Adelaide

After a miserable nights sleep, I somehow managed to draw myself out of bed. The friend I'm staying with got up around two hours before me to go to work, but that didn't get much of a reaction out of me. Slightly reminds me of setting an alarm for 7:40 in the hotel yesterday, getting woken up, turning off the alarm, and then hugging my pillow again till 8:20 ... life continues to remind me that mornings should not be a thing.

The University of South Australia is basically across the road from where I'm staying, but it's really empty. Two points of note though: all the building had a letter assigned to them, and plastered that letter on large signs onto every corner of the building. Other campuses around the world: learn from this! And they have a lot of signs for 'Computer Pools'. On finer inspection, this turned out not be a swimming pool with laptops. This problem should definitely be fixed, but the signs are fine.

Australia is a little weird in terms of students concessions. I can get student concessions in Japan using my Australian student card, but not across states in Australia. And public transportation isn't the cheapest with my local friend spending about $40 per week ...

The train to Adelaide was fairly sweet. First observation from the train platform was realising that there are no overhead conductors or third rails. Meaning Diesel for powering local trains. The next was when the train actually arrived; the platform was long enough for 6 or 8 carriages, but what arrived suddenly needed me to run to the middle of the platform as it was only two carriages long.

Wandering through Adelaide was fairly aimless, and a weird experience. Some parts made me feel like I was walking a few years into the past, some felt unique. But they have both trains and trams (yay!) both of which run at who knows what frequency (sob). When we were making out way back to catch our hourly train, it didn't even occur to me that we also needed to check the tram timetable. Luckily, the tram was also running a couple of minutes late (yay and sob at the same time).

But walking along the main north-south road is actually a seriously loud experience. Ran across a traffic light with three buses lined up to drag race, and together they make your ears drop off. Not quite chopper with missing mufflers level, but not far from it either. And you wonder slightly why there is a tram lined up next to the buses, considering that well ... you have three buses all going in the same direction as the tram.

The complete enclosure of parks is appreciated though, including the parks also within the city. Relaxing in Victoria square (basically dead bang in the centre of the city) was nice. Tomorrow on the other hand will take us to Hahndorf (my friend keeps on pronouncing it as 'Hahndolf', leaving me very confused), which promises german cuisine and beer. We'll see how it delivers ... at least on one of those fronts.

P.S.: My photo team is terrible and will make more pictures tomorrow ... maybe ... hopefully?