This was absolutely great!!! Some people I know went to Rottnest Island (about 20km west of Perth) for the weekend and they told me that I could come and stay at the house they rented. Since I got to Perth, many people have told me how beautiful the island is, but I was still surprised! Enjoy some nice pictures that could have been taken on some tropical island instead!!

After a really nice day on the beach I went to this really cool BBQ. I wasn’t really invited, Katrin kind of invited me *g*, thanks for that! I met many people that I’ve not seen in a while and I got to know some more. We had a good time!

Since we haven’t been there in a while and nobody wanted to stay inside all day to study we took of to cottesloe beach. Rachel, Jim, Daniel, Simon and me. Very nice as usual, we played a lot of frisbee although it’s always pretty windy.

Everybody got invited a week early and Jen made it clear that everybody had to dress up somehow… incredible, almost everybody did :). There were somewhere around 30 people there and no neighbour complained about the loud music, nice.

We had a nice dinner at some noodle house and Bob Stamps got some presents for organizing last year courses.

All the students present some of their laboratory experiments they conducted in the last 2 semesters and everybody gets to see them. Besides that it is far more relaxed than in germany (there is no Wallraff!?! hehe) — After the conference we had a drink on the roof of the physics building… quite a nice view.

Besides BMW, Porsche, sausages, cakes and Rammstein, Aussies know one more thing about Germany: The Oktoberfest. so they had an official Oktoberfest on campus in the Tavern (pub on campus) - On my table were mostly other physics students.

We took 2 planes (Grumman Tigers) on a very nice trip up north for 2 days with the university flying club. We had a great time and great weather so we had a great view on the land below us.

Another OutdoorClub activity. Walyunga national park is around an hour northeast of Perth. It turned out that that is the place to go, if you want to see some “roos” (kangaroos).
The park is perfect for walking, the weather was great and one got to know some great people. It’s also a great area for some paddling.

Quiz nights have many fans down here, so the physics departments does them too. I didn’t really know what to expect but it turned out to be pretty cool. Of course beer is a big part of it too, rofl.

Pretty much everybody I talked to said, that the drive (around 4h) to Wave Rock is definitely NOT worth it, well, we’re tourists so we went anyway.
We rented 2 cars and went for a 2 day trip east. Those cheap Toyotas.. Claudia and Alex were listening to the radio for half an hour, after that battery of the car was depleted so we had to jumpstart it and go back to the city to get a new one (since we thought it might be broken). Crap! 10A/h, what kind of a battery is that?
Besides that, it was quite a hassle to coordinate 2 cars to get out of town… whatever, we just took of and met the others again 100k east. Because of all the trouble we spend a night in a very small town called Corrigin, which turned out to be pretty nice though (nice breakfast in the morning).
The other day, we went to the wave-shaped rock as well as a cave with some aboriginal paintings.
Well, it was a Road Trip :)

Did I already mention that the beach (during winter) down here is great? Well, go and take another look. The weather is really nice most of the time and I just can’t stop going there (and no, I don’t skip Uni for it, not yet!!).

After I heard that there is a flying club at uni I had to get to know the people :). They had a BBQ and some really nice people gave me a lift there. The Flying club has it’s own plane so it’s pretty cheap for members to fly.

I’ve been there many times, but I never took a camera, so I had to change that. Here are some pics of the pedestrian zone etc. Even Perth has 1.4 Million inhabitants you walks into people you know, even me, after just some weeks here. Really nice there, not as crowded and busy as european cities.

A great party organised by the international offices of UWA, Curtin and ECU. Well done. One got to know some great people there!! Thanks for that!

Some pictures from trinity college, where I stayed during the first week. Some party pictures, some from downtown and the area around campus… whatever..

The outdoorclub introduced itself to the new students. We had a very nice breakfast at Mathilda Bay (100m of campus) and went for a paddle. Later we did some rock climbing at rockface in Northbridge, which was really nice, they have great walls there! In the afternoon, after grabbing some lunch we went for a walk to kings park, where we had a nice picnic.

Since we’re here we go to the beach pretty often. The Australians think it’s still too cold, no foreigner can understand that :). It’s really nice there, the sunsets are awesome, too bad the pictures can’t show that.

Aussie Rules Football (Australian Football) is the Australians’ favourite sport. The international office recommended that we go and see a game of the Fremantle Dockers or the Perth Eagles. The field is fu**ing HUGE, and the game is pretty chaotic and rough. The atmosphere in the Stadium is great.

Simon and me didn’t have to look around for long, the second apartment we took a look at was the one. Pretty cheap (780AU$ per months) and impossibly close to uni (check it out from the air). The place isn’t new but way good enough for some students that don’t want to spend much time there anyway. Two weeks later Daniel moved in, so it’s even cooler and cheaper.

Everybody met in front of the recreation center, as usual, and we took a bus somewhere to the east to a ranger farm, where we had some breakfast. We got to see some baby kangaroos and were told about native animals and plants. We also got to paint some fake boomerangs (which was kinda stupid) and because the bus was late we got time to go for a walk, which was probably the best part besides the Aboriginal telling us about how to survive in the desert :)

We went around town, kings park, Cottesloe Beach and Fremantle, where we could take off, get some lunch and walk around.

All the new international students (50% american, 20% british, some Canadians, Germans, Norwegians and a few others) had a nice breakfast together. We were introduced to the Aussie way of saying hello, got all kinds of information about what and how to do stuff here and played some games.

Because some strange bird made an even stranger noise I got up early in the morning and I “explored” the area. The campus is right next to the colleges, so I took the camera for some pics later. It didn’t take me long to like the area :)

Yo, here we go. Grandpa, dad and me were leaving at around 10 in the morning, which gave us plenty of time. In Frankfurt, we went straight for the huge McDonalds in Terminal two, as usual. On the plane I was sitting next to another physics student who went to study in singapur for a year. I landed in Dubai in the middle of the night (35ûC there!!) and continued my flight to Perth 2 hours and 3 Burgers later. In Perth me and 4 other students were picked up and we went straigt for the college.

The last week in germany was quite eventful. First of all, I had to move all my stuff from Aachen to Biersdorf (got another ticket) while I was studying for 2 oral exams at a time. Well, they all turned out great. Second, I had to finish some of the work in the lab, which didn’t go quite as smooth but we ended up being smarter.
Back home I needed to pack, get an international drivers license, visit some friends and relatives… stuff you have to do. Well,I managed to get everything done with way less problems than I expected.