Christmas in Australia

was so excited about Christmas this year because I missed out the year before. I spent Christmas 2011 in Sydney and even though they tried to make the city look festive it was a whole different thing. A Christmas tree surrounded by palm trees and tropical birds in the summer heat isn’t the same as the Christmas trees at home, standing in snow next to a Christmas market. Instead of snowball fights we had a water balloon fight and instead of a real Christmas tree we had a plastic something standing on the fridge in our tiny flat. That was a gift from our nice landlords, without it we thought about ironically buying a “magic tree” air freshener shaped like a fir tree.

But we made everyone jealous anyway haha and took pictures at the beach, which we sent home as postcards.

We arranged to meet our landlords (/friends) on Christmas day and we knocked on their door on the 24^th but nobody opened. Found out a few hours later that they celebrate on the 25^th in Australia. Haha. We didn’t know what to do so we drove to the beach, spent the day there, had our gift giving there and watched the sun set over Byron bay. Afterwards we bought some red wine because we had the spontaneous idea to show the Australians how to make hot spiced wine on the next day.

On the 25^th we exchanged presents already in the morning, drank beer (and the spiced wine) the whole day in their garden and had a barbecue. That was Christmas 2011 :)