Adelaide Through The Eyes Of A Rockstar – Hahndorf, the German settlement

Absolutely looove this small but beautiful Little Germany – just the pretty little shops selling candles, crafts, woolly stuff, tassels (yes really), cuckoo clocks… festively-decked beer and eating places… It’s dubbed the oldest surviving German settlement in Australia, so I realize I’m serving up a shallow, airy-fairy post about wandering about here (but maybe I am shallow and airy-fairy)…

At least a few cafes provide buckets filled with chalks for you to entertain yourself with. When it’s not raining, anyways – when we return on a rainy day, the sidewalks and cafes are chalk-free.

This is my favorite – mum and dad (and aunt and uncle?) look on as the boy lies prone in someone’s drive and the girl traces one of those “body shapes” that police coroners usually put in white on the floor after the body is carted off to the morgue. Passing then on the street we overhear, “Ok – do it now!” from one of the grownups when the coast is clear of cars and I turn to snap a pic. I think they’re way cool.

After a brief exchange in one of the curios shops, a Thai couple turns to the storekeeper sporting long, long white hair and a long printed dress and asks in English, “How much is this please?”

“I’m sorry, that’s not for sale.”

I glance over their shoulders at the framed photograph – of Elvis seated in conversation with a young King of Thailand. Apologetically, “He has been an amazing monarch. When he’s gone, it will be the end of an era, truly the end of an era…..”

While the sidewalks wear chalks, the trees and shopfronts wear wool.

They like tying little stuffed animals to trees too… I’m not a fluffy-toy person and neither are Rockstar or Kings, but for some reason the latter takes it upon himself to collect pictures of the various “dead stuffed animals” tied up along the street…

Seriously, it’s pretty crowded but no one lifts any of these nice knitted soft toys or the scarves and pom-poms adorning many of the trees… It would seem vandals have bigger fish to fry… Like vans…

In one of the stores is a kind of “fairyland grotto,” minded by a couple girls who look to be in their early teens… They stop Kings from barging straight in, and ask for the entrance fee… For AUD 2 Rockstar feels a little unfulfilled and insists on turning back at the exit and going thru the cave, bridge and little stream again (and again, and again, if we didn’t insist on leaving – distracted by my iPhone filming, I trip a fall on the uneven grotto floor (klutzy!) then felt a little less enthusiastic for going back and forth again.) I want to ask the girls if they put a lot of the cave up themselves, but they aren’t there when we exit…

 Rockstar then goes running around with the tin animals…

An Asian guy is trying valiantly to photograph a hanging tin “flying pig” which is why I end up not taking too many pics… And yes we overhear Putonghua and Cantonese conversations along our walk down this street…

We enter an aboriginal art gallery, where two teen boys are busily drawing outside. We pass what looks like a man-shaped “root sculpture” which is of one of the spirits, but I don’t get to take pictures of anything because Rockstar is starting to crash – and does so as we enter another gallery and museum of Hahndorf’s history. Didn’t even make it back to the very first gallery we’d entered where I was hoping to buy a vase sculpture by an Aussie artist for AUD 105 (I actually can’t find it when I swing round again, it must’ve closed as we settled Rockstar in a cafe – though he goes out like a light in 5 mins.)

Only just managed to snap this memorial near the playground

Rushing to browse shops before they close (at 5pm! We never get used to that – if you walk around Causeway Bay HK at like, 9 or 10pm, it’s lighted bright as day), I find a faux fur jacket that looks like some of the ones I’ve been eyeing on Shopbop.com for around HKD 3,000, give or take HKD 500 (waiting for them to go on sale – faux fur is Frivolous Purchase to me, not worth dropping Investment Buy Money on). This one I pay AUD 71 for, which is about HKD 500. And it’s exactly the look I’m hoping for.

(In fact, I really liked shopping in Adelaide in general – in David Jones along Rundle Mall I find MAC cream blush in a color I’ve used for years that’s been discontinued in Hong Kong (to be exact, I’ve “used” this one blush compact for years – that’s how long it took me to use more than half of it and when I finally tried to replace it one day with a fresher, newer piece I realized they’d discontinued it. Gotta be a little disgusting though, that walking about I feel strangely comfortable recognizing familiar names – Alessi, Max Mara, Bulgari, among the Seafolly and Witchery. Not that I actually bought anything, and anyway I rarely buy full-priced – I’m more a branded goods warehouse shopper – but I think initial markdowns would sell out a lot less fast here and intend to keep that in mind… In HK you keep getting calls on your cell preparing you for the first couple days of sales and I have SAHM friends who know the exact dates the major branded goods departmental stores go on sale throughout the year…)

And in case you’re wondering why I don’t go around Causeway Bay (which is roughly like Singapore’s Orchard Road) to get the faux fur, it’s because I tried years ago and discovered it’s much easier to get real fur, especially rabbit, than the fake stuff. I tried explaining to the Lane Crawford salesgirls how I don’t want real fur and they stared at me as if I was nuts. Then kinda said try and settle for the real stuff cos it’s easier to find. Which is probably true, if you do find some fake fur in Mong Kok or something, it usually looks like Fake Animal Roadkill. (Really cheap.)

Dog Collars For Man Or Beast, says one of the signs...

OK obviously I’ve just waffled on so I’ll just cut this (abruptly too!) and come back with an eats post later…

Ok last pic of the post - Dog And His Best Friend we spy before getting back in the car