If you told me 5 years ago that I would EVER plan on moving to Australia I would have told you you’re crazy. I’m definitely the kind of person who has always said to her mum “one day I’ll move abroad!”. While my parents contemplated on moving to New Zealand for a while, Australia hadn’t been on my radar. At all.

And I don’t remember when it started exactly, but I’ve been telling my parents about my plans to move abroad when I was barely 15. I applied for a year abroad as an exchange student in Japan when I was 16, but ended up not getting a spot. I was crushed back then. I went on a short exchange to China a year later, but I still wanted to leave my tiny German village. And at this time I thought I’d move to some place in Asia.

A few years later I graduated high school and while everyone else seemed to want to become either a lawyer, doctor or elementary school teacher I felt a bit lost. I didn’t know what to do. A lot of my peers were actually moving to Australia for a gap year, but it seemed to far away for me. So, I did the most logical thing my teenage brain could think of: I applied for a language program in Seoul, South Korea. Obviously.

Moving to Seoul on a whim

I hadn’t been to Korea before and I certainly didn’t know any Korean. I also didn’t think they’d accept me. But they did. 3 months later I was at the airport, about to move abroad for the first time ever. Flying to a country I had never been to, moving in with two girls I had found on craigslist (19-year old me was a different kind of brave).

One of my new flat mates, who was also German, picked me up at Seoul station. I was so lost and overwhelmed for the first few weeks, I actually didn’t know if had made the right decision. I couldn’t understand a thing, couldn’t read anything and didn’t know anyone besides my two flat mates.

I spent a total of 11 months in Seoul, which was an amazing time, but definitely deserves its very own post. So I’m doing a deep-dive on it right now. What I will say is that I will never stop eating kimchi and I will never stop loving Korean food and culture in general.

Next stop: Vienna, Austria

Fast forward a couple of years, after my gap year in Seoul and several visits to South Korea, I was in art school applying for a semester abroad. This time around I wanted to stay somewhere in Europe. Funnily enough, at this point I thought I was done with living a long haul flight away from my family. (joke’s on me!)

I decided to apply for the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and they accepted. So I packed my bags and move to Austria. Being from Southern Germany I felt very at comfortable there pretty quickly. Everything was very similar to where I grew up. Only that the Viennese dialect sounds a lot cooler.

While “I’ll move to Austria” almost sounds like “I’ll move to Australia” they couldn’t be more different. Moving to Vienna for a semester was a 4-hour drive with my parents, who dropped me off at my new apartment. No visa, no time difference, no airport adventures.

I loved Vienna. The culture, the architecture, the vibes. All absolutely immaculate. But I never really felt at home there. Still, for a fair while I thought Vienna would be the city I’d move to after graduating university as well. I even planned on transferring to the Academy of Fine Arts. But then the pandemic hit. I had just come back to Germany and then there I stayed. Way too long.

It was almost 4 years of almost only being in Germany and I felt very, very stuck. I was yet again in a country I didn’t want to live in and still didn’t know where else to go either. I definitely didn’t plan on moving to Australia. I knew someone who was doing a gap year there, but still, it just wasn’t a place where I saw myself going. So really I wasn’t just stuck, I was also kind of lost. But I still wanted to leave.

Final destination: Australia.

I’m not even going to pretend like it’s always been the plan to move to Australia. It hasn’t been. Reading the previous paragraphs I think you already know that by now, too. It never even really was on my bucket list for travel, just because of how far away it is and also, I’m afraid of spiders. But then again, I also didn’t think I’d ever meet someone I’d fall in love with while gaming online. Or that he would be from Australia.

When he first told me where he was from I thought “SA” was in the US and I tried to figure out which state it was. I like to think I know many states, but I couldn’t figure it out, so I hopped on google. And it didn’t take where I thought it would at all. Instead there was a tiny little location marker aaall the way in South Australia.

AUSTRALIA.

At this point I didn’t think anything serious would come from whatever we had going back then. I still didn’t know that I’d move from Germany to Australia. But once again, I was wrong. Because as I’m typing this we’ve already started the whole visa process that eventually will allow me to move to Australia with my partner.

I always knew I wouldn’t stay in Germany. I always said “One day I’ll move abroad!”. But I never knew where the journey would take me. And I really feel like the journey has only just begun. The plan has been made, the first baby steps have been taken and a lot more steps are going to follow.

I’m incredibly excited for what’s to come and I hope you’ll join me on the journey! Just reading along or packing your bags as well. Either way, welcome! I hope you enjoy your stay as you join me on the rollercoaster ride that is moving to Australia.