Lord of the Sweets

I'm a chocoholic. I could eat a bar of chocolate in one sitting, no matter what it's size is. Unfortunately, New Zealand is not as vegan-friendly as Austria and it's difficult to feed your cruelty-free sweet tooth here. The only candy I had for my first two weeks here was half a sleeve of Oreos. But this weekend, I got to indulge into chocolate-heaven. My culinary weekend started out on Friday night. Our volunteer-group went to the Night Market in Cuba Street, a must-see for every tourist. There are many stands with delicious smelling foods. Most of them, of course, meat or dairy products. Then I spottet them: Two girls selling raw vegan treats. I bought a lovely brownie and a freshly squeezed Orange, apple, cinnamon and ginger juice from a stand nearby. Heaven. Some stands sold non-edible things like art and pretty postcards as well. To be honest, at markets like this, I don't pay much attention to the overpriced and unnecessary decorative junk, whether it's a Christmas market or our spring fair. Come on, there's food a few meters away, let's look at that! Having said this, I got excited over one other store in the street: A second-hand bookstore with a huge queer section. It doesn't get more "Me" than that.

On Saturday, I went into town again to visit the Weta Workshop. On the way, I stopped in Newtown to check out a place I passed by many times with the bus. The large mural is hard to miss, but I hadn't gone there yet.

And just - wow. The place is the definition of quirky. They have food, one food, take it or leave it. It's also quite affordable, Ten NZD for a large meal, eight for a small one. The food was better than it looked, a little spicy, and the coffee was good.



But the food was not the interesting part of the experience. The place just looks like someone's living room with comfy chairs and a photography studio.

Overall, odd and positively strange premise, I'd devinately go there again.
I was feeling like dessert, and luckily, Hipster-Newtown has places that sell vegan cakes, for example Pranah.

From the logo on the outside, I'd have guessed it's named Planah or Pvanah, but the Internet says it's spelled that way, whatever

I had a raspberry brownie, a chocolate chip cookie, and a Choconut smoothie. It was more like a milkshake: Bananas, cocoa, peanut butter, and soymilk. The cake was good, not as good as what I usually make, but still nice. The smoothie was awesome.

There was some time left until I had to jump on the bus again to go to Te Aro, so I just walked around. A farmer's market took place, and I found the biggest Kumara (Sweet Potato) ever, and some actually ripe bananas. I'd have loved to buy some fruit if I wasn't so full and had a plate or knive with me. A nearby grocery store sold overripe bananas by the bucket, I wish I had a blender with me here.

Then I went to the Weta-Tour, and in the evening to the night Market again. At the Weta Workshop tour, no pictures were permitted, but I got to look at a bunch of original film props, like Sauron's armor and a Rifle from the movie District 9. I highly recommend doing the workshop tour as well to anyone visiting Wellington. For me as a film geek, it was especially cool.

These trolls guard the entrance to the Weta Cave

It was sunny for most of the time - on days like these, Wellington is awesome.
The following Sunday, I went on a Lord of the Rings-Tour where you go to some of the places where they filmed the movies, it was pretty cool to stand where they stood.

I cut the footage of the Weta cave and the LOTR tour into a video. This time I'm legally using music with the permission of the band Syca. Thanks for letting me use your beautiful song "The Spirit of Bossa Nova", which is the acoustic version of "Spirit Flows" from the album Seven. I love them, so please check them out, and maybe like them on Facebook

Seal Appeal

We had two very easy workdays this week. Yesterday, we went to Zealandia again and today we weeded a area at the beach. The great thing about that: Just a short walk away, some seals are usually hanging out.

The gate to the seals

Cloudy sky, but we stayed dry

The weather wasn't perfect, yet the pictures I took on our little post-planting-walk today turned out neat. Some of them are lightly edited to bring out the best in them.

Unplanned Planting

Summed up in one picture, the weekend was

Rainy, foggy, wet and cold. Not really the weather to go outside or make a Lord of the Rings tour. or do anything else outside. We basically just relaxed in the warm and cozy Truby King House.

On Saturday evening, we went to a Pub to watch the Rugby game versus South Africa.

Julia, Jakob, Martin, Kat, Tina and Gabi at Murphy's Irish Bar, panorama taken by Johannes

The beer was good, but definately not cheap. I kind of missed Prague, where everyone in our group could get a pint for the price of one here. Oh, Cheap Czechia...
New Zealand won by a landslide, and so the atmosphere in the venue was great. To be honest, I don't care about any kind of sport and never watch football or anything on TV, not even during the Olympics. But it's nice to be able to cheer for a country that actually has chances of winning, unlike our football team.

On Monday, we weeded and planted again. We have planted trees almost every day. I don't mind it, but we all were excited that we would do something else on Tuesday.

These flaxes are guarded against wind, dogs, and people

All the wild turnips we pulled out. You could also eat them.

Today's agenda was to free some trees from grass. No planting, for once. We walked up to the hillside we were supposed to work on. But there...*cue dramatic music* a surprise waited for us. 400 trees. That nobody knew about. A quick call to the office by our team leader revealed that we were indeed planting trees today, again. 

Some local students were coming to help us with the planting, which was nice. Still, digging holes on the same hill as 30 young teen boys reassured my decision to never become a teacher.

Wellington.. We actually had some sun today. As well as rain, of course

Carry plants up the hill, dig a hole in the steep slope, hit a rock, dig somewhere else, plant the tree, walk down the hill. 

Exhausting!

Break Time!

A dreaded rainy day

I had a terrible nightmare this week. Some ballots didn't work and Austrias presidential election got postponed and I had to figure out how to vote now that I am abroad with no real, consistant adress I could request the new ballot to. But something that ludicrous like failing glue strips would never happen in a respectable country like Austria... right? Honestly, how often can a country mess up an election for a merely representative position that hardly wields any real power? At least the faulty glue was (probably) German. OUR glue would never do that...

Sorry for that little rant, I never claimed this blog would not get a little political. Just don't let other countries' politicians hear about that whole fiasco, they might get ideas. #gluegate #Bundespräsidentenwiederholungswahlverschiebung 

Three other volunteers arrived today. One German, one French, and one Austrian (yay!!). Now I won't be the only one telling the people here that Austria is not, in fact, part of Germany. We tried that once, and it didn't work out too well.

Us four were on our own at night all week. We managed to make food and not die, which is pretty adult I think. Now we are seven, and it's getting a bit crowded here. The good thing is that more people working means less work for each person.

I finished my first week of volunteer work. My muscles are a bit sore, I can definately feel that my shoulders aren't used to physical labour. Maybe I will come home looking super buff! We mainly planted trees this week. The weather was pretty bad, otherwise I would have taken more pictures, but I didn't want to ruin your bright green Middlearth-Image of New Zealand. And you can look at a rainy, grey sky anytime. As soon as we have a bit more sunshine, I'll have my camera on hand, I promise! Unfortunately, this won't be next week, at least not according to the forecast.

So monday through wednesday, we planted trees. It's not too bad, as long as long as the soil is not too hard, or has little rocks in it. Or you are planting on a steep slope. That's muddy and slippery. The weather was cold and windy and cloudy, but at least it didn't rain.

On thursday, we went to Zealandia, a ecosanctuary trying to preserve native flora and fauna. It's a beautiful place, it almost looks like the real jungle! It actually was kind of sunny that day and I took some pictures of the birds. We cut down trees that were too close to the perimeter fence. Even though we went there for work and not sightseeing, we got to look around a bit. And having a person who worked there with us ment that someone could tell us about the plants, birds, and other animals we saw and point them out to us.

The very rare Takahē

The Takahē is the largest living member of the rail family and the biggest flightless bird to survive in New Zealand. They were thought to be  extinct until they were rediscovered in 1948 in a remote Fiordland valley. Their current population is only about 290. We saw this one bird in the sanctuary, and it wasn't very shy! The birds there are definately used to people. Takahē are quite big, fat and not very graceful looking things. My first thought was that they kind of look as if I tried to make a bird out of clay - misproportioned and round with a far too big beak. But then it fluffed up it's feathers and looked like the softest down pillow. I think that bird was doing it on purpose, to impress the visitors - what a poser!

Kakariki

"Kakariki" means small green parrot in the language of the Maori, and that's pretty accurate. This one has been fed to attract it to that branch where everyone could see it.

This is some kind of Shag

We also saw several Tuataras and a Weta, but I couldn't take a decent picture of them since they are so small and camouflaged.

Today, it was time to plant trees again. It started raining halfway through the day, which wasn't nice. We had to plant trees next to a river. Knowing how clumsy I am, I was constantly worried I might slip on the muddy slope right next to it and take a involuntary bath. While I slipped many times, especially with a tray of plants or a trashbag in my hands, I didn't fall in, luckily. 

Needless to say, I was glad to come back to the house, where it's warm and dry and I could get rid of the messy clothes.

Julia & Johannes - soaked and muddy