That's Melbourne...

• "No Worries..."

• "Hey, mate..."
• Flies! Not as bad as we thought but in some areas, really bad!!!
• Summer daylight saving
• Dress Code: Short skirt and high heels
• 4.3 % unemployment rate
• Gaensebluemchen (german flower) on most of the grass fields
• Freeways instead of Highways
• Gluten-/Wheatfree food en mass
• You want exotic food from all over the world? Come to one of Melbourne's markets :-)
• Super sushi Shaun!
• What's a waitress' job? Standing behind the bar, what else? Come and fetch your stuff....
• The race that stops the nation: public holiday for the Melbourne Cup Day (very famous horse race)
• Did you know that Carolin is a South African :-) ... this accent of hers.....

Our First Days in Australia

Seeing that we've got a blog now, let's post some news, should we (Carolin) ;-)

We arrived safely in Melbourne after spending our first weekend in Adelaide, location of Bob's company's head office. We had a lot of fun with Bob's boss and colleagues, including some wine tasting in the Barossa Valley, walking along the beach at "Henley on Beach", checking out Adelaide city, playing cricket in one of Adelaide's beautiful public gardens and having lovely dinners each evening, even in a German Pub!!! Much to my delight! (see our photo album "first days in Australia")

3 weeks ago we arrived in Melbourne, our new home. Until our container arrives at the end of Dec (hopefully!!!), we stay in a residential hotel in the northern suburbs. Besides getting a little claustrophobic at times, it's really great: a new gym in the cellar, a coffee shop and two restaurants on the premises, free newspaper every morning and cleaning service once a week :-) Besides that it's close to public transport, 20 min to the city (getting used to that quickly!).

Bob started work straight away and I got to enjoy some free time! Get lazy quickly, I must say. However, I'll start work next week at Siemens Melbourne as a Business Analysist (don't know exactly what this means yet...) and I'm really looking forward to meeting new people and getting into a routine again.

We explored quite a bit of Melbourne and its surroundings on the weekends, we both agree that we can easily imagine feeling home here one day (besides the ever unreliable weather). From "Camps Bay" like Beachbars, to the Dandenong Mountains with its many little coffee shops, hiking and mountain bike trails, the Mornington Peninsula with it's military forts and nature reserve, the city centre with all the street shops (girls, you would be impressed!), the royal bontanical gardens, the exhibition center (we were at a great outdoor show there already) and the various sports stadiums, the Yarra Valley with its many many vineyards (even hosting concerts and open air cinema!!!) and the Great Ocean Road (still have to explore that), everything is on offer. Bob didn't get the chance to find out too much about the fishing opportunities here yet, but one thing is for sure: Australia's most impressive fishing spots are further norh....

We've also seen our first Australian animals in a sanctuary at the weekend. Don't you think this Kangoroo looks like a giant rat???? One thing is for sure....you can't beat South African wildlife....

Koala bears are quite cute. The most exciting thing they are up to in their lives is, we heard, is to generate their poop ;-)

And to make us really feel at home, Bob's car was broken into last night. One of the back windows was smashed while parked overnight in the underground parking of the hotel and all contents were searched, but nothing stolen. Which is not too surprising seeing as Bob left his empty laptop bag for everybody to see in his car. Lessons learned. We can see it with a lot of humor: Insurance paid without excess and everything is fixed again...

Our Fairwell Party at the Anstee's

Thanks to Ursh and Gareth and all of you we had a great fairwell party and we really, really enjoyed it a lot!

Thanks to all of those who gave a "little" present to us, really great of you! :-) Can need it for Australia.

We'll miss you a lot!

See you at the next party!!