I didn’t mention this in my last post, but there are some really weird animals here.. in Europe I am used to seeing pigeons, crows and in our garden even some rarer species, but here those animals seem to have mutated.. pigeons for example – or whatever they are called – are pink! (I think it are Galahs, but don’t quote me on that..) I don’t know for certain what the Australian version of the crow is, but I think they are black and white and not as annoying as ours..
There s a dozen more weird birds acting like pigeons, mostly some sort of cockatoo I guess. And at least one thing they are better at than pigeons: causing uproar! If a tourist is naive enough to feed one, all hell breaks lose.. and I don’ t know this for sure yet, but I am pretty sure that – like pigeons – these flying vermin also bomb spectators below with the unhealthy remains of their previous meal.

I guess that by the time I go home, I ll be longing for the european versions of these birds causing a fuss on my windowsill..

I was having dinner at a local restaurant next to the Yarra river yesterday and met a couple of very nice girls (I will explain.. ;)).. One of them was going to move to Sydney so they were having a last evening out.. actually, judging by the 3 bottles of wine on their table, I think it was more about getting drunk together one last time ..

Sadly – and maybe also luckily – one of the 2 was apparently still sober enough to realize she was drunk enough already and wanted to go home.. they still had an almost untouched bottle on the table though. So they needed a victim to relinquish their wine to.. well mannered and friendly as I am, I couldn’t say no to a damsel in distress and thus the task of finishing 2 full glasses of wine and half a bottle befell to me. 😀

I remember I wanted to write something yesterday evening, but due to a sudden and unforeseen impairment of my ability to type I had to abandon that endeavor.. I have no clue anymore as to what I wanted to write about, so instead I decided to yield to reader’s curiosity and write this short update about my – no doubt very interesting – adventures in Melbourne 🙂

I made the very hard decision last week to go on a tourist tour.. you know, one of those awful and boring organized trips where you get to sit in a bus most of the day and are occasionally allowed out, usually at the worst possible places, tactically chosen to let tourists take a picture of something utterly uninteresting, or in a labyrinth of shops selling the exact same things you found on your previous stop. I much prefer the way I did it in Norway: driving myself, alone, able to chose my own destination and stops. Sadly, if i want to see anything outside the city limits, this is giong to be the only way for me to do it.. God have mercy on my soul!!

It didn’t turn out to be quite as bad as expected, though getting up at 6.30 in a weekend is asking a lot! The company was as expected: a bus full of japanese, chinese, vietnamese.. all sorts of asian -ese’s. But the end justifies the means so to get out of the city I would have to suffer through it. Luckily getting up early meant having no trouble at all sleeping in the bus.. as if I’d ever have trouble sleeping anyways, but that s not the point..
The first stop for the morning tea was along the shores and a small sandy beach. A couple of people were trying to surf on the waves, but I don’t think it was a good day because there weren’t much more waves than you ‘d have in the North Sea on a windy day. Next we had one of those typical tourist stops: a wooden “gate” over the road with the text “Great Ocean Road” written onto it.. this basically was not much more than a wooden pole placed overhead, yet apparently that s enough of an achievement to warrant a stop. Talk about a complete waste of time.. at least there was a beautiful beach next to the read that was worth a picture.

We drove on to a little town to have lunch and had a few more stops on the way. Usually these were actually worth stopping for because of the great view you had over the rocky coastline.. if only we had a shore like that in belgium.. though closed-minded as belgians tend to be, it would probably be covered in concrete because it s easier to build or walk on anyways.. Maybe it s for the best we only have around 60km coastline.. we ‘d just turn it into a concrete wasteland in no time.. as we say in Dutch “Parels voor de zwijnen”, “Peals for the pigs”.. belgians wouldn’t be able to appreciate it for what it is.

After lunch we drove on to the 12 Apostles – of which only 8 remain standing today. It s a formation of limestone rocks rising up in front of the coastline cloffs and, again, a touristic hotspot. When we drove in we could see a whole queue of people going from the bus parking to the view point.. having heard nothing but asian languages all day already, one can imagine this wasn’t exactly on my wishlist. So I went for the – more expensive – alternative: a short helicopter flight over the coastline and the apostles. Not only can you see 100 times more from above (on the ground you can only see a couple; they are too spread out to see them all from the ground unless you take you time to walk along the coastline), it was much calmer queueing. So while this did cost me money, it also saved some money by avoiding a nervous breakdown.. 🙂 Those of us who took the heli ride actually had time to spare to go down to the beach whereas those who went to the viewpoint only just managed to get back in time.

Two more stops, one in the vicinity of some caves, the other in a small village to refresh before the journey home and that was the end of my first day as a bus tourist.. Could have been worse, had a friendly and well informed bus driver, though I would have prefered a little less other tourists.. 😉

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Tried to go to the swimming pool today.. Saying it didn’t go very well would be a true understatement…

Going to the pool is a 30 minute walk to the northern district from my hotel at Southern Cross.. once I got to just a couple 100 meters from the pool, someone up there decided to open the floodgates.. the heavens opened and in mere seconds the road had become just an extension to the pool. The minute and a half it took me to get from the doorway I was sheltering in was enough to get me completely soaked! 🙁

Oh and I almost forgot the worst part of it all.. since it wasn’t just heavy downpour, but a real thunderstorm and it is an outdoor pool, they closed the pool because of the lightning!!!
So not only had I just walked 30 minutes to the pool for nothing, I had to walk back to the hotel wearing nothing but a light short and a t-shirt. At least the temperature didn’t crash during the rain shower like it usually does in europe.. So I decided I ‘d rather have a dry shirt when I got to the city centre than a soaked piece of fabric and walked without till just before I had to enter the hotel.. (no pics available ;))

In case you don’t know already: I am in Melbourne, Australia.. the country of the kangaroo, koala and apparently also the miniskirts…
Well.. that last might have got something to do with the fact that is spring here, and closing in on summer.. judging by the temperatures we have here already though, I doubt I still want to be here once summer really starts.

So why am I here.. for work primarily, but who could say ‘no’ when they ask you if you are willing to go to the other side of the world for some time.. even if it s mainly for work! Getting here was a bit less appealing: 23 hours on a plane. In the end it wasn’t even half as bad as I had expected though: I travelled in premium economy which meant I had some leg room – I think nobody will disagree I need a fair bit of room here – and a better service too! After boarding the plane I was treated to a glass of sparkling wine or some other drink and a little snack. I was lucky enough to have a free seat next to me so I didn’t even have to get up allthe time to let someone pass.. that changed though after re-boarding in Hong Kong.. I ended up next to an elderly Chinese guy who didn’t speak a word english and was dazzled by the complexity of the on board entertainment system.. Guess in the end I was lucky he didn’t understand english.

Stops in London and especially Honk Kong were a bit of a nuisance though, because, even when you have to re-board the same plane, you have to go through the security clearance again.. and in Honk Kong I had this lady who didn’t seem to trust my insuline supply… she kept me waiting for like 15 minutes while she was doing paperwork.. and more paperwork.. and even more paperwork… must be government officials I guess…

Arriving in Melbourne.. there wasn’t much to see. since with a 10 hour time difference I arrived in the evening, so even after sleeping for like 20 hours in a plane, I got to go to my hotel and sleep some more..

I stay in a hotel in the buness district of Melbourne.. and it shows.. I ve never see so many penguins (default blue shirts, black pants with tie) on the street as here, even with these relatively high temperatures.. either they are extremely conservative (or insecure) here or they all have the same bad tailor. Apparently that s the norm here though.. so that kind of poses a problem for me since, even at home, I don’t have a single piece of clothing that conforms to this standard.. the only shirts I wear that come closest to it are khaki, though I did manage to get a matching leather tie. Next problem was getting that tie in a knot.. quite a challenge for someone who s only worn one once before.
By now I think you can image that I am sort of an obvious outsider among all these typical business people..
I don’t know if it s just as bad in cities like brussels, but it does make me miss Helsinki.. there I never had the feeling that while walking through the city I was surrounded by a legion of bad copies of an already boring original..

There is an upside to this as well though.. The women also go to the same tailor. Though for women the only thing on the menu seems to be miniskirts or anything else mini..! (at least up to a certain age 😉 ) And unlike in europe it s actually a sight for sore eyes: here the people wearing them are the right people, whereas in europe, you just wish the few people that wear them wouldn’t..

This brings me to another topic: the “mini” mania seems especially strong among the asian people.. There are so many people of asian origins here though that if someone would have dumped me on the streets of Melbourne and asked me which country I was in, I would have guessed Hong Kong or Singapore.. anything but Australia. I guess that s a more of a percetion problem we have about Australia in Europe. And don’t get me wrong , this isn’t a complaint.. given their clothing habits I wouldn’t mind seeing even more asians 😉

As for the city itself.. I don’t like the business district itself. Too much high rise, almost no restaurant or cafe outdoor sitting.. too business like (hence why it s called the business district i guess). Once you get outside it though, it s much much better.. walking past the Yarra river, in one of the parks, or even along one of the green avenues is a lot more pleasant. Makes me wonder why they build those skyscrapers at all.. they are plain ugly and only cause huge traffic jams when everyone tries to get to work in the morning or back home in the evening.

Guess I d better stop writing now.. I still want to go back home in one piece..