Up, Over and Down Under

Month 1 for a Croatian in Melbourne

A month has passed since I landed in Melbourne, sometime around 9pm, trading in an early Croatian summer for a windy, rainy Melbourne winter. I didn’t mind. Whether you get wet from sweat or rain, you’re still wet.

T R A V E L

It takes at least 19 hours to get from Zagreb to Melbourne. And that’s if you have the shortest possible pause between flights. It took me 23 hours — 18 in the air, 5 on the ground, in humid, conspicuously man-made Dubai. 23 hours for about 17000 km — almost half the equator.

My relationship with airplanes has had it’s ups and downs (pun intended), but I think I’ve settled on allowing for the 1/16mil chance of a screaming, semi-conscious death after plummeting 100000 meters to the ground, without resorting to heavy duty pills.

What I am not a fan of is the airplane seat. Still, it seems even the most frustrating of things can provide inspiration for passive-aggressive poetry (or was it humorous? Who can say).

Ode to an airplane seat

Within your sturdy plastic arms I am held, steady, only fleetingly touching the elderly woman next to me. The motor buzzes with the imperfect sound of things made by man. My knees bask in the comfort of restriction — the seat in front beats them with an ignorant interest. Space, it is not what you provide.

Oh airplane seat, I am of luck to have been put upon you. Hours shall pass without me moving, blessed with the ache of immobilization. But you have more for me — the screen, yes, it shows moving pictures on it’s glossy surface. I shall watch so many. And forget about the backpack with the calming pills I cannot reach.

As is the confine of the tin can blazing steadily 30000 feet in the air, so are you a shell — let us let the machine move. We shall rather experience the lack of experience. Travel for the sake of the destination, forget the trip itself. Can me and send me out. But offer me with plastic food, I am hungry because I am not trusted. I am not trusted because I am hungry.

Oh airplane seat, let me not be able to sleep, however much I may wish to. And let the cool air conditioning breeze chill my un-stretched muscles and tendons. I would have them hurt at my destination, so I may converse of this with others. It shall be a topic of interest, held high together with the weather and finance.

Ah, little children in the row next to mine, cry your lovely wails. I shall listen to them through the flimsy headphones that I have been given. You know the ones with the two prongs? The only ones that fit you dear airplane seat. Yes, you are special, in this as in so many other ways.

Even travelling by plane you get to meet people along the way. Like a charming service agent who finds you on Facebook later on (poetics of life > privacy issues). Or an African taxi driver who tells you about the Croatian-Serbian relations in Melbourne.

H O M E S

Oxford Street The first place I settled in was the home of Beth, Ivan and Thomas the genuinely cheeriest dog I’ve ever met — a renovated Collingwood warehouse space, furnished as if from a designer’s wet dream. I remember a time when that would have been the most appealing thing I could ask for from a place to stay. I’ve changed since those times. Seems these days I’d rather just have space, light, warmth and some history inside my four walls. And a mattress, a gigantic mattress.

Collingwood is full of repurposed warehouses and people in their late twenties, early thirties working in the creative and craft industries. Strangely enough its bricks feel a bit sterile hiding a lot the juice on the inside of the large complexes. You would probably have to have much more local savvy to experience the micro-worlds inside them.

But bordering it is Smith St with numerous fresh shops and bistros lining it. It seems to be the current go-to place, taking a bit of the limelight from Brunswick St. You can feel the mix of the nouveau cool and the more established eateries and stores. It actually works. It feels good.

416 Gore St On the other side of Smith St, in Fitzroy, the artists’ mecca, among the numerous galleries, terrace houses and vinyl shops I found my next place. In another Airbnb apartment, in a repurposed chocolate factory, I stayed with Lisa, a really friendly marketing professional, looking for a new job. Lisa has a swing inside her apartment, hanging from a wooden beam. She likes circus. It’s not a bad thing to have inside your place. Better than a plastic floor like I had in Zagreb. She also has one of those ball-like 90s MTV (or was it VIVA) chairs. And a bunch of pink. She likes pink. I’m always suspicious of pink-lovers. But I liked Lisa.

211 Gore St The first time I laid my eyes upon Gore St, on a cold, sunny winter’s day, I said I would live there. And for the time being, I am; sub-letting a very large room in a terrace house — furnished with a bunch of rustic elements and opening to a potentially relaxing street oriented balcony — from Lester, an (ex) skater trying for a new life in Brisbane with his girlfriend. Well good luck Lester, I do hope you take it the whole distance. Would not mind staying in here for a long and lazy time.

P E O P L E

“I met some people along the way, some of them split some of them stayed.” Bouncing Souls

Friendly. That’s what people are. But that’s and outer layer friendliness. I feel as if a Croatian might not be as friendly with his greeting, but once you’ve started to talk with him, you are much more likely to end up with a new friend. Here you can talk and talk, but there are barriers and they are not easily breached. Might be cause I’m a Croatian hick, with a bad accent, not impossible!

What would a place be without women (boring, it would be boring). I have come to think of Australian women as blonde, thin and tall. It seems to me a lot of them strive to look that way. I don’t mind. There is a platinum blonde style that is all the rage. That and pierced noses, full rings. Go figure. But the streets are full of many different women. Asians abound in the CBD, at Unis and in suburbs like Footscray. In Fitzroy, you’ll see the artists, the creatives, the bohemians. And it’s only winter. There will be much more to see in spring.

In the meantime, I did actually meet some people:

The Dight St Crew are Australian. I met these guys at the second place I checked out as a potential houseshare. A bunch of laid back young people doing this and that in creative industries. A fashion mag called Hessian, a line of jewellery, a band called Mutton. They have their hands full most of the time and seem to be an integral part of the Melbourne cultural tapestry. And they can sink a beer quite professionally. My kind of crew.

Klara is Australian. I don’t really know Klara. Met her one evening with the Dight St crew. She’s a friend of theirs. Does lo-fi art around the city. I saw her stuff later on on Facebook. I like it. She thinks of herself as a Bogan — an Australian version of a redneck. She knows the slang and she knows the street. She’s not an asshole about it.

The Illustrating Brits are British. Just before arriving, I got an invite from Chris, an illustrator from Britain that decided to have a bi-weekly drink & draw session in a pub called The Standard in Fitzroy. I went there the first time it was on and we had a jolly-ol’ time drawing stuff with our left hand. An older guy actually bought us beers just because we were doing analog work. He was quite happy to see that. Seems the digital aversion transcends oceans. Or is it nostalgia? In any case, these guys are mates now, but they are British, so the previously mentioned friendship-barrier doesn’t really apply here. The other one is Ainsley. Ainsley is chill. He’s one of those guys you wanna hang out with. And he has mad drawing skills.

Camille is French. She is really French. In a good way. I like the French complaining. I like the French stance. She is also very tall and she has her own record label. They do electronic music and they do limited edition pieces for their editions. The label is called Stellar Kinematics. Camille has a chrome bike and a chrome helmet. Camille has a costume of fairy floss — the cotton candy you can buy at parades and in the circus. Camille doesn’t like the shitty kebab either.

Philline is German. But she studies in Denmark. She is here for a 6-month exchange. Then she’s going to India for an internship. She studies business but you would never think that looking and talking to her. She likes to travel. She has a bohemian style about her. She invited me to the storytelling event of a guy she stayed at a while couch surfing, called Magic Steven. Steven told an intimate story of his trip to Byron Bay in a Fitzroy Gallery setting. He was good. She is a bit in love with him. I might be a bit in love with her. She is cute.

Sara is Australian. She has a pet duck. I met her when I was looking for houses. I was going to move in but her housemate decided to stay. I found that out after hiking over to their place in the pouring rain. She could have told me over Facebook, but Sara doesn’t really cater to such trivial niceties. She is quite ravishingly beautiful, so she doesn’t need to, that’s the way the world is. She is also a very good photographer, that’s why I like her. Even if I don’t know her. Sara is in Tokyo now.

Diemmy is Vietnamese. She has two bachelor’s degrees and is now studying for her first masters. All in Melbourne. But she still has a strong Vietnamese accent. It’s very endearing. She is also quite clever. She was supposed to be in Design with me but changed to Multimedia Design. She maintains that it is not because I am such a “lovely” colleague.

Gretta is from Dublin — she is Irish. She has a strange accent that bounces from bouts of strong Irish to fluffy American. She wants to stay in Australia. That’s why she recently did work in the countryside. It seems it’s a requirement for a long term work visa. I drank a very spicy cocktail with her at Cookie’s, a popular rooftop bar in the CBD. Gretta is very pretty and she likes to read the kind of book I pretend to like to read. She also gets very tanned, very easily. I told her I don’t, she didn’t seem to mind.

Claire is Australian. She drives a BMW. I told her that car is a young mobster’s car in Croatia. She is not a young mobster, but she is criminally good looking (I couldn’t help myself — sorry God of Quality Jokes). She is both from Singapore and from Austria. She understands my retarded sense of humour. Thank God someone from Australia does. We ate at some great eatery in Caufield. I want to find it again. They had a bunch of stuff on the menu I couldn’t understand. That is always a good sign.

My housemates are Australian. Lachlan has the room next to me. He plays the saxophone. He is really good at it. That doesn’t make it any less noisy. He likes to cook a lot. He has a favourite cookbook with Asian fusion recipes. First day I came here I helped him chop wood for an improvised barbecue. He made Chicken au Vin. There was also charred cabbage. I didn’t trust it, but it came out good. Claire is a teacher. She is also a singer. She sings folk. She is the one who cleans the fridge. She sings while cleaning. Claire seems to have her shit together. Penny is new to the house, just like me. She is a French instructor and we have a similar mindset. We went to Camille’s house party together and got semi-drunk. That is a good start. Mark studies law. He collects the money for the household stuff. I never see him.

Bruno is from Trujillo, Peru. He looks like he is. He likes easy music and always sounds like a record of waves designed to relax you. I met him on the trip to Phillip Island.

Veronica is not called Veronica. She is from China and we can’t pronounce her real name. We will try to learn. There is time since she is my year at Monash Art, Design and Architecture. She just opened Facebook. You can’t have Facebook in China. It’s blocked.

U N I

Monash is nestled in Caufield, a suburb not unlike any other outside the central parts of Melbourne. Small brick houses and a few restaurants — some local, some global franchises — seem to provide a life a lot of people find fulfilling enough.

On my first visit, enrolment day, I was introduced to the fact that most students in Australia are actually Asian. And even more so in the Semester 2 intake (Australia has 2 intakes per year). Bear in mind, when I say Asian, I mean Chinese — Chinese make at least two thirds of the masters students on my campus.

I have nothing against the Chinese, especially the young people and students, but it does beg the question of what this sort of situation suggests about the state of higher education in Melbourne and Australia.

I’m quite curious what my day to day educational life will look life. Time will tell.

The Monash student bodies try to play out a similar show to the popular idea of American campus orientation weeks, but the effect is a bit underwhelming. There are no crazy jocks running around, pulling wedgies; no supermodel ice queens parading around with their entourages. There are just a few friendly students talking about their clubs and organisations. You can still find the token Indian guy that looks like he is managing an underground gambling den somewhere underneath the postgraduate associations halls, but that’s about it.

The coming days will have some more stuff to check out, but I’m not that enthusiastic to join in on the festivities. I think I prefer the deliciously pretentious air of Fitzroy. Much more wrong to feel good about.

F O O D

Melbourne is a haven for the foodie. There isn’t a combination of world cuisines that doesn’t have an eatery to serve it. Greek meets American, Thai meets Italian, pockets meet emptiness.

Even with a generous scholarship I decided to limit my initial exploration to a burger tour. Easey’s, Huxtaburger, Meatball & Sons and Babu Burger were my first destinations. Simply put, the burgers are really good. I think it’s hard to go wrong with a burger in Melbourne. Just don’t think the same goes for kebabs. Kebabs are still the domain of Europe.

I also went to a newly opened spot called Sugar Prawn. Jeannine of the Dight Street Crew just started working there so I went with Camille to try some prawns. They were served in a coconut, cooked in its milk. They were delicious and sufficiently un-filling for the bistro to have multiple repetitive orders. Sugar Prawn also has a host that I fell in love with instantenously, later to find out she was seeing someone — seems my luck has followed me to Melbourne. Huuzah.

There are no photos here. I feel very bad taking photos of food. Social networks, you have taken that joy from me!

Ok there is one photo. This shit is amazing.

E V E N T S

I bought a bike. It was a fixie of course, I am, after all, a hipster douche if I am anything. You have to wear a helmet here. Even if they don’t catch you everyone yells that you are an idiot. But you can have a dominatrix party as part of you student organisation events… Some priorities need to be rearranged.

I walked on the wrong side of the road. I did it so many times. Once I almost got beat up because I did it with some Australian Football fans. They are right, it’s dangerous to walk on the wrong side of the road.

I saw a show at the Seventh Gallery and the Gertude St Projection Festival. The festival sounded better than it looked and the show was less conceptual than the description. But Getrude St is beautiful. It was the genesis of the hipsteria that revived Fitzroy. And now it feels so well integrated that the self-irony has created tradition. Strange are the ways of (alternative) culture.

I went to see Alpine at the Forum Theatre. Alpine is okay. But the Forum is beautiful. It looks like a venue you might find in Las Vegas, but built within an actually historically ornamental interior. It has an impossibly deep ultramarine ceiling, high in the sky. It actually looks like the morning sky. I’d just go in to stare at it. I’m not gay (yes, I am keeping with the politically incorrect humour).

I signed up for a black & white film darkroom workshop at the Strange Neighbour Gallery. The city made me want to photograph it. And the people made me want the same. So I went and became nostalgic for the analog photography days at the School of Design. Now I’m waiting for my camera and lens to arrive from Japan. Then it’s time to break out of the proverbial shell and get comfortable with irritating people on the street.

I heard punk at the Tote Hotel. one of a thousand hotels around Melbourne. These “hotels” are pubs. You can’t sleep there. Even in the grungy ones. They are not squats. And they sure as hell aren’t hotels.

I went to Phillip Island. It’s on the Pacific, obviously. It has some surf beaches and some surf bitches. It’s also the home of the “world famous penguin parade”. How it got world famous, I will never know. It’s also the home of the world famous soaking wet penguin parade. You get both for the price of one.

I got bit by a Wombat. That was on the last day of my first month here. Good way to sing off on it, connect with nature by blood. It said “do not feed the animals” but they looked cute. They are not that cute. Even if they are the most similar thing to Ewoks you can find.

Coming up: Month #2 (if I don’t get bit by something more substantial)