Chocolate

I am sitting at the tram station Alma Rd/st Kilda Rd waiting for a tram to take me toward East Malvern. Although it is half past 12 I haven't really done anything besides showering, getting dressed and walking here. Admittedly it is hard to get out of bed if your six other roommates (including Anja right next to you) are nowhere close to waking up or getting up for that matter. And why as they dont have anything planned today? I, however, am on my way to meet Owen again and it felt very strange to leave Anja behind and not seeing her until the evening. At least she will be taken care of by Raul and Lauritz (I have no idea if this is how you spell them - does the name Lauritz even exist?)

They are our German roommates and have been in Australia for 20 months I believe. We met them when we checked into the Coffee Palace on Wednesday evening, had a game of cards and decided to spend the next day at the beach together. Though the weather seemed foul in the beginning it quickly cleared up and watched over by the sun it drew us all into the water to do some backflips and water fights. Raul was desperate for a ball and a game of soccer but sadly we couldnt find one. Instead a French "backpacker photographer" decided they were worth making his collection and had them smile for him. The late afternoon brought steong winds with painful sand blown over and against us and so we took off grocery shopping and fixed up cheese penne and salad before it was time for the boys to go to the movies and for Anja and myself to watch a comfy movie in our sixbed dorm.

Leaving Halia and Chris was a strange thing for itself. Firstly I had to make sure they knew it wasn't goodbye! Anja and I are planning to visit them on the weekend and when I come back to Melbourne after Tasmania I am counting on seeing them too. But as I stuffed my backpack in the boot (trunk) I still had a pit in my stomach. Just like when I leave home. It might have been in combination with my family's amazing fox video that I felt like leaving all over again and I was happy to be going to the hostel accompanied by both Chris and Halia. They have become so dear to me and when we played Luey's new game on the last day with the whole family it really felt like home. I am so glad to have met them and although I have thanked them before I would like to do it publicly as well. They have done so incredibly much for me and have become such good friends that I surely won't forget them.

Well my tram was so kind not to show up  so now I will be gloriously late. Victorian public transport. I. Hate. You.

Until soon friends,

Skipper (and sleepy munchkin)

Christmas

For christmas eve Anja and I made the plan to have a completely different christmas than we have at home in order not to miss it. We therefore took off to brighton beach which is about 1 hour and 30 minutes of foot walk further along the coast from the famous St Kilda beach. We figured we could make that walk and then go to Luna Park in St Kilda before we take a train to Williamstown to take up our dinner reservation. Although it was only 23 degrees warm the sun burnt hot enough for us to feel too warm.

 The beach was lovely and with our Santa hats we attracted a few kids wondering wether we were Santa's helpers. On our stroll we found a starfish, dead jellies and beautiful shells and of course walked past the famous Brighton beach houses.

By the time we felt hungry for lunch we had already been on the beach for about an hour but still would have had to walk 75 more minutes to get to St Kilda. An amount of time we didn't have. Luckily the father and his two girls whom we asked for the next bus station offered to simply take us to Luna Park and save us the trouble. You won't believe how happy we were.

Luna Park is a very old very small theme park with a few attractions. One ride on any attraction costs 10,95 dollars. Well, it was christmas so we allowed ourselves three of those rides and chose a water slide due to the hot weather, a swirly head down thing which Anja know from die Wies'n and the famous scenic railway which runs along the outside of Luna Park. This one is a over 100 year old roller coster which wasn't fast or very steep (it had a 'driver' standing in between the carts), but when going down it basically hops up and down quickly and makes you hit knees and elbows everywhere if you are not prepared. That was pretty scary the first time then. We only spend around an hour in the park because waiting times for scenic railway took 30 minutes, otherwise we probably would have been done way earlier. It was alright this way and we could take our time to get to the next beach in Williamstown.

Siren's is a sort of nicer restaurant which we decided to treat ourselves with. It is located right on the beach and sitting outside it offered a spectacular view of the sea and setting sun. The price turned out fine too, although we decided on a three course menu for christmas because we shared the food. How can anyone eat a three course menu by themselves anyway? As an entree we ordered focaccia with house made dips. Our favorite was a beet root dip (I was very surprised by myself), then the hummus and the tsatziki and well, then there was the pumpkin blue cheese dip. Which.. I found Anja brave to eat more than one taste from. Confusingly they served the entree and the main at the same time so the dips actually had to wait and we started with our tiger prawns on penne and with a basil cream and tomato sauce. Sooo yummy. Our dessert we ordered after having a short rest and chat and then shared a wonderful tiramisu with strawberries and chocolate.

Once the sun set we returned to the family home and joined right into a traditional Ukrainian christmas celebration with twelve courses of little nibbly things (so not full meals) and while I didn't like the beet root soup I did like potato mash in noodle dough with sour cream and the carol singing afterward. Chris and their friend Alison played guitar and the kids had lots of rhythmic instruments to keep time. By the time everything was cleared up again and Anja and I had finished making our christmas movie it was late in the morning and we were sooo tired. That is why this blog post is up so late.

To all of you a merry christmas,
Skipper and munchkin

23. December

Dear people big and small and overall

it has been another day of sleepiness, vodka and herings, language learning (english, ukranian and german), stress, christmassy spirit and photographs. We also went to the science museum, but there really isn't much to say about it. So today I will let images speak for me. Enjoy your last day before christmas.

-- On the 'leventh day of christmas my true love gave to me: many pretty pictures... -- and so on until -- and a paaartridge in a pear tree! --

The science museum had a large variety of activities and things to learn and it was fun to spend a few hours with the boys there, especially since I will barely see them starting Wednesday.

The exhibition "Think ahead" was focused on possible future happenings and for example enabled the visitor to create their future self with three different categories of 'items' to choose from.

Tree decorating is one of the most fun things to do with christmas. Especially since this time we made some of the decor ourselves! The red and white hearts were weaved out of paper and make little baskets containing lollies. We will also hang Lebkuchen on the tree tomorrow - very similar to those we always get at Aldi too! The hearts and stars and pretzels. Once the tree was up and pretty Anja and I had lots of fun in front of it, as it is right next to our bed. (Don't be conceived, the thing on the left is just our blanket covering up the suitcase and bags.)

This is our photo that we took in the 1960s, we kept pretty well until now. (Doesn't it look like an old photo though that you would find in your parents albums? It's blurry, shows all the untidy surroundings of the room and has an antique color. Voilà.)

Keep up the good work so you don't spoil your spot on the nice list,

your naughty Skipper and Munchkin.

22. December

Oh my goodness!! How could I forget to write about a big part of yesterday? Cannot believe that happened to me. Now we can go back in time again and speak about some more crafty/bakery work. As Luey and Stefan had a friend sleepover here we decided to make a ginger bread house - sorry, I meant an outdoor shack. Fortunately Anja and I were in charge of making it look nice, while the boys used some incredibly untasty marzipan to make goblins and hobbits and a candy gandalf. This left us enough time and space to make the shack look somewhat pretty, although I wouldn't call us chef bakers and decorators (this title has been given to Jenny). Our Santa ended up looking slightly Mexican and the house fell apart one hour later, well, what can you do.

Los Santanos even got a mustache later.

Today felt very christmassy. Around midday Anja and I took off toward the city after saying good bye to Kevin, who is moving on to Sydney for the holidays. We had put the Queen Victoria Market on our agenda and really got into a swing of christmas shopping and the delight of buying other people gifts. The market is seperated in a few different sections of delicacies, retail and organics (fruit and veggies). Since we weren't out to do grocery shopping we spent most our time in the huge retail part, after trying a few different cheeses and dips.

Actually not the market but Melbourne Central Mall ;)

Our hours in the Queen Victoria market were filled with smelling and tasting things (like some of the hottest chilli sauces in the world, although I only dared to go up to 8/10 while the hottest was labeled 14/10), trying clothes on, chatting with salespeople and getting bargains.

We of course bought a few presents for our lovely Australians, although I can't name those for the adults with the chance, that they glimpse into this blog post. For the boys who are into drawing and being creative I stopped by the Magic Pen stall and listened to a very enthusiastic man, explaining how they work! And I must say they are pretty amazing, but not too cheep and of course I couldn't decide on what to buy. There was a pack of all the different kinds of merchandise he had (pencils, color change pens, erase pens, zigzag pens, face paint, blow out pens) for fifty dollars and I said sounds like a great deal, but I don't have fifty dollars to spend. So his deal for me was to give me the two main pen packs (colorchange and erasable) and to put the blow out pens and one face paint on top. All for the normal price of the first two - 30 dollars. As I didn't say yes right away he also stuck in a zig zag one and two more face paint sets. Alright, alright! Great deal. He was amazing and those pens are supposedly long lasting (better are), non toxic and washable and purely water based. I believe him on that because he smeared them all over his face and drew on his tongue.

We scored another great deal when we were looking for lunch and came across great smelling paella stall. They offered two kinds, but twelve dollars for one box sounded really expensive. We could have shared if Anja liked seafood or I ate meat, but as we didn't we were put off by the thought of spending twelve dollars on our lunch. After a few minutes of us thinking and wondering the woman waved us close and whispered she would give us each a box for six dollars. It wasn't the bestest paella I have ever eaten (actually the prepacked Aldi or Lidl one is pretty good), but we got a great deal on it and it did fill us up nicely. In the spirit of all things christmas we also had a little snowflake painted on our faces at a free face painting booth and chatted with the lovely woman running it. She also let us know that today's Santa was a bit of a drunk, as he appeared super sleepy and wobbly on his feet and kept saying strange things.

We also had a sort of conversation with the two Indian guys at the candy bar who in the end we figured must have had a thing for us. The had us taste every single candy snake in all flavors like mango, sour cherry, blueberry, lychee and so forth and wrapped us into a conversation again when we walked by another time.
Having a christmas shop in bad rainy weather really made me feel like christmas was coming and I enjoyed looking at all the goods at the market. We also found out that the dollar is extremely week at the moment or the Euro extremely strong at an exchange rate of 1=1,5!

Anja fell asleep while I was doing all this writing work ;)

Now we are having a gift wrapping party and locked everyone out of the room for a few minutes. Anja bought a few presents for the family that is taking care of her suitcase in Perth while she is traveling (interestingly enough it's not her host family) and I got a few small things for the boys and Halia and Chris.

I hope you enjoy the trip with us and seeing some more photos.
Skipper and Munchkin

ps: This is for all those who have wondered what turning right in Australia looks like. I tried taking some bad pictures while crossing the street to make it easier to understand.

20./21. December

Santa Clause is coming to town!
Yeah, I am finally being grasped by the spirit of christmas after these two wonderful days. Anja and I are relaxing on our new camp (moved rooms because Halia's parents arrived) and are anticipating the end of this blogpost so we can have some hot chocolate with marshmallows and rest in front of a movie. We blew our plans to go to a bar into the wind as we lay in bed half dead this afternoon and for a few other reasons like having lots to do here. Today we also finally cooked again and whipped up my favorite stir fry that luckily everyone enjoyed (beside Stefan). As we are chilling here I am wearing a new piece of my clothes collection, but a bargainer as I am, I didn't pay for it. Hmm, how did I attain it? Well, we have to go back in time for that, just one day though.

Around midday we made our way to the station to get to Mentone by one o'clock. In the end the trip cost us one and a half hours. One reason for this delay was our rush to leave the train arriving at Flinder's Street in order to hop onto the Frankston line (taking us to Mentone), however, we then discovered our train had just turned into the Frankston line and drove off right in front of our noses. Upon our arrival we were picked up by Mr Owen himself with whom we headed into the nearest supermarket to gather the missing ingredients for traditional christmas cookies. Oh boy, Owen had no idea what he had gotten himself into. Before I keep going I would like to thank Oma and Opa for writing out and sending my beloved recipe.
Kneeding and mixing the dough was a quick affair once Owen had found the scales packed away in the pantry. Luckily we did find them because we did have to improvise with a few other needed utensils like the rolling pin which we substituted with a bottle of wine. This option seemed classier than the olive oil spray that we mistook for insect repellent at first.

Anja also insisted on kneading chocolate flakes into the dough so some of the cookies later turned out looking burned because they were so dark. The cookie cutter shapes I was able to attain were very christmassy of course. They contained a gingerbread man (male), an angel (female), a mistletoe (flower), a christmas tree (triangle), a christmas tree ball (circle), the spirit of christmas (heart) and a star (star).

Once the cookies were done and Owen had used the rest dough for a big blob face after he had grown tired of cutting out cookies, we decorated them with yellow, red and orange icing and differently colored sprinkles.
In the end Anja and I had to take half showers because the flour never really went where it was supposed to. I must say I got away the worst at least concerning pretty much my whole body. However, Anja ended up decorated with a nice and clear handprint of the back of her black shorts.

Once the kitchen (and us) were clean again and the cookies were packed away the plan for the day was not done yet of course. We had booked tickets for an open air showing of Frozen in the Botanic garden. Well equipped with a pick nick blanket and a fluffy blanket and some drinks and our santa hats we found a nice place in between all the other movie goers. Fortunately we arrived about 90 minutes before the actually screening, that way we got a quite nice place in front of the huge blowup screen, because the whole lawn ended up packed with people. In those many minutes of waiting we all lay down under the blanket and looked at cloud formations and just before the movie started what I thought were birds, were actually many many bats flying above our heads!! That was the first time I ever saw bats.

The movie was actually really funny and sweet and I was surprised at how well the sound was carried over the lawn. During the course of waiting and all of it I absolutely fell in love with Owen's jumper and since I was wearing my huge huge flea market jumper he agreed to swap for a while. And then he allowed me to keep it for a few days while he is holding mine hostage.
You could therefore say we have spent another two lovely days.

Hope you did too,
Skipper

17./18./19. December

Finally I have managed to sit down and produce another blogpost again.
Anja arrived yesterday evening and now my bed is a little warmer and my room a little fuller. My previously planned blogpost will be postponed and instead I will speak about today, the 19th of December, 5 days till christmas, the hottest day yet. We knew we were facing up to 40 degrees heat but we didn't expect a temperature of 32 degrees at only 10 o'clock. We also didn't expect it to still be 39 degrees at six o'clock in the evening, so postponing our plans to go to the beach until later in the evening sounded like a great idea.

Instead we started an art project for our two birth day boys (Owen and Luey) and after that decided to hurry into the city and not worrying to wash the paint off our faces. As a result we were approached by many strangers one of whom shot away frantically with his huge camera. Anja had Summer written on her face, which she decided didn't make any sense. Therefore, we told everyone it was our friend summer's birthday and that we had been on a scavenger hunt with her earlier. The people loved us :P

Although we were meant to meet another girl from Perth today she never got back to us because apparently her phone died. This still led to us waiting around for about an hour inside the acmi where we were supposed to meet her and her never arriving.

This was the photo we originally intended to do.

And these happened during our venture into the city.

With those lovely strangers we met two guys from Stuttgart who were difficult to understand, Dieter at the information centre, a train station security man who let me through the gates for free because he thought it was my birthday and Canadian parents on a visit to their daughter. They probably were the nicest.
After the hot afternoon in the city we took off back to Newport to spend some time with the younger birthday boy, Luey. Although way past seven it was still warm enough for my first swim in the Australian ocean. What a debut!

To our dislike Halia brought Hamburgers for them and fries for us to the beach. It would have been lovely if we hadn't had a go at Lord of the Fries earlier in the day, where we tried Belgian Mayo and Spicy Mango Chutney Sour Cream souces, which were both tasty, thought the mayo didn't have much flavor. This must have been my unhealthiest day in Australia yet, adding three huge subway cokes which we shared (free refills) and the obligatory birthday cake.
An evening at the beach called for lots of photography and so we shot away until my camera died and we had to resort to the beloved iPhone.

I will talk to you again tomorrow and wish you a lovely thursday.
Skipper

Eye photography. Before swimming and after. Note: Seawater will turn you eyelashes into a spider.