Tuesday-Wednesday, 9/9-9/10 - Melbourne

Day 1

It was about a 14 hour flight from LA to Sydney, most of which I managed to sleep through relatively comfortably since I had an empty seat next to me. Over the course of the three flights from Seattle to LA, LA to Sydney, Sydney to Melbourne, I managed to watch an episode of 30 Rock, E! True Hollywood Story on Marishka Hartigay (whom I'd never heard of previously but learned too much about), How I Met Your Mother (guest starring Danicka McKellar!), Monk, and part of The Visitor. I planned on using my time to read up on things to do, which I somewhat did, but months of procrastination caught up to me, and that paired with the distraction of (mostly) crap TV allowed me to plan only a few day's worth of activities.

Upon arrival, I spent a little time at the airport going through customs with a very friendly guard and figuring out how to get around. Since I couldn't go to my Couch Surfer's house til after 5, I had a whole day to kill while lugging around my giant backpack. Upon leaving the Spencer Street station, my first impression of the city was its colorfulness. There were many older buildings juxtaposed with more modern ones, sleekly designed and painted in bold colors. It reminded me a little of London.
I started out walking around the city center for a while (here referred to as the CBD or Central Business District, but more commonly just the "City"), found a cheap $5 lunch deal at an Indian/Malaysian place called Gosh, then walked around to all the landmark buildings - the Royal/Block Arcade shopping areas, historic Swanston St., Chinatown, St. Paul's Cathedral, Scot's Church, and eventually the Old Melbourne Gaol (which I later found out is pronounce more like "jail"). I thought it looked like a cool enough site to stop at where I could stash my backpack somewhere for a while. A bit overpriced at $17-ish, but interesting. They took us on a tour of the newer wing with holding cells that closed in 1994, simulating like we'd just been arrested. The older part from the colonial era, with the tinier cell blocks, where the (apparently) infamous Ned Kelly was hanged, was kind of cool.

On my way out I went to pick up my bag, which they stored in a cell during the tour, and the guy who worked there told me I "sounded" like Julia Stiles. That was a new one.

After all that I still had an hour or two to kill, so I sat in Carlton Gardens down the street and wrote for a while before heading to the nearby Hawthorn area to find my Couch Surfer's place. It being my first CS experience I was obviously a bit nervous about just showing up on a stranger's doorstep, fearing, what if she forgot or something? Or what if no one was home?
I knocked on the door, and the girl I'd contacted, Rebecca, was out, but I was greeted by her roommate Jeremy and a little dog named Stumpy. I talked to Jeremy for a minute and he showed me in to what would be my "room" for the next week, the living room, which was in its own separate area and thus semi-private. He left me to it and returned to his room where he seemed to spend 90% of his time, playing video games or surfing the net or whatever.

I decided to go down the street to the grocery store to get my provisions for the week and was somewhat disappointed at the limited selection and the lack of anything I interesting I couldn't get in America. The price of fruit was also a shock - grapes for $9.99/kg, average of about $1.33 for a banana. And I'd later discover that seemingly you could not get peaches anywhere in this country. So after this I priced out produce carefully. But for the next week my meals basically consisted of the following:

-Breakfast - vanilla yogurt with banana/grapes or apple, or when that ran out, cheese toast
-Lunch - Sandwiches with edam cheese, apple, and Dijon mustard
-Dinner - Microwave noodles, Easy Mac, or microwave Indian curry

When Rebecca and her brother James got home from swing dancing lessons, they were very friendly and welcoming. I bonded with Stumpy on the couch as we talked.. eventually we got to talking about music and they broke out their string instruments (a guitar, a banjo, and a ukelele) so we could play together. Sadly I didn't know the uke as well as I probably should have so I mostly took the guitar. We played some simple songs they had music for, then just started making stuff up, which they did pretty well, but is something I've never been particularly good at. We switched off on instruments and James taught me a few tips on the banjo.
Once James left Rebecca brought out a foam mattress pad and blankets for me to sleep on the living room floor, which was plenty comfortable. When she gave me her house key to come and go as I pleased, I was taken aback by her hospitality. I could manage to grasp the concept of people letting you stay at their place free of charge, but giving them open access to your home wasn't something I expected. Other people I'd meet later claimed similar experiences, with some hosts going so far as to let guests stay while they were out of town, and even allow use of their car. In many ways the whole concept of Couch Surfing and the people I met through it managed to restore a great deal of my faith in humanity.