5th Jun 2008 - 13th Jun 2008Bye bye oz.... ;-( I`m in tears... I almost jumped on a plane when I saw it was heading to Sydney... I can`t help it but I totally fell in love with OZ! And now I`m at the airport in Singapore trying to kill some time before I continue towards Frankfurt where I`ll first catch up with Sari and Mauro and then go to Bonn for a party! Ok, I AM looking forward to meeting all (or at least many of) my friends again, but still there was a stone on my heart as I watched the plane rise higher and higher as we left Darwin. ;-( But back to how it went in Australia. Sydney was good and I was well looked after by Mike and later by Quynh, who had previously hosted me twice. I hung out at Quynh`s place the day that I left Sydney, because it was raining so much that I couldn`t do anything without getting soaked (and Mike had left to go to NZ). The plane to Darwin was 2 hours late, which meant that I arrived there at 2 am. I had to catch a cab to get to my host`s place. He lived farther than I`d thought and the taxi was ridiculously expensive. And the driver was a "lazy bastard" as my host Mick said as he had to give the guy directions on the phone. But I finally made it there and was welcomed by Mick, Milou and Silvia (the last two surfers) and beer (a third surfer, Marcel, complained the next day he couldn`t sleep for all the noice). This place was quite obviously a total party place. And I was sweating wearing my jeans - at night! Oh how I loved Darwin already! The next day Marcel, Milou and I went to town and I saw an add by a Dutch guy about going to Kakadu the same day. M & M both said they`d come too. So after going to the Beach, where I didn`t get to swim because there was a crocodile in the water and the life guard came to get me out before I made it very far, M, M and I went to pack our stuff, met up with the others and went to Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks.The group: Marcel, Sander, Tim (all Dutch), Milou, Skan (both French), Lital (Israeli girl) and I. Sander had made all the plans already so the rest of us didn`t have to do much thinking. Nobody knew each before but we got along very well except that I was sick and tired of all the french and french accent by the end of the 3,5 days. And Skan did btw stink a bit! Ok that was after two nights without showers and temperatures way above 30 but everybody else`s deodorants did NOT fail! Kakadu was awesome, but had annoyingly many mozzies (you should see my ass - oh I forgot: you will because I had Tim take a picture of it with all the bites.. ;) ). After 2,5 days of pure nature, rockpaintings and crocodiles we went to Litchfield National Park on the way to Darwin. It was just plainly fabulous! This totally compensated having missed the Kakadu water falls (we didn`t have a 4WD)! We went to swim at two of them and also in some rock pools. Oh how good it felt! And it was good fun jumping into the water. Lital was rather shy and was just concentrating in taking pictures and sitting half in the water with unusually lot of fabric on, but even Milou, who must be already 60, was jumping head first and laughing with the others. Dhugal (my host in Perth) had told me to climb on a cliff at one of the falls and jump down from there but I was shaking uncontrollably after 2 meters so I decided to skip the last 13 m and jump from where I was... But Marcel, Milou and Skan made it and jumped down (hitting the bottom of the pool btw). I have a video of Marcel jumping so I can show how scary it was.. Back to Darwin I met up with Melanie!!! :-D (background info: She lived in Bonn for a half a year and I was supposed to visit her in Canberra but her plans changed so we didn`t get to meet.) And now she was in Darwin as part of her role as Australian UN youth representative. It was soooo lovely to catch up with her again! :-) Mel hadn`t changed at all and was as lovely and easy to talk to and fun and full of good stories as ever! AND she`s coming to Helsinki in September! YAY! Afterwards I went to to watch soccer at 4 am in a bar!! Can you imagine that? It was Holland vs. Italy and I didn`t want to miss the action. It was absolutely weird being in a bar full of Dutch and some Italians - in Australia. On Tuesday we were totally knocked out and just hung out at a hostel where Lital was staying and Sander was doing laundry. I met an English girl who had been working as a stripper. She was good fun and I enjoyed talking to her. She tried to to convince me to try it out since I was so out of cash, but no...On Wednesday I`d organized a BBQ by one of the beaches. And we actually had two locals coming AND Melanie!!! So three Aussies, which was more than I could have hoped for since the CS community in Darwin is no community at all but rather a couple of hosts who never meet each other. I had all my belongings with me since I was keen to move to another place. Mick (the first host) left us (in the meanwhile M, M and two German girls) alone in the house because he had leave for work. I`d sent out three requests but never heard back from them and decided to see what happened at the bbq. And so it happened that there was a guy who offered I could stay at his place. Nathan and I went out partying after everybody else left and had heaps of fun. It was definitely one of the wildest party nights for me here down under. ;) Poor Nathan is not used to drinking alcohol (he works in housing projects for aborigines and is not allowed to drink while in the aborigine communities) and had to go to work next day very hung over... In the meanwhile I stayed at his place, hung out by the pool, went for a walk on the beach and downtown, then again hung out by and in the pool. A hard day... In the evening we went to a market that was held every Thursday. There was a lot of music and I especially liked Emdee, who play modern didgeridoo music. I had already listened to their music in Marcel`s car while in the national parks (the music fit perfectly to the scenery!!!) and was excited that I could now hear them live and buy a couple of CD`s. And we watched the sunset. Australia has the most beautiful sunsets in the whole world!!! Even the pictures of this last one are so fabulous that when seeing them you now they must have been gigantic live! So now it`s Friday and I spent half the morning by the pool at Nathan`s before leaving for the airport. And here I am. In Singapore. Wondering when`s the next time I`ll go back... ;-(
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