Witaj from sub zero Poland!

With a goal of learning to snowboard, I (Dan) looked further abroad than the typical ski resorts in Austria, Switzerland and France and decided to spend a week in Poland. With friend Matt we set off for Krakow and the mountain town of Zakapone, which borders Slovakia in the Tatra mountain range. After many falls and some lessons we soon got the hang of it and thoroughly enjoyed the amazing scenery, friendly people and very quiet slopes. Poland had so much to offer, with the mountain range being absolutely amazing, and the history and architecture so interesting. While snowboarding was the highlight, the funicular train rides, walks, seeing the many old wooden building and finding out about the history surrounding Jews’ plight during the war all made the trip a really worthwhile journey.

Working down on the farm

This was a solo trip to the Algarve, Portugal as I (Dan) had too use up my leave. It was a holiday with a difference, WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) on an 8 hectare farm in Aljezur. The break was great – leaving the daily inside activities of working in the office, phones and emails and getting outside to plant trees, a potato patch, collecting wood and clear brambles. It’s wasn’t all hard work, I managed to get to the beach and local market plus a few hours of spare time in Lagos and Faro. My hosts were a lovely Welsh couple and we hand many happy nights with other WWOOFers. To top it off I got to re-experience what it was like living in a vehicle again (on our car rally in 07/08 we lived for 3 weeks out of a car) by living in an old converted van!

The Netherlands

In amongst all this, we still kept up with the travel. Most recently we spent a long weekend with a couple from Church in Amsterdam. While we there it rained. A LOT. But we still managed to see a bit. With all that rain and all those canals its a wonder not even more of the country is actually below sea level! Apparently the Anne Frank House is overrated and when we saw how long the queues were we decided not to make the effort. We did see some of the famous sites though, including the Rijksmueseum, Rembrandtplatz, Albert Cupyrmarkt, and the flower market. One of our highlights though was getting out of the city to visit the Hoge Veluwe National Park. The park has a mix of wooded areas and dunes. It's home to the Kroller-Muller Museum and a great collection of scupltures and Van Gogh art work. One of the cool things about the park was that they have free bikes that you can just collect at any of the entrances and then return when you leave. Here are some of the pics from the weekend.

London Town

Even though we like travelling, we love London. It's a big city and we are not going to live here forever but everything has its season and we love taking advantage of all the city has to offer. Speaking of seasons though, it was SNOWING here a couple of weeks ago and the cold weather lasted a wee while. Dan got some pics on his way to work:

Before the snow came, though, Matt, Susanna's brother, paid a flying visit. Here's our proof

It was great to see him, if only for such a short time.

Believe it or not, the snow was still falling in dribs and drabs on Waitangi DAy. We still went out for dinner with some other kiwi friends. This was taken at Suze NZ Restaurant in Mayfair:

We had one token Ozzie - the guy on the end who isn't smiling. Wonder why?!

Joyeaux Noel

Well, if we couldn't be having a BBQ with family back home for Christmas, this was surely the next best thing. We went to France with our good mates, Josh and Roz, who like us, are Kiwis living in London. We rented a gite (like a bach) in the small village of Coquerel, between Amiens and Abbeville in the Picardie region of Northern France. We then spent 4 days exploring the local environs. Some of the highlights were:

• Location, location, location - really homely accomodation and cute village
• Christmas Dinner - we even had pavlova!
• The Palais de Beaux Arts in Lille
• New Zealand War Memorial in the Somme
• Gothic Cathedral of Amiens
• Having a holiday!

Norway - Part Two

As we said, Norway, and Scandinavia in general, is a comparatively expensive place. So, in another attempt to cut costs, we joined up to CouchSurfers (the link to the website is on the right hand list in our Blog). Pretty self-explanatory - you "surf" peoples couches and spare beds so that you save on accomodation and also get to meet "real" locals and learn more about the culture. To that end we met Karl-Johan and Katrina. They were GREAT hosts - they even waited for our train from Bergen (which arrived in Oslo one hour late - that's a whole different story). They took us to church on Sunday, to some of their local hang outs, and to the famous Vige Park - a park full of these sculptures of the naked human form - some really interesting, others great ingredients for humour. Talking with them also helped us understand a little more about Norway and its people.

We really enjoyed Oslo. We spent time by ourselves checking out the folk museum and also the Viking ship musesum - some amazingly preserved Viking ships dating around (we think) the 9th Century AD! On our last day in Oslo, we said goodbye to Karl-Johan and Katrina, and went to another suburb of Oslo to meet Daniel's great-great Uncle and Aunt (brother and sister of his great-grandfather, who emigrated to New Zealand in the 1870s). That was really special. Botolf and Solveig showed us around the old homestead, and the surrounding area, and also took us to where Erik (Daniel's great-great-grandfather) was born. They gave us a book that Botolf had written about the family history (it's in Norwegian, but hey) and pointed to where Daniel and his family are named in the appendix.

Here are some more pictures from Oslo. Enjoy!

Norway Part One

Yes, we know it has been a while but December and Jan seems to have been a bit of a whirlwind as we got a lot of travelling done with our new found freedom.... We looked at the blog and realised there was a lot that had happened so here goes...

Just before Christmas, we went to Norway. Daniel’s father’s family are originally from there, Ryanair had cheap flights, and Susanna had leave she needed to use before Dec 31st. And so it was that we flew to Oslo Torp Airport (about 1.5 hours from Oslo itself – typical of RyanAir) and encountered the first truism of Scandinavia travel – the cost of the bus to Oslo... never mind. We had one night in Oslo and then took the well-known and well travelled Train from Oslo to Myrdal, from where we changed to the Flamsbana railway down from the mountain into the Sognefjord region. After wondering at the beauty and cold of it all for an hour, we took the ferry from Flam to Gudvangen, down another fork in the fjord. From there we took a connecting bus to Voss and a train into Bergen.

We rose early in Bergen and although it didn’t get light until 9.30am, we spent the whole day wondering, up the funicular to a morning view over the city, walking down again and into the old town, admiring towers and old wooden buildings, the harbour, and the small fish market. The newer part also had some quaint shops. Bergen reminded us a lot of Wellington, New Zealand. In the evening, we caught the return train back to Oslo.