Today I began my day with the usual morning tea (with milk and sugar - like always in New Zealand) and a good walk to the Waitere Falls with Anna. It's really nice to walk in these North Island - almost tropical - forests again, with such a large variety of trees and plants and still non-tropical temperatures (although you heat up when climbing a mountain like we did ;-) ). Later we went to Te Ahora for lunch and at 3pm I met a girl I only got to know at the bri...

Heyho! As you may see from the new photos, I've been to Hobbiton today and it was totally amazing. Of course there are lots of tourists (up to 3000 per day), but they organise the tours really well and it was absolutly worth it. We went extra early and that was probably a good idea - when we left, there were long rows of people waiting to visit. It's of course a little difficult to feel the magic of middle-earth with so many visitors around, but we did have a ni...

Cheers from Tauranga! Today was my first day of Bridge with Anna and although it didn't go so well, I really enjoy playing here! It's a nice atmosphere, there is free water and snacks between the rounds and if you go outside, you can see the sea :-) As some of you may know, they don't have bidding boxes here in NZ, but write their bids down. As I haven't much experience in that - apart from our glorious tournament in Dunedin two years ago - it might have taken...

Hey again! I promise you that I won't be able to write that often as soon as I have found some friends, a better place to sleep and an area without internet access! Until then I'll work on my typing speed at the phone and on my written english. Although I haven't actually done a lot since yesterday, I have learned some things. First: It wasn't too smart to underestimate the sun here. You might get sunburned. I know, everybody says so, but I still forgot/ignore...

I made it! After 48 hours of flying and waiting for flights, I did arrive in Wellington yesterday night (afternoon for the european ones). Everything went pretty well until I missed my connection flight in Melbourne fuo to delay of the previous one. But even then it wasn't bad at all, as I met some elderly travellers with the same problem and managed to be allowed to the Business Lounge - which is actually a rather nice place to be ;-) Seven hours later we t...