-Chapter 5- Auckland, the Ibis Hotel, and the bank appointment

Auckland is an extremely hilly city. The center consists of only one street, which we will probably remember forever. Queen Street, where the Ibis hotel was located, was a typical shopping street with everything you needed. However, in the first few days, all we noticed was Burger King. On our first day in Auckland, we went in search of a New Zealand SIM card. In a warehouse similar to Media Markt, we were advised by two employees for a whole hour until we finally decided on the Vodafone SIM card. When setting up the new number turned out to be more complicated than we had hoped for, we were on the verge of giving up. Additionally, we knew that we urgently needed a bank appointment so that we wouldn't have to stay in Auckland longer than necessary. However, we could only reach a hotline by phone, so we walked for an hour from our hostel to a district slightly outside. Of course, the bank had recently closed permanently, but a Vodafone shop employee was able to help us with the SIM card. We asked for appointments in several banks, but we were either rejected or would have had to wait for an appointment a week later. Then we walked for another hour to a suburb of Auckland, where fortunately, we got an appointment for Tuesday.

On Sunday, we mooched off Wi-Fi at McDonald's and looked for jobs. In a Facebook group, we discovered a job advertisement for a kiwi farm in "Te Puke Town," with a mobile number and the phrase "Call me every time." So on Sunday noon, we called there: I started with the sentence we had discussed before, and a guy with a strong accent answered in very fast English. Whenever I asked a question, he repeated the same thing he had said before, just as fast. We understood almost nothing, but with the sentence parts we heard, we figured out that he needed a lot of workers, we could bring all our friends, and we should call him as soon as we arrived in Te Puke. The conversation was like a really difficult listening exercise in English, in which I also had to respond. But hey, after three very long days in Auckland, we had a SIM card, a car, a bank appointment, and a job.

The Ibis

The hostel was so dirty that we saved the shower for the hotel. That's how we felt all morning until we finally checked in. We had to get up especially early to walk the 2 kilometers between the hostel and the Ibis twice. It would have been too hard to carry 20 kilo backpacks, a suitcase, our Fjallräven backpacks and a big laundry bag at once. The day before, we had already asked at the Ibis reception if we could get a proof of address, which we needed for our bank appointment. At the reception, a friendly little Asian guy named Andrean with a high-pitched voice told us, "We can do that for you." In the morning, he took our backpacks and tried to play down how heavy they were.

From our hotel room, we had a great view of the Auckland harbor and the Skytower. We dried our laundry on a clothesline across the room, went to floor 7 instead of floor 11, and tried to get into our room until a room service employee pointed out that we were on the wrong floor.

The Ibis had a great location right on Queen Street. That was especially convenient because we had to go to the ANZ Tower every day at least once to withdraw enough money for the car. It wasn't easy because we had to consider the low limit at the ATM, the daily limit of the credit card, and the exchange rates. After a lot of calculations, after we had reached the limit on Celina's and my credit card and also had to withdraw money from our Sparkassen card, we luckily had enough money.

In addition, we were constantly at the reception. Once to ask Andrean for a laundry mark, then to extend a night to get the proof of address from Andrean, and of course to reactivate our room card, which we only noticed when the elevator didn't open. But Andrean discreetly hung around the elevator to ask for the thousandth time, "Sorry, are you Änna Mary Miuss?"

The bank appointment

On our last day in Auckland, we walked for an hour to the bank, where we had the likely nicest employee: a pregnant Asian woman named Daisy. We went through the documents we needed for the appointment so many times: our German tax number, the visa, the passport, the address confirmation... just to make sure nothing could go wrong. However, something did go wrong because the proof of address stated that we would check out of the hotel on the day of the bank appointment. Therefore, it was not valid. The employee suggested calling the hotel so that they could email us a new confirmation. So I panicked and called the Ibis, where, of course, Andrean answered. It took many attempts to explain to him in my slightly hysterical English what the problem was, and he didn't understand it for a long time until he finally said hesitantly, "Yes... we can do that for you." After a tense minute, the email arrived, "Hello Ms Anna, your address confirmation is attached." However, Andrean was just as clumsy as we were and had only attached a picture of the Ibis.

5 minutes later, the same email came again, this time with the correct attachment. After that, everything went mostly smoothly. We didn't understand every word, but enough. After the appointment, a huge weight was lifted off our shoulders. We took a detour to Mount Eden, from where we had a cool view of the Auckland skyline.

To be continued