My Aussie Drivers License

I talked about driving on the "wrong" side of the road here in Oz. Left side, that is. I talked a little bit about highways here, too. It's time to mention how easy it was to get a drivers license and just get off my driveway, turn left from the left side of the road, but struggle not to slide into that empty right lane, where I used to drive for the past twenty thousand miles before moving to Oz. Two days after moving to Melbourne, we got up early in the morning (didn't have to, really) and drove the "hire car" to VicRoads. We showed our valid American drivers licenses and asked for Australian ones. We paid what seemed a bribe, but it was just a fat fee for processing the request, had a picture taken and received the Australian licenses on the spot! No questions asked, no driving test, no vision exam. Easy peasy! So, yes, I struggled and my hands were wet on that steering wheel the first time I turned into a busy road. And I got stuck allowing everyone else to pass at the first roundabout, because I forgot who had priority. Not to mention that on streets shared with trams in the CBD (downtown), I'd need to be a sort of traffic contorsionist and perform the hook turn to go right. Yet, outside the city, all you need to worry about is the wildlife it seems... (look at this picture from South Australia)

Dear I-10

This is my blog entry and letter to the busy freeway I used to hate and I left behind in LA thinking that soon was going to crumble like apple crisp when the serious, long awaited earthquake was going to happen. It was one of the asphalt ribbons that tie the smog-wrapped LA into one of the largest urban gifts ever. A gift of transit. If I add the three hours spent daily on I-10 for my commute, Hollywood sign in the distance and hands-free phone connected to my ear, I would certainly revert to the frustrating feeling that my life was being wasted behind the wheel. My daily commute was also my daily terror. From Pasadena to Santa Monica and back I thought only of being killed (and buried) by an earthquake, getting hit by a bigger car or truck while I changed lanes through six freeways, or getting shot by gang members at some slow exit. None of these scenarios is fictional... So dear I-10, your counterpart here in Melbourne is M1. If "I" stands for interstate, "M" stands for ministate. Half your size (three lanes, although a fourth one exists close to the city, it's short and mostly shut down for no reason) and half your weight (true bumper-to-bumper traffic lasts for a lot less time than in LA), M1 is a dwarf! With a little stretch, it gets to Ballarat, maybe 100 km from Melbourne, not beyond. After that it turns into a two lane country road that slows down to 60km/h in populated areas and has a passing lane every x kilometers only... M1 has a few siblings only, so my commute now takes me from the South East to the North of Melbourne through small roads and over 30 traffic lights. I am no longer terrified of earthquakes and gangs, but I do carrythe fear of falling asleep in this very laid back country of Oz. Today's picture represents Princes Bridge over Yarra, which allows cars, carriages and trams to transit into and out of the CBD.

Melbourne (CBD?)

I started this blog about two weeks ago, but I haven’t really talked about the city Melbourne itself. I will start with a few highlights. The river Yarra draws a curly line across Melbourne, a lot more playful and less segregating than the one drawn by the river Seine in Paris. Yarra looks incredibly muddy but the fact that it flows and rowboats manage to go on it confirm the fact that there is sufficient water in the mud. I love the numerous pedestrian bridges across the river in the Southbank area (Southbank? tres Paris!), from which the city’s skyline presents itself like a lively Leggo site. The equivalent of the American “downtown” is called CBD, short for Central Business District. Misleading, but since Aussies love to abbreviate words, I learnt to refer to it the same way. I propose another name CRD, or Central Restaurant District, because many restaurants are concentrated on the streets and alleys of Melbourne. The city also has an array of shopping areas (although prices are either double or triple those in the US!), with the most attractive being some historical laneways and arcades, without cars, European-style, planted with boutiques and cafes. Oh, cafes should come ahead of Yarra as the highlight of Melbourne! Cappuccinos and espressos, lattes, macchiatos? They all live here with us and this city is a heaven for coffee lovers (like me), who almost went into withdrawal after the “regular”, diluted, gigantic, etc, coffee in the US. Melbourne has mesmerizing parks (Royal Botanical Gardens, Fitzroy Gardens) and gardens populated not only with the most exotic trees and plants, but also filled with flocks of parrots and even flying foxes. Melbourne’s persona comes through also with the markets, the most famous and largest of which is Queen Victoria Market. Oh, I wish I could share the sounds and colors from this market that flood it every Saturday morning, at its peak activity! Half the market buzzes with vendors of crafts, opals, and junk, and half with fresh produce: veggies and fruit, meat (A LOT! And cheap because Aussies love it on the barbie), fish and seafood (have you ever heard of the Moreton Bay bug?), and delis (awesome cheese at prohibitive prices of up to $80/lb, nougat of all kinds, South African biltong, marinated stuff, etc). Finally, there are the Federation Square, which half the people perceive as the ugliest piece of architecture and half as the most modern (see for yourself by clicking on the name), Flinders Street Station (jaundiced but beautiful train station), the dizzying Eureka Tower (Trump-style apartment high-rise, in the top ten tallest apartment buildings in the world), and many other interesting places that make Melbourne what it is. It's time for a cappuccino now! The picture is from one of the pedestrian, artsy bridges over Yarra in Southbank.

Parenthesis

I started writing today's blog about highways in Melbourne when I realized I got diverted towards LA... I found myself in a virtual commute of thousands of miles, when I got stuck, not in traffic, but in parallels. Not those circling the planet, but those in my head... I moved so much around, yet, I stayed enough in each place where I've lived so far, that I cannot see them without all previous places somewhere in the background. Like parallel slices of white bread in a ham and cheese sandwich, my picture of Macin's streets with old, discolored houses runs overlapping with that of back streets in Bryn Mawr (US) and that of Mount Waverley (Oz) courts, groves and parades. This happens to me so often, I get disoriented. The more I change places, the more I see them stacked with the old ones. I walked to the train station the other morning and a pink camellia lit my memory of the California gardens surrounding our apartment in Arcadia. Were they camellias or roses in Macin and in Bryn Mawr? I walked through this parallel images and memories and I forgot where I was. Not as if I got lost, but as in "I was in all places in the same time."

Seasons and Birthdays

I never thought that Australia's nickname, Down Under, would touch on everything, including birthdays. If you can't see the link yet, it's because it is a bit hidden behind the seasons. Being on the other side of the planet than Europe and North America is cool, but it comes with reversed seasons. Summer falls between December and February, and winter between June and September. That's right, when you all enjoy a warm spring breeze now in the States, we are adding a layer of clothes, changing shoes for boots, and turning on the heat, not the AC. I think I got used to that, although this change throws up in the air my Christmas menu altogether. December 25 is normally a warm, even hot summer day when we go to the beach and make sand, not snow, angels. We eat a seafood salad and drink some chilled wine. We may surf through waves like Santa through blizzards, but we should seriously consider celebrating Christmas in July, like many Aussies, just so we can enjoy a heavily caloric tasty meal when outside its crisp and grey. Our birthdays switched seasons, too. My July birthday is celebrated now by holding a hot cider with gloved hands. The ice cream birthday cake is now a warm date pudding. After over forty years, it's not "just another change." It's seriously different. Chloe is the lucky one, because now she can have a pool party and Popsicles in the middle of November. The day is long, so her friends can stay late at the party, too. Just think about it. The last thing you imagine changing when you move house is the season on your birthday... (I gave this picture the title "Down under a roof", a metaphor)

Aussie Bush Flies

Something about the rain yesterday made me remember the Australian bush flies, a species of obnoxious flies that seem to be glued to your skin in the summer time. And I really mean glued, because they completely ignore simple shakes or waves, and if you manage to get them to fly off your face they will take a two second flight and come back relentlessly. They love the precious wet parts of the body, such as eyes, lips, nose and eyes. Considering that they also like to visit dung and other dirty places, this experience is twice as awful. In areas where they swarm, the victory is theirs and if you manage to keep them off the face and neck with insect repellents (the more powerful the better), then you don’t fight them on the rest of your body. The picture of my back on a walk in Gippsland (East of Melbourne) shows the density they can reach even when they are not drinking your sweat. And yes, their persistence was such that walking, running, jumping and other clownish movements I tried did nothing to deter them from sitting on my back. The famous Aussie salute is a continuous wave in front of the face, a desperate attempt to get rid of these insects that tickle and sting in the same time. In the rural areas people used to wear hats with cork hung in the front, tricking the flies into sitting there instead, but use of insect repellent is a lot more efficient nowadays. Can’t think of a “pestier” pest!

My Suburb Day and Night

If I dropped from the sky randomly, like leaves during autumn, and I found myself in this suburb of Melbourne where we live now, I’d first think I was back in my hometown in Romania. If I painted the landscape, it would look like this: cookie cutter, old fashioned, one-level brick houses void of embellishments; old wooden fences leaning under overgrown vegetation; a labyrinth of small residential streets leading eventually to a shopping area; silent sidewalks; and electric poles holding hazardously low electric wires. At a closer look, I would likely notice the differences: long strips of green that crisscross the suburb allowing people to stroll, bike or walk their dogs; round-abouts and traffic islands slowing down the dangerous, rushing drivers; tall eucalyptus trees decorating the streets with white, yellow, orange and red flowers that feed flocks of parrots all year round; and new two-floor houses with garages, pools and big, flashy “Sale” or “Auction” signs you could see from the Moon. A walk through this suburb at night is an entire new landscape, more alive with night creatures than during daylight. Possums travel on the electric wires between lampposts, like fearless circus tightrope walkers. Perched on chimneys, hills hoists, or lampposts are owls and tawny frogmouths. Flying foxes (largest species of bats in the world) fly with such stealth among fruit trees and eucalyptus that you have to scrutinize the night sky to spot one. Garden spiders lay sail-sized webs in daring places between trees and lampposts on the sidewalk; I often wonder if I am the next prey. Huntsman spiders spread their supermodel long legs on fences or roofs ready to ambush the first of the thousands of moths flying into their territory. The photo shows a tawny frogmouth using our hills hoist as hunting post.