Dirk´s 29th birthday and our goodbye from Sydney

Saturday we went to shop at IKEA to get some quilt covers, some storage boxes for our kombi van and to eat some “famous” koettbullar. Now we can move in our new home:-)! Yesterday night we went to the Victoria Room (www.thevictoriaroom.com) to celebrate into Dirk´s birthday. After searching about 45 mins for a parking spot we finally arrived in the bar and had really nice food and drinks there.
Unfortunately only few of our friends came to meet us: Tatiana, Ricardo, Juan and Jonathan came to party with us:-) – thanks girl & guys, we had good fun:-)! There we also met some kind of “blind dates” – Melanie & Ricarda, friends of friends from Berlin whom we met for the first time. Just some mins before 12 we arrived at the Fringe Bar where we danced a while. Dirk was really, really happy about his birthday present from our German friends back home:-)! He has chosen the tandem skydive.

In the end we finished our “last” big night out in Sydney in the Colombian Hotel.
Today Dirk´s birthday was a little bit stressy as we had to go to the North Shore to Dee Why to meet the sellers of our car again to get some more papers from them.
On the way back we had some German food in the Bavarian Bier Café in Manly. We had some “Weizenbier” and a “Brezel”. As the main Dirk had Nuernberger Bratwuerste with mashed potatoes and Sauerkraut and Silke had mashed potatoes with Sauerkraut and salad. Yummy, yummy but really small portions:-)!


Tomorrow or latest on Tuesday we will start our trip up North and we are very much looking forward to it:-)!!!

Our car is our castle

Yesterday we bought a very good looking old VW kombi van to travel around Australia. We both had the dream to drive and own a VW van for a long time. And now we can live our dream. We bought the kombi from a Finnish couple who are travelling to Asia in one week. So we could get it for a fair price. We will let it check before we start travelling and hopefully the inside is as good as the body. The kombi has central locking with remote control and the locking pins (the pins which move up and down when you open and close the car doors) are silver skulls.
Dirk was driving the kombi over the Harbour Bridge (you have to pay three dollars toll fee) and we both enjoyed that exciting first ride. Dirk was a little bit nervous because it was raining and it was the first ride but he did really good (except for finding the reverse gear).
The kombi has the same age as Silke, and Dirk says that you know the condition then:-)!
We now have to go to the Australian state Victoria to change the registration of the kombi to our name because the kombi is registered there.
We are no looking for a name for the kombi. We already got some ideas from Olli and Francesca. If you have an idea for a name please write a comment!

Heaps of sailing boats in Sydney Harbour (14.05.06)

Nearly every Sunday all sailors go crazy and go in the water, the harbour looks really busy and even the ferry to Manly takes more time to get there because of all the sailing boats around.

Our time here in Sydney is nearly over… Dirk is working his last week in café comity and we have to move out of the flat on the weekend, too. Still thinking about doing a birthday and leaving party this weekend but not really sure, because all our party-animal-friends are still in Düsseldorf and some other spots of Europe;-)
At the moment we are really busy choosing the right present for Dirk´s birthday,….it must have 4 wheels, and a powerful engine with a lot of space around! We`re talking about a campervan which we would like to buy this week!
A lot of cars we already drove for a short trip, but it gets hard to find a good one for a acceptable price. We will take our favourite one to the garage tomorrow morning. We want to be sure that nothing serious is broken. The car is the same year of birth as Dirk and he is not in such a good condition too……;-))
More details about our plans will follow in a couple of days. We will leave Sydney to go up north as soon as possible because there it hopefully is much warmer than here! Then our blog will get a bit more interesting because we will explore something new….three months just in a “small” (that´s what Dirk thinks) city like Sydney is enough.

Going out with Francesca (08.05.06)

Finally Silke got in eye-to-eye contact with her friend Francesca. She nearly uses to work the same hours like people at clicktivities in Germany do, it took us two month to finally meet up;-(
Now we went out already a couple of times and enjoyed it each time. It´s different and more interesting if you go out with a local, there are so nice places around.

“Speed” sightseeing and yummy chocolate with our “first-grade” friends from Frankfurt (07.05.06)

For the first time Özlem and her family who are “first-grade” friends of Dirk came over to Sydney to visit us. Usually only friends of friends came to meet us so far. Everyday we spent some time going to the beach and the city. Because of their three-year old son every step took us a long time and we had to speed up. We even managed to go out at night and trained each other to clean our tongues which Özlem decided is very important for kissing;-). For the first time in down under Dirk tried driving on the wrong side of the road and also with an automatic car. It worked out quiet easily and we found out how quick you can be in the city centre by car. But maybe soon we will have a car more often ;-) and even our own one.
On Oxford Street there is a chocolate store called Max Brenner where you can have different kinds of delicious hot chocolate and fruit fondue. Yummy, yummy:-)!!!

Harry´s Café de Wheels – eating a famous Tiger Pie in Wooloomooloo (30.04.06)

The other day Silke wanted to show Dirk the famous Harry´s Café de Wheels. There Dirk took the well-known Australian Tiger Pie and Silke a vegetarian Tiger Pie. The Tiger Pie is a beef filled pie with mashed potatoes, gravy and mashed peas on top. You get this pies from a campervan styled café for take-away. There you sit next to the water and eat it there with all the birds and fish watching you jealously.
After the delicious pie Dirk showed Silke a hotel bar in Wooloomoolo that he already knew. On Sundays they have a mixed afternoon party with a BBQ on the terrace. And yes, Dirk was thinking about eating a burger straight after eating this pie;-)! But in the end he did not eat it.

Sunset at the Opera House, cowboy Dirk and cowgirl Silke, African food and drag queen show in Newtown (29.04.06)

After nearly two months in Sydney we finally took the chance to watch the sunset at the Opera House. We tried different spots for taking pictures and Dirk found the nicest spot, which you can see in the picture.
We also tried out some hats for our future farm work in a real bad souvenir shop at Circular Quay.
Afterwards we took the bus to Newtown to have dinner there. We found a really interesting African restaurant right where we got out of the bus. We tried out two of typical African drinks there and both of them and the wine we bought at the lick-her-shop were disgusting. But the food was really nice:-)!
Later on we dropped into a local pub with a drag queen show to experience the party life of Newtown.

Swedish connection BBQ at Bondi Beach (22.04.06)

The Swedish friends of the German Jana were doing a birthday and at the same time goodbye BBQ on Bondi Beach. This was our chance to enjoy the first BBQ right on the beach. It was still really warm and sunny when we arrived there and we watched a beautiful sunset (and it got cold). You have to wait til other people finished with their meat and then you can take the BBQ over and use it by throwing some change in there.