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is there a particular reason you always wanted to come to Australia? Just curious :D Congrats on making one of your dreams come true!!! 🩷🩷

hey there! sorry for the delayed answer, but i'm (sadly) finally home again and currently catching up with everything that's piled up! the thing is i always wanted to come to australia since i was 18, like right after school, doing some work & travel. i‘m having a hard time remembering why australia in particular… i mean. besides the obvious points like the landscape, the wildlife, the welcoming people. i observed that it‘s a popular choice with germans in any regards (and to be fair i‘ve been a big mad max fan since i was 17 so… guess this played a not so irrelevant role).

but… it was quite expensive (you needed to have at least 3000,- euros as savings back then, i can imagine it‘s even more nowadays) and all those years i told myself that this was the reason i never went. when actually i chickened out. i was too scared back then and for the longest time after. there is a lot of regret i harbour for my anxiety-ridden 20s and all the things i actively avoided, but not appreciating and taking the opportunity the work & holiday visa gives you, i feared that this will be something that's always going to haunt me. (i am too old now to do work & travel, the cut off is at 30yrs.... which is a shame, really, because i've become a person that is so ready for it now... but i'm gonna look into different kinds of ways to stay longer maybe, to work there).

so yeah i guess ever since australia stuck with me. always with a little bitter "could've seen it" thought. and as the years went by i watched a lot of documentaries, and movies and shows, i learned about the history here and there, the incredible flora and fauna, really fell for the australian accent, dunno why, just love to hear it... befriended ppl who've been there and did work & travel and always envied their experiences. developed a longing for the vast extents of it all and the nothingness especially of the outback which's actually so full of things and life... and i have to be honest, being a team fortress 2 fan with sniper as one of my faves and a junker fan (and always forever and ever a mad max enthusiast)... it would be a lie to say i didn't romanticize the place maybe a bit on the basis of this. but believe me i'm not some kind of delusional fan who does "postapocalyptic vibes tourism" or sth like this. i pay my highest respect to the people who live and lived there.

so yeah, there's that. i'm just looking back at the best 6 weeks of my life so far and my expectations were not simply met, they've been exceeded a billion times and i am so. SO. happy, that i finally had the guts to just do it. i've gained so much personally. and at the end of the day we cannot escape our ways to an extent, i learned that too. but it's been a mindblowing experience especially in regards of self-concept which is hard to put into words.