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.