Sara Hammerzmith

So. Today was Dreamworld day. At first I didn’t really get it, but the more time we spent there the more I started to understand that this is basically Disney World, but for Dreamworks. We left pretty early in the morning, around nine I think. Dave, Curt and I took one car, and then Chiara, Ashleigh and Michelle in the other one. We had a good drive down, listened to Powerwolf most of the way and introducing Dave to this wonderous music. Of course, Dave missed the sign, and it’s just fun, because I was about to tell them that we need to get off here, but I figured they know better, and then it turned out we were indeed supposed to be off there. Oh well then.

So, after a little detour, we finally made it to Dreamworld where we caught up with the ladies. Sorted out the tickets, and then we got inside.

The first thing we did was to hit up one of the rides Ashleigh really wanted to go on. I have a heartcondition, as you may know, so I can’t go on a lot of rides, but we followed them regardless. It’s a nice looking themepark, but humans will never cease to amaze me. Some workers came with a young tiger, walking through, probably to move him, and as soon as they’d passed the people, the people ran up from behind to pet the tiger. Like, come one people. Leave the fucking pets alone.

(Picture belongs to Chiara Parry, used with permission)

After the ride, we went to a ride… that I can’t remember the name on for the life of me, but it is the same sort of ride as Kållerado on Liseberg. I liked it a lot, I was just surprised they had safetybelts, despite this ride being a bit… how do I put this… calmer than Kållerado. You who have been at Lisebergs knows the big “ocean” part where you just get float around like nothing and sometimes get stuck in? Like you were really on the seven seas? They don’t have that, yet they have seatbelts. We have that, and no seatbelts. I do find the watercanons a little lame as well, like, I walked out perfectly dry, which is impossible on Kållerado… But, none the less, I still enjoyed it.

After this, we caught some food and the most exciting thing that happened there was us hiding Dave’s pizza. Sadly, he took my food hostage. God damn it.

After this, we headed down to toward the wildlife section of the park, and saw a lot of nice animals. Like old turtles with algea on their backs.

And alpacas who could not give a shit about us being there. Or more, they obviously found themselves being better than us. Especially the white one. “I don’t have time for your bullshit”

Then we came out to the kangaroos. The firs thing that struck me, was that they were loose. Like, they could jump around and roam freely. I was surprised as hell, seeing kangaroos are pretty big and strong. I wonder how many accidents happen with the kangaroos… I don’t even wanna think about it. But they were chill as hell. Kangaroos are like, those kind of people who are in reality really strong and buff, but also really chill.

Then we headed over to see the sleeping little koalas. Like my spirit animal. Sleeping all the time. Cuties.

We headed down to watch birds, a wombat that was also sleeping (I don’t blame him, I’m tired too) and then we went down to see them feed the crocodiles. It was pretty cool.

We went down to an arcade-like hall, where the rest of the people went to the ball-pit shooting balls, and then did some radio-cars, but I found myself sitting outside the tiger pits watching the cubs play until I found a shadow Dave and I could rest in while the others did whatever they were doing. Oh that’s right, Ashleigh and I found a fancy dragon too.

Curt, Chiara, Dave and I went off to eat somewhere (ice-cream!) and later met up with Michelle and Ashleigh again. The day was coming to an end, and we took one last ride on Kållerado-look-alike, and then we headed home. Once home again, the rain started again and I spent most evening on the balcony sucking in all the calmness that is darkness and rain, and after it stopped I went on a walk around the suburb.

// Sara

Today was a really slow day. Curt, Chaira and Ashleigh was off to a party of a friend of theirs, but seeing I was a bit ill I decided to stay in. I went for my usual walk around the blocks, the weather wasn’t exactly on my side, so I didn’t do a whole lot. However, you know how in Sweden, when it rains, after rains comes the snails? Like this HUGE massive invasion of snails, that you can barely walk without stepping on a snail?

They have it here too, only with toads and frogs. I fucking shit you not, there were toads everywhere, all over, tons of them. It was like, the toad invasion. Maybe I should make a movie. The toad invasion. I stopped along the way to watch some field hockey games as well.

Once I got home, I walked down to one of the McDonald’s and got myself a dinner. And really like, treated myself with 6 pcs of Nuggest, a hamburger and two fries. I don’t treat myself a lot, so I figured it was about time I did that. So what I did is that, since Michelle was already asleep I went out on the balcony, set up my computer, fixed the chairs with pillows and blankets and my travelpillow and put on “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1” on the computer. It’s always a bit of a contradiction when you are eating while watching the Hunger Games series, but still. Love this series.

I remember I fell asleep a bit during the movie and woke up to unsettling noises of war. What a way to sleep, huh? It was raining a bit on the evening as well, but unlike Sweden, even though it rains it’s still superwarm, so it’s super duper cozy. After “Mockingjay” was finished I watched “Phineas & Ferb: Mission Marvel”, and Curt and Chiara got home when I was watching the end so Curt and I wound up discussing villains (Whiplash is so hot in this special, I can’t even deal with him) and having a bit of a heart to heart.

Once finished with “Phineas & Ferb” I went to bed to prepare for tomorrows adventures, Dreamworld.

// Sara

For today’s evening we decided to, together with a friend and the sister’s of Curts, head down to the city, mostly for dinner and to look around a bit. So first and foremost, for the first time ever I went on Australian transport, which differs a bit from Sweden. Here, you tag your card when you enter the bus, but you also tag your card when you LEAVE the bus, and it’s really then the money is withdrawn. A little confusing for me who’s so used to put down my buscard right after I enter so I don’t lose it, but I can work with this.

So, we got down to the city and headed over to a mall where we met up with Tayla, Ashleigh and Ciára who was more or less waiting for us in the mall. After walking around in some of the stores we headed outside and went across the bridge over the river, Ashleigh being like my private little tour guide telling me about the town, the river and the bridge. And the view is seriously…

Just look for yourself. As we were all pretty hungry we mainly looked for somewhere to eat, and wound up at this Japanese place where I got a chicken sort of dish. I have to disappoint you that I don’t remember the name of the dish nor the place, but it was indeed really good!

Afterwards, the rest of the lot was heading for dessert, so I decided to head over to the marketplace. Curt accompanied me, and we wound up walking around the waterpark and the pools they have close to the river, which is absolutely stunning. Like, seriously. I was dying inside on how beautiful it was. And to top it off, we met the cutest little possum ever. What a little guy!

We met up with the rest of the crew, and Ashleigh was challenging some of the fountains (she won) and after that, the group splitted and we got home.

It was a great evening, and I’ll for sure be back in town to check out some of the stuff I never checked out this night. Seriously. Amazing.

// Sara

You know what my favorite part about my running trail is? It’s that part of the park that sounds like the stereotypical tropical jungle. I guess, it in a way is indeed a tropical jungle, but it’s just on that one patch. I remember even taking out my earplugs just to listen to the noise of a million different bugs and birds making sounds, and thanks to the incoming heatwaves and humidity in the air, it felt like I for a moment were in the Amazonas, or something. Well, it’s close enough for now, right?

I love the trail though. I mean, we haven’t done much since we got here, but I could literally do anything to just chop out this trail and take it with me to Sweden. Perfect distance, and lovely equipment along the way. and the view, I mean, how bad can this be?

I spent parts of the afternoon on the balcony reading “The Fifth Wave” that I’m currently on. I saw the movie a while back, and I liked it a lot so I figured I’d give the book a shot. For now, it’s pretty slow and hard to chew down, but perhaps it gets better.

In the late afternoon I went down to Chermside Shopping Centre for a first shoppingspree. This means, basically check out what they have and prepare for a real shoppingroute. The first thing I had set to get was actually Rachel Platten’s album “Wildfire”. I had planned to get it while downunder, so I was very happy to find it in the recordstore, and especially at that price. Her album is probably going to become the soundtrack of this trip, and I need to save her music since some of her songs got bad memories to them, but it will be fine. After that, I headed over to the foodstore originally looking for after-sun screen, but wound up buying a lot of pop corn and candy instead. Whatever rocks your boat, right?

After that I strolled along some of the clothing stores, and I found quite a few interesting one I need to think further about. But I did stop by what is probably Australia’s answer to Glitter and Claire’s, which is Lovisa. They had a lot of lovely jewellery, even some I need to think further about, but for now I picked up two of them that couldn’t wait ’til later.

After this, I did a quick stop by The Body Shop to pick up on more body butter since I’m running out and my body is screaming for more.

After this, went home for like ten minutes before we went back to have dinner with Chiara on her lunchbreak, then home again. We talked a bit, and then I decided to take a nap but woke up by the fire alarm going off in the building. We all got out after a few ifs and buts, after seeing the fire truck coming, but gladly it was false alarm. But you know, that is one hell of a way to wake up on!

Later in the night when Chiara came home we finally got around to buy the tickets for Epica, so now that is for sure a go! So excited to FINALLY see The Quantuum Enigma tour since I managed to miss out on it TWICE while in Europe. How the hell is that even possible.

// Sara

Today has been yet another calm day really. Started it all out with a few episodes of “Pretty Little Liars” and the closest to a proper breakfast I’ve had in a few days, before hitting the park again. So basically I’ve come to realize this track will stay on it’s six kilometers course, but at least I’ve gotten a routine I know I can pull off.

For lunch we hit up Chiara in Chermside shopping centre to have lunch with her, and afterwards Curt showed us this really cool recordstore that I’m going to have to pay a visit again asap now that I properly know how cheap the stuff actually was.

Once home we talked music for a little while before I took a nap, before his sister Ashleigh came over and we had dinner with her watching “The Wolf of Wall Street”, among other things. The night kept on with talking and catching up on things, so not a lot really. It’s been a pretty slow day, but all of that is about to change, I tell you.

// Sara

Well, not exactly New York, but that Taylor Swift song has been in my mind all evening.

So, what’s been done today? Not a lot, quite frankly. I overslept a bit, and then I headed out for a walk. I didn’t really know exactly where to go, I just knew that somewhere along there’d be a park, so I kept looking for it and found it. I followed the trails for a really long time, and when I had gotten 3,2 km away from where we are staying, I figured it was time to head home.

What I like about this park on the other hand, is the fact they had multiple exercising equipment in the park. Like, they had ladders to climb, sit-up stools, step ups and what not! I really liked it, so I’m sure getting the work out of my life every day now, and I’m super excited to get started.

I was out for a good two hours, and once home I can’t say I or we did much. I managed to find where I left off on “Pretty Little Liars”, so I’ve done a few episodes of that, and then at like, 18 or 19 it started raining, so I went out with “The Fifth Wave” and a chill playlist and sat outside on the balcony. I have always loved rain. It’s so calming watching and smelling it (tropical smell) and hearing it, and feel the cold drips occasionally hit you.

Curt came out and bothered me for a while, and then it stopped raining and I got too hungry to continue reading, so I went in and had dinner. Chiara came home just as I did so, so we sat in the sofa together and I presented my gifts to them. Chiara got a “snowball” with Stockholm in it, Curt got Gustav Vasa’s ship in a bottle, they got a moose from Finland, stuffed, of course, some Swedish candy and Swedish coffee. And he got his signed Lordi shirt, so they were all very happy.

Now I’m just gonna… probably apply for a job or so, and continue watching “Pretty Little Liars”.

// Sara

Well then, let me tell you all about these two days of traveling we’ve had before reaching our destination. So, we started the entire fucking day off, Saturday, by getting up an hour early. And why is this mentionable? This is mentionable, because I was like “I wanna sleep another hour… but there is no time..” and once we’d finished packing everything, that’s when I realize I had my phone on Swedish timezone, and not British, meaning we could easily have slept another hour… oh well. Despite this, we almost ran late. But not too late, only late for the bus to take us to the busstation, which on the other hand, was very early.

So we got to the busstation, got our tickets sorted out, got on the bus and then headed back towards London. It’s like.. a weird feeling in a way. You are looking out on the streets, and it’s not actually the same, but on the same time, it is. It’s just another bus on another high way, traveling between cities.

Once at Heathrow, we met up with Nathan who came all the way from Portsmouth to see us since he never made the show on Friday, so after a while, after quite the waiting, we managed to get a table at this coffeeshop where we had lunch together. He then stayed with us all the way up until it was time for us to go through security screening, and I shit you not, this was the hardest good bye I’ve ever done, at least in a very long time. Firstly, I don’t see him a lot, and secondly, I was actually really scared and nervous to do this trip to begin with, so I guess I found some comfort in Nathan being there.

So, once inside the gates we did some last minute shopping. We planned to stay awake the entire first flight, getting loads of candy, drinks and snacks to watch the Hunger Games trilogy, found this restaurant where we had dinner before it was time to board the plane.

Lucky me, I had scored a windowseat, so it was all good. After take off an other routines, we brought up my mac computer and started off with the first Hunger Games movie, when it happened.

The stewardessess came with food. And simply asked if we wanted dinner. And we were like yeah, sure, and the next thing I know is I find a foodplatter slammed on my mac. So basically, I’m having the most surprise dinner on top of my mac when watching The Hunger Games. Surreal feeling.

Sadly, the long traveling day had worn me out quite a bit, and I was getting very restless, so despite saying we’d stay awake, we decided to sleep off. I usually get sleepy from flights anyway, so perhaps it’d sort itself out anyway.

I woke up like, what, two hours or so before landing in China. I checked out the stuff they had on the airplane television, and we found Cycle 21 of Americas Next Top Model so we decided to watch that until the stewardess came with another batch of food, but this time breakfast. Like honestly. What did I need the Chinese money for if I was just gonna get food for free anyway?!

As we were approaching China and Guangzhou, I was breathless by the view, it was just… stunning.

Once at the airport, we did some quick hunting for food to eat – because I must admit, I was a bit stressed and rushed so I never got the chance to properly finish any of the meals, so we sat down and had one meal but first I picked up some gadgets in a tourist shop. It’s like, small porcelain figures on a string, I got two cats, one with stones and then this one with the turtle, which is now on my bag as my little mascot or token.

We boarded the next plane, and this one… Seriously. Like, first of all, the plane was far from full so we had the entire four seat row to ourselves. And it seemed, it was more space between the seats, so we could easily put our computer on top of the traytables to watch Catching Fire without having to have the computer in my lap. Even when the dude leaned the seat backwards, all we did was to move the computer a bit, and all was good.

After finishing that one, we tried to sleep again, and I woke up some time like… 4 am. I had a dream that we were landing, so I had hoped to see us being in Brisbane, but instead it was three hours till then. Damn damn damn. Tried to get back to sleep, but then at 6 they put on all the lights, brought us washcloths and breakfast so that was a no can do.

TO BE CONTINUED

// Sara

I’ll continue right now where I left off yesterday.

So, we got off the flight and then we had to wait almost an hour or so, or at least it felt like it, for our luggage. I started to freak out, I mean, I guess I’ve seen too many of these Australian Border Controls episode to be completely freaked out, but I guess I was a bit scared about getting in as well, but everything went smooth as fuck. So that’s good. And then we had to wait like I said, and it took ages. I was really worried for a while that it wasn’t gonna come, but eventually, it did, so that’s awesome.

We got ourselves a little freshed up in the bathroom before going out to meet my best friends. A guy that I have known for almost ten years, but had yet to meet. It was superodd to see him in real life, you know, a person I talk to almost daily but never see. Jesus. It was long overdue. He had Dave with him, a friend of his that I got to know during Eurovisions last year, so it was great seeing him as well.

So, we got to the car and the thing is, Dave has a very little car. It was a bit of a deja vu from last year when going on our tour, where the company at the time also had a small car. Difference is I had one bag, now we had like, four suitcase and three other bags. But, Dave is the man so he managed to get everything in. Good riddance.

We got home to the apartment, landed, I took my time well in the shower to get off like everything from the shows, seriously, men’s sweat all over from the pits, and then the flights… it was good. Then we waited for Curt to come back from his dentist appointment, or actually, we had planned to go see Chiara, but just as we were about to go, Curt came home, so he came with us.

We went to the store she’s working at, and it was soo good to see her in real life too! We didn’t stay for long obviously, not to disturb her too much at work, and we went to get snacks and then went home to pass out on the couch to Family Guy.

Chiara came home to do a turn, headed to her pole practice (I think?) and I went for a “walk”, basically going around the house since, apparently, it does go pitch black here already at 19. That is superweird. Right before I left we ordered pizza, and I had the best timing ever since I came home right when the pizza came.

So we had dinner, Curt went to bed and Chiara, me and Michelle sat up for a good few hours talking about concerts, music, traveling, work, horses well, life in general I guess.

Really good first day, I’d say.

// Sara

So wow. The first day on our big bonanza trip and it started rather…. Odd I’d dare to say.

Seriously, everything was done and fixed – just putting in the last few things when my mother notices that my dear EPIC Wildlife Crate Zebra is broken. The zipper got a runner, so… what was a well planned morning turned into a stressed morning. We decided after a few ifs and buts that we’d get a new suitcase, since none of the ones we had were big enough for the trip.

Once downtown, I was first heading to take out my exchanged money. And this also, turned out to be quite the ride. When I got there, they told me the order had disappeared from their systems somehow, but miracoulosuly, they had exactly the amount and currency I needed. So after a few stressful moments I got my money. And as Shania Twain put it, it can only go up from here, right?

Next up, was bag chase. At first I wanted to get another Epic Crate Wildlife, the black / white lepard one, but of course it was unavailable everywhere, so we got a turquoise Samsonite instead. Finally we got a bag, and then we repacked the entire thing in the parkinglot.

Headed over to Bergvik to meet up with Michelle and our driver Linda to begin the roadtrip down to Gothenburg and Landvetter airport, which was fun, but not very eventful. We got to Landvetter, checked in our stuff, had a quick dinner at Espresso House and were still close to almost missing the flight, because apparently they did final call already like 20 minutes ahead of time. Luckily, we hadn’t gone far from our gate.

Flight went on good, and landed twenty minutes ahead of time, and the passport check and baggage claim went so quickly and smoothly that even managed to get on the early bus to Norwich, walked all the way to the hotel, dumped our stuff and went out to get pizza, because lucky us, there was a pizzeria open at 3 am in the morning. So now it’s pizza and Bloodbound.

I guess you could say Shania Twain was right. It could only go up from here.

// Sara