June 17: Day 52: Arriving in Australia

After creating a detour to Fiji, I needed to get back on track with le tour de Mundo and plan for my next stop in Melbourne, Australia . My Aunt Joanne had married a guy named Bernie when I was young.  Joanne and Bernie divorced some time ago, but they have remained close and she sent me information to get in touch with Bernie and my 4 cousins that live in Australia during my travels.  Although I intended to get everything planned well in advance, my schedule prior to Melbourne had so many chances of being changed, I was hesitant to contacting them and then not end up showing up.  To err on the safe side, I waited until two days prior to my arrival and sent an email that went something like, "Hello, Bernie, Jessica, Erin, Jason and Corin- I know it has been about 26 years since I saw many of you, but I am traveling around the world and will be passing through Melbourne in two days.  Sorry for the last minute notice, but if you have any availability; it would be great to see you.  If not, I fully understand and apologize for the lack of notice. 

My memories of Bernie were that he was a carefree, happy guy that was always joking and enjoying himself .  Everyone liked Bernie when I was young and he is always doing something that was the topic of conversations.  Fitting true to my description, Bernie responded almost immediately to my email and said it would be great to see me.  He asked when I was coming in and when I responded with the time of 3PM on the 17th, he said in a relaxed flexible manner “perfect! I have a meeting  in Melbourne til 1:30 or 2PM on that day and will be having dinner with Jason and Corin at 6PM.  Your timing will work out perfect for me to pick you up at  the airport at 3:30PM and then you can come with me to have dinner with Jason and Corin later that night.  If you need a place to stay, you are welcome to stay with me at my house." It was so nice to have such relaxed flexibility agreeing with my attitude of not loving too much planning.  Who needs a schedule when you have an Uncle like Bernie?

The last time Bernie saw me, I was a 12 year-old Florida beach kid with blonde hair and a dark tan .  He had a full grown beard with 70's style hair from what I remembered. We had not talked about how we would recognize each other and I was not sure what he looked like now.  I don’t think Bernie recognized me as I walked out of the airport and I may not have recognized him on my first glance. But, I soon recognized his face and walked right up to him. He had not changed a bit in his character.  He was very interested in people, relationships, purpose in life and helping in any way that he could.   As we talked about things, he took me to by a bank, to downtown Melbourne and showed me Melbourne University.  The people that I met at every stop in Melbourne were so friendly and I loved the architecture in Melbourne.  It was a really interesting town. I later found out that it is continuously named the top place in the world to live!  Prior to coming to Melbourne, the news had shared nothing but gang related news about this city.  One item was how gangs had committed hate crimes on people from India beating them up and telling them to leave .  Another was how a highly suspected Gang Leader was killed and they determined that his family did it. From what I knew, Melbourne was a dangerous city with gangs everywhere, but the new reported could not be further from what I experienced during my time here.  It appeared to be a friendly and safe city.

We went to Brunswick St to meet up with Corin and Jason.  We arrived early and went to a Dining Hall.  I asked the waitress a simple question about Gangs in Melbourne. She answered the question telling me it was very isolated and expanded on it by telling me about the history of Melbourne, the GDP, the amount of India students that travel to Australia for school and how much money it made for Australia.   This is what I love about certain countries.

Arriving to our Italian Restaurant, the waiter was funny.  As we told him we were waiting for two others, he said, “not a problem, I am a waiter.  It is what I do .  Sometime I wait for hours and no one comes in, but whether they come in or not, I wai!.”  As I tried to decide which Italian dish to order, he told, “Get the Gnochi.  If you don’t like it, I will give you all your money back and $5 extra dollars out of my pocket. But, don’t try to lie to me, because I will look you right in the eye and be able to tell if you like it or not.”  I had bumped into several fun people in a short time of being in Melbourne and it was quickly becoming a city that I loved very much.  

Jason and Corin arrived a little late to dinner, but I recognized them instantly.  Corin, with his long hair and great smile, still had the same face that I had remembered 26 years earlier. Such a good person, his intentions for shown by his genuine smile. Jason, with a short, clean haircut was bit more clean cut and polished, although every bit as polite and genuine.   It was impressive to hear about the everyone’s lives and tell stories back and forth.  We all had dinner and shared laughs and stories of what I knew about them .  They were surprised how good of a job my Aunt Joanne did on summarizing what everyone was doing.  She really was pretty on top of things. It was a fun dinner and I was so glad that I met up with them.  Although Bernie had offered to take me back to his house to sleep afterwards, Jason and Corin informed me that Australia was playing in a qualifying soccer match that night and asked if I wanted to go watch the game live down the street at the G? It sounded like a fun idea, but we were late leaving the restaurant and tickets were expensive so we just went to a local bar to watch. 

I was still in my early phase with this town watching details of each person around me and observing how they acted, what they looked like and all their mannerisms.  This is always so interesting to me in a new country.   The girls looked like Oliva Newton John wanna be’s, mostly tall, blonde and fair skinned.  The bloks appeared to have just got back from wrestling alligators-just like us Americans had expected .  Alright, I am just joking.  I say that because I am learning how much media creates our opinions on people and matters.  Each person really needs to visit a place to get their own opinion.  I have been way off on many of the countries that I visited including Melbourne.  It was so much more beautiful than I had imagined. I loved everyone’s friendliness with the blokes always apologetic for bumping someone in the bar or standing in their way of the soccer match.  Australian had an exciting come from behind victory edging out Japan and making the bar cheer with drunken celebration.  Although they were happy, it was a far cry from my experience in Argentina at a local futbol match.