Melbourne update 2: Time to move on

Seven months living in the same area has its advantages. You are not getting lost if you leave the pub drunk three blocks away from your hostel, you do not need to introduce yourself every day and explain that your real name is Job and you are building up a tiny bit of routine. But it also has disadvantages if the environment and the people are getting familiar: the highlight of the week is the night out where you got eye contact with the barmaid, the man who complains every week about the high rent of the tennis courts and his sore foot comes back every week and the week has no Sunday morning because your brains could not give your legs a reason to step out of bed.

You probably think that they have no internet access in Melbourne or that I have stayed in my room the last few months, judging from the information that I have fired at you with the speed a koala moves. That is not true, so I would like to give you a summary of my time in Melbourne.

At the tennis academy where I work I became, besides a tennis coach, ‘’business manager’’ which includes being the money counter, salesman of water bottles and gingerbread, court cleaner and helper of the children who have to go to the toilet halfway their tennis lesson. These highly responsible and stressful tasks took me 50 hours a week and makes me live at the Tennis Centre. Especially when I am on the tennis court I have a good time trying to give the people their favorite hour of the week. This resulted in barbeques at customer’s houses and a petition from concerned mothers about my idea to hitchhike through the outback. It turned out that coaching tennis is a passion of me, though I do want to quit before I have to hit the balls with a walking frame.

Another passion that occasionally screams for attention is my travel passion. What helps is a pilot '' in between jobs '' and therefore comes to Australia with a bag of money. Besides throwing his money over the bar he was looking for a companion to make costly trips so he did not have to take the heavy moneybag back to Holland. I filled in the vacancy for ‘’wealthy travel companion’’ the best.

The first trip went to Tasmania, an island that is leaded by animals. If a koala is sitting on the road, because he felt asleep while crossing the road the cars are waiting till the koala wakes up, a wallaby who forgot to cook comes to your plate to pick up a burger without ordering it and if the possums are hungry the grass cutters lose their job. As a replacement they filter the seawater, to make sure your lost snorkel is still visible at 15 meters depth.
The second trip was a journey by car to Adelaide with another friend with more hair on his toes than on his head. The trip taught me a few things; do not want to drive through half Australia in three days if you want to make some stops and do not travel with people with a sense of humor that makes peppers flavorless. And Idiscovered that birds see me as one of their kind, since they make no attempt to fly away when I'm coming. I found out that being a 'gold digger' is not my passion because I had lost patience after 5 minutes. And I came to the conclusion that extinguishing a bushfire with seawater is not sufficient to prevent the rise of the sea level. In short, despite sitting in the car half a day it was a worthwhile trip.

To stay in shape in the meantime I cycled with a friend in a few days around the Bay of Melbourne. As Cadel Evans is forcing himself at the last km of the Alpe d'Huez, I had to force myself to conquer the hills after 15 minutes on the bike. Therefore it seemed that everything turned against me; my saddle was not giving a massage to my butt, the cars did not stop to carry me forwards and the team leader had his driving test at the same day. Eventually I did it anyway, though I expected more people cheering for me at the finish. Halfway we had a two-day stop in Sorrento, which is the most popular holiday spot of the Melbournians. If you live in a wealthy neighborhood in Melbourne and you have a summer house, then you probably spend the holidays with your neighbors on the beach in Sorrento. Because during your holiday you do not want to be around strangers and see things that you're not used to.

In between my generous uncle and aunt were so kind to let me stay in their apartment while they were on holiday in the Alps. I showed my appreciation by teaching the dogs how to play beach volleyball and to have the longest cleaning day of my life. I appreciated to have my own room, a fridge without leaking milk bottles, a shower with a working drain and a TV where you can decide what to watch.
Every week Melbourne is organizing an event to keep their residents excited. As a representative of the backpackers I visited a pride whereby transsexuals in their most extravagant outfit were following the horse racing club, the White Night where all museums were open during night and could welcome a lot of visitors because it was free and a nice festival that was so strictly organized that you could not drink beer.
Fun events, but my favorite was the Australian Open. At a meter distance from the tennis court I could see the world's best players. It became painfully clear how big the difference is between Dutch hope Bertens and the world class. On the other courts you could see how Sharapova was doing a formal training with five bodyguards where smiling on court was prohibited, how an unknown 18-year-old boy kept his nerves in control like a senior player after 4.5 hours of tennis like and how a ranked Frenchman was fully focused on entertaining the audience five minutes before his loss.

Other news is that I met a great girl who could last longer than a week with me, a Dutch friend came to visit me and enjoyed her two weeks in Australia while lying in the sand trying to get tanned, my friend alcohol and I are having a quiet period, I became gold member of the Pizza Hut because I order pizza 4 times a week and I still cannot stand on a surfboard.

I have lived for a while now in Melbourne and have seen most things here, so it's time to pick up my nomadic life again. I had time to think about a trip on a horseback, by feet or with a bicycle, but at the end I decided that I want to hitchhike. I have exactly outlined at what time I need to be picked up and where they need to bring me and I do not expect any deviations from the schedule. Small obstacles like running out of fuel in the wilderness, encounter an unfriendly driver and get bitten by a cobra are included in the schedule. Now it's a matter of waiting until the 10th of April at 9:58 until my ride picks me up at the door.