Not everything is bad in Germany. I´m still quite happy. Melbourne brought me so much luck and confidence. Its good to go to my home university, still meet people there I haven´t seen for long, getting to know new people... and now spring has arrived. Comparing to the Australian spring its more interesting here: to watch the plants go greener and greener each day, to watch the sun go down later and later almost each day... Changes that are more deeply here. In Melbourne there was not so much difference to observe in spring.

But what is sometimes going on your nerves, is that the big cities here are so overcrowded. In Australia there are not so many people. You won´t find so much space in clubs or trains in Germany. I could always walk in my own pace in Melbourne, and I´m walking very fast. Not often possible in Hamburg when I´m late for Uni.

Anyway. I just made the first step into a new life here: I will move to Berlin and go once a week to Uni in Hamburg. To avoid boring allday life and for many reasons. I think its the right choice, even though it might be stressful sometimes.

My first two weeks back in Germany...
Its okay, but its sad. Nobody ever told me before how sad such a goodbye is. I love Melbourne now more than even Berlin! Hope I´ll be cured soon... But I will do anything to come back soon to this lovely, friendly city.
I don´t like German bread at the moment. I never would have guessed I would say this, but I miss Australian "bread". And I miss Humus, and Pumpkin. I miss the blue sky and the "how you´re doing" at the counter. I miss Australian beer, that doesn´t make you feel bloated while drinking like German beer does. First of all I miss my friends, luckily I saw three of them already in Berlin and Hamburg!! But the others are now in Australia, Canada, or somewhere else.
I know that I´m like a child that wants to have its toy back, but its so triste often to be in Germany. Its now not cold anymore, but also not hot yet, and there will be only a few hot days in summer, i mean 30 degree with hot!
My Uni is still a good place with interesting people, but also some "posers". Some people are still lovely friends, others are still annoying like it ever was. Everyone notes that i lost weight in Australia. Don´t ask why, i don´t know how i lost it. Its one of the good things happen to me here. I´m still very positive. Melbourne gave me much energy and confidence.
I also had a few good parties here, actually only two in two weeks, as I´m busy with searching a flat and everything else.

I miss:
my friends
Palmtrees
good weather
speaking english
Ms Libertine, my favourite club
Humus
the good coffee (the very good coffee, even coffee for take-away tastes so good... And of course MY sort: Flat White!)
Australian bread
Stones Ginger wine
Little Creatures Beer
and so much more...

can´t be missed out when you experienced it. A hailstorm like I never experienced before. within minutes the streets were rivers, like you see here, and it rained into the cafe I was at this time. I think many buildings were flooded as they were not meant for such an amount of rain and ice that came down from the sky on this day.

Goodbye Party


just a very very good party. So happy that so many friends arrived to say goodbye:)

A night full of music and dance performances

What a warm day this was. My friend Sean organized an event of all his diverse friends that are into music and dance. I proudly designed the flyer for it:))

We had a capoeira group, a belly dancer, an African Percussion Group, Reggae singers, two singer and songwriters, and 3 djs. One of them was me, presenting German Minimal Techno. I djed with the equipment (serrato) of my friend, using my mp3 files as I didn´t have my records with me. It was a beautiful event at the very best restaurant of Melbourne in Abbotsford. (Its delicious Sri Lankan Soul-Food and you can pay what you want and can afford)
What a great but also bitter sweet final for the friendship of us international and Aussies that found each other at Lentil As Anything (Sean, Gabriel, Rivers, Gisella, Alexa, Simon, Alex, Miriam, Brittany, Bree and many many more)

My exhibition opening on 6.2.10

Just pictures:) my beloved friends in front of the gallery at the opening
me, while hanging the pictures in a 35°c hot small room at around midnight, with a little help of a friend (Casper)

my favourite piece of the show

Only thing constant seems to be change...

Times got tougher. Everyone is preparing for leaving. Three of my best friends are leaving, Sean, Bridget and Street Art- Miriam. Living is still nice but expensive and since my exhibiton opening I have nothing to do here anymore. It rained in my studio, (buildings in Australia are not built for much rain I suppose, also my favourite Club Ms Libertine was flooded for a couple of hours) it looks decayed now, I can´t use it anymore, what a sad goodbye. It will be a hard goodbye but I think I will also leave soon, at least in March.
My spiritual journey though is still interesting. I met so many spiritual people here, and they all tell me the same: Believe in your thoughts and you can change things like you want them to be. (But thats another chapter)
Tonight is Chinese New Years Eve, They celebrate the new year of the Tiger. Me and friends will attend, wow how often do you have this chance!?
Except of the milk in my coffee by the way, I ended up eating almost vegan, (like I said, my parents would be scared!!) but I started now to eat cheese again, I was starving for it recently.
I will try my best to do Honours/Master at RMIT in Melbourne! I´d love to come back to this wonderful, friendly and vibrant city (though its not the most beautiful city i´ve ever seen;) I got so used to think in English, think in dollar instead of Euro, got so used to left side traffic... I can hardly imagine being back in Germany... Its like my home here.

I´m a big city girl!

Since two weeks I´m now in my beloved city again. I first slept at a friends flat, then moved into a beautiful flat in Fitzroy, but I had to move out two days after cause my flatmate was not nice. I will have an exhibition in Fitzroy in February and I wanted to start immediately with my new work (I sent my old artwork to Germany) but these circumstances didn´t allow me to spend a lot of time with it.
My best friends are still in town (Markus unfortunately not), but Michelle, both Miriams, and Bridget! We were on a few parties like Roxanne Parlour or Bimbos in Fitzroy. Three days after I moved out of the flat in Fitzroy, I found a beautiful apartment room in the CBD; in heart of Melbourne, in an old house between skyscrapers. My flatmate is an aquaintance I knew before and I met him again by accident. We get on really well together. He is highly spiritual and he always listens to deep minimal techno like from my hometowns Hamburg and Berlin. I have a dream life here now. I can still use my old studio for working for this month, I have a beautiful flat and a very nice flatmate, many beautiful friends and some men who die to date me, its summer and my heart hurts when I think of my farewell in february.
One chapter I must dedicate to Stones Ginger Wine: Our favourite drink at the moment. Not available in Germany i´m afraid, so its double precious for me. I fell in love with many sorts of alcoholics here, like little Creatures Beer from Fremantle, West Australia, and Mango Beer. But Stones Ginger wine and Ginger beer are the ones that I can still drink without getting bored.

Sydney

When i arrived in sydney, I was still on tranquis from the night. I managed to find the flat of my friend Michelle somehow. The flat was in Glebe, a beautiful but not too extreme suburb around the Center of Sydney. It was the flat where we were supposed to celebrate christmas together.
Christsmas eve was very very nice. I had no high expectations to celebrate it the first time without my family, but it was almost more relaxed than in the circle of my family. The people who celebrated with us were Volker, Michelle, Ossi and his girlfirend, Miriam, and Ryan...... We made a delicious dinner with dessert and later on, Volker had some "popping bonbons", I don´t know the name of it, for us, and we opened them.


the next day me and Miriam went to Kings Cross, a suburb which reminded me of Hamburg St Pauli with its red light bars and broken people everywhere. We stayed three nights with Ryan there at his deluxe hotel. Unfortunately it rained all three days much. Despite, Miriam and I went out the day after to the suburb Paddington, with the gay district and the interesting Oxford street. As not many shops were open, we decided to go to a cafe finally where I ate one of my best sticky date cakes ever.

New Years Eve
New Years Eve was supposed to be a pain in the ass cause some of our friends decided to go to Botanical Gardens to View the Fireworks at Harbour Bridge and Opera House. That meant they stood in a queue from 10am to get in there at 1pm to catch a good spot and squat it all day. Me and Miri joined them later at 5pm or so. On the way there which took us endless cause we were distracted by so many things, finding things on the street (happens very often now to me), listening to an Asian soul singer with an unimaginable beautiful voice in Sydney Central Underground, sneaking into a festival which would take place the next day (really! but we hadn´t the stamina to stay all day and night in the mango tree just to see the festival next day), singing in the train.... We had a great time, and even when we entered the park, we made the best out of the situation being packed with 20 000 other tourists in one spot. We danced to the sound of our mp3 players and collected bottles so we could refund them, in the end we could afford $40 for a bottle of prosecco that we shared at midnight!
We were driven away from the park pretty soon after midnight by the security guides, and Miri, Volker and me ended up in a disco of an Irish Pub, they played good 70´s Funk and Soul there, but in the end I was happy to go home to recover from this busy New years eve and the also sleepless nights before.


Newtown!
A suburb that I really really liked (Glebe was also not too bad, or Paddington) but Newtown was to Sydney what Fitzroy is to Melbourne, Schanze is to Hamburg and Kreuzberg is to Berlin. There were so many vegan or vegetarian restaurants, street art spots, alternative cinemas, 2nd hand shops (here you say op-shop) and nice looking bars. I didn´t spend to much time there unfortunately. I hope I will come back.

Brisbane

What a lovely city. I heard many stories about Brisbane to be not a good city. But when I arrived there, finally after all the hitchhiking countryside struggles and the feeling of being lost so often, I felt so well in the environment of a big city, and eventually now I know I´m a big city girl! Brisbane is warm, tropical, but has the charme of a world city, and is much more alternative and creative than I thought. I really fell in love with Brisbane, not surprisingly, as all my favourite cities have a "B" as the first letter - Berlin, Barcelona, Brighton (except of Melbourne). I slept the first night in a house with 30 Hippies, what was okay but for me it was to few peace and I was longing for calmness. We went out in a district called Westend, its one of the artist districts, comparingly with Fitzroy in Melbourne, and I loved it. We went to a good Open Air bar to hear a Funkband and later a Gypsyband there. I enjoyed it very much. the band played under a tree of Frangipani, and all the time these beautiful flowers were raining on us!

The next day I met a friend of Melbourne, Volker, who was at this time in Brisbane, too. It was really cool to see someone familiar again except of my friend Miriam who I was travelling with. We went to Chinatown or The Valley, a really cool district where the clubs are at night, and by day it has a coffeehouse charme with many creative people walking around. I really loved the atmosphere there.
Later on I cought up with Miriam and her friend Jon who lives in Brisbane. I decided to stay the night at his place to in order to have a little peace. He lives in a suburb more outside, but beautiful in the hills and palmtrees. We made a delicious pumpkin based dinner like so often here in Australia, and of course, a glass of Gingerwine, everyones darling!
The next day miriam and volker went to Sydney with car but I had already booked a bus so I stayed the moring in Brisbane, just walking around and making interesting pictures. Its a pity that I had not enough time for Brisbane! Next time I would plan at least five days for it.