What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Happy New Year! We are back from a fantastic two weeks exploring New Zealand’s South Island. Since there was way too much to put into one blog posting, here are the highlights:

Queen Charlotte Sound

Best Breakfast: We stayed at B&Bs most days, so had our share of delicious breakfasts (organic eggs, homemade bread dripping with New Zealand’s Manuka honey, fresh squeezed juice, great coffee, etc.). Matt, who is never one for chit-chat with strangers first thing in the AM, lists his favorite breakfast as the one provided by the hotel in Christchurch. None. He stopped at Starbucks for a nice big cup of coffee after his run and enjoyed it in the quietude of our room.

Best Hike: Routeburn Track. New Zealand is renowned for its tracks and we spent an hour or two one some almost very day. Routeburn is one of the most famous tracks and we spent a morning walking part of it – crossing rope bridges, raging mountain rivers, seeing waterfalls and gorges and other alpine scenery.

Best Hike Deux: Matt climbed Ben Lomond, a mountain above Queenstown. It is a mile high and involved crossing multiple narrow ridges to reach the apex (where it drops precipitously on both sides). Despite the rigorous climb, he was rewarded with spectacular views of the Southern Alps with Lake Wakatipu shimmering below. At the same time Marlys was enjoying a spectacular view of the inside of her eyelids as she enjoyed a 1.5 hour massage followed by a pedicure.
Best NZ beer: Steinlager for Marlys and Speight’s for Matt. We went on the Speight’s brewery tour in Dunedin (east coast). In the tasting room, Marlys taught everyone the Finnish toast, “Kiipis” which (essentially) means, “cheers!”. The Aussie tourists in the group LOVED this toast because they thought it sounded like “get pissed!”

Speight's Brewery

Best Idiom: “Nerd-tastic”. Matt spent NZ$25 on a guidebook specializing in Lord of the Rings film locations. He thought he was so cool until we happened to see this particular book described in Lonely Planet as the “nerdtastic” book for the type of groupies who live in their parents’ basement and spend a lot of time pretending to be a wizard in an online game. Of course, that’s not to say we still didn’t visit every location we could. We would stop at the site, look at the vista, sigh, turn to each other and say “It certainly is nerdtastic, isn’t it?”

Idiom Runner Up: In New Zealand hiking is called “tramping”. You can imagine the witticisms that engendered over the course of the trip.

Best Seafood (aka Biggest Surprise of the trip): we could also call this category oddest restaurant – Stumper’s. Stumper’s was bar/restaurant in the seaside town called Hokitika where we spend one night (by the way the hotel wins the “worst room” award because the room smelled like “damp mop ala’ creepy basement”). Hokitika, despite the promising location of right on the Tasman Sea, isn’t much of a town and we explored the two main streets within 5 minutes (on foot). Stumper’s was conveniently located across the street from our odiferous hotel; it was one of the few open places (it was New Year’s Day), and by all looks it was hopping with business. We wove our way through a bunch of drunk, scruffy locals lounging outside and ordered the blue cod. As we waited for dinner, we were entertained by one of the locals arguing with his girlfriend, then duking it out with friends about not wanting to get in the car and leave (picture this – girlfriend in back seat, boyfriend standing in open car door - girlfriend tugging boyfriend’s jeans at the waist, friends standing next to guy trying to corral and push him into the back seat). Due to his condition, bobbing and weaving was not a problem. This was eventually resolved when the police showed up and put him in their car for a ride. The surprise? The blue cod was absolutely fantastic – fresh, perfectly prepared, and in two weeks of eating seafood for dinner (every night but one), Matt pronounced it the best of the lot.

Marlborough Wine Country

A Very Aussie Christmas

We had a couple sweltering days last week but on for the 24th and 25th the weather was perfect. We worked Christmas Eve morning and then had a potluck brunch - complete with Kris Kringle and champagne - with colleagues. Then we went to Christmas mass at the oldest Catholic church in Melbourne, St. Francis, which has an unusual and beautiful cedar ceiling. Our first antipodal Christmas was spent with our friends the Alessios at their beach house on the Mornington Peninsula. Christmas eve was a traditional Aussie barbeque with snags (sausages), lamb roast, and some summer salads. Christmas morning we took a walk along the beach where the winds were calm and the sea a clear blue/ green. We walked to the end of Rye Pier (John, Frani, Nita, you’ve all been to this pier) where we spotted a massive stingray and the local seal that regularly suns itself on the pier.

Christmas day was with the extended Alessio clan – 26 in all – feasting on the northern traditional Christmas feast if turkey, pork, and ham, roast potatoes, green beans, etc. The meal was capped with traditional plum pudding – a secret Alessio family recipe. It’s a dark dense boozy collection of stewed fruit, nuts, brandy and cake. Old coins are buried within the pudding, and one coin, a sterling silver florin is good luck. The finder gets to keep the coin and according to tradition will receive a year of good fortune. While neither of us received the buried treasure, we savored the dessert. We returned to Melbourne that evening so we can go to the cricket on the 26th. But given the sun hadn’t set at 9 PM, we went for a ride along the beach where all the families were winding up their family events. As for the cricket today, the Boxing Day Test is one of the most famous matches known for hot sun and an “enthusiastic” crowd. We’ve slapped on the sunscreen and are looking forward to a slow, relaxing day. Tomorrow we head to New Zealand for two weeks so you won’t see an update to the blog until mid-January.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Weekend Weather Comparison

As I sat here working with one eye on the cricket on TV (Australia is batting and leads South Africa in the second innings of the first test by 203 runs, in case you're wondering) I got a St Paul weekend weather report: snow, poor roads, high temps in the teens.

Weather in Melbourne this weekend - sunny and 70s. And now that my work is done, we're going to the pub and enjoy a cold beer in the sun.

But I'd still prefer a white Christmas in MN.

A Day of Thanks

Thanksgiving and all that goes with it - eating turkey, pumpkin pie, and mounds of mashed potatoes - is a uniquely American phenomena (although the Canadians have a similarly named holiday). With Matt in the US for the Thanksgiving and Melbourne embarking on summer – it didn’t really ‘feel’ like Thanksgiving so I thought I’d just let this American holiday slide on by. My dear Aussie friends, Dominique, Maria, and Jen had another idea altogether.

For weeks these three had been conspiring WITH MY MOTHER to put on a surprise, honest-to-goodness Aukee Thanksgiving dinner of turkey with all the trimmings. Family recipes like yams with pecans and marshmallows and rutabaga casserole made their way to a Melbourne table thanks to email, much time to converting family recipes from imperial measurements to metric, and driving to the lone USA store that sells canned pumpkin (another Aussie slang term for you – “in the middle of nowhere” is referred to as “woop woop”).

The clever ruse was an invite to Jen’s for pizza so I wouldn’t have to spend Thanksgiving alone. Sounds good, I thought, all this alone time is torture for my extroversion.

6pm on Thanksgiving night I walked into Jen’s house and was greeted by the giddy looking trio. First they brought me to the dining room, which had a beautiful tablecloth laid with Jen’s finest china, wineglasses, and full silverware. There were hand-made Thanksgiving decorations on the table - felt turkeys. Wow! What a beautiful table, I said, so much trouble to go to for a pizza dinner. Well, not quite pizza. They brought me into the kitchen, opened the oven door to produce a turkey and multiple covered dishes of family favorites. I was (in another apt used Aussie term) gobsmacked. "Happy Thanksgiving!!!" they chimed.

Eight of us feasted on a delicious meal. It will always be one of my most cherished Thanksgiving memories. One that closed with a full stomach and a very full heart.

Marlys Dom Maria Jen

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving from warm and sunny Melbourne!!

Australian Political Primer

Because today is Election Day in the US we thought we’d give you a quick glimpse into Australia politics/ election process.

An overview: Australia is a constitutional monarchy (Queen Elizabeth II) and a parliamentary democracy.

Australian Constitution: 1901, established a federal system of government where powers are distributed between national and state levels of government.

Head of Government: Australia has a Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. Who reminds us of Martin from"The Simpsons". They even look a bit alike.

The legislature: Commonwealth Parliament. The Parliament is comprised of the Queen, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. The Queen is represented by the Governor-General, who in practice exercises little or no power over the Parliament. The GG serves “at the Queen’s pleasure” without a specified term (although it’s usually 5 years). This past September, for the first time ever, the queen appointed a female GG, Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce.

Political Parties: Australia has a number of recognized parties – Labour, Liberal, National, Democrats, Greens, and One Nation. While you’ve got your fringe parties – i.e., One Nation which runs a populist, anti-immigration platform - it is basically a two-party system. The two main ones are:
Labour party (the party of the left)
Liberal party (which…just to make it confusing to US expats…is the conservative party)


Voting: Voting is compulsory in Australia. Every Australian citizen (18 years or older) is legally compelled to vote. If you do not vote and do not have a valid and sufficient reason for failing to vote, a penalty is imposed. I suspect there’s a lot of money and time saved due to no “get out” or “rock the” vote campaigns.


Finally: One of the national TV stations ran an election poll asking Australians which candidate they would vote for in the US election. The result?
Obama 83%
McCain 17%

10 things we learned on our trip to New Caledonia

1. Air Calin (the national airline) offers free liquor on their flights. It’s only a 2.5 hour flight from Sydney to the New Caledonia capital of Noumea, but, in addition to a nice meal, they give you an appertif, wine for the meal, and then the flight attendants walk around with a brandy bottle. Très French. Most certainly not très avion américain!

2. It rains during the dry season. October is the driest month of the year and prized for its sunny weather. But we arrived in a torrential downpour - we couldn’t see 100 yards in front of us – and it remained cloudy with occasional rain the entire time we were there. The sun only broke through on our last day. But we’ll say this for New Caledonia – it was a fantastic trip and never once did it feel like the weather got in the way of a good time.

3. French Colonialism has its upsides. Here we were on a tropical island and every morning we could have wonderful coffee, breads, perfect buttery croissants. All our dinners were amazing – especially a Vietnamese meal prepared by a family that left Vietnam with the French in the 50s. Best of all, because it’s a French dependency plenty of vin rouge and vin blanc is available and duty free from the motherland.

4. The natives call it Kanakyland of the Kanaks. OK, technically we learned that from an informational placard in the botanical gardens in Melbourne, but it was so odd we had to get the word out.

5. Theft is apparently not a concern. When we got to our hotel, we locked our “valuables” (i.e, about A$50 and our blessedly inoperable blackberries) in the room safe and set our secret code. When we tried to open it the next day it wouldn’t budge. After numerous tries, we called the front desk.

• Marlys: “Our code won’t work and we can’t open our safe.”
• Pleasant French-accented receptionist: “Just to enter 0000.”
• Marlys: “Will that work?”
• Receptionist: “All ze safes in ze ‘otel open to 0000. Voila!”
• Marlys: “Ahhh. The old ‘un-safe’ safe!”
• Receptionist: “Pardonnez-moi?”

6. Over 1 million US servicemen came through during WWII. We learned this at the small but fascinating Maritime Museum in Noumea. Because it was close to Australia but sufficiently far from Japanese conquests, New Caledonia became a massive staging area for the Pacific War and the country enjoyed an economic renaissance on the back of Uncle Sam's taxpayers. The legacy is a tremendous amount of good will for Americans and interesting place names. For instance, there is a suburb of Noumea called “Motor Pool”.

7. It’s surrounded by the world’s 2nd largest reef, making it the largest lagoon in the world. This means superb diving: we spent a day checking out the reef life. Lots of sharks, turtles, barracuda, and plenty of colorful fish.

8. It’s very multi-cultural. The dive company owner/operators were French (him) and Japanese (her). He was a former French Foreign Legionnaire. They have two kids: he talks to them in French, she in Japanese, and they talk to each other in English.

9. Obama mania is a global phenomena. They get few American tourists (mainly French, Australian and Japanese) and we never heard an American accent while we were there. When people learned we were Yanks they immediately wanted to tell us how much they hoped Obama would be elected and ask us if it was true, really true, that such a wonderful thing could happen. “He’s a new Kennedy” they’d say – presumably meaning the Camelot Kennedy, not the Chappaquiddick one.

10. We want to go back.