Hans & Vera UPDATES FROM BRISBANE

....it needs an foot operation to find time to update our homepage, but well here I'm sitting now at home, my first sick leave in over 18 years, with a bandaged right food, still hurting from yesterday operation and sweating in the heat of Queensland summer. You might know that I was suffering from an inflamed Achilles tendon the last three years and was lucky enough to have found an excellent specialist who is well worth the four months wait before your first appointment. I'm looking forward to a pain free "going out of bed in the morning" and eventually back to my beloved and much missed running sessions.

On 1st of January we celebrated our first year in Australia, we missed out on Christmas and New Year celebrations due to busy work schedules, well what else is new with a couple who is enjoying to work in the hospitability industry?

Böf our good friend from Amberg arrived on the 13th of December for his six weeks Oz holiday and stayed with us for two weeks before heading up north to Cairns and than back South to Sydney. He brought Vera few Kilos of delicious and yummy German Gummibärchen which made her extremely happy.

Vera accepted the offer of a full time receptionist position from her boss Michael Platsis the owner of,

Hans is doing well at the Sheraton with the assistance of his new Swiss Executive Sous Chef Dominic Egger who invited all of us for a BBQ at their home at Kangaroopoint..

We planning a two weeks holiday end of March and another three weeks in June when Hans mother is coming for an visit. All holidays this year will be spend to discover and explore our beautiful new home Queensland.

Our two lovely kittens Minie2 and Maxie2 doing well, right now I placed each an ice-cold towel on them to ease the heat for them a bit, they really seem to appreciate it. They both give us so much joy and happiness and we really adore and most properly spoil them a bit, but just watching how Minie2 is cleanings brothers Maxie2 ears inside and outside is worth all the littler tray cleaning and the mess they do sometimes. We made so many pictures of them which we will just place now all on one page. Here is the official Maxie2 & Minie2 Picture Page.

we started to welcome our first visitors to our home. Janice from Hong Kong was the first who dropped in, Jürgen stayed for 10 days on his around the world tour (he said this was the longest ever time he spend at one place since he started his tour in March) We visited the Gold coast with him, showed him our old home and enjoyed the hospitality of Chris & Sandra's home and boat. Check out this spectacular pictures from this day.

Jürgen moved with his convertible car to Sydney and Chris & Sandra stayed with us for a night. Jürgen's fantastic holiday pictures can be seen here, believe me it is very worthwhile to browse around. Chris drove his boat all the way and spend a lovely Sunday afternoon cruising up and down the Brisbane river. Please visit the special page, www.chefhans.com/chrisboat where you can see how graceful Vera is as an assistant speedboat captain.

While talking to the pasta supplier Austrian Christian Gruber from CJ's Pasta I found out that an longtime "lost" Austrian friend Martin Schett with whom I have worked over 17 years ago in Davos Switzerland is living here in Brisbane. Being in QLD for over 12 years he has added his good name as one of the finest pastry and bakery chefs around Queensland. He is currently a head teacher at the TAEF universality to teach young apprentices the art of pastry and baking. It took me just a few hours to contact and surprise him and we immediately had an BBQ appointment for the next weekend at his place in no time. There we met his lovely wife, the two very active well behaved boys an even more active dog and a shy cat.. Martin and I had a great time in catching up over the last decade. I brought a photo album from our wild times in Switzerland which brought up a few good memories in us.

Yes I know, since arriving here, updates been slow and few. Funny enough, we thought life will be slower than in HK but it seems it is just opposite so far. However the move from the Gold Coast to Brisbane safes me between 3 1/2 and 4 hours a day traveling. Now I just have to watch that I don't spend this extra time saved in the hotel.

Yes we moved in to our new home at the Gold Coast on 31st of March and now we are already in our "new new" home here in lovely Paddington. The house is a forty plus year old "Queenslander" walking distance to everything for our day to day life. Best thing of all, on a good day with not to much red traffic lights, it just take me about 9 minutes for the 3.2Km bicycle ride to the hotel. Mini our remaining cat (Maxi did not returned home on 15th of June from his usual evening walk around with Mini. We tried everything possible to get him back and now just hope and pray that his implanted microchip will help us to have him back one day) has a new Garden to roam around and it seems we moved into a "cat street". All our neighbors do have cats, unfortunately all much older and stronger than him. There is a possum visiting us on most nights and thinks that our roof is the best place to hang around and have fun. According to our neighbors he/she?? apparently walks over one of the two power lines which are connected to our roof from the other side of the road to a old and big fig tree. Well so far he is lucky that I was already in bed when he decided to have his orgies up on our roof and it just to cold to go out of bed and start a "possum go off our roof hunt".

My job is still extremely busy and Vera is starting to look for a new one in the coming days. She was very busy to pack and unpack the last four weeks, as I had not much time to help there.

We finally have a wireless broadband internet connection at home and I had already few "video conference calls" where I showed our new home to callers who visited our live video homepage in the same time. http://wergin.camarades.com http://wergin.ww.com/

Just a short update, we been successfully hunting for a new home and moving in on 31.01.03

We are FINALLY here, after a 8:30 hours smooth flight from HK. We "celebrated" the New Year still in Hong Kong's airport at the tarmac , ready to take off for our new life in Australia. We landed on time at 10:25am, greeted by a blue sky, a smiling and 30C warm sun. After a short but thoughtfully immigration check-up a customs officer would make sure that we did not bring any illegal or dangerous items with us. All our four large suitcases plus four hand carries been politely searched bit by bit. I could tell him before that we did not have any drugs, snaked penises or nuclear waste with us, but I guess he would not believe me and just doing his job. I thought , if this what it takes to life in a secure country, let them check our bags twice, no problem for us. After a short taxi ride we arrived at our temporary home, which is in the very center of Brisbane, easy walking access to all the important places we have and like to go. A very friendly and helpful hotel manager of the Dorchester Inn, Brian and his wife Jenny welcomed us and we moved in a nice and cozy mini apartment with everything in what we would need for the next few days. Brian gave us tons of good advices and tips, I guess he is used to guys like us. Few hours later we visited our first friend Alex who is the F&B manager of the Sheraton hotel which is just a five minutes walk away from us. He is in Brisbane since one year and could give us additional valuable tips, he even invited us for dinner at his home where we later met his wife Jenny and their lovely and very smart two year old daughter Jenny (when ever our beer bottles been empty, she would walk to the fridge and brought us refill with a big smile on her face, she will be a dream wife :) They arranged a Barbie (BBQ for non Australians) on their balcony overlooking the Brisbane skyline and we had a very chatty and informative time. They told us that we are very lucky with the weather (31C) because last year they had hot and steamy 44C. Next day we started early to explore the surroundings and the city. Before we left the hotel, Brian gave us another half and hour insider tips, really helpful. The day before he actually pointed all the important places out on a map with ball pen dots, unfortunately there been so many dot's at the end, that I forget what places there been. First thing first, to get us each a mobile phone number and an internet connection. This was done very quick and next was to stock-up our fridge. Now we started to learn new things like:

- to greet people (even if you don't know them, "very strange"#) while entering a shop, bank, bar, they even ask you how the weather is outside, how gorgeous Vera's hair looks, how busy they been during the holiday times, VERY VERY VERY friendly people around here #you will understand this only after living in Hong Kong for a while.....

- open your bag to show the cashier at the supermarket that you did not stole anything, beer and wine you can only buy in "bottle shops"...

- if you pay by credit card you have to mention that you pay "credit", press a button to confirm that you pay "credit" than confirm the amount before you sign the slip...

- people actually wait on pedestrian crossings while the traffic light is on red, even there are only a few cars or none on the street...

- that a Aussie drivers license is VERY important, I've been asked today around a half dozen times if I have one, it functions as an ID card here...Unfortunately they don't accept Vera's HK car driving license, she has to do a driving and the written test again. I'm more lucky, with my German car driving license I only have to do the written test. The written test you can do as often as you need, just pay 15$, fill in the questions, wait for the result, if you busted it, just bring the $$ and come back the next day....

- few more things we observe, while using an automated telephone switchboard, you don't have to listen first to two foreign languages (as in HK where you can/have to choose to listen in Mandarin or Cantonese Chinese or English), the 10 TV channels are all in English, a lot of advertising for Special Sales for woman's bra's, Newspapers offering loans from A$100 to A$2,000.- !!!(again # is applicable), some shops are closing at 5:30pm, Banks and the Post office are not open on Saturdays, a lot of Asian people here who speak very good English #, not many people talking on mobile phones, we heard not EVEN ONE mobile phone as we watch the Lord of the Rings movie today (again # is applicable), we been not bumped into by fellow walkers on the street, # did not see anybody spiting or the familiar HK sound and "evidence" of somebody who is the master of deep throat clearing #, we visited China town last night, it looks very nice, orderly and clean with lot's of people enjoying the night out drinking, chatting and eating, so far all the toilets been very clean AND have toilette paper #, calling from a local mobile phone is expensive, I guess this explains why you don't here them often, but incoming calls are free #, (PLEASE call ME)