Travel « i8bozo

HAHNDORF LOVLINESS

By i8bozo, on January 7th, 2012%

claire and i headed up over the hill out of Adelaide to a small German settlement named Hahndorf. the community was established by Lutheran refugees in March 1839. the majority of the Hahndorf’s fifty-four founding families were passengers on the Zebra, the third ship of Lutheran immigrants to arrive in South Australia in 1838. The ship’s master, Captain Hahn, helped his passengers achieve their goal of settling together as a community to farm and worship their God as they wished. it is a quaint little community bustling with the weekend visitor traffic and activity. we liked it the moment we drove down the tree covered road which leads into the tiny town center – Main Street.

while perusing the various shops along the main street we decided to have a traditional German meal at the Hahndorf Inn – kransky’s, sauerkraut, potatoes and a very large beer for claire! somebody didn’t order the half pint as instructed. whoopsie! what do i know? pint, half pint…it was a glass of beer to me. anyways, a very fine meal if i don’t mind saying so. the sauerkraut reminds me of my childhood when mom used to make it as part of the family meal. i’m sure we’ll head back for another visit.

after our little meal, we headed down the street to the Hahndorf Candlemaker where our eyes got a good ol dose of eye candy overload. it is a wonderful little shop with candles a plenty as well as some other amazing German craftsmanship knick-knackery. we picked up a few lovely candles (one of which is burning in front of me as i type) and this amazing little hand carved tree sculpture along with a 6 pack of these cool little laser cut snowflake ornaments. the tree sculpture was hand carved in the small town Seiffen, Germany where the craftsman have to go through an intensive three year program to acquire the necessary skills.

the shop owners were lovely. very kind and helpful with all manner of inquiry. sadly, i didn’t get their names but i did get the business card of their husband/father, Eduard. so kind they were that when i inquired about the clown item lurking on the back shelf collecting dust in the dark (seen in the image above) … they told me it was broken and that they didn’t have any more new ones. seeing my fascination and enthusiasm for the whole clown motif, they just gave it to me after a quick demo and explaining how it was broken. it is my hope that i’ll be able to get it repaired at some point because it does look like an amazing little animated bank.

after the lovely stop at the candleshop, we headed out to the studio of Sir Hans Heysen, a local artist we fell in love with when we saw some of his paintings in the local museum/art gallery. picked up a book of his works then called it a day as we had to get our little rental car back by 5pm. nice to have some free time to explore a little. ever since animation mentor started, free time has been something i’ve not really had. really have to enjoy it when the opportunity arises. being the first week of this new term, things aren’t that busy just yet.

A KIWI, A KID AND A SORE BACK

By i8bozo, on October 2nd, 2010%

newly relocated to auckland and finally employed, i felt it in my best interest to treat myself to a day of snowboarding. the weather promised clear skies and a storm had recently rolled through dumping new snow. supposedly.

with good intentions, i woke early (3am) and was on the road by 3:55am. i didn’t quite get the eggs and chorizo big breakfast like i had envisioned the night before but hey, its the thought that counts, right? who ever it was that taught me that, you are WRONG! i was hungry an hour later. bananas from the passenger seat had to suffice.

never having made the trip to central mountains coming from the northern direction before, i was bound to make a slight miscalculation with my directions, which i did…somewhere out of Hamilton. very confusing hamilton. my little miscalculation saw me run very nearly out of gas. right near the end and close to the line i took a drastic detour 9k out of my way toward this little “village” in the hopes that this “village” would have a gas station. mental note, “villages” don’t have gas stations. i did however meet a guy who informed me of this. he was up early packing his car for a morning departure with his family. he set me straight and i was off.

with the music turned off i drove in silence at a steady, slower than normal pace making sure to keep my RPMs down so as to conserve gas as much as possible. the “light” had not yet come on but was about to any minute. i just didn’t want that kind of stress that early in the morning…especially where i was. in every direction rural farmland and rolling green hills as far as the eye could see.

at the gas station where i took my sweet time pumping gas and stretching my C-shaped spine (stupid boy racer bucket seats), i noticed a car pull up. seconds later out pops the guy i spoke with a short while earlier about a gas station in the “village”. jeff was his name and before you knew it, his wife had introduced herself and they were packing their son’s ski gear into my trunk. i had adopted a kid for the ride up the mountain it seemed. i found it very odd, the notion of pawning off one’s son onto a total stranger; but that is one of the odd little old school quirks that makes life in New Zealand still a very beautiful thing. i introduced myself to their son Tyler and shortly after i used the rest room, fed the car a liter of oil and cleared the front seat of water bottle, maps, camera and hat we were on our way to the Whakapapa resort.

talk about being put into an odd circumstance, well, this was it. what do you talk about with a rather shy and quiet – i’m guessing 13 year old kid to whom you’ve just been introduced? well, lets just say i exhaused the topics rather quickly and then i introduced Tyler to the concept of the Audiobook. i was close to finishing this story so i had let it keep me company on my early morning drive. all in all, i think it was a success and when i asked him what he thought of listening to an audiobook, he said he thought it was pretty cool. =)

i won’t go into too much detail about the remainder of my day which included too much warmth, too many people clogging the queues, snow which was too mushy and too much pain in my little feets. i called it a day by about 1pm and headed back north – completely exhausted and very much over heated.

had to whip the car around when i passed by that kiwi sculpture cause it was hecka cool. had to have a photo. i love creative people.

holy crap! i just heard a huge WTF type explosion, maybe a crack house blew up!