Quick Update

Hello

I know all has been silent from us for the last few months but a lot has happened, well not that much!!

Both of us have moved, as you are probably all aware! I (Tara) have moved to a sweet little country village on the outskirts of birmingham called Barnt Green. I live with a couple who are really nice and are so obsessed with there dog that it is unlikely that they will have children and kick me out!! It's ideal for work as it is about 10 mins from my office and close to the motorways for when I have to go to site. I also am living with a dog, which is really nice. Her name is Bindie and she is a Dandy Dinmont. (google it!!)Very hyper but quite sweet!

Michael is now living in a share house in Summertown in Oxford, with 3 other people, who he gets along with well! His landlord is a little strange but all seems to be going well. He has no pets there but he does have a bike!!

Anyway, please keep tuned and we will put our Hong Kong trip up soon!!

Hope you all had a really great Christmas!!

Les adventures en Grenoble et le telepherique!

Back again, its been a busy couple of weeks since the last post- and a few bits and pieces have happened since!
Spent the weekend before last in Grenoble, French Alps, believe it or not for the weekend (shock horror!) not just one day. Its a neat little student city nestled in between a stack of ginormous mountains not too far away from Lyons in the mid-East of France. Well known for its fort, Le Bastille (see pics), complete with masses of (manmade) underground caves/tunnels, le telepherique (a gondola), walnuts, Chartreuse and music. Of the above we were fortunate enough to get up to the fort, in the strange egg-shaped gondola capsules and spent a good chunk of the day checking out the scene. Very commanding view of the neighbouring countryside, with cannons it must have been almost un-takeable! Sturdy walking/climbing shoes highly recommended...
Back in the town we looked around the multitude of stores, used our limited command of French to purchase things like une baguette, une tartine noix (walnut tart), deux cafes (coffees), une echarpe (scarf), tried Chartreuse (free! although this potent drink did pack a punch, and the lady serving was VERY generous with her 'test' samples!) and got a lovely little room in the middle of town (care of lastminute.com:) with no headaches at all!
Very friendly people there, although brushing up on French beforehand is HIGHLY recommended as they will go the extra mile!

Brief on other other things.
Checked out London, again and was pleased to 'discover' a Van Gogh exhibit with The Sunflowers! and a stack of other great artists, Renoir, Monet etc and some of their better works at the National Gallery in London!
Spend last weekend in Birmingham over eye-patch day, the anniversary of Trafalgar- very modern, would be great for shopping esp the bullring.
Still into crayfishing (which has potential to become a commercial venture- watch this space...)
We're moving (work reasons), we'll send new address/phone when its all locked in.
Its beginning to get cold and miserable (read: fog and rain), although I am assured by everyone here that it gets much much worse.

Hope everyone is well, keep an eye out in the near future for more posts!

Dave

Hi Guys,

Tuesday morning before work, I caught a monster crayfish down at the river in the usual spot. After much yahooing and bringing the beast into work, where it was found to be 164g on scientific analytical scales (proper use I'm sure!!), we took a few pics of Dave (after other such sizeable catches as Prince Albert, Brutus and Colossus). As you can see from the large claws, he was a truly meritorious catch!

Hope everyone is well and I'm more than happy to give fishing lessons to the interested.

:) M

Crayfishing

As part of being a seaside dwelling “Antipodean”, almost all kids and adults, families and individuals partake in crayfishing. England has a slightly different method of obtaining these fresh(not salt) water critters, which are not the shy humble creatures that dwell in cracks and smell of salt water, but small vicious beasties with oversized claws and tempers to match. We were fortunate enough recently to start up the ‘sport’ of crayfishing in the local river (Isis, which becomes the Thames) using an array of methods- active and passive. The most successful involved dangling stockings with a stone and a hunk of ‘quality’ fish (6 fillets a pound, care of Saisbury’s) and a scoop net made of another stocking and a wire hoop- 53 over two days (only 1.5 hrs active fishing time), of which there were two monsters worth noting: Prince Albert, a tough character weighing 110 g on day one and Brutus, a one-armed behemoth which would have topped 140g had he not been missing his claw. Attached are a few pics of the catch, and one of James (along with Marnie and Tara) a keen crayfisherman. Truly part of the Oxford experience and the eating afterwards is fantastic! Heading out again today, so watch this space for tales of the next colossus of note…

My First Day At Work!

Hurrah I have finally started work! My first day was good, I left home at 7ish with the hopes and dreams of missing peak hour traffic (which I did!) and arrived at work at 845 after getting lost three times! My office is in the most random of back streets and if one did not know it was there, you wouldn’t know it was! My first day was quite interesting as I am convinced that they forgot we (myself and another girl called Sarah) were coming. My manager turned up 30mins late and due to the servers being “rained” on we had no access to emails etc. As each day has gone on though we have done more and more stuff and I have stopped getting lost on my way to work. I am really enjoying it though as there is no monotony as every day we have something different to do depending on whats happened the day before and depending on the weather! I can’t really say much more at the moment, due to a mistake with ordering codes and a lack of computer, I have not had a lot of work given to me, but I really like it, the people are really nice and am glad I stayed with this choice as I there are just so many opportunities! Michael took a million photos of me heading off on my first day so please enjoy them!

Berlin

These were these awesome huge see saws that we played on for ages!

This was the holocaust memorial, pretty amazing. It was like a huge concrete block maze!

This was the cool beach bar in the centre of Berlin. So surreal!

These were these cool footie boots that were part of a sculpture trail across the city. I loved them!

Der Brandenburger Tor!

At 11.50pm on Friday night we woke up…
No, this is not the start of a story involving the Tooth fairy, Santa Claus and intelligent Blondes but in fact of a very busy daytrip from Oxford to Berlin.
After a couple of hours sleep on Friday, a freshen up and jumping on the Megabus to Victoria St, London followed by the Stanstead express, a short wait and we were in the departure lounge on our way to Berlin. A 1.5 hrs later, an efficient 25 min trip on the autobahn and we were at the massive concrete and glass train station of Hauptbahnhoff (not Hasselhoff) near such landmarks as The Reichstag (go early if you want to avoid the massive queues), Potzdamerplatz, The Brandenburg Gate, a gigantic holocaust memorial, plenty of shopping centres, Checkpoint Charlie and a hotair balloon that goes up and down every hour or so for breathtaking views of the city. Very much a new-feeling place- lots of glamour, glitz, exceptionally clean(!) and the people were happy and helpful.
After exploring this multitude of places we decided to have a look around the huge Alexanderplatz TV tower area, with the River flowing through the centre and plenty of markets all down the left hand bank. Pretzels were the go here, along with currywurst mit brötchen (curried sausage and bread), followed by one of the most surreal bars I have ever laid eyes on, a fake sandy beach, with one long bar, deckchairs everywhere, views out over the river playing English lounge music. Truly part of the experience. Apparently a similar one exists in Paris? One thing we found about Berlin, was that money went considerably further than in the UK, chocolate, lollies and drinks were almost laughably priced- decent bottles of wine often fetched less than 2 euros (sometimes as low as 1), and spirits at the airport were enough to turn a complete teetotaller into a hardened drinker or drunkard. Awesome day, awesome place. Massive kudos to Tara, who spoke German like a local (some lessons, learning recommended before going there), and made the day run very smoothly!

Dublin

Hello!

We are both so so stuffed today, we had the most enormous effort yesterday starting at 12:30am Saturday and ending at 3:50am on Sunday! We decided to go to Dublin for the day and it was so worth it (until we got to the airport at Dublin, but that is another story!)
Stansted airport was, to put it bluntly, an absolute shitfight! I guess with the terrorist threats that is to be expected. We were forced to check our hand luggage in (the worlds smallest backpack!) and were only allowed on the plane with our passports and wallets. Nothing else. I felt sorry for people travelling with small children to places like Krakow etc. A lot of flights were cancelled willy nilly and a lot of people had set up camp (literally, there were people with tents) near the check in desks.
Anyway, we finally arrived into Dublin in the middle of the nicest summer day (NB: SARCASM..it was so so so cold!) and started our day with a hot cooked breakfast. Michael ordered a full breakfast, consisting of sausages, eggs, beans, bacon, black pudding, white pudding, mushrooms and toast. I looked at it and had beans only as we figured there was enough food to feed an army on michaels plate to feed me as well. I think Michael enjoyed his black and white puddings. I didn't even try!

We then walked up to the Garden of Remembrance (Established in 1966 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. It is dedicated to those who died during the struggle for Irish independence.) and had a wander around but left fairly rapidly as a leaf blower started up and made the place as peaceful as a jackhammer! It was very pretty though, quite interesting.

We then wandered around and walked through the city, and got a little lost but then found our way and went to the guiness factory. It was so good and definately worth a visit. I fully recommend it! It was really interesting and we got a free pint of guiness which, classed as lunch! We spent quite a long time there and were very glad we had booked online and went earlier in the day as when we left the queue was out the door and around the corner.

Temple Bar markets were our next stop and were extremely disappointed with them. The food market was pretty good but I don't really think that the fashion and book markets deserve to be called a market. They were essentially a few stalls thrown together, with nothing very much on them. Although there was a few pairs of earrings that caught my eye, but I resisted temptation!

We had a very late lunch at the Stags Head in the Temple Bar area, which was huge. So much food! We shared a meal of chicken wrapped in Bacon and watched a game of Hurling. It is the strangest game ever but was really interesting. We've both decided to attempt to go and watch a real live game at some point. There was then a game of Gaelic Football on, so we watched that for a little bit (the blue team won, if anyone cares!). We then walked along the river bank adn over a lot of bridges including the Ha'penny bridge, then back into the town centre and had a look in some stores. Then got the bus to the airport. We were glad we left the city earlier rather than later because there was a lot of traffic and it was fairly slow going due to the football game of the red team vs the blue team.

I'm going to take a break now and publish this and then finish off telling you about the airport later on.

Photos of Marco (Polo)

Here is our white goods. Our 1999 VW Polo, aptly named Marco!

Marco...

Hello everyone, its been a while since we updated the spot, but here goes nothing. Now have in our proud possession TWO items of co-owned whiteware:- a schmick washer/dryer (very flash) and a VW Polo which you will see pictures of at the bottom of this post! Tested it out over the weekend with a solid drive up to Tara's new place of work. After negotiating the multiple roundabouts that seem to feature extremely prominently in the British road system (and taking a few wrong turns...) we made it! Frankley, Birmingham! Not the most stunning place on the universe but the actual waterworks where she is based looks very new, secure and imposing, like a Spectre hideout from one of the earlier James Bond films. I'm sure, however, that it will be very welcoming to a young Antipodean lass. Also buzzed up to Derby, got lost on the way, made it to Mickleover in the wrong type of record time and spent a nice night at Jane and Ken's place before heading back down to Oxford today. Nice induction for the little beast. Other things (dot form)
- if you are building/designing a house/flat DON'T place the smoke detectors DIRECTLY over the top of the stove! (NB this led to considerable noise in the Walton St area, thankfully we did manage to turn it off after 15 mins, with the help of a tall neighbour)
- had a lovely time with Steph and Matt, up from London- managed to realise some of the untapped value of a Bod(elian) card [free entry to colleges/libraries etc] and during one of these visits even saw BONO of U2 fame. At first we thought he was an impersonator, but cross checking revealed it was him!
- also on that weekend, stirred up plenty of mud at the bottom of the Cherwell River by PUNTING! Great fun and a must on the list of all travellers to Oxford. Just don't expect to be an expert within the first five minutes...

That's about the lot, hope that everything is hunky dory and to hear from some of you soon! Will write more when things happen:) MJ

(Whoops photos of car on tomorrow!) Stay posted