Christmas Eve - Melbourne

The city is abuzz with activity; Federation Square is filled with people wandering around. With everyone in shorts and short sleeve shirts, it loses the Christmas feeling. It does not matter to me since I have lost that Christmas feeling many years ago, but it still strikes me as strange. No one seems to be hurrying along to get their Christmas shopping done either. So many people, so few bags of goodies to be wrapped and put under the tree. I think the difference is that perhaps people here have it in perspective of not letting it get too commercialized.

Melbourne offers a free tourist bus that goes around the city, number 999. We rode the entire circuit as it makes a wide loop around the city hitting popular sights. It beats a hop on and hop off bus. When you want to catch it again, it will stop at every thirty minutes. Although there is no commentary like a tour bus, our driver did announce some highlights as we went along.

At the end of the route, we stopped at the Melbourne Contemporary Art Gallery for a look around. We were attracted to it due to the sheet of water that serves as a fountain for its glass wall entry. Admission is free, but we only went to look at the stained glass exhibited in the rear gallery, but later was seduced into the back yard where lawn art was on display and which was quite diverse. One statue of Rodin was displayed next to a Mexican mosaic. As we were leaving, we noticed what we had missed coming in, statues of emaciated nude people of various ages standing with the watery curtain of glass as a back drop. Our original purpose in going in the museum was to use the restrooms, but the glass caught our eye and then one thing led to another.

As we left this museum, we seemed to find fairy girls roaming the streets with adults. Little girls who were dressed in fairy costumes were swarming the area. We could only assume they came from a recital of some sort. They were so adorable with little wings sprouting from their backs. We assumed they were little girls in costumes, but then again, this country does have some real oddities, so you never know.

Strolling without a goal or purpose, we found ourselves down by the wharf where the largest casino in Australia happens to be. It could very well be the largest in the world, taking up multiple blocks, rising up into the clouds, and having everything under the sun in the lobby from shopping to restaurants to multiplex cinemas.

Along one bridge, there are metal statues spanning the length. These statues are representations of aboriginal symbols. During the day, we were told they move ever so slowly, so you don't even notice unless you have not looked at them for an hour or more. At each end of the bridge is a legend of the meaning of each piece. Just looking at them, one would not have a clue what they represented. The only exception is one of a man and woman who look like their dancing. After you read the summary of what each one represents, there is an expanded appreciation of the aboriginal themes and stories.

On another bridge, the city has huge panels of glass installed. On each panel going in alphabetical order, there is etched the immigration information for a group of people who came to Australia and those that stayed in Melbourne. For example, and these numbers will not be correct, but a typical panel would show:

Afghanistans

20,000 to Australian 12,000 to Melbourne

Cities in Afghanistan where they came from

Reasons for coming:

Social persecution

Religious freedom

Increased changes of better employment

Better education

Languages spoken:

This serves to engage the multiculturalism of the city and embrace it. Everyone we spoke to said that they appreciated the multicultural-multifaceted nature of the city believing it made a richer heritage for everyone.

In the evening, we were torn between two activities both of which were being held in Federation Square. One was the the unwrapping of the Advent calendar again for the final night and the other was something we were not able to get tickets for. Each year, they offer Christmas Carols by Candlelight, a fund raiser for a children's health organization. It was sold out, so we could not see it in person. In Federation Square, they have it televised on the gargantuan television screen on the square. Personally, it was probably a good thing it was sold out. All of the entertainers were Australians we had never heard of before, some hosts of local talk shows. We watched about thirty minutes of the show with Australian singers who just released a new album or just had their latest child, performed some Christmas carols we were either familiar with or not, but what was unusual was that they would come out to perform looking like they were headed to the corner store after popping out of bed on a Saturday morning. A few of them seemed so out of place with their dress for a Christmas special and one woman singer, had a lovely evening gown on with flip-flops. What we watched was interesting, but not worth the price of tickets for us, which were $25.00 a piece I think.

A block away from the square, there is a large Christmas tree made of green metal with metal ornaments and lights. Every half hour, the lights flash and the tree sings a Christmas song. One wall along side the tree is covered with sayings that run into each other making it difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. This is named the Nativity Wall, yet no where in the city did we see a nativity scene set up, not even on church lawns.

By 10:30 at night, the streets were still lively, many families out with their children, making me wonder why they were not home waiting for Santa. They must have him here, since more than one place had a “visit Santa” or “have your picture taken with Santa”.

We went back to our hotel by midnight, I naively thought that the bar would be empty, being Christmas Eve, but not so, it was full. Thankfully, most were in the beer garden at the back of the building, but the music permeates the whole building. The boom, boom, boom, bass sounds is reminiscent of many decades ago. How uncreative to still have a boom, boom, boom beat continuing into the 21^st century.

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Christmas Day

I have been reading the book We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. In spite of the author’s name, it is a woman. The book won the Orange Award for Literature in 2005. We picked up the book in South Africa last year, but I never got around to reading it. Ron had and strongly urged me to read it soon. Well I finished last night before going trying to find the Sandman. However, my mind was in a tidal wave of thoughts about ATM cards, credit cards, worrying about cash if the hotel could not get our card to work, running out of money before our trip is over, which is really quite ironic. For the first time ever, we have enough cash in our accounts to cover this trip in its entirety without having to use credit cards at all. However, with Bank of America putting a stop on my ATM card and our Hungarian bank’s ATM not working, we are having to struggle with the cash on hand. Ron’s card has worked once. As a last resort, we will try his again, but the sadist/masochist duality in me does not want to draw money from that account. After all, we have over 3,000 Euros sitting in a bank in Hungary waiting to be drawn on for this trip, so I really don’t see the reason we should pay Bank of America $5.00 for every withdrawal PLUS their currency conversion fee on top of it. With these boil, boil, toil, and trouble thoughts, sleep was elusive. When it finally arrived, my slumbering nightmares were about school shootings and watching someone prepare for the next one. This is Kevin’s fault or rather Ms. Shriver’s. She is solely responsible for these transmissions into my subconscious, because for certain if they were mine, I would be lining up bankers, not innocent school children.

Knowing that Santa did not find us, there was no real motivation to crawl out of bed when the alarm went off other than knowing Ron rested well and had his heart set on more explorations. He was sweet enough to go the Italy for coffee and pastries while I showered and dragged myself together.

As soon as we reached the lobby, we told the desk we wanted to pay our bill. If we had to arrange for money, we wanted to know if they were going to have issues with our card also. It went through like a charm, averting one cardiac arrest. When I explained to the desk clerk our problem with the restaurant last night, she explained they had a chip reader also, but were trained in the other method also for instances like this. She claims there is no reason why the restaurant should not have been able to run our card. We are having to leave here at 3:30 am to take a taxi to the airport in KL for an Air Asia flight at 7:00 am. If I did not have enough material to produce a trilogy of full length nightmare movies, here is an added bonus. Air Asia has a luggage weight limit of 15 kg. When we left Vienna, my carry on, which did have the bulk of our clothes and six books was weighing in at 42 kg. We have dumped things, have not purchased a thing that has not been consumable, and hopefully they will know how to run a credit card machine to charge us for the excess baggage. There is nothing left to leave behind.

Being conscientious, we went straight to a money changer and converted more Euros and then on to Libra, the restaurant we owed the money to clearing ourselves of debt. It was 11:30 am, but they were not open for the lunch trade. Ringing the bell and pounding on the door did not produce any results either. We knew there was a historic mosque in the area, so we hunted it down and found it on Harmony Road. This road is so aptly named because there is a mosque, a Buddhist temple and a Hindu shrine with two blocks. When we were in Thailand, the Buddhist temples really spoke to my soul, but there is something about a Hindu temple that speaks to my imagination. This one in particular was dedicated to Ganesh, the elephant headed god. When I started to take a picture of a small Ganesh statue, a monk ran up to me waving his hands. I said “No pictures”, but without responding he placed a lei of flowers around Ganesh’s adequate neck and then signaled that now he was ready for his close-up.

Ron being the ever optimist, we went back to try out the other hop-on hop-off bus to see if we could get to the Portuguese neighborhood, though I reminded him that most likely they were all Catholic and nothing would be open. We entered the bus for two Ringgits for an all day ticket. We did the full circuit taking close to two hours of our time, touring neighborhoods reminding me of the time I lost my way in NYC and ended up in Harlem, back in the early 70s. We never did get close to the area of the city Ron wanted to see, so we let it go and returned to our starting point.

Again, we tried Libra to pay our outstanding bill, but still at 3:30 the place was closed tight. The neighboring business was open and when I questioned him, he said they would open at 5:30. He then asked if he could help and when I told him why we were insistent on finding someone, he called the manager for us. We arranged to leave the money with the neighbor. Cynically, I will now have to monitor Ron’s charge card to make sure that charge did not actually go through. We stopped at the Geographer’s Café for a beer where Christmas carols were BLASTING. I really cannot take it seriously hearing “I Am Dreaming of a White Christmas” when Ron and I are the whitest things around. “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and “Jingle Bells” are unnerving also in this environment. Perhaps they don’t play “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” because of moral issues; hmmm…I wonder.

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