First big trip is a road trip road trip to Sydney and back. We targetted the coastline closer to Sydney, and therefore spent the first day covering many miles, or kilometers as it were, over 400 of them. While we had to spend many hours in the car, we did find time for some fun and leisure. There are many wine regions surrounding Melbourne, so our first stop was at a winery for our lunch break. The wine was good, we even planned to buy a bottle, but the dining room service was uninterested in serving us one of the available window tables. Rather than give our money to a classist establishment, we instead slummed it with cheese and salad wraps on their boardwalk through the boggy tree palm patch. Fruit stands dot the highway as ... read more

I head out from Duvendiek to catch the train to Rügen from a nearby town, but realize I will miss it, and start heading to Stralsund. I approach the next town just as another train pulls in, and miss it as well, doh! Rather than wait an hour or two, I opt to cycle along the motorway on the dedicated path to Stralsund. The path is fast but unpicturesque. From there I get the train to Lietzow, which is the closest town to Kap Arkona along the train network. Kap Arkona the northernmost point of Rügen, and my destination for the day. From Lietzow the hilly path winds through a beautiful beech forest and then dips down to the coast, before turning slightly more inland through beautiful pastures and meadows towards Glowe. The path changed from ... read more

This is our final stretch towards the sea. The theme of the day is lost and found. We enter the tentacles of Rostock, where we refuel. We wander through to the sprawling city towards the coast, including a detour west taking us past an IKEA (hotdog break for D) and a local produce market where we grab delicious apples, plums, and blackberries. My companions tell a story of Rostock and neo-Nazis. We finally make our way to Warnemunde, eventually find the ferry which will take us to the east side of the channel, and eventually find the campground, which is a sprawling campervan park. We are given a small plot of land next to the toilets. By now I have been stared at a lot (Germans are known for not being self conscious about staring), and ... read more

Sunny day, perfect weather. We follow the Elbe-Müritz trailfrom Lenzen to Parchim and then from Parchim to Plau am See as much as possible, cutting out loops when the route wasn't found or to save time. We pass rolling hills of wheat and corn, the road lined with lovely poppies and other wildflowers. Most towns are quaint, beautiful, old, and a little bit broken. While I find the old dilapidation charming and full of character, my German companions find no beauty in this. There seems to be an endless network of these tiny ten-building towns of -itz's and -hof's- and -dorf's and -ow's. We would pass through the towns in a blink and then have to check which town a few kilometers away was our next target. Many had beautiful old timber-framed (fachwerk) stables and houses ... read more

My visit to NZ is the culmination of a desire to see the homeland of a dear friend of mine, which started when we were grad students together, almost a decade ago. The fact that LOTR was filmed there doesn't hurt. A friend who recently visited called it a trip of a lifetime. The pressure of such a label is a bit much, and with a total of three weeks, I definitely will only be tasting a slice of what NZ has to offer. A long list of places to visit was made, and I've had to painfully cross things off First week is mostly planned, Matamata, Coromandel, Rotorua, Tongariro crossing, Wellington. Second week is hopefully the south island. Original intentions to go through Christchurch will be let go, but I look forward to directly contributing ... read more