Leaving Ann Arbor was hard, despite my fatigue with anything American. I was going to miss the nice bikeride and cheerful Jamie.
When I checked in and looked at boarding time, I noticed it was way beyond when the flight was supposed to leave. Oh, yeah, when did you book your flight? Was it longer than 4 weeks ago? Well, American Airlines changed a lot of flights. So yours is now 1.5 hours later. Fantastic. How about my connection?!
Well, it worked out in the end, and although technically it was Am Air’s fault, I still felt I could blame Qantas. After all, they could have told me and I would have had another 1.5 hours in the lab.
From Detroit I flew to Dallas and then the 16 hour flight to Brisbane. It wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated, perhaps due to the little blue pills I had acquired in the US. I did make the mistake of watching two movies in a row featuring best friends and weddings, and had to cry a little in the lavatories thinking about my friend and her wedding that I was flying away from further and further.
Arriving in Australia was strange. I had again lost a day (and my father’s birthday no less), and although the sunrise was beautiful, the larger than life poster of Australia’s 2000 species of spiders was definitely not amusing.
Also the visa thing.
Border control lady: Do you have another passport?
Nina: ??????? No ????????
BCL: Where is your Israeli visa?
Nina: ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
BCL: Your AUSTRALIAN VISA!
Nina: Oh, Australian, I thought you said … nevermind. Ehm. Hmm. Visa. I have a New Zealand visa?
Well, who would have thought, turns out I needed a visa for Aussie-land! But it was easy as pie.
I was in Brisbn, as it is correctly pronounced, and proceeded to the backpackers. Showered and explored a bit on my own. In the evening my friend Peter arrived from his outpost in Lismore and we had dinner and drinks together and I outed my love for rugby.
Saturday we didn’t do much beyond finding shady spots in various parks and having meals and drinks while catching up on things. It was also interesting to compare Aussie and NZ through the eyes of two geographers although it was pretty annoying that Peter had already adapted to the Aussie way of treating NZ as its little brother.
That night we watched the All blacks defeat France in rugby, and although I almost got into a fight the first minute the game started (SHE started!), it was a lot of fun. I explained to Peter that Dan Carter is why I like rugby, and this clarified a lot to him.
Brisbn isn’t very much to look at, but it has nice spots and I had a very good time. The people on the street were nice too. But mostly it was just really nice to have another few days with a good old friend from whom you can’t hide your weird character traits…
