There’s a popular Vietnamese restaurant down the street from us that is always busy. If you think you can walk up on a Tuesday night with no reservations, you’re wrong. The wait is usually not that bad though. 20-30 minutes. So we bring our camera, leave them our name and number, and walk around until they call us.
I have always been a big fan of architecture. Well, my twin sister is an architect so there may be a correlation here. Individual houses are always my favorites. Not only do they always vary in shape, size, colors, vegetation around them, but they also make your mind wonder of the people living in them. They tell a story.
Australia has some very specific architecture that you rarely see anywhere else in the world. A curious mix of Victorian style houses and ultra modern homes. Surprisingly, these two worlds work together in harmony and with the vegetation around them.
I do have a preference for the charming Victorian houses as they really seem to be from another world. A weird mix of colonial architecture and colors that you could expect in Africa two centuries ago, with ironworks you could see in New Orleans… Quite intriguing!
Anthony and I have been going almost every day on walks through nice neighborhoods. Mainly because we do not have a car and it is on our way to the library where we work! Or because Anthony managed to get me out of bed at 6.30am for a morning walk!
Well, I have to say it is really rewarding to wake up that early and get out of the house. You get greeted by hundreds of birds (who seem to be having a morning rave) and the beautiful colors of the sky.
The best is when we make it all the way to the beach. Everything is calm and still, the first lights of sunrise are playing with the waves and the âSpirit of Tasmaniaâ, a passenger boat linking Melbourne to Hobart, Tasmania, slowly approaches the shores.
One of the fundamental reasons we travel is to experience new things. But what are these experiences if we have little or no memory of them at all?
The other day I was reflecting on how none of us should be surprised by how quickly time appears to pass in our human minds by now. 2018 has come and gone (“gee that was quick”). 2019 will as well (“I have all year for this”). And so on.
Everyone agrees that time flies, but we are still extremely surprised by this fact until the day we die.
In the original Cosmos, Carl Sagan shared a bit a wisdom that I would like to share with you. He said, referring to a lifetime, “We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”
We “flutter for a day and think it is forever.”
Brilliant, right?
When people talk about the passing of time in their own life, conceptually they know they won’t live forever (unless they believe in the hereafter). But day by day, year by year, they live as though their own fate is much further away than it really is.
And on the occasion that they’re faced with it – the end of another calendar year, the death of a loved one, another birthday, or even the close of a weekend – it is often filled with anxiety, fear and sadness.
Is it because we are too caught up, fluttering away in the warm sun, without the hurry to do the things we want to do or believe are important? We have the potential to enjoy life in as full and complete a way, precisely the way it is, each and every day. So why not do it already?
Anyway, back to remembering. What does it all mean if when we reach old age we don’t remember 90% of the things we did in our life? All of the meaningful relationships and great experiences we spent a lifetime creating – all for nothing?
These are complicated questions and my opinions on them vary. Perhaps I’ll elaborate more on these topics in future blogs.
My initial intent for writing this post was to feature one of my favorite pictures from our NYE weekend of our friends’ dog, Duke. And how one of the best ways for remembering things and transmitting them to a wider audience and future generations, is to take pictures and write about ’em đ thanks!
Yesterday, Agathe and I decided that it was time to really start preparing March, April and May – the three months we will be actively traveling.
And we made good progress.
March will be dedicated to traveling in Australia. We think it will consist of Tasmania, Darwin and Sydney. Though the crocodiles and rainy season might see Darwin traded for Western Australia – to be decided!
April will be New Zealand. Auckland to Christchurch by camper van. Yeah baby.
And May will be Thailand. Bangkok. 10 day silent meditation retreat in the south. And who knows what else.
Anyway, once we were finished chatting about these months of travel and excitement at the Bridie O’Reillyâs pub on Chapel Street we were walking back to our apartment and decided to pass through the library to see what they had on offer to help us plan what to actually do once we arrived in these different places.
Among the books we found were:
– 1,000 places to visit, Australia
– 100 nature walks, Tasmania
– Landscape photography
– A beginner’s guide to T.S. Eliot (I enjoy reading and learning about such things)
and
– A two inch thick biography of Napoleon (we can guess who chose that one đ
Our momentum is building for these trips! As is our excitement as is our ability to write about travel experiences on this travel blog. By the time we hit the trail in March we will be FULL ON travel mode.
Yet we are still embracing each day as wholly as we can too – before you know it Melbourne will be a place and time of the past. As will these trips. Subject to the same dreamlike quality once as all other things that have come and passed…
Such is life. Enjoy this day!
Christmas is a winter holiday made for the northern hemisphere. When it’s winter up north, it’s summer down under (thanks to Earth’s 23.5 degree tilt).
This year we had an AWESOME summer christmas (the first for me and the THIRD for Agathe – wow lady). Filled with a barbecue in the park made possible by publicly available gas BBQs (don’t see that anywhere else) followed by an xmas house party going late into the night.
When groups of foreigners living away from home come together to celebrate an orphan christmas, particularly when it’s totally out of the traditional context, it reminds you that the holidays – and more broadly life in general – is about being together with those you love and care about, enjoying each other’s presence and life.
This year, that is exactly what we did. One for the books here – thank you everyone!
When we moved to South Yarra, we welcomed the change and new surroundings to explore. Here are some shots on an evening stroll around the area.
Friends make a birthday party in Melbourne the best. Happy 27th Agathe! At our new place in South Yarra đ
It has already been a month since we arrived in Australia! It is crazy how fast this time has gone. Well, our schedule has been quite filled with some adventures, work and a wide array of tasks to get us settled.
The first week was mainly transitioning from the US to Australia and getting settled in our new life. We were hosted by our amazing friends Marion and Josh that we have known for over 6 years now! Marion is French from Lyon and Josh is Australian from Kalgoorlie, a mining town in Western Australia! We all met at the University of Missouri (Mizzou for those who know!) where we were all studying abroad (apart from Anthony of course as he was a local^^). Actually, Marion & Josh have basically the same love story as us (with the same timing) as we all met on campus in the US and the boys then went to Lyon to learn French (successfully! big round of applause) for a year where we all lived together. They moved to Australia when we moved to the US and then back to Europe. All in all, they are amazing friends with whom we have shared so much.
Back to our time here in Australia. We were hosted by Josh and Marion for a week in St. Kilda which is a pretty cool neighborhood of Melbourne. It actually reminded me of Berlin in some instances. Not sure how to best describe it, but it is basically quite hipster, with sometimes some borderline weirdos (Anthony you are going to hate that comment). St.Kilda is also super enjoyable as it is next to the beach, not pretentious, with some cool bars and cafes.
Oh! I forgot to mention: Melbourne was way colder than we expected! Yes, we had indeed been bragging to everyone back in the US that we were going from one summer to the next (when âOh you poor people in the northern hemisphere are just going to boring winter ha haâ) Well too bad, because we showed up in Melbourne in our summer gears… and it was 8 Celsius degrees. Whoâs laughing now!? We both went to buy a coat and some long sleeves (and posted some sunny pictures of the beach lol).
Actually, it was quite a disorienting feeling, having been on the verge of fall and arriving to a new place overnight to see cherry trees blossoming and waking up to very cold mornings.
At 17, when I first went to Australia to a host family, I had had the chance to change seasons and go from snowy winter straight to sunny summer. It is obviously a choking feeling but in a very positive way. Here I guess we were not expecting the opposite experience which one may say is, less pleasant!
Back to our sheep,(french expression – I always LOVE translating expressions straight from French to English as it never works! Anthony loves that too!), we found a shared house for us to spend the next months in Melbourne.
Looking for a place was not really hard, we used marketplace on facebook (that for some reason Anthony canât access) and Gumtree (the equivalent of craigslist or leboncoin). We only had two visits, the first one being disastrous, the second one being where we chose to live. Let me go back to that awful apartment we went to. It was just across the street from where Marion & Josh live so we were like: âGreat we are gonna be neighbors!!!â. Well, the place turned out to be a landfill of about 15 square meters for 350 AUD a week. We stayed, literally, 5 seconds in it, just the time to have a peek and say âthank you but it is not gonna work out for usâ and turn away to leave. I remember Anthony catching up to me, (yes, I had gone down those stairs and out of the building quite rapidly) and jokingly screamingâ Ruuuuunnnâ.
Visiting apartments!
Remember “the most beautiful man you’ll ever meet”?
Well a week after we saw him the first time, we happened to be walking down the same road we saw him on before. This time I had my camera with me and I thought “wouldn’t it be cool if he was there and I asked to take his portrait?”
From a distance I could see that there were three or so men sitting where he was the last time. I thought one of them had to be him. I was a bit nervous walking up to the group because I wasn’t sure really how the conversation would go. “Hey how are you remember you told me that you were the most beautiful man I’d ever meet?” He probably said that to everyone who walked by that day. Oh well a chats a chat and this guy was obviously a veteran of sidewalk smack and I’m not so shy either so here we go.
So as I approached and recognized him sitting in the middle of his two mates, I asked how they were doing. He treated me like a casual old friend had walked up, answered “good good” all while reaching out his left hand for me to grab with my right. We shook hands for a few moments. And then all of the sudden I didn’t have much to say. He asked me my name and forgot to ask him his. One of the other gentlemen was on his feet shuffling slowly to kick a rock off the sidewalk that otherwise may be stepped on by a passerby while the other, a small round man with checkered slacks a vest and flat cap stared off into space. We exchanged some small talk and I mentioned that he told me the other day that he was the most beautiful man I’d ever meet. Now in the same way he had told me that he just responded “Hey I help people man. I help people.”
Now it’s easy to pass off interactions with the atypical as the typical crazy guys talking nonsense. But every interaction we have with anyone is as much or as little as we make it to be, right? I looked at his blue-gray eyes and with nothing else to say asked “can I take your picture?” He said yes. So my novice hands pulled out my big camera, he made a grin, and I took a few shots. I showed him how they turned out. He didn’t much care. I thought I did him justice in that moment. I then said my goodbye and he grinned. He told me I was a good bloke. When I started to walk away he called out again looking me in the eyes and said “I help people.”
However âjust-a-mad-bloke-on-the-side-of-the-streetâ this encounter sounds, (yes I use âmadâ and âblokeâ from time to time now) the funny thing is that he did help me and anyone else who reads this and takes something away from it. There are these odd yet impactful moments that arise spontaneously but require you to be open to your environment to catch ’em. Keep your eyes and ears open and have a chat. You might just find the most beautiful man you’ll ever meet.
On Saturday, Agathe and I went with Marion and Josh to the Yarra Valley. Wine country. After driving about an hour and half from Melbourne you arrive in a semi-mountainous countryside. The road we came in on straddled acres of vineyards sprawling far and away. Spring colors were in full bloom on a day that could have been summer for all we knew. Our first stop was Chandon, a well-known French champagne that has vineyards in various countries around the world too. They claim to use the same traditional methods of making champagne at these destination vineyards as they do in France. After a generous tasting with our French server, imagine that, we spent our day traveling from winery to winery, tasting many Shiraz, blends and even gin, we had a picnic in a regional park with old trees and unfamiliar birds. It was a great of a day as any. I hadnât thought much of Australian wine coming from Europe and the US, but what impressed me in particular was: the passion and flair of some of the smaller winemakers and the high quality of the wine. Which leads me to a much broader question:
Does Melbourne really have it all?
Coming from someone whoâs been here for less than two weeks itâs hard to say. But from what I have seen, Melbourne is successfully incorporating much of whatâs good in Europe and the US while leaving out the bad, like:
These are some of the reasons Melbourne is rocking it right now. It feels like the modern âland of opportunityâ — what America used to be for many though with far more social safety nets. How unjust of them..
Cheers to a good gin,
Anthony P.S. If you make it out to the Yarra Valley, Four Pillars Distillery ought to be on your list. Before the tour, I didnât know how to properly drink gin (spoiler alert: hold it in your sealed mouth for 15-20 seconds before swallowing) nor did I expect to have a gin-guru comedian as our guide. Hats off to him!
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