When Katherine and Andreas had their leaving party in Cambridge two years ago, they invited their guests to come visit in Melbourne. I remember thinking to myself how nice that would be, but at the time I didn’t foresee that there would be the chance to fly to Australia anytime soon. Well, here we are…
Andreas works now at Trinity College Melbourne. When he lead us around the campus, I couldn’t help but think that this looked just like a Cambridge college. The British did really well exporting their culture and architecture to their colonies. But even though Melbourne has at times a quite European feel to it, it’s obviously also a very Australian city. Widespread, laid-back, sunny, and in never-ending rivalry with Sydney. When Andreas picked us up, we came by a highway bridge that had a huge banner across it saying: If you want to see a real bridge, you should come to Sydney. On the other hand, the licence plates of most cars in Victoria proudly proclaim ‚Victoria – the place to be‘.
We had a really nice time together, great food, for which Melbourne is famous, but I give all the credit to Katherine’s cooking! They were great hosts and made time for us, even though we came at a busy time just before Christmas and Katherine was just settling into her new job at the university.
With summer in full swing, it was hard to create a Christmas feeling, even though Jingle Bells was played all over the city, and over-life sized inflatable Santa Claus figures loomed at every corner. But decorating the Christmas tree together with Katherine and Andreas put us a bit more in the Christmas mood. A day trip out to the Christmas Hills did not necessarily add to it, but was still stunningly beautiful.
Melbourne was the endpoint to our 5500km long roadtrip along the East Coast. We were a bit sad to drop off the rental car that had started to feel like our own. To prevent withdrawal symptoms, we booked another car in Perth. Australia is just not the country to try to get around by public transport. So we’ll postpone this real backpacker business until we are back in Asia.
