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

Sam and Sönke just chilling on their way to Rivendell

But then the dark Rider approaches! Near....

Far! Where ever you are!

 No worries: Legolas to the rescue! (this poster-reenactment was taken in the Rivendell location)

That was the last we saw from him...

The Weta Cave exhibition - many small and bigger figurines, helmets and weapons of their movies (of course a lot of Lord of the Rings)

Dangerous angry Lurtz in the Weta Cave shop! Don't worry, he only bites hobbits and elves... except you climb him!

Going South (~ Dec 10th)

After I sorted everything out in Auckland, I booked buses to the south. I wanted to meet Ronja and Sönke in Taupo, a city by a lake pretty much in the middle of the northern island.

The buses connecting cities are good, I guess, and there are 3 companies in total (I think), that work in NZ. One is Intercity, then Nakedbus and it's smaller counterpart Manabus. I have used all 3 and all have good standards and most of them had wifi working on board (though many other travelers told me that I was lucky).
Besides these 3 there are also other bus companies, mostly they do guided tours and such like "Stray Bus" or "Kiwi Experience", here the travellers are transported from one city to the next, can do all sorts of activities, that are organised by the guides and see alot of things, sometimes off the beaten track, though if an entire bus full of tourists goes somewhere, I don't know how off the track it actually is...

Anywho... next to me on the bus to Taupo was a maori woman (judging by the tatoos, dialect and skin colour and later on what she said). She was drinking quite alot of wine during the ride, singing along to her music she was listening to on her phone. Now and then she'd talk to me and when she found out I was german she asked me if we were still "hunting them jews". I denied of course, but she did make a few more comments about me being german and all conected to Nazi Germany. At one point she told me that maori troops were the ones who killed hitler and defeated his army. I'm not sure how many maori troops fought in world war 2, but I doubt they forced hitler to commit suicide. Anyway, I tried listening to my own music and not be annoyed too much by her.  The bus was quite cool. It was a double decker with several seats making groups of 4 with a table in the middle, so seemed more luxorious than "normal" buses connecting cities. Though that was only this company, more others use the "regular buses".

Then we finally arrived in Taupo. A cute little town and looking pretty by the lake. Only the weather could have been much better. I got picked up by my friends Ronja and Sönke from Hamburg and we spent the evening together in our hostel. I shared a room with 6 other german people, who were all about partying. I was out with my friends for a while but all of them came back much later. One came back so late and woke up the entire hostel (I can imagine).
Unfortunately he was sleeping in my room. He forgot his key to get into the house so he started yelling the names of his friends, who were sleeping till then. After a couple of minutes the guys finally talked and one of them got up to help the guy inside. Then they had to compare their adventures and talk about what happened. They were apparently proud of getting into fights with the bouncers and so on and had gotten pretty drunk over the night. I was able to fall asleep quite quickly after he returned... But a great example of how not to behave in a foreign country you are visiting...

We wanted to do a trek up in the Tongoriro national park close to Taupo (or should I say Mordor?) and were eager to do it soon. But as I had mentioned the weather sucked and didn't allow it. We asked the tourist office: i-site (you can find these almost in every town!). They informed us, that all shuttles were called off till the weather improves. It was still snowing with really strong winds, so no one was encouraged to go up there...
Sad we accepted this and worked out an optional bad weather plan. We went to the cinema (we watched a cute movie called "Pete's Dragon"), visited the iron man competition going on and just sat by the lake. Ronja and Sönke planned to go on soon with their car, alas I couldn't follow, because the cities aren't connected THAT well by bus and their car only has 2 seats. The buses connect the cities more in a north-south direction and more rarely in the east-west direction (where they were heading)
So I just headed out to Wellington instead, the bus I got was leaving 2 days later, so I had some time to kill. The other 2 had moved to a free camping site and told me how great it was and they had met other nice people. So I headed over there to meet them and we had a fun evening =)
I then left Taupo the next day to move towards Wellington, the capital of New Zealand!

On the way I stopped in Palmerston North, where I thought I'd meet Ronja and Sönke again, though they had told me the city is not worth it and they will probably just pass through, so I booked another bus from there to Wellington. I had a few hours in Palmerston I couldn't really enjoy because I had all of my backpacks with me and it was raining a tidbit, but it didn't seem as that big of a deal. I spent some time in the central park, which was nice.

With a big delay the bus finally arrived and took us to Wellington! The capital of New Zealand and again a harbour city.

This is actually mentioned in a travel guide, saying you should eat in the McDonalds airplane...

The cockpit of the old plane

What an experience! :D (thats Ronja and Sönke on the right)

AFter out meal we went into town and Sönke tried out a new ride... a recycled cycle

Land of Kiwis, Kiwis and Kiwis (~Dec 5th)

On the 5th of December I arrived in Auckland, New Zealand. I had flown from Bali to Auckland and took a bus to Auckland city to meet my friend Silja. She and I already travelled several times together. Last big time was in Australia in 2013 (4 years ago!). Now she has a job in Auckland with her working holiday visa.
We met after some time again and she showed me around Auckland and I had to get a hand with all the new prices again... And New Zealand is much more expensive than India, Nepal and Bali (probably more expensive than all of them combined!).
We had good talks about how her life is going and what we were up to lately. She is of course jealous, that I was in India and Nepal without her, but she will probably catch up sooner than later ;-)

We went to the harbour, walked through parks and saw the main shopping area. Auckland isn't that big, though it is the most populated city in NZ. But I guess where everything is happening is not too far apart in Auckland. The outskirts are much bigger and to see everything you'd need quite some time. She had taken some days off so she could show me around =)
Next day we split up, so she could work for her university courses and I checked out Auckland a little bit by myself. And I searched for information about the IRD (tax number in NZ) and where to get a bank account (I had already applied for one in Bali). After getting an appointment close by and working out some other things, I was ready to relax again and annoyed Silja.
She introduced me to some of her friends and we went to a comedy evening in one of the clubs there. It was an evening filled with 10 comedians, either trying new jokes or comedians who want some training or whatever. But I think the guy moderating the evening was the best. He had a good mix of insulting people and telling weird stories about himself and preferably his girlfriend. But mostly it was good fun ;-)

I got a new zealandian SIM card for my phone and was able to check out what my friends were up to, who weren't in Auckland. The 3 friends of mine from the scouts were already on the southern island and Ronja and Sönke were doing their last few days of work and so we were making plans to meet soon.

In all Auckland is a nice harbour city. Many of my friends who were traveling across NZ said it was rather boring and Silja said you enjoy it more the longer you stay there. Well I liked the few days I spent in the city. Going out with people, visiting the cinema, sitting and relaxing at the harbour, like in good old Hamburg...
Additionally there are several islands I was hoping to explore, where you can get to via ferry, though because of weather and other things to do I didn't make it.

Fancy christmas cakes!

In Auckland they put up this lego christmas tree - with a Santa ready to surf!

And of course little elves helping

Whats that? Silja and me in her teeny tiny appartment

Wooo! Hamburg! ;-) Hamburg Süd is a freighter company which paid for this building belonging to the university of Auckland (or one of the universities)