Oops- an Aussie beach shot crept in there

Just was refreshing my memory of what I wrote on the blog (and wishing I was away elsewhere of course) and I have realised that I put an AUSTRALIAN BEACH shot in that last post. The picture of Sybilla (4th one down) on the beach, sitting down and looking away (bright sun) is actually Mornington - not Thailand. 

I don't think such a clean beach exists on Koh Samui!

The kids are all back at school now and have settled in well. I'm still sorting through the contents of our shed (all our stuff got packed in there before we left).

Bangkok-home

So this could be the last post!

The flight was pretty uneventful in that the kids just watched loads of movies as they were used to staying up so late. Unfortunately, it meant that they were falling asleep as we were landing in Bangkok and then we had to drag them through the kilometres of hallway at Bangkok airport to get to the domestic terminal to get our connecting flight to Koh Samui. Not to be recommended - we only just got there in time (we had about 1.5 hours between landing and taking off again) and the kids were wild and woolly by then. They crashed on the Koh Samui flight for an hour and then we had to wake them up again and then the rooms weren't reaady when we arrived as it was so early (9.30am) to check in etc - we had to wait about 30 minutes in the cafe with our eyes hanging out...

Koh Samui was lovely, lovely hotel (Thongtakien Resort) and great beach. The kids had a swim in the pool and then we all slept. I think we woke the kids up around 3.30pm so they didn't get too disorientated with time/jet lag etc.  We had dinner out on the beach - beautiful, yummy Thai food. But the kids and Murray drank some shitty water I think at Bangkok airport and by 3am, Saul and Valli were knocking on our door, complaining of feeling sick and then had vomits for the next 4 hours - quite awful really given the trip exhaustion. Then Murray was off during the next day. Sybilla and I were fine luckily. And the boys were all ok with impaired apetites though by the day after. 

So we had a few nice beach/pool days and partook of the massage (I did), pedicure (me and Sybs had her toe nails done) and hair braiding (Sybs got 12 done and Valli had his tail done)  that was on offer at the beach. Lovely and on the Friday, ventured off Elephant treking, saw how they train monkeys to pick coconuts, swam under a waterfall, and checked out the ghoulish Mummified Monk (only in Thailand!). On the Saturday, we flew back to Bangkok where we wandered around Pratunam market, giant shopping centres and smoggy streets. We had a lovely dinner with Yui that night (Peking duck and other delights) and then we flew out Sunday night after another day of swimming pool at the hotel and shopping except that we didn't dare buy anything as we were so heavily packed! 

So it was heavenly to walk out of Melbourne airport two weeks ago. We managed to get all Murray's Thames river bones and old ferryman pipes through Customs (all 30kg of stuff he collected in London and Berlin we were allowed to keep amazingly!). My nephews and parents were there to meet us. The house was fine, the cats were fine and so far, so good.  

Murray is off this week to see his parents in Perth. We're not sure what the long term prognosis is for Alex other than be happy that he is still there each day. I will take the kids to Anglesea one night for some more beach time before the kids start school next week. I will start applying for jobs soon and we will be well into 2009 before long.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this. It was meant to be Sybilla writing but motivation, computer free time and awake time never seemed to coincide for her so it's ended up being me, sporadically sitting down and sorting through the pics - we now have over 2400 on the computer (pity all those who have come to visit us so far). It's been good to get everyone's feedback as I thought it was only our parents reading and looking (hence the excess of photos!).

And yes, I do recommend taking your children away for such a long stretch - it is do-able and they do adapt and enjoy it (with some whining and pining for friends of course) and it is GREAT for you - it's been very good for us and I'm sure we will see some great art from Murray in due course... he's done a huge amount of groundwork and preparation and had breakthroughs and epiphanous moments in the last six months, which should yield results very soon!

  

Athens- Bangkok - home

So Olga hadn't checked out the train for me between Thessaloniki and Athens and of course, we should have booked!  We got a bus instead which was fine but I would have preferred the train and got to Athens about 7.30pm. It was great to get back to Athens and the hotel we were in this time (no hardcore porn on the TV as soon as you switch it on as per our hotel in July) was fantastic - right next to Monstiraki metro and in the middle of Plaka, views up to the Acropolis from our room and a great old elevator - the Hotel Cecil - I highly recommend it.  We went off to the Benaki Museum the next day after looking around the flea market - some great old furniture and STUFF and of course, lots of crap. We returned the National Garden where there is a great kids playground and a nice cafe. Again the kids really enjoyed returning to somewhere familiar although it was more pleasant in mild winter sun than blazing July heat. Then we walked all the way back to the hotel, stopping for hot chocolates when we got a bit lost to recoup our energy. I love Athens.  There was no immediate trace of the Athens riots although I think they were still fixing some hotel windows etc but we did have an exciting moment whilst sitting in the square next to Monstiraki Metro. About 30 people in black balaclavas suddenly ran through the square firing cap guns and throwing out leaflets and whooping before running off again. Everyone jumped and some panicked a bit, grabbing kids and charging up the road away from the square incase it was real gunfire. Of course, Murray was relaxed and just walked off but I did grab Sybilla and Valli and charge around the other side of a building we were sitting outside of just in case! 

The next day, we rushed around and bought some beautiful Greek plates to take home (yet to be hung) and a present for our friend in Thailand, Yui. We also visited the Athens Central Market - full of lambs, pigs, wild boar, poultry, snails, fish etc olives etc  which the kids loved. Then we rushed back to the hotel to grab our suitcases and get out to the airport. Our plane left at 4pm. I am going to post our luggage shot - by the time we left, we had 4 suitcases (started with 2 and 5 hand luggage - one each) plus 6 backpack/hand luggage and each of those suitcases weighed about 25-30 kilos. Murray and I pulled two each as well as our backpacks, handbags and cajoled the children about 300m to the train station (luckily down hill), through the station to the train to get there. The train, direct to the airport, took about 45 minutes - fantastic - with luggage racks etc.   We made it!

Return to Ptolemaida

How lovely it was to get to Olga's on Christmas Eve. It was really great for the kids to go back to somewhere they had been and to see kids that they had already bonded with.  Kosta had scored a big turkey from one of his workers which Olga and I cooked the next day - poached in stock and then roasted to crisp the outside - excellent. We had Christmas lunch at Kosta's parents at Foufas, the village where we went to that lovely festival in July and then went on to his aunt's for coffee and liqueurs. It was a really nice day. I did miss Mum's Christmas pudding, the brandy butter etc (and the oysters) but only a little bit....

Then on Boxing Day it started snowing! How excited were we - a white Christmas.  We decided to drive up to a little village - Agios Athanassios for lunch and a play in the snow. Everyone else in that neck of the woods also decided to do that so it was quite crowded up there. We had a great lunch (more Greek food of course) before going off walking around the village. And it was still snowing! We had coffee somewhere else, a snow fight as the snow was too powdery to build a snowman and fun trying to walk around on the slippery streets. Hmm - actually I was a bit worried about driving back if the roads were this slippery as we had 'all weather tyres' and no snow chains which the hire company assured me were fine for 'all weather' (NOT!!!).  As we returned to the car, I saw another car's wheels spinning as they tried to go up the hill to turn around. Of course, our tyres were not much better and combined with everyone leaving at the same time and more cars not having the right tyres, we spent at least 30 minutes going about 1km. It was pretty bad and by now, dark and the car was registering the outside temperature as about -2 degrees. Not good.  Of course, once we got past the really slow cars (not that we were going much faster) and past some of the people who decided to stop and put on snow chains (I don't know why they didn't put them on before leaving...) , we went for a slide. I passed Olga and Kosta's car on the wrong side of the road and slid around the next bend, hoping that no-one was coming up the hill, had a quick (very quick?!) discussion with Murray about what to do to sto and we agreed to drive into the right hand embankment rather than run off the road to the left, down hill. Quite scary and I have to say my heart was beating very fast.... The car was fine, we were all fine but Murray thought he would drive at that point. Good. But of course as soon as he set off, we went into another slide which felt much worse - not the least because there were more people parked on teh side of the road chatting with the door wide open on the road side plus a car coming towards us. All we could do was to beep madly and somehow, Murray managed to steer between the two cars without hitting either and stop - after doing 90 degree turn - before we went over the road edge down the hill. 'Quick everyone out' as I had visions of some one else hitting us - which didn't happen. We realised that we could go  further in that car! We flung the kids into Olga and Kosta's car and about 12 men all shrieking instructions in Greek and I turned the car (with Murray driving) around and parked it on the side of the road - just in time before we saw another man in a Renault sliding past with a look of extreme horror on his face - luckily he didn't go over the edge either!). Olga conned two lovely young men - Kostas and Parnos -  who were laughing at the aftermath into giving us a lift back to Ptolemaida (about 100 kms) which they did most generously and happily - Greeks are so amazing like that - and we made it home to Olga's. And the car we got towed back that evening and managed to get the hire company to reimburse us in full.  Of course worse in hindsight but made for good conversations for the next two days as we were pretty much snowed in there.

We did get out to the Ptolemaida Museum - amazing dinosaur bones -  the largest mammoth tusk found in Europe there plus a giant prehistoric Hippopotamus skull dug out of the coal mines but the rest of the museum is not set up yet. There was a lovely woodcarver Milena Rusinovic there who showed us an exhibition of her work and also her parents. Another day we went and had a play in a snowy field between Foufas and the next village Variko. We had a couple of boozy nights and we watched a lot of DVDs. We took the kids to the indoor play centre where I nearly died of smoke inhalation - all the parents and grandparents were smoking in the cafe section - it was EXTREME. Olga assured me that the air con blows it away from the bit the kids play in!

On New Year's Eve, we rushed up to the main square for the midnight fireworks. There was also big bonfires but it was really too cold to stay out for long. Then on New Year's Day, we set off for another drive to find traditional dancing in the villages and somewhere for lunch. Sadly we missed Foufas but caught some dancing in the next village. Then had a great lunch in a lovely place at Klissoura. It was a spectacular drive (with clear roads) and a great lunch - the standout dish was a fetta cheese coated in sesame seeds and then quickly deep fried to crunch up the seeds. Really yummy. Here are our pics - of course in backwards order so you should look at the last ones first and the first ones last. The bubbles in the bubble ones with Valli and Krissa are this great stuff I had when I was a kid that I got in Montpellier and you make your own balloons - all the kids really enjoyed it - a great distraction on NY Day while we waited for the food and that view - so spectacular. Yes - it does snow in Greece!

Thessaloniki

After Berlin, Thessaloniki was a haven of sunshine and blueness. Our hotel was very central (the Orestias Kastorias) and overlooked the Roman Agora. To be honest, we didn't feel like doing museums particularly so we did walk around quite a bit and just people watch. We could see the aftermath of the rioting from early December and there was increased police on the street - all very exciting for us. We did actually visit the White Tower which houses the history of Thessaloniki museum and we did go to the Archeological Museum but only looked at the prehistoric displays and watched one 15 minute doco about ancient Greece but the kids (and Murray) refused to look at any Greek pots etc. I sprinted through the gold rooms by myself.  We had one touristy dinner (I can only remember the slimy(needed 2 minutes more cooking) mussels in a spinach and saganaki (cheese) sauce which I can't recommend) and one more expensive dinner at a place more for locals, where we tried to order mussels again but without cheese and in a tomato sauce but alas it came with cheese again (why, why, why...). They did do an excellent calamari however we should of ordered a paella type dish that we saw ladies eating at the next table or another pasta dish - these looked much better options. But there is no next-time when you are on the road! 

Leaving Berlin

It seems like an age ago that we left Berlin and indeed, it is a whole month and a bit.  Now ensconced back in Melbourne, the cold and early darkness is a distant memory already and I am really missing the bakery, deli and the neatness of my day doing things while the kids were at school. Given they go back next week, I'm sure I will regain some of my composure very soon. We are still refusing to really unpack all our things and I think we will probably have a huge chuck of stuff when the kids aren't around to claim things in joyful voices.

Here are our last pics from Berlin. There was a flurry of activity those last 3 weeks after all our visitors had gone and once we'd got through the boys birthday etc. I spent some time in the darkroom at Galerie Magenta, run by the lovely Astrid with her baby daughter Charlotte in tow. It was great to find I could still load a 35mm film onto a spool in darkness pretty quickly and my feel for printing did come back although I had forgotten about filtering multigrade papers to increase contrast etc.  

I got all our Christmas shopping done before leaving too and then began to pack up the house.  We were knocked for six by the news that Murray's dad had been admitted to hospital with a brain tumour (which he has had out and is now doing radiotherapy as it was cancerous - thinking of you Alex!). At this stage, we didn't know what was happening and Murray was mentally preparing himself to rush back to Australia but luckily for Alex (Murray's dad) and Murray (and us) this situation didn't arise. We ran around and caught up with old and new friends one last time.  We went to the Christmas funfair behind Alexanderplatz and went on lots of rides including that 55m giant swing thing (very cold, fast and high and completely freaky) - I went on with Sybilla and Murray ended up going on with Saul. I also wanted to get nice trees/plants for Zille Grundschule (the kids' school) to say thanks for all their support which I did (a nice banksia and another indoor plant). So it was quite busy! Here are some pics from that time.