Sleepless in Sydney
This is a translation of a German post. View original or Never translate German
07:50 am
After a ten hour flight we have finally arrived in Sydney — and because we didn't get to sleep on the plane, we have to fight on through the day tired as hell. We meet Johannes, who ended up here to learn English, gulp down our lunch like zombies, and try to process our culture shock: Who would've thought there would be so many westerners here, all speaking English, too?
Once evening finally arrives, we hit the beds early and sleep until noon the next day.
Once awake, we get Johannes to show us around the area a bit, which, due to heavy rain, does not work out quite as well as expected — who expects rain in Sydney anyway?
Our plan b is a 19. century style shopping centre which is already in full Christmas decoration and does feel pretty authentic, except for the escalators maybe.
Old meets new
And because we're mentally still in Seoul somehow, we're having dinner at the local Korean place — very close to the original, as far as we can tell, with barbecue grills, K-Pop and all.
Today we explore Sydney on foot with much better weather: We take the train for two stops towards the harbour and just follow the shoreline from there.
Harbour Bridge
We walk by the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House — which looks smaller than in the photos — and many pretty parks and gardens in which we can stop and rest every now and then.
In the botanic gardens
Off the beaten path
All in all, Sydney makes a very western impression — at times we feel like in London, just (mostly) without rain. There are a few cathedrals and colonial-style buildings — with more Mediterranean-looking vegetation than London, that is.
Sydney feels a bit like London in general, with slightly better weather.
Sydney Skyline
The next level
We skilfully identify an Asian travel group as Korean based on a tiny note posted to the window of their bus — and because we are constantly raising the bar for our Asiatenraten skills, we even manage to classify one of the Koreans as someone from Seoul based on accent alone. Not bad, huh?
Spotted in Chinatown
We'll be back with more to tell you when we've actually started to do stuff here — so far, we have just taken some time to arrive here and relax for a bit.
You gotta take some time to do that, too.