G'day mates! Glad you found your way here to my blog about my "vacation" in Australia last year. The plan is to share photos and stories with you, telling you something about the places I liked and the ones I did not. Against all odds, I did not do that typical "Work & Travel"-stuff, every third german graduate does. My plan was easier, but more expensive: I did travel & travel!
Why & How: I just did not want to spend my time in Australia searching for a job, doing work no one else wants to do and always be dependant on my boss / my current financial situation. What I did was working before, here in germany (where it is much less sunny, colder and the nature is not that differentiatet as down under). I worked in retail trade in our city's shopping center and in addition to that did a payed internship in a medium-sized engineering company. I was very lucky about receiving a bit of money from my parents and grandparents for my graduation + my 18th birthday, so after a couple of months of working, I had a nice budget for flying to the other side of the world and travelling around for about two months. I compressed everything I wanted to see there in this period of time, planned it well and left at the beginning of January.
I bought an expensive backpack, lots of helpful stuff like a very small-packed hammock, and before I realised I sat in the plane in Duesseldorf, heading towards Dubai with Emirates. At this point let me tell you, that Emirates is one of the best airlines in the world! I did not try that many yet, it should be something around 8 different airlines - but Emirates is definetely the leader of those ones. Their board entertainment for long distance flights is just awesome! I've watched two movies, listened to different music and played several games on the screen in front of me when we landed already in Dubai. 7 hours just seemed like a single one!
In Dubai, I had a little less than 4 hours to catch my next flight towards Melbourne - and started my day around 5 am with a Whopper Meal at Burger King! I did not leave the airport that day and spent much time in the duty free area. When it came to boarding, I was pretty impressed by this giant plane: An Airbus A380 - the king of the aeroplanes!
It was pretty nice to fly in a plane, where I could finally stand upright everywhere. I am 1,90m (6 ft 2") tall and in every other plane I can stand properly in the corridor, but nowhere else. The best thing that happened to me on that flight was the person on the seat next to me: A gorgeus, lovely old woman from London, England. She was about 70 years old and was as friendly as could be. We chatted a lot during that 14 hour-flight, and if she had not spilled her cup of water on my pants, I would have called her the best seat neighbor ever!
During the flight I had the best possible view on the maledives. When I woke up from a Nap and looked out the window, I just saw those beautiful islands just 40.000 feet below my seat - unfortunately a picture hard to catch with a cellphone camera (but i am not too disappointed with that shot though).
The half-day lasting flight went by quiet quickly, even though I slept for just half an hour. But, as said before, the board entertainment was catching. If i remember right, I watched 4 movies on that flight - some classics, some brand new!
When I first saw the West Coast of Australia it was still a couple of hours until we finally landed. But when we did, I started realizing: I am in Australia! 12.000 km away from my family and friends. Suddenly there was summer instead of winter and suddenly it was morning, when in Germany there was the evening of the day before. Amazing!
It took me quiet a while to fight off the plastic I wrapped my backpack in at Düsseldorf Airport, mostly because I had no tool at all so I fighted with my bare hands. After passing the toll area, hiding my german sweets (Still don't know if that was okay or not), I jumped into a bus to get me to the city. On the bus there was free Wi-Fi so I let my family and my girlfriend know, that I was okay and that I arrived in AUSTRALIA!
And if you'd like to, come back tomorrow to see pictures of the wonderful city of Melbourne, read about my worst sunburn ever and find out, why I almost bought a car.
Upvote if you liked the post, but more important: Follow me to not miss my next episode of "Discovering Australia".
Cheers
P.S.: Yes, all the pictures I used and will use are original content, I made them by myself! No internet pictures, no friends asked - every single shot! Happy to share them with you :-) Any questions? Just ask!