What if you met an Australian for just one evening in Hamburg and he offers to let you stay with him when travelling; you take it and then end up staying with him for four weeks?

Right background music for this post: Listen to party by Sam

I never thought that something like this would ever happen to me. In the end though, it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life.
It all started on a cold day in Hamburg in January. I went there to take a look at the university and I stayed in a hostel. „Hello, I’m Angela. Who are you?“ „Ehm Hi, I’m Julius from Germany, where are you from?“ „I’m from Australia.“ Suddenly, a guy in the room awoke. „Australia… I’m also from Australia!! I’m Sam!“ And that was the beginning of a very funny evening. No details, but we ended up in a Karaoke Bar. On a Tuesday.
As Sam knew I wanted to come to Australia like I had told him. we stayed in contact and he invited me to join him in Adelaide and allow me to stay with him. He was going to have his 21st Birthday while I was there which is a big thing in Australia. He wanted to show me Australian life and his beloved home in Adelaide.
Straight away on the first evening I arrived in Adeliade, Sam took me to a housewarming where I met all his boys. They were all pretty amazed to talk to a German, some even spoke to me in German! I also met Aaron who invited me to join him for Easter lunch with his family. It was a pleasure to be there, having nice conversations around the BBQ (which Australians love!). I didn’t even have to miss out on an Easter egg hunt.

In the next days I visited I think nearly everything, what a tourist can visit in Adelaide. I went to the botanical gardens, which is actually very nice. I went to the Museums, the Art Gallery and had a tour in the Parliament House. Characteristic for Adelaide are the parklands, big parks which surround the CBD (central business district) and North Adelaide. Here are some pictures I took on my sightseeing:

South Australia Art Gallery

Adelaide Oval by night

president’s chair in the south australian senate, even Queen Elizabeth sat on this

Victoria Square

Botanical Garden

Sam took me to Glenelg beach, where I took this picture:

Because Sam was busy with the preparations for his birthday, Aaron took me to a lot of nice places around adelaide over two days. One day, we toured the (National) parks and mountains in Adelaide itself and another day, we took a long drive along the coast where Aaron showed me his favourite beaches.

Sam is crazy about sports and very well informed about Australian football and European soccer too. He recommended that I go to a football game at the famous Adelaide Oval. Equipped with a hand made fan scarf from his grandma I attended a match between Carlton and Port Adelaide. But it isn’t only Sam who is crazy about football. All Australians love football. It felt like I was walking with half the city on the way to the oval. In the end, I sat with 50,000 different people in the stadium to watch this game. Luckily I had my Port scarf so was able to cheer them on as they smashed Carlton by a lot. A nice, older Australian man was sitting next to me, and having played football for 22 years himself was able to explain all the rules I did not understand. Here’s a picture of this great evening. Unfortunately the game was followed by me missing several busses trying to get home.

And then, it was Sam’s big day. He turned 21, which is a big celebrated birthday in Australia, although nobody really knows why.

left to right: Sam, Julius, little Charlie, Harry, Jess

I helped with the preparations. Especially with buying the drinks which was impressive , 24 bottles of beer are about 55AUD; for that you can buy three boxes of beer back in Germany. We celebrated at Sam’s House, so we had to move all the furniture out of the living room, created a dance area outside and put a lot of lights in the garden. Everybody helped to create a wonderful looking atmosphere with old pictures of Sam, Polaroid photo bar and large drinks bar. And an old election poster of Sam’s dad’s past political career was something that couldn’t be forgotten.

A collection of party pictures can help to present some people:

This is a picture of the photographers of the evening, Matt and me, Sam’s mother’s boyfriend.

This are Sam and me

This is Sam`s father Hugh with his wife Jessica

Like I mentioned, the 21st birthday in Australia is much more of a formal thing than an 18th in Germany, everyone wears dresses, nice shirts or suits and so there were relatives as well as not only young people. Highlight of the evening were the heart-opening and funny speeches of Hugh (Sam’s father), Andie (mother), Samantha (girlfriend) and Aaron (friend).

left to right: Samantha, Aaron, Andrea (Sam’s mother), Hugh

I don’t wanna mention more about the rest of the evening, but thanks to Prestie for opening Hughs Chamber of secrets.
Living together with Sam in house was pretty relaxed. We had a lot of fun together with discussing a lot each other about our home countries, famous comedians and favourite foods. Sam made me try „typical“ Australian food like meat pies, fruitchocs, farmers union iced coffee’s and an AB (chips, yiros meat and sauce). I often went outside to play with Sam’s dogs Milo and Remy. Milo is a ball mad girl and Remy is a stupid boy whose totally obsessed with Milo.

I also often visited Sam’s sweet little brothers Harry (4) and Charlie(1) and played with them. It’s wonderful to deal with little children. It was an honor to see Charlie learning how to walk.
In the evening we often went to Sam’s mums and her boyfriend’s house (Andie and Matt). They were funny evenings, where I was shown famous Australian movies, TV-Stars (Hamish and Andy), Football, Football-Players, Australias top-ten football players or drunken football-players. We spent the nights playing board-games and eating Matt/Andie’s delicious cooking.
But Sam and me were different in one point: While Sam is crazy about games (he even said that his girlfriend is most important in his life – except from his xbox) he described me very well as farmboy who has absolutely no clue about computer games. But in the end, thanks to Sam, I found a game in which I’m kinda good at (Tetris). Sam took me along to his basketball and netball games. On one day, the basketball-expert Dr. J (me) played with him and his friends. I was so impressive sometimes that they had a hard time containing their laughter.

On other evenings, Hugh and Jess invited me around for dinner, where we had nice wine, conversations and strong discussions about politics in Australia or Europe, the Australian history or climate change. It was always interesting to see the point of views of Australians or a member of their liberal party. I would still recommend the Aussies to use more solar power, I mean, there’s enough space and the sun is much stronger than for example in Germany.
A great opportunity for me was that I could work together with Sam in his father’s company. He’s a liquidator and they must store all the hard copy documents of the companies he runs for five years in an archive, which is Sam’s job to manage. I had never seen so many folders and pieces of paper. It was great fun for me to empty an insolvent private school (my german friends will understand 😉 ). Hugh was funny as well; he told us that we would have to store a new set of 300 boxes, in reality it was nearly a thousand. In conclusion: Not only Germans are masters in writing papers!

It was an honor for me to be invited along to the Martin family weekend, , to which aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents came over to have lunch and a nice time together. It was an enjoyable day with tasty food, nice conversations and funny board games.
I came to Adelaide without really knowing where I’d. In the end, I leave with fantastic experiences, a best Australian friend, a whole family behind him and a lot of Aussie friends. I will never forget this wonderful time I could spend in Adelaide.

Thank you for the great times: Sam, Samantha, Hugh, Jess, Harry, Charlie, Andie, Matt, Emma, Aaron, Michael, Holly, Cohen, Ela, Karmi, Maria, all the boys, Kathy, James, Brigitte and Kyle!

And with the time, it became autumn in Australia, I have to move north now!