Halbe Weltreise/ Half World Trip: Wind, Wellington, Wargs and Weta (~ Dec 17th)

So I was in Wellington. In the first few minutes I thought to myself: "Well this is a windy city!" And that is actually it's nickname: Windy Wellington!

Windy Wellington:

I headed to my hostel and got a 6 dorm room instead of a 10 bed dorm room (yay) and it was ensuite (yay!) for the same price (Yay!). And I had it to myself in the first night (YAY!) - Good start ;-)
Of course this meant I had to find some other way to get to know people, but that wasn't too hard in this hostel, as it is rather big. You could just hamg out in the kitchen or common room and meet alot of people. I walked through the city in the evening, I really enjoyed it! It reminded me of Hamburg, more than Auckland. Especially the wind :D
Just walking along the harbour promenade was pretty beautiful. With it's lights, views on the harbour and so on it made me a little sentimental thinking back to the city I had lived in the last 7 years.

The next days I walked alot around town, met different people, some moved into my room and left again. Then with Antigone (german of course) and another german I visited Mt. Victoria. The guy had to catch a flight, so Antigone and I spent the afternoon together, enjoying the pub culture in Wellington and visiting the cool Museum "Te Papa", which is for free (except some special exhibitions). This is a big museum with different exhibitions, one about the first world war (New Zealnd had a population of about 1.000.000 people back then and they sent 100.000 into the war! Thats 10%... and only about 7% returned)

View from Mount Victoria

A slug slurping a worm?! Found in the Wellington Museum...

Of course there were constant exhibitions about the history of New Zealand, Maori culture and the earth, especially going into details about earthquakes. Because for New Zealand earthquakes are almost a normal thing. Before I arrived in the Beginning of November there had been another big one on the south island destroying mostly a highway.

The day before I visited the Museum I went into the "beehive", as they call the government building in New Zealand. Here I participated in a free tour and learned about the NZ government. The building had 3 parts, the beehive being the most modern, then the house of representatives about 100 years old and the library about 150 years old. In the 90s they made the old buildings earthquake proof! They installed a so called isolated foundation. The building then stands on rubber-lead platforms instead of it's actual foundation. Thanks to the rubber the building can move up to 30 cm in any direction and not be too effected by the earth moving underneath. They are also installing this technology on many buildings in Christchurch, which was destroyed by earthquakes in 2010/2011 and slightly 2016 again. I thought it was really impressive to see, that the actual buildings is really "standing" on 100s of these rubber installments and not on its actual foundation. There actually was a 5-10 cm gap!

I had convinced Sönke and Ronja (who would be in Welington a few days after I had arrived) to join in on a full day Lord Of the Rings Tour! I was really excited!!
I booked everything and was looking forward to that day.
Then new people moved into my room and I met another Silja! She was from Switzerland though and wanted to speak english rather than german (she being from the german part of course could speak german). But I enjoyed being forced to speak english once again =)
That is in fact really not that easy in New Zealand. You find german people everywhere. And of course they band together and then there are alot of german groups hanging around. I really can't imgaine, that only german people travel to New Zealand, but I don't know where all the other backpackers are. Of course you meet a few french people here, british there but not as many as germans. But this way you are never forced to speak english and can always retreat to a safe place and talk german while in another country. The people I wanted to meet - I of course knew before - and I knew I'd meet them, but I still was suprised that there were so many other germans and literally every place I stayed in there were other germans.

When Silja left the rest of my room left aswell and it was filled with completely new people. Now also Sönke and Ronja arrived and I met them for the big tour on saturday!
While I was enjoying my breakfast I noticed two men sitting next to me using sign language! I couldn't really understand anything, so I figured they'd use a different language, than I knew. When I met one of them again in my hallway I tried talking to him and he told me he is also from Germany and his friend is from France, so they used "international sign language" (basically 80% ASL = american sign language, as he told me). That was pretty cool, to be able to speak DGS (german sign language) once again! But they left and I was about to go on the tour, so I hoped to see them later after the tour again.
But wait... They were standing waiting for the same tour! So then I was made into an interpreter for the 2 fellows and tried telling them what our guide told us. It was always a chain, I translated the guides english explanations into DGS and Nils (the german deaf guy) then translated this into ISL for Arthur (the french deaf guy)! I realized once again, how bad my vocabulary is getting... but I guess that is understandable if you haven't been using it for almost 6 months. But I have to try practice more, once I get back. They were very happy that I was there, because the short films and so on that were shown in the bus didn't have any subtitles and the notes they got from the guide were rather poor. But he was at least that commited, that he printed out his notes so they could understand a little bit! I think that was really cool from our guide. But of course if you can understand all the fun tidbits, details and jokes he tells it is more fun. And unfortunately the notes didn't describe everything on the tour, rather a few places. In all it was quite lucky I was there, I guess. This was they were able to understand a little more a join in on some of the jokes.
I really enjoyed the tour, both because I love Lord Of the Rings and also because I was able to use sign language again. We were able to reenact some scenes (the guy had brought some costumes etc.) and actually stood where some of the stars of the movies stood and that was a cool feeling. Especially when he showed us scenes, that were just filmed in some public parks, some in central Wellington or other smaller suburbs just ourside the capital. Incredible.

The last day in Wellington I had to check out of the room to move to another one. But when I checked back in I got the same room again. And the same bed. I don't know why they made me check out in the first place, just because I had extended for one night... anyway, I was back in my old room :D
Again it was filled with germans, though one girl was from Denmark! Woohoo! She understood german a little, but of course I spoke english again. She left in the early morning to catch her ferry to the south island and so did others, my ferry was in the evening that next day...
After my last night in the hostel I checked out and got ready to leave for the ferry. I was able to keep stuff in the hostel and so could walk freely without my bags, I had a nice time with the people from the hostel, got some last minute shopping done for dinner and then walked to the ferry station.
I had to give up my guitalele, because they were afraid I might play it on board and harass other passengers I guess... Not very cool, but luckily they took good care of it and I got it back when I arrived on the south island a few hours later!

Here we see some tricks used by the film makers, Gandalf rode "through" this "bridge" on his way to Isengard