Australia has been calling my name for years. It began in high school, when the country struck me as everything Germany wasn’t, and the promise of adventure planted a dream of one day visiting or even living down under. I can’t say exactly when it took hold, but the pull has never faded, and I’ve been fortunate to return many times since.

I’ve now been to Australia several times, and I was fortunate to work for a while at both the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra and the University of Western Australia (UWA) in Perth. It was during these longer stays that I came to truly appreciate the warmth of the Aussies and their relaxed way of life.

Over twenty years ago, in 2004, I visited Australia for the first time to attend a conference at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra and to visit old friends that relocated to Australia to work at the ANU. After the conference was over, we took a road trip from Canberra to Sydney with a longer stop over in the Blue Mountains.

Two years later, I visited Adelaide, again to attend a Plant Molecular Biology conference. In this occasion, I was accompanied by a colleague from my Department at the Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany, and decided to extend our visit for another 10 days. We rented a car and drove from Adelaide to Melbourne, visiting the Gampions National Park and follow the Great Ocean Road along the coast of Victoria.

In 2008, two years after my previous visit, I had the chance to spend three months at the ANU, collaborating with my friends in Josette Masle’s lab in Canberra. It was quite an experience to be awakened by a group of Kakadus and to stroll to the lab in flip flops, or thongs as they’re known there, with the Kakadus flying overhead. My time in Canberra was truly enjoyable. While there, we took a trip to Narooma, a quaint coastal town on New South Wales’ far south coast, and explored the Montague Island National Park and Wildlife Reserve. Before returning home, I made a brief trip to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef. My most recent journey to Australia was in 2013, when I attended the Arabidopsis Meeting in Sydney. Afterward, I extended my stay in Perth, where my friends had moved to the University of Western Australia. I spent a few weeks there receiving practical training in Next Generation Sequencing from them.