Settling into Europe

июля 2016 - июля 2025
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  • A 40th, Christian Metal, and the Med.

    24 июля 2016 г., Германия ⋅ ☁️ 30 °C

    It already felt somewhat like home returning to the cosy village of Neuffen after venturing down to Switzerland and Austria. My brain had integrated a small percentage more of the German language, although this particular breed of it spoken around Neuffen was still bafflingly different to anything I'd been taught in school.
    Gesine welcomed me home with such enthusiasm, and I felt such a deep gratitude for her friendship, and that of her Aunty, both making me feel so safe and belonging in this place.
    It was the time we'd been thinking about for at least a year: Gesine's 40th birthday party. In fact, it was the instigative idea for me to come to Germany in the first place. It was to be held at the Bible college that her Aunty worked at (where there also happened to be a Frau Holder), which was a beautiful old medieval times building, with a leafy and spacious courtyard in the centre, ideal for holding events.

    Coinciding with this event was the arrival of a certain Australian musician, Paul Colman, who played in the Christian boyband Newsboys once upon a time.
    He had been coming to Germany periodically for years, to tour small venues, organised by a character of a man called Didi, a good friend of Gesine's.
    Paul and Didi were a funny pair, and while they were around Gesine and I spent a lot of time with them, attending Paul's show, and hanging out laughing and swapping stories. They came to Gesine's party, which her brother Thomas and family came to as well. I felt so joyful here with my honorary German family.
    There was lovely food and people gave speeches, and it was a sunny late summer's day in Neuffen. The elderflower syrup was still going strong, one of the most memorable flavours of the summer in Germany for me.

    Besides the party, this second stint in Neuffen also saw Gesine and I returning to Nitzenhausen to help Thomas and the family with a few more projects. It was so good to be there again, I remember lots of trampoline time with Noemi, and soccer time with Nathanael. The kids had their little dramas and feuds, but always settled down, and I was so happy to be like big sister during my time with them.

    Paul's visit to Neuffen had been building up towards a bigger event that Didi had been part of organising, which would be on the last night I had in South Germany, before I headed off to Croatia. It was the performance of a Christian, German heavy metal band, who were apparently very popular. Such an intense combination of things as far as music goes.
    They played two shows, the first night was unplugged, much more mellow, and the second night was the full blown metal experience.
    I ended up helping out backstage in the kitchen, preparing food and drinks for the crew. It was a lot of fun.
    After the show on the first night we were all sitting outside talking and drinking, some people smoking cigarettes, and I got to know the lead singer Fabian a little bit. He was going on a bit of a rant about how mainstream it was for Germans to go to Australia, and I had to reiterate that I was in fact from New Zealand. He was a very good looking guy, who knew that he was, and I think he was trying to use a point of potential conflict to flirt with me. I found it amusing, he wasn't actually my type, but it was flattering, particularly in the days and weeks that followed when he drunkenly messaged how much he liked me.

    In any case, I learned how to cut a hole in a watermelon and use a stick blender to make a slushie inside the watermelon, before adding whiskey to top it all off. I made some lovely connections with people there, and the last night was a little bittersweet as I knew I wouldn't be back in Neuffen for a few months at least. It had been the perfect start to my European adventure.

    After the second show we were all outside again, this time under a warm rain, and I recall one of the guys telling me that he particularly liked girls when they had wet hair. Why were these men so damn over the top honestly, it was a bit much.
    I didn't sleep that night, and made my way in the very early hours of the morning to catch my flight to Dubrovnik, Croatia. I got into my seat, and passed out immediately.

    As the sun rose over my first day on the Mediterranean coast, I woke up to the plane approaching landing in a very different place to where I had just been. A golden sunrise, iconic red roofs and sandy stone buildings, and I could almost feel the dry heat already. I was going to love this place.
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  • Sound of Music

    10 июля 2016 г., Австрия ⋅ ☁️ 30 °C

    Before returning to Germany, I had another Germanic country to have my first introduction with, and catch up with some old friends there: Austria.

    Traveling via the Munich train station, which blew my mind as it felt like an airport to me, I made my way to Innsbruck, a beautiful little city in Western Austria known for being a groovy student town, with heaps of outdoor activities right on the doorstep.

    I stayed with my friend Connie, whom I'd met while she was on a student exchange in Auckland. We'd even bumped into each other at Lake Pukaki in the South Island at the free camp, while my family had been on a road trip, and she was traveling with the Danish man she'd met and fallen in love with. I'd promised her I'd come and visit.

    She lived in a cute but somewhat squished apartment, and while she was studying, I'd explore the city, and go for hikes. It was so easy to catch the bus to the edge of the mountains and take any number of trails to various adorable huts called "Alm" where you can sit and drink a coffee, and enjoy the view over the magnificent Austrian Alps.

    She introduced me to her friends, and was a wonderful host. I put my foot in it one day when I ran the washing machine without consulting her, having wanted not to bother her, and she gave me an important lesson about just asking, as it may be more important that she gets to choose how and what gets washed, than not being bothered. I felt quite ashamed of myself, and I definitely wasn't very good at handling the feeling of being a nuisance to someone. Though I know of course she would not have held onto it tightly.

    I entertained the image of what it might be like to live and study in Innsbruck. Be one of the cool cats who skates to uni, and snowboards on the weekends. A cool image, but not my world.

    I left Connie's, and traveled further east to the beautiful Salzburg, to reunite with a beautiful family I'd spent a precious few months with at Sonshine Ranch. Susanne and Martin, and their kids Maria and Simon, lived at the ranch while I did my course, and they became so familiar to me, I was so happy to see them again. It was incredible how back then I couldn't have picked the difference between their German and a German's German, and now I could hear the adorable dialect so much more clearly.

    Martin worked a lot, so I didn't see him so much, but it was lovely to catch up when we could. I slept on the couch in their little apartment, which was situated within an apartment complex that I thought was quite well designed, in a sort of horseshoe layout, with a playground and outdoor common area in the centre for the residents.

    It was a handful being around the kids again, but so much fun. Maria and I played a lot, Simon tried to play, and gave a lot of those cheeky grins, but also acted like a bit of a pest. Susanne and I planned a getaway down to Lake Garda in Italy, Her driving over the mountain pass was to this day the only time I've ever actually thrown up from carsickness.

    We stayed in this gorgeous villa-like motel, and the first night after the kids went to sleep we sat outside in the balmy air and drank Aperol Spritz. It was so nice to see her away from the kids looking relaxed and free. She told me more about her life. There was a man before Martin who she said she loved more, but he didn't want children, so she had to make the decision to leave him. Now more than ever, that story impacts me a lot to think about.

    We met up with friends of hers who also had children and were on holiday there. Lake Garda was incredible. We hiked in areas along the lake's edge, these rocky, barren mountains that surrounded the lake. I was astounded by the wind that kicked up at the same time every day, delighting the windchasers on their kitesurfs and windsurfs who traveled from far and wide to play there.

    We'd go out for dinner, my favourite kind of evenings which were warm and breezy, with the cobblestoned streets leading us to ornate Italian restaurants that served the most fantastic food.
    It was wonderful practicing my German with the kids. I knew my brain was in sponge mode, being attentive to, and soaking up every conversation I could to grasp more of how the language works. That, I believe is one of my brain's element states.

    After a few days in Italy we returned to Austria. The next trip with Susanne and the kids was to her parents' place, in a town about halfway to Innsbruck, called Neukirchen am Grosvenediger.
    We arrived at night, so I couldn't see much of what we were driving into, and were welcomed so warmly by her parents. Their English was limited, but they were the loveliest people.
    I had my own little room, and I fell asleep very easily.

    It's one of my favourite things to wake up after having arrived at night, and now knowing what it's going to look like outside. I got up and pulled back the curtains, to a view that took my breath away. A little balcony stood overlooking the mountains, and we were up a bit higher too so it felt almost like we were right in them. It was absolutely incredible.

    Being summertime, the mountains were bare of snow, and lush in greenery up until the top of the forest line. We went for a lot of walks, and picked wild raspberries in the forest. The Austrian wild places enthralled me. This country had a fairytale-like energy to it.
    We had a wonderful few days in this gorgeous town, and I knew I'd come back in the year ahead.

    Once we got back, it wasn't long before I needed to leave Salzburg and get back to Germany. It had been such a wonderful visit with Susanne and Martin and the kids, so enriching to be a part of their family for a while.

    A train ride, followed by a very long Flixbus journey, and I found myself home again in Neuffen, ready for round 2 of this small village and the shenanigans with Gesine.
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