Melbourne: Setting the Scene

Scene:

Melbourne, January 6, 2013

Skater park (actually called Lincoln park, but there are gangsta white boys working on their skateboard trix as the trams go by on Swanston Street, so “Skater park”)

Temperature: mild enough to make you forget it’s summer

Windy: always

I have been to Vienna, I’ve been to London. I’ve been to Tokyo and Beijing and Seoul. I’ve seen Bangkok, Siem Reap, Hong Kong, Guatemala City—Chicago, New York, Washington D.C.

And Melbourne—in the summer, in the windy windy summer, with its green parks, its clean trams, classy cafes and second-hand book stores, both cosmopolitan and comfy—Melbourne is the loveliest of them all.

Perhaps I’m just basking in the aura of a new city (I’m prone to) or perhaps, confined to the grey of Busan and the winter of the Midwest, I’ve been coveting the glories and greenery of summertime and this is a long-awaited payoff that couldn’t have gone ill.

Perhaps I’m influenced by how beautiful people are here—stylish, zany, smiley—or by how helpful they are. Australians are westerners at heart, so they don’t attack you with niceties but help asked for here is help given—with a friendly nod and a g’day.

I love that the weather is beyond bipolar. Tri-polar? Quadripolar? Hot enough to melt you one day and jeans weather the next, and all the while wind to blow your skirt above your face. Seriously. It’s a hazard, and on the windy/hot days it feels as though you’re living in a hair dryer (the analogy compliments of Camilla, my newest in a bizarre string of roommates).

I promise to write more soon, blogosphere. I think I’m too much in love with the city right now to do it proper justice. And it’s a lazy kind of love, too—one in which I’d rather bask in its beauty than discover its insecurities—

I’m rambling.

Perhaps perhaps perhaps I’ll have a more coherent thought soon and very soon. In the meantime: pics.