Bus Trip

The day started pretty messed up, but before lunch it took a turn for the better and by dinner time it turned out to be almost perfect.

At 9 in the morning I had an appointment with Kimberlee. She's with a recruitment company outside of town, so she suggested meeting me at Starbucks in Auckland. Good idea, because I can see Starbucks from the hostel, so there's no way I can get lost. Neither of us remembered that in a city with more than one million people, there might be more than one Starbucks. Believe it or not, according to their website, there are 20, two of them in Queen Street where the hostel is. To make a long story short, we didn't meet this morning, because I was running out of time and she couldn't describe where she was. "Ask for the shopping mall", she said. Unfortunately, Queen Street is one big shopping mall. Ah, it doesn't matter, because I only have one more day in Auckland, so I doubt she could get me a job interview on such short notice anyway.

***

Next on my schedule was a bus trip through the outskirts of Auckland with Kiwi Experience. For the sake of briefness, I decided to bullet point my notes:

- Harbour Bridge Walk:
The Auckland Harbour Bridge is a great place to watch, walk on, bungee jump from and/or catch a cold on. Harbors are a terribly windy place, I should have known. And no, I didn't bungee jump. But I put it on my list of things to do next year. The bridge was built in 1959 with four lanes. In 1969, when traffic became too much, they two lanes on both sides. Due to their country of origin, the additions were soon called Nippon clip-ons.

- Bunkers:
In World War II, the Kiwis were afraid somebody might come and conquer New Zealand, so they build bunkers facing from the hills to the harbor. They put cannons in them and waited for the enemy. The cannons were immersible, so that the enemy wouldn't be able to target them. They were not exactly sure who to expect, the Germans, the Russians or maybe the Japanese. The war went on and on, but nobody showed up. That was good, because when they thought it through again, they remembered that cannons tend to smoulder after they were fired. You can hide the cannon, but you cannot hide the smoke. Duh!

- One Tree Hill:
The U2 song One Tree Hill refers to to a hill outside of Auckland with no tree on it. There's quite an interesting story behind it, you should check out the link. The song is dedicated to Bono's personal assistant, a Kiwi who died in 1986.

- Fish And Chips:
What can I say... I never had Fish And Chips before, although I've been in London once. Yummy! I always thought it was fish with potato chips, but it's actually fries. Potato chips are crisps there. British English is strange. (Now that I think about it, I remember learning about the difference in my English lessons. Mr. Marschall, if you're reading this: it's not your fault that I didn't pay attention in your class!)

All in all I must say the trip was great. And it was free, too. Except for 7 $ for the fish and chips, but it was worth every cent of it.

***

In the evening, my roommates and I had a pizza in our room. Meeting people is easier than I thought. Richard Web, a new guy from England arrived today. He's a surfing teacher and a cool dude, too. Now we're six people in our room: C.T. (USA, 33 years old), Rob (England, 20 years old), Richard (England, 20 years old), two Irish guys and me.

Oh, and I copied 25 GB worth of mp3 files from Richard's iPod :)