German Wedding 1st Pics

The German Wedding on 20th August 2011 - the Church bit. It was a great day - the sun was shining; no Volcanoes or air-traffic controller strikes prevented the the international guests from Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore, England and France from arriving; the food was great; the beer and wine flowed freely into clay goblets, the band rocked and even the jetlagged parents could keep dancing until 3.30 am.

Ruth, Christina's mum making the wedding cake

Night before the wedding, greeting some of our international guests with the internationally recognized pinnacle of German cuisine: Schnitzel! Guests came from Australia, Singapore, Japan, England, Switzerland, Sweden, & France.

The vows: in St. Katharina church in Wallerfangen

Sekt empfang - drinks after the service in front of the church while the Musikverein Konkordia (Chistina's home-town orchestra) played.

Balloon boys and girls

Our first married act together - conducting the orchestra. And it was defintely an "act"; our conducting might not have been great, but the orchestra didn't even pretend to follow us - none of the players even looked in our direction while we were waving the pointy sticks around.

More champagne at the Roman Villa in Borg (Perl) where we had the reception.

Serving staff pouring the popular Römersud beer into the clay goblets.

The Wedding (very basic) Foxtrot

The married life quiz: to this question we both agreed Christina cooked better than me...

The finished wedding cake - decorated with Christina's favourite Margareta flowers

Cutting the cake

About to throw the bouquet

With the moose theme taking on a life of it's own, we provided a space for everyone to paint their own.

Paris & Bradford

The only connection between these cities is that I visited them both on consecutive weekends in 2009. Christina was in Paris for some training, so we met there for the weekend. It was a short weekend: only from Fri night to Sun lunchtime, so not a lot of time to really see much and relax with Christina and catch up with Sissi who was also there... but we did have some time to just wander around and even catch a ballet in the Opera House.

Bradford is nothing like Paris. An old center of the industrial revolution, it was famous for textiles and wool, but after all the industry died it went into serious decline. I went to check out a multimedia museum with exhibits on photography and tv and so on, and Saltair, an old wool-mill that has been converted into galleries and art space, and featured an exhibition on David Hockney.

City Hall, Bradford

More pics on Picasa - click on the link, or enjoy the slideshow

Paris

UK Last Year

Hoi Zäma!

Welcome to my first post for 2011 (despite what all the dates and the weird post order will tell you)! How did I go almost 6 months without blogging at all? Well, having gotten married on holiday in Aus in Jan, and getting married again in August, meant there hasnt been much time to concentrate on other stuff. So here we go again, trawling through My Pictures, for some old blogworthy (hopefully) stuff.

First up, I spent about 2 months in the UK in 2010 waiting for my Swiss work permit, starting from the week after the Ejafjallajoekul volcano eruption (400£ for a 1-way Eurostar ticket to London thank you very much), to the end of June (great welcome back with the Weil am Rhein Windmusic Festival on my doorstep).

I started off staying in amazing in Camden for about 3 weeks. A mixture of what was once definitely cool and alternative, now very touristy, but still a great place. Thanks heaps to Michael for letting me stay in his flat. I didn't do much in my time there but it was good to be a bit of a tourist without huge time pressure. I could go out every day and just sit in cafes and soak up the ambience, in between excursions to museums, concerts, a very contemporary opera, the Camden Crawl music festival, Bletchley Park WW2 message decoding center and so on.

The Gherkin

A Cornwall Beach - Newquay

After London I went to Brighton for 2 days where the Brighton Arts festival was happening, and caught a couple of concerts and saw the famous Brighton Pier and holiday town. I found a good whiskey bar and tried the weirdest Whiskey ever: Mackmyra 5 y.o from the Swedish distillery - oily and weird.

I also saw a very rare performance by Philip Glass, of his Music in 12 parts, which goes for over 4.5 hours, which I didn't realise at the time of buying the ticket! I just knew that I liked alot of his stuff. I have a sample here (not taken by me) to give you an idea of what I sat through. Many people find this music annoying, but it was actually far more interesting and entertaining than I expected it to be. Minimalist is the wrong term for his music because although there is no dynamic change or tension and it's very repetitive, there are constant subtle changes in the way parts overlap, which slowly warps the soundscape. And it was an amazing performance from the singer and huge feat of concentration for the other instrumentalists - it cant be easy to play. Check it out for only 4 mins:



Then it was into a hirecar and across to the west coast, to Cornwall, where Cornish pasties are called "Pasties". It is a popular tourist spot in England due to the beautiful landscapes, beaches, cliffs, and surf. It really is beautiful, and there were a surprisingly large number of surfers there, because although the sun looks enticing, it is short lived and not hot!

But Newquay is also a prime "Stag-do" destination - that's Englandspeak for weekend-long buck's parties. When you're sober and travelling alone, a town full of roaming bands of very drunk English yobs in matching bodystockings is not the most fun place to be.

Typical Cotswald village, just a quick stop for a pint and look around on the way back to London

The Hathern Band Gang, "doing Colonial"

Following that was about 6 weeks sponging of mates back near Loughborough. I was in Hathern, staying with Bandsmen and enjoying just taking it easy in the Midlands countryside, living the life of a semi-retired country gent. Walks and bird watching, pints in the local, mum's home cooked sunday roasts... it was a surprisingly easy habit to get into, not doing much! Thanks again to the very hospitable Hatherners

Hands up who's a drongo?!

And yes, the bit of excerise I was trying to do, on a bicycle, didn't exactly help improve my health!

More pics in Picasa - click on the picture link below:

https://picasaweb.google.com/DrMrTerner/UKTime?authkey=Gv1sRgCN3qjcjYvZ7G_QE&feat=directlink

Bugatti, Hamburg, Sion

Broom broom!

A Bugatti Veyron on a test spin around the factory in Molsheim - which we pass on our way to Christina's parents. It didn't manage to hit 407 km/h but spritned pretty damn quickly away from us in our Ford Fiesta.



The Dreilandereckbrucke - the bridge at the 3 country border, crossing from Germany to France, right at the edge of Switzerland. The yellow building is the Rheincenter shopping center, which has separate lanes in the carpark leading to the Swiss or German exits!



So, more pics from 2010, and a weekend ski trip to Sion, capital of Wallis /Valais near Verbier. Ben and Alex in foreground.

The dammned mountains block the view from Pida's balcony in Sion!

Chateu de Chillon, Montreux

Memorial to Miles Davis

A long weekend was also spent in Hamburg, visiting a family friend of Christina's. And yes, we dead eat an authentic Hamburger (from a US chain). And Hamburgers did kind of originate from Hamburg, as Wikipedia tells me the sailors and settlers from Hamburg (a port city) brought Frikadellen from Germany and the Yanks called it steak "Hamburger" style.

The famous Michael Church

Rathaus

Switzerland, as seen in the largest model train museum in Europe

Sweden

Hej hej,

Some pics from our Sweden trip last October - a bit of nostalgia, playing with the old Lulea Uni band (Luhrane) at the Stork festival in Uppsala, getting engaged, and visiting Stockholm, Lulea, Malmö and a few hours in Copenhagen.

Luhrane, and the all-important purple bags. Not recycling, but bags from 'Bolaget', the Systembolaget state-run monopoly that sells all the liquor in the country.


Capt'n Albin and some members of Snösvänget, our sister band down from Umea.

Typical band shenanigans in concert in Uppsala

The view from our Stockholm boat hotel room

Whoooooo!

Nostalgia-tripping with Swedish pizza, with plenty of kebab-like sauce on the top, from Old Brodies.

The Twisting Torso in Malmö

Anders & Linda

Albin

Hanna & Christian

Backblog

Hoi zäma, So it has been a year without much blogging; aplogies for that. Basically the as the years progress and being away from Australia gets to be more "normal", the intense desire to blog everything seems to have waned a bit

And life sometimes gets in the way of blogging. So just a quick update as to my situation:

Though most of you probably know, back in 2009 the crisis and various other internal issues meant that my job at Rolls Royce Fuel Cells was moved to the US Midwest. For various reasons, mostly a girlfriend in Germany, the move wasnt appealing. So after a few weeks in Aus for Xmas, the first time with Christina, I went to Weil am Rhein in the very southwest corner of Germany, just a stone's throw from Basel in Switzerland, and the French border. This is where Christina found work. During my 3 months there, I was looking for work in the area, and eventually had an offer from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, (interview on my first day in Germany, job approved and visa application started 3 months later). As an aussie without I could only stay in Europe for 3 months. I also started German langauge courses during this time. Most weekends were spent travelling back up to Wallerfangen, Christina's hometown, for various Carnival events and birthdays and so on. So we only had a bit of time to explore the local area - Alscace is 30 minutes northwest of us, the Schwartzwald (Black Forest) 30 mins northeast, and Switzlerland just to the south.

After 3 months I had to leave and go back to the UK where I had a residency permit, to await my visa application. Here I spent 2 months doing basically nothing! A bit of tourism, but also a bit of casual editing work, some more German learning, and catching up on lots of UK TV comedy. Thanks to a friend Michael, who was away, I could stay in his flat in Camden in London, went down to Cornwall for a week and stayed in the dodgiest but cheapest hotel ever, and then relaxed back in Hathern near Loughborough with my mates from the Hathern Band. I also managed to almost-break my elbow being a muppet on a bicycle.

Then I started work in July. We currently want our main residence to be together in Weil, so I commute twice a week from "Basel" to Winterthur - 2 hrs door to door, and stay over in a share house 3 nights a week in Winterthur. Not ideal, but the for the moment it is good. We both play in a local orchestra in Germany, and C has started to build some good friend networks from work, whereas I am spreading myself a bit thin for that with all the travelling and partial living.

And today we are off to Aus. Half our time is spent in Cairns with the family and only a short 6 days in Melbourne, where we are getting married! So lots of stress and things to do...

Anyway, I hope you all have a great New Year, and that we can catch up somewhere, sometime, soon!


And yes, the usual promises for more photos coming soon apply, when the wedding is over...

Weil am Rhein Altstadt - downtown, nestled amongst vinyards and 3 country borders

The famous Vitra chair factory is based here, and has become a center for industrial design, so its claim to fame is being the City of Stools

The new shop Vitra Haus designed by Herzog & de Meuron

The Museum designed by Frank Gehry

Weil am Rhein

Windmusic festival, complete with oversized comic instruments - Alphorn

Haut Koenigsburg, and a Stork, the symbol of Alsace, just 30 mins north of us

THe castle Haut Koenigsburg

Colmar

Colmar - the so called Venice of France (Alsace)

Christina and Julia