Auckland

We finished off New Zealand in Auckland.  Wellington is the capital but Auckland is larger and something of a cultural and media capital.  It also has the main international hub airport, so we spent a couple of nights there before moving on.

We wandered through Auckland Domain, one of the larger parks in the city, to the Auckland War Memorial Museum, which serves as both a memorial and as a national and natural history museum.   

In the natural section they had mock-ups of the extinct Giant Moa (standing at 3.5 metres) and the giant penguin (weighing in at 150kgs) - the moa being victims of being too damn slow, tasty and unafraid of humans with sticks for their own good, and the penguins being competed out of existence by its smaller cousins. 

In the obligatory war sections they had pristine example of a Supermarine Spitfire and a Mitsubishi Zero.  The Spitfire was produced post-war, but the zero was destined for a Kamikaze pilot but was laid up for repairs as the war ended.

A novel exhibition they had was one where local kids had modelled the battle of Gallipoli using Minecraft (in case you don't know, this is a computer game in which you can build 3D structures on various scales using simple blocks. It's quite popular with the kids).  They then made the model explorable using controls and wearing Oculus Rift (the newer, fancier generation of Virtual Reality) goggles, which was innovative.

There was a seismic exhibit here too, focussing this time on volcanos as Auckland is built on an active volcano field where an eruption is not unlikely.  They've put together this room, which is made up like a living room looking at a TV screen representing a french window onto the incoherent fury of an angry god.  That was a giggle.  There's a guy who walks out of the rubble at the end to tell you to take a flyer on the way out with information on how to die less from pyroclastic flow.

Air New Zealand also had an exhibition space, showing off their history, uniforms and whatnot, but they also had a mock-up cabin with more Oculus Rift goggles.  I think someone got a multibuy deal on those. Anyhow, you sat down, donned said Tomorrow's World glasses, and they showed you alternate ways of distracting us in-flight in future.  So, rather than staring at the screen on the seatback in front of you, you watch the floor disappear, to be replaced with a psychedelic fever dream.

This is them simulating the noise of an unconsolable crying child while you peer vertiginously through the seat in front of you,  into the yawning maw of an ill-tempered hippopotamus. 

 We finished off the Kiwi sojourn with cocktails, in a brave departure from habit.

So farewell then, NZ, you were the least foreign-feeling-but-categorically-foreign foreign place we are likely to encounter.  Next stop was Australia, which is still somewhat-British, but half the nouns there conspire to murder you.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir haben unsere Reise in Neuseeland beendet. Neuseeland ist das Ausland, aber wir haben nicht fremd fühlen. Jetzt sind wir nach Australien reisen, wo alles will dich töten!