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Published: April 24th 2005
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I am still in Sydney, inhaling it in a slow pace and enjoying every moment of it. I get up in the morning without real plans, and they sort of form themselves during the day. Like Friday - I thought of going to Manly beach but I called Chabad in the morning to reserve a seat in the Seder. Well, I should have thought that one has to come and buy the ticket in advance, as they can't take money on Shabbat. (Yes, I did decide to celebrate Passover with Chabad, and don't worry you'll hear the stories).
Chabad are in Bondi beach so I went there. It's the most famous beach of Sydney and it’s really nice. There’s a nice walking track from Bondi back to Coogee, on the coast - it’s called the coastal walkway, and I decided (in memory of NZ) to walk a bit. It’s 2 hours walk, of course it took me more cause I stopped for pictures every 2 minutes. I put on my mini disc and had Patricia and after that Patrick to accompany me (P. Kaas and P. Bruel), and I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I was walking there and thinking that
I could have still been in the office trying to decide if I had the guts to go on my own and instead I am here and it’s so good… Well, to remind me that it was not always just fun, immediately while I was thinking that, my leg got stuck in a small gap beside the path and it hurt quite a bit, but it’s nothing. It didn’t change my mind at all about how lucky I was to do all that.
Friday evening I went to see the musical “The Lion King”. It was truly amazing and I think it is the right time for me to watch a musical about animals, when so many things I do here are related to nature and animals… It was amazing how they had all these costumes and they had the whole zoo on stage. For example the giraffe was an actor walking on sticks (“kabayim” - I don’t know the English word) in his legs and his arms!
Yesterday I moved to a new hostel in Kings Cross area, and then went to see some markets. They are nice but I should visit them again at the end of my
The rugged coast line
On the way from Bondi to Coogee trip. It was pretty frustrating that I couldn’t buy anything. In the evening I took the train to Bondi again, for the seder. In one word: a disaster. What was I thinking to myself? So, yes, it was a reunion of NZ. I met lots of people that I met there (and everybody asked “where is my husband”, especially if they met us in one of the HIT houses… funny), so that was real fun. The best was that I met again the “Mt. Cook triplet” - Roy, Esti and Liron. But other than that, the seder was boring, the food was worse than one can imagine, and the atmosphere was nice at some parts (singing together etc) and too Israeli at other parts (when they started singing “that who doesn’t jump is red”). After the Seder I went with the “triplet” to their hostel and we had one last night together, so at least that was real fun.
Today I got a new roommate - Paula is Italian and is 29, and we enjoyed a lot chatting together. I felt a bit lonely when I left the Israelis, and I was a bit down, but meeting her completely changed
my mood again.
It’s getting long this post… but I still have some stories from today.
The weather was not so perfect like before so it was a ”museum day”. The Australian museum was really boring apart from their huge collection of minerals, some of them really fantastic. They have a big collection of stuffed animals (I wasn’t sure if they were real once or they were really like teddy bears…) - even if it shows Australia’s fauna, it’s still stupid. Then they have a collection of skeletons and they even show a man with his dog (but they admit that the human bones are just replicas). In short, it’s a strange museum. From there I walked to the government house but it was closed, I wanted to take a ferry to Darling area but it was late, so I found myself walking to the Rocks again, because it’s a really beautiful area of Sydney. And then I found myself inside the museum of contemporary art - it’s free so why not have a look?
I never got along quiet well with contemporary art. Sometimes I find it really strange. Also here the first things I saw were strange.
What a place for a cemetery???!!!
Still on the Bondi-Coogee walkway The worst was a mat that you put in front of the entrance to clean the feet, and it even had “welcome” on it - just like all the mats you can buy in Home Centre / Home Depot etc. But then I saw two really interesting exhibitions.
The first showed the work of a Lebanese artist living for many years in England. Some of her work is political and as such not always easy for me, but it was really interesting. I especially loved one piece: you remember the “phone” we made as kids from 2 yoghurt cups and a rope between them? Did it ever really work? So she made a “phone” like this with 2 marble cups. They had words in Arabic written on them and surprisingly I managed to read. It said “east” on one and “west” on the other. I can guess it means to show the bad communication between east and west. I wonder why she wrote it in Arabic only, after all most spectators won’t understand. Another interesting piece was a mirror with the words “You are still here” written on it - and of course you see yourself in it. But I
Sydney bridge from close look
I didn't mention that I also went to the lookout terrace on the foot of the bridge. You climb ~200 steps and there are fine views of the opera, the harbour and the bridge itself can’t really figure out what she meant.
An even better exhibition was of an Australian photographer - Rosemary Laing. She had several sets of photos. One set showed a bride suspended in the air. It’s very serene with beautiful clouds and blue sky, but in the other photos you see that she has a bleeding shotgun wound in her chest. It’s not the first time an artist uses the contrast between the purity of a bride in a white gown and the brutality of the blood and a gunshot, but it’s still impressive and she made a nice work. Makes you think.
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its strange your stay in australia/sydney seems as though you didnt enjoy it! i cant blame you if you didnt enjoy it if you only went to the boring/more interlectual places in sydney then i can understand you making australia out to sound boring.