Day 2, Friday, February 5 2010
———————————
Finally we arrive on time in Perth at 7pm. We have been travelling for 26 hours and we are feeling it in our bodies. I’m quite awake from the couple of hours sleep I managed to got.
Passport control is a pain, as is always the case when travelling into a different country. We didn’t have to wait that long for our luggage, so soon we were on our way to the part of which we had the most fears; luggage control. Travelling into Australia means that your bags get scanned going into the country as well!
Iris had some mushrooms from Switzerland which her mother gave her to give our aunt. We were fearing they would be a problem, so we then just declared them, deciding not to try our luck as there were many signs up, warning about the fines they deal out when they catch you trying to smuggle something in.
The weirdest part of all was, that when we finally showed the guy the mushrooms he tells us they are from China. Now isn’t that a funny thing, we import Mushrooms, namely Morcheln and Steinpilze from Switzerland, bought in Coop and they are actually again imported from China! So stupid. Oh well, thankfully it went well and we got through with no problems as the mushrooms are fine to import.
An interesting fact is that, if you declare something and take the declared goods out of a suitcase, then that suitcase does not get scanned, yet any other luggage does get scanned, so I suppose if you really wanted to import something illegally then just bring something else with you which is in the same suitcase and then you can bring it in. Of course I wouldn’t bet my life on it…
Finally through all the checks we finally meet Magda, Kevin, Brian and John. That was a nice meeting. So nice to see people when so much time has passed since the last meeting. I get into the car with Brian, and the rest into Kevin’s car and we drive the 20 minutes back to their home.
At home they show us their house, with the pool, and rather interesting layout which I quite like. Our room is very nice and we put in our luggage, and take our long needed shower. After talking a bit we then go to bed and enjoy our first nights sleep in Australia.