France-tastic

While the temperatures in January on this side of the world are not usually conducive to celebrating Australia Day with the traditional barbie, this year we managed to do just that! After a thorough study into what constitutes a successful barbecue, the result was clear - it is not the barbecue that makes the barbecue. In other words, the actual sausage cooking machine is not the most important feature of the great aussie barbecue. So for Australia day 2008, we hosted a barbecue-less barbecue in our tiny apartment and grilled up a feast of sausages (on the stove top), lots of beers were downed to cope with the heat (from the heater), there was a potato bake and a few salads that sat reasonably untouched next to the steadily decreasing pile of sausages (HP sauce is not a bad replacement for BBQ sauce, and a whole lot better that french BBQ sauce) and to finish things off, there was a pavlova and lamingtons (not made by me or Alex I must confess)! Even better, the soundtrack was the 10-hour old JJJ Hottest 100 broadcast on the internet!

But once all the sausages had disappeared we headed down the road to the very classy establishment of Café Oz where the real celebration got started. With the barstaff in wifebeaters and thongs and Midnight Oil blaring, the atmosphere was sorted.

And then, barely recovered from all this Australiana, a wedding invitation arrived and a very long distance plane ticket was booked. Actually, did you guys know that they now do electronic print-it-yourself plane tickets for Europe-Australia?? I feel a bit nervous about not having a real ticket! Obviously this has been the way they did it for short-haul and domestic and european budget flights for ages, but I am used to the real red-backed official looking thing telling me which explosives I can or can't bring aboard for big flights. How old-fashioned of me! So, assuming that this ticket does work, I'll be in Oz (where there had better be some sun waiting for me) on 6th March! See you then!