Home-sweet-home-sweet...

Hi all !

For those of you for which this is a surprise, Tara and I are back in Australia!

Tara begins work on Monday at Logan Central Special School and I am registering for relieft teaching.

We are lliving at Tara's parents place until we can muster enough money to get a flat in Brisbane.

Looking forward to catching up with you all.

Adam!

these are a few of my favourite things...

i see pictures of people invalidating passports
mabo is written on berlin wall of division
korean propaganda and lister is listless
these are a few of my favourite things....

the wall and castles

Hullo!
The last couple of weeks have been very busy for us here in Berlin. After a long time of not being tourists, and just being Berliners, we took the tourist trail along the wall.
We visited the East Side Gallery, a public art space on the East facing side of the Belrin Wall and were quite surprised to see the name of a Brisbane based grafitti artist LISTER scrawled on the wall.

When at Check Point Charlie, tourist hot spot and site of the U.S checkpoint on the border, I was also quite surprised to see an old aquaintance from high school casually ride by. Of course, he was here for the football, but it "...just makes us more and more convinced that Berlin is the centre of the world..." - quote from York. You can also get your passport invalidated with old stamps there, and buy small pieces of the wall ofcourse.

We also went out to visit some historic castles in former Prussia, where Kaiser Frederick the Great spent his weekends in a modest but spectacular castle, having Enlightened converstations with the likes of Voltaire - who lived in the castle ´San Soucci´ for 3 years. There were quite a few castles actually...but the grounds were just too big for us to get around to see them all.

We visited a very good Jewish museum with an awesome exhibition and unbelivable architecture - which some argue actually detracts form the exhibits. We also visited a very large Synagogue and yes Broooko, we have lots of piccies and brochures to send to you!

Also passed by the Aldon Hotel, and reflected on when Michael Jackson dangled his baby from the landing.

The Berliner Dom, Museum Island and Medieval Art Gallery were also nice little visits, but the highlight for me was seeing some performance art by a Japanese artist. He built a house, put it in a vacant lot, filled it with a LOT of fireworks, and exploded the house. It was awesome and lasted maybe for 20 minutes. I´ve always wanted to fill a house with fireworks.

Anyway, today is very hot, like 32 degrees, and I just can´t imagine what it would be like in winter here. The lakes freeze and you can go ice skating. I wonder if we will make it that long...?

Money for basic needs;

Unfortunately I dont have too much to say. I started work for this small company teaching English and its really good and relaxed. The people I work with and for, are very nice. They are young and good. We had an artshow the other night which was low key but it was great for me because I got to meet all these new people, and they all spoke English to different degrees. The company plan to have more artshows in the future so it will be agreat opportunity for me to meet other artists and creative types so maybe I can get back into that scene again.

We have this summer camp who wants us to go with them. But it is very hard work at only 4.5 euro an hour!!!! and we would probably have to go to Austria. Tara has some nannying possibilities too.

Basicallly at the moment it´s like we've got into a timewarp but instead of being 2002-3 in Brisbane, its 2002-3 in Berlin (share-housing, poor, haging around with young creative types...oh, and the NANNYING!!!).

It will be great though if we could just get a bit of money to survive from a reaonable source. At the moment, our only option seems to be this terrible summer camp which will only just get us enough money for basic needs (like water, sausages and bread).


So...its all still up in the air...


Update: Adam just got offered to run an intensive summer English course. Very good news, Tara also has been offered private English lessons to kinder. So maybe all has been provided for.
Must go, need to remember English.

deutsche Jobjagd

We have two job interviews, one for tomorrow, one for tuesday which look promising if the job is okay. Basically to survive we need 30 hours a week between us. We have an apartment!! Fully furninshd so thats cools and its cheaper than staying in a hostel.

Pieces of the Berlin wall are anywhere from 10 bucks to 60 aussie dollars.

Germany

Hallo!
We are in Germany now and have been in Frankfurt for three days. The World Cup is coming so the place is getting very excited and there are a lot of tourists here. Every night on the river has been like New Years Eve at SOuthbank Parklands. We are staying in the seedy part of town but it is totally safe with the police presence. Have been able to finally talk in STRINE with some Aussies instead of the usual broken, or ´proper´, English you need to use when talking to most other foreigners.
Tara is having some trouble finding appropriate food. Remember - she doesnt eat meat, wheat or drink beer: and we´re in Germany?
Will try to keep you updated....
Adam and Tara OUt!
Tchus!!

sri lanka

OKay
It's been a long time I know, and most of you probably think this BLOG is now extinct.
Sri Lanka has been good, we leave tommorow.
Lovely historical Buddhist sites, the people tend to be genuinely nice and the food is fresh and slightly more spicy than South India.

This photograph was taken from the site where Buddhism began in Sri Lanka a long time ago.

We visited cousin Michael first and last and he was a most gracious host and friend. We will now be one week India, and then across to Europe for Germany and Italy.
Hope you are all well...

Farewell
Adam

oman

Whoda thunk it!

We are in the gulf - desert, Arabs, Islam, Tara's dad, etc. The architecture is awesome. It's seriously like we're in Tatooine (desert planet of Luke Skywalker). I keep waiting to see some droids. Most of the men (in my imagination) look like Jedi wearing fez (whats the plural of fez?), there is a mosque on every cornerand every other building is fantastic - pure white, massive, symetrical Arabic designs, etc, it's like every house is a 5 star hotel and get this - no income tax! The only tax you seem to have to pay is on restaurant bills (service charge) and on pig products and alcohol.

We are so impressed with the place, it's exactly what we were expecting but at the same time nothing like what we expected. For example, today we went to the beach, and there were ruins of forts (which are everywhere!) whcih surprisingly featured grafitti such as 'Eminem' and '2pac'.

The men wear decorative but functional daggers in their belts. They are worn for formal occasions. The dagger is the national symbol and features on the flag. I've included a piccie of the dagger for ya'all.

Peter is being a great host and is taking us out to dinner, touring us around the sites, etc, as well as generally being a very nice man. His place here is very nice and it has been great to just hang around the house and do nothing for a while (except maybe cook our own food and watch TV).

Take care, thinking of ya'all everytime I'm seeing all this desert, castles and other impressive things. Adam out!