Christmas in Sydney

It is Christmas Day here in Sydney (25.12.), the sun is shining and the thermometer is already climbing across the 30°C mark. The sailing boats underneath our window are slightly rocking in the breeze. Very peaceful, and very different from Christmas in Germany.

While Tati feels home in this tropical festive season, Matthias, used to a white Christmas, finds it difficult to believe it is Christmas at all.

In that spirit, we've built our first family Christmas tree... a palm tree got the honour!

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, we were invited to a Christmas party with a family that lives on a tiny island 1 hour north of Sydney. There is only one street, maybe 40 houses surrounded by an old lush forest.

Astonishing!

When they first moved there, 20 years ago, there was nothing but jungle. And there they built their house, raised their kids and welcomed the new-comers.

Being so far from out beloved ones, It was lovely to share their family spirit and celebrations!

We are now almost a half year in Australia, it is hard to believe how fast the time passes.

Tati is very happy working at Boehringer-Ingelheim, a pharmaceutical company and Matthias at Resmed, a medical device company.

We are still amazed by the many things Sydney and Australia has to offer, so many places yet to be explored.

We slowly meet people that might become friends. We have fun doing things that we would have thought impossible before.

Sailing our small Laser boat around the beautiful Sydney harbour on the weekends is particularly thrilling:-)

It is a delight to have all the tropical fruits again, Mangos, Papayas, Pineapples... a piece of Brazil in Tati's heart. Whereas Matthias looses himself with all the fresh sea-food that Sydney has to offer.

No German bread though...

And talking about being home sick during this time of the year, Tati decided to take action towards our “German-bread-sickness”. “The Bread Bible” on hand ( a 5kg-heavy bread-knowledge book), she faced the oven and produced a batch of whole-meal multi-grain sour dough bread!

Yummi....

It is amazing how fast you can start in a new country, finding a job, a place to live, a garden. Exploring the neighbourhood; and slowly drawing wider and wider circles around your new centre of live. We do feel very blessed to have this opportunity!

Still, being so far away from YOU, friends & family, is the hardest part of it.

One more reason for you to put Australia on the map – are you already planning your holidays in Australia?

Yes, we can bake bread, but we can not replace you!!

Our New Home

Ohhh, it is so nice have a home again!!! After 2 years jumping from one city to the next and from one apartment to the other! What can I say? We really put the Home Sweet Home sign on the door and we are not moving unless we absolutely must!! Tati's salad is growing in our little garden, the tomato plants are 5 cm high, carrots should be to be harvested in 5 weeks time.

Tatis favourites breakfast place..

We have even house pets!!!
Actually those came with the house! A Possum family that always waits for us at the front porch! Possums are found in millions in Australia, I am not sure how it started but fact is that they reproduced more than expected and fruit farmers have a hard time to keep any leafs in the trees with the possums eating the fresh ones for dinner every night. Night animals, they look like a mix of Kangaroo, squirrel and a rat, they have the size of a small cat. Plague or not, they are just sweet!

Probably when they start eating our salads we will not find them as sweet anymore!!

Our pet..

During the week is hard core though, working from 7am to 7pm, traffic jams... big city life!

Every evening and weekend is just like vacations! A walk around in the small walking path, surrounded by a beautiful wild park takes us to a refreshing jump into the ocean swimming pool.

The winter here is quite hard, considering that nobody has isolated houses or central heating. Meaning that it gets 9degrees inside the houses. We fast discovered that buying a gas heater was not a matter of luxury but of survival!

Now it is spring and all is colored by flowers and trees in blossom.

Spring at the beach

We can still count in one hand the days with bad weather. So we can just enjoy the nature and the beauty around. Now we can swim every day after work and spend a few hours on the weekend picnicking by the pool and reading a book! Niiiice!

A bigger walk takes us to the Zoo, 30 min walk from our house. It is just mind-blowing-gorgeous! We can't get enough!!!

Come and vist!

For a long weekend we drove further south, yes... you have to look at the pictures and see for yourself. It is just not describable! Cliffs, blue water, sandy beaches....

Sydney - The Arrival

We stayed 5 weeks, to get a feel for the country and to understand the job market in Sydney! In the pure spirit of, if we find an attractive job here, why not!

To our absolute surprise, one week before our flight back to Germany Tati went to the interview that would change everything! 2 days interview to get a contract arriving by express mail one day before we get on the plane!
With the pressure to respond to the offer in a few days time.

Our bay

Mind blowing!!! Much more so because in Germany doors started to open as well, interviews and also offers.

Therefore it would be our call, both countries possible, up to us to decide where. With Australia being the higher risk for Matthias, as in Sydney there is much less manufacturing companies than in Germany!!

He took the challenge, Sydney was calling. In May 2005 Tati was landing in Sydney to start working the following day. Matthias stayed in Germany for a couple of weeks more to tight ends up.

Tati: from Automotive to pharmaceutical, Boehringer-Ingelheim! Exciting job in the customer evaluation team, segmenting and targeting customers to which different strategies would be applied to get the business! Fun fun fun!

Spring in the city..

Why Australia?

Kangaroo Land, Down Under or the land of Oz.... all the funny nicknames Australia may have.
Yes, that is where we have landed!
Probably a decision that came as a surprise, even for ourselves! A few months ago we put all our stuff upside down, literally, and migrated to Oz.

Yes.. yes... of course, things don't happen like that! You are right. It is difficult to explain this feeling of surprise for being here.... but, before our world trip, when we thought of applying for a VISA somewhere just to keep some doors opened... we chose Australia more for the fun of it than thinking what it really meant.

Visa-wise we had Canada or Australia to choose from. We both knew Canada and are total fans of the west coast, BC, "if we had a job there we would not think twice before buying a ticket and shipping our stuff to Vancouver!" - you would hear us saying without hesitation!

Australia, we had never visited before, and besides pictures of Australian surfers, kangaroos, Koala bears and being an Island-country-continent where the most poisonous animals hide (discovery channel fault!) ))

Which is just as real as Brazil being carnival, beautiful women in tiny bikinis and Amazon forest ... or... Germany being populated with people on leather pants and drinking white beer and eating sausages, an eternal "October Fest"!

All that to say: we had zero clue what Australia was about. But why Australia then? You may ask... Well, something we both didn't know! We thought. )

Appartment hunting

In that spirit we found ourselves putting together 1kg paper-work in order to apply for a permanent resident Visa for this country we both did not know!

And before we left for our world trip, we prepared our application which would take two years (!) processing time. During the trip we never really thought about it. Somewhere in the back of our minds we knew that we had a process running to migrate to Australia, but if we would ever use it...?

During the trip we visited Australia, half way around the world... the first time we faced this country and our idea of spending some time living here.
June/2003 we first put our feet in Sydney and we had 6 weeks to get an impression of the country.

We were impressed of Sydney from day one. Scary at first, with a weired low budget tourists scene in Kings Cross, fascinating from day 2 with all the water front and the immense inner harbor incorporating the city life. We couldn't get tired of catching ferries and going everywhere the Sydney Ferries would take us. Sometimes with a purpose, most of the times, just for the fun of it. It was just so astonishing!

Sunday trip: Royal national park

And so we went, always bombarding ourselves with this inner question: Can we imagine myself living here?
And the answers were as various as they could possibly be: sometimes yes, other times the feeling of being FAR AWAY and upside down from the rest of the world would strike and .... well..all the comparisons would come and ...

At the end, I guess we left the country with a little bit more clue of how Australia looked and smelled like, but not much more of a clue if this would be a home for us!!
:-/

Wish you were here..

And time passed....
..... countries came and went as a picture book.....
..... ideas came and went as a brain storm....
- and - the world trip was over.
Away from the mind prisons, one is overwhelmed by the endless world of possibilities.

We realized we wanted to spend our life together.... got married.... but still didn't know where to life long term or what to do exactly!

- Christmas 2004, in the letter box we found a striking message: Australia had accepted us as immigrants! And we had to make our first entry into the country within 3 months-time. Demanding little letter!

March 30th , 2005 was the deadline, by then we should touch Australian land. March 15th we were flighting out from Germany! First idea: "let's spend 2 weeks, get our stamp and run back to Germany for some more job interviews".

That was what we thought...