Chapter 17 - “To Gaz, Maz, Big Poo and Little Poo. -The GIBSONS!”

1:01pm NSW time 04:01am Danish time

I’m going to do this blog in English, as I’m afraid Google Translate won’t do the job quite good enough. This is for the Gibsons – and Mo ;) –Finally a blog you will understand from top to bottom.

Først dog lige hurtigt på dansk til jer, som sidder og tænker; “Hvem er The Gibsons?” –The Gibsons er den australske familie, som min fætter, Kasper, boede ved under hans ophold som udvekslingsstudent her i Australien. Familien består af mor-Marion, far-Garry samt døtrene, Melanie og Amy. Sammen med dem tilbragte vi 8 fuldstændigt sindsygt fantastiske dage i deres hjem i Brisbane. Vi kom som totalt fremmede og rejste videre som sønner og brødre. –Bedre kan det ikke beskrives. Dette er til dem.

Sorry for the unavoidable spelling mistakes, by the way – I haven’t written much English lately ;)

…

“Thanks” is such an underrated word nowadays. It has been worn out and lost its meaning. So how do we say thanks for the incredible 8 days we spent, being part of your family? –Well, it all starts with a blog.

When we arrived in Brisbane we had no idea what to expect. We knew that you guys had prepared a nice dinner – and for that alone we were grateful. However, we were still a bit confused. Did we need to book a hostel or could we spend the night with you? –That was what we were asking ourselves. Having in mind that we – two dirty, Danish backpackers - were close to strangers to you when we first met you, we really didn’t want to expect too much. As I said – the dinner alone was already fantastic and big bighearted. Well. We had to make sure we were on the same page! I don’t know if you remember, Maz, when I asked you if we could spend the night. It was right after you had picked us up and we were in the car. The answer came straight away - “Yes of course guys! You get Kasper's room and there's a spare bed in the office”, and later that evening Gaz told us we could stay as long as we wanted … Wow - you know that kind of welcome truly tells something about people and it really taught me something about what kind of person I want to be. -We have always done the same in my own family, but suddenly being on the other side of the table made me realize how much it really means.

… From the first minute you treated us like family and we were blown away! We kept asking ourselves; “How can we ever repay them?”. You kept giving without ever blinking an eye .. And we kept taking .. I won’t say I feel bad about this exchange rate as that would ruin the whole foundation of our stay at your house – but a little embarrassed, perhaps, and I definitely feel that I owe you something. When we stayed with you we didn’t have much to give apart from company, good stories, our world famous Danish mentality and of course our awesome cooking skills ;) ..Sometime in the future, however, I promise you that I will - one way or another - repay you with an equally awesome experience.

I guess what we’re really trying to say is.. Thanks guys. Thanks ever sooooo much! We came as complete strangers and left as sons and brothers. For that we are forever grateful and trust me when I say we will never forget our Brizzy family!

…

I envy Kasper. This guy got to spend nearly 9 months at this house. With these people. Being part of the family … first 3, then 6 and finally 9 months. I guess I understand why you didn’t want to leave, dude… Neither did I… It was funny, by the way, to get an insight to Kasper's Australian life – a life I didn’t really know much about. However it was an obvious subject for conversation since, well, I am his cousin. I understand him better now I have walked in his footsteps and in the end I owe him a great thanks as well. If it wasn’t for him – and his SDS resume – the Gibsons would have been totally unknown to us, and we would most likely never have met them.

Being a backpacker in Australia you would think we have a lot of contact with Australians – encounters with the locals! –We don’t and that’s sad. Only the lucky few – that’s us – gets to experience the true Aussie lifestyle that pretty much all of us originally came here to find. -By time, hostel after hostel, you kind of forget about this search and let yourself fall into the backpacker routines only talking to other backpackers. So thanks for reminding us, and THANKS for giving us the lifestyle-tour. Maz has summed up the week pretty good, and I’ve allowed myself to copy her words:

"WHew !!!! steak dinners, corona's, wine, BBQ's, Mt Coot-tha, Inglis family,Rosie, swimming at Southbank, big snake, swimming in pool, shopping at city beach, Indro, Queen St mall, lots of chillin', fish n chips at Manly, bike riding from Rosalie to New Farm along river, contemporary art exhibition, ice-creams at Southbank, Regatta, hot water leaking into bedroom, Rosie, Gecko that made Simon scream, annoying sisters, surviving Melanie's driving, Touch Footy, Amy's school muck-up day, Kay and her boys, Jesper driving Pullenvale Road and now the Danish boys are cooking up a storm in the kitchen for dinner....Yay I think they have now experienced a little taste of Kasper's life in Brisbane !!!!"

All kinds of good luck in the future. And yet again, again, again and again: THANKS!

We fuckin’ love you guys.


/S

PS. Just for the record - I did not scream!