Life as in-betweeners 2

Many moons ago we were living as in-betweeners anticipating our 2015 adventures. Now we are back in that space again, albeit early, and enjoying what it brings! This time we are post-overseas adventures and, unexpectedly, back home in Melbourne. Since our last country (island city-state!), Singapore, we have had a bizarre but enjoyable time back in Australia. After a warm welcome from my Mum and Sarah and a short recovery program, we realised we were in Australia for two important birthdays and hot-footed it to Brisbane.

In Brissy and Toowoomba we caught up with family and friends and attended Tim's ALL-STAR MARIO KART BIRTHDAY BASH at BOUNCE! It was also Rob's great aunt's 95th birthday. On top of all that, we were able to catch Tim's latest play The Odd Couple. Our return home was certainly nicely timed in some ways!

Brothers!

Ahhhh!

Bouncing fun times

Dodgeball

Star of the show! 

Luigi in action

Flying high

It's a me Luigi!

Joining the revolution!

Chasing Cooper Trooper 

Yoshi bouncing along

Scaling new heights!

Jumping for joy

While looking elated, Tim was a little deflated

Moments after this photo was taken, Yoshi lost all his air and Rob took a break from the trampolines

Brothers (x2) on a tight-trope 

Tim & Sal...always performing

Post 30th birthday celebration

Back in Melbourne I soon realised we would be staying in the one spot for more than a week, something that we did infrequently on our overseas adventure. It felt odd not to be on the move and we were (a tad) in denial. It was however fantastic to be catching up with family and friends again. We caught some key events that we would have otherwise missed: David and Kelly's BBQ at their new house, Marita's Halloween party, meeting a special 3 month old, attending my cousin's first solo art exhibition and welcoming visitors we met via Airbnb in Glasgow. 

David in his new home

Kelly in her new home!

Uncle Pete full of advice for our upcoming roadtrip

Favourite sisters

Zip-lady and Drop Bear

Survey says "3 in 4 Australians don't know what a Drop Bear is"

This is what happens when you mix Darth Sidious, a Drop Bear, a Whoopee Cushion and a character from a Tim Burton story

Tim Burton was popular this year

Tony always has the best costumes (he's at the back right)

Catching up with Ben & Jenny

Even with so much going on, it wasn't long before we were plotting an Australian road trip around my health appointments. That's right, we decided Australia, the lovely, amazing country that it is, should certainly be included in our big adventure. After all, plenty of other travellers include it in their Round-The-World trip, Gap year or world jaunt. There sure is a lot of it we haven't seen too. Anyway, we began plotting...WATCH THIS SPACE...

Being terrible tourists in Singapore!

Upon leaving Garsten we were supposed to head to Zagreb, Croatia to kick off a road trip along the Dalmatian coast. Instead we finally made the hard but necessary decision to return back to Australia so I could consistently see the same doctor, do some further tests and figure out what was making me sick. By this point I had been sick for around 6 weeks and although we dearly wanted to head to Croatia (and Bosnia and Turkey and Sri Lanka!), it wasn't to be.

Instead we took a train to Vienna were we flew to Zurich and then Singapore. We decided to break up the absurdly long flight back to Australia with 4 nights somewhere in South East Asia. We opted for Singapore, a new country for both Rob and I, and the only island city-state in the world! Although it would likely mark the end of our overseas travel, we were excited to be heading somewhere new for a relaxing end to the trip.

Rob crossing the bridge to find our Air BnB apartment

Singapore didn't quite turn out as planned. Aside from me being "normal sick", we both got colds, had issues adjusting to the change in time zone and the overwhelming humidity, heat and smog. We had huge problems sleeping at anytime before 3am. This left less time for sightseeing and we turned into pretty terrible tourists! However, importantly, we did utilise our Airbnb apartment's wonderful pool and did some reading.

Sleeping and pool time were high on our agendas

From what we did see, and barring a few less enjoyable things (humidity, air quality challenges), Singapore seems like a great place to live. The city has done an amazing job at urban planning and seems to be prioritising gardens and active lifestyles. We went to the Singapore City Gallery which shows the transformation of the city over the last five decades. It is astounding the changes they have made over short periods to neighbourhoods, building and lifestyles.

Not a bad view from our metro stop

Singapore model at the gallery

New meets old in Singapore?

Older style buildings with skyscraper neighbours made quite a sight

Singapore is a lovely town to wander around, especially in the evening when the heat has lifted. We enjoyed the atmosphere around the river and found lots to see. The city buildings are quite spectacular at night. I'm not really sure why but part of the cityscape reminded me of Melbourne. (Of course I don't recall a soccer field floating on the Yarra but I haven't been home for 10 months!)

Singapore turned the lights come on

Floating soccer (i.e. using the land you've got)

Love these statues. Reminded us of similar ones we saw in Santander

"Play it forward" Piano's under a bridge for the public to enjoy

We were there! 

Interesting helix bridge near where we had an AMAZING ice cream sandwich

Our "final" day in Singapore was quite the experience! In the morning we enjoyed the beautiful botanical gardens. The National Orchid Garden was just fantastic. The orchids were so varied and very colourful. 

Paphiopedilum Hybrid

Rob enjoying the lovely mist garden

Worth battling the humidity!

Fountain and flora near the entrance

After the gardens we met up with Rob's old neighbour, James, and his wife Dora and two boys for a brief but lovely catchup - shamefully, WE FORGOT TO TAKE A PHOTO! 

In the afternoon I started to feel worse for wear. Long story short, hours before our flight I ended up at the airport medical centre where I was deemed "unfit to fly" due to having also contracted gastro. We had to book new flights for the next day which wasn't great news but at that point we were just pleased to have seen a doctor. Needless to say our (actual) final day in Singapore was low key. 

Our flight home consisted of less than an hour sleep between us but we were still smiling and happy to catch up with family and friends at the other end. (And plotting to keep the 2015 travel dream alive...stay tuned!)

Garsten and Steyr

We were lucky enough to stay off the more typical international tourist track in Upper Austria and even luckier to spend time with Rob's friends, Ulli and Flo and their three gorgeous kids. Our timing was a bit poor as it coincided with illness in the family as well as my own continuing health problems. However, it was great we were able to spend time together over a weekend and it was lovely to be in such a nice family environment. We weren’t long in the house before we were treated to a dress-up parade that included Spiderman, a medieval outfit and a firefighter!

Garsten is a lovely village in Upper Austria, located on the edge of a town called Steyr. It is around 2 hours west of Vienna by train and, like much of the country, has the advantage of a lovely mountain setting. On the Saturday we had a relaxed morning before taking a walk up a mountain to Schosserhütte. We were a bit unlucky with a fog obscuring what is usually a wonderful view (for great views of what we couldn't see, visit here) but it was a nice walk and we were rewarded at Schosserhütte with a tasty, warm lunch. Schosserhütte was nice and cosy, as I imagine a lot of places in Austria need to be come winter! After lunch the kids played in the teepee that stood next to the hut and Jinti, the families beautiful “Nepalese mountain dog”, also had a fun time digging about the place. On the way down the fog lifted ever so slightly, giving us a view of some colourful Autumnal trees. 

Jinti

Jinti walking Rob

Finn, Flo and Jonah sprint/skipping down the road from Schosserhütte

We also took a quick walk up to the ruins at Burgruine Losenstein, which had lovely views and is regularly used as a site for plays.  Finn took the opportunity to work on his climbing.

Ulli booked us tickets for a Night Watchman's tour in Steyr that evening and Flo dropped us off in town. The tour took us through the medieval part of town and to the top of the parish church spire. The tour was in German but the guide was kind enough to tell us the key bits of information in English along the way. Steyr is a very pretty town located at the confluence of the Enns and Steyr rivers. (A useful spot to be when you need to construct a moat around your town!) Steyr has a long history as a manufacturing centre and once produced cars and arms. Our guide told us that at one time it was against the law to manufacture a complete gun in Steyr. This was (apparently) to ensure the working class Protestants would not use the guns to rebel against ruling Catholics!

The beautiful main street of Steyr

View from the church tower

Shopping alley in Steyr

Across the Steyr river

Family/city crests adourning the city streets

You can't make it out from the photo, but each sculpture on the facade
of this building represents one of the five senses

On Sunday we had a restful day for the most part. Rob, Flo, Finn, Jonah and Anna went for a short walk and saw some deer. Rob had a conversation with Jonah about…well, Rob isn’t sure. It was a bit one-sided with Jonah happily telling Rob all sorts of things he had no hope of understanding but he thinks that it was mainly about deer!

Though the kids were probably a bit afraid of us with our odd accents and lack of German, we managed a few games with them across the weekend. Anna, the youngest, was not at all shy and was keen for us to read to her. Rob pulled off the German a lot better than me but I was pretty good at pointing at things she was interested in! By the end of the weekend Finn and Jonah were saying “Good night” to us in English.

It was great to meet Uli and Flo who I have heard so much about, as well as see the lovely life they have created since they lived in Nepal with Rob. We felt spoilt to stay in such a beautiful area for what turned out to be our last stop-off in Europe.

A musical time in Vienna

Music shaped our time in Vienna, unsurprisingly given it is commonly referred to as the City of Music.  We enjoyed a self-guided walking tour of music, Wiener Wiesl - Vienna's take on Oktoberfest - a visit to the Haus der Musik, a concert at Karlskirch (St Charles' church) and relaxing at the famous Cafe Central as a pianist set the atmosphere. We didn't let attempts to find a doctor (one of whom was incredibly rude) disrupt our visit to the city. We admired the architecture (Kat would like to use the adjectives 'creamy' and 'grand' to describe the city) while on our walking tour and we also had a long visit to the Kunsthistorisch (the Art History museum).

Our self-guided walking tour was odd in that we got lost (there's only a small circle of people to blame when you are self-guided) but that this made it a bit of an adventure. There's certainly worse places to be lost than Vienna, with its windy streets, beautiful (creamy) large buildings with the exteriors decorated with such complete and marvelous sculptures and characters.  Places that were home to Salieri, Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss.  The place had a feeling of completeness to it.  

Passed this on the way to Old Town

Grand old Vienna

At Stephansplatz

The approach to the Hofburg palace

Hofburg

Controversial Holocaust monument

On our walking lunchbreak we found a tiny little place serving what the internet tells me is Fleischkäsesemmel.  Sort of like a meatloaf on a simple semmel roll, we thought it was delicious, but the meal was made more enjoyable for the recognisable characters drawn on the wall enjoying their own Fleischkäsesemmel.

Entertaining artwork depicting many recognisable characters munching on Fleischkäse  

More celebration of Fleischkäse

Love and bunnies outside the Opera (note the pedestrian traffic light!)

We found ourselves in Austria in early October, and Kat spotted a sign advertising the local version of Oktoberfest, Wiener Wiesl. It was great we could experience this particular Austrian cultural experience. This meant that I could enjoy a beer and together we could experience the now global sensation that is Oktoberfest. Wiener Wiesl is a celebration of autumn that brings people together in with traditional food, music, clothes and drink.  Although the young'uns probably come out at night, this is not just a weekend bender activity that it might be elsewhere in the world but a celebration for all ages and it is on all through the week with free entry during the day.

We sang and swayed along to songs we had no hope of understanding while enjoying the performance of the band and the happy people who came to dance and eat together.  By mid-afternoon it was a swinging party and we were quite out of place in jeans and t-shirts but I've never had much of a need for lederhosen before!

Is Oktoberfesting a verb?

Starting to get a little rowdy at 2pm

Beer and sunshine

The Haus der Musik was good fun with interactive games and systems (some of which were a little 'tired' on our visit) to teach you about how we hear and process sound.  There were also rooms dedicated to the great composers, sharing elements of their lives, habits, debts and works.  

Trying the Sound of Music out on the keyboard stairs

This visit paved the way for our night-time outing to Karlskirch, a church we had only really admired from afar in our first few days.  We bought our ticket on the day from the venue itself (we had a bit of a run-in with a pushy street vendor who was too eager to encourage us to buy tickets from him).  A grand building with a beautiful dome framed by two towers, brilliantly lit up by night, the church was undergoing some maintenance inside and out but not so much that we could not enjoy both the concert and the art all around us.  We enjoyed a lovely performance in a beautiful church of some of Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss' best known works and were able to wander around before and after the performance to see the church in more detail.  Highly recommended experience, but one of many that you could get to in Vienna, it is the City of Music, afterall.

The ceiling with scaffolding centrepieces

Magnificent altar at Karlskirch just before the quintet commenced

Karlskirch (under a little renovation)

Visiting the Kunsthistorisches was a really powerful experience.  Our favourite part was the Kunstkammer exhibit.  The noble families over the centuries accumulated great arts to celebrate and often demonstrate both their wealth and authority.  These were stored in what was called a Kunstkammer, like a special art room.  Sometimes they were collections of brass sculptures, portraits, and tapestries but only the imagination can prevent you from thinking about what they had in there; mounted nobles with interchangable heads, over-the-top table centrepieces, drinking horns, clockwork frigates and clocks that surprise you with a mooning bum instead of a cuckoo-bird.  Perhaps one of the grandest features was a backgammon set that laid out the dynastic and territorial claims of the Habsburgs, Maximilian I's descendants (Charles V & Ferdinand I), demonstrating their right to rule but also their wealth.  In odd timing, a joke that would have flown past me before made me laugh out loud, through our slight addiction to the show Downton Abbey, a reference came up when the Dowager Countess said "I used to think that Mary's beau was a mésalliance, but compared to this, he's practically a Hapsburg." (The "p" is the Anglicised version). The collection at Kunsthistorisches was big, and it was a kind of fun to see what they collected, what they gave as gifts; it gives you a bit of an idea of the wealth these people once had to throw around.

The cafe of the Kunsthistorisches was lovely, not modern and tucked away out of sight but within the grand building itself, with a great dome rising above and beautiful marble archways on all four sides, hubbub with activity.

We finished off our stay in Vienna with coffee at the famous Cafe Central, a place those more famous than us used as a meeting point long ago; it's been around for more than 130 years.  There we were treated to a pianist who came and went a few times while we indulged on Viennese cake and coffee.

Selection of cakes at Cafe Central 

The pianist at Cafe Central

St Peter's Church at dusk