So we arrived in Melbourne, our last stop in Australia. Having slept accordingly, we were relaxed and talked to everyone. We weren’t in a rush, as 1 week to explore a city should be enough time. The two British couchsurfers (one of them Scottish with a really difficult accent) couldn’t find another accommodation in Melbourne due to the Cricket world championship in Australia/New Zealand. All the hostels were booked out. Our Indian couchsurfing host Ajay told us why: on Sunday the match India-Pakistan should take place in Aidelaide. Therefore 20,000 Indians travelled to Adelaide, but, of course, not everyone could find an accommodation in Adelaide, so they had to go to “surrounding” cities. The two stayed for two nights and then went to a hostel. Besides Ajay, another Indian guy lived in this house, who, to make it simple, introduced himself as Harry. Both told us a lot of interesting stories about India, probably we have to travel there as well, one day. In addition a guy from Bangladesh lived in the house, but he moved out the next day, and another Chinese couchsurfer, who left after a few more days. So quite multi-cultural and funny. But we planned to stay longer at Ajay’s place, who lived quite far out of the city centre, but a comfortable 40-minute drive by train took us in the city directly to Federation Square. And then, it was love at first sight! Melbourne is not as touristy as Sydney, but also not as boring as Perth or Adelaide. Simply a million-people city with a very special flair. The city centre (CBD) like in lots of other Australian cities, is geometrically created. That looks quite boring on the map, but has its advantage that it’s really hard to get lost. In this part of Melbourne, there are free trams with really nice looking painted trains. We spent the first afternoon walking along Southbank which is opposite of the city centre along a river. Without further knowledge we had quite a good timing to be there, as the Chinese New Year was happening during that time and there were a lot of activities along the Southbank. Of course we directly ordered our first coffee, especially because Melbourne is said to be the coffee capital of Australia. Tobi found a very good offer for an Indian All-You-Can-Eat dinner in the late afternoon for 7.50$ (or around 5.30€) and that’s to say not per person but for both of us. Of course we tried it out immediately and ate as much as we could of two different vegetable variations, rise and sweet dessert (also included and all you can eat). On our second day we did a 1$ sightseeing tour through Melbourne, organized by Jess through Couchsurfing. The dollar is a donation for an animal we couldn’t see in wild unfortunately, the Tasmanian Devil. The tour lasted for 2 hours and Jess showed as some of the famous Laneways (which were used for delivering goods to the big shops in the front once upon time, and now crowded because of a diversity of hipster café’s, bars and restaurants). One of the bars is in a very weird location, as one has to walk through a street which is mainly used for (and therefore filled up with) rubbish bins (and that’s how it smelled there). Another restaurant is not noticeable as one from the outside, as there is no advertisement at all so you’d have to ring the bell and someone will come to the door and offer you a seat. After this tour we went to the CBD, in order to fulfil one of Kerstin’s dreams since we arrived in Australia. In Melbourne is the one and only (!!!) H&M in whole Australia and that’s why some clothes were exchanged by some new ones 🙂 Apparently the H&M has a very cool location within the old post building of Melbourne directly in the centre of the CBD. We also visited the Tennis Grand Slam stadium in Melbourne, which became our third one after Wimbledon and Paris. Number four and therefore the last one will follow in New York. Additionally, there were some organisational things which need to be done, namely tax return and closing of our banking account. Funny enough it figured out that we will get additional money of our fundraising job, why we couldn’t do both things. Anyway we were able to prepare everything so that we’ll just have to send a letter once we got everything and close the banking account online. One hint for everybody who might have a similar travel plan as we do. The ANZ (Australia New Zealand) bank operates (as the name implies) in both countries and that’s why one can get cash in the other country without paying any fees. We ended up chilling in the park for a couple of hours before we went to the Indian food place a second time 🙂 The remaining days were filled with some culture (Parliament, old treasury and the arts museum) and a visit of the Victoria Market (the biggest open air market in the southern hemisphere where you’ll get everything from fish to souvenirs) and St. Kilda. This dirstrict of Melbourne has some special characteristics. On the one hand, there is a quite nice beach which habits a penguin colony. YES, you heard correctly, little clumsy penguins. It consists of approximately 1200 sakkos and settled in the harbour around 20-30 years ago and are protected and researched since then. Of course the hint wasn’t that secret and the pier filled up with Asians and Indians close to sunset. First we thought “pour little things” but apparently they had fun with all the tourists. If you ever asked yourself if they actually move as funny as you always see in the television, yes they do. The belly-landing is not even the funniest part. One of the guys tried to walk along the stone wall along the pier, and therefore he had to jump over some gaps, which was extremely funny to watch since he inspected the gap accordingly before he found the courage to jump (followed with an “Oooooh” of 100 people who watched him). At least it showed us why penguins are not able to fly. Who jumps like that should just not fly 😉 We also tried another restaurant in St. Kilda which is called “Lentils as anything”. The concept of the restaurant is pretty cool, as everyone pays as much as he thinks it’s worth it or is able to afford. A quite impressive concept which seemed to work out for quite a long time (especially for the artists in the area with a very instable income) but unfortunately it’s almost bankrupt just because it is easy to presume its good nature. Anyway, the food was delicious! We spent our last day in Australia with cleaning duties and some preparations before we could go on our next stop, New Zealand. The drive to the airport figured out to be quite adventurous as we didn’t want to spend money for the extremely expensive airport shuttle bus. That’s why we planned to drive as close as any possible to the airport with train and tram and hitchhike (or take a cab), just to figure out that there was a regular bus going from there to the airport which was even for free. It just took us two hours to get over around 20km beeline from Ajay’s home to the airport 😉 Unfortunately the airline was not Emirates this time, but Jetstar which fulfilled every bad words said about a cheap airline. We had to check-in ourselves, which of course didn’t work and the lady at the counter needed ages to do so. The plane was extremely narrow, but fortunately the flight was only three hours and how we arrived in Christchurch will be part of the next post.

Federal Squre

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