Alarm!

In Christchurch, getting from Cathedral Square to the airport is very cheap. The ride from the hostel to the departure terminal is only five bucks. It's a good idea to be there a couple of hours ahead of departure time, because next to the airport is the Antarctic Centre. It's definitely worth a visit, although it's rather expensive. They have cute little penguins there and an Antarctic storm simulator. The simulation is mostly acoustic, so you can experience it in shorts, if you want. Very impressive.

At the airport, I almost had to pay $ 45 for excess luggage, but when I told them it's sport equipment it was okay. Every airline is different, I suppose...

Something else was very strange, though: Nobody checked me for weapons. I walked through a metal detector alright, but my hand baggage wasn't x-rayed, and nobody wanted to see my passport. I said my name, they checked their computer, gave me the ticked and sent me to the gate. Strange, isn't it?

In Christchurch I met this girl called Tanja. She got there with a propeller plane and the flight and landing was so rough that the woman beside her actually held her hand. You can imagine my face when I saw a propeller plane standing outside, especially since we were flying to Windy Wellington. I immediately remembered what happened last time I entered a propeller plane. (I jumped out)

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To my surprise, the flight was short, calm and somewhat unspectacular. Phew! Getting from the Wellington airport to the hostel was $ 15. Welcome to the capitol! And guess who I met in the bar? Tanja! What are the chances? I think the term "stranger things have happened" refers to things like that.

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Under normal circumstances, this would be the end of today's post. But these are no normal circumstances. At 1.30 AM, when we were all sound asleep, the fire alarm went off. At first we didn't understand what the noise meant -- no mobile phone is that loud! After a while we realized we were supposed to leave the building, so we put on shoes and went out. It was a false alarm, of course, but one of the guys in our room said he's been here 4 nights and it happened twice. I'm totally not looking forward to the next few nights...