Day Five

Today is my fifth day in Australia and time is just flying by.  Before I came out here I was under the assumption that arriving would be extremely stressful and disorienting.  I thought that I might have trouble figuring out how to set up a bank account, get a cell phone, tax ID etc...but everything has been quite seamless.  So far the most complicated and frustrating thing I have had to deal with has been transferring money out of my Wells Fargo account and into my Australian account (go figure)...THANKS MOM!   


In these last five days, I feel like I have done virtually everything Brisbane has to offer: I have walked through the CBD, Fortitude Valley, Chinatown, Kangaroo Point, the Botanical Gardens, and two different Queensland University campuses.  I have taken the ferry for transportation (which is so cool!) and gone to high tea.  


After all of this, so far my favorite part of Brisbane is my hostel and the people I have met here, oh and winning $15 at Pub Quiz (the Australian name for Trivia Night)...the first question was: "What is the Jewish place of worship?"...I was the only one who knew the answer haha.  


Anyway, at this point, I think that I will need to stay at the hostel for another week to wait for my debit card and tax ID number to come in, plus the hostel is only $130 per week so why not?  After that, however, I plan to move on...haha, this sounds simple but I have been hearing so many cool stories about different places that I have no idea where to head next.  I have been told that Sydney is a great place to find a job so I might head in that direction, but my waitress at tea said that Sydney was "too normal" and that I should go somewhere else...hmm..."too normal"... anyway the British girl who sleeps in the bed next to me gave me her copy of Lonely Planet Australia.  The book added about two inches to my growing stack of travel books...in all it is pushing about a foot high.  Anyway, I am in the process of finding direction (ha, story of my life.)


But I can say this...after only five days in Australia: I do feel quite at home :)       

I take it back...

Brisbane is nothing like San Diego.

The Beginning

I arrived in Brisbane at 5:30AM yesterday --> bags/immigration/customs/etc. --> Airtrain to Roma Street Station --> I arrived at Brisbane City Backpackers Hostel at 8:15 (or, as the Aussies say: "eight and a quarter.")  

The room I am staying in consists of fifteen bunk beds packed together in a space roughly the size of my old living room back in Boulder.  My mom would probably hyperbolically refer to the room as a refugee camp.  I, on the other hand, will euphemistically describe it as cozy and social.  The hostel reminds me a bit of a ski bum dorm in a resort town.  There are a variety of languages, it is a rarity to find a local Australian, and people are referred to by where they are from: the Finnish girls, the British guy, that weird girl from California who asks too many questions and loses things constantly...etc.  Becoming a backpacker in Australia (which really is an identity out here) is akin to joining an international community of nomads, we spend little, need little, and carry our homes on our backs -- kind of like turtles.  

Anyway, I got to my hostel --> showered --> decided to explore: My hostel is situated next to a variety of, bars, internet cafes, other hostels, and travel agencies plastered with deals for the low-budget traveler.  The Central Business District is only about a ten minute block away.  Walking around Brisbane I noticed two major differences from the US: 1. there are no homeless people.  2. It is clean.  Other than that, Brisbane reminds me a little bit of parts of San Diego if you subtracted the beach and added a giant public pool in the middle of the cultural center (okay maybe there are three big differences...)  

When I returned from exploring, I met some guys back in the hostel.  They laughed at my "accent" and then invited me to where ever they were going.  We bought this terrible "wine" stuff called Goon.  It is the cheapest alcohol you can get out here.  They also bought some lemonade to mix with it, which confused me until I later found out that Goon tastes like  great fruit juice mixed with rice vinegar.  Anyway we met up with some Finnish girls and German guys and we all sipped Goon together and that is how I spent my first night in Australia...not bad.