My mother always used to say that flying into Sydney felt like coming home, ever since she first moved here at the end of the 70s. Flying in this time felt to me like coming home from a long night of heavy drinking. No profound sense of welcoming warmth, simply a place where, having endured the journey, you feel reasonably comfortable collapsing on the floor and puking with a reduced chance that a hobo will steal your wallet while you are doing so. Yep, airsick again.

Staying with my dad in his new apartment, conveniently close enough to the airport to keep me supplied with that wonderful jet-engine whine I love so dearly, didn't exactly endear Sydney to me more. It felt like a home, not my home. A place I used to live, with annoyingly different traffic conditions.

So I took care of the things I had to, saw my friends less than I would have liked to and even managed to have a crack at organising car repairs back in Germany via the Wonders Of The Internet. Now I've only a few days left before I head back there and that prospect doesn't feel like a homecoming (or "homegoing") either. It just feels like travel fatigue.