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Top floor apartment for 2 weeks

Piggy Back

The kids have officially gone feral!  After three months of upheaval and only each other to play with it’s understandable!  I spent the morning at the school helping out with cleaning and classroom preparation where I met Amelia’s teacher and the lady who runs the Kinderkrippe where Noah will go.  I also met the teachers’ aid who is from London but married to an Austrian and has lived here for 10 years, she was very warm and easy to get along with, so I have no worries about the kids settling in and enjoying themselves, and the routine will be great for them.  And us! 

On Tuesday we did a huge hike.  1.5 hours up and 1.5 hours down.  We encountered more cows on our path and a curious horse who took a fancy to Amelia’s bright pink attire and squeals of terror.  We made it in good time, instead of an hour behind the scheduled one, as we splashed out on a baby carrier for Noah (a father’s day present), the hardy-proper- hiker- type ones!  It was an ambitious first hike to take it out on, and Maciek was pretty sore the next day.  And I had trouble walking up the three flights of stairs to our apartment.  Poor Amelia complained all the way down, but I don’t blame her, it was pretty tough, and so much cow poo to dodge!

We’ve been having trouble getting the kids to bed before 9pm.  We tried putting Noah in a bed but because he is such a restless sleeper and we have no bed rail it just wasn’t working, so back into the cot with him!  Last night Amelia wasn’t in bed until 11pm! There is a village church a few hundred metres from our apartment, and the bell ‘DONGS’ 28 times x 3 every morning at 7am, even on Sundays, and has never failed to wake us up.  But this morning, just because we all had to wake up early so that I could get to the school, everyone slept through it!  Good in a way for Amelia because she had such a late night.  But not good for me as I was supposed to be at the school for 8.30am.  Why do these things happen? 

Princess Hiker

After a frustrating first week looking for accommodation and waiting to hear from people who can shed light on living and working here, we are finally finding our feet.  We found a little holiday cottage available for rent until Christmas and then for 6 weeks after New Year.  Hopefully by then we’ll know one way or another what our plans are, and can either take a longer lease or ditch the idea altogether!  We move in on Saturday, and it will be nice not to have to traipse up flights of stairs and be able to sit in the lounge room while the kids play in the fenced garden.  We met an English couple running a Bed and Breakfast not far from us who have been here 4 years, and I have finally been in touch with Catherine who’s daughter will be in Amelia’s class.  So, so far we have 3 people to call and chat to locally!  It’s not easy though.  The language barrier makes things very difficult.  The simplest thing seems impossible and it’s a knock to the confidence having to make a pratt of yourself umpteen times a day.  Some people are smiley and helpful and others are just straight faced and serious and make you feel like a nuisance!  We are excited and encouraged one day, and feeling dejected and flat on another.  For example, we need bed linen and towels for our new house, do you think we can find any? Where is Big W when you need it? (By the way, Big W at ‘Joondy-Up’ is Amelia’s favourite shop, she tells me!)

Silly Moo!

Hopefully getting into a routine next week will help, and now begins the search for work!  Even though I needn’t have missed the church bells in Soest that I loved so much, as there are churches everywhere through Europe, I DEFINATELY won’t miss this one! It’s been a complete pain in the bum.  Fingers crossed for a sleep in this Sunday.  Wishful thinking!

Lost in the wilderness

Awards and Statistics

(Link to the journey map  http://g.co/maps/qh3c)

To mark the end of our 3 month journey we thought it might be interesting to look back and record some of our bests and worsts!

First of all here is a photo of our Sat Nav recorded statistics.  When we first found this (Maciek accidentally came by it while trying to search for something else) it told us our fuel costs and total driving time, which would have been interesting if we could find it again or remember it.  The maximum recorded speed of 144 kmh must have been when we were trying to outrun the Swiss police when they caught us mowing our lawn on a Sunday!  Not really.  But that is an actual law in Switzerland, believe it or not.  There is also a link to a Google map of our journey.

We can call our journey The Magical Birthday Tour with Maciek’s marking the beginning, and mine wrapping it up, with two little ones for each month in the middle!

We are grateful for the fact that we had no major problems at all, and that apart from a night in Torquay when Milly was sick all night and a morning on the second visit to Soest, when Noah was also sick, and a few sore throats and runny noses, we had no health issues.  (Apart from the sea sickness and constant vomiting from the back seat whilst driving.)

It was such an awesome experience,  however hard and stressful it was at times. 

And the Oscar (or wooden spoon) goes to…………….

Worst Roads:

Winner!!!   Poland, followed closely by England due to the abundance of ridiculous roundabouts.

Scariest Moment:

Winner!!!   Losing Noah in France (We’ll elaborate later, didn’t mention it before as we didn’t want to give our oldies heart attacks), followed closely by -  losing Noah at the aqua park in Poland (it’s okay he had floaties on).  In third place is Maciek nearly breaking his shin.  Joint third place is when Maciek was stung by a bee in Kitzbuhel and let go of the stroller which then rolled down the hill and into the road, with Noah in it.

Best food (excluding home cooked):

Winner!!!   Ireland.  Followed closely by no-one.

Most Spectacular town:

Winner!!!   Annecy in the French Alps.

Cosiest Accommodation:

Winner!!!   The farmhouse cottage in the Cotswalds.

Most Relaxing Place/when we felt like we were actually on holidays:

Winner!!!   Second week in France, in the Dordogne, due to the accommodation, weather, and pool!  Followed very closely by Sportcamp Wolfergut in the second week of Austria.

Worst Travelling Companion

Whinger!!!   NOAH

Funniest Moment:

Winner!!!  Amelia doing a number 2 in someone else’s apartment at Haus am Wald!

Most Valuable Purchase:

Winner!!!  The Sat Nav.  As much as we gave out about it, we would have been literally lost without Karen!

Oh, and obviously the car!

Best Bargains:

Winner!!!  Torquay for cheap food and clothes

Most expensive:

Winner!!!   Ireland!

Worst weather:

Winner!!!   Edinburgh!

Most Frustrating:

Winner!!!  Bad skype connections

Worst thing about long distance driving:

Mel’s winner!!!   Getting seat belt burn on my neck from constantly turning around to pick up toys off the floor and pass food and drink to the monsters in the back seat.

Maciek’s Winner!!!  Those @#*%!! roundabouts in England! (have I mentioned those before?)

Cheapest Banana’s:

Winner!!!  Soest at 79 cents per kilo

Interesting to note:  Number of different beds we slept in:  19!!

Obviously we can’t give everything a mention.   We’ve done so much and visited so many places over the past 3 months that this post could go on for pages and pages.  Every place had something special.  I’ve noticed I’ve given out more Wooden Spoons than Oscars, but all the great stuff has already been written in the blog!

Thanks everyone for all the comments to the posts.  We really enjoyed reading them, we were always excited when we got a new one and they gave us encouragment when we were struggling.  We will continue with the blog as we attempt to live in Austria over the winter, but posts may not be as frequent as we will not have a regular internet connection, but we'll try our best.  But for now, that's the end of the first chapter.  Tchuss!

Happy Birthday to Meeeee!!

On the road for the last time

On a 'walk'

We left Poland in shorts and thongs in 34 degrees heat to arrive at our overnight stopover in a little town called Pfeimd in Germany, north of Munich, freezing to bits in 14 degrees!!  We hadn’t thought to check the weather at our destination as we’d been sweltering away in Poland for over a week and had forgotten about cold weather!

Driving into Austria the next day took us back to those first weeks away, which seem so long ago now, exactly 3 months since we left Perth.  Sunny skies and spectacular scenery, greenery, smooth roads and that refreshing scent of freshly sprayed manure!!  (No kidding, Austria smells like cow poo, you get used to after a while!)

Water park

It felt good being back those first few days.  Nice to think we only had one more move left which would be into a permanent house or apartment for the next 6 months.  This apartment is good except for the extraordinarily small kitchen without an oven, microwave, kettle or toaster or draining board, which will make culinary delights pretty hard to achieve over the next fortnight.  Not that I’m any good at it any way!  And after 3 months of eating very basic meals or eating out I’ve almost forgotten how to cook.

We have free entry into the local swimming pools with indoor and outdoor facilities, heated pools, jacuzzi’s, water slides and a playground so we’ve been there a couple of times, where Maciek and I took turns doing laps to trim off some of that holiday chub and where I had a menacing fight with a wasp!  It was self-defence, it was attacking me from all sides, and it deserved what it got.  It wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last to meet its fate at the hands of my stealth slipper and thong wacking action! 

How sweet!

Maciek has played tennis again, and we’ve been on a hike (don’t tell Amelia, to her it’s just a ‘walk’!  She says “ Are you sure this is only a walk, because it feels like a hike and my legs are aching already!”)  We ended our ‘walk’ at a glamorous 5 star resort with Mercedes and Porsches parked outside and old people milling around in white bath robes and lying on sun beds reading books.  Reminded me of a scene from Little Britain.  But next to the state of the art underground tennis courts was a great little playground overlooking an enormous field where Amelia came out with another pearler, “Wow this looks like the whole WORLD!  I could do cartwheels ALL OVER THE PLACE!!”

mmmm cake!

The past couple of days have been more stressful and we’re becoming anxious about finding a place to live for the winter.  It’s difficult with the language barrier and not being able to enquire about the most basic things, and I am awaiting a reply from the one English speaking person I know here.  But after speaking to friends and family from home today we feel better and are sure that within the next  few days things will start moving in the right direction.  Fingers crossed anyway.  I spent my birthday doing nothing, something I haven’t done for 3 months!  Maciek looked after the kids and I slept in until 10, then I slouched around in trackies all day and ate cake!  Hip Hip – Hooorraayyyy!!

Happy 5th Birthday Amelia!

Luckily Kamil and Ania allowed Noah and Milly to spend a day at the kindergarten they run,  so we could have some time to buy birthday presents for Milly, as well as some other stuff we wanted to take back with us to Austria including a chin up bar to help Maciek along on his ongoing goal of trying to get big arms!  (to match his newly acquired beer belly!)

One of my favourite things to do in Wroclaw was to stroll through the Rynek (old town square) in the early evening and enjoy the sights and sounds.  It was always full of music and buskers and plenty of nice places to eat and drink, and one evening, thanks again to Kamil and Ania, we were able to go out and enjoy it alone so we could actually experience a couple of these places.  All through the city centre are little sculptures of gnomes which when you touch them bring you luck (see the pic in the previous post).  The Rynek is gorgeous.  The architecture; colourful buildings;  stalls bursting with flowers; clip-clopping of horse and cart; accordion players.  I loved it.

On one of the main streets there is a sculpture of men and women going under the road on one side and rising again on the other.  It symbolizes the ever changing Wroclaw through the decades.  Not sure if the photo of it really does it justice, but I found it quite moving.

On our second last evening there, Maciek’s other cousins took us on a walking tour of the oldest part of Wroclaw, which I always thought was the Rynek.  It was dark by the time we got to it, but I’d love to see it by day.  The stunning cathedral, which was destroyed during the war, has been rebuilt exactly as it was.



Milly's presents



Amelia and Noah were showered with books, toys, chocolate and sweets from family.  We spent Amelia’s birthday at the zoo, in 34 degrees.  It was a lovely place, with loads of nice cafés and restaurants to have lunch, a drink or an ice-cream, all with a theme from a different part of the world.  Then after tea we danced and popped balloons, had cake that Ania made and sang happy birthday, and Amelia was spoilt with so many presents including fairy wings, a sparkly lacy bejeweled princess school bag courtesy of Aunty Jo, an Ariel Barbie and the long awaited shiny black shoes ‘for parties and going out to dinner’ which she has been asking (whinging!) for since June.

There are so many layers to Wroclaw, and Poland in general.  It’s probably not a place to visit for a relaxing break, but if you’re interested in culture and history, there’s plenty of it here.

Make a wish

Amelia's favourite animal

Watching the seals

Rellie Bashing in Wroclaw

The Rynek

Kamil, Ania, Vicky

We arrived in Wroclaw one day early as previously mentioned. We stayed with my cousin Kamil (camel, to Melanie) and Ania and their daughter Vicky. They had just renovated their apartment in time for our arrival, we didn’t know any of this of course, if we had known we would have offered to stay in a hotel . Camel was supposed to have had it finished by the end of June and he was still painting as we arrived.

Bye Bye Babcia!

We had a very busy 10 days in Poland visiting all my relies, there aren’t that many of them but seeing as I hadn’t seen them in over 7 years I wanted to make sure I saw them a few times. Our time spent with Kamil and Ania was great.  Ania is a great cook and treated us to many home cooked dinners, which for us has been quite rare.  Kamil was busy with work but finished early as often as he could to catch up with us. The kids were kept entertained by Vicky and her array of toys.  She liked to wind Noah up by pinching a toy he was playing with and running off around the furniture laughing, Noah would of course chase after her shouting “my toy!”. This went on day after day.

Lucky Gnomes

The weather we had in Wroclaw was stinkin hot, it hit 30 most days and it was very humid. We escaped the heat one day by going to the new aqua park they built there. It was pretty awesome with indoor and outdoor pools, waterslides, a wave pool which felt just like the waves hitting the shore back home, except without the horrible sand getting stuck in your jocks, and our favouite - the lazy river - great fun watching the kids faces as they got pushed by the current.  The only problem was that there was a thunder storm that day and the indoor and outdoor pools are connected so they closed the pools for about half an hour so we wouldn’t get electrocuted.

Wujek's (unkle's) garden

Wroclaw has changed quite a bit since the last time I saw it.  It is undergoing a major facelift in preparation for the Euro2012 Football Finals. It’s quite difficult to get around the city as a lot of the roads are being worked on. There are plenty of fancy new buildings but also plenty of buildings needing renovation so at the moment at least it’s all looking a bit mixed up.

Keepin it cool

Agnieszka, Babcia, Milly and Pooh

Being in Poland did take some time to get used to, especially for Melanie not being able to communicate, it does feel like a different world from what we’re used to. We had a great time though once we found our stride. We lived like locals riding the buses and trams. Melanie got thrown into the tram doors when the tram was jiggling about while changing tracks, luckily she didn’t get hurt. The kids really loved the public transport, we even caught the bus one night at 10pm coming from my cousins house, they were trying so hard not to fall asleep. Ohh and speaking of jiggling, for the first time in my life I felt my pot belly jiggle while riding the bus. It was quite an experience for me, I am cutting out the beer as soon as we get back to Austria.

Rorbach Senior

Rorbach Junior

On to Wroclaw

In the car again. Are we there yet?

We planned to split the drive from Soest to Poland into two.  So we aimed to get close to the border of Poland for our overnight stopover.  Having seen plenty of Travel Lodges and Holiday Inn type accommodation on our travels we figured this would be an easy cheap option, but as usual, when you actually need something you’ve seen millions of times before you needed it, it doesn’t seem to exist! 

We found ourselves hovering along the border of Poland looking for a hotel, and ended up driving into the town of Gorlitz.  Coming from the excellent straight forward roads of Germany into this was like peacefully cruising down the Swan River sipping on your favourite glass of red, and then being suddenly plunged into white water rapids without any warning.  It was manic.  Trams everywhere, intersections with seemingly no structure at all (who gives way to who?), minimal road signs or lane markings, and cobbled potholed roads that felt like they hadn’t been improved upon since the days of horse and cart.  We asked ‘Karen’ for a hotel, she gave us the ‘Mercure’.  That sounded good, a familiar name, a reliable chain, so we followed her directions.  She brought us to a 3 storey carpark.  No sign of a Mercure or any other hotel that warranted consideration for an easy overnight stay!  So we legged it.  Let’s just get out of here as quick as we can, were the words I remember being shouted by someone.  But as we jiggled along we realized that somewhere along the way we had crossed the border and were now surrounded by number plates registered to ‘PL’.  So here we were, unexpectedly in Poland a day early, with no local currency to buy dinner.

So on to Wroclaw (pronounced Vrotswav) it was.  Maciek’s home town.  And as there was no sign of a welcoming hotel other than crumbling old creepy farmhouse types, we called Maciek’s cousin and announced we’d be arriving that evening instead of tomorrow afternoon.

The road a little way from the border merged into a new motorway and was smooth and easy, but arriving into the city became an encore experience of Gorlitz, only on a much bigger scale!  Hats off to Maciek’s driving.  Lucky for me he just gets on with it.  I’m stressed enough as a passenger.

We left Soest at 10am that morning, and arrived at the other Grabowski’s at 8pm, the longest driving day to date, but not for lack of trying.  Poor Ania and Kamil hadn’t even finished painting their apartment in preparation for our arrival!  Sorry!

Return to Soest

On the sundeck (or the wind deck!)

Kids play room

The Pride of Hull took us from the UK back to the continent arriving at the port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands at 9am. It was a 12 hour overnight ferry, absolutely enormous, with 12 decks (including the car and sundecks) at least 3 of which were full of bars and restaurants, quiet rooms and cinema rooms (which sadly we couldn’t experience!) and children’s play area (which we did experience – a lot!).  We spent the best part of the evening in the Showroom Lounge listening to a band and then watching a poor magician go down like a tonne of bricks in front of a dismal audience!  To be fair many of the passengers resembled the cast of The Only Way is Essex mixed with groups of dodgy looking Eastenders type characters, so they probably weren’t that interested in a children’s magician at 10pm after sinking 7 pints/Bacardi Breezers  in an hour.  We finally got the kids into bed about 11pm, and then lost an hour crossing the time zone before being awoken at 6.30am by the ships wake-up call.  But happy to say no-one was sick, not in our cabin anyway!  And it was a very enjoyable trip.

Hugs in Soest

We drove straight to Soest.  It’s on the way to Poland, and we thought it would be nice to stop here for a few days and rest, which is exactly what we’ve been doing.  Our hotel is situated opposite the old town Wall and so a stroll into the town centre or around the ‘moat’ isn’t far.  It’s lovely to be back here, where it all began.  We are more confident this time round, and not so afraid to practice our German as we’ve picked up so much more compared to what we knew in that first week away from home.  It’s amazing how different we feel now after travelling so much, we are used to it now, and so are Amelia and Noah, and everything is far less stressful than it was in those first couple of weeks.  Plus knowing Soest and knowing our way around makes it so much easier.

Can’t help feeling like there’s something missing though?  As we walked into town, passing a familiar street and a familiar little house, we half expected Sue and Frank and little Curly to appear to join us for cake and coffee!  It’s not the same without you!

Also we've noticed over the past couple of days that Noah is showing signs of breaking out into tremendous tantrums!  Terrible Twos have arrived we think!  Noooo!!  And he also likes climbing to great heights then announcing "Weeda weeda caackle!! (I'm the King of the Castle!)" whilst doing some movements that look like the actions to I'm a Little Teapot!

You aint sin me, right?