the reality strikes

Here I am, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia where the aussie experience begins! Arrived here on Tuesday after an exhausting 40 hour trip which started when we arrived at Stansted airport in London, well actually a 90min busride away from London Victoria station where we nearby stayed for a few days. London was great, I enjoyed our stay there a lot, I like the city, the feeling of being there. I like that we went there together. :)

At the moment i finished my breakfast in a nice appartment where i am staying for 3 days, just after I had a nice morning swim in the pool which is just outside in the garden. Soon I'll be off to the city, have to get myself a local phonenumber and a bank account. Yesterday i had a short walk in city center with Katrin, the friend who gladly offered me a place to stay for a few days just to get things sorted out.

It looks nice here, the people are very friendly and helpful, you get occasional "hellos" just when walking by of somebody. On our way back we paid a quick visit to a local shop just to get some fresh salad for a light lunch. We didn’t take much but the total amount of approximately 40 dollars just showed how much everything costs here. I also bought myself a go-card which is needed for public transport. The card itself is 5 dollars, but then you need to load money onto it for travelling. Of course you can buy a single ticket, but it costs quite a bit more. It is something similar to what I saw in Amsterdam – you load some money onto the card and pay with it by touching a certain screen when entering any means of public transport. However that isn’t cheap either. Later yesterday I went to see the place I will be moving to on Friday. It’s located in a suburb – Underwood and to get there you either take a train or at least 2 buses. I went with the train and came back with the buses. The whole trip costed me roughly 12 dollars.

What makes moving around even harder is the public transport system itself. It's very controversial - on one hand you see special road systems only for buses, underground terminals, fastways above regular traffic, easy go-card system where yu only pay for the travel yu actually make. But on the other hand the buses usually go twice or trice every hour and they finish their service sometimes even at about 8 pm. Which is EARLY! As I could not get a bus back from the city after a 1 hour long jorney from Underwood, I already thought how on earth people go out here on weekends. Does everybody walk back?! Luckily I remembered that there is also a riverboat that could take me across the river, and as it turned out - the riverboat departs from one river bank to another in every 10 minutes and 24 hours a day. Odd!

I am off to downtown now, hopefully going to get things sorted with the bank account and phone number.

Cheers from sunny, 29 degrees warm Brisbane :)