Nicole schreibt...

Australia 2003

Going to Australia had been my wildest dream for a long time and now I could finally make it come true. It's a long way down under though and I chose Hong Kong as the stop over point for the journey. It hadn't been easy to find a travel agent flexible enough to accommodate my wishes, but luckily there are a few that are able to think outside the box. The first leg of the journey now took me from Düsseldorf to London-Heathrow first and then onwards with a British Airways 747 to Hong Kong. Departing late in the evening, I arrived in Hong Kong the following evening just after sunset, offering dramatic evening colors behind the hills of mainland China. Even without that I had hardly ever been as nervous as this in my life, for it was the first time I was all alone in such a foreign place and for a moment wasn't sure if I could bring myself to leave the plane. I did, however, and treated myself to a taxi ride to Kowloon, where I had booked a hotel. After checking in, I walked the length of the famous Nathan Road to the harbour where I could look across the water to Victoria Island, had a little dinner and returned to the hotel to sleep the jetlag off.

The next day was my sightseeing day so I took the ferry to Victoria first for the tram ride uphill to Victoria Peak which offers an amazing view over Hong Kong's skyscrapers and towards the Chinese mainland. Walking around downtown Hong Kong turned into a nightmare quickly though, because although many skyscrapers and their indoor shopping malls are connected by walkways, it's still difficult to navigate through the crazy traffic. I was glad when I was back on the Kowloon side where I could stroll along Nathan Road and even found a lovely park in which to chill and watch the Chinese at their Tai-Chi. In the evening I went to the famous Temple Street Night Market, where you can find everything - especially faked designer goods. I had planned to visit the Hong Kong History Museum the next day but found that it was closed on Mondays, so I spent most of the morning in a gorgeous Chinese supermarket that sold all the great stuff I love anyway for incredible prices, such as silk pajamas and kimonos, dining sets, porcelain and lots more. Then it was time to say goodbye to China and head onwards to that old dream of mine. I stood on Hong Kong Airport staring at my ticket to Melbourne for the longest time, hardly able to believe my luck. Another night ruined on a plane, this time flying Kangaroo Airlines (otherwise known as Qantas), I arrived in Melbourne bleary-eyed and jetlagged, but if I had hoped for my favorite country to welcome me with open arms, I was soon taught otherwise. First I spent a long time queuing at immigration, then some funnyman decided I was a good person for a thorough bag-search at customs. But finally I was on a bus into town, with a glorious Australian sun shining on me in deepest winter and I couldn't have been happier.

My friend Sherry was coming all way from Perth to meet me in Melbourne and do some christmas shopping and we spent two very nice days together - and it helped on this first big trip alone to spend at least two days with another person and do stuff I wouldn't do alone, like visiting a cabaret-concert and catching a movie. But while I felt a little lonely on Christmas Day when all of Melbourne seemed to be out in the parks for picknicks and barbecues, while the shops were closed and the streets deserted, I had a fabulous time overall, exploring the city and its environments, especially the beaches at St.Kilda and Williamstown.

Meeting the Natives:

Another day trip took me to Sovereign Hill near Ballarat; where a replica of a 19th Century gold mining town has been set up. It was raining most of the day but even so it was a great way to travel back in time and get an idea of what life in the young colony was like back then. The bad weather made strolling around in the goldmining cap more or less impossible (especially since I had packed summer clothes only - I hadn't known that 'summer in Melbourne' often gets to be as much of a joke as 'summer in Germany', so I was pretty frozen all day too)

Finally I headed onwards to the warmer climate of Sydney, Australia's number one city - though not capital, that's Canberra, a "planned town" in the middle of nowhere. Or exactly half-way between Melbourne and Sydney to be precise because the Australians couldn't agree on which town should become the capital of their young nation - so they finally compromised by building a new one. To save on money and time I had booked an overnight coach trip between the cities, departing Melbourne late in the evening, passing through Canberra actually without seeing anything of the capital and arriving Sydney the next morning. I slept through most of the trip, but I remember that when I was awake and looked out of the window, I saw the most gorgeous starry night sky ever. Just as in Melbourne I spent most of the time just walking around, exploring the city and the famous Harbour area with Bridge and Opera House as well as Sydney's famous beaches. The harbour view above was taken from the ferry to Manly Beach, which was a bit cosier than crowded famous Bondi Beach.

I had purposely planned my trip so that I would be able to spend New Year's Eve in Sydney and see the famous fireworks above the Harbour. Since I didn't want to spend that evening all alone I had contacted a fellow German traveller on the internet who would be in Sydney as well. He brought two other girls along and I was already profoundly annoyed by him hours before the fireworks even started. There's some irony in trumpeting how much he loved Australia and the cheerful easy-going attitude of the Aussies so much that he kept travelling there and then ruining the entire evening by acting super cool and cynic - and in this very German. In order to later have a good view on things we went down to the harbour area at 9pm already and it was so packed that I could easily befriend some Aussies who were camping out next to us and spend the rest of the evening with them rather than Mr Cool from Germany and his companies (who had probably been very nice girls to hang out with otherwise). I botched my own photos of the fireworks, so here's another one :) The first day of the new year was spent on Bondi Beach for one last chance of soaking up the summer sun, then it was time to travel on. During my Malaysia trip a year before I had already fallen in love with Singapore and deeply regretted that I didn't get a proper opportunity to explore the shopping malls of Orchard Road - and in fact it had been seeing all those Qantas Airplanes heading for Australia on Singapore's Changi Airport that had partly triggered this trip. So I had now made sure that my stop over on the way home would be Singapore and I greatly enjoyed being back there. Arriving in the evening, I took a taxi into the city and after checking in just walked around to soak up the atmosphere and find some dinner. I hit Orchard Road the next day for a bit more shopping and in the evening returned to Changi for my flight home - first to London and then onwards to Germany. It was certainly a trip of a lifetime and not the last time I went 'down under'(or to Singapore, come to that...)