Finally Adelaide

Current local time: 09:45 am, sunny, 8 ° C. It’s Winter, and it can get pretty cold here, compared to other parts of Australia like Darwin, where todays high forecast is 32 ° C. Darwin is close to the Equator. Here in Adelaide min. today was 3 ° C. Woke up frozen last two nights. Somebody in here always turns the thermostat down to 13 ° C, which is imho way too low. I’d like to have it comfortable, with around 18 ° C I’m fine. In fact, I only got one thin blanket. Before my arrival, my landlord wrote that he’d provide pillow and blanket. Therefore I expected a “usual” blanket, like we’re used to in Europe, filled with feathers or similar. But I was wrong. So I’ll keep on asking my housemates not to turn down the thermostat to 13 ° C. Because it sucks to wake up and be cold.

Somehow I expected my housemates to be more “partyish”, but in fact they’re all quite quiet. I’m fine with that, nevertheless some kind of “Weekend-Welcome-Celebration” would had been neat. As far as I could figure it out, there’re three Australians (Jamie, Denzel, Daniel), one Malaysian (forgot the name), one Taiwanese (Jason) and me. I just recognized, that I’ve already met all of them. Well, they’re all enrolled in courses at the UniSA (University of South Australia). First I met Denzel, who’s doing some kind of mobile networking stuff. Then Daniel showed up for a few seconds. After that short introduction, I entered my 16 m² room with everything a student need: comfy chair, desk, cabinet, book rack, commode and bed. Call me gay, but personally I like the pink carpet floor. It’s nice to walk on.

So after exploring my room, my landlord Lionel showed up, to do some formal paper work and show me around. First impression was: nice guy. We’re about to do some kind of house meeting once in a while. Next is supposed to be on Friday. Lionel wants to know everything when it comes to things that are broken, so if anything breaks, he’d like to know that directly. Daniel’s cooling system broke sometime ago, but somehow Lionel hasn’t repaired it yet. Daniel feels like Lionel expects him to admit that it was his (Daniel’s) fault. So maybe it’s better not to break anything, even if it’s not my fault…

Next I met Jamie and the Malaysian guy. Jamie does his Bachelor in Education and works on Saturdays at a camping store. The other guy is doing a Bachelor in Civil Aviation. He’s going to tell pilots where to fly and land. He’s looking for part time work, just arrived six weeks ago from Singapore, where he worked for two and half a year as a school assistant, planning students plans and stuff. Last one I met was Jason. He did nighshift from Friday to Saturday, beside that I don’t know anything about him yet.

In short, to me it seems like we’re going to come along. After meeting everybody I went to that foodstore around the corner, about 10 minutes walk, and bought some stuff for meal: meat, sausage, cheese, rice, bread and stuff. There’s also a video store, a bakery, a camping store, an ATM (bankomat) and some other stores, a kindergarden and a community centre. The area I live is called Montague Farm, where all streets are named after Australians who died in the Vietnam war. It’s a pretty nice neighbourhood, and as Kathi already mentioned, the area looks like an American suburb. In fact it is a suburb in the North of Adelaide, about 20 minutes by bus to Adelaide City. The day trip ticket is 4 $ for students when purchased on the bus.

Yesterday, after brekky I walked around Montague Farm and finally got on the bus to Adelaide City at Mawson Lakes. Tried to find a nice pre-paid mobile deal and some additional blankets. Finally got back home with a tasty 7$-200g-Haigh’s chocolate bar, some drugstore articles, food and a pack of Tooheys beer. Spent the evening watching TV, talking to some housmates and watching Helge Schneiders Praxis Dr. Hasenbein, a funny weird German movie.

"My" house

Montague Farm - Nice area around

Black swans near the Adelaide Festival Centre

Sunset pictured next to the Adelaide Festival Centre

Linz, Vienna and ten Big Macs later

After the first two days I would have really been able to eat ten Big Macs with no effect, theoretical. Started in Linz at 9 a.m. our average speed was about 25 km/h for the first 80 km. Then in Ybbs/Donau we stopped for a Pizza at Giovannis Pizzeria which I can really recommend.

After that first longer break we moved on. In Wachau we then grabbed some fresh and tasty cherries and apricots. Half an hour later, the sky was getting darker and we looked for a place to sleep. In fact, we wanted to find something under a bridge to avoid getting wet in case of rain and thunderstorms. We then figured out a nice place near the highway in the woods. Everything looked pretty dry, even the light rain couldn’t really manage to get through all the trees. So we decided to stay there for the first night.

So we looked for the driest spots and placed our Biwaks there, which are kind of tents without fiberglass bars. I had a single person Biwak from McKinley, my dad a bit larger one. And if you ever think of buying a Biwak, I can recommend not to buy one from McKinley. In my case, it really sucked. For the first hour, everything was pretty dry. Then the rain started to get stronger, and another hour later my silk sleeping bag got wettish already.

I then moved to my dads one, and it got kind of tight. Rain got even stronger. It was not possible to fully close the Biwak to keep the rain outside, so our heads regularly got wet. When one moved out for toilet, the other got the whole bunch of rain resting on the Biwak onto his head. Beside that, it got really cold outside. Strictly spoken, we both were happy when the birds chirped.

The morning surprised us with a lot of sun and we were happy to be able to dry our things (inside my Biwak there was a little lake). At 10 a.m. we finally moved on towards Vienna. My first impression was “we’re never going to manage it, my butt just hurts too much”. We both had the impression, to be much slower than the day before but in fact we cycled exactly the same distance (120 km) at about the same time (OK, it took us 20 minutes longer, which was because we couldn’t find my uncles house).

So finally, 240 km, an effective cycling time of about 11,5 hours and 5000 additional kcal later we arrived. The third day is for regeneration, on the fourth we’re heading to Innsbruck by train, which means getting up at 4 in the morning… Will get to bed at 6 p.m. I suppose.