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As long as I can remember, I've always wanted to visit New Zealand. Just before I got married, I remember making the rounds of travel agents checking for the island country deep down under as a honeymoon destination. But the exorbitant fare (1.05L return each, if memory serves right and this is more than 15 years ago!) led me to look elsewhere.
The yearning remained and when I got a chance to work in Auckland in 2017-18, I grabbed it.
Some background: Auckland, though not the capital city of New Zealand (that honour belongs to Wellington), is easily its most bustling metropolis. Auckland region, which includes not just the metropolitan area but also outlying smaller towns, rural areas and the Hauraki islands, has a population of 1.7 million, which doesn't sound like a lot till you consider the fact that 35% of New Zealand's population lives here.
Putting things in perspective, 9 Indian cities, the smallest of them being Surat, each have a population
more than New Zealand. An astounding 53 Indian cities have populations of more than a million, i.e. comparable in population to Auckland. All 5 major Australian cities likewise (Sydney and Melbourne
each are almost as populous as NZ).
To someone raised in Mumbai, that sounds piddly. But you get used to it pretty quickly. The downtown is small- you can do a brisk walk around it in 20 minutes- but has character. Greater Auckland has sprawling suburbs, dotted with parkland and well connected by road and a fast-growing rail network. To answer the question every Team BHPian would ask, YES you need a car! Unless you live and work in downtown (which I did). So, although I had residential parking for most of my time there, I didn't have a car (I know...the shame!) and made do with weekend and occasionally longer-term rentals.
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I landed in Auckland via Singapore on the 10th of August, 2017 bang in the middle of winter. The rainy season back home had been unseasonally warm and I had been warned to pack adequately. The night I landed was actually very pleasant but I soon came to understand why they call New Zealand the land of 4 seasons. You can wake up to a perfect day that gets positively hot by noon, but a sudden downpour in the afternoon can leave you shivering later in the day. To be fair, it never goes sub-zero in Auckland but the gusty winds often make it feel that way. Thankfully, it rains pretty much only in summer over there (explains all those rain stoppages at Eden Park eh!) so at least you're spared the misery of being cold AND wet.
Bah who am I kidding? New Zealand has the best climate anywhere I have ever lived for sure. It's hard not to fall in love with the climate, the place and its people. Not necessarily in that order.
Paying obeisance to the mother ship a night or two after I landed. My company has its headquarters bang downtown at the lower end of Queen Street.
I worked out of my client office which moved to midtown the week I moved and eventually to the North Shore, a short drive across the Bay. This was how my typical commute looked.
You really don't have to go into the rural hinterland to see sheep. This one is placidly grazing in one the hundred-odd parks in Auckland city. I kid you not!
This sign always made me homesick. Bombay is the most distant of the far-flung Auckland suburbs, almost 50 km from downtown.
My first weekend I spent just roaming around downtown by foot or on the red metroline bus (we called it the "atthani" bus because the fare was just 50 cents).
Elliott Stables was an upmarket downtown food court that actually was a stables till about a generation ago.
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I needed to find myself an apartment and managed to find one just at the edge of downtown. It was in a quiet tree-lined street with the police headquarters at one end and the fire department at the other.
It had a pool! I figured the kids would love that but turns out you can't really swim too much in an unheated pool so we hardly used it a handful of times. Still you'll admit, it's a nice view.
Auckland downtown apartments are matchbox sized. The second bedroom is actually a glorified cubbyhole in the living room where they squeeze in a study that pulls down into a queen bed and a closet. Still, it was comfortable and served its purpose as a kids bedroom.
I could see the Sky Tower (featured here on extreme right) from my terrace! This was such a thrilling revelation for me at the time but I eventually realised that was true of virtually half the partments downtown
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Drive about an hour North of downtown and you will hit some awesome beaches...
But wait... the initial couple of weekends I didn't drive. Instead I hit the local Rockshop in search of a guitar to spend those cold lonely evenings.
Ended up buying a Washburn plug-in acoustic that is every bit worth the $299 (about 14K INR) I paid for it. It's still my primary axe of choice.
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Everybody drives in Auckland. And those that don't- mostly students, old people and Indians saving up their "onsite" paychecks- use the super efficient transit system run by Auckland Transport. It's mostly buses, but I managed to take a train in my very first week there. It was nice:
The city used to have a tram system like most cities built by the British. It's gone now for the most part, but some of it is retained as a heritage site: