I'm not a city person. I hate the noise, the fashion, the hustle and bustle, the busy-ness...I hate feeling like a random number, I hate not knowing where I'm going, I hate the tourists, the honking, the endless amounts of people, the buses, the whole impersonable-ness of it all...but I fucking love Sydney. Perhaps it is because it was the first city I arrived in at an international airport by myself, or perhaps it symbolizes the place where I had stepped out of the plane on a warm, balmy, February day and realized that I was FINALLY in Australia, or perhaps it is the place where so many of my stories began but never really ended... but there is something about that city that has captured my heart forever. And yet again, I found myself sobbing the 3 hours back to Christchurch as my plane flew out of Sydney, and I waved goodbye to the Opera house and the Harbor Bridge once again.
Now there are a number of tangible reasons why I love Sydney, and the first and foremost is because it is just a beautifully stunning city. Within a 10 minutes walk from anywhere, you can be on the water and in view of the city's iconic opera house. The streets are clean, and there is a certain sunny-ness that the city has about.And i love that Billabong and Rip Curl are next to the Prada and Gucci shops, and that you will see more people in boardies and thongs (flip flops) walking down the street than you will see wearing anything that resembles high fashion. And it is not uncommon to see people carrying surfboards through the streets, on their way home from work in down town Sydney, because they are headed to the beach for a surf. It is a huge city, but Sydney-ians have the ocean close at heart. And I've been told time and time again that Melbourne is "Australia's City" because it has more "culture", but I don't know how else the Aussie spirit can be defined but by seeing business men carrying a breif case in one arm and a short board on the other.
But I also know that I will never look at Sydney the same way ever again. Because when you are guided with your eyes closed, through the streets of the Sydney Suburbs for a "surprise", and when you open them, you are sitting atop a hill overlooking the entire city and the opera house, lit up at night in all of it's glory, and you can hear the Harbor Bridge overhead moving as the cars go past, and you have to take a seat because the feeling of realizing just how far you have come and what you have accomplished hits you in the gut, and then you begin to cry because you know that once again, you are leaving Sydney tomorrow and it is coincidental that you are spending your last night in Sydney on top of this hill with the same person that you spent your last night in Sydney with 1.5 years ago, someone who has taught you about pride, about accomplishing goals, about working towards the seemingly impossible, about relishing in the unexpected, about taking risks...well, I think it's safe to say I won't look at Sydney the same. So thanks, Chris Holliday, because I see the city, and my life, in a completely different way. And thanks also for everything else.
And it was with a heavy heart that I flew out of Sydney...headed back to Christchurch where I knew I would be own my own once again...feeling like I was pretty much back at square one. In a new place, backpacking alone, no friends to speak of. It was weird. And I spent the night on the Christchurch airport floor (as you do) with a community of other backpackers who also were alone and homeless for the night. And then I arrived in lake Tekapo, the smallest little lake town you can think of, where I met 2 Israeli boys who invited me to come along with them to mount cook. So I went. and it was beautiful. And now, I am in Wanaka, couch surfing with 3 girls who, I have to say, have made my first couch surfing experience pretty freaking awesome. Rock climbing, playing music on the shores of lake Wanaka, Bouldering, wine, Shitty movies...it's been real fun. And now I'm headed to Oamuru tomorrow, to spend a week Wwoofing at a creative arts center, where hopefully I can produce something worthy of bringing home. It's been a long, random, story filled few days...but I suppose that's what this is all about.
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