Australian Reptile Park

Today I was at the Australian Reptile Park which is at Gosford, about 70 km or an hour's drive, north of Sydney. This is a zoo where you can see not only reptiles but also all the typical Australian animals such as kangaroos, wallabies, Tasmanian devils, platypus, wombats, parrots and koalas.

As you can see, I already bought myself the mandatory "Indiana Jones" hat :)

What I really liked best was the area where you can pet and feed the kangaroos. They are too cute!

But they also showed the more dangerous animals -- snakes, crocodiles, spiders, etc. I'm sure you have heard the horror stories of the deadly fauna in the land Down Under. Well, I survived the first week without meeting any of them. And well, 20 million people live here and don't feel that the "lucky country" is constantly threatening their lives. So once again, no worries.

New home

I moved into my new home and everything's fine. Got all furniture very quickly and am settled. The only thing that I still struggle with is my new Internet connection (wireless broadband) which still isn't working. I'm typing this from my housemate's computer and will add more to this posting once I'm back online.

We are sharing this house with 6-7 people. The main tenant and her boyfriend are Australians, then there is one girl from Taiwan, her boyfriend from New Zealand, one guy from England, one more girl from Australia and me from Germany. And there is Milly, the cat (20 years old). Everybody is very friendly and so life is quite pleasant here. They really integrated me quickly into the "family". We have 5 bedrooms and share the kitchen, laundry, dining room, livingroom, and garden.

The location is really good, too. To go to the city, it's 8 minutes walking uphill to the main road where the bus stop is, and from there 10 minutes by bus. And there are also buses that go to North Sydney where I'll go to the office in January. And there is a park just down from the house, good to relax with quiet and trees and green.

Christmas on the beach

Skype makes it easy to Internet-phone with my family at home in Germany, so I don't feel much alone.

I spent Christmas the Australian way: on the beach, enjoying the sun, sand and surf. Today I was at Manly beach, which is one of the finest and most popular beaches around here. I've also been to North Head, which is one of the two "entrance gates" to Sydney Harbour. You can stand on top of the cliffs and enjoy the view, Sydney is in the distance to your right and the endless blue Pacific Ocean to your left.

Found my accommodation

After inspecting two more places today -- the two best I've seen so far -- I made my decision. It is a room in a beautiful house at an excellent location, let by a very nice Australian couple, Peggy and Lochy, who told me "welcome aboard". I will move in on Friday.

What's great is that I'll have my own bathroom, directly accessible from my room. A so-called "en-suite". The one and only disadvantage is that the room is unfurnished, so I'll need to buy a mattress and a bed frame on Friday. Luckily the shops will be open on Boxing Day and there will even be special discounts on that day. And my new landlords say they are going to help me shopping.

I'm really happy, everything is going so well. Today is Christmas Eve. I escaped the German Weihnachtsstress and my present is a new and wonderful country to live in and explore. This year 2008 is ending really special and sometimes I think I'm dreaming.

Google's street view

I'm still busy checking out rooms for rent. I already have 4 offers to choose from, and two more appointments tomorrow. Getting to an address is really easy with the navi, but also Google Maps is a wonderful helper. They have the "Street view" feature here. If you haven't seen it, here is an example of one of the places where I'm going tomorrow.

Größere Kartenansicht

Click and drag inside the image to look around. This is really great to get an impression of an unknown street and area.

North Sydney

North Sydney is not the northern half of Sydney, it is a specific suburb, the other main business district, with skyscrapers and nowhere to park your car. This is where a lot of companies, especially the IT companies, have their Sydney offices.

This morning I had a look at my company's office there, to say hello to the people. They are located in a 22-floor-building, with the NCR logo on top, using 4 of the floors. Nice view, and very friendly people who welcomed me.

Back on the streets in North Sydney I heard the sound of a saxophone playing, and then I saw a sight that made me wish I had taken my camera with me. It was a christmas tree, the size of a man, on wheels, with a face and arms, playing the saxophone. In between the breaks he would wave "Merry Christmas" to the passers-by. And no, it was not a robot. It was a cheerful adult man in a whole-body-costume.

Xmas in AU

Some people asked me whether there were any christmas decorations now in Australia. Yes, there are. Plastic christmas trees, more like a cone than an actual tree. The picture on the right gives you a pretty good example. This is one of the nicer ones. There are uglier ones too. ;)

Most of this decoration is in the shopping centres, supported by pop music versions of christmas songs. Naturally, something like a German Weihnachtsstimmung just can't really come up in summer. But no worries. I hear the snow has melted in Germany and there won't be White Christmas either. And this morning the TV showed snow chaos in the US. So Australia is not a bad place to be at the moment...

I had my TomTom navi checked and it turned out that what was broken was not the navi but the cigarette lighter in my rental car. So I went to Hertz and got a new car today (same model but a nicer colour), and everything's working again now.