Off we go ...

It is now T-3h, our planes leaves at 7:50pm.
The feeling is weird - it feels like we are just leaving for one of our frequent trips to Austria, Switzerland, Munich, you name it. But this time we are not coming back until February ... yes, F-e-b-r-u-a-r-y 2010.

If we forgot anything, well, we need to buy it.

Take care, come back and enjoy the upcoming fall!

Project Nbr 1: Natural Tan

We have the idea of doing something that is absolutely not new, but still we think it might be fun. We try and take 1 picture of us every day while travelling. We will post the pictures to a Picasa album. I am just curious if you can see that the tan is getting better with every day.

I also hope that Philipp does not grow quite such a beard ;-)

Packing

Packing sucks. I'm ok with wearing the same stuff for months (hey - and also today it's my favourite fleeca again!), however the things which keeps hammering in the back of my head is the question of all questions for travellers: "Did I miss something?"

See for yourself:

Would you take all! of! your! clothes! off! for 1 day of rental car for free?

Obviously Wicked Campers is convinced that this is a great discount opportunity and ask their customers to pick up the vans "as god created them" to get 1 day for free. Customers 60 and older get the day for free anyway - they rather should keep their clothes on. I am sure this is not very compliant with age discrimination, but anyway ...

(quote from the homepage)
The Naked Special
Due to popular demand the Naked Special is back!  If you are renting a van for 14 days or more, and you pickup your van NAKED we will give you your first day rental free. Don't believe us? View our Naked customers here (if you're over 60, leave your clothes on and we'll also give you a free day!).

"Unfortunately" the photo link does not work anymore today - it still did yesterday. And I can assure you, it seems like a lot of customers actually thought this is a great discount opportunity ...

I honestly don't know - we chose an Escape camper - dilemma solved ;-)
Maybe we even get one in green ...

Bye-bye, Uluru ...

We are saying Good-bye before we even set foot on any plane. After 3 days of searching optimized travel routes, checking flight schedules and fares, memorizing kilometers on Google Maps we have made a big decision. We will not visit Australia's red heart. With "just" 6 weeks in Australia and soooooo many kilometers to get from one location to the other it would just end up in endless hours in a car or hundreds of euros/dollars on the plane.

Therefore we have noted one lesson learned: Never start travelling Australia from Sydney - that is the middle. Not the beginning. Not the end.

We decided to leave Sydney immediately, fly to Adelaide, get a car and drive to Cairns - bypassing Sydney where we fly back towards the end of our journey to continue travelling to New Zealand. This way we have more than 5 weeks for about 5,000 kilometers which should work out fine (considering I already did 12,500 kilometres in 28 days over in the US). Uluru would take away 1 week and cost an additional EUR 500 just for flying. We simply come back one day and do the other half of Australia, we figured.

the good side of a cold

We are known for often squeezing 48 hours into 24 mostly between Frankfurt, Munich, Walchsee, Zurich and sometimes even Seoul for a night - and if snow needs to be involved also adding 1500 km on the Autobahn on a single weekend. Sometimes this pace just doesn't work well - either with schedules, friends or health. This time my health put a stop to packing boxes, renovating my appartement, meeting friends, dogsit Ronja, clarify admin stuff and worry about Philipp falling off a mountain at the same time. A cold now cleared my calendar for the one thing I wanted to do for the past ... hmm, six months. Reading travel guides. I am getting more excited about our trip with every page I read. Travel tips are very, very, very welcome and much appreciated! Thank you.

There are great places to visit out there - I already found Dieter's favourite and Heike's (No, Heike, you should not click this Link!!!).

Speaking of a cold: This is the right moment for my (meanwhile second) favourite YouTube-Video - bless you!

clothing

... is overrated. just in case you didn't notice :o)