"That
we live in an apartment in Sydney with a view of Lavender Bay?"
"No,”
I replied, "that we have Wi-Fi in our apartment in Sydney." You see, I had just
returned from the mall where I bought a Wi-Fi hotspot, and was focused on the
small picture, my success of getting it set up. Katka was focused on the
big picture, that we live in an apartment on the other side of the globe from
her homeland.
We
left Franz Josef Glacier early on Thursday and drove to Greymouth. It
was the first oddly unkempt city we had seen in New Zealand. There were
buildings that needed painting and the streets were not particularly clean, but
the people were as nice as always. After lunch at a small cafe we returned our
rental car and took the Tranz-Alpine train four hours over the Southern
Alps of New Zealand from Greymouth to Christchurch. It was a spectacular
ride, almost like stepping back in time. The train was sort of old and run
down, and the tracks were not smooth at all. Most of the land we passed through
between the mountains was either deserted or ranch land with cows and
sheep.
Arriving
in Christchurch about 6pm, we got to our hotel in time for a quick walk
into the city for dinner while Misa took a shower. I was shocked at the
damage from the earthquake last year. Someone told us that 60% of the buildings
in downtown Christchurch have to be demolished. As we walked down the street,
about every-other-building was fenced off, slated for demolition. And this was
not in the badly damaged central business district that is closed
entirely.
Katka and
I split a pretty good pizza, and brought some delicious chicken strips back for
Misa. She was having a grand time at the hotel enjoying her solitude.
She was only a bit bummed that we made it back so fast, as she was getting ready
to order some room service.
Our
flight was scheduled to leave for Sydney at 6:30am, so I set my alarm for
3:15. At 3:45 the ringing of the telephone woke us up; it was our back-up plan
wake-up call. Oh no, my alarm didn't go off! Was it the snooze? Did the
electricity go off? No, it was the AM/PM! Just like that episode of Seinfeld
with the marathon runner. So we got ready like our family never gets ready
(fast), and made our 4:30 taxi to the airport. We had a little trouble at the
airport convincing them we were allowed to check two bags each, but finally they
relented. We grabbed a pastry for breakfast, got on the plane, and were in
Sydney at 7:30. The school had a taxi waiting for us, and we were in our
apartment by 10:00. The apartment is OK, two bedrooms and two bathrooms on the
17th floor, but the view is ridiculous. If you have a map of Sydney, we are
across Harbor Bridge, and we overlook Lavender Bay . Right below is us the
"Luna Park," which is what amusement parks seem to be called in the rest of the
world, and just beyond that is the water, stretching on and on. The bay is very
active, with lots of ferries and small boats racing to and fro.
Misa was
so tired that she "might fall asleep from exhaustion," and Katka was
doing laundry, so I went off exploring by myself. My goal was to get an
Australian cell phone and Internet. First I wandered around our neighborhood,
locating the train station, parks, convenience store, small grocery, and kebab
restaurant, where I had an awesome lunch. It is my new favorite restaurant in
Australia. While I was eating lunch I noticed a travel agency on the second
floor of the building. We have two trips still to plan, Tasmania/Melbourne and
Perth/West Coast/Adelaide. So I stopped in and had a chat, and will go back on
Monday to finalize at least the Tasmania/Melbourne trip.
The
travel agent found a cell phone store for me and gave me directions on how to
get there. It turned out to be in a shopping mall one stop from our house on
the train. The train is like an above and sometimes below ground subway. From
our house there are two train lines and one ferry.
The
shopping mall was a godsend; there is a nice supermarket, butcher, fruit and
vegetable store, pharmacy, food court, and lots of cafes. And most importantly
there is a Vodaphone mobile telephone shop. I picked up a
pre-paid SIM card with $20 on it; the number is (04) 1457-0013, where 04
is the area code for this part Australia. The country code for Australia is 61,
so I guess to call from the USA it would be 011 614 1457 0013, but you don’t
ever need to call, as my US phone is always on and costs me the same amount of
money. I also picked up a Wi-Fi hotspot, $99 for 6GB. We’ll use about
that much each month. What is cool about the hotspot is that it works from the
cell phone network, so you can use it in the park, in the car, on the ferry, in
a tree, etc. The apartment where we are staying charges $50 per week
for 1GB of Internet, so we are getting 2GB more for half the
price. You can see why I was so excited.
On
the way home I picked up some groceries and schnitzel at the
butcher. Katka cooked the schnitzel for supper and we had it with some
delicious Australian apples.
