Our flight was booked for the reasonable hour of 6.30am. However, for an international flight this meant a check-in before 5am. Which in turn meant, taking a cab at 4.15am. O.O That is too early, folks.

Würging Australia, a pun for our German readers.

We got out of the house well, were at the airport in time and then things started to go slightly wrong. Check-in was impossible because we had no visa for Australia. Yes, everyone who enters gets a three month tourist visa but you need to tell them in advance that you will enter. So we rushed from the check-in to the help desk, got our visas for 30 dollars each and rushed back to the check-in queue. Now we were 30min late though and most of the check-ins seem to be closed so it took another 30min until we were checked in. At least that happened.

We then rushed to fill out our departure card, went through security and ran to our gate because we were so late. I say ran. What you have to see is us both in full motorcycle gear, running through an airport, trying to catch our flight while sweating like pigs who have had neither breakfast nor water this day so far. The plan was to have breakfast at the airport which fell through because of all our rushing around.

We got on the plane and man, it was a shitty flight. It was one of those flights where you have to pay for absolutely everyhing: In-flight entertainment, breakfast, drinks. Since we hadn’t ordered anything, we didn’t get more than the obligatory tea. Okay for me as I slept through most of the flight but Flo was unhappy, too hot in his gear and generally grumpy and hungry when we left the plane. He also had a head-splitting headache which didn’t help at all. It took us an hour to clear customs and biosecurity and get out of the terminal. By this point, we were both fed up with Australia.

Old and new, Federation Square and Flinders station.

Things got better from here on though. We had a bad airport breakfast but at least, it was food. Took the skybus into the city and saw advertisement for Ben&Jerry’s ice cream. Yes, Ben&Jerry’s does exist in Melbourne. Also, Melbourne is a big but quite cool looking city. Stored our at-the-moment-useless motorbike gear at the station to be able to walk around and had a look at Melbourne. Flo and I both liked it almost immediately. Very cool, very hip, very artsy and full of good food. 🙂 We had lunch at a Greek place where I had the best tzaziki I had in years.

Flo still had a headache so we wandered around in seach for a pharmacy and came upon the laneways. These are tiny lanes, pedestrian only, filled with small shops and many, many cafes. Flo had his pills and we hit the National Gallery for a place to sit down. That was part of my plan for Flo to get better but then we wandered around the free permanent exhibition for 2 1/2 hours and it was great! They have a floor full of Aboriginal art, old and contemporary which we visited and had a good talk about.

Melbourne has an astonishingly complete art history since the 1820s.

I walked on one of the art works that was mounted on the floor under a piece of acrylic glass because it said ‘The artist invites you to walk over this work and experience to be in W(forgot the actual place name) country’. I was then told off by a guard that I did it. Luckily, I could show him the sign and then he admitted that he didn’t know the artist had invited everyone to do so. Phew. My heart had stopped for a second.

Flo felt much better after the museum so we had coffee in the laneways before heading towards our accomodation in St Kilda. Transport-wise, Melbourne is full of trams that you can use with a myki card which is why we got two with a weekly pass on it.

Arriving at our lovely AirBnB “dream nest” reconciled us almost completely with Melbourne …