Culture shock they told me; be wary of the culture shock. But one doesn’t fall into shock as easily when they are on an adventure, or at least if they do then maybe sometimes they just don’t feel it in the way it is imagined.

I came from a sleepy and safe city of one million people, broad streets and roses in gardens – everywhere. But the culture was also asleep in the safety of the city, and I’d always wondered if there was more.

I was rushed into my first tube station, and the air that the approaching train forced into the cavernous space frightened me, like a lion was about to come out of a dark space and maul me – culture shock. I saw a ragged girl, head tucked against her ragged clothes and hidden by messy hair with a sign that said “help me”. My friend – the one I’d travelled half way across the world to see – grabbed my arm and marched me past. “She is fake”, my friend warned me. “They do it all the time”. But still it tugged at my sense of compassion, even if I was being conned – culture shock.  The wind sent up tiny swirls of rubbish and dust along the London streets I walked, getting into my eyes and making me wonder about back-home for the first time since I’d arrived – culture shock. And that was about it. I’d been shocked enough and was ready to continue my exploration.

The thing about London is that one can walk a few miles across certain parts of the city and encounter twenty or so, different cultures. Jamacians, Indians, Americans and Italians. The French  and Chinese, the Greeks, the Irish and the Japanese. Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis. And the list goes on. Some are integrated into the veins of the city, and some are tourists passing by, but they are all there, humming through a city that was nothing but a village when Rome was an empire. It was my favourite thing about London. Wandering for hours – sometimes without any destination – breathing it all in; the architecture, the Rastas with thick, Cockney accents, and the dear Indian women who would smile at my own faraway accent. I had arrived. I was home, even if I wasn’t home.

I stayed for nine months, travelled to Manchester chasing a girl fruitlessly, slept on frozen floors behind couches, and burnt candles beside a mattress on the floor to read. On Christmas day I walked for hours across the north side to a party then returned and hardly saw a soul in the city of over ten million. That was eerie, but I also felt safe. I saw snow for the first time, ran out and threw myself in it until the freeze jolted me back to reality and I returned to gazing like a child through my bedroom window. Like Christmas, Londoners also disappear when it snows. I hitched it west with another girl who had a piece my heart and spent the night camped on a beach where we’d earlier stood in amazement at the sunset silhouette of a castle on an island nearby. We made the most westerly point of mainland England then realised that this meant it would be nearly impossible to hitch out. We walked for 15 kilometres before we got a ride.

Early spring brought with it friends I thought I’d keep forever and some encouraged me to visit Germany with them. We left the ferry in Calais around midnight listening to Madonna, drinking vodka and moving to the other side of the road. Sunrise drove us past the ancient cliff-architecture of Luxembourg and my eyes opened a little wider until bright sunshine saw me finding shade and a nap in a sunflower field in Southern Germany. We continued along the roads and autobahns where I thought Ausfahrt was a major German city I’d somehow never heard of. I eventually asked the question and was told that it means “exit”. I stayed for six weeks then got my thumb out again and headed back to London to wrap up my year away. A Croatian guy gave me a lift and told me – pretty much instantly – that I was going to stay with him for a few days and that we would play music together. He picked me up because I had my guitar with me. I told him to drop me off at the next fuel station, but in the end, he was right. I left him and his beautiful friends a few days later but soon returned after successfully rescheduling my flight back to Australia through Frankfurt instead of Heathrow. I worked in the Croatian guy’s barside pizza servery and spent the days with him landscaping for a beautiful man who created Japanese gardens. One day during lunch a woman walked up to us and started a conversation in German with my friends. I couldn’t understand their words but by their tones I figured they knew each other well. When she left I asked who she was and they told me that they had never seen her before. I miss that random friendliness. I started to bridge together conversational sentences in German and realised that the best way to learn a language is to somehow be inside it. I’ve never forgotten that.

Eventually I said good bye to Europe and to my year away. On the way to the train station the Croatian guy gave me an envelope with 600 deutschmarks in it from the Japanese gardener. It had to be a distant gift in case I refused it. I told you he was beautiful; humble too. I took the money and passed on my deepest gratitude.

I cried, I busked, I froze, I laughed, I met people from everywhere and I left my heart in more places than two; and I did a lot more.

The tropical Darwin heat greeted me at 4 am almost a year to the day I had left. A few days later I finally ventured out into the world I’d known for most of my life, and guess what - I suffered from severe culture shock.