Day Five
Today I revisited Collingwood in order to have a deliciously brewed coffee from Proud Mary. Boy should she be proud for she is indeed delicious. I had a smooth and rich long black, sipped it up before a beautiful sailing ships' hull of a bowl arrived with a lemongrass and vanilla rice pudding inside. It was lovely to look at, not to mention lovely to eat. I learned much about the lives of the people sitting next to me - which was hilarious (only to me) and also loudly obtrusive.
Collingwood is a hilarious place and I can't quite work out what's it's 'deal'. It's full of quirky and elegant barber shops, grungy and earthy cafés, crazy vintage stores and yet elegant boutiques boasting fine pastel homewares and natural expensive products for your skin. In my two short experiences of this town I smelt (both times) this peculiar scent lingering and wafting around the streets, the only thing it reminded me of was the one which affronts you when you open a bag of Doritos. Alas, it was a bag that had something terribly wrong with it, these Doritos were not ones I wanted to eat. In fact, the smell of Doritos often mingled with what I can only describe as festering seafood. It was all round, a little gross.
Some things, I find comfortingly universal about Australia; the way we greet each other, our vocal volumes and the playing of indigenous instruments at random. Melbourne is certainly no exception, but allow me to use my short yet culturally rich walk up to the Main Street of Collingwood to illustrate these little comforts which really do help you to feel at home in an unknown place. On my walk I was first confronted with a loud yelling noise, as I got closer I discovered the source to be a man yelling loudly. He was also running. This although unexpected is really not so unusual. Australians love to yell. I walked on. Only to be greeted by a warm and friendly lady who wore a fluorescent green singlet and was walking in the oncoming direction to me with a child in hand. She smiled as she said 'hi! How are you today?'. I smiled and said 'hello!... I....' Trailing off on the last bit as I realised I had made the fatal error of not just blurting out 'GOOD'. What a humorous bunch we Australians are, asking questions to each other when we're actually just about to be a step behind the other person who is traveling in an opposite direction. I sometimes wish we instead would finish our own hilarious jokes with some brutal honesty, my alternative scenario is, woman in fluorescent green singlet and with child in hand smiles and says 'HI! How are you today?!' As she passes and is now behind she laughs back to me 'Just kidding, I don't care! Have a good day!' And I will laugh. Because it's true. Because we sometimes don't care about other how people are today and that's ok. It would be weird if you, happy fluorescent singlet wearing lady did care how I was. Now, my final and favourite encounter was that of a man walking down the street in a casual and jolly sort of way. He was carrying a digeridoo. He tooted it periodically every so often. People just clearly felt at home with this sound, it just sunk right into the background static of normality, for not a single person around raised an eyebrow. Ah normality. Collingwood you make me feel as if we are one, but we are many.
Later this day I went into the city. Something I had been eager to do since I arrived in Melbourne. I visited my favourite coffee shop, Patricia, a beautiful, sophisticated, elegant and authentic little space where they literally just do coffee - black, white or filter. Damn they do it so well. I will forever be in awe of you Patricia. You are detailed immaculately, the gold announcing 'Patricia' on your door, your tiled 'standing room only' which is really not a lie and my, your layout, your suave simplicity, and how can one forget your amazingly handsome leather aprons. I would choose the hashtag swoon to describe you, for I feel it covers all the bases. I had a mouthwatering pour over. And I thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart.
I also did a fair bit of walking this day. Around the city, to Federation Square and down Flinders Lane. The fair bit of walking was mainly accumulated by walking to and from my car. I've decided it would be really great (seeing as I have oodles of time on my hands and little concrete agenda) to really embrace my freedom and just not ever pay for parking in Melbs. Admittedly this often results in 25 minute walks to destinations and up to about a 27 minute hunt around my destination for a free park. All in all, a worthwhile thing to do. Save money on parking, spend petrol, exercise those calves for copious distances.
I also found today a little information booth for real tourists in the city. I was real and a tourist so I felt entitled to a map and some human interaction from the famously friendly and helpful, red shirted, city guides. In fact, I knew exactly what I wanted. 'Hi, could I please have one of those urban walkabout brochures!?' I said quite confidently to the old, warmly smiling man in the red shirt behind the counter. He just cupped his hand to his ear. I repeated myself louder. He tried to decipher my crazy language 'urba... Wh.. A walk about? Do you want to walk about?...We have some excellent brochures on..' 'No no no, sorry, I mean it's a thing that you do around the city, it's called urban walkabout' 'oooh well, there is a guided group leaving in about...' 'No no no, sorry, it's just there on the shelf'. Old man shuffles toward shelf... 'Yep, that's it, directly in fron..' Man looks around for several minutes, I just stand pointing and looking directly at it, hoping to goodness he turns around and see me. He very carefully plucked it finally from the shelf and picked up many other little folded things which he shuffled back to endearingly explain to me. I loved this little man, even more so when he got out his little red pen and started to draw on one of the maps he had decided I would want aswell, 'now somewhere you may not have heard about.. A little gem that you'll definitely want to see... Down on Collins Street...' He explained, while he drew carefully exactly where the footprint of the building could be located. 'It's number three, three, three, yes... Is the old commercial bank' he slowly narrated perfectly in time to narrate his live inscription on the map in capitalized old man font. 'It was built in 1880, and you can even go into the foyer, it's simply spectacular, it was built during the gold rush' he said as he finished labeling the little square he allocated on the map. 'Now, over here' he said as he drew another box outline of a building on the other side of the road. 'Over here we have the... 'A. N. Z. Gothic Bank' ' still scribing away.,, 'it's very old and you can't miss it for it was built in the gothic architectural style, it's another 'must see' building, you'll really enjoy it' he assured me. Little did he know that he had me at 'building' when he first mentioned it almost as a secret most people miss. I loved his inside knowledge and I appreciated it immensely, I tried to convey this to him with the most heartfelt 'thank you' I could muster and with 1 wanted urban walkabout map, 3 smaller maps - one personally annotated and one big city map I was on my merry way. The buildings were, indeed as he had said, nothing short of spectacular. My tiny architecture loving self that I thought I maybe squashed out of me earlier this year suddenly pounced back to life after being stirred with the smell of marble and the sight of curving and gold embellished, symmetry.
After staring up at the ceilings enough to make me dizzy and exchange glances with the guard keepers or modern day equivalent of the sacred foyers, I ambled my way back to my car. To travel back home. Only, I didn't yet feel like going home, slash back to budget hotel accommodation, so I instead walked up Lygon Street in search of some food. And my, was there food aplenty! For those of you familiar with Leichhardt in Sydney, I can say it is very similar, except only at least 12 times more intense. Think of a long long street, the footpath completely enclosed by big fabric awnings outdoor seating to your left and to your right, a restaurant, complete with a menu in a font big enough to read from two streets away and a menu sidekick, who's main job appears to be cajoling innocent walkers-by into first shopping to glance at the menu and about one second after that, they 'invite' you to sit down. By 11 meters of walking, I felt grossly harassed and made a game of looking as unapproachable and disinterested as possible, interestingly the cajoling persisted. Much to my immediate disappointment and frustration. Once I found some food, I walked back to the car avoiding the Main Street and instead enjoyed some fine Carlton boastings of terraced architecture. I then proceeded to bundle myself up in a blanket and set off on a well known adventure into the beautiful park and gardens of Carlton. I sat in a choice position to watch the sun set and see the well and carefully laces lights flicker on at the exhibition hall when it started to darken. Now, I had set about eating some dinner, and I was quite alone, no one else in my direct vicinity - perfect I thought... I decided to use this blessed opportunity to eat without a single care for etiquette, which somehow seagulls must really enjoyed, for one keen gull watched me intently for my entire performance. He had beady eyes, which I didn't appreciate in the slightest, if you're going to watch me please do so in a polite fashion at least! I finished my meal and stuffed some iPod into my ears and opened my book.... At my moment of relaxation a small family walked by the pond (yes I always sit in the same spot, it's just so perfect I can't possibly imagine sitting anywhere else!) two grandparents and two grandchildren. The youngest of which was hopping from pond edge stone to stone, she said to whoever was listening while she hopped 'Yes! I saw a real mouse!!' Her grandfather then replied, indulging his precious granddaughter 'really?!' And snuck me a knowing glance as if to say 'we both know there was no such mouse!', 'yes! Really! It was a brown one! And very big!' It was very funny for she didn't seem to detect the slight skepticism in his reply and had simply carried on in padding out her discovery with as much detail as she could recall. They walked on smiling. I dug back into my book, only to be distracted half an hour later by... Is that.. A rat!? Indeed it was a rat and it was exactly as that small lively girl described. I laughed. I once again returned to my book, only to be interrupted once again by another two ratty friends. It felt like they were emerging from the reeds of the pond in force, and to be honest they were quite friendly looking, though they never acknowledged me, their secret force was out in number and they proceeded to singularly pick a time each in succession to its' former to bound across the lawn beside me. The look on their faces was cunning, as if they were executing a sneaky and secret plan... There seemed to be a stream of these guys relocating from their previous pondy location to the little shrubby place behind me. Little did they seem to know that I watched them the whole time and I was delighted. And then I froze. Well, not literally. It was well, dark by this time and this night was particularly chilly. The lights were on but my fingers started to do that thing where they try to perform everyday functions such as turning a book page but fail miserably because they are just too cold. Shame. I was kind of wanting to finish my chapter, even if in dim dim impractical reading light.