In other news, I’ve relocated to sunny Townsville to start work as a librarian at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. My motivations for moving here are manyfold. The need for an adventure, a desire to be “just” a librarian again and my need to round out my professional skills; I’ve been too specialised for too long.

At this stage, I’ve been here for one and a half weeks. I’m still trying to find a place to live; tomorrow will feature a hire car and many point-to-point journeys, investigating flats. I’m currently umming and aahing over whether I want to live alone or with a housemate. There are benefits and drawbacks to both, of course.

So far, I have not had the chance to go for a dive. I think I’ll wait a little until I’ve settled into my own place before I start channeling funds into that particular activity.

I wonder if I’ll post again, any time soon.

After going to the movies on Wednesday, I raced to the airport to dump my luggage in time.  I had already checked in, but I hate being late to anything.  Unfortunately, the resulting stress resulted in an unfortunate tension headache.

Thankfully, my checked baggage scraped in at 20.4kg, and my hand luggage was only 5kg!  Perhaps I threw out too much stuff when packing…  Oh well, not to worry.  I have some money to replace the things I disposed of.

The flight from Perth to Singapore was uneventful, if a little turbulent  I sat next to a nice girl, Cara, from the Albany area, who was visiting her boyfriend in Copenhagen for two months.

The meals, as always with Singapore, were delicious.  Delicious vegetarian curry accompanied by a bit of tipple.

After landing in Singapore, the first thing I did was look for a massage.  I found one in the transit hotel, although they could only fit me in for 15 minutes when I was quite prepared to fork out for an hour to combat my tension headache.

While I waited for my turn, I tried connecting to the Internet to while away the time and found that I couldn’t!  I was thoroughly disappointed.

As it was, a 15 minute massage was quite enough!  “Uh oh,” I thought as the masseuse climbed up on the table “it’s getting serious!”.  There was no happy ending, however.  I’m sure the little, middle-aged Chinese lady would have either slapped me or called the police, had I suggested it.  The last thing I want is to be arrested in Singapore.

I ended up getting an Internet connection outside my departure gate, and managed to check in for my flight from Frankfurt to Berlin.  Hooray!  This gave me a little more breathing space in the one and a half hours I had to clear customs, pick up my baggage, get to the other terminal, drop off my baggage and board the flight.

The flight from Singapore to Frankfurt itself was also rather uneventful.  More delicious food, six hours of interrupted sleep and a terrible movie with the Rock made it pass relatively quickly.

Upon landing in Frankfurt and getting through customs with far less fuss than I was expecting, given I was entering Germany for the first time on a German passport, and a temporary one, at that!  Baggage claim took forever, unfortunately.

As I raced from one terminal to another, I noticed that another passenger was mirroring my steps.  I struck up a conversation with her and discovered that she was visiting relatives in Berlin for a couple of weeks.  We checked in and proceeded to a cafe for a breather.

I discovered that Manja runs a massage centre in Sydney, but I was too polite to ask for a massage in the middle of the terminal.  We exchanged phone numbers and will hopefully be catching up for coffee later this week.

The flight from Frankfurt to Berlin was incredibly short – less than an hour.  I’ve spent more time getting from one place to another in Perth in public transport!  It was just enough time to take off, get a free snack and land.

Then, I was finally in Berlin!  I’ll blag about my first few days later…