my first 3 months in Australia

Hey hey!

I arrived here in Perth on the 24th of October 2014, so today it is time for me to pause for a moment and look back on the last 3 months. So much has changed and yet so much has stayed the same. I left my old life and home behind to experience something completely new.

I had never left Europe before, I had never been to Australia - it was so scary and exciting to fly into the unknown.

So let's see what has happened, what has met my expectations and what was completely different from how I imagined it.

// palm trees in the city // cbd skyscrapers // view from mundaring weir // a germany brick // babe and I at Toastface Grillah //

The city

My expectations: I am not exacly well-travelled so I could only try and get impressions of Perth from Google and Jarryd. He didn't really do a good job in making me excited about moving here because he had been living here for most of his life and said it's quite boring. However I was so thrilled about moving to the other end of the world that I pictured it to be big, pulsating and exciting.

What I think now: I have explored quite a bit of the city and its different suburbs now. For a European like me it appears HUGE because the Australians here do not live on top of each other in jam-packed apartment blocks. The city spreads out wide and outside of the centre you hardly ever see buildings with more than two stories.

Furthermore it's not boring at all here, very much the oppposite. There are awesome eateries and cafes everywhere and the city if sull of art, music and events. Very popular here at the moment are food trucks and food markets as well as upcycling and handmade products that are preferably sold on little markets and street festivals.

The weather

My expectations: HOT! I expected it to be unbearably hot every day with a burning sun that would cause me skin cancer and daily sunburns. I hate heat and was really nervous about if I'd be able to cope with the Australian summer. Sweating is just not my cup of tea at all...

What I think now: I totally overestimated it! It is a rather dry heat here and luckily a constant breeze from the nearby ocean makes it absolutely bearable. There are those odd days when it's 42°C but in general I'm happy that my expectations were wrong.

As an inveterate German I however have to admit I miss rainy, cloudy and grey days a bit. No one understands, I know. That's just me...

// perth skyline // there's a beautiful sky with fluffy clouds every day // one of the many graffittis around town // iced latte from the daily at swanbourne beach //

The insects

My expectations: Horrible! I have a big fat insect phobia and that's no exaggeration. I heard so many horror stories before I came here, especially about spiders! I was so worried about not being able to handle the many big and dangerous insects here.

What I think now: The same unfortunately. I have become a bit more relaxed about the quantitiy of encounters because I do not come across yucky crawlers as often as I expected. However if yxou come across an insect here it's always either huge or venomous or both. In my first week here I already met a Redback spider, one of the small but dangerous ones. Two weeks ago I had my first Praying Mantis sighting and then at work we had the biggest freakin cockroach I've ever seen in our office. It's really not a piece of cake at all for me, I'm trying to keep my cool but the phobia just really freaks me out. I have decided to tackle it with hypnotherapy soon.

The money

My expectations: I was told everything is more expensive than in Germany. Especially Perth has the reputation of being the most expensive city in Australia due to the many well-paid mining workers living here. Then again I was also told that the wages are obviously higher here than in Germany. So I hoped these two aspects would simply balance each other out.

What I think now: Well, I'm not 100% sure because I have not lived on my new job's wages yet. I've been working in my new job for one month now and next week I'll get my first payment. However I have already calculated my cost of living and think it will be okay. I won't be rich but it'll be enough to do all the nice things I've planned to do (weekend trips, dinners at nice restaurant, a new laptop, a new tattoo etc.).

// fun at kings park // breakfast at sprolo // la paleta makes the best popsicles // swanbourne beach //

I could actually list a million other things here but this shall be enough for now. Maybe I'll do another recap after 6 months then and talk about the other aspects I didn't mention today.

Congratulations if you made it through and read it all, I know my ramblings can be a bit long sometimes. So thanks for reading!

Have a wonderful weekend!

pink thunderstorms

Hello peeps!

It was stormy, really stormy last night here. Scary stormy! The sky turned dark grey all of a sudden, it began to rain and crazy winds swept through the streets. Then came thunder and lightning, more heavy winds and it was really raining cats and dogs and baby elephants.

Twigs, branches and whole trees fell, got tumbled around, hit cars, shop windows and according to the news unfortunately also three people. Cars were blewn onto the tram rails, big waste containers were blewn against an iron gate and pulled it off its hinges. Roof tiles came crashing down on the pavement.

I have never ever seen such a thunderstorm in my whole life!

I still can only imagine how it must be for other places in the world which have to fight hurricanes on a regular base, but damn this was unbelievable if you've never seen it before. We had storm forces of up to 144 km per hour (that's 90 miles per hour) - that officially is a hurricane.

Today however it was unbearably hot and humid again. I had the day off and wandered through the streets heading for the old town to meet a friend. I had to walk because there was no public transport at all today. On my way the aftermath was clearly visible, whole trees lying in the streets, on cars and branches and twigs everywhere.

But it was good to see the city being awakened and reconditioned, everyone swept the pavements, tried to move branches out of the way, neighbours helped each other with their flooded basements.

Düsseldorf is a great place with great people - most of them not nearly as snobby as the reputation says they are. A proud city that pays lots of attention to a spotless cityscape. So it'll get up, brush the dirt from its shoulders and shine again soon.

But maybe now for something different not as tragic to brighten up the mood okay? I don't mean to sound like a shallow person switching from a disastrous storm to my outfit, but the damage is done and now we can just try to build everything up again and make better preparations next time. That's how life will always make us learn from mistakes.

As for the outfit pics they were taken last week before the heat wave and storms struck us, therefore there's a jumper involved. I don't know what it is that makes me love pink so much at the moment but there has definitely been some change going on in my mind regarding this colour. It's not that I hated it before, it just didn't do anything to me and I had no idea how to style it and thought it doesn't look great with my hair anyway. But lo and behold! I bought an amazingly pretty pink lipstick the other day and last week I couldn't say no to this neonish (not so much in the photos, but actually is) candy pink jumper.

Like it? 

By the way every time I post a new outfit I think about my "moral issues shopping post" again, that's why I'd like to say that in this outfit the skirt, belt and shoes are second hand finds.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

rome roundup

Hi guys!

Sorry for being away so long between my posts, I'm still trying to get into the normal blogging routine again after all my city trips and the flus I had in between. Furthermore I'm trying to spend as much time as possible with someone who has entered my life and has been making me really happy since then. ;)

Anyway, here are the promised photos of my Rome trip. It was the last of the three city trips I took, so after this post there'll finally be outfits again.

I went to Rome with my family to weeks ago, it was my mum, stepdad, stepbro and me. Believe me, after two days I started to remember why I hated to go on vacation with the family when I was a teenager - damn can they be exhausting.

However I shouldn't really complain because my stepdad had booked all kinds of sightseeing tours for us, for example a guided audio tour for the Coloseum.

On this first tour we covered the Coloseum, which was really cool and the Forum Romanum. It was quite hot that day, although it was the end of October we had 24°C and pretty high air humidity that made the trip feel like a summer holiday.

The Vatican was a bit of a disappointment because you have to pay for everything. The only place you can visit for free is St. Peter's Square and when I stood there and took a look around I saw that it always looked much bigger on TV, so it was nothing really impressive to me. I would've loved to see the Sistine Chapel with the Michelangelo frescos, but like I said, unfortunately you had to pay for it and I just failed to see why I should throw money down the Christian church's throat. In my opinion that's a total tourist rip-off and pretentious for an institution that tells their followers not to be covetous...

Shopping-wise I couldn't do much because I was already pretty broke from the trips to Budapest and Prague that I had taken before I visited Rome. However I was able to at least buy a cheap necklace for myself and some chocolate that's not available in Germany.

Some other places we visited were Foro Augusto (see picture above), two arch basilicas, the Holy Steps, catacombs and Castel St. Angelo, but I didn't want to spam you guys with too many photos. Also I enjoyed the trip but came to the conclusion that Rome is not really my cup of tea. It was interesting to see all the historic sites, but apart from that I was just not feeling this city, it felt different and I was not as smitten as I was with the Eastern European cities.

Hope you like the pics though.

Have you ever been to Rome? How did you like it?

Have a lovely day!