Every New Years Eve Day for as long as I can remem­ber, I would turn on the TV at 2 PM (CET) to watch the first and most fam­ous fire­works on our dear planet in Sydney, Aus­tralia. Every year I would see the Har­bor Bridge and the Opera on a back­ground of every pyro­man­ics dreams. Col­ors explod­ing all over the sky, beau­ti­ful people in shorts and shirts watch­ing. Every year I would turn off the TV again, merely won­der­ing about how far away and unreach­able that place seemed.

As you would assume, last year‘s New Years Eve was a bit dif­fer­ent. This time, I was there, on the other side of Sydneys Cent­ral Busi­ness Dis­trict, with the Opera House and the Har­bor Bridge and the sea in my view, pick­nick­ing under the hot sun with friends and con­sid­er­ing what strange altern­at­ive of cel­eb­ra­tion this was. I wasn‘t freez­ing, nor had I been stress­ing three weeks in advance about which party to go to or what to do at all; I just sat down in the grass and waited for the fire­works. I didn‘t have to buy my own little pesty rock­ets, I didn‘t need to booze myself into deli­rium to enjoy this day, and most of all, wow, did this not feel like New Years at all.

Yeah, I finally made it. After three months of a more or less bumpy ride through South East Asia, I made it to my next (and maybe last) leg of my alleged world trip: Aus­tralia. And where else to hit first if not Sydney? To be hon­est, it‘s the only city that really meant any­thing to me up until two weeks ago (in terms of the for­eign con­tin­ent down under). I didn‘t care enough to buy a travel book, and quite frankly I ima­gined Aus­tralia to be some­what of a famil­iar envir­on­ment. While I know that many of you frown upon the decision to go to Aus­tralia in the first place, I‘d rather not get into that right now. But I‘d love to show you the Sydney that I came to dis­cover, not half thanks to the achieve­ment of Ke, a local Sydney­sider and now a friend who took us to some his favor­ite spots. Cheers to you mate!

First off, it‘s a city. It‘s a beau­ti­ful city with a stun­ning sky­line and plenty of gar­dens and exotic wild­life (hello sweet Kakadus by the day, good night dear abso­lutely creepy bats at night!). But that‘s not it. That‘s not what makes Sydney a good place to be in. In fact, you can have that any­where else in the world. No. The thing about Sydney that mes­mer­izes me every­day I wake up is how Sydney, essen­tially, is not a city. It‘s a huge bay. It most def­in­itely feels like an island, too, when you hop on the fer­ries and cross the ocean to get to the next bor­ough. The water, the sails, the fish, the beaches, the surfers, and across all of it you can still make out the high rising build­ings and, of course, the iconic Opera and the much less appre­ci­ated but none the less mag­ni­fi­cent Har­bour Bridge. It‘s a dream come true for me: my favor­ite ele­ments com­bined into one. Urban water­life, if you want to call it that. My little shitty cam­era does not do any of this justice, and I do apo­lo­gize. Being back in a big place like Sydney makes me cringe at the fact that I didn‘t actu­ally bring my proper DSLR. But for what it‘s worth, here are my snap­shots (of which most, I have to admit, where taken of the Opera. Every time I see it, I have to rub my eyes, just in case I‘m still dream­ing. Fuck man, I‘m in Sydney, and I still can‘t believe it, and I‘m tak­ing as many pic­tures of evid­ence as neces­sary to con­vince myself).