So I spent my Christmas in Adelaide with Nic. The lovely Angelica came back from Kangaroo Island for one day before heading off for good and on that day we went out into the Barossa Valley to sample some wine. Geli did the driving which worked out well seeing as alcohol has no effect on her, and we dragged Nic along too, luckily she didn’t mind being a third wheel. We toured around visiting first a little town and trying some cheese then off to try the wine including Wolf Blass, Seppeltsfield and several others! It was a beautiful day and good to see my gorgeous German again before she disappeared, her plans would take her to Sydney for Christmas and New Years then to New Zealand before home.
For Christmas the Adelaide Central YHA or Jackie to be precise arranged a feast! Nic and I met up and went to hers for lunch, it was free after all and they didn’t know I wasn’t from their hostel. We had meat, cheese and bread followed by fruit and ice cream and goon which is appalling Australian wine in a box. It was a good lunch and we hadn’t much else planned so we gradually drifted back to mine, presuming we had missed the Christmas lunch happening there. We were wrong, and what a nice thing to be wrong about, Jackie ushered us in and told us to grab plates and tuck in, whilst Shon one of the fanatical staff members interrogated us about our tickets, which we didn’t have seeing as Jackie let us in for free. So to all people who say ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch!’ I just had two of them.
We helped ourselves to a lot; we had potatoes, chicken, salads, pasta, bread, good wine and then dessert; cakes and custard and chocolate! Half way through Jackie asked me if I wanted to help, I said “sure” and ended upstairs pouring out the custard and delivering the cakes downstairs, each time having to shoe away greedy guests who couldn’t wait. Then finally we got it all there, arranged it nicely, took a picture and demolished it!
I had gotten into the spirit of the joining in thing so when Jackie said “I want some volunteers, a group 1 and group 2.” I immediately put up my hand to discover it was a trick to find people to clear away glasses and wash up, although after washing up seeing as I had shouted “I’ll be both!” I got to learn from Jackie how to make Irish Coffees. Which meant getting given a bottle of whiskey and lots of whipped cream to play with, so it was fun, and that’s how I had my first coffee, with extra whiskey. Then with a little help from the whiskey the singing began, Jackie insisted that we perform various songs, and so we did. Rudolph was tributed, a Canadian pulled out a song about tying down a kangaroo, an Aussie had a poem no one got and then I got to sing “Im gonna be (500 miles)” solo because no one else could do the accent. Like all days the sun goes down and eventually people get tired and go to bed, the magic of Christmas lingered just long enough to send me to sleep feeling happy and contented and nowhere near as homesick as I had earlier.
The rest of the time went by in a blur of random stuff, mostly more sleeping, plenty of wandering about, and I also went out shopping to spend my Christmas money from home, on shoes, no I haven’t had a large dose of estrogen, I had just reached the point where my shoes were carving holes in my feet with their deformed and deteriorating selves. Also a friend of Nic or rather to be precise Nic’s boyfriend by the name of Conrad was coming to Australia, he arrived white as chalk and soon became pink as Barbie in the sun. He joined us for our random little expeditions including going to the botanic gardens and hunting round the market, which in Adelaide is awesome and well worth doing all food shopping in if you happen to go.
The best day out was to the polish festival, didn’t make much sense to me at the time, I had no idea any poles had made it as far as Australia, however it turns out they had, we even met one (or a half one rather, some of his ancestors were polish), at the hay throwing competition; this involves sticking a pitchfork into a bale of hay and lobbing it as far as you can, amazingly good fun. I took the lead on my first throw but was then outdone by our polish friend who was in turn outdone by Conrad, who was overtaken again by the Polish Guy and then Conrad finished it off by hurling it almost to the fence on the other side, I was only slightly put out by being beaten seeing as Conrad is at least twice my size and therefore it would be just silly if I was stronger, and the prize was beer, 1 for each of us.
So far I had not stayed anywhere longer than a few days so this for me was a very long break, and a very needed one. I discovered something about staying in one place, and that is I met more people, and got to spend more time with them proving that my previous speed of light travelling method was not only draining but also crazy as I missed out on loads. The high from Christmas had me in a good mood, so when a new staff member arrived I spoke to her straight away, Deniz who was so funny I was usually cackling like a madman around her, is “Turkish, German!” as she proudly announces anytime someone forgets the Turkish part. She would do funny things like wear wetsuit boots to her night job when they requested black footwear because she didn’t want to buy new shoes. Then there was Mandy and Iris; two friends who I promptly broke up, one of them liked me, then the other one did, then I failed to avoid the obvious trap. And all through I had Nic, keeping me company in the scorching Christmas heat, take that englanders! My Christmas was sunny and warm!!!
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