Mercure Hotel Melbourne

... I hated it! I usually find it hard to stay awake on a plane, but I must have scored a mere ten minutes of snooze on this nine hour flight. Needless to say, I was not in great form on arrival!<br><br><br><br> But I was brought back to life by the smiling face and big hug of my old friend Mandy and her husband Ken. It's always been great to catch up with Mandy during the twenty two years since we stopped misbehaving ...

... with me getting on the wrong tram. Then I obviously had to get soaked on my way to work (Melbourne weather, it&#8217;s like April in Germany or March in Canada..) and when I got there the atmosphere was horrible &#8211; two of the best people from the channel had to get fired (due to unprofessional behaviour). Everybody was just down and it was a really bad day, the only day I didn&#8217;t make ...

... to the Southern Cross train station, which is why I selected it, but it is not a very attractive hotel. Everything is painted gray. The carpet is gray. There are no paintings on the walls or other decorations. My window looked out into an alley. It did have two bedrooms though, one appeared to be a children't bedroom--which I obviously didn't need. After I got settled, I went for a walk around the hotel. I went down ...

... of the first things we did was bump into a guy I know from working in Sydney at the supermarket. I thought he'd already left Melbourne so hadn't looked him but it turned out that we were just in time for their leaving barbecue in front. I mean just in time, they were getting supplies in the supermarket and then walking to the park. And so we spent the afternoon cooking a barbecue on the great free barbecue they have in every park out here. We had a nice view of the ...

... was tempered with having done it once and knowing a little of what to expect unlike the complete blindness of going into something like Cambodia that was there last time. A short train ride and into departures, we checked bags which we were sure were going to be over the weight limits, kims' weighing in at 20kg and mine at 23kg, a fraction under what we were allowed to carry onboard, not to mention the 7kg each we had in our hand luggage. At some point in the ...

... surfen, Mechaniker aufsuchen, boxen, Versicherungen abschließen, Karaokeparty mit Stefan und Sushi in Sydney uvm. Zu guter letzt haben wir einen 1a Bruno (so heisst unser Bus) käuflich erworben. Er ist nur ca. 90 Menschenjahre(24 Autojahre) alt und hat schon gute 410 000 km auf dem Buckel. Ach ja und seine Farben sind creme und manchmal braun. Wir sind überzeugt, das er unsere Reise mitmacht. Fingers crossed;) Er hat uns schon weit gebracht .Nachdem wir von Wollongong losgezogen ...

... packs or in extra bags. So, we tossed a lot and had to send some of that "stuff" home, too. However, probably our most important task of the day was finding Halloween costumes for that night! We had heard from dozens of people that Australia doesn't celebrate Halloween, but we had heard of a few bars throwing Halloween parties that night, so we decided to get decked out anyways. We found kid-sized fairy costumes at a bargain store, and made ourselves ...