March

Heyhey, welcome back! Next up: my family comes to visit me in Australia! After not being sure if they will arrive at all due to the war in the middle east, they actually showed up! It had only been six weeks since I said goodbye to them at the airport, but I was still very happy to see them again and to show them around, as well as explore new places with them.

After doing a quick tour through the city and a ferry ride on the river, I took my family to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, so everyone could also get to feed a kangaroo and be violated by some hungry parakeets.

We then went to Sydney together, before my parents and my sister went on to do a road trip down the coast all the way to Adelaide, with my sister already departing from Melbourne. On arrival in Sydney, my family unsuccessfully tried to sort out their flights back home at the airport (the airline refused to give them different flights to avoid the middle east), which means they had to rebook flights for way more money. Setting that aside, we had a great time in Sydney. We booked a hop-on-hop-off bus tour, which took us all around the city to see the main sights. We saw the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, visited Bondi Beach, took a stroll through the fancy shops in Queen Victoria Building, and went to the top of the Sydney Tower Eye to get a great view of the city.

When my family left to do their road trip, I had the rest of the day to myself. Unfortunately, due to a storm, the weather was quite sh***, so I decided to go to a few museums. In the evening, I walked to the airport, only to find out that all flights were cancelled due to the weather conditions. I quickly booked the cheapest hotel I could find (the airline didn’t pay for it) and was set to stay in Sydney for one more day. The next day, the weather was nice again, so I did some more sightseeing, and did the coastal walk from Watsons Bay to Dover Heights. In the end, I was really happy to have spent one more day in Sydney.

April

When I returned to Brisbane, I spent one week finishing my Guided Research Project from TUM, which I had been working on for 7 months until then. I had a lot of fun doing that project, but I was really relieved when it was finally done (For anyone interested, here is a link to the paper). With that complete, it was finally time to start thinking about the easter break which was coming up the next week, for which I had no plans yet. Fortunately, my friends Jessica and Vincent asked me to join them to a 3-day surf camp at Seven Mile Beach, which is about 2 hours south of Sydney.

Next thing I know, I was back on a plane to Sydney, only 7 days after I had left there. The surf camp really was one of the highlights of my exchange. The conditions where absolutely perfect, with quite big waves for beginners (one of the days the instructors were even contemplating to cancel the session because of the swell). Apparently, our previous surfing endeavors had paid off, as all three of us were selected to be in the “not quite beginners anymore” group, which meant we got to surf the green waves, which are the bigger waves breaking a bit further from shore. I had an absolute blast, catching more and bigger waves than I had ever dreamed of. The instructors were really nice and gave great individual feedback, which helped me improve a lot over the three days. At night, we went to the beach to look at the stars. I have never seen the Milky Way so clearly. I was sad when the camp was over, although by the end of it, my arms felt like limp spaghetti.

To find out about our adventure to New Zealand, continue reading in part 3…