About Dumbphones and Tom Hanks

The tasmanian devil (from the Lonney Tunes)

I just arrived in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, the island, where the devils live.

I left Melbourne yesterday evening to stay the night at the airport, because my flight took off at 6 AM today.

For everyone who's thinking about to come to Melbourne, there's a cheap way to reach the airport or leave it to the city. Usually you will be told to get the Skybus, which will set you back 17$. But there's a bus from the Melbourne public transport system, the 901, which is even to some locals unknown, which takes a little bit longer but only costs 6$!

My sleeping bench

When I arrived around 11 PM at the airport I couldn't check in yet but asked the stuff at the check-in desk if I'm at the right place (the airport is pretty big). I was at the right place, but I couldn't check in before 4 AM. 5 hours left, it wasn't too loud, so I found a bench which I transformed into a place to sleep, hiding my backpack under the bench so that no one can steal it while I was sleeping (or at least tried to sleep).

My pillow this night is proof that the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is wrong. You don't need a towel but always a big scarf with you, much more useful! ;)

In a kind of closed area...

Do you know the movie "The Terminal" (Trailer)with Tom Hanks about this guy who has to live on a terminal for some time because his passport became illegal why he was in the air - based on a true story?

I felt quite like him when I built my sleeping place at Melbourne Airport... :D

Sleeping their was a premier in a second way for me, was it the first time that I used a sleeping mask -which is really helpful at such a bright place like an airport hall, even though I probably looked pretty weird.

I set two alarms for 4 AM and 4:15, so that I could not oversleep under any circumstances!

Well...I woke up by myself at half past 4 just to figure out that my phone shut off while it still had 10% battery! Such a Dumbphone!

But anyway, I still had enough time, caught the plane (slept the whole flight) and arrived safely in Hobart. I already had breakfast with my host Alice (my first true couch surfing experience!! =)))) and now I'm off to explore the city!

By the way...Tom Hanks. I walked past a cinema the other day and saw that there is a new movie with Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips (Trailer), which is based on a...drum roll...true story! I was wondering...what was the last movie with Tom Hanks that wasn't based on a true story...any idea??

About Toothbrushes, BbQ and Ildiko

What a great weekend! First of all, Melbourne became a sunny place again! =)

Right in time for the Latina Festival at Johnston Street where Foreigners from all latin countries contributed their tasty cuisine and their music combined with free dance classes all day long.

Sandringham Beach

On Sunday I had a run on the beach...such an amazing feeling to run next to the sea. At one point a put one of my earbuds out of my ear to hear the ocean. Wonderful....so wonderful that I didn't see a wave coming and my shoes and my jogging trousers got wet (I was running really close to the water).

In the afternoon I went to a BWS (Beer Wine Spirits - a supermarket that distributes nothing but alcohol in opposite to usual supermarkets which don't sell any alcohol at all) for some Cider and to Coles (supermarket like Spar) to grab some steaks for a Barbecue at my friends Josee's place. Two hours later I finally arrived at her place - she lives on the damn other end of the city and my train line wasn't operating this weekend because of reparation or whatever works, so I had to take the bus. Starving and thirsty we began to marinade the meat while drinking some cold Ciders.

Kangaroo-Sausages

When we found Barbecue Honey-Sauce in the fridge we wanted to marinade our pork spare ribs like real Wannabe-barbecue-pros with a brush! The problem was, we didn't have a brush. But! I had a toothbrush from Etihad Airlines with me - on long distance flights each passenger gets a tiny toothbrush, toothpaste, a sleeping mask and a pair of socks. So we used this (fresh and unused) toothbrush to marinade our ribs. It worked and the ribs were simply nomnomnom! :D

Beside the rips we had Kangoo-Rooh! And, yes, they were Kangaroo-Sausages. To all of you, who I told that Kangoroo meat is chewie (at least the one, I ate in Germany), the sausages are much better (especially better than they look on the photo)!

Me and my toothbrush (which I've never seen again)

After the Barbecue we went to the concert of one of Josee's housemates, performing with his band 'Ildiko', whom I was really excited about to hear.

I've never seen him before. But when I had breakfast at her place a few days ago I suddenly heard some noises from behind a closed door. A guy playing guitar. But he played it so touching, so smooth and with such an energy! 

So I came into the kitchen and asked, totally astonished and excited: "Guys, do you here that?!" 

I just got the answer: "Yeah, that's my housemate Laurence, he's pretty good, isn't he...?"

You find all pictures of the concert in this G+ Album.

But listen to him yourself or download his last Album for free or as much as you wanna pay: 

At last some impressions of the concert:

Laurence's Guitar

Laurance performing

A guy with awesome hair(cut)

This guy was just attending the concert but I liked his haircut, so I asked him for a photo. While I was taking a picture of him, one of his friends asked me if he could take a picture of me taking a picture of the hairy man. So that's the person to whom the middle finger points ;)

Ben, Laurence' and Josee's Housemate playing pool after the concert

Vienna has pigeons - Melbourne has parrots

A forecast for Melbourne sounds these days like this: It was rainy, it is rainy and it will still be rainy the next few days. It's actually summertime so we don't have a clue where the rain comes from, but we are used to changing weather in Melbourne...

So what do you do, when you come from Austria and the weather is shitty like this? Right, at first, you don't give a single fuck...but after a few days you get a little bit upset about coming to the, so-you-imagine, sunny-side-of-the-world just to find out the weather is just like at home...

The advantage of such a bad weather is that you can stay at home all day long and watch movies without a guilty conscience. So I learned a little bit about Australien History while watching a movie with Laura, my host's mother.

Red Dog is about a dog...which's red. (This is the perfect time for an "Oooohhhh" from you ;))

This dog and his story is actually known pretty well in whole Australia. The dog was a lovely friend for everyone, well-known at the communities in the hot areas in North-west of Autralia and was totally into hitchhiking! By himself...at least that's what the people say...you know, he somehow became a legend...

And the Movie is great! Haven't seen such a good film for a long time. It's emotional, it's funny, has a lot of good footage, romantic and the ending is not too hollywood-like as the movie is produced by an Australien studio.

So if you're bored by the ORF - today they send Undercover Boss at prime time - give Red Dog a try, it's free on Youtube: Red Dog Part 1

Funny movie knowledge: The dog in the movie became the main actors dog in real life! :)

After that movie, it stopped raining for some time, so we went out with the dog to a nearby park.

Did you know that most trees in Melbourne are Eucalyptus-trees? Laura showed me some of the different sorts, they all smell different (at least their leafs, I haven't put my nose into the tree's trunk)! One smelled like Baby-loof (or whatever the stuff was called, your parents rub on your back when you were a child and had a cold), another like lemongrass!

But then Laura told me the most amazing thing...there were parrots in the trees. And after starring some minutes into the Eucalyptus (you would imagine that you can see a parrot in wild nature, because of the amazing colours, but actually it isn't that easy) they flew out of the tree, so I got a glimpse of them...and they were amazingly colourful! I've been told that they are actually in every park in Melbourne...so I hope that I will have another sunny day in Melbourne so that I can stare at the trees in the parks through the viewfinder of my camera.

I don't carry my camera with me because of the bad light situation during these rainy days, so you have to stay with this cute bird at the moment. ;)

In the evening I went out again for an Evening of Werewolf. Yep, Werewolf is everywhere...

We were nearly 40 people, so it was a little bit - imagine my thumb and my forefinger 2mm apart from each other - loud. Didn't make it easier for me to understand all the (sometimes really fast) conversations during the play, but I think in the end I understood more than in the beginning. All in all it was Hardcore-english-conversation-training, try it out! (it will be easier for you unless you find some Aussies, but anyway...)

So during the night I killed Casanova (literally lovely character!), was lynched when I was the pope (yeah, we had to make up what our job is in Düsterwald, so I became the village's pope sitting next to the village's slut...obviously not too religious people in this village as I died and the slut survived...) and got to know a nice pub in St. Kilda. :)

Hello World!

It took me quite a long time to set this blog up, I actually had some problems with the background (and media in general) and I'm still not too thrilled about the current one but I thought I should finally start blogging...so here it is!

What happend to me the last three weeks? Well, a lot. :) Much more than I could fit into one post. So I decided to give you a short summary and post in the next time in a non-chronological order about my past adventures, while I go on with hopefully more regular posts about what happened recently. ;)

I headed to Essen (sounds more delicious than it is) on the 18th of October to the Boardgame Convention "Spiel" with three friends. After that I went to Frankfurt, where I spent two nights before I took off to Melbourne. After 22 hours of flight I arrived in this amazing city, which is said to be the Australian San Francisco (and it actually has some very, very (one more time: very) obvious things in common). I've been here since then, but maybe I'll fly to Tasmania on Wednesday...you know, quite some time 'till then (and yes I'm a little bit spontaneous (= ).

A quick overview about Melbourne:

• The people here speak actually English and not Australian-mumble-until-no-one-understands-you--dialect, so no communication problems yet (at least not too many).
• So many lovely and cool people, so many opportunities, so much to see, so much to do...you can imagine: I've got too many appointments every day...
• Melbourne is said to be a Coffee-Metropole...anyone ever heard of that?? Me neither...
• I haven't seen a Kangaroo yet, beside a dead one in the museum, but I think that doesn't count
• This is one of the greenest city I've ever been to, in terms of parks and trees and plant-stuff
• Gratifies. Wonderful ones. Everywhere.  
• Beer is expensive (and if I say expensive I talk about prices like four times as high as in Austria!) -.-
• The weather is nearly the same as in Vienna (changing from day to day, sometimes rainy, sometimes sunny, sometimes both...so it feels quite homelike)
• The first three things that Austria is referred to here are:
• Sound of Music (WHY??)
• Mozart
• Hitler (but, never fear, Fritzl comes shortly after that ;))
• It's big
• You can actually use the public toilets without catching a disease

Oh, and of course, last but not least: The beach is wonderful and next to the city. ;)

Technical stuff: You can follow my blog via email-notification or via RSS-feed, both in the sidebar on the left side. Or you do it old-school-like: leave a tab with my blog always open and press every few minutes F4 ;)

Personal stuff: I'm looking forward to emails from you about what's going on in Europe! Or leave a comment or stay in touch via Skype! I promise the next posts will come faster than this one! ;)
I miss you all!

By the way, the timezone here is GMT+10...so have a good night!