\paragraph{15.02.12}
After ten hours of flight we arrive in Seoul, at the very symetric airport with live music: There is a string quartett, and at another place a piano. I eat an onion-avocado-hotdog for five euro minus one american dollar change. After three hours of walking around the transit-area I try to sleep for the last hour. Back on the plane, I have "chicken" and cereal. Same state of half-awake half-asleep than the flight before.
\paragraph{16.02.12}
At 0830 we arrive in Auckland and go through hours of waiting for visa stamping, bag control and biosecurity questionnaires. Outside, the air is warm and moist and rich with potential, a great breath after recycled airplane air and german winter weather. The shuttle takes us to the YHA hostel, but it is too early for check-in, so we leave our bags and walk around the city. I found an old arcade with Myers Park behind it. There are palms and ferns.
\paragraph{17.02.12}
We head for the WorknHoliday headquarters for our lecture on travel possibilities, car purchase, applying for a job, bank account, sim-card and all the other stuff. Afterwards, we went to the National Bank to activate our already set-up accounts. I got 500 dollars from my credit card. I also visit the basement of the sky tower, the highest strucure in New Zealand. Down there is a movie museum with an environmental book about Avatar, weapon props from District 9 and endless movie posters.
\paragraph{18.02.12}
I go to the harbour to see the pacific. I also visit the Auckland museum but find it closed. At the surrounding park and ckricket fields, I find a fernery with various sorts of the national plant.
\paragraph{19.02.12}
I walk along the harbour and coast. I find a bridge over the street up to a water park. Behind it, there is one of the suburbs that surround the only half-an-hour-walk-sized city center. There is a market with bbqed sausages with onions and freshly squeezed fruit smoothies for 5 dollars each. I walk on along the suburb and some train tracks to find myself at the park with the now open museum. Inside, there is a lot on history, sports, the unique flora and fauna, and only one floor of war-related stuff. At the hostel, I change the room for an extra night.
\paragraph{20.02.12}
I walk to the Kathmandu outlet store with my backpack to get a tent. I am exhausted, so I take the train back to the center. I am too late for the last bus to Rotorua, so I walk to the next BBH hostel. It is fully booked, but the owner of the next BBH hostel is there and offers me a lift. I take it and book a night.
\paragraph{21.02.12}
I take an early bus to the sky tower bus terminal and get on the bus to Rotorua. It stops in Hamilton and the town with the hobbiton movie set. In Rotorua, I walk to a campground on the map, but it is quite far out because wild camping has been outlawed some months ago and there are few campgrounds. The weather changes every half hour from rain to shine to rain. I am offered a lift for the last part of the way. The campsite is at Lake Okareka. I read the last part of The Fountainhead next to some german girls chatting about how they don't really know what to do with life, but how studying to be a teacher is socially accepted and the right thing to do. (I might have over-emphasized that).
\paragraph{22.02.12}
I slept bad. It rained. I walk to a small peninsula in the morning on a jungle track. The scenery is wonderful. I pack the moist tent and hike. Due to the rain, the first car stops. I find me the Crank Backpackers, a hostel in the city. They have a cinema in the basement and a climbing wall from the basement to the third floor. From the hostel, I watch the climbers through the windows to the hall.
\paragraph{23.02.12}
I take a walk along the city and a volcanic field. There are islands of dead wasteland within the vegetation. It rains, so I head to the hostel early.
\paragraph{24.02.12}
I walk along the lake and find the Zorb facility. I do two rides and find a camera crew doing a promotional video for their media company. They are in search for guys with ideas to make shows on anything interesting. Media experience is welcome, but not mandatory. I whould have applied, but the back side of the business card reads ''ASDFASDFASDF'. As I walk on, I find the OGO facility. I do two more rides and talk to the inventor. He tells me the story of how he invented the Zorb to walk on water. He then turned them into downhill-waterslides. His investors wanted to make money and inhibited his experiments to optimize the Zorb, so he sold them the place and founded the OGO to have his own place without people to tell him what to do. Later that day, I visit a place with the Shweeb, a cycle monorail invented to ease the traffic situation in megacities. It is kind of depressing to see this promising idea being an attraction in an adrenaline park. They also have an upright turbine to fly over, I do that. Rotorua is a place to burn money. It is also a place to get addicted to KFC AllStar meals.
\paragraph{25.02.12}
There is a scottish meeting or festival in town. There are dozens of bagpipe bands performing in a competition of music and marching. In the town center, I find a religious guy telling me and everyone else within reach about the ten commandments. I try to make him agree with me about how gullible people believe everything if you repeat it to them a couple of times. It reminds me of the movie Postal. At the mall, I invest 21 dollars in a trolley to put my backpack on. My chiropracticer whould agree with me that that was a great idea, since there are roads everywhere nowadays. Later that day I walk to the redwood forest. They seeded all kinds of trees here to find out what can be used as lumber suplies, but they decided to keep the redwoods. Later that night, I visit Rainbow Springs, some kind of a zoo where kiwis can be seen at night. I actually see some of them. My plan is to stay there all night, but for some reason I got the 24/7 opening times wrong. Luckily, one of the security guys gives me a lift to the city. I book a night at a YHA hostel and get a four-bed room with three beds being used by some horrible teenager and his parents. He yells at his mother because she snorts and he took the blanket of the free bed and won't give it to me. As they leave the next morning, the father utters an apology, I'm not sure because of the light and noise they made when leaving or for his son.
\paragraph{26.02.12}
I take the bus to Tauranga, walk to Mt Maunganui by foot and check in at the Pacific Coast Lodge after walking up and down the beach road. At the hostel, they have a tv and hdd with movies and series. As I walk in, 'How I met your mother' is on. Which becomes the second thing I get addicted to in New Zealand. Guess my favourite character.
\paragraph{27.02.12}
I take a long walk along the beach.
\paragraph{28.02.12}
I have a closer look at the small mountain in front of the Mt Maunganui itself and the peninsula nearby. I find Burgerfuel, a franchise that values quality and self-made ayoli. They are amongst the best burgers I have ever eaten.
\paragraph{29.02.12}
The density of superettes, small supermarkets, is higher than usual. I try Memphis Meltdown ice cream. They are great. If mankind manages to enumerate the decades right this time (this is, after all, the 21. century), I can later tell people that I got addicted to that ice cream in the twenties.
\paragraph{01.03.12}
Some people watched lotr part one because they visited the movie sets.
Stay tuned for my journey to Raglan and the adventures that lay ahead. Also stay tuned for those that still do lie ahead.
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