Steve n Jen's UK adventures

UK and European adventures. Read on my pretties, and discover what two stray Aussies can get up to on their travels.......

18 April 2007

Apr 2007 a

Mon 02 Apr 2007
Steve starts his first day on the new job.
Thankfully, because its the Easter break, school's out. Steve can ease into the job while the CRB check is done - making sure he's leagally OK around children - and this check can take two weeks.

Tue 03 Apr 2007
We got a reply from a different (recommended) mechanic about fixing our car. This fellow seems much more willing to be helpful. Excellent.
Jen's work day consisted of a special outing looking at the amazing things different sections of the business are doing to turn undesirable neighbourhoods into great ones. Traffic calming and facade beautifying is only a small part of the work, but here's an example anyway:


Thu 05 Apr 2007
Hurrah! the water pressure is finally fixed this afternoon - hey its only taken them 2 weeks damn it!

Fri 06 Apr 2007
Easter - a day off work for everybody. Steve meets up with Alexi (Penny's daughter) at Kings Cross station, and she comes to stay with us for the Easter break.

Also happens to be Lauren's birthday today - Steve made us all a fabulous dinner, and Lauren's choc birthday cake lasted until several days later.... really there was just too much for four!

Sat 07 Apr 2007
We all go to the V&A museum to see the Surrealist exhibition.

Above: Steve walks into a surreal dream world!
Below: All of us outside the gift shop - even the walls have eyes


Above: Alexi and "David" in the V&A
After a fun day of sight seeing, including exploring the tourist spots in Harrods, we go our separate ways and head back home.
Below: Steve, Alexi and Lauren digging into curry for dinner


Mon 09 Apr 2007
Alexi leaves, and we're back to only one houseguest.

Thu 12 Apr 2007
Last minute packing for the weekend... weighing the luggage and re-sorting to keep under the weight allowances. Steve and Jen take tomorrow off work, leaving Lauren a restful weekend on her own.

Fri 13 Apr 2007
We get up at 4:30am, drag our stuff to the coach terminal, get to Stansted, take a flight to Sweden, arrive in Gothenburg, hire a car, drive for three hours and finally find the cottage we'll be staying at for the weekend. Take a nap after 5 and a half hours of travel. Later in the afternoon, pick up Dan and Elizabeth from the nearby local train station, and head to site 5 minutes down the road.
We made sure to get to bed before 11pm, as the Tournament the next day was due to begin at 10am. To us, its actually 9am because of the time zone difference.

Sat 14 Apr 2007
Get up early, get organised and head back to site on time. As it turns out, the tourney starts about and hour or so late. And the weather was absolutely beautiful!


Above: the Queen couldn't make it due to complications of her pregnancy, but she did the next best thing and had Countess Honor carry her crown about in her stead.

Above: For those of you who remember Arenwald - he's been busy, and here's his Lady Signe and their little ones Christina and Frederick.

Above: Steve did really well in the tourney. He made it to the final against Duke Sven! It was a real cliff-hanger too... in the best of three, Sven "one-shoted" Steve(Alaric) in the first bout, they double killed in the second, which had to be re-fought and Alaric won the second bout, so it was down to the very last fight. Alaric threw a border-line face-shot which he hadn't been watching and Sven wasn't sure if he was defeated or not. So, Alaric said he didn't want to win with a questionable shot, and so they re-fought some more.... and we won the tourney!

Long story short .... we both attended meetings and enjoyed sitting at the High Table for the feast; after which we were invested as Crown Prince and Princess of Drachenwald. Vivat!

Above: The stunning "swan" subtlety at the High Table.

Sun 15 Apr 2007
The next morning. Lovely Swedish summer sunlight streaming in through our cabin windows.
Off to another early start, we cleaned the cottage, packed the car, returned the keys and headed off for Varberg to see a Bogman!
Below: the castle in Varberg, Sweden, which houses the museum with the "Bocksten Man". And below that, the grassy top of the castle.


The Bocksten Man is a medieval fellow dug out of a bog, who's clothing and acoutrements were exceptionally well preserved. There was a mannequin created with a re-construction of all his clothes, shoes, knife etc and with his face based on his skull. Amazing! No photography allowed, so naturally one of us snuck this photo in, without the flash of course:

We had a huge lunch and drove back to the airport early, returned the car, and with our spare time had a read through the "user's manual" for the Kingdom :-)

Mon 16 Apr 2007
Decide to unpack later. Back to work again.....
Go to the local Shire Meeting at the Shakespeare's Head pub, and get congrats all 'round. Thanks guys! Very nice to have the support!

Tue 17 Apr 2007
Confirmed and ordered a replacement engine for the car, and it will be delivered to the garage later this week - yay us!

Wed 18 Apr 2007
Finally got the car towed today - yay again! Mechanic says he can't look at it until next week, but that's fine by us since we're waiting for payday again. It sure was nice being paid weekly back in Brisvegas.

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Congrats Steve and Jen. Miss you both heaps.

It looks like things are going awesomely for you.

1:51 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Steve and Jen. Congratulations for the valiant and gracious victory. AMazing that it's been a year. Love reading your news. It takes time obviously but is an excellent record. Love to you both. Colleen

6:56 am  

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