Holiday! Part 2: Perth

After spending a few good days in Melbourne our holiday continued two time-zones further west. Perth with its 1.5 million people is the most isolated ‘big’ city in the world. For those who don’t know Australia that well, Perth is situated on the west coast. For instance, between my current home in Canberra and Perth are four days of driving through sand and bush. I believe the Beatles wrote a song about it called ‘Kangaroo Fields Forever’. We chose to fly...

Downtown Perth is rather small and peaceful (not compared to Norwegian standards, obviously), with a couple of nice pedestrian streets, hot dog stands and surf shops. We also had time to visit the infamous micro brewery in Freemantle called Little Creatures, which beer is a lovely odyssey in citrus flavored beer…eh… whatever…

The city of Perth seen from Kings Park

I've grown pretty tall down here... Tom & me, and Steve lurking in the background.

In Perth we met up with our good friend Hugh (another ‘Oslo student’). We stayed at his father’s place; a big house from 1910 in the nice suburb of Clairemont. The house has a big garden, numerous surfboards and two small, but loud dogs; Missy & Bill. Both Hugh and his dad are former local surf celebrities (right Hugh?). We even saw a picture of a young, blond Hugh posing for the newspaper revealing his dream about surfing in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. I think the only reason why Hugh never got an Olympic gold medal is that surfing never became an Olympic sport….

Our temporary residence. Francesco, Tom, me & Hugh.

Around Perth there are some superb beaches (especially in Cottesloe) and the water temperature was pretty comfortable (around 22-23 ’C). Living in Canberra, which is an inland city, makes you really enjoy having sand in your hair, the smell of salt water and even the odour of dead fish and sun dried seaweed. I'm not sure whether it was something in the water or just the feeling of freedom, but being at the beach transformed us all into wild teenagers again... and, of course, it ended with a nice cut right in between my eyes.

Some action shots from our beach days.

As the sun set in into the Indian Ocean we all became very sentimental...

In a few days I'll publish the last part of this Holiday Trilogy, Holiday! Part 3: Western Australia, so keep your eyes open!! Surfing, camping and a nice flower are some of the treats coming up...

Holiday! Part 1: Melbourne

Hey folks!!

Since you’re reading this it means that I’ve finally found some time in between work, work, holiday and work to write my blog again! I just handed in an essay last night, which means that I only have three big ones left before escaping the Australian winter and going back to my lovely fiancé for the summer. As you read this you might notice that something is different; yes, it has to do with language. Somebody told me that Norwegian is not a ‘world language’ (what!!), and after intense research I have come to the conclusion that English is spoken by slightly more people than Norwegian. This shift means that even more people can enjoy or hate my self-centric, non-political blog… To those of you that don’t like or understand English, well, what can I say…

Since I last updated the blog there has been some good days of traveling, surfing and laziness, but also a whole lot of long and stressful days of essay writing. I’ll concentrate on the fun part. On Friday 11 April a two week teaching-break finally started. The teaching-break is supposed to be a time for students for self-study, reflection and catching up with essay writing, yeah right… After class on that Friday Tom, Steve and me packed up Steve’s lovely Holden (weird Australian car brand) and headed south towards Melbourne, a trip that normally takes 7-8 hours. In our case a snapped fan belt in the middle of nowhere, very inefficient road service and an incredibly grumpy, chain-smoking tow-truck man and his not-so-lovely wife, made our trip last for almost 12 hours.

The next morning, after royal treatment in casa de família de Steve and a good night sleep, we headed downtown to watch an Australian football match, also known as ‘footy’. What is it with people using the term ‘football’ for every game where people run around with an oddly shaped ball, and then on top of it all they ignorantly refer to proper football as ‘soccer’!! Anyway the stadium, MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground), is one of the nicest stadiums I have ever seen. It can accommodate more than 100.000 people; unfortunately there were only about 25.000 this day.

Melbourne is a fairly big city (approx. 3.8 million people), but it still has a nice, calm and cool atmosphere. The downtown area is a mix between modern, high rise buildings and old stone buildings and churches. The river Yarra which runs through the city adds a nice dimension to the asphalt jungle Melbourne also proudly presents itself as the home of the highest observation deck in the southern hemisphere, and we obviously had to check out the view from there.

Melbourne is not just tall buildings, you can also go fishing in the Tasman sea

Some of the Melbourne suburbs have lots of trendy cafés, bars and clubs, and the architecture looks like a modern version of the Wild West. In these areas you’ll find a lot of colorful street art (graffiti) and ‘alternative’ shops, something you’ll really learn to appreciate after living in the well polished city of Canberra.

The days in Melbourne were spent walking around the city, visiting Steve’s church, having a lively dinner-party with Eleanor’s family (Eleanor was in our Oslo class last semester), hanging out with Steve’s friend Bec, and eating good food at Steve’s place. As you probably have figured out already, Steve was our local guide. On Monday morning our Italian friend Francesco entered the party. Exhausted after a long night on the bus and pissed off at the people that stole his bike in Canberra, he really needed a good vacation.

Stay tune for Holiday! Part 2: Perth, to be released on 30 April 2008