It's been 1 year since we landed in Adelaide, Australia. Its fair to say we had a bit of a hard landing and a jarring end to our travels - rushing to the other side of the world because of bad news is never how anyone wants to end their travels. We had known for a long time that Sasha's Mum Pam had a cancer lump in her stomach, but it was getting treated. We'd settled on Adelaide, Sasha's home city being the destination at the end of our travels so that we could spend time around Pam for a few years. But the family was quite unaware that the treatment Pam had talked about was never going to fix it, and suddenly we all found out it was worse than they'd known. Instead of visiting Hawaii and then some time in NZ, we plunged headlong into grappling with making decisions around Pam's immediate and long term welfare, as well as getting set up in Australia quick smart in order to get jobs and therefore income flowing in. getting to know Sasha's family better, constant meetings with people in hospitals, spending time with Pam, getting Tax numbers, bank accounts, and applying for jobs. I was lucky - I managed to start a job, and a decent one at that, about 3 weeks after we landed. Sasha didn't have the same amount of luck - the job market in Adelaide is not so vibrant in her career field, and added to that has been the emotional toll. We were lucky with Pam initially being in hospital, and then in respite that we could stay at Pam's rented unit and use her car. It was also a bit of a double-edged sword - Pam was loathe to throw away anything and the unit was a bit cluttered, to put it mildly. We tried tidying, but could only do so much as Pam kept asking for various items and knew exactly where they used to be, until we re-arranged things so that we could function in the house. The one thing Sasha threw out, was the very thing Pam asked for 2 days later! It all has meant that in living in the unit, Sasha has been surrounded by constant reminders of memories of her Mum. It has taken an emotional toll on both of us to slowly go through everything, but Sasha especially so. Pam was much more with-it when we arrived than she had been when we left the US, thanks to drugs reducing the swelling in her brain around the lump inside it - or "The Apple" as Pam kept referring to it. Because she needed care and her mobility was a bit impaired, we organised to get her out of the hospital and into respite care in a home that if need be could become her long-term care facility - which it did. She was quite mobile at first, and found it quite amusing when the Radiation Therapy on the lump in her head caused her hair to fall out. The Radiation Therapy reduced the size of the lump, but could not remove it and couldn't stop the cancer's overall advance - we knew that any time we had was finite because there was no getting better. We went and visited Pam almost every opportunity we could, and often took her down to the nearby beach for a change of scenery and so she could have a smoke - despite the smoking ultimately causing the cancer which started in her lungs and then spread, she wasn't going to stop! At first when her mobility was good, we could walk down there or go in the car, but as time went on we'd take her down in the wheelchair. Slowly watching Pam's decline was hard for me, but immeasurably harder for Sasha. Pam beat the doctor's estimates of 6 months, but ultimately succumbed at the end of March. If I'm honest I can't say Adelaide seems like home yet. Part of that is until March, a lot of our lives revolved around Pam and rightly so. While Sasha's friends have been very welcoming to me and I get along with them really well, I can't say I have many if any of my own accord just yet. Part of this is being so "close" to NZ, but also so very far away - NZ is "next door" to Australia but from Adelaide it's not easy to get to and it also costs a lot. If we were in Sydney or Melbourne, popping across to NZ for a few days would be quite practical - but it's 2 flights minimum to get to Wellington or Christchurch from here. There are various things I haven't been able to go see or do in NZ for 5 years now, and there's still no way of knowing when I might be able to go do them. I'm sure at some point Adelaide will seem like home, and I'll get into things more here in my own accord. Living in Adelaide has been good though. Sasha didn't really want to come back here, and with everything going on kept a bit of a low-profile after coming back and has slowly eased back into some of her friendship circles. But Adelaide has been a rather pleasant place to live in so far - living in Glenelg has had a lot to recommend for it, and being a block away from the beach was very handy on the hot summer days. The city has more going on in terms of activities and events than Sasha remembers it to, and we've done a whole heap of things in the city since we've been back - and we went really hard during Fringe time! The city feels like a cross between Christchurch and Wellington to me - Christchurch in layout, and perhaps attitude but a bit more like Wellington in terms of what's going on. Its definitely more relaxed than the pace of London, and it might not have all the "cool" of Berlin to explore, but its definitely got its own thing going on! And there is some train stuff here, we have done a little bit of it but there's still more to go see at some point, and perhaps potentially get involved with. In among all of what's been going on we have found some opportunities to travel. We set the focus as being Australia, since Sasha hasn't seen a lot of her own country and "while we're here" we might as well take advantage of that. My work has sent me away on work trips to various spots in South Australia too, giving me a chance to see more of this state which I call home for now. Airfares are not cheap in Aus - they were never going to be Ryanair-cheap but even by NZ standards I feel like they are expensive. But we have a car at our disposal and it might be old but its proving up to the task. We've taken it on trips to Port Augusta, and even as far afield as Broken Hill in NSW - visiting Mildura in Victoria in the process too. We even took it down the south coast to Kingston SE and slept in the back of it once so far, and have intentions to use it as a "mini-campervan" again. We headed off to NZ for a week over New Year's, but the biggest travel we've done so far has been to the Northern Territory where we flew to Darwin, picked up a Campervan and drove to Alice Springs and to Uluru - the red center of Australia. For Sasha's birthday we went to Cairns in Queensland for a week, and yet to come are a few days in Perth, Western Australia and a trip to Tasmania - with other trips to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and elsewhere in mind also! We might not be hopping around as much as we were previously, but its something - especially since the hopping isn't anywhere near as affordable as it was in Europe! My relationship with Sasha has been built around travel and travelling together - and we work really well together in that. Sasha had always said that the real test of our relationship would be whether we are able to "stay still together", and living here in Adelaide with everything that has been going on has been the absolute test of that. I'm very pleased to say that it has been proven we are indeed very good at "staying still together" - to the point where I had no qualms asking Sasha to marry me in February, and I'm very happy to report she said Yes! So for now, we'll continue to live and work in Adelaide at least until our Wedding in August 2020. What happens beyond that is yet to be decided. We've had a few people express surprise that following Pam's passing we're not immediately heading off to another country (such as Canada) to go live, but the prospect of uprooting everything to go live somewhere else temporarily again doesn't appeal to me now. I think I'd much rather do big holidays but always know that I have a home of my own and things I can pick up and carry on with on the return, rather than start from scratch each time which can be quite tough really. That's not to say we're going to be in Adelaide or Australia forever - we don't know that yet. If we don't stay in Australia though, we'd be moving to NZ. But that's a question for another day. For now, we're here in Adelaide, making the most of being in this city while recuperating and finding our feet again, as well as planning a wedding (which is not easy!). It's nice to know that we can stay here as long as we want, and aren't facing a fixed deadline of having to pack everything up and move somewhere else. Plus it's great to be able to spend time with Sasha's brother and his family here in Adelaide - Sasha's nieces have even come to stay for a sleepover at the unit. So that has been life beyond the big OE so far, a year filled with a lot of uncertainty and turmoil but also with a lot of promise and excitement for the future. Life is a different kind of exciting to that which we had in Europe, and we'll always have all those memories of our travels there to look fondly on while we look to future travels and adventures elsewhere, as well as in life - but most importantly and excitingly, a life together for Sasha and I :)
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If I'm going to talk about the Plane Stuff, I'm definitely going to talk about the Train Stuff! Primarily though this post is about providing a Table of Contents of my train adventures - so I'll do my talking summary at the bottom. Excursion TrainsGermany 35 1097 Dresden-Nossen-Dresden, Germany (April 2015) 03 2155 Berlin-Wolsztyn-Berlin, Germany and Poland (April 2017) Berlin U-Bahn Cabrio Excursion, Berlin, Germany (May 2017) Portugal CP 0186 Regua-Tua-Regua, Portugal (October 2017) Sweden Ra 846 Gavle-Uppsala, Sweden (May 2015) United Kingdom 60009 "Union of South Africa" London-Lincoln-London, UK (December 2014) 46233 "Duchess of Sutherland" London-Carlisle-Settle-London, UK (January 2015) 45407 Jacobite Fort William-Mallaig-Fort William, UK (August 2015) Metropolitan No.1 & L 150/5521 Harrow on the Hill-Chesham-Watford-Harrow on the Hill, UK September 2015) 60103 "Flying Scotsman" London-Oxford-Didcot-London, UK (June 2018) Heritage RailwaysAustralia Puffing Billy Railway, Melbourne, Australia (November 2014) Steamranger Cockle Train, Victor Harbor, Australia (December 2016) Yarra Valley Railway, Healesville, Australia (November 2014) Germany Harz Schmalspurbahn, Harz, Germany (December 2014) Harz Schmalspurbahn, Harz, Germany (August 2015) Harz Schmalspurbahn, Harz, Germany (January 2017) Harz Schmalspurbahn, Harz, Germany (February 2018) Kasbachtalbahn, Linz (Rhein), Germany (July 2015) Weisseritztalbahn, Freital, Germany (April 2015) Isle of Man Isle of Man Steam Railway, Douglas, Isle of Man (June 2018) Manx Electric Railway, Douglas, Isle of Man (June 2018) Snaefell Mountain Railway, Laxey, Isle of Man (June 2018) United Kingdom Bluebell Railway, Sussex, UK (January 2015) Mid-Hants Railway/Watercress Line, Hampshire, UK (February 2015) Gala Severn Valley Railway, Worcestershire, UK (March 2015) Gala Rodney Hythe & Dymchurch Railway, Kent, UK (May 2015) Gala Great Central Railway, Leicestershire, UK (June 2015) Gala Didcot Railway Centre, Oxfordshire, UK (July 2015) Ffestiniog Railway, Snowdonia, UK (December 2015) Welsh Highland Railway, Snowdonia, UK (December 2015) Brecon Mountain Railway, Merthyr Tydfil, UK (March 2015) North Yorkshire Moors Railway, Yorkshire, UK (April 2015) Severn Valley Railway, Worcestershire, UK (May 2015) Gala Strathspey Railway, Aviemore, UK (December 2017) Snowdon Mountain Railway, Llanberis, UK (June 2018) Mail Rail, London, UK (June 2018) United States of America Roaring Camp, Big Trees & Pacific Railroad, Santa Cruz, USA (July 2018) Railway or Railway-Related MuseumSAustralia Canberra Railway Museum, Canberra, Australia (November 2014) Menzies Creek Railway Museum, Melbourne, Australia (November 2014) National Railway Museum, Adelaide, Australia (December 2016) Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia (November 2014) Belgium Trainworld, Brussels, Belgium (April 2016) NRM Canada Toronto Railway Museum, Toronto, Canada (July 2018) France Cite du Train, Mulhouse, France (April 2015) NRM Germany Dampflokwerk Meiningen, Thueringen, Germany (September 2016) DB Museum, Koblenz, Germany (July 2015) DB Museum, Nuremburg, Germany (April 2015) NRM Deutches Museum Verkehrszentrum, Munich, Germany (February 2018) Deutches Technikmuseum, Berlin, Germany (July 2016) Deutches Technikmuseum, Berlin, Germany (February 2018) Dresden Transport Museum, Dresden, Germany (April 2015) Eisenbahnmuseum Dresden, Germany (April 2015) Gala Miniatur Wunderland, Hamburg, Germany (October 2016) Technikmuseums Speyer & Shinsheim, Germany (April 2015) Italy Museo Scienza, Milan, Italy (August 2017) Lithuania Lithuanian Railway Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania (May 2017) Poland Wolsztyn Steam Depot, Wolsztyn, Poland (April 2017) Gala Slovenia Slovenian Railway Museum, Ljubljana, Slovenia (May 2018) Sweden Jarnvagsmuseet, Gavle, Sweden (May 2015) NRM Gala The Netherlands Het Spoorwegmuseum, Utrecht, The Netherlands (April 2017) NRM United Kingdom Aldwych Underground Station, London, UK (January 2016) London Transport Museum, London, UK (November 2014) London Transport Museum Acton Depot, London, UK (April 2015) Gala Museum of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (November 2015) National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK (December 2017) National Railway Museum, York, UK (December 2014) NRM National Railway Museum, York, UK (April 2016) NRM Thinktank, Birmingham, UK (March 2015) Tyseley Locomotive Works, Birmingham, UK (October 2015) Gala United States of America National Museum of American History, Washington DC, USA (July 2018) Train Journeys of NoteGermany DB City Night Line Dresden to Basel and Zurich to Halle Wuppertal Suspension Railway IRE Berlin to Hamburg, here and here ICE Dresden to Berlin Berlin U-Bahn and S-Bahn Locomore/FlixTrain Frankfurt to Berlin Italy Milan, Italy to Zurich, Switzerland via the Gotthard Pass Sweden SJ Night Train Stockholm to Boden, Sweden Switzerland Glacier Express Brig to Chur, Switzerland Bernina Express Chur to Tirano, Switzerland Jungrau Mountain Railway, Switzerland Croatia Zagreb, Croatia to Sarajevo, Bosnia France Le Shuttle Vehicle Train Coquelles, France to Cheriton, UK Macedonia Night train from Skopje, Macedonia to Belgrade, Serbia Norway Flam Railway, Norway Spain AVE High-Speed Train from Seville to Madrid AVE High-Speed Train from Madrid to Barcelona United Kingdom Caledonian Sleeper London (Euston) to Inverness Javelin from London (St Pancras) to Folkestone Eurostar from London (St Pancras) to Brussels, Belgium here and here London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Railway "Parliamentary Train" from South Ruislip to London (Paddington) United States of America Amtrak Southwest Chief Superliner, USA So given my interests, it was only natural train travel would form part of my OE - not just as a means of getting between places, but in many cases the train would be the very reason I might go visit somewhere. There are a lot of high profile modern trains I wanted to experience, and there is also a lot on the heritage scene in Europe. Often, I could combine both new and old in a trip, particularly in Western European countries. The UK was very fertile ground for trains of all kinds when I arrived. A huge network of modern trains of many different kinds, some that can whisk you along at 200km/h. There is also a prolific heritage railway scene in the UK, to the point where some of them run every day of the year, and most will run every day over the summer months. There is also a huge industry around steam trains running on the main lines - with a steam train running an excursion somewhere in the UK almost daily at certain times of year, with a variety of steam locomotives being used. High on the list of things for me to do in the UK was visit some of these heritage railways, and it seemed a sensible idea to use some of these main line excursions to help me see various destinations in the UK but also see and experience the type of steam loco which might be on the front of the train. For the Heritage Railways, I decided to visit the Bluebell Railway south of London as my first one, one cold and later on foggy January 2015 day. I never wrote a blog post about going to Bluebell, which is interesting but there may be a reason for it. Bluebell was one of the oldest and more established heritage railways in the UK, but to be honest, I wasn't hugely impressed by it. A lot of stuff, particularly steam locomotives that had been working on their line had been parked up out in the open air, messy looking storage sidings, difficult viewing angles from stations and and cramped and dark display buildings. It seemed for photo opportunities, I either needed to walk ages away from stations or I'd be better to have a car, and while there were 2 steam trains on the line I was practically waiting an hour between photo opportunities. While of a good standard in general, it didn't seem to live up to its supposed reputation. Were they all like this? A visit a month later to the Mid-Hants Railway during one of their Gala Weekends put Bluebell in a sharper focus - no, they weren't all like this, and Gala's had more trains running (at least 5 steam trains running from memory) so more photo opportunities and also on-rail transport between spots. On a standard running day, Mid-Hants would have been better for me than Bluebell - but clearly Gala's were the way to go for maximum opportunity. I visited quite a few of the UK heritage lines, mostly some of the big-name ones but there were some I never got to do. Of all of them, Severn Valley Railway was my favourite - I even went there twice, once for a Steam Gala and once for a Diesel Gala. Their display building at scenic little Highley with the big viewing balcony is just magic. The Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways were also pretty cool. For Main Line Excursions in the UK, all started off very well and promising. My old work colleagues had brought me tickets on a trip behind an A4 steam loco to Lincoln - and another separate steam excursion visited Lincoln that same day, which I got to see. My next excursion was a month later, which I rode because I wanted to see a Duchess class steam loco in action, it would travel across one of the UK's "most scenic" railway lines and added to that, it snowed just days before. It was a great trip, the views looked great because of the snow but the scenery didn't hold a candle to NZ lines. I had big plans to ride more excursions behind different engines, with a shortlist drawn up but I never did them - because in March 2015 a steam train excursion ran through a red stop light at Wootton Bassett, almost creating a collision with a high-speed passenger train and all hell broke loose. 90% of all steam excursions in the UK were run under the license of West Coast Railways (WCR), and month later WCR were banned from running for an indefinite amount of time. As a result, main line running effectively ceased overnight because the other licensed operator, DB Schenker wouldn't operate the brake systems used on most steam trains. The Tour Operators, rather than promising something which they couldn't guarantee on delivering, cancelled their entire programs until they got news WCR could run again, which happend by May. It led to a slow build back up for the tour companies, and then WCR had another incident in October which led to another steam ban in November 2015 and a full ban in February 2016, which lasted until March 2016. Suffice to say the subsequent bans again knocked the stuffing out of steam on the main line, pretty much for the rest of my time in the UK! Flying Scotsman could run under the DB Schenker license though, and did so - but excursions behind it were either astronomically priced or sold out in minutes. It was not until we were leaving Europe I managed to secure tickets on a train hauled by Scotsman - so this constituted my last steam excursion on the UK Main Line! I did go see and ride steam trains in Continental Europe too, though not nearly as much as what I did in the UK. Part of that is the excursion offerings are less, or at least harder to find for an English-only speaker. By far the most of my outside-UK steam experiences were had in Germany, even before I lived there. There is a lot of steam to be seen in Germany, and I really only scratched the sides - partly because I got fixated on the Harz Schmalspurbahn, and kept wanting to go back there at the expense of seeing other steam railways in Germany. I don't regret this - the Harz is magnificent, especially under snow, and even Sasha thinks so! One major thing I hoped to achieve in Europe was ride a steam excursion across an international border. I hoped to do this when I attended the steam train festival in Dresden, Germany on a trip to Decin, Czech Republic but it sold out before I could obtain tickets. However the trip I did do, from Berlin, Germany to Wolsztyn, Poland ticked quite a few more boxes as I'd wanted to go to Wolsztyn anyway - and it coincided with Wolsztyn's Steam Loco parade. I intended to visit steam in Austria and Switzerland, but I didn't manage either of these things in the end. But I did get to see steam in Sweden and Portugal, both of which I never expected to when I embarked on my OE. I did manage to do a bunch of the modern trains that I was hoping to do - and some extra's I didn't think I'd get to do, like the Jungfraujoch Railway, the Glacier Express and the Bernina Express (all Switzerland).Trains of speed was a slight factor - so riding each country's fastest trains was a goal for me, and at the highest speed if possible. So this was achieved with the UK's Pendolino, HST, IC225 and Javelin trains; the ICE in Germany; the AVE in Spain; the FrecciaRossa in Italy; but the biggest one missing was riding aboard a French TGV at all, let alone at its top speed. It just never happened, as it was expensive relative to other options and I could never fit it in to what I was doing. One other thing I would like to have done - ride behind Germany's 18 201 steam loco at 180km/h, though I don't believe it ever ran any trains at that speed at any time that I was in Europe. I did ride at 75mph (120km/h) behind A4 60009 "Union of South Africa" and 60103 "Flying Scotsman" so they both tie for the fastest I've ever been behind steam. I also visited a lot of Train Museums or Museums with Trains in them - getting to see a lot of important trains in the process. My favourite train museum was not the UK's National Railway Museum in York which is often held to be the gold standard, but rather the Cite du Train in France. In fact compared to a lot of the NRM's around Europe, York is missing a trick in many areas - though good at displaying shiny trains, it doesn't even attempt to describe the history of trains in the UK unlike many others. Aside from that - I did some foaming. Not a lot though. About the biggest foaming opportunity of note was going to Cologne, line-siding outside of a freight yard. In London it was often too hard with high walls blocking the view - and hard to track down info on where the freight trains would be. I did a lot, some things more than I counted on, other things not as much as I'd hoped. But it was all enjoyable and eye-opening - and all was very informative for any future trips to Europe and the UK to see trains, if that so happens! One of the side-effects of doing my OE was plane travel. You almost can't avoid it - unless you have deep pockets to do a cruise going in the right direction, or manage to wing your way on container ships, there is no other way to get to the UK and Europe. While in Europe though, I figured it would mostly be buses and trains that would get me around - but at least half the time it was flying that did the job. I'd flown a fair amount growing up in NZ, from small planes to bigger planes but until I left NZ I had never been in anything bigger than a Boeing 767 with it's 2-3-2 seating. It was inevitable that I'd fly on a bigger plane to get to the UK - maybe not a 747, but quite possibly an A380 or 777. I expected once in Europe that any flights would be done by bigger planes than the 737's and A320's we had in the skies of NZ, and that shuttle people across the Tasman. I was quite looking forward to that, on the odd occasion I might fly within Europe. How wrong I was. The skies of Europe are a very different place to what I had imagined - and it's the low-cost carriers which rule the day. You can often find flights to almost anywhere in Europe for the same as a bus or a train, or sometimes even less - and the plane will do it far quicker than the bus, and often even than the train too. When you are trying to cram a trip into a weekend like I often was, time becomes a factor and therefore flying wins out. If you're trying to do it on a budget or at least as cheap as possible like I was, you go with whoever is cheapest. So I became very well acquainted with the low-cost carriers, who make their money by offering as low-or-no frills a service as they possibly can but charge you for any extra's. They manage to keep fares low by flying plane fleets consisting of one type of aeroplane, so everything's the same and all the parts are the same. Their planes of choice? The 737's and the A320's! And there was always lots of choice, and if there was only one airline flying between the origin and destination you wanted to go to, 99% of the time you can bet on it being a low-cost carrier too. Sometimes, maybe you didn't particularly know where you wanted to go any given weekend, so you'd idly search the flight aggregator website Skyscanner and see what might be possible and also cheap for those dates, or sale fares with the low-cost carriers. That's how we ended up going to Riga, Latvia which hadn't been on our radar of places at all, or Romania. It was often cheaper to fly International than domestic too, and given the size of European countries it was often more time-efficient to catch the train for the same price by the time you factored in check-in times at the airport. How much of my OE was spent with my bum on a plane seat? I can't actually tell you a time figure, but I can tell you how many times I flew and with what airline - a grand total of 96 flights (doesn't include any flights in or between NZ and Aus in the course of the OE):
The plane types flown in listed against each airline won't mean much to most, but 737's and A320's clearly dominate! Long haul I never did get in a 747 or A380, but did nab an A340 and mostly flew in 777's. Only once did I get a 767 within Europe, and I flew in a near-brand new A220 when they were still called the CS300. The table count shows overwhelmingly though that most flights were done aboard 2 airlines - on Ryanair or Easyjet.
Ryanair and Easyjet are the two biggest low-cost carriers by far. When I was in the UK they were often slightly cheaper than Ryanair, but while living in Germany Ryanair was the cheaper of the two. Generally I quite liked Easyjet - it was not much different to flying Jetstar, even down to the liberal use of orange everywhere, and they were consistent and on time. The one thing which did grind my gears was Easyjet's enforced 1 bag in the cabin policy - you couldn't take a smaller bag, they'd make you stuff it into your bigger bag but all you'd do was take it out again when on the plane so why did they bother with it? Ryanair let you take on a smaller bag, and although their yellow-accented interior and seats with no seat pockets was a bit jarring, initially I thought they were the better of the two even though I knew Ryanair had a reputation. They did have a completely arbitrary "Visa Check" policy which no other airline did, where if you had a foreign passport you had to go to the counter and get your boarding pass (which you print out at home or get charged £50 for them to print it for you!) checked, otherwise they could refuse entry to the plane when boarding. Over time though, they turned the screws - they purposely started people booked on the same booking in completely different parts of the plane, so if you wanted to sit next to each other you had to pay to choose your seats. Not long before we left Europe, they were making you pay for "Priority Boarding" to be able to take any cabin bag on the plane, else they'd take it from you at the gate and put it in the hold for free (pretty sure they charge for this now). I'd long grown sick of their boarding process which always entailed standing in 3 queues (what I called the Ryanair Shuffle) in order to get on the plane, and their tactic of going from "Await Boarding" straight to "Final Call" only for you to wait in some stairwell or holding pen for 30-45mins after scanning your boarding pass and before you got on the plane. Ryanair did have the dual distinction of the cheapest flight we ever took within Europe (€5, Berlin-Krakow) and also the most expensive (€169, Berlin-Porto). After a while I started going out of my way to try and avoid Ryanair when possible. This is partly how we came to fly on Air Berlin, Germany's 2nd biggest airline who had been full-service but were restructuring and had cut the inflight service, and prices too (but retained the massive Lindt Chocolate heart given out at the end of the flight!). British Airways also cut out inflight service, but the 3 times I flew with them they still had it - and on 2 of them they had complimentary alcoholic beverages before that too got cut! Norwegian were a low-cost carrier that acted like a full-service airline, and although there was no inflight service they did have free wifi onboard - when everyone else barely had wifi at all, let alone free! Probably the smallest plane flown in was the ERJ-145 jet from Kyiv, Ukraine to Sofia, Bulgaria - but although Sasha thought the plane was going to be bumpy because of its size, it was quite a pleasant flight. Special mention to the flight aboard the SWISS Bombardier CS300/Airbus 220 where a cat got loose from its cage and I managed to get a pat (while trying to help retrieve it!). Suffice to say, there was plenty of choice in airlines in Europe, and a lot of the competition was pretty cutthroat - to the point there are a number of airlines on the above list which don't exist anymore. Air Berlin is the biggest, declaring bankruptcy mid-2017 and were propped up until October by the German Government until closing - with Easyjet and Eurowings getting most of the bones of the old operation. UK carrier Monarch declared bankruptcy in September 2017, with the UK Government deciding to let it collapse and charter aircraft to repatriate all the Monarch passengers instead. Germanwings and Dniproavia also have bitten the dust, and Flybe came close although has been bought out and rebranded under the Virgin banner. I guess we were lucky not to have been disrupted by companies failing, nor the industrial action Ryanair staff started doing while we were in Germany though we thought me might get caught up in that. If I'm talking about flying, I would be remiss if I don't give a quick mention to airports. London had 6, Berlin had 2. Of the London Airports, I did them all at least once - Gatwick was by far my favourite, and Heathrow was among my least favourite along with Stansted. Heathrow is 5 average sized individual terminals, mass slow-moving immigration and security queues and expensive pricing, while Stansted - the Ryanair hub - also had slow moving counter queues and security. Luton was nice although slightly awkward to get to, Southend didn't have many flights to it and London City tended to be pricey to fly into (and a really small terminal!). Gatwick easily won me over with its two very well appointed terminals, always speedy security, and never a hold-up at immigration. Of Berlin's two, Sasha preferred West Berlin's Tegel which admittedly was nice in that it had individual security scanners and lounges for each gate in the main terminal and good facilities elsewhere - but it was tired and was being kept on life support, as it was supposed to have been closed by the long-delayed new Berlin Brandenburg Airport based opposite East Berlin's airport, Schoenefeld. On average I think we did more flights out of Schoenefeld, passing the big Brandenburg Airport terminal each time which was always lit up, but no one home. Munich Airport was the best of the German Airports we experienced, Charles de Gaulle Terminal 1 was one of the strangest (inspired by the shape of an Octopus, it looked like a spaceship), and Zurich was probably the cleanest and most posh looking of them all. On the note of the longhaul flights - in the end I only ever flew Air Berlin, Etihad and Virgin Australia on any long haul legs. Both Air Berlin and Virgin Australia were quite pleasant, Etihad was okay but their entertainment system was slow and buggy plus they really tried to shoe-horn in the seats on the 777. I never got a chance to fly in a 747, which is becoming rare, or an A380. But there were a few flights in 777's, A330's and even a now-rare A340. Had we gone to Hawaii, I could have added a 757, 717 and a 787 to the list! 96 flights over 44 months comes out to just over 2 flights a month. Put it that way, it doesn't seem like much! In the early hours of 4th November, I said goodbye to Mum at the entrance to security at Christchurch Airport, and stepped into the unknown. At best, I would be back in 2 years, and at worst, I might be back in a matter of months. I was embarking on a voyage of travel and discovery, to see a different part of the world. What I never expected was that 2 years would stretch into almost 4, it would involve living in another country and at the end I still wouldn't have returned to live in NZ - and that along the way I'd have become a different person than the one who stepped into the unknown that 4th November morning. It had taken me a very long time to even get to that point of embarking on my Overseas Experience. For the longest time I only ever envisaged my OE to be a long holiday in Europe, I had no desire to live and work there. I had too much going on in NZ that I wanted to be involved with and do to consider upping sticks and leaving it behind for a while. I'd even twice started seriously intending to embark on such a holiday, and planning it to a certain extent. The first time, I intended to go do a 5-week Contiki Tour followed by a week travelling around the UK around August 2009. I remember being a bit annoyed at some of the "silly countries" that the itinerary included seemingly at the expense of other more interesting countries but nevertheless that's what I wanted to do, and follow in many respects in Mum & Dad's footsteps as they'd done a Contiki Tour in Europe - that's how they had met. I started planning this in and around August 2008, but in February 2009 I moved to Wellington. Setting up in Wellington ended up using any funds I had for such a holiday, and I definitely didn't have the leave. It got postponed until August 2010, but even then it got shelved for lack of funds. In 2011 I dusted the idea off and started planning anew, aiming to visit the UK for 2-3 weeks in 2012 and maybe a brief foray into Europe - all of this by myself and not part of any tour. I had a friend who was working on steam trains in Wales and there was an opportunity to visit him and the railway, and get hands on. I started saving, and had the leave. But in early 2012, I got into a relationship and as that developed, the trip became unrealistic and was shelved. By early 2013, that relationship failed and I started to dust off the idea again. By now, visiting my friend in Wales wasn't an option, but I was a lot more open to the idea of going and living and working in the UK. Using the UK as a base from which to conduct travels around Europe did seem like a very good idea, and I'd see vastly more that way. The more I thought about it, the more I warmed to the idea and ultimately decided to do it. Saving began again in earnest (previous funds had been spent elsewhere such as a replacement car), plans formulated and when to go decided upon. It even encompassed a holiday to Sydney and Melbourne in October 2013, which was used as a "practice OE" where I simulated what travelling around Europe might be like with just a normal sized backpack. I slowly wound up my live in NZ throughout 2014, getting rid of everything save for some things I wouldn't be able to re-acquire which went into storage at Mum & Dad's. I only planned to be away for 2 years, but I was disposing of my assets in case something came up and I never returned. The OE started off pretty easy and simple - I was going to Australia for a week-and-a-half as a kind of follow-up to my trip the prior year, doing things I wasn't able to do that previous time. It was in the departure lounge at Sydney Airport, waiting for my flight to Abu Dhabi in the UAE where I discovered that I was going to learn a lot about myself during the OE too. I felt pretty confident boarding the plane from NZ to Aus. Now, about 20 minutes from boarding, an enormous wave of anxiety emerged. I am not too familiar with Anxiety - I only started feeling it for the first time in early 2013, and for a couple of seconds mid-2014 when I felt like I still had too much to do to disestablish my NZ life. Walking onto Big Bird for the flight to Abu Dhabi was the real leap into the unknown - into the Northern Hemisphere and a foreign language country for the first time and way beyond anything I'd done before. If I'd listened to the anxiety, I wouldn't have left that seat until after the plane departed, but I got up, walked down that jetbridge, took my seat and buckled in. The anxiety didn't go until 15 minutes after takeoff, but I was on my way. I'd never felt it that strong before and I hoped I wasn't going to have constant problems with it throughout the coming months Luckily I didn't and in fact I don't recall ever feeling it since, though I could have quite easily. I arrived in Abu Dhabi late at night, with a set idea of what I was going to do the next day but when I woke up I threw that out the window and changed it. I discovered I had no cellphone reception on my NZ Sim, and none of the UK ones I had were activating so I travelled around Abu Dhabi on prior research and offline maps. The next day I caught the bus to Dubai for the day - and noticed I was the only white person on the bus. In Dubai, I discovered my research hadn't been as thorough as I needed - I knew how to get to the Burj Khalifa, but not into it; I didn't realise you're best to buy tickets in advance and virtually all tickets had been sold out; I didn't know Dubai wasn't set up for walking, and had to run across 8-lane roads for lack of pedestrian crossing lights at intersections; and I didn't know where my bus left from to go back to Abu Dhabi. All of these things I managed to overcome, but were mentally exhausting (and physically exhausting in the heat). My ingenuity and problem solving skills were so far keeping me from getting fully unstuck, but only just. 6pm on the 14th November, I set foot at Heathrow Airport. I was in a rush to meet up with Jeremy on the other side of immigration, and then hot-foot it to Euston to catch our train to Liverpool as my plane had been late. Following that weekend away, it was time to concentrate on getting set up in London. I had a place to crash thanks to Jeremy and Rachel, but the first month-and-a-half of sending out job applications with literal zero response was demoralising. Demoralising too was the grey and cold London autumn weather, and a large city which was crowded and busy. My first foray out into London by myself didn't fill me with confidence at being able to cope, but the 2nd outing to see "Fairytale London" left me feeling much better. I was leading a delicate balance - while job searching, I had time on my hands that was best spent going and seeing things, but seeing things required spending funds. The quicker my finds were used up, the less time I had to search for a job. At some point I might run out of funds, and so I'd run out of time and have to go home. But there was a risk that even if I never went out, my funds might dwindle to nothing and I'd go home without seeing or doing anything. Uncle Wayne had warned me that I may not get many bites prior to Christmas, but it was more likely to get some in January. But in the lead up to the new year, I'd had zero bites. Come the new year, suddenly I was being flooded with responses, and to the point that by the end of January I had not only landed a job, but I'd already begun working there. It was a good job, doing exactly what I'd been doing in NZ, paid what I had been hoping for and was a permanent position - so would last until the end of my Visa. Shortly after, I managed to get a room in a 3-bedroom house in South Wimbledon - this was no crowded terraced house of dubious quality, but an actual stand-alone house, fairly modern with large rooms. I had the two major things I needed to stay and succeed in the UK - now I could look at furthering travels in the UK and in Europe. The first trips were doing things that I really wanted to do, and generally were harder to do too because they were a bit niche and therefore off the beaten path for most people doing their OE. I learned to trust my instincts when it came to being confronted with uncertain situations, usually in a foreign language country and at that stage no recourse to the internet. I discovered I was learning things about myself and my ability to cope in certain situations, but moreover by my Big Germany trip in April 2015 I discovered I wasn't the same person I had been. I always sought re-assurance when I suspected something was wrong, yet I was on a train I thought I was supposed to catch except my destination wasn't on the screen and I just went "Oh well, let see what happens" rather than resort to checking on expensive cell data. I was risk-adverse, but after missing my train connection through no fault of my own, I opted for the much more risky of two alternative train options to get to Nuremberg. I had done a lot of research, but somehow overlooked that the Museum I was going to in one town would be closed on the day I was there and I didn't trust a lot of the other research notes I had for the rest of my trip as a result. I was usually very structured, but found myself changing my plans on the fly as I felt like it to suit, and as options presented themselves. I had fully expected to broaden my horizons through travelling, but not grow or evolve as a person myself - and certainly not to the extent that I did in those first 6 months. In fact April 2015 had a big effect on my OE and my life in general, because just prior to that Big Germany Trip I met Sasha. We met at a Kiwi's in London event, and then again 2 days later with people from Britbound to watch the Oxbridge rowing race. A few months later, we were dating, and then when Sasha's flat wound up in March 2016, she moved in with me at South Wimbledon. Things had been going well, and we'd travelled together and worked well travelling together - we'd co-plan trips, I'd work out the transport arrangements (my forte), Sasha the accommodation arrangements (her forte) and the rest we'd work on together. But her UK visa ran out before mine - hers in June, mine in November. When we landed in the UK getting sponsorship would have been a formality - but thanks to the lead-up to the Brexit vote, it became an impossibility for the likes of us. She wasn't ready to head back to live in Australia, so she'd come up with a plan of getting a 1-year German visa, move to Germany and wait out the nearly 6 months before my visa ended in the UK. At that point, we'd move back to the Southern Hemisphere (either NZ or Aus). But I didn't want to be apart like that, so instead we both got Visa's for Germany and moved to Berlin when Sasha's UK Visa expired. These visa's were only for 1-year so effectively I was forgoing 6 months of living in the UK in exchange for an extra 6 months of OE overall. I had no qualms about moving to Germany - it was my most-visited country, and we'd both really liked Berlin. Berlin had a reputation for a lot of tech jobs and also a lot of spoken English so seemed like the most ideal place. And of anywhere in Germany, that definitely was the place for us to move to. But we did move to Germany in a bit of a fog of ignorance, and didn't realise quite some of the hurdles facing us. Things like registration, how difficult setting up bank accounts was, that the hiring process typically takes 3 months for any given job, and that there is a profound housing shortage in Berlin. We found these things out as we went along, and slowly but surely made progress towards clearing these hurdles only to find another one. I wasn't even convinced we'd make it in Berlin, but we were going to give it our best shot - but I did want to set "Go Home" date markers, which if we hadn't gotten a job by then, we were to pack up and leave. We set the first one, and then I got a temporary fill-in IT job in a Berlin School. It brought in a little income, and enough to re-set the goalpost a bit further out. As it happened, Sasha secured her job before the initial goalpost, and I followed soon after. A place to live was much harder though - we spent a year moving from one temporary let to another, before finding one where we could stay as long as we wanted. Oh and our workplaces sponsored us on new Visa's, so we could stay longer. So that spurred further travels, meaning we ended up seeing a lot more of Europe. Our time in Germany came to an end for two reasons - Sasha got made redundant, and her visa was tied to the employer. She could have gotten a new job and a new visa, but around the end of 2017 we got news that Sasha's Mum Pam had a tumour, which turned out to be cancer. While she seemed okay and the news seemed to be it was treatable, we decided we'd take it as a cue to move back to the Southern Hemisphere - Adelaide initially at least. With Sasha's redundancy money we decided we'd travel around Europe and the US on our way back Down Under - I always wanted to go via the US when leaving UK or Europe as it was just as long as going the other way, and why not circumnavigate the globe? We packed in a hell of a lot in those 4 months, and with Pam's situation we always knew there was a risk we might have to cut the trip short and head straight to Adelaide. Everything sounded largely fine, up until we hit Los Angeles and got the news Pam was in hospital and the long term prognosis was not good. As soon as we practicably could, we made a beeline for Adelaide and had our rather hard landing there. And with that, the OE ended - and a new, separate chapter in my life began. And that is how 2 years managed to stretch into 4 - a journey of travel, but also a journey of personal growth. I left NZ not running away from anything, but rather seeking to travel, broaden my view of the world both literally and figuratively, and I guess maybe see if I can learn something about myself along the way. Not only did I learn many things about myself, but I grew on a personal level also. I never expected the personal growth aspect, but in some ways I guess it was inevitable - but certainly a lot of that growth happened fairly quickly in the early part of my OE. I ended up seeing far more than I intended, doing far more than I expected, and staying away longer than I anticipated. There's always more to do and more to see, and never enough time. Sometimes I ponder what we might have done travel wise had we stayed in Germany another year - would we finally have done Russia? Probably would have visited Israel and Jordan. But that was never really going to happen, and although the thought of more potential destinations was a nice one by the time we left, I was ready to leave. It wasn't too short, it wasn't too long, it was about right. It felt right to go and do my OE, and it felt right to call time on it too. Without a shadow of any doubt, embarking on my OE was the most challenging thing I've ever done in my life. But I wasn't doing it because it was easy, part of it was exactly because it was hard. And I succeeded in my OE - in fact it was far more successful than I ever even imagined possible. I am also a different person in many ways than the me that boarded the plane to leave NZ. I am more open to a lot of different foods than I was, I drink wine which seemed unthinkable when I left, I have a greater understanding of different countries and cultural expectations, and also know what it can be like to be a foreigner in another country - in fact, 3 times over now. It's been a journey of discovery, a journey of learning and a journey of experiences. This blog charts that journey, and also the journey from "I" to "We" - because woven in between these blog posts is not just the story of my OE, but the story of how I met Sasha. Without question, leaving my life in NZ to do my OE living in the UK was the best decision I ever made - it wasn't an easy decision to make, but now I can't imagine having done anything else and I am so, so much better off for it!
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A Kiwi out travelling in the UK and surrounding countries Archives
August 2019
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