About the country
| Capital | Canberra |
| Currency | Australian Dollar |
I could write a whole book about Australia, I studied there for one year and traveled across the whole country. But why Australia?
Within my first semester at university, I already thought about options to study abroad. I quickly realized that I wanted to study in an English-speaking country, as I didn’t see the chance to study another language extensively enough to be able to study. My other key desire was to leave Europe, so I considered New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Canada, or the States as possible destinations. Some internal drive wanted me to pick a destination as far away as possible. Mainly, because the further away, the more difficult to get there on a casual trip. I considered New Zealand first, however, the exchange was paused due to a lack of Kiwi students coming to Munich. This was how I decided to study in Australia.
Luckily, I was not accepted for the exchange program from my university, which would have restricted my time abroad to one semester. Instead, I was accepted for a one-year scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service. Considering the different semester periods, I had 13 months of time available to spend abroad. I picked the University of Queensland in Brisbane. Its semester periods covered 8 months in total, such that I had 5 months and plenty of weekends of time to travel around. You indeed need a lot of time if you want to check out such a huge country like Australia. Even a flight across the country, from Brisbane to Perth, took almost five hours. Even though many international tourists went to Bali or Fiji, I stayed in Australia, except for a one-month camper-van trip in New Zealand.
I have spent more than one year of time in Australia, checked out so many places, had so many and deep experiences. Therefore, it will take me a while to write up blog posts about my time in Australia. This is why I decided to first focus on other countries which I visit during my Sabbatical leave and only afterwards write up my Australian experiences.