Melbourne Juni & Juli - winter bliss

A blink of the eye and I found myself in the deepest melbournian winter.... needless to say, me, swiss and "used to the cold since I was born" am walking around wearing 6 layers of clothes, my hasefellstiefel, a burton beanie and alprausch gloves! and all around me, Australians are happily walking around in their ballerinas (no socks!) and little cardigans only complaining here and then how bloody cold it is.... And the truth is, it's not even that cold! Roman and I (and all the Swiss that I met during the past two months) are still trying to figure out why on earth we are freezing our butts off with temperatures around 9-15°!

So our theory is that
1. since humidity is much higher here, and we know that humid heat is worse than dry heat..., that must also apply to the cold!
2. Australians use airconditioning even in winter..... (my school being the worst example ever!!! but they won't listen to the complaints of about 75% of their students that sit in class wearing winterchappene and jackets!)
3. As Tina mentioned many times on her blog (travelbar.blogspot.com), central heating is non existent in this country and having windows WITHOUT double glass doesn't really help to keep the cold out. Not to speak about the cracks in the windows in our lovely old art deco apartment (the bathroom window doesn't close, so there is always a 5mm gap at least! nice when you get out of the hot shower.... brrrrr)

So my battle against the cold is
1. always wear at least 4 layers with the 5th being my new fleece jacket (applies for INSIDE) and at least 6 layers with hasefellstiefel, gloves and hat outside.... and move around a lot! ( our apartment is sparkling clean! cleaning DOES make you sweat...)
2. at home, always make sure there are not too many heaters connected to the circuit since otherwhise you find yourself in the dark without any heating at all (short circuit. normally once a day.)
3. always, ALWAYS, wear finke at home!
4. never trust the weather; the sun can be out, but wind and rain are just waiting around the corner....
5. always bring additional jacket or pulli to school (pathetic...)
6. go play tennis outside in the cold - abhärtig!

well well, enough about the winter. There are still lovely days and it is a completely new experience for me to be at a beach in winter!

As you probably know, we moved to our lovely fridge at Barkly street in St. Kilda. It was a real nacht und nebelaktion! On a wednesday i saw the ad and was stricken by the name of the building "Bellevue" (hä ja....). Got a special inspection date the next day, signed the papers the following saturday and moved in the week after! et voilà! =) No more unilodge, no more flinders street with all it's bums and weird people. Bilss!!
And we already had our first visitors, Tina and brother Marky. Needless to say, THEY WERE FREEZING! It was usually quite an effort to get them out of bed in the morning but we ended up doing quite a few things in the city and two trips, one to Rye and one to the Great Ocean Road (Ava calls me woman, now Tina - she is "Big Bird" hahaha). Wine was our ständige begleiter and i spotted my first two whales!!! I will post some pictures later but you will have to look sharply... they were not exactly jumping around much....
Now Tina left again (sniiieeff!!!) and left me homesick for all my friends and family back home. Next visitor will be Sevo, yey!

Ah yeah, I discovered that Australia is a bloody third world country when it comes to internet connection. Jackson organized a broadband conneciton for us (....) and i didn't realize how slow it is until I sat down and wanted to upload my pictures! i am still praying for a faster connection and getting on his nerves... I can't work like that!!! Swiss perfectionism but hey, I need certain standards don't I? ;o)