Sydney and Germans!
Confused and feeling lost I checked into Sydney central YHA and dumped my stuff, then noticed that not only did the whole place look nice it was clean! In a moment of pure heaven I praised various lords, wept, and claimed a lower bunk! Lets have a quick comparison to explain my joy: I had just left a cheap hostel by the beach, no problem with the beach, however the room floor had collected more dirt that the street, so much so that standing on it meant you had to then un stick your feet, clean them and put on shoes before taking a step. Central has a clean carpeted floor, that actually gets cleaned regularly! My bed at the beach had slats missing and the ones left moved around, plus the mattress was about and inch thin in the middle due to perhaps a bear hibernating on it, which meant I was really just lying on a few bits of wood that kept changing places. Central has real beds! At the beach all the lower bunks in my room were claimed leaving me with a top bunk. Central had a choice! Sleeping success at last!
This is the day I met Nora, after stressing about life and wallets and my beautiful hat I encountered a pretty girl in the lift. We talked for long enough for both of us to establish which country we came from and then I reached my floor. Forgetting about the incident I continued my day and continued stressing. Later on I eventually realised my lack of food wasn’t in fact improving my chances of finding my stuff so I went shopping, walked in a circle, before encountering a pair of sisters I had met the week before who directed me towards food, mentioning the name of something or rather that I wasn’t quite sure about at the time being so hungry and in desperate need of brain food so I walked along in the direction pointed with the information of Coles, downstairs and left stored in my tired head. As I walked I became gradually more confused wondering whether I had already walked past the shop, wondering if Coles was the name of the shop I was searching for or perhaps something I just made up, and wondering how id find it if it was downstairs, after much wondering and wandering I looked up and saw the word Coles in front of my face, success!
I got the loot back and started cooking, looking up who do I see but the same pretty girl from the lift, we chatted away having to duck to see each other under the extra low extractors which I’m sure they built precisely to impede such conversations and when we’d finished cooking sat down to eat together. We continued our chatter as she turned my stressful and horrible day into one of pure joy, making me chuckle like a little boy and wonder about how my day had changed and how little I cared about the stress causes whilst in her company, after dinner we sat down together on the sofa, I whipped out my 2 way headphone splitter and we watched Marley and Me on my laptop (yes I like cute films about Labradors) giggling like little children and getting tearful at the sad parts, I tried to at least not cry and just about managed it. As we went to our sadly separate rooms I asked what she was doing tomorrow and she told me she was spending the day with a friend. Annoyed at knowing that id probably not see her and really wanted to before I headed for the blue mountains on Wednesday I went to sleep.
The next day I woke feeling uneasy remembering my losses and went to the gaff (where I lost everything) resolved to gain them back (failed) I did this early hoping to catch the person who I was told would be in around 9-10, I got there around 9.30 no one. I walked back to the hostel to check out of my room and into another; I hadn’t booked the 2 nights together so my bed was taken when I went to book the second night. I wandered aimlessly, trying to organise my life, and mainly wondering if id get to see Nora again this day, time passed slowly.
Eventually she showed up when I was cooking, what a surprise! This time with another German, called Lisa. We cooked and insulted each others food like very immature people and then stuffed ourselves, they with their inferior pasta that tasted of nothing, salad that tasted of nothing, and sweet corn. Me with my chicken stir fry with rice and soy sauce, yum! I told them Id give cooking lessons when I returned from the Blue Mountains and Lisa and me arranged a time, Nora wouldn’t be there then due to her ‘English school’ which finished at 4. Again Nora and I hung around in the evening, getting quite cuddly and almost falling asleep on the sofa eventually we decided we should get up as I had to leave early and she had homework, we reached my floor and I refused to stop hugging her, so we continued up, at her floor she simply said bye and walked off. I went to bed feeling utterly forlorn and hard done by, ‘why must the YHA make me travel around with all this free accommodation and travel, I’m having a perfectly wonderful time right here!’ I thought as I made my way to bed and fell asleep.
Conclusion: there are lots of Germans. In Sydney.
Tuesday: awoke feeling terrible! For some reason being absurdly tired means you sleep worse… maybe just me. Gradually I rose and we headed off for a day of surf! Excited almost to the point of accidents I journeyed to the beach which apparently was where some great surfer used to train, I’m sure you could say that about every single inch of sand in Australia but still, I was impressed. The beach had dolphins swimming just behind the waves, excitement at this point is almost winning. Suited and barefoot we waded into the freezing almost English water and proceeded to brake the first rule of surfing, ‘looking cool.’ I have surfed before so I got the hang of it pretty quick and stopped looking ridiculous, well partly, but I had tons of fun and that’s what counts in my book. In the evening we went to a club and I learned how to pole
