Janhoo's Blog

Melbourne was in a crappy mood this morning. While it has not rained here for weeks, the weather suddenly turns for the worse as soon as I decide to fly down.

For those who don't know, and I was blatantly ignorant until booking my plane ticket a few days ago, Melbourne is located 1.5 hours south of Sydney. While the latter is by far the biggest city in Australia, Melbourne and Sydney seem to have some sort of competitive relationship going. Melbourne's strong point is supposed to be culture, which probably is my weak point. Even though it rained today, they were not able to drag me into any art museums.

Instead, I visited some of the attractions outlined in Lonely Planet, which I religiously carry around like any other dumb tourist. The above monstrosity is the Federation Square, a public square in downtown Melbourne that opened in 2002. I thought it looked like a temporary display of expensive garbage, but perhaps the Federation Square will become hip in the future.

The far most interesting experience in Melbourne was to visit the Melbourne Gaol (known as The Old Melbourne Gaol). Apparently, gaol is Early English spelling for prison. There; you learned something new. Staying in an Australian prison such as the Melbourne Gaol would have been a horrible experience, and it does not seem like the 19th century jurisdictional system was up to par either.

Apart from that, Melbourne is just another city. Great dining and bars, I am sure, but so has almost every other major city on the planet. However, I was surprised to find a gigantic casino centrally located in the city. From what I hear, Australians gamble the most per capita in the world.

Finally, while it rained like no tomorrow today, few Australians bothered carrying around an umbrella. This provided a good cultural contrast to Japan, where people generally will bring an umbrella if there is the slightest chance that a tiny drop of rain might fall down to the ground somewhere in Japan. Having lived in Japan for too long, I quickly bought an umbrella at Target. Still, I managed to get soaking wet. Being an idiot isn't easy.