Hi everybody,
I hope you had a lovely Christmas time with all your favourite people. We’ve only celebrated Christmas eve as we didn’t have a real Christmas feeling without a Christmas tree and our family the following two days. Anyway, Christmas eve was really beautiful, we cooked yummy food, talked to our family and got, although we’re this far away, many lovely Christmas presents.
It’s unbelievable how time passes by – the year is nearly over, and we’ve experienced so many things. A year ago, we still had to live an exhausting time during our final exams and we still couldn’t believe that six months later we graduated from high school. Now we’re here in Australia with a really good final degree, we worked in Germany and travelled to England, Italy and Chile. We’ve collected so many beautiful memories together and above all, we’ve experienced unforgettable moments as a couple. A year ago, I still couldn’t believe that we were going to Australia, it still seemed to be so far away. Now we’ve bought our first own car, travelled more than 8000 kilometres, explored beautiful landscapes and got to know many interesting and friendly people.
Obviously, it wasn’t always easy, neither the time during our final exams nor when we were working nor now travelling the world. But who’s life is always easy? I’m sure everybody who reads this article had good times and tough times during the last year, everybody has passed through easy times and challenging times, but I think the most important thing is that everyone has made experiences. Experiences, which made them grow and taught them new things, so now everyone can think about the last year as a good one because the good times count more than the bad ones.
Anyway, let’s talk about our time in Melbourne. Since we left Melbourne 1 1/2 weeks have passed and we’ve driven 1500 kilometres. In Melbourne, we stayed in an Airbnb apartment in the heart of Saint Kilda. Instead of starting our time relaxing, we had a problem with our van. A half week before arriving in Melbourne our window at the driver’s side broke. Although the mechanism worked, the plot of the window was twisted so we couldn’t close it anymore. As it was Friday afternoon, nobody was willing to help us but a mechanic from a Toyota workshop. He couldn’t fix the twisted frame but he was able to close our window and steady it with some wood. However, we had to repair it as it was terrible to drive with only one window opened.
Therefore, the first thing we had to do in Melbourne was to search for a mechanic who could fix our window. The first mechanic we asked said it was too hard and too expensive to fix it and furthermore, he had no time. When we asked him if he knew any outer mechanic we could ask, he just replied nobody would care about us one week before Christmas – thanks, man.
The second one also told us he had no time until the new year but we didn’t plan on being in Melbourne for more than one week.
When we came to the third mechanic we were lucky. As it was a bigger brand there was one man who had time to have a look at our van the next day.
So, the next morning we brought our van to the workshop and hoped they would at least have a look at it. Six hours later we got a message we should ring him, and he told us he couldn’t get a new frame, but he could fix the twisted one and we could pick up our car one hour later.
When we came to the garage our window was fixed and now it works without any problem. We couldn’t have been happier. We really thought we wouldn’t get our window fixed in only one week.
From then on, we had plenty of time to explore Melbourne. The first suburb to explore was Saint Kilda. We walked through the suburb and went to the beach, but our first impression wasn’t that good. The next day we walked 1 ½ hours into the centre of Melbourne, although the Victorian architecture and the big parks were really impressive we still didn’t like Melbourne that much. The next two days we took the tram and searched for two good cafés. So, we didn’t only go to Melbourne CBD but also visited North Melbourne and Fitzroy. Especially the café in Fitzroy which is called Industry Beans was really nice. It’s a roastery with a café inside so the coffee was really good. Generally, we liked Fitzroy a lot because there are many cafés, restaurants, bars and shops. That’s the kind of suburb I like the most when you can walk through the streets not knowing where exactly you are because there are so many nice shops.
After the first two impressions of Melbourne were bad the next experiences were so good I started to like the city a lot. Anyway, my expectations were a lot higher, I thought we could find more suburbs like Fitzroy. In the end, I liked Melbourne a lot but it’s still not my favourite city.
The time we had left we spent very chilled as life on 5 square meters can be exhausting sometimes. I think what I miss most while we’re travelling in our van is an oven to bake and to cook all to good dishes like Pizza or baked potatoes.
With new energy, good coffee in our veins and freshly baked raisin bread rolls in our bag, we started our next trip into the direction of the Great Ocean Road.
With these words, I say, see ya’ next year and I wish you all a good start to a new year full of adventures. We’re really looking forward to the new year 2018 and to all the things we’re about to experience like moving to our new second home and starting university. Let’s collect our best experiences of the year 2017 under this post. Just comment your favourite or most impressive moment of the year.
xoxo,
Fiana
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