(2015/03/16)… 6:40am, the plane has landed.…*yawn*…that was short night because i missed another hour due to timezone difference. The rental car was booked for 9am, so we had plenty of time. Tobi took the chance to sleep while i got my morning coffee and started to write. Domestic arrival zones aren’t a good place for hanging around, i prefer international transit areas. At around 10am i got the car and we started to the quick Brisbane sightseeing tour, because Tobi had to fly to Auckland in the evening. What todo first? Lookouts are always a good start, so we drove up to the Mount Coot-tha Lookout, after we passed some toll tunnels. The man at the rental station had told us, to setup our account which can be done till 3 days afterwards. I’m really used to strange web interfaces, but this one was, sorry, IS real crap! It took a while but i got it successfully setup. The lookout was nice, but Brisbane was somehow to far away. “Do a BBQ at the river at South Bank beside the beach” my sister told me, who lived there for one year while she was studying there.
In former times you had used your army swiss tool to survive, nowadays it’s a smartphone. If you have both and additionally a multitool camping knife (fork, table-/tea spoon, knife, corkscrew, can opener) you are the champ. With the navigation of the new world survive tool, we found a supermarket to get our meat and finally on the shortest way the BBQ place at South Bank Parkland. I like these BBQ places, for free, spread over several parks in Aussie and Kiwi. I think in Germany this wouldn’t work, even regular BBQ spots are dirty and covered with trash from BBQ remaining. A short walk around the beach let me thought, how cool that is. Beaches are setup in some other cities, but just with sand and no water for swimming in. How cool would be that in Munich in the Englischer Garten :-).
Navigating through Brisbane and finding a parking spot wasn’t that easy. After 2 hours walking around near Queen Street Mall, buying new Flip-Flops, looking at old near new buildings, it was already time to drop off Tobi at the international terminal. It was already afternoon so there wasn’t enough time for driving around with the Cat (City Catamarans) on the river. Near the airport they had build a huge outlet mall where stopped. A new pair of hiking boots was also on my list. The old ones where already almost broken and not save enough for a further longer hiking trip. They really had enough seen and needed to be replaced, but the prices for new ones where just to high for my budget. Finally i had success and exactly one pair of boots where left for $99 with my size, they are fitting perfect and looking good. I really had to think twice if i should buy them or not. With the new pair of hiking boots i passed a bottle shop and decided to buy one bottle of beer, or at least have a look what they have. Weihenstephaner Dunkel…. jackpot … i told myself that will be the last beer till my next burn, i had to save some money to compensate my newest expenses, the Blazing Swan burn. Last destination for today was the Go Now Family Backpacker Hostel in Westend. With the drive of a real Real Beer, a new blog entry was easy written and the rest of Brisbane i’m gonna visit on my way back down south…