Gabriele Steindl: Professional Kitesurfer & Freelance Writer - Action, Lifestyle & Travels

• + Home Page
• - Blog

Off to Western Australia

Departing on a flight that leaves at 6:00 am does not necessarily help to get enough ‘pre-departure-rest’, nevermind… too excited to go to bed anyway, plus there’s always that ‘final squeezing stuff into bags’ and finishing off stuff, saying bye to friends & family etc…

Thus, I have not slept at all when my mum picked me up at 3:00am to drive me and my bags to Vienna airport in a cold, wet, wintery, grey Vienna night…

For the first time in my 7 year kitpro-career, it was the first time that me and my mum had enough space for us in the car as I decided to send my equipment with cargo already a couple of days in advance due to the fact that airlines go more and more crazy lately on excess luggage policies and the quote that Singapore Airlines shocked me with: for the 60kg gear, I would have needed to pay about € 2.000,-  !!???  ..hahahaha, I thought it was a joke but they were VERY serious…

So, it was a ‘trial’ on how the shipping by air would work and I have to admit it made me pretty nervous  n o t  having my baby-boards and stuff right there with me on the plane.  Yep, my 3 waveboards  –  the brandnew North Kontact series 5’10 and 6’1  –   as well as my super dooper cool Mallory Pro freestyle mashine and all my kites, spareparts, bars, harnesses etc etc they were picked up by the freight company directly at my flat in Vienna and went on a Malaysian Airline plane to Perth.

My flight was loooooong but ok.  The plane was not chocker block full and I secured the emergency exit row on all 3 legs of the itinary – Vienna to Frankfurt further to Singapore and onto Perth  –  yeeeeah, legspace, excellent !!  One could feel X-Mas vibes everywhere already, X-Mas decoration in the planes, at the airport,…

When I finally arrived in Perth, I was so stoked I could not believe being back in W.A.  I felt like a zombie after like 40 hours of travelling that’s for sure and when customs pulled me over after baggage claim just before ‘exiting’ into Australian air I had to really hold it together  n o t  to simply tell them “f§$* off, let me go, I’m clean…and I’m dead”. So they made me open up  e v e r y t h i n g, I had to empty my hand luggage, take each piece out, same with my check-in luggage…darmn, crazy… They also asked me a hell-loads-a-questions like ‘what r u intending to do here, how long will u stay, u know anyone here, is anybody picking u up, do u have a mobile phone and and and…weired…

The they found my vitamin supplement that I kept in a different box than the original one and they were like ‘what is that?’, ‘my vitamine supps for hair and nails’, ‘mhhh, we better get that checked’, so it took another half an hour before the customs officer returned with my supplements that they had analyzed with their ‘drugs machine’ and with a smile he gave me the ‘ok’ to proceed…

So, off I went outside and stepped finally back onto Australian grounds. Friends of mine picked me up and the biggest surprise was when I saw my ‘monster quiver’ in the car. YES, they had picked it up from cargo just before me, it took them almost 4 hours to get it cleared (also customs turned out to be difficult) but thanx to all the neat paperwork and documents on each piece inside the quiver that I had put together and emailed before leaving Austria, the did get my ‘baby’ out and so drove out of the parking @ Perth airport.. Me, super stoked with dark circles underneath my eyes but a big grin of happiness and excitement 🙂