Meine Sicht der Dinge
On Tour
Auf geht’s nach Marble Bar
Mar 29th
Morgen flieg ich von der Arbeit aus nach Marble Bar. Im deutschen Wiki findet man nicht viel ueber den Ort und auch das englische haelt sich relativ bedeckt. Bekannt ist der Ort allerdings durch seine Temperaturen:
Von 31. Oktober 1923 bis 7. April 1924 ist die Temperatur täglich auf 37,8 Grad gestiegen
Was also heisst, dass es an 160 Tagen verdammt heiss war 
. Powercorp baut dort gerade eine Solar/Diesel power station bei deren Inbetriebnahme ich helfen werde. Ein interessanter Job an einem relativ uninteressantem Ort (Hier in Google Maps). Aufgrund der Sicherheitsbestimmungen vor Ort werde ich den ganzen Tag in langaermeliger Arbeitsschutzkleidung unterwegs sein. Mit Sicherheit nicht die angenehmste Kleidung bei den Temperaturen. Allerdings auch eine einmalige Erfahrung. Auf jeden Fall werde ich fuer ca. 2 Wochen offline sein. Also bis dann!
Marble Bar
P.S.: Falls es interessante Bilder gibt im Anschluss, lade ich die natuerlich hoch.
Hej Sverige!
Feb 15th
Seit einer Woche bin ich jetzt im Rahmen meines Steinbeis MBE Studiums in Schweden, genauer in Jönköping unterwegs. In der ersten Woche waren wir bei einem Unternehmen, dass Polkagris herstellt. Eine schwedische Spezialitaet aus Graenna, die wohl jeder aus amerikanischen Filmen kennt. Die Zuckerstangen haengen dort naemlich an Weihnachten immer an den Weihnachtsbaeumen nachdem irgendeiner das Rezept mal mit nach Amerika genommen hat.
Polkagris
Eigentlich sollen die Stangen im uebrigen ein “J” fuer Jesus darstellen.
Heute war ich dann im Tändsticksmuseet einem Streichholzmuseeum – ich muss ja auch mal einen auf Kultur machen
Auf jeden Fall ist Schweden bisher total gut. Wir haben richtig kaltes Wetter, viel Schnee, teilweise gute Vorlesungen und natuerlich auch wie immer viele Partys. Hat sich also bisher gelohnt! 
Oz Road Trip 09 – Day 4 – 30.08.09 – ALICE SPRINGS & ULURU
Oct 31st
30km to go to Alice, so we were pretty excited. We almost reached the biggest goal on this trip: the Uluru (also known as Ayers rock). Well at least we thought we were pretty close. After passing Alice (nothing exciting there, really) we still had a couple of hundred kilometers to go. Eventually we arrived at the Uluru ressort, where we planned to stay for one night. We were early enough to have a look around before heading off to the sunset viewing area at the Uluru. The park was only about10km from the Uluru away, so there was no need to rush. So here are the pictures of the Uluru:
Laura is excited about Uluru and wants to take it home...
...so I tried to squeeze it...
...but that didn't work. So I had to carry it home.
Luckily, I was to lazy to carry it. So it was still there for sunrise.
Well to be honest I have to say, that the Uluru is not as impressive as I expected. This is mainly because of the following reasons:
1) Everyone in Australia tells you about it. How big it is. How nice it is. How different it looks depending on daytime. How amazing the feeling is to actually see it. How different it looks from every angle. All nice and good, but people just overstate a lot. After all it’s just a massive rock.
2) You’ve seen it so many times. On magazines, postcards, pictures of friends, on the internet, on book covers, in books, in the newspaper, on shirts. It’s just everywhere. So when you actually stand there and see it, it looks just like you already knew. No different at all.
But anyhow, we saw it, and we could drive on
Oz Road Trip 09 – Day 3 – 30.08.09 – DALY WATERS & DEVILS MARBLES
Oct 21st
Off to day 3! Actually we thought about leaving the camping site we stayed over night without paying. But as we were just about to leave, the park ranger came along and asked for the money…damn!
Anyhow, our aim for today was to get to Alice Springs! But first we wanted to stop at the famous Daly Waters pub. So off we were to explore the very special Australian outback pub culture. Yes, it’s kinda strange. They have nothing in the outback. Just endless spaces full of gum trees and … nothing. But then out of nowhere there is a pub. And even funnier there are people in the pub drinking (this fact does not correlate to the time of the day). Daly Waters is specially famous as a good example of such an outback pub, full of stuff. And I really mean stuff. They have everything there, starting from id’s over money to thongs (german: flip-flops) and bra’s of people who visited once and left something behind. Just have a look yourself:
IDs at Daly Waters pub
Money hanging off the walls at Daly Waters pub
They even had an original DDR numberplate there.
Original DDR numberplate at Daly Water pub
After we had seen enough of Australian outback pub culture, we drove on to Alice. On our way we passed a sign telling us that we were close to the so called “Devils Marbles”. We never heard of them, but decided to stop, as we were a little bit tired anyway. And what a good decision this was! These are big round rocks looking like marbles, standing just there as if the devil himself put them there to play with. I wonder though why they are named “Devils Marbles” . Some of them were stacked up high and I climbed on some of them. From up there the view was even better, as you could see how many of those marbles there actually were. For those who are interested how they were created, have a look here.
One of the Devils Marbles
Laura also enjoyed the view, standing on top of one of the marbles:
Laura looking over the marbles
And after this nice stopover we drove on to Alice and almost reached it. We stopped at a parking spot 30km before Alice and set up our van for the night.
Oz Road Trip 09 – Day 2 – 29.08.09 – KATHERINE GORGE & MATARANKA HOTSPRINGS
Oct 14th
After having a good sleep in the van, we got up very early, to be one of the first people on the water: Our plan was to hire a canoe and paddle along the Katherine Gorge. For those who don’t know how the gorge looks like, check this out:
Katherine Gorge
Awesome, isn’t it?
Before we hopped into the canoe the instructor told us we were allowed to stop everywhere and jump into the water or onto the land, except where they had signs. The signs basically told every curious tourist that there are some crocs breeding and they may be aggressive if people come to close. Well, to be honest I thought “whatever…” and thought about going on land there. But after only 10 minutes on the water, we saw a 2 meter crocodile swimming right next to us. Not 10 meters away, or 5, or 2. It was just RIGHT next to us, maybe half a meter. I could have reached if I had tried. While Laura and I were fascinated and shocked at the same time, the croc didn’t really bother. So luckily we escaped without being harmed and ew could jump into the water a couple of hundred meters further down the gorge, to cool down. This place was just so amazing. We climbed up the rocks, jumped into the water and swam around. Soo relaxing.
But anyhow, we had to move on, so after half a day canoeing, we drove further down to Mataranka, which is famous for it’s hot springs. As we arrived we directly jumped into the warm water and had a swim. After jumping in, you don’t realise how warm the water actually is.
Mataranka Hot Springs
But I had a swim a bit further down in a river. In here you could feel the warm, or even hot water from the spring floating into the in comparison ice cold water of the river. It was quiet nice, but there were croc warning signs everywhere. This, the fact you couldn’t really see the riversides, and the croc experience earlier this day, made it clear to me that I had to get out of the water as soon as possible.
After this experience we just drove a few kilometers up the road and stopped on another camping spot to rest for the next day.
Oz Road Trip 09 – Day 1 – 28.08.09 – DARWIN & KATHERINE
Oct 13th
Today was the big day. We finally were able to convert our planning the last few days (or even weeks?) before into action. We took a Taxi to get to the camper van rental company and were so keen on getting our little baby. Of course to get this, we had to fill out heaps of paperwork. After watching a 10 minute DVD that explained us, how to open the door of the camper van, how to use the steering wheel and how to cook we were given the keys! One final inspection and off we were. Of course we had to fill the esky, so we first went shopping before we drove off to my workplace to say goodbye to everyone for the next 4 weeks. After all we were ready:
Ready to go
So we headed off to our first goal: Katherine. After driving more than 300km we found out, that it was a bigger goal than we thought – we were already running out on fuel! On the first day. Luckily we managed to reach the first fuel station in Katherine. With nothing to offer for Tourists we decided to keep on driving to the Nitmiluk National Park where we planned to stay over night. The reception was already closed so we just drove onto the campground and looked for a nice spot to stay. We did not only see some Cane Toads, but also our first wild wallaby:
First wild wallaby
After taking those pictures we went to bed, tired, but happy to be on our way! We had big plans for the next day…
Oz Road Trip 2009
Sep 30th
As some of you already noticed: I am back from my road trip. Before I start blogging about the single days, I just want to give you an overview of the actual trip. We drove 8951 km in 21 days, plus additional 1600 km in 1 day with a greyhound bus. We started in Darwin and crossed the outback to get to Adelaide. From here on we drove the east coast back up north (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane) until we reached Townsville (we wanted to get to Cairns, but ran out of time). Then we drove back to Darwin. In between we had a sailing/diving/snorkeling trip to the Whitsunday Islands and to the Great Barrier Reef and also a day trip to Magnetic Island. It was a very impressive and awesome trip. Though we only had 4 weeks, we saw so many different things and made so many experiences, that in the 2nd week we couldn’t remember what we did in the first week . During the next couple of days I am going to get more detailled, and include some pictures of the trip as well.
Oz Road Trip 2009
Back – and still alive
Sep 28th
Hey there!
I am back. After 4 weeks of travelling through Australia I finally made my way back to Darwin. It were awesome 31 days of travelling. I know that my blog recently wasn’t …mhh let’s say… well maintained as some time ago. I hope I can change this from now on. I will write some posts about my travelling, though I won’t start until I have the pictures ready to show you some of the stuff we saw on the trip. I also have to disappoint everybody who was waiting for underwater pictures from the great barrier reef – the underwater camera died one day before the diving trip in a pool (!). But more to all this stuff later, when I have some more time to write.
Big in Japan
Jul 21st
A summary of things I’ve done so far in Japan:
On Monday all Steinbeis fellows went to a traditional japanese tea ceremony. We were a bit early, so we had to walk through a (typical traditional japanese) garden and wait. It wasn’t that fun, as it sounds, because the temperatures in Japan at the moment are about 30 degree with a humidity of 80%. Just like Darwin during the wet!
Traditional japanese tea cereomny
After the tea ceremony we drove back to the hotel. After refreshing we went to a typical japanese restaurant and hat a great dinner. We had all sorts of raw fish, japanese beer, sake and of course sushi.
Japanese dinner
After the dinner was over, we went…. of course! To a karaoke bar We ordered lots of beer and sang together with the japanese fellows all kinds of songs.
Today we visited tmsuk, a company that builds robots. They have some quit impressive robots, especially the big search & rescue robots looked like out of a Terminator movie. Some others were a number smaller and were for home use, like this one, that acted kind of like a dog.
4 leg robot for home use
After a long day at the company, we finally drove home. On the way back to the hotel we also stopped at a japanese shrine. Very impressive I have to say. And a welcome change in landscape to the quiet boring city (everything is concrete, packed up and noisy and grey).
Me in front of a japanese shrine
That’s it for now. I try to upload the missing pictures to my picasa account asap.
Territory day
Jul 3rd
First of all: Sorry that I didn’t post a new entry for such a long time. I was quite busy doing other stuff – work for example
On July the 1st the Northern Territory celebrates it’s self-government since 1978. This is the only day during the year that Australian people are allowed to lit fireworks. I also heard that no other state in Australia allows to shoot fireworks at all, but I am not sure about this. Anyway, although it is a big day, it wasn’t a public holiday, so I had to work. After work I went to the Mindil Beach and waited with thousands of people for the big firework to start. Meanwhile you could see fireworks all over the city or on the places at the beach where they were allowed (one area at mindil beach was fireworks free for people to watch the big firework). At 7:30 the 20 minutes long firework started. Although it was so long it wasn’t that good. In between there were a lot of breaks, were almost no fireworks were shoot in the air. But you can have a look on your own. I uploaded two videos of 10 minutes each on youtube:
Part 1 of 2:
Part 2 of 2:
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