I headed straight to see Stina at work. I got lunch, and Stina's kee to the apartment and decided to come back by the time she finished so that we could head for catch - up drinks. It was so great seeing her again and we chatted the hours away before realizing what time it was and decided to head home. Ready for my first shift back at work.
I remember the feeling of leaving fruitshack, returning a couple of months later facing completely different people. I felt the exact same way returning to Albert park deli. The place was the same, the work as was the same but with a completely new selection of staff. I was happy to see myself standing face to face with my American friend Will, as the only one remaining from the staff members I know even if he's only works at the deli once a fortnight these days. But to work without Eric by my side as the head dinner chef was beyond sad.
Bush walking
I didn't got as much shift as I hoped my first week back, and got 3 days off in a row. To keep myself busy I headed straight for the climbing wall. One of the things I've missed most whilst being away. Despite my 2 months lack of practice, I never expected to be at the same level as when I left and was prepared for disappointment.
As I had 3 days off, and couldn't possible climb 3 days in a row as it would kill both my arms and wallet I decided to go for a full day bush walk. I didn't have many options since I don't drive, and headed for the dandenong range. Prepeard with 2 bottles of water, lunch and a poorly written map that I downloaded to my iPad, I settled off on the train to upper ferntree gully. I struggled to find the right platform, and by the time I reached the tiny village after over an hour on the train, the time was already pass noon. I went in to the tourist information to get the right directions. She gave me a printed map over the area, and recommended a 4-5 hour route that would take me up the famous '1000' steps, through the jungle, across a big road, and along a number of different walking tracks before having me ending up in Belgrave.
Sounded good enought for me, and off I went. I shared the experience of the thousand steps with dozens of other people I wouldn't say it's too much to brag about. A thousand steps isn't even that much. Specially not due to the fact that back in the phillipines and 'the nut huts' Alice, Louise and I walked close to 300 not being able steps just getting from bed to breakfast. I got to the top, and instead of following the crowd straight back down I followed the pathway further uphill and got myself to 'one three hill picknick ground' where I stay'd for lunch and water refill. It was a beautiful day. The weather was in great condition, the nature was quiet and gorgeus and I couldn't have been more happy with myself. I followed the walking track that at some point would take me to a main road. With the nature as my only company I was crossing the jungle and finally reached the road. I was suppose to follow it for a couple of hundred meters before crossing onto another track leading back to Belgrave. As I stood facing my poorly written map, with the road in front of me I couldn't quite figure out whether to head left or right. It never accord to me that I was facing the wrong road. I walked left, and followed every turn of the road even if it never seemed to turn the way it supposed to, according to the map. I took my time finding out how far off I was and couldn't other than walk back, laughing at my own stupidity. As I walked the same track deeper into the forest the parhway suddenly separated into two and I realized that I had no idea which one I came from. I lay all my faith into my poorly printed map who told me to head left, which finally brought me back to the right track. According to the map, following this track would have me end up on a bigger road. It took me to a dead end. I had to tell myself that this map wasn't up to date. Crossing a few backyards and jumping a couple of fences got me to the one three Hill road in the end, after a 2 hour detour! Following it I managed to find the right track back into the forest that definitely would take me to Belgrave. I couldn't be more happy about myself. The last 2 hours went sucessfully unenventful as i crossed different tracks through the forest and made My way back to belgrave, tired as. I'm proud to say that, given that I spend the day by myself kept getting lost, I still managed without losing that smile of mine even once. I had the most enjoyable day!
Christmas
If there's one day of the year where i wish that i was back home, it would be for christmas. I miss the fact of being around my family, and all the weeks leading up to the holiday. The preperation, excitement and the dark but cosy atmosphere and simply just the feeling of Christmas. What I want is not 40 degrees and boiling sun. It's family. And not being able to be with my family around the holiday took away the satisfaction of celebrating Christmas, and I didn't mind spending all day working.
Louise arrived at the 23rd, and as I was working Stina was the one welcoming her with open arms. We woke up early on chrismas eve. Louise and I headed for breakfast at Stina's before i started work letting Louise hitting the city of Melbourne. I got a bottle of wine for chrismaspresent from my work that I happily shared with my swedes back in the flat before heading for christmas dinner. After a lovely meal in lovely company we headed for a couple of drinks and then home to watch 'Karl bertils julafton' eating saffron buns. A quiet, but enjoyable Christmas Eve!
During Christmas and boxing day I voluntarily worked at Stina's place as they where ridiculously understaffed given that their regular staff wants to spend Christmas with their family. Being the only cafe in the area open on Christmas it got super busy. And no one except from Stina had been working there for more than I couple of weeks, with me having my first day on their busiest day of the year. That's when I realized how much I have learned and how much experience I've gained during my time at Albert park deli. When the day was finally over, after having us all working for 10 hours without a break the owner bought us all dinner and we enjoyed a few drinks together. I headed to the hostel afterwards to meet up with Ashleigh and Louise and their christmas celebration, but my exhaustion from work brought me to bed. Ready for the same chaos the next morning.
Abbotsford adventure!
A couple of days after Christmas, Louise and I headed out to meet up with Courtney. Our amarican friend from Boracay that Alice and I met again in Bankok, and that was now on a visit to Melbourne. We went for a few drinks, and ended up dancing in the clubs hours later. I struggled through work the next day but as I finished early I decided to show Louise around the suburb outside Melbourne. Given that we've had beautiful sunny weather everyday for the past weeks I was well excited to finally be able to spend the afternoon int he sun - nor working. Due to my luck, the rain decided to hit us only this day. Louise met me as I finished work, and we headed to Brunswick and sydney road -northern Melbourne. , They have a lot of cosy little cafe's, the city's biggest op shop and K-mart that kept us entertained for a couple of hours. I knew it wasn't too far to walk from Sydneyroad to flitzroy and Brunswick street which is one of my favourite districts. That would also be on the way to abbotsford where we agreed to meet up with Vicky later, my long lost Sydney friend who's in Melbourne only for the night. My first travel partner in Thailand (except from Beccy) who I haven't seen since my first visit in Sydney as I arrived to Australia 15 months ago. As the rain suddenly disappeared replaced by a hearing sun we didn't mind walking. We put all our trust into my sense of direction, which surprisingly enought brought us the right way. This didn't last all the way, as you probably figured, and we somehow lost the track of the main road. Crossing a beautiful park I've never seen before we stopped a lovely lady to ask for direction. She kindly described how far off we've got, with the directions to abbotsford. She finished with telling us that we where standing right by her car, and that she was happy to give us a lift, as she was going that way anyway. With no intentions of hithhiking we happily jumped into the car. We got dropped off at Johnson's street just outside abbotsford where I convincingly told myself that I knew the way. We're meeting Vicky at 'lentil as anything', a volunteerly driven resturant with the slogan 'pay as you like' located in a convent in abbotsford. Stina and I went there last year just as we arrived to Melbourne, why I insisted in my confident of finding the way. Allthought, My sense of direction seemed to have disappointed me once again and we had to call Vicky for survival as we were just around the corner. With the best vegan food one could ever imagine 'lentil as anything' filled us up as we were chatting away over everything that had happened during the last year and a half. If was indescribably nice to see her again even if for such short time. And I promised to come visit Sydney soon enought.
New Year's
You know how you sometimes have those days where simply everything seems to go wrong from the point where you wake up? New Years was one of those days for me. I headed for a shower in the morning and shaved my legs in a hurry. A slint with my cheap razor cut half my leg open. With a silent scream I got out of the shover just to face pool of water covering the bathroom floor up to my ankles. Before having time to clean it up, Cam woke up facing our terrific bathroom situation. Not understanding how I could not have noticed the pipes being blocked he tooked care of the situation without further arguments. All of this ended up having me being late for work, not in my best stage due to Cam's highly defended mood. Things didn't get better whilst at work. Given that I was working my 15th shift in a row brought my to a state of exhaustion not even 12 hour shift out at the farm would. The ability to concentrate seemed to have disappeared, replaced with distraction. One thing after another ended up having my crying over a dropped plate by the end of the day.
As I got home I dropped dead on top of my bed just to wake up by Louise's calls half and hour later. I forced myself out bed and across the road to the rooftop at their hostel, where I met Louise just as a second beer hit my empty stomach. By the time we finished our third one and started feel both tipsy and hungry, we met up with Stina for dinner. We have a Mexican favourite where we always seems to head on special occasions. Their food is delicious but way to expensive to make a regular habit.
Before heading to the beach, counting in the new year, we dropped by a house party of one of Stina's workmates. As we got down to the beach just before midnight, Louise and I lost them all int the busy drunken surroundings. We overviewed the magnificent fireworks beyond the city as we downed a bottle of champagne at the beach. After enjoying a few phonecalls to our long lost well missed family we fancied another drink and decided to meet up with Courtney at one of the clubs around st Kilda. That's when we realized Louise's passport no longer existed in our bag. Someone must of have stolen it while at the crowded beach hoping for more valuable things, or we must of have simple dropped it. Either way, there was no way we was getting inte clubs without identification. Instead we headed back to the hostelparty meeting up with Ashleigh. Louise headed to bed and I passed out at the couch not too long afterwards.
Line's visit
One of my best friends since 8 years came to visit Melbourne not too long after Louise had left. She met me at my work as I failed my attempt getting the day off. It was an indescribable feeling seeing her walking in with her massive backpack after one and a half year apart. We spend afternoon chatting away in my couch catching up on eachothers lives. I had called the next day off and as it was about to be a lovely sunny day we decided to simply spend it at the beach. It's funny how I've been living in at Kilda, Melbourne's beachtown, for almost 8 months with our even once being at the beach! Being a bit overexcited and naively thinking that there's no need of sunscreen, I ended up whith the worst sunburn in my life. It took weeks for it to peel off. A mistake I will never do again. Except from that we had a perfect - well deserved day together. I unfortunately had to work during the weekend but tried to spend as much time with my best friend as possible. As I had Monday off I brought her rock climbing. So much fun, especially doing if with a good friend. I showed her to Chinatown, shanghai dumplings and one of my favourite bars in town. After almost a week in town she left Wednesday night. We went into the city together and spent most of the day in my favourite city bar, where Cara came to join us - one of my best aussiefriends who recently moved down from Brisbane. After a few jugs and sushi rolls we followed Line to the bus stop where I sadly enought have to wave her off after an amazing week together.
Great ocean road
Stina and I both took our last weekend off work to be able to finally do a great ocean road trip before leaving the country. Cara and her boyfriend Djarra came to pick us up Saturday morning and the four of us headed southwest for a 2 day roadtrip down along the beautiful coastline.
We had the weather on our side but not the traffic. The ridiculous almont of cars in front of us delayed our travel plans a bit. Passing Geelong, Torquay and Anglesea we stopped in Lorne for lunch at the beach where they had a market going on. We continued to Apollo bay where we stayed for the beach and a swim in the cold water. I was more careful with the sun this time! Before reaching our final destination for the day, Port Cambell, we stopped for the twelve apostles lookout. It was absolutely beautiful. Despite that it's one of Australia's most famous tourist attraction we obviously shared the experience with a bunch of tourists. Getting into Port Cambell, a super cozy tiny beachtown we checked into a hostel and headed out the experience wathever this town had to offer. It wasn't much, but just getting away from the city life for a change was a great feeling. Dinner, beer, and a couple of more beers did us well before heading to bed.
The weather didn't treat us as well the next day as it was raining quite heavily. After breakfast we drove to the national park to hopefully be able to get sights of wild koalas. We hadn't driven far into the forest before spotting them climbing on top of the trees. Along the road we spotted more of them hanging on to te trees as we went deeper into the forest. We did another stop in Anglesea on our way back, another supertiny beautiful beachtown, before setting wheels for Melbourne!
Australia Day!
For the second time, I had to say goodbye to work, friends and the beauty of Melbourne and St Kilda. This time for the last time, as I'm not planning on coming back to live in Melbourne. As we got back from great ocean road that evening I headed out to spend my last night with the girls from work. Lately it been a team of 6 young girls working together having the best time. We met at a bar around the corner from the Deli where we ended up having a hysterical laughing session lasting for hours.
On Australia Day the next morning, our last day in the country, Stina and I woke up super early to meet Corey for a coffee. He had just been working a nightshift in the area and wanted to see us before leaving. It was raining heavily as we forced eachother our of bed and down the slippery streets of St Kilda. It's funny thinking that he was our first friend in Melbourne, as we got here unemployed and broke almost exactly one year prior.
When Stina and I had spent the rest of the morning cleaning our room, done all our wash and packed our bags I went back to 'Albert Park Deli' for the last time. Having a last breakfast, coffee and beer with the girls who wasn't working and saying goodbye to all my lovely colleagues after 8 months of working there. Emotionally I settled for the tram into the city to meet, and say goodbye to Chloe. We met at the bar at Brunswick street, where her roommate joined in as well as Cara with her boyfriend. The weather was great, the company was better and brought us all to a tearful goodbye as I eventually had to leave to meet Stina for dinner. Spontaneously I popped by the Deli as they closed for one last drink and chat with my boss. Getting a lift back to st Kilda I met Stina at our Mexican favorite resturant where we had invited some people for dinner, including our roommates Cam & Chelsea and a few friends from Stina's work. After a super nice farewell meal we had to rush home before heading for the airport, leaving Australia and our Melbourne life behind us. With our backpacks on and full of excitement we walked towards new adventures. Happy Australia Day!
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