Art, tea and a fish tank

The beach has various attractions

It’s warm! And there are palm and eucalyptus and gum trees! And the ocean is warm! And the sky is cloudless! Yes, I am quite excited.

 Charlie is out of order for an hour, so I went to the breach with her mum. I can see more and more why family has good connotations for Charlie, her mum is lovely (you have to pronounce the word ‘lovely’ the way the Farley family does).

 After meeting Charlie’s aunt for dumplings (she is also very lovely) we walked a bit around town. It’s hard to say after just one day, but I think I like Melbourne. It’s a big city, OK, but it doesn’t feel as overwhelming as other metropolies – it has broad sunny streets, the people seem quite relaxed, there is a huge variety of small shops which make every street look different. And the public art. Tons of public art, a sculpture of businessmen waiting at a pedestrian crossing, a horse on a pole, a cow on a tree, a kinetic abstraction next to the docks, trees dressed in colorful yarn, and tons and tons of just good looking abstract forms all over the place. Amazing!

Bubble Tea – yum!

 But back to food. After the tasty dumplings Charlie had to offer me some bubble tea. She was talking about it for ages, like she wanted to test me, or maybe to prove the rest of the world that it is possible to like it. And she won! The weird iced green tea with some green fruit syrup and green jelly might have been very confusing to start with – not least because the jellies jumping from the straw to my mouth felt a bit like little worms – but it turned out to be an acquired taste. And I did acquire it. Need to try another flavour next time.

My fish tank 🙂

We tried to see more of the city from the historic circle tram, but Charlie started really falling asleep so I sent her back home and went on sightseeing in the centre. And then a bunch of people sitting on the city square offered me a free fish tank. They looked like they were trying to find someone willing to take it for a while now, even had adds written in chalk on the pavement. So I took it. Not a bad one, too, it even had some little stones and some fish feed in it, and was fairly handy to carry around.

 I was walking around the town finding more and more cool modern buildings (the Australian Centre of Moving Images is amazing, need to go in there one day) and public art, until I found a Chinatown. In the meantime people were eyeing my awesome fish tank with poorly disguised jealousy, so I thought that perhaps I should continue the game and find someone who would take it. To a man observing me while waiting for the lights to change: ‘you good sir look like someone who can appreciate a nice fish tank. Would you like to have this one? For free!’ I tried giving it away several times, but oddly enough, nobody seemed interested. Until Chinatown. Since I was looking for a case for my camera, I was checking out the local shops with phones and cameras, never forgetting to offer the owners the tank. And this one Chinese lady who worked in a tiny shop was delighted by my offer – she seemed really happy, took it and made me happy too, for successfully re-appropriating a fish tank.

 

 

 

The new proud owner of the Fish Tank

 Knackered as I have been, after coming back to the hotel I just had to go for at least a short swim in the ocean. It was great, but gods did the tiredness catch up with me… Now sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep…