The Coogee to Bondi walk is well known on the backpacker trail in Sydney for being the sort of stunning landscape experience that even locals will get out of bed for. Granted, not before lunch though. And today, dog-tired form all the recent festivities, we can’t manage the full two hour walk and settle instead for lolling about on the sand collecting sunburn.

We drive out in Kylie’s boyfriend’s car. Kylie, for the record, is currently discovering the joys of dating an older man – namely, material goods. It’s an Alpha Romeo, and, I’m told, not the sort of flashy car that draws the immediate attention of the uneducated masses, but rather genuine car connoisseurs.

He picked it up for a song, apparently, with such minor defects as the coat hooks in the back being upside down. Sure enough, we do get lots of looks, but more likely because people are wondering which clown in his right mind let two girls like us loose in a car like that.

In any event, we manage a stately arrival at Coogee – or try to, but due to the usual eastern suburbs congestion have to park about three suburbs back and stroll down the baking pavement.

I’d forgotten what a stressful experience driving to eastern Sydney is, and, what’s worse, trying to get back to the city in peak hour evening traffic. It’s no wonder people who live there joke that Anzac parade (no more than 2 k’s in from the coast, as the crow flies) is too far west for them to bother.

Down by the water, the sun is scorching, and with my pasty cum-European feet I collect a scalding on the soles and a sunburn on the top. We play a classic bout of spot-the-Aussie – failing, for the most part, since we’re surrounded by eastern European backpackers and French tourists, who you can spot beyond the shadow of doubt on account of their penchant for string bathers. No Aussie with any experience in the matter would invite a sunburnt arse like that.

Getting on the bus out to Sydney’s eastern suburbs today, I realise I’d forgotten just how irritating it is to be able to understand the conversations of all your fellow commuters (something I can easily tune out in the Netherlands).

But in the act of kindness of the day, the bus driver tells me to just give him $1.70 instead of the usual $2.90 adult fare (it’s the first time I’ve not been a student in Sydney) – “It’s new year’s, mate.” (Still!?) An Indian girl getting on behind me asks him “Do you go to Sydney Uni?” “No,” he says. “I drive a bus.”

Out on the street, too, I realize I’m well out of practise in this part of the world. Used to waiting (im)patiently at red pedestrian lights even on streets cars haven’t driven down since the Renaissance for fear of over-diligent German cops, here not crossing against the light is enough to get you committed, or at least badly trampled.

Stop on the curb at a busy intersection on George Street and you’ll find yourself bowled over by the mass of shoppers who hunt in packs and never stop for the small matter of pedestrian lights.

Just as road rules in Italy are more suggestions than anything hard and fast you ought legally to stick to, little red men here are more like gentle reminders to at least pause mid-step to glance about before you charge across six lanes of oncoming traffic.

Arrived alive! On the bus into downtown Sydney on this first day, I have the flicker of an inkling that I could live here again. It’s the bustling vibe in Sydney on a hot, busy day; the place is thriving. Street performers on every corner, tourists taking happy snaps of Martin Place and Circular Quay and Darling Harbour, shops at Chinatown going into overdrive despite the public holiday.

What I quickly realise I don’t miss, though, is bare legs on a vinyl bus seat. But I’m distracted by all the shops and suburbs flying past – secondhand books, antique furniture, Thai takeaway, sushi train, Asian grocers, dodgy looking internet café, Golden Pide kebabs, Charlie Chan bottleshop, Solomon Levi money exchange…now this, I do miss.

And what I love – and Sydneysiders love – about Sydney is that so many corners of it (I won’t say all) are great. There are scores of suburbs that would be tops to live in, each with their own flavour: ‘little Italy’ Leichardt, where I’m staying with Kylz now; bohemian Newtown; backpacker heaven Bondi; swanky Double Bay, colonial Pyrmont; trendy Woollomooloo – and that’s just on the south side of the harbour.

Stopover in Tokyo. We all bundle off and those of us with onward trips wait dutifully at the connecting flight counter. No-ones there. We wait. No-one comes.

The Kiwis start to panic: their connection leaves in an hour. The Aussies start to doze, since we’ve got a leisurely nine hours to kill. Eventually an airport crewman comes by and, almost as an afterthought, tells us we’ve got to get our boarding passes first, from a counter which lies somewhere yonder, beyond the security check.

We all traipse down but are stopped in our tracks by security, who demand to see our boarding passes before they’ll let us through. ‘But…I…we…’ everybody collectively stammers, then crawls back to the first counter for another interminable wait. Eventually they decide to let us through security sans boarding passes, ostensibly because they’ve figured out if they mess about with us any longer it’ll likely cut into their cig breaks, so we’re on the move again.

At the next counter we’re told we can’t check in yet on account of it still being seven hours before departure. We are left in airport limbo, sentenced to snooze on the shuttle bus that rattles back and forth between airport terminals, since without boarding passes we aren’t welcome in the boarding lounges.

Eventually I manage to weasel my way in, though, by virtue of in sidling in behind a woman in the World’s Shortest Skirt who neatly misdirects security’s attention. Once inside, I settle in comfortably at the sushi bar, but haven’t so much as swallowed my first California roll before my sleeve gets caught in the sushi train and drags me forcibly around the bar, taking out the lone customer along the way. Irredeemably, this affords him the opportunity to strike up the World’s Most Boring Conversation. Jesus. Are we there yet?

I’m going home. Not permanently – just swinging by for a short hol. Off to Amsterdam, then Sydney via Tokyo.

En route to Schipol airport, I make a mental checklist of all the things I want to do while back at home. Oddly enough, they all seem to revolve around food. And aside from the obvious desire for cheesecake, it’s all about pie. Meat pie. Steak and onion. Chicken and veg – I’m not fussy. I start to wonder whether I’d get in trouble for bringing pies back into Europe. After all, that potato pie recipe could be a state secret. I could try smuggling them. Just imagine it – body packing pies. Be worth it though.

At the check-in desk – the most loathed of all airport institutions (with the possible exception of the luggage carousel) – no-one seems to know if my suitcase will go straight through to Sydney or just hang about in Tokyo till some punk finds it in three years’ time out the back of a hangar. And by the way – how much of a load of rubbish is self check-in? Haven’t they noticed you’ve still got to queue anyway to check the luggage through?

Odd how even the most accident-prone of us seem to stay safe in our own countries but once abroad, cut loose on the gumbiness. Sure, I managed to stay safe on the ice the other day, but I’ve lost count of the number of bus driver’s side mirrors I’ve copped in the head due to to looking right first. Similarly, I’ve heard endless tales of Europeans downunder being assaulted by various moving objects. Aside from the usual sharks, footballs and beer bottles, here’s one that cracked me up about Melbourne’s trams…

Not everything lost and gained when overseas is abstract and intangible. Some of it is very much material. Like my friend’s toenail, for example.

And I don’t mean just any toenail: we’re talking the Toemaster, the big fella. Okay, so it hasn’t quite fallen off yet, but it’s rather an interesting shade of mottled purple and it would appear that its dancing days are over. (The wound was sustained sometime in the course of a particularly huge night, possibly run over by the beer scooter?)

Being a bit of a rough and tumble country girl herself (well, as far as one can consider a private Catholic girls’ school in Terrigal ‘country’), Laura has no qualms about whipping out this monstrosity in the presence of perfect strangers and inviting them for a close inspection and a blow-by-blow account of its various bloody phases - always, of course, to our disgusted cries of ‘God, girl, put that thing back in its Ugg boot!’ What we have learned from this episode: falling up a flight of stairs can be just as physically devastating as falling down them.

In terms of abstract gains, here are a couple of other miscellaneous acquisitions:

1. An overly crude sense of nationalistic pride. My bedroom is swathed in magazine cutouts of Oz - who cares if I’ve never been to Uluru or seen the Devil’s Marbles? Details, people!
2. A newfound appreciation for those proficient in the English language. Sure, it’s satisfying to converse with people in a language other than your mother tongue, but it’s also frustrating, demoralising and a downright pain in the bum. My German tutor in Sydney failed to mention that.

There are a few things you tend to lose after having lived abroad for some time. Here’s two of the important things.

1. Tragically, all knowledge of current gossip from Aussie celebrity circles. Um, hello - Princess Mary’s popped one out? And Bec Cartwright too? How is it possible I did not know about this? Steph’s mum sent her a copy of the latest Who Weekly and it’s become our bible, tattered and worn as it makes the rounds of our four bedrooms, clutched to our chests at night and the first thing we lay eyes on in the morn….

2. My grasp of the English language; yes, despite the woes of my previous post, because I’m like, so fluent in German now. (Ha! Sarcasm detector on overload.) Instead of coming home with two languages I’ll probably be left with half of one. Virtually the only English I hear spoken these days is from the other three Aussie girls, and I don’t suppose that could really be called ‘proper’ English! I tried to email my tutor in Sydney the other day and for the life of me could not think how to spell ‘house’ - all that came to mind was the German ‘haus’. And all of our sentences are starting to be in the German way constructed, because we that all the time hearing are.

Thankfully, I’m not the only one who sometimes has - well, let’s call them…little issues - with the language barrier in places where English is not altogether prevalent. Or is spoken in it’s sister-form, Engrish. Check out Getting cozy with the language barrier for some embarrassing examples…

The joys of learning a new language mean that one is left oftentimes satisfied and proud, at other times more than a little red faced. I’m told that it’s all about learning to laugh at yourself. (And be laughed at by others.)

One morning the task fell to yours truly to speak for 10 minutes in my German class about ‘Mein Heimatland’ - my home country. This was not difficult in itself: it’s facing question time afterwards that can often leave you open to catastrophe. After explaining that yes, we do eat kangaroo, and yes, this does make us the only country on earth that eats our own icon, and yes, chicken tastes better, and no, I haven’t met Kylie Minogue, and no, you can’t get kangaroo burgers at McDonalds in Australia (yes, that one was from an American guy), my tutor threw one way out of left field.

‘Alison, warum ist die Sonne in Australien so gefährlich?’ (Why is the sun in Australia so dangerous?) Given that ‘ozone layer’ is not really a term that falls into the category of everyday conversation, I naturally had absolutely no idea what it was - come to think of it, I didn’t even know what the word for ‘hole’ was. (For future reference, it’s ‘Ozonloch’.)
So after a number of mumbled ums and ahs and possibly a few Aussie curses as well I blurted out something along the lines of ‘Wir haben eine große Fehler in unsere Himmel’, which loosely translated means something like ‘We have a big mistake in our heavens’. I have a feeling this is something I’m not going to live down for a while yet.