Sebastian Heise :: Blog :: Photos

I used the train to get from Frankfurt to where I had to go in northern Germany.
Despite the early saturday morning (when you really shouldn’t expect too much trouble or delays) the InterCity Express arrived at Frankfurt Airport being already 15 minutes late.
When we were finally on our way towards cologne, we were informed that the train left the station with a delay of “23 minutes – due to boarding passengers”.
Well…. I don’t know, but if you ask me, you would expect passengers to get on and off a train at a station, wouldn’t you? Especially since that particular train was a Lufthansa codeshare connection between Frankfurt an Cologne….
Arriving in Cologne, my connecting train was already gone, so I had to catch the next one. Since I had to switch trains 4 times, all of my connections didn’t work out, so that in the end it was quicker for my brother to pick me up at one train station because I would have waited for another 45 minutes – just to be on the train for about 10 minutes…

[A few days later…]
I used the train to get from Osnabrück to Fulda. Guess what…!? The train was late, I missed another connection and arrived an hour later than planned.

I finally got a chance to go through my photos from San Francisco… :)
Barbara’s got some more! :)
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Our trip to germany was quite busy so I didn’t get to update my blog… Not that I’ve been posting a lot lately anyway…. ;-)
We’ve met each others families and friends and all went well :)

Booking a Lufthansa flight however has been my first and will be my last time.

Traveling with their fairly modern Airbus from the US to Germany was okay even though we could tell the difference to the Air New Zealand plane we had before.

But…. Our plane back from Frankfurt to San Francisco was an old Boing 747 which lacked an on demand entertainment system in economy class (own screen in front of you) and still had the legroom of last century: ZERO.
The rows were way too close and it is annoying to feel the knees of the person behind you in your back (a five year old child in my case).
Even the seat width wasn’t wider than my shoulders – and I don’t have particulary wide shoulders to start with. The toilet areas still had ashtrays even though smoking flights are not existing anymore since the 70th.
The food was overcooked (or rather: overmicrowaved).
At least the flight attendants were friendly.
Still: I will not fly Lufthansa on long haul anymore.

There ARE better ways to fly!

Just two (2) days to go then we will be on our way to Germany.
It will be nice to have a couple weeks of warmth even though the weather is quite friendly this winter. (my kiwi friends say it’s been the worst winter ever though…)
We will be at the airport in MUC Sunday evening and meet a few friends from Munich during our wait for the connecting flight to FMO (Münster).
The first few days will be the hardest: jet-lagged for once and then moving my flat from Frankfurt back to my parents place in Osnabrück.
At least I will be able to skate along with the Tuesday Night Skate in Frankfurt! I’m sooooo looking forward for that!
On our way back we will be stopping in SFO for 4 days (8. Sept.-11. Sept.). Hopefully the weather will be nice and warm and sunny! :)

Remember how stunned I was, when I got my working holiday visa in just 4 days?
Well, this time, NZ immigration even topped that!
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I was skiing in July! :-)

Granted: Mt Ruapehu is a small ski area – at least compared to European and North American fields. There are two fields on each side of the mountain: Turoa and Whakapapa. They are not networked, though. :(
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I moved into a new apartment last weekend! And if I say new, I mean new! – brand-new!

The construction of the building finished about two weeks ago. The owners of the apartments got their keys on May 13th and even they were not allowed to access the building before that!

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This afternoon we had one of the “bigger” ones: 4.1 Richter magnitude. At first it felt like a heavy truck passing by – everything just shook slightly. 3 Seconds later you could feel the main quake and also see the computer screens shake. Nothing scary, but still a reminder of where we live. Details.

PS: Thorsten, YOUR room shakes more with heavy traffic rolling across Baseler Platz! – So did Marbachweg, BTW! ;)

Did I say, I needed a job?

Well… I saw (no, actually Barbara saw it… :) ) an interesting job description at the website of one of those job recruitment agencies and sent them my CV/resume on sunday night.
They called me up Monday morning, inviting me over for the afternoon.
We talked for about 10 minutes, then they took me directly to their client with who interviewed me for another 20 minutes.

I started Tuesday morning with a 6 weeks contract (for now).

I guess it’s time to admit it:

I’ve been living in Wellington since January now and I’m gonna stay here. :-) I found myself a nice room where I’m flatting with two other people in the middle of the city (1 minute to Cuba Street).
Now I just need to get a job…

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Hello to all skaters in and around Frankfurt!

I’ve been following the discussions for the first Tuesday Night Skating in Frankfurt very wistfully…

I hope you’re having a great summer rolling through Frankfurt every Tuesday night and without any rain!

Take a look at the HR report about the first TNS of 2009 (in german).

For the past few weeks, I’ve regulary been a guest at the Tuesday Night Dinner at Mike’s here in Wellington. This is a potluck dinner party, where the host ( = Mike) is setting a certain theme for the evening and whoever wants to come just shows up – bringing some food or already cooked dishes according to the theme of the evening.
Last week Mike has had his 10 year anniversary – that’s over 500 tuesday night dinner parties!

Impressive! – and congratulations!  :-)

More Info at: http://tuesdaynightdinners.org.nz/

Finally got through all my pictures. Here are some pictures of my dives.
All the other pictures are in this post: Rarotonga :: Cook Islands
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Cook Islands (or rather Rarotonga) is about 4.5 hours by plane from Auckland.
Air New Zealand and Pacific Blue sometimes have specials and sell tickets for as low as NZ$99 – one way.

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