Aaron Around The World - Christchurch quake, again...

It's been, umm, about eight months since my last decent European trip (Germany road trip last August) - high time for another: two weeks in Scandinavia! Scandinavia is a region of northern Europe that includes Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, though Finland and Iceland and the like are often thrown in there too. It covers a massive area with many major cities and attractions, but unfortunately there's only so much time in the day. As such, I'm going to concentrate on the western part of it, and maybe try to group the rest into an Eastern Europe trip some time in the future seeing as I've managed to see very little of it during my time here. So, Kristina and I fly into Copenhagen, Denmark this Friday for a few days (happy Easter to us!) before getting a train up to Gothenburg, Sweden for a day, followed by another train up to Oslo, Norway for a couple more days. From Oslo we pick up a hire car and spend a couple days heading west to Stavanger on Norway's west coast, and eventually finishing with a few days up in Bergen. Mountains and lakes and fjords galore, stunning enough to rival New Zealand's apparently but I'll be the judge of that. We're flying in and out of London, and the day after we get back Kristina gets back on another plane to head back home to Texas, where I'll be meeting her in about four months if all goes to plan but that's another story :)


That is, or was, one of our public transport buses.		And that is, or was, this guy's house.


The very tip of the Cathedral which was badly damaged and is a no-go zone.		A clock on the Christchurch Art Centre which stopped about the time of the quake (12:51pm).


New Year's Eve again, and my second one in London. A few us rocked up to my mate Chris's place in South London for a cook up (goose - yummy!), and to question him about this 44-year-old chick he is supposedly dating at the moment (not that we saw any proof at that ;) After food and booze we stumbled down to Vauxhall Bridge to join the chaos.


All eyes were on this - the London Eye, and come the big moment she exploded with the usual foray of bangs and pops and fizzes and pows amid much cheering and chanting and carrying on.


Yup, it was a great time had by all, none more so than the dude on the right there hahaha! And spot Kristina in the middle - made it back in one piece to join me :)


This is the state of play in Ipswich at the moment - 30kms west of Brisbane. Meanwhile, " Gympie Pines golf course owner Mike Towler is offering a $1000 reward to anyone who can help catch the person who carved the outline of a huge penis into one of the course's greens while others battled the flood disaster elsewhere." hahaha! News article here.


What's left of Christchurch Cathedral in Cathedral Square, the city's most iconic landmark, after its massive spire toppled from the point I've marked in yellow. There is an observation deck up there that had people in it at the time - I don't hold much hope for them nor anyone who was below it.








What's left of the four-storey Pyne Gould Guinness building - many people are trapped inside.


It's now been 24 hours as I write this. The death toll stands at 75 so far with dozens if not hundreds more still trapped in rubble. John Key, our prime minister, has declared a national state of emergency, and help is pouring from the world over including the US, UK, Asia, and our old mates across the ditch. Christchurch is flooded, cracked, demolished, and still shaking with aftershocks occurring every few minutes. I'm still waiting to hear from a few folk but as far as I know so far my friends and family back home are all ok, as is my property just outside Kaiapoi. Latest events here, photos from yesterday here, and photos of the aftermath today here. Much aroha to all. Kia kaha!


New Zealand's former Prime Minister Helen Clark, now the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said today the damage from Tuesday's quake is "as bad as Haiti", referring to the earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th last year. That kinda puts it into perspective. The difference however is we are thankfully much better positioned to deal with this than what Haiti was. More photos, constantly updated since Tuesday, here.


The economic impact of the Christchurch quake will apparently top that of Hurricane Katrina which did a number on New Orleans in 2005, and yesterday we were told the damage caused is on par with Haiti. Good page here with before and after photos of the quake.


Where were you for today's two minutes of silence? I was overlooking Les Halles in central Paris, which was anything but silent despite it being 12:51am on a Monday night / Tuesday morning, but oh well.		Meanwhile this whack job has gone on live television claiming to have predicted last week's quake based on the planets and the moon. Full interview here - it's funny stuff; John Campbell you're still a legend!		This is Matthew (Matti) McEachen, one of my brother Jared's best friends, and one of the first taken by the quake. He had just turned 25. New Zealand's 3 News did an item on Matti here.


A while back a guy at work organised an introductory climbing course at his local climbing wall for half a dozen of us who had never climbed before. I've climbed a few trees in my time (usually to get balls out of them that had been kicked or thrown up there) but I've done nothing like this.		It was a five-hour course, starting off with fitting the essentials of the harness, knotting your rope properly, and keeping your mate from plummeting. Once those formalities were out of the way, up we went.		We also went through a number of techniques for negotiating various courses, before tackling the big 12-metre wall - hell yeah!


Welcome to Aotearoa!


View looking down from the top, with specks of chalk in the air showing up in my flash. It was bloody fun but by the end of it our hands had been totally punished and our inner arms tortured hehe.		That night was my mate's stag doo. He'd been on the sauce since 3pm but I couldn't get into town until after 9. Despite being the sober one of the bunch it was an entertaining night nonetheless ;)


Well after two awesome weeks in one of the most expensive but naturally beautiful parts of the world, we're broke hehe, and I now have over 600 photos to sort through (as well as several videos!). In other news, Kristina flew back to Texas this morning after living with me in Paris for the last five months, and as I mentioned above the plan is for me to join her over there at the end of summer, but again I'll divulge all once it's all figured out. In the meantime, I'm heading back to Paris at least for this week, and this time in three weeks I'll be celebrating my 29th birthday in Slovenia - hooray for that (the Slovenia part I mean, not the turning 29 part).