Melbourne

 Returning from vietnam, I went back to Melbourne and stayed with my friend Hope and her partner Scott. It was really lovely getting to stay with them. They are such a wonderful couple and have a lot of really cool friends and it was just a really great experience. One night we went to an indigenous music festival, which was really neat. Lots of contemporary indigenous artists were playing different music from some alternative contemporary to opera. It was really cool to hear the variety and the meaning behind it, and hear all of these indigenous women’s stories. Generally, it was just really enjoyable.

I actually like Melbourne more than most any other city I’ve visited, especially that size. I think it might at least partially be the people I was with, but it’s got kind of a small hipster feel being quite a large city of. I think they said 5 million people. it was really easy to walk around the neighborhood where Hope lives and easy to catch trams trains and buses, which is great but also the housing in the apartments felt very individual and not mass produced. They looked fairly up, kept and it really felt like acommunity more than a lot of cities. While I would still find it quite far from nature for my liking, I do think it’s one of the more compelling cities to live in for me. I found it really enjoyable, walkable, great food, and lots of music and art and social events going on all the time. lots of people around the city and it seems like there’s really no need for a car if you don’t want one. In fact, I found driving in the city quite a large pain and I only did it one time because I hated it. I feel like it’s a really enjoyable city to live in, although I’m not sure how enjoyable of a city it would be to visit as a vacation or if you didn’t know somebody. It very much feels like a locals city.

Anyway, it was a really great time one of the days I caught up with a friend of a friend. He and I met initially six years ago when I lived in New Zealand and my friend Claire told me that she had a college friend backpacking in New Zealand at the same time. We contacted each other and it had turned out that we were both in Wellington so we met up for a drink. Before I left for vietnam, I saw him in a 2024 backpackers Facebook group for Australia, and messaged him, and as it turned out. He was going to be there at the same time as me, and so we went and got some food and hung out and chatted with Hope and another friend as well which was really cool. It’s funny how we both ended up in the same place at the same time twice many years apart but it’s a small world.

Most of my time in Melbourne besides chatting with Hope and Scott and eating some good food I was just trying to catch up a bit on rest and work and just feel a little bit more settled before my next big trips. It was good to just kind of take a load off and rest for a few days .