Yarramalong

This fantastic weekend trip on the last days of the winter school holidays took us to Beleuah Ranch in the bushlands north of Sydney. The description our hosts emailed us prior to our departure was summarising what we were about to get into: "at this point most people get lost" and "along Spring Road this is where you will loose mobile coverage". As you might have guessed...Yarramalong is a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, just what I was looking for to escape the city. We stayed on the ranch of our hosts Dawn and Greg and happily moved into their comfy guest house overlooking the valley. We arrived in the dark, luckily we did not get lost but it was still tricky to find the entry gate to the ranch. In the morning we were greeted by Sammy the dog, who pretty much babysat our kids for us for the whole weekend. We ventured out to explore the farm and its horses, Sammy would show us around. Later we went for a drive and discovered Ourimbah Tree Top Adenventure Park which looked like so much fun, hence it was booked out for the weekend, but we will be back to try it out. After that we had a super-yummy Brownie at the Wyong Milk Factory, lazing in the sunshine. Soon enough the kids started begging to go back to „their dog“ and so we drove back and took Sammy for a bushwalk on the ranch, did I mention that this is a very big ranch? In the evening we cuddled up in our house, the wind was howling outside but we stayed nice and warm and played some boardgames and watched a movie. The next morning after a nice breakfast we said our good by's and took off for another drive which took us to Glenworth Valley, a place we have been camping before. We rented a pony for Magnus, well it was not a small horse and Fionnuala had a riding lesson. I was so impressed by her and also by the teacher for just letting her ride the horse by herself. It was bitterly cold, but we enjoyed every minute of it. On the drive home it was very quiet in the car. Yesss.

The Art of Fielding

 

I always thought that the German language is my favourite reading language. I thought will never fully enjoy and soak up an English language book, simply because I find the German language absolutely beautiful (Obsttörtchen), thoughtful (Augenblick), touching (Geborgenheit), odd (krass) and funny (Dreikäsehoch).

Enter Chad Harbach.

I loved the book for the beauty of its language, for its story, the characters, the emotions and it was a joy to read. This book seems to be a baseball novel, all characters somehow involved with the sport at fictive Westish College in Wisconsin. I do not know enough about baseball to even like or dislike the game, for all I know it is like cricket, quite boring, but the book managed to get me hooked, because it is not only about the sporting aspect of the game.

In a small town the slender shortstop Henry Skrimshander is being discovered by the huge batter Mike Schwartz. Mike gets Henry into Westish College and onto the baseball team and the two characters will have a tight coach-student relationship. They will be best friends but I always felt that Mike is looking out for Henry like a big brother. Henry's room-mate Owen, also part of the baseball team, is gay, charismatic, tidy and loves books. Then there is the president of the College Guert Affenlight and his daughter Pella who just left her husband and returned to live with her father at the College. These five characters are taking centre stage in the book, all stories are revolving around them.

This book is about friendship, ambition, all kinds of love, sport and complications of (college) life. I admire the writer for the detail in storytelling, the quirky connections and hints (Henry Melville's 'Moby Dick') and the imagination that went into creating this wonderful book. An absolute highlight for me.

Advent

Decoration is out. Santa getting ready. Like every other year this year I want to get ready in time, write cards, buy present and send them to Germany and Ireland, get the holidays organised and finish everything at work on time. Well let's see.

Lunch time

Rose Bay lunch between site visits. There is this lovely chicken shop with super friendly staff and the most amazing salads. Today I devour a mango chicken salad which is absolutely delicious. The beach is almost empty as big dark clouds roll in. A couple is taking their dog for a walk, that water sounds friendly, sand between my feet. I have been living in this city for more than 9 years now and I am still amazed how it never fails to impress me all over again. The changing colours of the sky and the water, still finding new hidden spots of amazing beauty along the harbour. I will be back.

Must Read for Germans Down Under

I love my Kindle and my new black denim cover. It took me a while to get used to it since I really enjoy flicking pages in a real book, especially to flick back to a page I really liked or just to browse a bit. But now I like the Kindle especially the fact that I can read a German book at any time, I just need to download it. I did some book reviews before but this is my first e-book review, so here we go:
Friedrich Gerstäcker: Australien

While browsing the Kindle-shop the other day I came across this book. Its title and price (0 Euro) convinced me to download it straight away. I got hooked after reading just a few pages and I did some research on the author who's name I had never heard before. Friedrich Gerstäcker was born in Hamburg in 1816 and was able to travel the world and live of the sales of his travel books. He is most famous for his books about Northern America. In 1849 he sailed to Sydney. His plan was to built a kayak and travel from Albury to Adelaide on the Murray river. This book is absolutely fascinating for me, especially his detailed descriptions of Sydney, the Australian landscape, aboriginal people and the daily life of immigrants, gold diggers and farmers. All that he does with great humour and sarcasm and often I was laughing about his descriptions. Even in dangerous situations like attacks from aborigines, travels on a stagecoach at breakneck speed or loss of his kayak the author sticks to his humorous attitude. He visited a lot of places that I got to know too, only 150 years later. Some things have changed a lot (state of the roads) some have not (number of drunk ladies on the above).

Jeannie Pitjara

I can't say how excited I am about this painting. Not only is it the first original piece of art I ever purchased, but it is also incredibly beautiful. I bought it on Ebay, directly from the artists community in Alice Springs and could therefore get a much better deal than I would have in one of the overpriced Sydney galleries. So when the rolled up canvas (150cm x 90cm) got delivered a few days later I was happy and could not wait to have it hanging on our wall. I got it framed (finally all the framing shops everywhere made total sense) and I managed to hang it without a nail in the wall (in Australia you are not allowed to put a nail into a rented apartment's wall, but this is another blog topic).

The painting is about “Bush Medicine Leaves” and I really like the colours and the gentle movement of strings of leaves.

Interestingly there are two museums in the world entirely dedicated to aboriginal art, one in Virginia (USA), the other in Utrecht (Netherlands).

Aussi Holiday

 

About three hours drive north of Sydney there is a beautiful holiday spot called Port Stephens. It is pretty similar to Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) except no big city has been built, the main town is called Nelson Bay and it is nowhere near the size of Sydney. There are beaches along the inner harbour (great for little kids) and beaches along the ocean (great for surfers). We went to a little place on the harbour side called Fenningham's island and rented a cabin. Sausage sizzles, horse riding, swimming and fish and chips. Perfect Aussi holiday.