Bern, 29.6
De meeste mensen hebben waarschijnlijk geen enkele associatie bij Bern. Een anonieme stad. Maar Bern is verre van dat. De gebouwen yijn oud, groot en imposant; op elk typisch puntdak bevinden zich tientallen dakkapellen. Sommige gebouwen lijken zo uit een gebroeders Grimm-on acid-verhaal te komen. Misschien komt het doordat ik nog nooit fotos van de oude stad had gezien, dat het daarom zon indruk maakt. Paul Theroux schrijft daarover in Dark Star Safari: dat een deel van de verbazing, verwondering, bewondering, kortom de charme van het reizen, verloren gaat doordat we alles al gezien hebben, voordat we het gezien hebben. Ik besluit nooit meer fotos te bekijken van een plaats die ik ga bezoeken.
Vanavond is de EK finale. Maar ik ben niet geinteresseerd. De zon zakt weg achter de gebouwen terwijl wolken zich samenpakken boven de stad. Alle gebouwen krijgen een soort pasteltint, en ze steken fel af tegen de grijze lucht. Terwijl mensen met bier zich verzamelen voor grote schermen zit ik stoicijns een vieze pizza te eten. Als ik af wil rekenen zwelt opeens het geluid aan, van alle kanten klinkt het gejoel steeds harder, tot een collectief JHOOOHHH door Bern schalt; en op dat exacte moment begint de Grimm-klokkentoren, overigens meer klok dan toren, te luiden. Negen uur. Tien minuten later barst het onweer los.
Grimm on acid. Gone bad.
And so it has, like all things eventually do, come to an end, and we’re back again in The Netherlands, after being on the run for more than five months. Though not quite back were we started. How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back. There are some thi… Oh wait, that’s from another story.
Na zondag op de carmarket de auto verkocht te hebben zijn we naar Whangarei vertrokken, om nogmaals te duiken zodat ik eindelijk die verrekte certificatie heb zodat ik overal kan duiken. Het duiken was leuk maar het zicht was bar slecht (10m), en vandaag is alweer de laatste volledige dag in Nieuw Zeeland. De auto is net opgehaald door de koper, de tas is gepakt (oke, half dan) en morgen zullen we nog wat rondsukkellen alvorens de shuttle naar het vliegveld te nemen. Eenmaal aangekomen op het vliegveld zullen we inchecken, boarden en als het goed is om 23.30 opstijgen. Na 11.37 uur zullen we aankomen in Hong Kong, daar 3.5 uur niks doen en dan KLM vlucht 888 naar Schiphol nemen. De geschatte aankomsttijd is 16.00 uur (ofzo) maar houd teletext pagina zoveel in de gaten als je wilt weten hoe laat precies. Tot over 55 uur (ofzo)!
Selling a Car
As you probably know, we’re selling a car. To do that, you either have to sell it off to a dealer (you won’t get much if you do that), put an ad in a local newspaper (you won’t get many reactions if you do that) or go to a carmarket (bingo). So we went to a carmarket yesterday, right in the middle of Auckland. Strange how a patch of undeveloped, barren land can survive between all the skyscrapers. Oh well. So we were there at the market from 8.30 to 12.30 and all in all we had about two people who were interested. Bugger. So today, we decided to be smart and slash $200 off the price. We drove in and the first one interested was the guy at the entrance giving the directions. We parked, Nienke went for a coffee at one of the numerous stands and before she was back there were already half a dozen people swarming around my precious Corolla. I went for a testdrive with a potential buyer before my cappuccino was even drinkable and the car was sold before I had finished it. Wow.
It was, ofcourse, a much more professional market: a dozen people giving directions in stead of one, coffee stands everywhere and change of ownership facilities on site. Were there were about 25 cars yesterday including vans, there were at least 250 today under $5000 and the same amount over $5000, and there were more buyers than sellers, unlike at the other carmarket. Well, how should I’ve known that that one would be such a waste of time? But I reckon I could have gotten a lot more for it: I bought it for $4300, sold it for $3400. The price was $3800 on Saturday, $3600 today, but I could’ve added instead of slashed $200. Oh well… The dollar’s really strong right now, so that means I’ll get more euro’s for them.
In Auckland
We’ve been in Auckland for a week now, and it’s surprising how much you can do here. We’ve been to a really bad movie (Black Sheep) and up into the Sky Tower (187m in 30 seconds) on Friday, to a carmarket, Geoff (A cousin of Ian’s) and the Stardome Observatory & Planetarium yesterday and today we sold our car and it’s not even noon yet. We’re going to Whangarei today to finish our diving course, which I really dread because it means driving on the motorway a fair bit. Like Geoff says, Europeans really like driving on the motorway because it reminds them of home: all the slow people are in the right lane. It’s Sunday though, so we should be alright, but we’ll have to get back here on Tuesday…
I’ve made some really cool photo’s of & from the Sky Tower by the way, but I’m too lazy to connect my camera for one photo and the others are all a big panorama so I’ll have to stitch those together first. You’ll see it in a few days when I get home. Wow, only four days left now…
You all remember how I bought a car on the South Island four and a half months ago. Well, now it’s time to sell it again, since a car standing in Auckland will do me no good back in Holland. It is compulsory, however, to have a new (no more than 1 month old) Warrant of Fitness (WoF), a check that has to be done every six months, similar to APK in The Netherlands. So we went to a garage so that they could check our car. It was a fail, because:
- The right rear seatbelt was not OK
- The left rear wheelbearing was ‘noisy’
- The light to illuminate the license plate was broken
We wanted a second opinion though, since the seatbelt alone would cost $250. So garage number two. That was a fail as well, because:
- The light to illuminate the license plate was broken
- The handbrake was not strong enough
- The two front tires were worn
That was hardly better than number one, so we decided to do one last check up at garage number three. They also said it failed the WoF check, because:
- The two front tires were worn
- The engine mount was broken (!)
- The rear windscreen wiper was worn
Can you believe this? I don’t know what I find more appalling: the fact that you’re being ripped off and can’t do anything about it (engine mount broken? Come on! “Noisy wheel bearing”? Gimme a break…) or the fact that you can easily pass your WoF check if you shop around long enough: there isn’t one thing wrong with the car all three garages were able to find. Thank you, New Zealand!
Update: We decided to go for garage number two since that sounded the cheapest. It still was about $400 (or 210 euro) so that’s a bit of a setback. Let’s just hope I’ll sell it for a good price…
My last ten days in New Zealand are here. After the dive course we returned to Auckland, survived the Motorway and are now staying on Mt. Eden. I haven’t really written anything about the diving yet even though I was planning to do so; diving really is exhausting and we had to get up at 6.30 every morning. Well, diving is great, it’s fantastic and there’s nothing quite like it. We didn’t jump straight into the ocean, however. We had to work our way to boring theory on the first day and there was a really intensive pool session on Tuesday (lying in a shallow, dirty pool for four hours isn’t fun). Wednesday was more theory but on Thursday we finally went out to the Poor Knights. Thirty minutes by boat, don your wetsuit (a real pain) and hop in. It’s hard to describe how you feel the first time you land on a sandy patch between long strands of kelp, seeing the fish swim by… “Inner Space” doesn’t sound so cheesy anymore all of a sudden.
We were supposed to finish our course on Friday with Open Water dives 3 & 4. Notice the “were supposed to”. While Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were fine, Thursday and Friday were (of course) overcast. And Friday saw some rough seas as well. So rough that even some of the guys from the Navy who were on a ‘Team bonding experience’ got seasick. And I got so seasick that I emptied my stomach in paper bags that are, very eco-friendly, biodegradable. This means that you have about 30 seconds to throw the bag in the rubbish bin after you’ve thrown up before the acidic contents of your stomach burn a way through the bag. Great. I was so shaky after that 30 minute trip I could hardly stand, let alone dive. So yeah, I didn’t get to finish my course. All is fine, however: I get to give it another go next Friday, for free! I could do it earlier but I’m still a bit sick and the weather’s not looking any better than two days ago and it would cost $150 (80 euro) so why not wait a bit? So that’s how we ended up in Auckland today, and we’re returning to Whangarei on Thursday.
