May 8th, 5:30 AM,

10.000 km away from home,

the opera house is passing me by.

…and all I can really think about is: “How the hell could this happen?!?”

Sydney, over 4 mio people and me standing at the airport and wondering how this city works. How do I know where I have to get out, when the fucking stations don’t have any sort of name plates?!? Anyway, I’m doing quite fine so far, get off the right station and try to find Karo’s house. Karo is my sister in law, sort of. Actually we never quite figured out what our relationship was really called, so we left it with sister in law.

The city is still asleep and the sun has not yet risen. That’s when I think “Ah, it’s not too bad man!”. Yeah, right! I’m passing the next garden and something bothers me. From the corner of my eye I notice things lurking between the trees. I focus and of course… Spiders! Actually three fucking spiders right next to each other. Every single one of a size where any halfway normal guy would run for cover and every halfway sane girl would have passed out already…

So I’m moving on and meet Karo right in front of the house. Nice surprise for her. I believe she didn’t really think I would make it this far, well neither did I! Anyway, she shows me the house and where I will be sleeping for the next couple of days. OK, if I wouldn’t have known that Australia was populated only some hundred years ago, I would have said the house must have been a thousand fucking years old! That’s when you start to realize that you just traded your 5 room 145 m² apartment for a mattress right in the door way next to the stairs…

I tried to stay awake for as long as I could but passed out at 4 PM anyway…