Well, my expedition to Australia is now over. Now to experience the joy of jetlag, hooray!

Let's start with my journey to this highly fascinating country, shall we?

Well, I'm kinda impressed that a journey to what is possibly the farthest location away from my home I could possibly get to on this planet, only lasted less than two days.

Also interesting is that I did not collapse into a heap upon arrival after going close to two days with no real sleep. Must be because I did squat in terms of physically exhausting activities during this journey.

I did, however, have a rather annoying reception upon arriving. As my luck would have it, I caught a (regular) flu a week before departure, and sadly, this flu wasn't terminated by the time I went on my journey, with the result that I ended up quarantined once at Perth Airport, Australia.

Nope, I didn't have swine flu and the quarantine personnel, nurse and doctor that checked on me were nice and decent people, but it gave me a hefty series of anxiety attacks.

But I got in. Right till I was interrogated by a not-so-nice security lady, who checked my baggage thoroughly. It became clear to me that I had not prepared myself thoroughly enough for this journey, because I had encountered no indication before anywhere that you need to be able to prove that you have enough cash to support yourself while abroad, when visiting another country.

So I had some difficulties doing just that as I didn't remember how much x Danish currency was in Australian currency. I also had to go to details about what sort of person my host and online friend for the last five years was, how we met and what we generally talk about.

My Aussie mate is a social phobic like myself and it's kinda embarassing to have to give details of someone else who doesn't want the whole world to know everything about him, to a complete stranger. And not a very friendly stranger at that.

But I got through at last, but it would take me quite a while to cool down from the hefty series of anxiety attacks I'd experienced. This is why I rarely travel abroad, despite living in a place where I can GO places.

Anyway, journey out over, I spent some quality time Down Under. Adapted surprisingly quickly to the different time zone, as I only had trouble falling asleep on the first night. My friend was as I always experienced him online (easygoing, tolerant and friendly with a good sense of non-offensive humour) and his parents were good and friendly hosts too. I felt really welcome there, even felt like a member of their family while there.

And I got to see some things too. I never was much of a tourist, so I'm not really good at getting myself out to see things, so it's good that my friend's mother was a closet-tourist guide who had lots of good suggestions. There were lots of photos to snap with my sparkling new digital camera (got it for my birthday about a week and a half before departure) and I got a nice feeling of being in an exciting and very different place from my home.

I had never been worried about my actual stay IN Australia, because I had a good feeling I'd be in good hands and indeed I was. My concern had always been about the damned journey itself.

Luckily, the return trip back home was less painful. Not only was I no longer affected by a flu (which effectively prevented me from getting any sort of sleep on the trip out), but I had a better idea of what to expect at the various airports.

None the less, I did encounter a problem. My luggage ended up stranded in London Heathrow, which is probably one of the world's worst airports. Lately, they seem to be having problems getting people's luggage on their flights in time for take-off.

As of this writing, I'm waiting for my luggage to arrive (I did receive word from the airport that it had arrived in Denmark about half an hour before writing this here sentence). Which also a reason I haven't posted any photos yet – the cable needed to transfer the photos on my camera to my computer is in the luggage I'm still waiting for.

There should be some initial pictures up for your viewing in my gallery in an indeterminite amount of hours.

All in all, I've taken a good step by going on my first, lengthy multi-transfer flight all by myself and meeting an online friend in person. So this vacation can only be concluded as having been a thundering success.