On my first day Blair showed me Bethells beach. It was a wonderful beach but windy. And it is similar to the beach where “The Piano” was made. Interesing is the black sand almost like ash. Somebody told me that on the west coast of NZ the beaches have these black sand and on the eastern side white sand. Later we visited Blairs brother and sister and there kids – four boys.

This is my new hometown: Auckland. The reason for coming here is simple – I will do a foreign semester at the University of Auckland. I am enrolled to study New Zealand film.
I’m so happy to finally be here. The whole trip from Berlin – Frankfurt – Dubai – Melbourne – Auckland took me about 35 hours. Because of the time shift and some breaks in Dubai and Melbourne I started traveling at the 19th of February and arrived at the 21th of February…really weird. I was picked up by a friend of mine – Blair. I was pretty happy when arrived and I was sitting in the car.
While having a stop-over in Melbourne I met Claudia another German girl at the airport bathroom. She is planing to do three weeks of vacation over here. When we arrived at Auckland airport Blair was a real gentleman and first we brought Claudia to her friends place and then we went to his parents home in Henderson, an Auckland suburb. Auckland is called the city of sails. It has a big marina and lots of winners of the big sailing cups are originally from here.

When I left it was quite cold outside in Berlin / Germany. My parents house looked like this…

This is my first blog and I will write about my journey to New Zealand. The countdown runs – I will leave good old Germany on next Sunday, 19th of February 2006.