FEEDBACK OF THE IMPRESSIONS OF GIRONA AND MELBOURNE

Group 1; Júlia Aumatell, Clàudia Gaitan, Àfrica Radsma, Aina Serra

Melbourne and Girona are very different cities, with different cultures and different landscapes. The two cities have a ten hours difference time, even so, it is possible to have a conversation all the way thanks to the new technologies. On thursday the 19th at 9.30am in Girona (and 7.30pm in Melbourne), we were able to do a video call to chat and know the truth about the impressions of the cities with our subject mates from the University of Melbourne, Tal and Magnus.

We discovered the reality of Melbourne and found the truth about what we were right with our first impression, and what topics are stereotypes from the information we receive from the news and other sources that can manipulative the image of an entire city.

The first topic we spoke about was the way of transportation in the two cities. In Melbourne, as the northern european countries like Holland, they use the bicycles to move around the city. In Girona, we are more used to walk. Even there is the Girocleta, the streets are not made to ride the bicycle, so it is better to walk around the city. Even so, Melbourne, as all Australia, is a very big continent and cities are far away from each other, just exact what we thought about.

As they explained, Melbourne is a colonial city and there was a big damage of the nature. Although, now, from the perspective of our Melbourne students, there is a nature beauty with plants all around the city. On the contrary of what they were expecting, Girona is more a stone city. It is true that there is the river and some forests, but in the main city the ambience is not that natural as they were thinking.

We continued talking about the cultures. They described Melbourne as a city with a lot of diversity, just as we thought about. The majority of people who lives in Melbourne are from foreign countries. For that reason, the people who lives there are from around the world and their culture is based on that, the diversity of lifestyles. On the past, immigrants were arriving on Melbourne. They were working in manufacturing jobs and they started to build up a union, and so they started to look for each other and created a city with a lot of cultures.

On the contrary, we explained that Girona wasn’t that multicultural. Little by little, people from African countries or chinese people start to come here. But as the Australian students said, it might be the beginning of having such a different cultural city as Melbourne. It is true that in Australia there are places, specially the British part of Australia, who are very conservative, and are not allowed to talk about specific things, and that difference of cultures are not allowed. Melbourne people are open minded, they like to have such a diversity of cultures in one city, a thing that delighted us.

It surprised us that Melbourne people do not celebrate the Australian Day. They tend to manifest against it. It is a common point since the Spanish day it is also not very good seen from many cities around Catalonia or Spain.

With the videos they filmed and sent us, they wanted to do a short film of their city and added a voice on off. Our video was more focused on the journey of a student who goes to the University crossing the city and filming all the emblematic places encountered on the way. They thought of Girona as a mythic city, with a lot of Mediterranean nature. They also came up with the Game of Thrones scene filmed in the old town of Girona. With that exchange of information and footage, helped us to have a more realistic view of the city.

Most of Melbourne students live with their parents till they finished the degree, because every city has a university. We explained them our contrast, here people usually when they start the degree they want to move from the house and the city and share an apartment with other students. Just like that, here we start our independent life very soon.

We also talked about food. Melbourne has no authentic food, but the authenticity of Melbourne is the good food. Considering their multicultural city, they adopted meals from all the world such as korean barbecues, japanese ramen or just greek, turiquish, italian and jewish foods. They were right on their writings, Girona, such as the general Spanish culture, it is known for its wine and tapas, we are very characterised about this.

The journey of Melbourne is very different of our’s. They start the day early on the morning. At 4pm the cafes are already closed and they have dinner at 7pm. There are specific times for the activities. Girona is just the contrary. We tend to go late, locals are open till midnight and lot of them open just at 7pm. People have dinner at 9 or 10 pm, the routine is just different.

Because of the 16.773 kilometers that tear the cities apart, the cultural differences are very big. That does not meant that we could not be right about particular things about the city of Melbourne, and that the students from the RMIT University were not conscious about particular things of Girona. Melbourne’s culture is build with a mix of cultures. Now we think of Melbourne as a young city, open minded on a cultural way, is a city in expansion and with a natural habitat.