vendredi 1 février 2013

5 years ago- "Welcome in Wellington, New Zealand"

5 years ago, Florence and I started a new chapter in our lives by arriving in Wellington. We began discovering the wonderful city of Wellington and the Kiwi culture via sport or arts.

If you wish to read about our discovery of wonderful New Zealand, I recommend you the following links:

  1. Our first days in Wellington and the discovery of the city
  2. The first trip over several days in the North Island, toward Cape East
  3. An overview of winter in July in the south hemisphere
  4. The discovery of the lovely city of Christchurch, before its awful devastation
  5. Walking the famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing, just before celebrating our first anniversary of presence in New Zealand
  6. Discovery of the golden beaches of Abel Tasman National Park
  7. Sunny break on Cook Island during the grey winter in Wellington
  8. Our last big trip in the North Island up to Northland, before preparing our nice travel back home
  9. … which started first with a month in the South Island
  10. Continued by a great trip around Australia, Hawaii, New York and finally back to Switzerland!

mercredi 7 mars 2012

Tristes nouvelles venant de Christchurch

Un an après le terrible, second tremblement de terre qui a totalement détruit Christchurch,  la presse suisse fait écho au triste sort à cette ville jadis magnifique.

Le Temps, dans son édition du 21 février, détaille les principaux problèmes et dilemmes auxquels les habitants restants ainsi que leurs autorités sont livrés:

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Plus récemment encore, une dépêche – trouvée dans le Tages Anzeiger mais dont une copie peut être retrouvée notamment sur le site de la Zürichsee-Zeitung, nous informe que la magnifique cathédrale de Christchurch, située en plein dans ce centre ville qui a été particulièrement touché par les tremblements de terre, sera entièrement détruite au lieu d’être réparée:

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Il ne sera donc plus possible de monter sur son clocher pour découvrir d’en haut le centre de cette magnifique ville fondée aux alentours de 1850 et qui possédait un si joli et doux charme…

dimanche 26 février 2012

Mount Taranaki in the Tages Anzeiger

A beautiful article about Mount Taranaki was publish recently in the Tages Anzeiger, one of the leading Swiss German newspaper:

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It describes pretty acruately this wonderful region we visited back in November 2008. The steep, rough and often cloudy slopes of the Mt Taranaki are also well described and I could almost feel myself being back in January 2009 when we climed part of the mountain.

Finally, let’s not forget the lovely town of New Plymouth and its awesome waterfront!

dimanche 12 février 2012

Earthquake... in Switzerland

Our region of Zurich was rocked last night by an earthquake which triggered hundeds of phone calls to the police:

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Source: http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/index_EN

You may wonder how much damage was caused or if there were any injuries due to this major event in Switzerland. Be relieved, nothing was declared so far, this mainly because the low amplitude of the seissm.

With a scale of 4.2, the earthquake features very high and well in red in the Swiss map of earthquakes. But compared to New Zealand – and this especially since the terrible events around Christchurch, it’s daily business:

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Source: http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/recent_quakes.html

Feeling the ground shaking is always a special occasion, and while we were in New Zealand, we only felt the stronger quakes – above 5. We only seldomly felt earthquakes around 4 of magnitude, and last night in Zürich wasn’t an exception to this.

dimanche 11 décembre 2011

Mercer Quality of Living Survey

As reported by Le Temps end of November, it’s time again for the Mercer Quality of Living Survey 2011. No major change, this year, with Auckland and Wellington being in the overall top 15.

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The most obivous difference between Zurich and New Zealand cities is for us the ease of travelling. Not that Kiwis aren’t travelling, but it’s each time an journey despite Air New Zealand doing a fantastic job compared to almost all carrier here in Europe.

The real point for us is the facility to visit Lucern within an evening, go to Basel during an afternoon or cross the alps and be in Locarno in less than 4 hours with the train. Same thing – with the high-speed train or the plan – for French, German or English cities.

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