Eighth Base - Murrumbeena

Yes, I had to look the name of the neightbourhood up. I wrote it down, I looked it up, it was wrong so I went back and corrected it.

After getting a taste of living alone, we wanted to have another stab at getting a whole apartment. We looked at airbnb and found this.

It was expensive.

But we would have the whole thing for ourselves and it even had a dryer. Only the dryer didn't dry anything, it only warmed the clothes up a little. And the bedroom looked like this in reality when the sun was on the best place for maximum illumination.

It's like the version of the bedroom in a Zelda dark world.

We were a bit bummed but otherwise the apartment was well equipped and it was comfortable there. The guy renting it to us gave us two additional days with a short term notice for a cheaper price so in the end it was OK.

The neighborhood was actually pretty apart from the street we were living because we were looking at a bulding site where they were upgrading the train station.

A 15 min walk away was the shopping street.

The shopping street has everything you want to have on an every day basis including every kind of food in restaurants. This concentration of restaurants is the one thing missing from Sydney somewhat.

Two train stations further away we had a Greek neighbourhood.

No non-Greek restaurants on this street.

The first thing that happened when I got out of the train is being stopped by someone trying to sell me something. When I told him that I am Greek he made a comment that everyone is a Greek here. And it is true. You could see it in the faces. It was hilarious. I went to the bank and there was a woman called Maria there and on her shirt she had a name tag that said "I speak Greek". I asked her for a good restaurant and she sent me to one.

There is a non-Greek shop here but we are not going to hold it against them.

In there, every table was full there so I sat with another guy. He was probably 35, Greek (of course) and was going to Greece in a couple of months for the first time. I don't know how to feel.

Seventh Base - Elsternwick

By the time the last day of our last apartment arrived, we didn't have a new one. First, we didn't know early enough if we wanted to stay longer in Melbourne, so that delayed the decision. Second, we decided that after being far from civilization for a few weeks, we want to go close to St Kilda where the biggest happenings are happening. We didn't find what we wanted, so we settled for a room that was too expensive and a bit further from St Kilda than we wanted. But it was only for two days.

We extended for one day.

The apartment was nice and a little more robust than the last one. Our hosts were and Indian-German couple. Apart from me being Greek and not Indian I had quite a lot in common with the husband. We worked both in I.T, are good looking, friendly and I liked him until he said that I talk English with a German accent. I don't know how Indian hell looks like or how many of them they have but he will eventually get there for that remark.

Bedroom. Too small.

The bedroom was too small for us. So we got out of there pretty fast. The neighborhood was good in that it had a train station that was 50m away and it had everything else we needed. Even a Russian and a Greek restaurant so that we feel right at home. We didn't visit either.

Should I make more nighttime photos?

Although the exterior doesn't look much different than similar neighborhoods in Melbourne, and it wasn't exceptionally busy there, I still noticed one thing. The interior of pretty much every restaurant and bar there was very tastefully equipped and decorated. I don't know why or how.

Melbourne Miscellaneous

Up until now I have seperated the content of the posts thematically but apart from some big things that will come in time, Melbourne has been more of a collage of little things that probably don't deserve more than a couple of lines. So now we will be looking at some vignettes.

I like it.

Of course I try to take photos to look somewhat nice but I also want the photos (I put up here) to document something and capture how living here feels like. So some of the photos are intentionally 'boring' because they show one of the hundreds shopping street that is completely normal here and not special at all. The above photo I made only because I thought it looked interesting. No story behind it at all. Same goes with this one.

I have the same photo withough the cyclist but I liked this better.

The next one is from the same walk along the beach and then to the way home. It has a story and the story is how in Melbourne as opposed to Germany (and Perth) sometimes they don't give a fuck how bad something looks.

The photo looks much better than reality in this instance.

The ironic thing that I know some neighborhoods in Australia better than I knew my neighborhood of 8 years in Germany because in Australia, I more often just go out to explore in every direction. This mean more exploring in a week than in 8 years. One week. Eight years. It's baffling how the human brain works and how little we understand even ourselves.

Less philosophy, more commerce!

That's the Queen Victoria Market. It's like those markets that happen weekly everywhere else, only this one is open every day and is ten times as big than yours. Envious yet? You will notice the Greek stand where I also had my midday meal. Apparently Melbourne has the biggest Greek population outside of Greece. There are some differences compared to mainland Greeks like, more often than not they can't talk Greek all that well which fascinates me a bit. But there are similarities like, they will be the loudest people around and their stand will have the loudest music. Hellas!

Also note that they have their own yearly festival where I missed the first day and Glykeria. Dang!

Back in Greece, my sister always complains about the people there who park with no consideration to other people. But has she ever seen a helicopter parked in the middle of the bridge?

My guess is not.

When we are on the subject of unconventional means of transport, let's talk trams. I don't know of many cities that still use them after Stuttgart dropped them. They still have them, it's the only public transport in the central area of Melbourne and they come in different types, some pretty new and some very old.

This is an old one.

Just like in Perth, the central district of Melbourne has a free zone where you can use public transport without paying anything. So here comes another thing that's irrational and I don't understand myself. A free zone is fundamentally a good thing, right? But because I just don't ... like Melbourne all that much, as in I didn't have a connection with it, I see the glass half empty in this instance. In Perth, the free zone reaches far enough that you can park your car outside of the city centre and take the public transport to reach your destination. In Melbourne, it doesn't. And it annoys me.

And now to something completely different: poetry.

A true artist never explains his work. This here illustrates the contrast of nature and technology.

Just kidding! On the second to last day, I went to a walk in the park with Andi and Laura who I know from the Germanies. They missed me (and also Diana a little), so they came to Australia to see us.

They also went on without us.

Melbourne likes its museums and galleries and it shows even in this park south of the river. Every couple (hundred) of meters, there is an exhibit with its own theme. Sometimes it's little oasis with its own character, sometimes it's a building or a memorial or a skate park or a flower bed in a shape of a star or a designed garden with a choice of plants.

Beyond Oasis - The Story of Thor

In the above one, there was a pair of teenagers who were studying together and it was kind of romantic I guess, until we appeared, starting shooting photos all over the place and scared them away. We probably destroyed a relationship in its beginning right there. Oh, well!

We had some strange voices of birds here we couldn't place. Laura accurately noticed that they sound like they have to be oiled.

Here's one thing, noone cares about: Nokia's map app sucks! Among other things, it has a bug where it doesn't display the walks in parks correctly even though it has the data. I read on a website that it is superior to the Microsoft map app. Fake news! I forgot, that Microsoft did have its own map app, so I looked it up and there it was, waiting on my phone for the last years. I tried it out and it was much better. Still going to jump to Android the next chance I get.

World War I Memorial.

Now you probably think that the building above is a memorial. Probably because I say that it is.

Wrong!

It's the X-Men headquarters.

At the end of the day, Laura wanted to see the march of the penguins and since Laura is the boss, we went there. It's where I took this final photo. I will write about St Kilda some time later. Good bye!

The end of the day.