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