since we had missed out on doing this pre-Christmas in Germany.

A quick visit to Strasbourg next morning meant the kids could tick off France on their list of visited countries, and it was well worth the visit - really pretty town, and I bought the obligatory baguettes and croissants to make myself feel that I was really in France. Signposts were often in both French and German, making things a bit easier, as my schoolgirl french was somewhat lacking.


Headed towards Moehrendorf, (near Nurnberg) in the afternoon on the kind invitation of the people we met at the Grossglocknerstrasse - see the earlier blog post describing how one entertains and copes with 10 people in a tiny campervan. Seemed to take forever to get there, but we were rewarded after the long drive with a delicious dinner of typical Nurnberg fare - our hosts Till and Anke had gone out of their way to make us incredibly welcome. Their house is absolutely gorgeous - an old "Forsthaus" which means it was originally lived in by the person who looked after the kings forests (I think - correct me if I am wrong Till!). Till and Anke had done an enormous amount of work on the house and it was so interesting to see the photos and to hear how they had made an effort to work with all natural and original materials in the renovations. Their children seemed to enjoy having us as guests, and played well with our kids despite language differences. Our kids didn't want to leave the wonderful comforts that they had been looking forward to after Till made his invitation particularly enticing with promises of wonderful facilities of sauna, hot showers, bath, washing machine and internet access (all the things that are very much missed in the campervan) - not to mention good company and great food.

We spent a few nights there and visited the town of Nurnberg - I had very good memories of Nurnberg from my teenage years and it is still as pretty and pleasant as I remember it. We watched a multi-media show of the history of Nurnberg at the museum - I certainly hadn't realised what a central role it had played in much of recent history. We also went walking in the Frankische Schweiz area and had both a delicious afternoon tea and dinner in the local eateries - again focused on sampling the local delicacies.

Went through Bamberg after leaving their home (and being told that croissants are known in the region as Bambergers). The significance of this town to me is that this is where I bought the bottle of wine that Rob and I drank at our wedding. Anyone who was there may remember me making a bit of a big deal of that in my wedding speech, and it tasted great in spite of having been rather poorly cellared and frequently moved in the 9 years since I had bought it.

After that was a brief stop in Bad Kissingen (after some serious navigational errors making us very late), where we had lunch with people we had met in Salzburg. Lovely to see them again and of course Breanna and their girls thought that the visit was far too short (although it was Liam that really didn't want to leave their Nintendo DS!!)

And then on towards Duelmen where I had spent much of my year as an exchange student. Got to experience a serious traffic jam and diversion on the way, so ended up spending the night somewhere on the side of the road, and then got to Duelmen next day. Lovely to see my host family (von Luettichau family) with the added benefit of catching up with my host sister and brother who happened to be visiting - they were only 3 and 2 years old when I lived with them - we looked back on the photos and the original entries in the guestbook. I was the first of quite a number of exchange students they had hosted over the years, so it was interesting to read the guestbook comments of the other students (and good to know that I didn't put them off hosting exchange students, with being the first!)

Also had a lovely afternoon with another host family, the Eing family in Gescher - this time managed to catch up with 2 of my 4 host brothers and sisters, and it was so great to see them and to meet their kids (or some of them anyway!)

Then back to Holland and into the packing up time - so sad to be saying goodbye to the campervan ready to head home - can certainly recommend campervan travel, and also BW Campers, Netherlands as a great company to rent a van from.

Austria-Innsbruck

1 Jan - 4 Jan 2008

Loved Austria (again!) in spite of it being so cold that our waste-water tank outlet froze so we couldn't let the dishwater out (becomes a real exercise in low water usage dish-washing when you know you can't empty the tank!)

Innsbruck was an ideal place for the kids to try skiing and ice-skating, so we took advantage of the low-cost baby-lift to have a day of practising skiing, which Chris and James hadn't done since they were 6 and 4 years old and the others had never tried. Everyone enjoyed themselves in gorgeous weather and really short lift queues. The boys focused on speed, Breanna on technique and by the end of the day all were doing really well and were keen to go again next day.

However, the weather was slightly worse next day and very windy on the more advanced slopes, so in the end opted for a half day skiing for Breanna on the kiddy slope and the rest of us went ice-skating at the open-air rink right next to the ski slope. Breanna joined us in the afternoon for ice-skating, so got the best of both worlds. Don't know how she managed to find the energy to do both, but she certainly did and loved every minute of it, until the time when James' knee connected with her head trying to dodge her when gravity got the best of her. So this was a great excuse to get back to the van for a hot chocolate and get going to get down the mountain before it got too cold.

Spent the next day travelling towards Germany crossing the border at Lake Constance (Bodensee), with fantastic scenery all the way. Have to say that Austria is definitely one of my favourite countries in the all-round scorecard of scenery, cleanliness, friendliness and liveability. Maybe being able to speak the language makes a difference to one's impression of a country, but Austria has always been such a pleasure to visit and things seem so easy there compared to travelling in other countries.

Italy 26th Dec-1 Jan 08

Having heard so many great things about the Cinque Terre from Ron and Joan and Geoff and Dee we decided we had to go there, even though it meant driving in the wrong direction for what should now be our homeward bound leg.
So we headed towards Genova from Milan, visited the biggest Aquarium in Europe there, and then on down the coast to La Spezia. Found we could actually drive in with the campervan to the second of the 5 towns, so started our walk from there. A big day (nearly 12 km) of very pleasant, but often steep walking, with lovely views and great little towns to explore on the way. Gelati in Venazza was a welcome refreshment break and by the time we got to Montessoro, I was a bit too tired to do much exploring there, so back on the train to the camper for an early night! Next day a quick walk to the first town Rio Maggiore, and then a quick trip down to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Rob and the kids booked for the tower climb (having done it before I took the chance of a welcome break).
From Pisa back up to Verona, for a quick look at this classic "little Rome" and then another day at Gardaland Theme Park followed by New Years Eve on Lake Garda. A great trip.