Melbourne

Well.. It has almost been a week eversince I first arrived in Melbourne. Melbourne is a really nice city with lots of shops. It has a new festival every month, so there’s enough going on. The city is very ‘alive’, I think even more than Sydney. People told me Melbourne is even more laid-back than Sydney, but I am not sure whether I can agree. Maybe I’m used to the laid-backness of New Zealand, which compared to Australia, is even more relaxed. Non-the-less it’s a very nice city to be in. The city is very modern with lots of art incorporated into buildings.

After staying for a couple of days in a hostel in the northern part of Melbourne I went down south to a suburb called St. Kilda. It’s a nice town right at the beach and is way more chilled out than busy Melbourne. It’s a 20 minute tram ride from the citycenter, which is good as well. In St. Kilda I met up with Mark, a guy I met in the hostel in Sydney. It was great to see him again. We went for a few drinks in downtown Melbourne, near Federation Square where the finals of the swimming competitions were being celebrated.
Monday night we went out to the Crown Casino, the biggest casino in the southern hemisphere. It’s full of restaurants, pubs, bars, nightclubs and of course a lot of gambling machines as well. We went to a bar called “The Pub” where they were selling 4 Jagerbombs (Jagermeister with RedBull) for 18 dollars (€ 11), whcih of course is really cheap. We went with a big group of people who I met earlier that day. We stayed there all night and after about 6 of those drinks and a few beers we went on to another club inside of the casino. There we stayed some longer. We got back to the hostel at about 5 o’clock. That same night I made a bet with Mark how we would get up at 9 o’clock in the morning to have a footlong Subway sandwich. Of course I didn’t think he would remember.. but 9:10 he knocked on the door to come and have a sandwich. I dragged myself out of bed with a big headache, but as promised we had our footlong sandwich. Later that day I went for a run along the beachfront of St. Kilda, which was nice as well. The day after I played some football with a couple of irish and scottish guys I met at the hostel. During the match I ran into another guy and hit my head to the ground. I was dizzy and disorientated for a while, but thankfully nothing serious. That night it was one of the guys’ birthday, so we had a few drinks again.
Mark told me he was going to work on a farm in about 2 weeks, I thought it would be funny to join him so I asked him whether I could come too. So in about 10 days I’ll be working on a farm for a week. It will save me lots of money on food and accomodation which is good as well, besides it should be a funny experience. oh, I also got meself a summer-ish haircut.. A bit shorter than intended, but considering the weather here it shouldn’t be a problem 🙂

More news as soon as I have some!

Robin