Update from Wellington

Again, it has been too long since I last posted something. Sorry. I will try to get on here more frequently but we seem to be rather busy lately.

The rest of my trip to Europe was good. I really enjoyed Vienna, lots of cafes and good places to eat and the streets seemed full of people all of the time, which I kind of like, it makes it feel vibrant I guess. Romania was, well ..... interesting. First off the driving was surprisingly awful, and I expected it to be pretty bad. During my first hour (of a 3 hour drive to the black seas coast) I saw an 18 wheeler truck backing up in the wrong direction on the highway, past several uncontrolled highway intersections (no stop signs for anyone, so people try to cross the highway in front of the cars driving at highway speeds, which was >130 km/h) in which a digger tried to cross in front of us (I am glad that my driver knew what he was doing!!), and a horse and buggy driving on the highway, not to mention the limited use of seatbelts, ridiculous speeds and impatience.

I spent two days on the black sea coast. One day I traveled to an OMV offshore facility and the other day I just visited the main onshore office. The drive up to the heliport was like a scene from a horror movie, where the people are driving up to what looks like an abandoned school or something, a long, deteriorating road with long yellow grass and very few trees, a sign archway that is falling apart so you no longer know what it was. As we drove up this road I started to get nervous since I was going to have to fly in a helicopter from this place, we passed an army base being patrolled by armed guards and then pulled into the parking lot, which was a field (this really didn't help build my confidence) and beside it were old broken down helicopters. Luckily, as we walked out of the parking lot I looked up to see a brand new building, phew. The trip offshore ended up being perfectly fine.

I also spent a few days in Bucharest. It is hard to explain what it was like. I guess in the early 1900s it was called the "Paris of the East", and some of the old buildings from that time are still there, however, many have been left empty and without repair and are now falling down. Then, during the communist reign, the leader decided to build tons of concrete apartment buildings, demolishing many of the old Parisian style buildings. Now, since the fall of the communists there has been some slow rebuilding going on. So, as you walk down the main city streets you see restored Parisian style buildings, then big concrete apartment block, then a building falling down. Overall, Romania was a nice country to visit but I am not sure I would do it on my own again.

Ted returned from field work just a few days after I got back from Europe. Since then we have basically just stayed around Wellington, together! It has been nice to spend some time in our place together. We have spent most of our time either riding our bikes or trying to get our garden fixed up, it hadn't been weeded for over 4 months so it needed lots of work. Next time I will put up some pictures of the garden.

Time for bed, hopefully you are not totally snowed in and freezing (it was 20 C here today!).