Kitchen hand

Time flies, I'm almost working one month now at the Village Hotel. Funny that I got offered a job right here, just 5 minutes walking from our place after trialling all over the city in very different places. Doing these trials was a very interesting experience. To get a look in the differently operating kitchens with their own style and atmosphere.
At a fancy Italian restaurant the hierarchy between the chefs and the lower staff was very intense, the food at a Hotel in the suburb Bankstown (one hour by train) was just nasty crap, a very macho atmosphere in a upscale lunch café in Pyrmont didn't seem very attractive but I could see myself in the family style café in Balmain. Rudely enough they don't even contact you after working for them for up to 6 hours for free if they're not interested in you. I was very happy to get a position offered by the chef at the Village Hotel right after my trial. It was by far the favourite place out of all the trials I did.
At the hotel we provide the pub downstairs with gastro pubfood, the restaurant at the first floor with fine dining and the lounge and roof terrace with canapés for functions. It's wonderful to work with a passionate team and both chefs are willing to teach me everything. It's hard work and long days working in hospitality, but I'm enjoying this opportunity very much.

Springtime

A couple of weeks ago the city was dressed up in this gorgeous lilac haze of the many Jacaranda blossoming trees; just magical. Everywhere in the city the lilac glow stood out against the coloured houses and historic buildings in natural stone.
Now we walk on a thick carpet of the fallen flowers to our favourite neighbourhood pub, the Fitzroy just around the corner. The Fitzroy has almost a European feel to it, with a mix of locals, travellers from Kings Cross and theatre visitors.
A Malaysian family presides over the kitchen and turns out huge bowls of delicious Laksa. We've been taking our visitors here and they enjoyed the place as much as we do.
Downstairs there is a little theatre with great shows. I saw a beautiful intense solo play here, 'seven kilometres north-east' by Kym Vercoe.

Sitting at the terrace listening to the live music enjoying a cold beer we're ready for the summer to start!

Exploring the Sydney Markets

We arrived just in time to enjoy the Sydney Crave Food Festival. There are many events you can sign up for and take part in like 'brekkie on the Harbour Bridge', Hands on workshops with master chefs, an evening with René Redzepi (of Noma, Copenhagen) at the Opera House, the Night Noodle market and lots more.

I sign up for the guided tour at the Sydney Markets with 'Bird Cow Fish' chef Alex Herbert. It is a huge fresh produce market – over 42 hectares - on the outskirts of Sydney. I arrived a little early to be able to grab a cup of coffee before we meet the chef at 6.30am at one of the gates. And of we go, first to the shed where the producers sell their produce.

There are some beautiful characters amongst them. It's amazing how these producers do it all; most of them have been at the market from mid night on to set up and sell to the big clients. Only after 6am the market opens to the restaurant chefs and general public. After nine they hurry back to and take care of their farms. I have no idea when they sleep.

Alex introduces us to her favorite producers and it is very interesting to hear all sorts of information from them. Like the chill winds that we felt in the city have a big impact on the cherries. There are hardly any that made it to the market and the ones that made it are crazy expensive.

We get to taste, smell and try all different fruit, veggies and herbs, some of which I have never seen before. Alex gives us tips how to prep and serve them. We carefully cross the lane between the sheds that serves as a high way of speeding fork lifters. Here are the agents with mostly fruit. It's obvisiously mango time, we see walls of different varieties. We taste a wide variety of heirloom tomatoes, it's amazing how different they are in feel, bite and taste, just delicious.

Inspired and with a green bag full of healthy goodies I take the train back to the city. Definitely a place to go back to and explore some more. We didn't even make it to the huge shed filled with only bananas!

Get out of town

Since on monday, the 1st of november I'm starting my new job here I figured it would be good to get out of the city for a few days.
Looking at the map there are lots of green areas pretty close to Sydney so we decided to go to Yengo national park which is north and on the way to the Hunter Valley, a major wine area of NSW.
The backroad to go there is by Berowra Valley where the road has some nice hairpin turns so will have to come back here one day on the motorbike to fully enjoy them!
At Wisemans Ferry you catch the ferry across the Hawkesbury river. There is a lot of early Australian settlers history here as convicts were forced to build the first roads north through the bushlands and up the hills around 1820. We walk a short part of the 'Great North road' before getting back in the car and talking the 'modern' gravel road to St Alban which is in the south end of the Yengo park.
It being friday afternoon and 5 o'clock, half the population of St Alban (so around 50 people) come to the one bar and we stop as well for a drink.
That turns into a couple more and nice talks with the locals and as it turns out we'll have to stay the night as the next stop is 2 hours further on the gravel road, it gets dark at 7.30 and there will we plenty of wildlife trying to use the roads as well. We don't want to kill any wombats or wallabies so we stay in St Albans and are treated to live Irish music to boost.

The ride through the park is beautiful and mostly gravel and sand but our car (an old '93 Toyota), although rattling, stays in one piece and gets us through without a hitch. We see lots of birds, a goanna running up a tree, wallabies hopping away and at the end of the road there is always a bar with nice cold beer, welcome to Australia!
We don't actually make it for the wine tasting but that'll be another trip soon.

New start

With the last hectic weeks in Amsterdam it was - even after a 22 hours flight - hard to really land in Sydney. In my head I was the first couple of days still in Amsterdam.

Now we've moved into our own place in Woolloomooloo, it starts to feel like something real. Our little stone cottage is just a charm, the sunny patio in the back a city oasis. The kitchen with stone walls from the 1800's is a dream to be cooking in. The new sour-dough starter seems to enjoy it here as well, so I'll be baking my own bread from tomorrow on.

Up to the next challenge, finding a job! There're plenty of restaurants here, but also tough competition. I got some promising response to my applications and even had a trial shift at a fancy Italian place nearby. I'm not sure if that is going to work out, but it was a good initial experience.

In the meantime I'm looking into all the green initiatives around here and especially the community gardens and permaculture. We even went to get some information on starting our own worm farm to chew up our kitchen waste! Back at the farmers market we enjoy a healthy chinese lunch from Kylie Kwong.

Settling in

We are doing pretty good in the just two weeks we've been here. We have found a nice place to live, a stone cottage in Woolloomooloo with 2 bedrooms, a really nice kitchen and a sunny patio.
It's good to have two bedrooms so friends can stay with us when they come and visit. A surprising number of visitors has already announced their imminent arrival and we are looking forward to having you here and sharing the good life in Syndey with you for a bit!

Meanwhile we've sent out our resumes to various places and gotten some good responses on them. Lena has done a try-out at an Italian restaurant and I've done a job interview that looks promising so might be starting work here as soon as next week.
Our location in the city is nice and central, almost everything is in walking distance. Good since cycling is more of an adventure here than in Amsterdam, though they are busy creating cycle paths; there is a big movement in Australia to become greener and more sustainable, lots of good initiatives.
Today we'll be off to the farmers market to get some great fresh produce. Food is a very important part of aussie life and we're happily joining the locals!

In Sydney!

After a last week of organising a lot of last minute things, like selling the boat, finding the cat a new home, selling stuff on marktplaats (e-bay) and lots of paperwork, we finally set of for Sydney on Wednesday morning.
Ieske was sweet enough to pick us up and drive us to the airport where Mieke and Bert also came to wave us goodbye.
Onboard we could finally sit back and relax for 22 hours.
Arriving in Sydney we went to our first place to stay (we got it through http://airbnb.com), in Marrickville, a suburb in the inner-West part of Sydney.
On Friday we got busy looking for an apartment, which isn't all that easy in Sydney as nice apartments in good neighborhoods are very much in demand. We made a couple of appointments for viewings on Saturday and then crashed because of the jetlag...
The viewings gave us an interesting cross-section of housing styles in Sydney, from bedsit (pied-a-terre) to full blown city cottage and things inbetween.
Then is was off to the pub to meet our friends Mike (O'Connor of RecipeWeb days in Amsterdam) and Dan who live in Brisbane but were over in Sydney for the weekend, good stuff!
Monday was labourday in Sydney so a public holiday and no chance to look for apartments but Tuesday we are back in business, getting our Tax File Number and opening a bankaccount, looking at another apartment and enjoying a sunny day in the city. It's all nice but seeing how quickly you spend your dollars we realise that we need to get jobs here soon :-)