No worries, mate!

Naurgh. Naurrr. 9, meaning nein. Or simply no, as the rest of the world outside Australia says.

There is no need to worry. Especially not about me. I own a key again. Two, actually. So I no longer seem to be homeless. Now all decent Swabian women and men can sleep peacefully again.

Things are looking up for the lad, won’t be long now and he’ll be wearing proper trousers again too. No worries, mate!

I am home. In Germany. Arrived. And I am still reflecting on my Australian experience. That will not go on for much longer, because life goes on, as we always like to say. Look ahead, focus on the next steps and keep going. Move from theory into practice.

For me, that means first of all: putting my bicycles back together and visiting the man who is my father.

Then there is about one terabyte of data, photos and videos to go through. After that, a regulated life again. I almost wrote a normal life. But what is normal anyway?

Apart from that, I have decided not to think quite so much anymore. Not to live facing backwards, but to move forward as before, with little plan and even less responsibility, except for myself. So far, that has worked surprisingly well with my wonderful travelling shop full of colourful pictures, as I like to call it myself.

Other people have other names for it. More dismissive ones.

Who cares what other people think? Their needs and expectations are their own business. I take note of what others think about me. I just do not have to agree with them. No worries, mate!

So then. Was everything really bad in Australia, the way it sometimes sounded? The way I wrote about it? Can one really put it like that?

No worries, mate! Certainly not.

Everyone has different experiences. I had mine. Is everything terrible? Nope. Not at all. I only pressed it through a one sided filter. There are definitely things in Australia that are much better than here.

First of all: public toilets.

They exist almost everywhere, and they are genuinely usable. My ex wife would have loved them. And when it comes to rubbish, you have to give Australia credit too: there is almost none lying around. You very rarely see any. Almost like in France. Germany is not quite as good in that regard. Okay, still very far away from Romania or Fiji, but not quite as good.

You can see what I think of first: toilets and rubbish. A certificate of poverty, perhaps. The only question is, for whom. No worries, mate!

Digitalisation is also a big plus in Australia. Well, it works better partly because there is less digital privacy and, more generally, less privacy and data protection. That is the catch. You call someone and get information quickly. Even about relatives. Things that are much more difficult here in Germany.

Can be good. Can be bad.

The pension system also seemed better organised there. At least that was my impression, with Superannuation and Pension. You see, I do not even have to try very hard to find positive points. I am sure I could think of many more, if only I were willing to think about it long enough. No worries, mate!

But after being on the road for 32 hours, I am also a little worn out.

Hardly had I stepped out in Munich before I immediately enjoyed the advantages of public transport again. The Deutschlandticket, the Germany Ticket. Is there anything better? Fine, fine, since I will soon be living eight kilometres from the nearest train stop, with two climbs of one hundred metres in between, I have to relativise that a little. But bicycle and train, that works. This life will do me good.

Country life. A new perspective. New experiences. New stories.

At Munich Central Station today, I already got another foretaste of German big city life. My God, people can walk around stupidly.

And I enjoyed it.

So. I have to go now and make something of the day. I spent the whole morning sitting in a kitchen in an old farmhouse, talking for hours over breakfast with other people.

That such a thing still exists?

And nobody left feeling offended.

Oh my God.

Simply beautiful again.

In that spirit: no worries, mate.