Australia

Better luck next time
August 21st, 2007

Sunday was solely reserved for more shopping, cause even though my bankaccount doesn’t agree, changing continents has made some serious shopping a neccesity. After that, I figured I couldn’t leave Australia without at least one night of partying, so I hooked up with some people from my hostel and started discovering Melbourne by night. As I have been on a strict beer diet for the past 8,5 months, the wine was a rare treat…. Unfortunately for me being that much out of practice ended up in one of the guys dropping me of back at the hostel, way before the others even started thinking about going home. The upside to this was that when everybody finally did return, they could wake me up in time to catch my 6.00 am bus to the airport

After just over a week I had to leave again. I haven’t seen much of Australia…. but I’ll try to do better next time!

Left!!! Left!!! Left!!!
August 18th, 2007

Sara, an Italian girl I met in my hostel, came up with the plan to visit the Dandenong Ranges, a national park, not too far from Melbourne. The trouble was that to get there we needed a car and rental cars are not exactly budget material. Somebody in our hostel tipped us of on a place called Rent-a-Bomb (doesn’t that give you just the reassurance you need for driving left for the first time in your life??), where cheap cars were available. After being sent in the wrong direction and with that basically including a sightseeing tour of the center of Melbourne in our program, we ended up with the most crappy car you can possibly rent in Melbourne. But hey, it was cheap and it drove… who cares it’s the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen???

Which leads me to the driving…. I drove the car out of the place and the guys came running after me that I made my first traffic violation… I was facing the street the wrong way! “Right, I can do this….. Left, Left, Left” is basically what I’ve been telling myself all day… now the highways are fine, it’s the small streets that do your head in. As if that’s not enough the steeringwheel, rear view mirror, and poke are on the wrong side, and somehow my lefthand was convinced that if it shifted it also got to do the indicators (like the righthand normally does in one go)….. I don’t have a clue how I got us to the park safely signalling with my windshieldwipers and getting too close to the sidewalks the whole time cause usually that is where I, as a driver should be. What was even more surprising is that Sara was very relaxed and supportive, rather than hiding under the backseat

But we did make it to Dandenong, a beautiful combination of forest resembling the forests back home and tropical-like vegetation. We made a really beautiful hike, saw some of the birds that seem to be quite common, but were special for us and treated ourselves to lunch at a propper fish & chips place in Belgrave. I never would have figured this, but in the tiny town of Belgrave, they had “kroketten”! Unfortunately they don’t eat ‘m with mustard here, but I was quite pleased with a taste of home anyway. After lunch we made a short stop at the Puffin’ Billy railway station, to visit an old steamer that still runs. Quite unexpectatedly, I found myself a scale there (apparently used for mail packages back in the days) and have finally gotten you guys some prove of how fat I’m actually getting (deduct the hiking boots though ) Seeing that I’ve made it over 50 k’s for the first time in my life, gave me just the boost I needed to drive us back home safely

Unfortunately for me, the lovely day I had with Sara didn’t convince my body that winter can be nice as well… so after returning the car yesterday morning I had no choice but to find my corner of the couch near the fireplace again, sneezing and coughing myself through the day.

Aussie’s favorite passtime

Being told you cannot visit Australia without seeing a game of football, I hooked up with Dennis and Martin today, to see for myself what Australia’s favorite passtime is. So here’s what you do, you grab a couple of beers and start watching 30 well-toned guys in pretty short shorts run around a round field…..so far no complaints here

What seemed hilarious to me is that they call the game Australian Rules Football – but there are no real rules! The only rules seem to be that you don’t get to grab the opponent by the head or tackle him below the knees (see that would be mean). For the rest it’s the weirdest mix between football, soccer, rugby & basketball (they actually dribble the ball on grass) and just about everything seems to go even though there are 5 referee’s.

Confusing as it may seem to a Dutchie like me, it was actually pretty good fun. The game is pretty fast and there is always something going on. Even in halftime, when they divide the field in small quarters, where about 8 kids’ teams get to play. Most amazing to me though, was the fact that everybody just sits right among one-another. Fans from both teams, family’s, senior citizens……. everybody just sits together and enjoys the game. When Dennis kept trying to get me to cheer for his team (who were losing badly) from the tribune behind the goal at the last quarter, where everybody seemed to be for the opposite team, my Dutch sense took over. Hearing him cheer for his team in the middle of this made me think he must have a death-wish and I was already planning my escape…… but apparently there are places where people can be passionate about their sports without immediately going at each other…… hmmm maybe Footy does have something over soccer after all!

Fffffffffffrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzziiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnngggg!!!!
August 15th, 2007

Bbbbbrrrrrrr, imagine spending 8 wonderful months in Asia (where the temperature usually doesn’t get below 30), saying goodbye to your friend, nice people you’ve met & than getting of a plain on a Sunday morning where the 8 degree cold is thrown in your face by the very chilly wind! Even my very big shopping effort Saturday afternoon couldn’t protect me from this incredible shock.

I, therefore, have to admit that I’ve spend my first 2 days in Melbourne pretty much like this, wearing everything I have (and trust me a had bought a lot!) on top of eachother. Snuggled up with my book on the couch right next to the fireplace. My only reason to get away from there was to get more hot tea! If I had to go to a grocery store or something, this made me feel like a small provincial girl headed to the big city for the first time…. the smell of fresh cut meat, the multicultural city, trams…. just about everything that should be normal to me seems to catch me of guard completely.

But to keep the spirits up I hooked up with Eline yesterday. We met at 15.00 and it took us two minutes to land ourselves a glass of wine and start bringing back the warm memories of Bali! Singing “welcome to my paradise” while freezing at the tramstop, finding out we experienced the exact same shock walking into a western supermarket for the first time in months and the other 2 bottles of wine cheered me up completely

So armed with 3 sweaters and a big grin I’m gonna start discovering Melbourne now!