Day at the races to farewell Adrian and Anna [View Full Entry]

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We flew out of Sydney on Easter Sunday, headed for the green green grass of home! After 2 weeks of relaxing, eating, drinking, hanging out, the next 2 weeks were to be a bit more full throttle :-) We arrived in Auckland to a typically cloudy day. Nothing like the perfect blue sky we had just left. But that's why it's called "Aoteroa", Land Of The Long White Cloud, ah? We were met by Paul and Maryanne at the airport, who very kindly lent us their car. We quickly visited Sarah, Nick, Tonia, Dave, Georgie and Theo, before heading back to [View Full Entry]

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So in order to get my Visa changed from a Working Holiday to a Work Permit, I needed to leave the UK. We decided to do 2 weeks in Sydney while the UK authorities did their part and then 2 weeks in NZ while the Kiwi's did their part. We flew out of London on Emirates to Dubai for 2 hours, then Bangkok for 1 hour, and touched down in Sydney about 7am. Charmaines mum picked us up, got us cleaned up and then straight to Yum-Cha for brunch! After lunch it was time for some shopping and then a quick [View Full Entry]

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After Baz’s long weekend introduction to snowboarding in January 2006, he was keen as a bean for a full week of burning thighs, aching backs and bruised bums. So in March 2006 we rallied the boarding troops - Sim, Si, Kent, Kirst, Matt & Faith - and chose our destination… Zell am See, Austria. There’s not a lot I can say. It was a wicked trip and everyone had a ball. Early morning wake up calls by Si and Baz were followed by morning yoga stretches to enable us to stand upright and hobble our way onto the slopes. Faithy had [View Full Entry]

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Waitangi Day arrives and the Circle Line erupts! Sending forth wave after wave of drunk kiwi's, up into the cold London air and straight into the closest pub! Another great time (I think) got the the Haka on time this year :-) [View Full Entry]

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A friend of mine at work had organised a 4 day ski/boarding trip to Chamonix, France for the end of January 2006 and as luck would have it, two people weren’t able to go. So I thought, what better way to introduce Baz to boarding than with a bunch of Saffa’s that he’s never met before! Luckily for us, most of them were beginners too. And as bigger luck would have it, Party Marty was itching for some snow time and decided to join us on a whim. The first day was a pretty painful for both of us. But even [View Full Entry]

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After more than a year in the UK (and not having driven for that whole time!) Charmaine and I decided we should hire a car and explore the continent. Belgium is only a small country and fairly close to the ferry from England, so that’s where we headed. As I was leaving Chapman Taylor to start work with Floyd Slaski, I made Wednesday my last day at work and we took a long weekend. 17 November 2005 - London to Brussels We picked up a car from Hertz in Fulham first thing Thursday morning and after clearing London traffic, we REALLY [View Full Entry]

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Berlin Now Berlin was cold, and I don’t mean chilly, it was frozen feet cold. But then again it was December and we were staying on a “hostel boat”…one of Charmaine’s great ideas. Quite neat really, we were sleeping beneath the waterline! Berlin was a surprisingly cool city with a long and incredible history. Not much of the original city is intact, thanks to WWII, but the buildings that do remain have pretty cool scars. The library and main museums are riddled with bullet holes. Apparently the city had a debate as to whether they should fill in all the ho [View Full Entry]

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So, The Munich Beerfest. Famous worldwide and justifiably so! Charmaine, Hamish, Becky + extras, had booked into a hostel months ago with Wanderers World, but due to not getting my butt into gear until later, I was traveling alone. Booked in to stay with PP Travel at Thalkerkein Campsite for 4 nights in a tent! Left Heathrow at 8am, touched down for my stop over in Duseldorf at 10am local time. Just enough time for a quick sample of the local brew before jumping on the plane to Munich Airport. Touched down at 12:30pm, straight onto the one of the best [View Full Entry]

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Me and Charmaine decided with a long weekend upon us, we better go somewhere nice. So Prague it was! Jumped on the plane first thing (7:30am) Friday morning, we took off for the Czech Republic. When we were being driven to the hotel, we saw a little old lady get her bag snatched off her by some crim! Rough introduction to a place. Apart from that unpleasantness, the weather was amazing, everybody spoke English and with 40 Korun to the pound, it was going to be a good 4 days. So much to see, Prague is an incredibly old city but [View Full Entry]

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