The end of the journey

As with all good things, also my adventures down under are coming to an end. After my vacation, I had a little less than two weeks left for relatively normal living in my apartment. I had figured that like at the start of my journey, I would also now book an Airbnb place for the last month as I did for the first month. Of course, back then I didn’t have an apartment but now I still had the apartment until the end. The reason for having the apartment and an Airbnb booking at the same time was the possibility to start selling all my furniture and household items from under me. In Airbnb places, you usually get a discount when you take it for a full month, so I booked one for the whole of April. I tried to find it close by for easy moving between the accommodation and the apartment. I first found a very good choice, which was a private room in the same building. It would have been very convenient, but they didn’t reply to my message for a while so I kept looking. From the available choices, I selected a private room about 20 minutes walk away. I went to the Airbnb place on the first day of the booking to meet the host, who was an Italian woman living with her two teenage daughters.

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I wasn’t yet going to move in, as I was just starting to put the furniture up for sale in Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree (local version of Tori.fi). About 30 minutes after listing the first item, I already got a message about my sofa. She wrote that she is moving into the ALT building (which is the one I was living in) and asked if I would be happening to move out from that. She probably recognized from the listing pictures the scenery out of the windows. After chatting a bit we found out that she is moving across the hallway from me on the same floor. And I thought selling the stuff would be hard.

I finally ended up living in my apartment for five days before I had to move into the Airbnb place. There were a few critical items I was selling, which without would make living a bit challenging. The couch wasn’t one of them, but out of the two important things I sold my fridge. I still had my bed, which was the other critical item, but living without my fridge wasn’t my thing. Also otherwise the first week of selling seemed very effective, which made me think that it’s over very quickly, or so I thought. I still used the apartment as my remote working station until the end of that first week when I sold my office chair.

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The second week of April was a lot slower on the selling and from the big stuff, I still had my bed, dining table, and the washing machine. There were some points there when I thought that how I’m going to get rid of the rest, but I still had time. From the big items, the washing machine gathered frequent messages from people interested in it. The main problem with that was the limited pick up times of the building. The same thing that was inconvenient for me when I moved in, was a problem again. People working in some nine to five job just can’t come within those hours when the lift can be booked. Finally, in the middle of the third week, I found a buyer who came with a sedan car. I offered my assistance on carrying the machine as he didn’t have any trolley with him. It was a tight fit but we managed to put it on its back in the back seat.

I didn’t put up my bike for sale until the third week as I figured it would sell relatively easy and it would be nice to have it as long as I can to go for rides. Well, I didn’t have time for those rides and I rather walked the 20 minutes between the apartment and the Airbnb place. As I predicted, the next day I already had four interested parties contacting me and the first one was coming to test it out the next morning.

When the second to last week was nearing its end, I had to make backup plans for the remaining furniture. I had booked the mandatory steam cleaning for Tuesday the last week so all the big furniture had to be gone after Monday at the latest. I started to lower the prices but it didn’t seem to help. The backup plan was to donate them to some donation shop. I had heard that those places also have pick-up service and I contacted some of them about it. For all the options the next available pick-up times were sometime in May, which wasn’t feasible for me I was going to be in Finland by that time. Then I looked for mover ads in Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree and sent out a message for a few of them. The purpose for the mover was the same as the previously mentioned pick-up services. But instead of them picking up them for free, I would have to pay for the delivery. A couple of them responded and during the weekend I selected one that would come to pick the table and bed and deliver them to one of these shops for 100 dollars. It wasn’t great that instead of getting some money out of them, I would have to pay to get rid of them. There were a couple of people interested in the table and one for the bed and I offered to split the delivery costs if the buyer bought it and it would have been delivered, but they didn’t come through.

On Monday morning, which was the pick-up day, I got a message about the bed. I managed to sell it on the last possible day and conveniently that also could just be carried to another floor in the same building. For the table one of the buyer candidates had asked that can the legs be taken off as they had only a sedan car to move. During the weekend I checked that if it’s possible and as it was from Ikea, of course, you can take the legs off. The buyer candidate never responded, but with this information, I asked my Airbnb host if she could help me load up the table into her car and so we did. I could then cancel the delivery guy and save some money.

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On the weekends of the last month, I gradually cleaned the apartment at the pace of clearing the cabinets and the rooms of the apartment. It was good to save the whole month to the preparations so I didn’t have any rush doing the cleaning and emptying the place. Then on Thursday of the last week, I picked again with the help of the Airbnb host the last of the stuff, which were mostly going to the charity place. Then for the last time, I watched the scenery from the windows that I’ll miss and closed the door.

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But the last month wasn’t all about trying to sell and cleaning on the side of workdays. As back in January I went to watch one of the national sports, a cricket match, I had the other local sport still to do. My colleague invited me to a footy match, which is AFL or Australian Football. This time the MCG arena had a 75% spectator limitation, but that capacity wasn’t all used. It was still more people than in the cricket match. And unlike last time, this time the seats weren’t high up to see the whole field easily. Our seats were just behind the goalposts next to the local team fan section. So it was quite important to watch the game as there is no net between the goal and the seats and the shape of the ball makes the bounces quite unpredictable. The sport seemed to be very eventful and I think I enjoyed it more than cricket.

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During my vacation, the management of the apartment building had taken the sauna into use again and of course, I had to test it out before leaving. It had some decent features of a sauna, but still some stereotypes of saunas abroad (from Finland). Outside the door to the sauna facilities, there was a QR-code that had a check-in form behind it. You could select one or two-hour time for the sauna. That however was just covid check-in instead of being some kind of booking for the sauna. The first door couldn’t be locked when inside, which opened into a small hallway leading to the sauna and the shower/dressing room. The latter could be locked from inside, but when sitting in the sauna, any resident could just open the door to the hallway with direct visibility through the glass door of the sauna. One resident did just that when I was in there and I also did that to another some days back when I first tried to test it out. Then what about the sauna experience. The first Airbnb place I had the first month had a sauna where it was disallowed to throw water altogether. This sauna was much better as the instructions allowed to throw 2-3 tablespoons of water to the stones. A little bit overprotective on the heater unit, but I guess some people can overdo it. When I had scouted the sauna before, I had noticed a tap inside the sauna with a scoop. When I went in for real, I noticed that the building management had removed the handle, so that was useless. Luckily I had brought a water bottle for drinking, which worked as a substitute for squirting water to the hot stones. There was also a design flaw in the layout of the sauna. The benches were so far from the heater that you had to always walk closer to throw in (or squirt in my case) the water. But still, it was the closest thing to a sauna after the longest period in my life without any sauna.

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I decided that I want to keep my golf bag that I had acquired just about six months ago. As I was anyway sending some stuff back to Finland with a courier, I looked up that should I bring it with me on the plane as check-in baggage or send it with the courier. I found out based on some courier firm terms that they would have insurance for the golf bag only if it’s in a hard travel case. Those are somewhat more expensive and bulkier than fabric ones with padding in the clubhead end. Then as I have gotten used to the fact that when taking a golf bag as check-in baggage, it’s special sports equipment with its own extra cost. From the Qatar Airways pages, I saw that taking it as excess baggage with the type of sports equipment would cost about 1000 US dollars. At that point I started to think that should I sell it anyway. After some more digging I found out that Qatar Airways accepts as part of the free luggage allowance bags that have the combined measurements of about 300 cm. So as long as the items of check-in baggage would fit the 25 kg of the free allowance, it should be good. So I went and bought a travel bag for the golf bag to put in as check-in baggage.

I had the courier pick up at the start of the last week and had estimated that two boxes and one luggage were enough to send. After weighing my luggage I already saw that the weight was too close to the 25 kg limit. So I took some of the clothes and put them in an additional box. On the day of departure, I did the final weighing and I was about 5 kg over the limit. So I decided to buy those extra kilos beforehand online as I doubt they would ever be that flexible at the airport. Also, my hand luggage was about 2kg too heavy, but I left that as is and just hoped they wouldn’t weigh my hand luggage as they don’t always do.

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Then it was time to go for a last run along the Maribyrnong river and have the last look at the city skyline. The flight was leaving late in the night, so I had a good amount of time for that in addition to the last souvenir shopping. But then it was time to order the Uber and say farewells to the lovely Airbnb host. The international terminal at the airport felt like a ghost town but I enjoyed the lack of waiting in the line for bag drop and then security check. Almost all the shops, cafes, and restaurants were closed. At the bag drop, they asked me for my hand luggage to put on the scale. I thought that ok now I have to cough up some extra cost for the too heavy hand luggage. I handed over the small backpack weighing just about 3kg and as I was about to hand over my 6kg laptop bag, she says that I don’t have to give the laptop bag. I guess it’s usually the lighter one of the hand luggage, but my two laptops and one charger made it quite heavy so I dodged that one. The staff member also spooked me by asking that do I have a negative test result on me, but after I said that it’s not required in Finland, it was fine.

I had heard from the staff at the check-in counter that there was a good discount at one of the lounges, which sounded too good to pass. After wandering through the empty duty-free shop I arrived at the lounge. There were only a few people and soon their plane was about to leave so I was left alone to enjoy the food and drinks. It was good to arrive early at the airport so I had time to relax there before the boarding began. When everybody was aboard, I had the whole row to myself, and also the row behind me was all empty. The section of the plane had maybe 15 passengers in total. After watching part of a movie and having airplane dinner, it was time to try to sleep. I had some success with it after using all three seats to lay down.

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Doha airport was a little busier and likewise, the second plane had more people than the first one. I still had the three seats for myself though but there was one other in the same row on the other side. After traveling 23 hours from the Melbourne airport I finally arrived at Helsinki airport. Even though Australia is pretty much covid-free, I still had to take the test at the airport as I came via Doha airport. It wouldn’t have anyway been picked in that test even if I had brought a souvenir from there as it was so soon after a couple of hour visit, but regardless I got the stick up my nose.

So that is it, the 15 months adventure is behind me and it’s time to get settled back home in Finland. Time to learn again walking and riding on the right side of the road, standing on the right side in escalators, and first looking left when crossing the road. When riding a bike I have to again remember that the left brake handle is for the front brakes and when I start driving here, it’s again right-side traffic. It has been already a week since I arrived and I have been enjoying a decent sauna and the Finnish rye bread. The time down under didn’t quite go as I thought before it all, but I guess it can be said by anybody about last year. I think it still ended up on the positive side even with the lockdowns and all. I managed to travel and experience the Australian culture and nature. I will be back at least on some vacation as I just missed New Zealand. They opened up the travel bubble with Australia a bit too late for me.

Thanks for your interest if you followed up on my posts until the end. Remains to be seen if this travel blogging stays as a one-time thing or is there a sequel to this someday. Maybe that vacation trip to New Zealand if nothing else.