Look at your country. Now back to me. Back at your country. Now back at me.

I'm in New Zealand visiting my folks for Christmas

Like most of my vacations, it's primarily defined by what I'm *not* doing.

I'm not checking mails, I'm not reading the newspaper

I'm not freezing my lice off in Europe

For this, New Zealand is spectacular

It's a great place to just shut up for a few weeks.

And look at the country from different angles.

Exactly, Dad, or translate it into ink and water

It feels either abandoned or undiscovered, depending on your mood

The shags dive in the morning, then spend the day drying out so they can do it again in the afternoon.

That's pretty much been my approach here too: Idleness recast as activity.

I'm not lazy, I'm anticipating.

As long as I know what I'm not, i'm not concerned about what I am.

 

Other People’s Pictures 2: Parental scenery

My parents moved to New Zealand two years ago. This often confuses small-talk participants ('Wait, you're American, you live in Denmark and you go to New Zealand for Christmas? Is your dad Bernie Madoff?'), but it has its perks. When they're not trying to talk me into installing Skype, my parents send pictures of their upside-down travels. Dad fishes and paints, Mom bikes and reads the books I Amazon her for Christmas.

New Zealand is a weird place. The country is gossamer and gorgeous, but underpopulated as a Copenhagen Easter. As a result, all their pictures end up kinda looking like the sample desktops that come with your PC. It's not my parent's fault, they just live in a country without any foreground. 

Fishing trip 009

Fishing trip 007

March 146

Fishingtrip 027

Queenstown 078

12

2northisland 022

Northisland 299

3

1a

Doubtful sound trip 126

Doubtful sound trip 182

Xmas2008 054

Xmas2008 200

Xmas2008 106

Tauranga 238

Tauranga 154

Fishingtrip 018

(And look at their little filenames!)

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Off to Sydney tomorrow

I’ve been in a place called Abel Tasman National Park for the last four days

Doing shit like mountain biking

And sitting angrily on benches

All this turquoise splendidry has been nice and all, but I seriously can't wait to get back to a proper city. I'm in dire need of good beer, crowded sidewalks, sunrise walks home, needlessly overdesigned architecture and non-parental human interaction. Seeya on the other side.

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Quoth the magpie: ‘Nevermore’

Every time a bell rings, a bird swoops in front of the wrong Honda.

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Vast and Presents: Christmas in New Zealand

I’m fly ‘cuz I’m turquoise. You ain’t ‘cuz you not.

I usually take off my helmet for the blog-shots, but my hands were occupied

The same photo, only the unsightly Mike has been Photoshopped out

Mountains, trees and the world’s most unnecessary luge course

Awwww, Mike’s first Christmas hangover

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Chairman Maori

This morning I got up early and headed down to the beach. It's the middle of summer here, but New Zealand gets all of its air directly from Antarctica, so it has 30-degree weather with 8-degree wind. This more or less means that you pack your parka and your sunscreen whenever you leave the house.

The beach was whitecappy paradise, and I hung out at a cafe, slowly choked the life out of The Dissertation That Wouldn't Die, and watched kayakers get gust-raped.

 

This must be what retirement is like, only that coffee cup would be full of pills

Look at the favelas, it’s just like City of God here, I swear

Easy as pylon

Sun makes Mike curly and frowny

This is the only green space in New Zealand not occupied by sheep, so they had to make it a park

Tomorrow I'm off to my favorite new Alps for a surreal summer crispmas. I don't know what proper kiwis do to pageant-up this unholy celebration of a Jewish deity's sketchy birth, but we'll probably end up eating barbecued ham or something.

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Aboriginal gangsta

Heart and solstice

Ahhhh, sunburn. How I've missed you.

 

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Fjord Explorer

Oh my God people actually get to live in this country

It's been an action-packed week here at the Summertime Ranch. Two days after my arrival I was treated to a visit by a buddy of mine from my halcyon Aarhus days, and we promptly took off on a roadtrip together.

Among the highlights:

Penguins (cute!), albatrosses (huge!), geologically mysterious glacier-rocks (round!) and a colony of sea lions (whiskers!) on the beaches north of Dunedin;

You do weird things on vacation, like driving two hours to see a rock…

 

A trip to Milford Sound, which is actually not a sound but a fjord and features the verticalest fucking scenery I've ever seen;

Milford Sound

This waterfall is 160 meters high, almost exactly the height of … Denmark

 

Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki (yes, it sounds exactly like 'bukkake'; no, that never stops being funny), two glacier-fed stopoffs in the middle of the South Island's interior, which has roughly the population of a homecoming dance;

Pukaki-porn

This observatory doesn’t have a telescope or anything. It’s just there to make your photos better.

 

We frosted it off with a big night out in Christchurch, a 300,000-strong minipolis on the west coast. None of the shenanigans were documented (they sell Red Bull and Jaegermeister together here. That's not fair.), though that's probably for the best. One sleepy bus ride later, I'm back in Dunedin; laid back; with my mind on my dissertation and my dissertation on my mind.  

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Oh no he Dunedin’t.

So here I am, sitting in my parents' house in Dunedin, New Zealand, on a clear, Saturday, summer morning. Getting down here required the unholy convergence of four different flight companies, plus assorted shuttle-buses, customs-lines, quarantines and immig-terrogations, and I'm genuinely suprised I made it on time, alive and un-frisked by the Honh Kong police.

The Mines of Moria are somewhere down there

I'll be spending the next few days dissertating and getting my bearings in my parents' old-fashioned, hilly little college town.

Asymmetrically jetlaggy in NZ

 

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Best. Hemisphere. Ever.

Well, this is it. Winter Avoidance '07 starts tomorrow. Here's the current 'tinerary

 

London, UK: 2 days.
I used to live there, Son, and I miss the joint. As well as doing all my Christmas shopping, I'll be beering up with my old Belfast buddy (I call him Troubles) and couch-surfing with Ivan, a Sardinian I used to translate rap lyrics for in Aarhus. Weather and sobriety permitting, my only two goals are to see the Tate Modern and visit my favorite neighborhood sandwich place for a brie-and-bacon toasty. Yes, motherfucker, brie and bacon. Leaving the Healthic countries has its benefits.

Dunedin, New Zealand: 1 month.
I'm officially supposed to be devoting all my New Zealand time to my dissertation, but I'm already getting sidetracked. As well as a 5-day road trip courtesy of another of my favorite Italians from the Aarhus Era, my parents have booked us A Very Mountain Christmas up in Queenstown. My dad'll probably talk me into going fly fishing a few times, plus there's bike-riding, rock-climbing and sheep-counting to compete for my time as well.

This is what I have to look forward to:

 

Dunedin weather

OK, so it's raining. Look at those temperatures, though. I haven't seen the business end of 60 degrees since July.

Sydney, Australia: 10 days
Yet another of my adulthood-postponement Study Abroads, I haven't been to Sydney since I lived there in 2001. I have no plans for this leg of my journey yet, but between my Sydney friend Chris, who gave me a day-by-day schedule of what I should be doing with my down-under gayness, and Sheila, who is possibly the most culturally literate Sydneysider alive, I should be able to enjoy myself. It's like having an Id and a Superego built into your Lonely Planet guide.

Return to Denmark: Jan 20, 2008:
I'll be coming back to a new year and a new job (is there a patron saint of work visa approval? If so, light a candle for me), and I'm actually excited to see what Denmark is like when you're not stressed out about school and money all the time. Probably about the same, 'cept with less cursing.   

I'll be posting boastful photos of the next six, summerly weeks. Have a good winter without me, Denmark.  

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