A Red CUBIFA II

A Red CUBIFA I

What can I say…
In 1995 I saw the first life kangaroo in Australia in Cape le Grand NP...

... and the first “contact” happened in Bowling Green Bay NP.

Dead, I saw many.
One even tricked me – despite being dead.
It was very windy that day and one roo was standing beside the roadside. I thought it doesn´t sense us due to the wind. I slowed down more and more just to see… soma angry driver has put it over a road-post, how weird.
I spare you the pic (yes, we took one. It was just way too weird), instead another often seen - and even being potential dangerous - dead:

Back to the living… actually that was a Wallaby, I guess.

Now I don´t know whom to call stupid, the kangaroos or the people. But people kept feeding the kangaroos with white bread in Bowling Green Bay and the roos kept eating it and got sick. Again and again.
So, when one came up to me…. Despite I didn´t even had bread – or anything to eat, or did I? – I kinda “panicked” when I saw it´s claws and called for Ingo.
Who just finished his coffee, refilled the cup with water and guess what. That roo seemed to love water with a wee note of coffee!

Cup after cup!

Guess it was better than bread :-)

Meanwhile another couple in a trailer had arrived:

(Whew, see those claws???)

The man took a hammer aimed two-three times, unaware of a large roo standing very near behind him, watching.
When he was sure he´ll hit his goal he hauled off with the hammer and… hit the roo who in return kicked him in the back.
The wife exclaimed: “ohhh, that poor joey!!!”
Ummmm, hello? Her husband was just hit quite hard by a large kangaroo!

Stand there and try not to laugh openly ;-)
Funny memories!

Grey Hair By Shock

That´s how my Niece looks like now, after a chat on the phone with me.
I´m a bad Auntie!

Haha, just kidding, toying around with Photoshop Express Editor

It´s so dang easy! Just look:

This our Henry with one of his doubles back in the worst year of our lives, 2008, when Ingo got severly sick.

And yet another double:

Later that year we went to Wilhelmshaven for a little holiday and to fatten Ingo up a bit (sadly didn´t work).

I so love the sea and here all the sheep on the banks/dykes:

A tad weird, in the city I saw this....

It was a clothes shop and I guess they were working on the dolls, but why has one still one arm?
And why do they have such a desperate expression on their faces?

My Mum. The only time she visited me all by herself...

Ingo, back to life in August 2009, in happy yellow! Shortly before my friend´s marriage:

They married in August, on the 7th. 07/08/09 - a date you just can not forget, huh?
Bro married in October 2009 - no idea what the day was!

And Bro and I at the end of 2009 :-)

Jewelry (necklace) and glasses made by Bro, btw :-)

Nothing much happening here, it´s cold again, 14C max, rainy.
I still haven´t bought flowers for the balcony hence.

I know, things could be worse, but, alas! It´s enough of that bad weather!

TU-Night

Tu-"night" again, a day at the technical university.

An odd feeling to sit in a lecture again!
The first was about how you can lie using statistics. It sure is weird.

I just wonder why they have this day in summer? Outside it´s so loud, you cannot open the windows, hence inside the air gets really, really sticky, you get so wiped out!

Then we had quite some time till the next lecture. As good students we used it as preparation, certainly:

Because the second was about… you know which country I´m in?

Right, about beer.

This lecture was filled till under the brim.
The prof certainly used local Märzen-beer for demonstration :-)

The professor was really, really good.

I´m glad though, I didn´t have to remember what he told us, physics, chemisty and stuff really is not my friend!

Outside Ingo had a longer talk with some students about rockets – rather boring for me. I listened to some music:

Later we met Leo, an organisation that helps to prevent that professors simply get to a higher degrade by reading a bigger lecture – back then I really couldn´t believe it. One of my professors did just that and got more money afterwards, too. We had a longer chat there as well. Here are Ingo and Leo:

And I had the yummiest piece of Pizza! Better than the Ten Withough Ham even! And my first gingerbread-heart! Guess for 7 Euro it´ll also be my last, which doesn´t matter, since I don´t eat it anyways, too sweet.

Sadly then it was too much for me. They still had tons you could see, it´s too much for one day.
Guess I would´ve had more power if I hadn´t been the driver before, we got up rather late cause we wanted to have lunch at KFC again. There was lot more traffic.
And we should´ve started earlier, not with the first lecture – should´ve strolled around a bit over campus before that.
Let´s see if I do better next TU-Night…

Addendum... I was too quick! Here´s the TU-pic! They sure did make us laugh!

Uhhh! I´m pawed by a Lion!!!

A Red CUBIFA

* (a ha-ha at the end!)
Don´t you just love custom´s duty?
"Zollamtlich abgefertigt"
They sure hate me - another postal item that was addressed to me from another (very likely bad) country, yep, they made sure it´s not drugs, money, or anything like that. Thank you for caring so much... again. Aren´t you disappointed by me by now, guys? It´s never drugs, money or anything, and, believe me... this started back in 1995!

Can "Y"ou Believe It´s Friday Again?
This "story" fits for a Friday :-)

We landed in Sydney, bought a car - and an Esky (darn it - when you don´t know K-Mart it doesn´t help to say that word louder and louder every time, I didn´t know where to get that Esky (luckily Ingo knew!)).

At the end of our journey - that was before Amazon /Internet for all - I had many beautiful, mostly second hand-books, Ingo had inched-tools for our Moped (Harley Davidson, built 1978), little treasures you don´t get over here... we packed it all in the Esky and sent it home via ship.
Customs duty. They were so dang disappointed, they threw our stuff loveless back in.

Anyhows, the mail from Red finally arrived, thank you so much, Red!!

So many sweet memories came back with this pressie/price, I think a thank you is sharing, huh?

Also so you know these sweet articles do exist, they´re made by Journey Jottings - and no - I´m not forced to advertise here - I just enjoyed it so much and thought, you´d do, too.

What do we have? A Map Magnet (goes on our therme), a puzzle-card!, two diaries and some reminders (thank you, Red, I totally forgot! And hence can´t go into detail) and a personal note :-)

Ok. Two diaries. Two journeys. I´ll mix it up, moments I had to think of flipping through. Guess I´ll print out pics and make some real diaries!

Here goes the online-version (guess you really need to click to enlarge for the cute details - they´re on both sides of the book, so I didn´t cut it out):

So, page 1 really starts with my first Australian adventure – yes, we landed in Sydney back then in 1995.
We bought our car in Kings Cross traveler car market (deep garage) right away the next day, a green Holden Commodore.

Yes, the green one :-)

Next stop: Blue Mountains, Three Sisters.
I admit: We both smoked back then and well, as you do, you get out of the car and light one, right?

“BANG!”

That´s what the car said.
It really was a little explosion!
We never gave it much thought, though. At times there was a tiny puddle of fuel after refilling the car, oh, well.

Now I don`t remember which NP that was (it was not Bowling Green Bay, but still somewhere near Townsville, I guess), it was some public holiday, the park was full, there was a smell of fuel.
Ingo crawled under the car, said, “oh, it´s dripping”. He touched the hole. “Oh, now it´s running!!!”

Luckily Ingo had read – why ever – in the section for motorbikes in the Lonely Planet that if you have a hole in your fuel-tank you can first-aid fix it with tea-tree-oil-soap.
Which, also luckily, I had just used – as in: a piece of soap.
It worked!!!

In Mackay we found a little… oh soo many memories – guess I can´t just flip through this “book” in one piece!

Mackay: Cool rubbish-bin, hu? In the background: our car.
The big garages had no time and finally we found a one-man-garage. That dude had no time, either, but suggested – and hey, now I remember! - it really was a Friday! Again! – we go to Eungella NP over the weekend.
“High up” in the mountains.
We parked the car in rather high grass (we had no choice).
And it started to rain.
So much that those poor guys in their tents a bit down the place had to pack and leave!
We thought: Oh, lucky us, at least it´s downhill to Mackay so we´ll get there for sure.

Heaps of rain, a hole fixed with soap – I kid you not: No one can come up with a story like that if it wasn´t true, right? (I´m not Münchhausen).
The soap kept sealing the fuel-tank, the grass was not high enough to cause us trouble.

Playground in Mackay - back then in Germany we had only wood, how boring, no colors...
Monday we went to the little garage.
And then on on foot to grab some brekkie. At the red light we had… red lights, but there was the sound for “go”.

We called the bird “Ampel-Vogel” – it imitated perfectly the signal for go – hopefully the blind people there knew that!

When later we came back we found all our belongings beside the car on the pavement and the car itself was turned upside down on the veranda of his house and… he really was welding the fuel-tank!

I mean… isn´t that dangerous? And right in front of your own house, too????

Later when he was done, he said he also renewed the fuel-hoses - one was the reason for the BANG! at the Three Sisters - and the price we paid was…
Well ok. We were young, we looked like not the rich travelers (and we weren´t), he´d seen we sleep in the car and all – but that price was too low for the job he´d done!

How many kilometers did we drive with a little hole in the fuel-hose? When did the hole in the fuel-tank add itself to the mix?
We went southwards from Sydney, went inland several times… oh, by golly, we were some lucky dudes!!!

Thanks, Red, this book is just great :-)
More to come soon...

Oh, right, ha-ha:
That´s a poster hanging - certainly - at our loo-door. When I read "Tough bag" I had to think of this:

Strawberry-Fields Forever

Sorry if I gave you an ear-worm, but I´ll have to end this on a positive note!
The temps exploded over here, kinda, 35,5C, humid, feels like being in Darwin – or Brisbane, as our neighbour stated.

So Ingo took the green BBQ – the one Niece thinks we only play with. It´s green, like hers, and it´s not higher – must be a toy, right?
Ingo had his sausages, I tried a bit of it, too, just cause that sauce is so dang yummy!!!

But corn, I like better :-)

See what else is in there? Right, potatoes!

How often have we, on our two long(er) journeys throughout Australia sat by the fire, waiting for some really yummy potatoes, they were like butter, needed only a bit of ordinary salt.

Dunno why, in Germany, actually an antagonism, it´s hard to find yummy potatoes. Most are what Ingo calls “Schweinekartoffeln”, potatoes those poor pigs in industrial livestock farming get, watery, slimey.

Ordinary salt cannot help.
Not even this super-yummy one from River Murray :-(

We got yummy potatoes from Netto. Tuesday we passed Netto – or rather the place where Netto was. It´s gone, not a brick left of it. And it took us so long to find a supermarket who has yummy ones!

But, well, seems like summer will be over tomorrow again anyways, that´s at least what the forecast says, 20 C for the weekend, can you believe it? 2013, stop being crazy with that weather!

We still have no flowers on the balcony, no one has, we wait for: hail!
Last year some hail or very strong rain ruined most of the balcony-flowers, I don´t wanna repeat that.

Moe, on the other hand (no, we didn´t move to Springfield, don´t worry!), Moe thinks it´s ok to buy flowers now.
And he knows a lot about flowers:

He´s the one who cares for the garden next door. With success, so I should believe him.
But guess I can´t go. Because I can´t go anywhere, I can hardly drive.
Thanks to the flooding we have mossies now and they´re really mean. Two bites in my left foot, it´s swollen and hurts! I don´t fit into shoes for long (please, no traffic jam on the way home!), one in the right ankle and another huge one, bigger than the palm of my hand, in my leg.
Really I don´t mind them taking my blood. But is this really necessary?

Here in 4th floor with huge windows to the South and no aircon they swell even to a bigger size.
I know, things could be worse, but this ain´t nice, either!

No flowers. But some relieve anyways.
Though I have to tell you, being polite hurts at times.
Moe is from Iran, his German is great but I have to ask back often anyways. He told me he works for some "agency" the other week.
I didn´t understand fully and didn´t want to hurt him by asking just yet-again!
Gah. So, yesterday when he was watering the plants, Ingo told him we go to Perth. With "agency"... He meant "Reisebuero" - Buero... "office"... he definitively said agency (Agentur), I never thought of traveling! He works in/owns a travel agency (that´s why he referred to Brisbane).
He could - and would - ´ve given us the flight for 200 euros less on his flight-miles he can´t use anyways due to being too many.
Aww.

He came over through the “hidden door” and had a look at our tickets. More gah: we don´t fly with Qantas, Qantas is just charging Emirates Airlines
Good thing Moe was there, we would´ve been quite confused in Dubai!

Good thing: Since Moe was over anyways I asked him to look if the strawberry-plants I didn´t recognize are fine, the ones from my Mum – yes, they survived this harsh winter, yay!!!
See, I ended with something positive! :-)