Goodbye to Maxi, Swiss roll, BBQ

Throughout our entire tour of Western Australia, we talked to Maxi, our eldest, almost every day. He lived 4,000 km away on the east coast with a host family while we were traveling. He was living with his Australian host brother, Christian, his Italian host brother, Gabriella, and his friendly host mother, Michelle.

Naturally, we were all looking forward to seeing each other again!

The plan was to rent a car in Brisbane, drive to Noosa on the Sunshine Coast, settle in our Airbnb house, and then pick up Maxi from his host family, all in one day.

But that was quite doable!

However, Maxi had other plans for us. He had arranged a BBQ with Michelle, with us as "special guests", and we were supposed to bring a multimedia slideshow of our trip so far. And mother, that's me, was supposed to bring her "famous Swiss roll"!

Maxi: "No stress, but please be there on time at 6:15 PM and I have already told everyone about it! And dress nicely!"

Great, this could be exciting...

So, first drive north from Brisbane, then move into our new house, unpack quickly, check what's in the house, oven, baking tray, hand mixer...?

After 7 weeks of living in a camper van and camping, it was nice to be in a real bed again, with a mattress, and have a fixed residence! Hallelujah!

We arrived at our house in Noosa, with our small rental car packed to the roof with suitcases, just as Maxi was turning the corner on his bike.

That was truly amazing, being able to hug the "little" (1.90m tall) one again. All four of us were overjoyed to be reunited!

Alright, now let's take a tour of the house - I think we would have been happy with the smallest hut, as long as it had a bed!

Yes, camping is really good and puts things back in perspective! You realize what you really need in life, and it's not much: family, a comfortable bed, a cooking facility, at least a good grill, a few clothes, a good book, and of course... a fast internet connection ;-)

As soon as I opened the front door of our small attached house, I knew, ahh, you feel comfortable here, I immediately felt at home.

Everything was modern, minimalistic, bright, tasteful, well-equipped. And when I opened the modern fridge and found a pack of chocolate cookies and chilled water as a welcome gift... I was truly touched! Very kind of Glen, our nice and very relaxed landlord! :-))

OK, by now it was already afternoon and our eldest was getting impatient: What about the Swiss roll, what about the slideshow? And be on time, Australians don't have guests late...

Hmm, that meant careful planning. I still urgently needed a hand mixer. There was a baking tray, but no scale, and... and...

So, off to Woolworths first. Hand mixer? No, we don't have that - Australians hardly bake themselves. Oh dear, where can we get that thing now, otherwise nothing will work?! And whipped cream stabilizer? The nice Woolworths employee was very engaged, he even looked it up on the internet, but: We don't have that. Oh boy, now what? Luckily, he then found vanilla sugar among the spices, which is not available in small packets for baking in Australia like it is in our country.

A scale? Too expensive! Will a measuring cup do the job?!

OK, searched and bought a measuring cup. What's this? It doesn't have gram measurements, it says: 1 cup, 1/2 cup, etc. Oh dear, how much is one cup? (By now I know: 128 g of flour are approximately 1 cup)

Well, that could be fun, and time was passing...

In the meantime, Moritz put together a multimedia slideshow of our trip through the Northern Territory and Western Australia, edited it, and added some multimedia features. OK, that was done!

But we still didn't have a blender. Let's ask the lady at the cash register behind us: Let's try "Target".

OK, off to "Target", no time to waste. I better ask the young salesperson right away - No, we don't have a blender. Oh no! It was already 3:30 PM! WhatsApp message from Maxi: "Swiss roll?"

I then searched all the shelves at Target on my own and actually found one of those things. So, off to "home".

And then it was time to improvise! Hopefully, the cream will thicken and how does the oven work here? The cake was ready at exactly 5:00 PM! There was even a little time to let it cool down. Quickly fix the hair a bit and then off we went! Phew, we made it!

It looked quite decent! The legendary, typically German, homemade Swiss roll. The Australians were quite impressed ;-)