Welcome to Brisbane 26/09/2012

My bus was an hour late last night, leading to an even later check-in. While I was sitting at the in front of the (closed) transit center in Surfers Paradise, I started to get a bit worried re: where do I sleep when this bus just won’t come? When I was almost at the point of getting up to look for a cozy sleeping place on the beach, the bus finally arrived. It’s only an hour from Surfers to Brisbane and the ride wasn’t too bad although the AC was way too cold for my taste. In Brisbane I bought a ticket for the City Train and had to drive out two stops, to Fortitude Valley. Once there, the hostel wasn’t very far and I only had to ask once. That’s the upside of the fact that the affordable hostels have a tendency to be located in the red-light districts: even when it’s really late, there are still lots of people (and lots of bouncers, so you feel quite safe). Since the “normal” reception was already closed, I had to check in at the casino next door. It was close to midnight and there were a lot of wacky people in there. To end the day in style, their machine didn’t like my German credit card, but they were nice about it and just kept my passport as a deposit till the next morning. The hostel is a bit run-down and my 8 bed dorm was messy, two Italian girls were getting high on the balcony and some other people watching a movie with the volume turned up as high as possible. But I was too tired to freak out, even when there was what looked like a cockroach on the wall.

The actual first day in Brisbane was quite nice. It wasn’t too hot (around 20°C) but dry. I woke up early, as I do, and found the bathrooms freshly cleaned. Big plus! When the reception opened, I paid and then went on my first little trip around town. Brisbane looks like a big city, but walking distances are short, so you don’t have to spend money on transportation. After walking through town from North to South, I got on the free City Loop bus. The loop around CBD took about five minutes and you don’t see a whole lot, but at least afterwards I knew where to find what, which is one of the reasons I always do these kinds of things on my first day in a new town. After I bought some fresh food, I went back to the hostel and was tired enough to spend most of the afternoon fast asleep. When I woke up at 5pm, I went for a quick stroll around China-Town, which is right next to the hostel. It’s Brisbane Festival at the moment, so I joined a group of Germans (Hamburg, Braunschweig, 2xStuttgart) and a French guy to see the nightly light show down at the river. The show was short, but super cool with great music. They used water fountains from a ship to project the lasers on, with some of the lasers located on the city’s highest buildings. When we got home later that night, I tried to go online with the free wifi here, but it was too slow to even check my mails, so tomorrow afternoon, I will carry my laptop to yet another State Library and go online there.

A quick word on Germans in Australia: there are ridiculously many of them at the moment. Wherever you go, you’ll find a gazillion people speaking German. It feels like Australia has taken Mallorca’s top spot as new German colony.