soaked and soaped

Our New Zealand trip is over—we arrived in Vienna yesterday noon.
We were greeted by our parents and girlfriends with a great poster:

Thanks girls!

Now we have to get rid of the jetlag…

Waiting for the ferry to Devonport, we decided to enjoy a cocktail at “Traffic – Bar and Kitchen”, Auckland City a few days ago. Behind the seats we discovered a huge collection old National Geographic magazines. Nice part of interior.
I picked randomly one from the year 1959 just to run over the pages and to marvel at the great typography. There was an article about “Building a new Austria”–What are the odds!

(more photos on flickr)

I ask the boss of the bar, where he had got all these magazines from. He told me, that there is a shop in Auckland called “Trash palace” (Thanks again!).
The name of the shop hits the point, if you’re looking for all kind of old stuff, you’ll find it there. We bought the remaining few National Geographic magazines, although we didn’t know if we have even enough space in our backpacks…

Here’s a quick update what we have been doing the last couple of days.

We left Wellington (see photos here) on Wed, 27th and got straight to Nelson on the south island by ferry and bus. The decision to go there was rather quick: We booked motel, ferry and bus just the evening before we left.

I think we were really lucky with the decision, because we noticed later that Nelson is one of the sunniest places in NZ. Also our apartment was just 10 minutes walk away from Tahunanui Beach. Staying there for a couple days, we enjoyed swimming in the warm sea and running at the beach. We also took the chance and drove to Abel Tasman National Park where we walked from Torrent Bay to Bark Bay. The view was amazing! Long, white beaches, blue sea, clear sky—definitely a play to stay longer than a couple of hours! You’re invited to check out the photos of this tour in this flickr set.

Next station was Hanmer Springs. The main attraction there are the hot thermal pools, which makes Hanmer mostly a place to relax and unwind. As a result, the rate of people who are 60 years or older is unsurprisingly high there. However, we used the perfect weather to walk around a day, where we came by a beautiful waterfall.

Now we are sitting in an apartment in Christchurch, preparing for the trip to Queenstown tomorrow. Christchurch has not much to offer, except the big park in the middle is quite nice. Also worth noting: Joe and Majersee had their hair cut! See the before/after photos here.

As mentioned, tomorrow we’ll go to Queenstown. Our todo-list includes: bungee jumping, zorbing, trekking, relaxing, coffee-drinking, heli-biking, jetboating,… :) Nice.

It’s nearly 11am in Wellington, NZ. I’m sitting in my apartment, enjoying Kiwi-fruit breakfast while I’m
writing this entry. The last days have been a bit rainy, but luckily the sky turns to a
clear blue now and also the sun comes out again.
As you might know—from former blog entries—we attended Webstock
Conference here in Wellington and it was totally awesome!
It was by far the best-organized and most-fun conference I’ve ever
been to. They also got some really nice conference schwag for
all attendees. To get some impressions of the conference and the city, visit
Kommen’s flickr set or search for photos on flickr tagged with webstock08.

We’ll stay a few days longer here in Wellington to get some things
done and maybe then move to the Southern Island or so.
Don’t forget to check our flickr photos as we will regularly update them.

So for everybody who doesn’t know: We are going to New Zealand for 2 month.

Why?
Conferencing, meeting people, relaxing and working!

So we will arrive in Auckland Saturday noon and then we will go more or less straight to Wellington.
There we’re going to attend Webstock Conference. We’re really looking forward to meet a lot of great people there!
Drop us a note, if you’re also at webstock conf.

We will post updates and photos here and on flickr. Stay tuned!