When my hubby got injured because of an accident at work I was still living in Holland. The day before the work accident I had gotten the last document I needed to apply for an Australian visa. I tried to ring my hubby to tell him the good news; I was going to make an appointment at the Australian embassy in Berlin and hopefully within a few months I could come over. But my hubby didn’t answer the phone…

A few hours later when I was at work I got the bad news; my hubby had a work accident and was missing a few fingers. I decided then and there to quit my job and to go over to Australia to take care of him. I would sort out my residence visa over there. After a few phone calls with his brother I decided not to tell my hubby I was coming over and surprise him. His brother would pick me up from the airport.

After a trip of 24 hours his brother, wife and two kids were waiting for me at the airport. They grabbed my suitcase, we got in the car and they asked me where I wanted to go. I told them I wanted to see my hubby a.s.a.p. so we went to the hospital in the big city. My husband was very surprised to see me and we were both in tears. Tears of joy because we had not seen each other for a while and tears of sadness and pain about what had happened.

While I was in the hospital my family-in-law decided to go home and left me all alone in the hospital without my stuff. I was in a different country where I didn’t know where I was without my luggage and without a key to our house. I was not amused to say the least, so I rang my in-laws. I wanted the key to our house and my luggage (which they had in their possession). They told me they didn’t want me to spend my first night in Australia by myself so they insisted that I came to their house and spend the night there. If they were so concerned about me not being by myself they should not have left me in a hospital in a strange city without my stuff to in the first place!

When I left the hospital I jumped in a taxi because I had no clue where I was. I thought that if I go to the trainstation I would figure out how to get to the town where my in-laws lived. When I finally arrived at the train station of that town after a train trip of an hour they picked me up from the train station. After arriving at their house I got a bit of a cranky welcome. It was late in the evening and they all wanted to sleep and they basically ‘dumped’ me on the couch. I felt very unwelcome.

To be continued…

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