uptempodemonplumsauce: "It's the best thing in the world isn't it?"

... said a stranger to me about my iPad (and her iPad which she was also on) at the bus station in Melbourne. And then iPads notwithstanding, we actually talked like people without devices which was a beautiful surprise.

Melbourne, Day 3 - (pretend this is four days ago)
Travel is SO important! Yes! I proclaim, and agree, with enthusiasm every time I have this conversation in my life, but especially in the 5 times it's come up in the past 24 hrs. I think the Universe was front loading the travel cheerleading so I wouldn't try to lay down in traffic out of frustration and exhaustion once I returned to Sydney- because I AM THAT exhausted and frustrated.

yeah, thanks for nothing horse

It wasn't even that bad-- but there are certain things that push my buttons, and many of them happened today, not least of which was the loudest child I've ever heard not get to ride the magical child masturbation ride - you know, those plastic poly-something horses you can ride for a minute?- they had at the tiny Avalon Airport (which is different than the regular, larger Melbourne Airport Teeluride-- if you're flying into or out of Melbourne, please figure this out faster than I did). This kid not only made me never want to have children ever, it made me want to talk my friends out of having any more. It was the worst creature ever conceived.

choc flavoured centre w
cruchy biscuit pieces encased
in thick caramel, all covered
in cadbury milk chocolate

Military time mix ups that ate hours of my last day in Melbourne (my fault), flight delays (I'm blaming that hideous loud child because I can), bad food choices (meat pie? Why do I do this to myself? Why??? Ugh.) and more bad food choices (candy bar to kill the memory of the meat pie) all wrapped in the bow of being elbowed at alternate intervals during my flight back to Sydney by a Japanese teenager with bad breath and an Indian woman who made me climb over her (a culture thing? I TRIED to be pleasant but not so much) made a should-have-been-easy travel day into another monster entirely.

God I hate traveling.

But it's SO IMPORTANT.

And here's where I, at long last, have a point. Yesterday, I returned to the hostel and finally got down with the whole hostel-ness of it all, all of 12 hours before I was to check out. It was a moment that saw me and my three dormmates all together in our room, all awake at the same time. With me was Michelle from Night 1 (the middle-aged alarmist with 2 grown children, who may or may not have passed me her gross cold), Anna, the cute Aussie girl who stole my bed 2 nights ago (and never returned it, and it also turns out she is German?? In the dark they all sound the same... ), and Anna-mean (certainly not the way you spell her name, just the way I spell her name) a med student from Holland who had just moved in. We had a discussion you ONLY have in a hostel ONLY because of the opportunity you get living with multi-generational strangers from different countries. I won't bore you with specifics other than to say it was very special and should have taken 30 minutes less than it did except that Michelle is a repeater. But I wouldn't trade a minute of it.

After our room meeting, I treated Anna-mean to nice wine down the street and she treated me, again, to those great conversations you only get when you travel. Different backgrounds, different perspectives, different beliefs and yet we still can share life experiences like love, learning, and wine.

A friend called me brave and adventurous for traveling the way I do, and I shirked it off because I'm too shy to talk to most people, therefore I see myself as neither. However, after all the TRAVEL IS SO IMPORTANT conversations over the last day, I can tell you I'm pretty wrong. The common denominator of those conversations came down to this: a traveler is brave, adventurous, and, more important than those qualities, open-minded. Not just about having new experiences but, even simpler, about getting out of the house.

Every travel conversation I had touched on how little the US values it compared to other countries. I'm lucky enough to have a father who is a dreamer and a traveller and a mother who is boldly open-minded and values squeezing all you can from life, and even with that background I had to be pushed into my first international traveling experience when I was 20 years old. At 20, I was safe and comfortable in my little Texas bubble. I was more interested in not missing out on what my friends were doing than I was in seeing/eating/feeling things I had never seen/eaten/felt before. Travel was work, it was expensive-- and I didn't discover til I was forced to: totally worth every penny and glisten of sweat (and even every screeching strange child-monster). It's only now that I realize that first trip at 20 saved my life- or maybe more correct to say, the trip created my life.

Travel tests you, teaches you, inspires you, enlightens you, and after all that, it makes you value yourself and where you're from. For my part, I'm going to shove my kid out the door the first chance I get (especially if its anything like that horrible loud beast of a kid from the airport.)

Here are some randoms from my last 24 Melbourne hours...

genius Aussie ads

more trust from the Aussies

**More from the "why
Australia is better" file: I love how they give you the gambling and they give you the warning and then trust you to make the best decision for yourself. Another example of "here ya go. If you're not an asshole, you'll be just fine..."

Some choice shots from my last morning in Melbourne at the Royal Botanic Gardens (aka "the Tan")...