Night Caching

So there are many types of caches that you can do - multies, micros, urbans, night caches and so on. There are also different levels of difficulty, not just of terrain but in access - some you need to take climbing equipment with you, some you need to decode the first clue, some involve much research before a cache can be undertaken so you can solve the clues, some have the first clue hidden in magic eye picture that you have to view online before starting, some have webcams at them that take a photo every minute to record the fact that you actually found it so you have to wait there long enough to ensure you picture was taken, while others you need a friend at home to actually wait for you command to activate a web cam...

Tonight we did our first night cache. Necessary equipment includes warm clothes (its cold here now) and torches (plus of course the GPS). Night caches generally rely on reflectors, so can only be done at night. With this one once you found the first reflector you had to see the next reflector and walk to it, shine your torch around and see the next one and walk to it and so on until you find the final and dig up the log book.

It was cool!!!!! The reflectors have to be close enough that you can see the next one from where you are, but we were in an orchard then a forest so its not so simple so it is quite fun

It was also the first time we have come across other cachers. As we were heading to the first spot we could see torches in the distance and guessed (correctly) that we weren't the only ones out. It did prove somewhat difficult to find the second reflector so the people we had come across (who have been caching much longer but were also on their first night cache) called a friend who knew the person who had set up the cache who was they then called to give us a clue to find the second reflector...

Once we had the second we were off. The reflectors were generally the size of a lage nail head in a tree trunk so it wasn't super easy, but it was fun.

Once you have worked out what you are looking for though it is easier to find. The first cache we did we didn't find the hidden box because we didn't actually know what kind of place it would be hidden in - now it's much easier to know where it should be. The first time we looked for something in a more urban setting it was also difficult, but you start to think like the person who hid the object and it becomes easier to find it.

Bel.

Singing in the Rhein, just singing in the Rhein...

Ok, so that was a crap title, but whatever!

2 weekends ago Bel and I were planning on going rock climbing (indoor) on the Saturday until Bel managed to get us invited to go on a 20km day walk / hike along the Rhein (big river). The Rheinsteig is a hike that runs along the Rhein from Wiesbaden (the capital of Hessen) to Bonn (the old capital of West Germany), through winefields and past castles, for a total distance of 320km. We decided that 300km of it was complete crap (kidding), so opted for the 17-or-so km from Östrich-Winkel to Rüdesheim (toursit Mecca of the Rhein).

Shiny web

Misty hikers

Foggy God of Wine

If I had have got my act into gear, I could have downloaded the GPS information for the trail that we were going to follow...but I didn't. So instead we relied on a book that we had of the trail, looking for little Rheinsteig stickers stuck to things, and keying in key points along the way on our GPS. All in all it was pretty successful.

Unfortunately the weather didn't really want to play along with our plans. We ended up with a fairly cold day (good for hiking) that was really foggy (bad for the view, which is supposed to be magical). But luckily it didn't rain along the way.
After conquering the 17km trail we sat and had coffee and cake in Rüdesheim before catching the train back to where we had parked our car...or so we thought. We got into the train which proceeded to stop at the next stop, and then skip ours and the next one, before stopping way to far away for us to walk back. Luckily there was a bus at the station that was heading back to Östrich-Winkel, and the bus driver let us ride back with them at no extra cost.
All in all we had a great day, and I would recommend it to anyone who ever gets the crazy idea of "going for a 20km walk" in their heads. :)

Tschüß,
Brushy.

Der Tag der deutschen Einheit - Das lange Wochenende

At the start of October we had what is our last long weekend before Xmas, thanks to "der Tag der deutschen Einheit" (the Day of German Unity). We had planned to spend the weekend camping in Dresden, but Bel caught a pretty bad cold in the weeks leading up, and we thought that camping in the cold weather wasn't the best of ideas. So instead we planned to spend a weekend in Frankfurt and explore the city a little.

In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the Lion sleeps tonight.

How you doin', Tiger?

I was poking around in the Internet a few days in advance and managed to stumble across a geocache that was located at the Frankfurt Zoo. We had never been to the Zoo before, and thought that this would be a good chance to combine a trip to the Zoo with a new hobby of ours.

These little guys were so cute!

Spike's the name...

The cache that I found is a so called Puzzle Cache that lead us through the Zoo to a bunch of different enclosures where you had to answer questions about the animals that you found there. These answers were then plugged into a formula that lead us to the final location of the cache, which we found relatively easily.
Bel had a ball photographing all of the animals along the way, and we both laughed ourselves silly at the Rhino that decided to roll around on the ground like a tool, all the while farting like a large diarrhoetic...well...like a large diarrhoetic version of me, really. :)

Looks like someone ate too much.

I'm blue da ba dee da ba die...

For Saturday we had registered ourselves for a introductory Rock Climbing course at an indoor climbing center near us. The course was 2hrs long went through the basics of how to tie a double-8 to secure yourself to the line, how to belay with an ATC, etc. After we had passed the tests and got our certificate (Germans! Gotta have a certificate for everything!) we were allowed to climb until closing - not that we made it that long. This sport is REALLY tiring! And my god did we know about it the next day - we couldn't open bottles, lift anything, or even type properly. Everything that used our forearms in anyway hurt like hell.

Lil' blighter looks all lonely.

Ugly lookin' bird eyeing off my hot lookin' bird.

Since the course we have been back again, and are planning to go again this weekend. Suckers for punishment. :) When we come home, we expect some of you to come with us every now and then, ok?

Are you...? Are you lookin' at me?	Tooty the Rhino takes on Barkey the Tree.
These Flamingos are actually real.	The grand "Finding of the Cache".

Tschüß,
Brushy

Congratulations!

Just a quick one to say congratulations to Whitty and Tanya for the birth of their baby girl Maya Katherine. We wish you guys all the best, and look forward to catching up with you in December.

Love,
Us.

Making your work trips fun!

Here's a cool way to make your work trips fun - GEOCACHING!!!

I flew to Finland today (hi from Helsinki) in preparation for some training that I have to deliver tomorrow. After getting here I sat in my hotel for 3 or 4 hours and did some work before heading out side with my GPS receiver to go looking for little buried boxes - and I found 'em! In 90min I managed to find 4 that were located within an 800m radius of my hotel (I had downloaded the co-ordinates in the weekend). :)

Sure beats sitting in your hotel room watching crappy TV. :)

Tschüß,
Brushy.

PS: You can now see our Geocaching stats, from the 2 sites that we are registered on, on the top-right of this blog page.

Womit beschäftigen wir uns?

So, just what have we been up to lately? It has been a hell of a long time since we talked to you the last time.

1. Geocaching
Geocaching is a modern form of a treasure hunt (yar, me hearties!) using a GPS receiver to guide you to your destination. Basically someone hides a container at a particular location with a log book and some little trinkets to exchange. Then the log the cache at one of the many websites from which "normal" people like you and me can download them and go searching for the "treasure". The caches can either be single stage (go straight to the final location), or multi-stage caches where you may have to solve riddles or find clues in order to calculate the GPS co-ordinates for the next location and so on. So far we have tried to find 3 caches, with the following results:

Cache 1 - didn't find the damn thing, but Bel brought about 10 ticks home with her.
Cache 2 - found it, and I brought one tick home with me.
Cache 3 - half-way through a 10 Stage cache, but haven't found Stage number 5 yet. This one is a riddle cache based on fairytales from the Brothers Grimm (at each location you find a picture of a fairy tale, and based on a list of quotes from fairy tales you find out the GPS co-ordinates of the next location).

After trying this out the first time with a borrowed GPS receiver, we decided that we enjoyed in and bought ourselves one so that we could do it more often. This is the one that we have - the Garmin Colorado 300 (just in case you care):Yes, it's very nerdy, but no, I don't care - you can't knock it until you've tried it. :)

2. Work and Residence permits
Yes, that time of year came around again - the time of year when we sacrifice ourselves to the bureaucratic gods at the immigration department. For Bel it was a relatively pleasant affair, given that she had an appointment and a nice person taking care of her case.
For me it was hell, as I didn't get the approval for mine until 1 week before my current one was due to run out. I was informed of this via a postcard on the Thursday, and I was requested to present myself (read into it what you will) at the immigration department before the following Thursday. Now, that was going to be impossible, given that they are closed on Fridays and on the weekend, and that I was going to be in Sweden from Monday through Thursday of the following week. I tried to call my Sachbearbeiterin about it on the Friday, but of course you can never get on to these people when you need them...
So I eventually managed to get on to this chick on Tuesday of the following week, calling her from Helsinki. I explained the situation and got a "well if you are in Sweden, then there is nothing that we can do about it, and I guess if will just have to wait until you are back". I should have known from the tone of the voice that this didn't bode well...
So on the Monday of the following week - 4 days after my permits had expired - I turn up at immigration 1.5 hrs early (6am) to enter my name onto the list, like we had to do in the past, only to find out that the system had changed and numbers would be given out by a machine 30min before the office opened - that is, in 1hr time. Oh goodie...
1 hour later I get my number (the first one - obviously) and wait the 30min until they open, only to then discover that my chick was 20min late for work without informing anyone. Grrr.
Then I finally get called, after all the other people who turned up later than me but had names that are processed by competent people, and proceed to sit through one hell of a telling off by Little Miss Grumpy-britches. Apparently I should have come past and picked up an temporary extension for my permits if I wasn't going to be around when they expired - even though the new ones had been approved. WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE IF SHE HAD HAVE MENTIONED THIS AT ANY POINT IN TIME IN THE PAST! BUT NO!, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN TOO DAMN EASY, NOW WOULDN'T IT?!?!?!Anyway lange Rede, kurzer Sinn (to make a long story short) - I finally got my new permits - although only for 1 year due to some bureaucratic bullshit instead of the 2 years that we applied for (and that Bel got) - and one hell of a reaming from devil woman for my troubles. Gotta love it. :)

Tschüß,
Brushy.

Before D&D came W&W...

A few weeks before heading Down Under for Dad and Diane's wedding, we headed down south to Schwarzwald (the Black Forest) for Wiebke and Wolfgang's church wedding. You may ask yourself why I said "church wedding", and the answer is this: Germans get "officially" married at a standesamtliche Trauung (Civil Registry wedding) - after this they are concidered "married". If the couple are members of a church, then they usually choose to get married in a kirchliche Trauung (Church wedding) either on the same day, or sometime later. In this case it was roughly six months after W&W's wedding at the town hall, and this time Bel got to play Bridesmaid for the day (and was kinda pretty too).

After the service, we all headed off to the reception venue (just up the road) for coffee and cake before the main meal. At this point in time, I took the opportunity to take on a real Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest cake) - it beat me down, and it beat me down bad! These guys really don't hold back on the cherry liquor when making black forest cake, as well as not holding back on the thick layers of cream and cake that make up this monstrosity. It was AWESOME!!!

After the cake, and a bit of tummy pain, it was inside to an awesome 4 course dinner in the restaurant run by Wolfgang's auntie. My favourite dish was the "Indian wedding curry soup with lentils". I have never heard of this before - and it could be that they just invented it - but it was so delicious that I would have gladly had a second or even third helping, if it had have been on offer.

After the meal was finished, the evening kicked on to the giving of presents. This is another part of the day that is completely different to Aussie weddings. Here, groups of people organise themselves ahead of time and come up with elaborate group gifts. These are then presented to the couple in the form of challenges, games, or little plays or poems that they have written to go along with the gift.
One example of such a challenge was taking a tree trunk, boaring holes in it, and filling them up with 2€ coins. The holes were then plugged and glued, and the bridal couple had to chisel them open to get all the money back out.
Another example was a group that was sponsoring a massive BBQ for the bridal pair, but in order to win the various components that would make up the BBQ, the bridal pair had to try and guess the answers to questions that they hadn't seen. How does that work? The statements (eg. BMW drivers) were written on cards and carried through the audience. All of those people that matched the statement had to stand up, and the bridal pair had to try and guess what was on the card based on who was standing. This got kinda interesting when the cards progressed towards "Who has a belly button piercing" or "Who is wearing a G-string". :)

Another way that the weddings differentiate themselves from ours is that the bridal pair has to stay at the reception until the last guest has left. There is no bailing early, or no setting an end time like we do (usually midnight in Australia). No, poor W&W walked across to their hotel as the sun was coming up after kicking the last guest out at 5:30am! They asked themselves more than once that day why they had bothered to book an expensive suite at the hotel across the road. :)

Anyway, we had an awesome time, and were really happy that we got to share in this wonderful occasion with Wiebke and Wolfgang. We wish them all the best and that they continue to feel the joy, happiness, and love for one another that was written on their faces on their wedding day for the rest of their lives.

The cake that broke the Brushy

Tschüß,
Brushy

Things that I got in Australia...

Here is a list of things that I got in Australia:

1. A new camera lens which we used at the wedding (Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 with VR);
2. A ripper discount on said camera lens (at Croydon Camera House);
3. 2 step-brothers, 1 step-sister, and 1 step-mother;
   
4. A new found respect for low power cars (who needs a V8 when you are limited to 100km/h??);
5. A dose of homesickness and a desire not to return to Germany;
6. Pneumonia from my brother (night sweats followed by night shivers - still coughing);
7. Looked after by pretty much everyone when I was sick (big thanks to Gwenda and my Mum); and finally
8. Back on the plane to go home (most of which I slept through - Pneumonia isn't so bad after all).

See you all again at Christmas, and let's see if we can find something to top Pneumonia - maybe the Plague?

Tschüß,
Brushy.

D&D's Day Down Under

A few weeks ago, Bel and I boarded the first of three flights back to Australia for a wedding - and a very special wedding at that. My Dad was getting married, and we weren't going to miss it for the world.

I don't think that I need to say much about the wedding, other than that it was beautiful and moving, and we were so happy that we were there to share the day with close friends and family.

So here are the photos of the beautiful side of the event:

Son, Daughter, Father, Son	B1 & B2 - such posers
Dad & Daughter do the lapel flower pinning thing	Water restrictions - gotta pay extra for water
What are they waiting for?	Dad & Daughter waiting patiently
THAT's what we've all be waiting for (for a few years)	Making the whole thing legal
The happy couple...	...dancing the night away

A random flower that I found pretty

The bouquet

And now those of the not so beautiful side:

Ah Nelson - such a picture of beauty	Is that Damo or Paul McDermot?
Who is that dashing fellow?	Oopsie forgot to do her face-ups this morning

On behalf of Bel and I, I just want to say thanks to Dad & Diane for inviting us to share in this special occasion. It was great to be a part of it, and I hope that you both find the happiness, joy, and comfort in your lives together that you both deserve.

PS: Nice work on having Fairy Bread at the reception. :)


Love,
Bj (on behalf of B2).

Things you may or may not know

1. I had a wisdom tooth out a week ago. Didn't hurt too much, and was done in the dentist's chair in the practice with a few needles (I prefer complete anethesia, but oh well).
2. There is German in the opening credits of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It only appears for a few frames at a time, but if you know what to look for, you will see it.
3. You can tell the difference between "Mehrwegflaschen" (multiple use bottles for recycling) and "Einwegflaschen" (single use bottles) by that little ring that is around the bottom of the bottle lid. If it stays stuck on the bottle when you take the lid off, then it is an Einwegflasche. If it stays stuck to the lid, then it is a Mehrwegflasche. This is because it is then easier to screw a new bottle top onto the bottle after it being cleaned.
4. We're a-comin'-home to visit tomorrow. Flying via Dubai and will be landing at 00:30 on Saturday morning.

See ya soon!

Tschüß,
Brushy

The things visitors make us see...

While Bel was in the Philippines on some world peace, stop hunger, or related initiative, I was stuck at home getting a feel for what it must be like when I go away - dead bloody boring. Luckily some friends from Aus decided to show up in Germany and help kill off the boredom.

Chis and Bec dropped in from the UK on the same weekend that Matt and Mel showed up from France for a two week stay in Schwarzwald (the Black Forest). So on Saturday morning we dragged ourselves out of bed, got into the car, and drove down to Ettlingen to catch up with them and head to Burg Hohenzollern for a bit of castle action - the results of which can be seen on Matty's blog. Here are some of my pics.

The following Friday I had a customer visit fall through, so I piled myself back into the car again, and drove back down to Ettlingen for a bit of a photo expedition with Matt to the highest waterfall in Germany. Given that Germany isn't particularly mountainous, this probably isn't such a big claim, but was still fun to take some pics of. Thanks for the tips Matt - though your shots still turned out better in the end (though most of the credit goes to the mullet).

And just last weekend we had Naomi (one of Bel's sister's friends) and her boyfriend drop in for a few days on their whirlwind European tour. I used this as an excuse to get us down to Rothenburg ob der Tauber - a walled city on the Romantic Road in Germany.

Anyway - to all of those who visited in the last few weeks, a big thank you. It is great having people come to stay, as it helps get us out of the house and seeing a bit more of Germany. Not only that, but it's great to see you guys when you manage the long hop across the big pond.

Tschüß,
'Brushy.