Montag, 24. Januar 2011

Weekend with Terry

My father and Terry met 32 years ago in a Kibbutz in Israel. They played in the same soccer team. I had never seen him before, although my father sometimes mentioned him: They occassionally wrote each other emails. Besides, he once sent us merchandise from the local soccer club, Perth Glory FC. When he heared that I was soon coming to Perth, he instantly proposed to pick me up at the airport and invited me to meet him. Last Saturday, I was invited to dinner. Right now, two Japanese girls, Sayaka and Sachiko, are staying in his home.

This is the dessert Terry is famous for: roasted Banana with Ice Cream and Apricot sauce. Nice to watch while being produced and absolutely delicious!

Sachiko, Terry and Sayaka after drinking Sake and eating Swiss Chocolate. ;D

On Sunday, Terry picked me up at 9:15 a.m. to show me around Perth. A tour that was way better than any tourist office could provide!

That's a sea gull. One of the most exciting things I saw were the birds. I took lots of photos.

These crows make a very strange sound. They wake me up every morning at 5!

A very interesting tiny bird with a funny name: Willie Wagtail. He's extremely trusting, I could photograph him from a distance of about 10cm and he didn't fly away!

This is, by the way, the bench where Terry and I sat to eat BBQ.

And this is the first wildlive pelican I've ever seen.

Now here we have a lizard. I saw him in one of the many green spots Perth has to offer. The Aussie folks, just to have it mentioned, generally take great care of their surroundings.

This is a picture of an area within Kings Park, a big park right next to the centre of the city and near the university.

This is a Banksia. An indigenous flower described for the first time by Sir Joseph Banks in 1770 during James' Cooks first expedition.

That's a Rocket Pincushion. One of the few plants in flower right now.

This beautiful bird is a blue corella. I think this one is the first animals of the parrot family I've ever seen in nature.

Faye told me later that they were good pets when adopted while they are very young. It'd be a pity to lock them up in a cage...

They are very active and playful birds. This one was hanging on a banch upside down! Shortly after that, he took a position like a bat. Lovely!


I cannot thank Terry enough for this wonderful time!

Samstag, 8. Januar 2011

New Photos of Perth

 That's Faye's house...
 Background: Perth City; Foreground: Highway Canning Bridge - Perth
Como beach

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I also made a panorama. Take a look at it @ http://www.panorama.ch.vu/
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Freitag, 7. Januar 2011

Traveling around the world. Literally.

At exactly 20:15 (UTC+1), 31st of December, my plane took off. Zürich – Frankfurt. On my left side: a nice couple from South Africa that, who by the way had seen the match Switzerland versus Spain live in the stadium. On my right side, there were 3 stereotypical German ladies: The first one talked in an extremely loud and high voice about how nervous she was because she was flying all alone for the first time. The second one kept looking straight into the first one’s eyes and repeated every 10 seconds “jaaa, jaaa”. The third one was obviously annoyed, as were most passengers around lady number 1. My first flight was over soon, at about 21:20, without having had any delay. In Frankfurt, I had time until 19:30 to switch terminal. During this time, I met two guys from Switzerland who were on their way to Australia too. We drank beer together and celebrated New Years Eve a little. At 19:45 a Qantas Jet with me on board started its engines. This time, I was sitting at the window, next to a couple that used to live in Germany. She originally had come from Poland and he from Australia. They just were moving to Australia permanently. At the stroke of the new year... (At New Years Eve) the Airline offered free champagne. I watched two movies on the in-built entertainment device and slept for about 2 hours until we landed in Singapore (18:20@UTC+8). My last flight took off about one hour later than planned (20:45). They didn’t say why. This time, I had no one next to me: 4 seats for me and my baggage. I watched a special extended version of Avatar and played Tetris for the first time in at least 10 years. At about 02:00 the jet had arrived at its destination. I was a little sleepy when I took my baggage and passed customs. On the other side, Terry was waiting to drive me to my host family.

Mittwoch, 5. Januar 2011

Pictures of the Flight

 Zurich Airport (31.12.2010)
 My second flight, Frankfurt. Still 31.12.2010.
 A bottle of sekt - a gift of Quantas Airlines. Picture taken a few minutes after New Years Eve.
 Somewhere between Frankfurt and Singapore. It was beautiful.
Cost of Singapore.