A few trips to New Zealand in the last few months. When I can, I try to visit a new city with Nami and SORA. Fulfilling a promise to myself to take SORA to a new country each year. New Zealand is an amazingly astonishingly many other complimentary adjectives country. I was lucky enough to have lived in Switzerland and gone to school there. Great nature there. But, New Zealand….this too, VOW.
On a whim, I decided to fly to Melbourne and visit my good friend Warwick who is the ZYX distributor in Australia and New Zealand. A short trip, but lots of fun while I enjoyed the hospitality of Warwick and his beautiful wife, Teresa. Also had a great Easter meal at his daughter’s home. THANKS my friends.
Tags: Auckland, food, New Zealand, travels
I have been in Auckland for a few weeks now. I will be posting some pictures soon. Love the people here. New Zealanders are some of the most open, approachable and sweetest people I have ever met in my life. I love their accents, and their sense of humor. Many times I catch myself not listening to what they say, but listening to their accents instead.
Auckland is a beautiful city. A bit spread, so despite being much bigger (size, and population) than San Francisco, it feels half as populated.
Cafe culture is great here. People seem to get out of their beds early, go to cafes, and have great coffee/breakfast. Easy to talk to the people sitting next to you. They are willing to tell you all about their city and country, helping you out with suggestions and directions.
At this point my favorite area in Auckland is Ponsonby, a Bohemian area, kinda up and coming, similar to where we live in Chicago, a bit like Berlin. As soon as I arrived in Auckland, took my shower, hired a cab to take me to this great cafe in Ponsonby, called Dizongoff. I have been a regular ever since.
I love New Zealand cheese. So delicious. Have also had some good New Zealand wines. I’ll be missing SORA’s birthday again but will be back home in time to celebrate Christmas with Nami and SORA. As always, a phone call or email away from my good friends.
I love Berlin. There is so much good music here, and so much interesting cultural activities. Arrived in Berlin last night, hit the ground running after a good shower. Today, went to the “Eastern” part of the town close to where the wall used to be.
Sundays are great in this part of Berlin. Lazy breakfasts/brunches, and flea markets where I was lucky enough to find some very good records. Fortunately it was a sunny and beautiful day, turned out to be the only sunny and beautiful day in the last couple of weeks. I walked for a few hours and as always managed to sniff my way to some record shops and flea markets. There were a few nice stands with records at the flea markets. Some of the records are pretty expensive (40 euros or more). By the time I got to these two gentlemen, I barely had enough euro left for a cab ride back to the hotel. They were kind enough to accept dollar bills from me, hence their pictures here. Between these stands and other shops, again I am in need of yet one more suitcase.
I enjoy the music of Holger Czuaky (formerly of CAN) very much. I am glad I found two records, one a rare one with Holger Czukay on it. I found out about a very good record shop in Berlin. I will be visiting there as I want Holger Czukay’s first solo performance after parting from CAN, called Persian Love! It has some very good sampling and use of short wave radio reception.
I was hoping to see Nina Hagen perform. Unfortunately she has a concert/poetry reading (a la Nina Hagen I am sure) on Wednesday night, a few hours after I am supposed to fly back to Chicago.
There are also a couple of restaurants I would like to try. One, Fischers Fritz and is known to have the best sea food in Berlin and has two Michelin stars; the other, Borchardt restaurant is supposed to be more traditional and has been a Berlin establishment/hallmark. Will soon post some pictures. Stay tuned.
