• While walking cross below the freeway out of Sydney into Darling Harbor, some vehicle of unbelievable noise drove on the freeway into the city. It was that loud I almost had to cover my ears and my body started shaking. The sound was that deep and strong, I expected Batman in his car/tank from the last 2 movies to jump off the freeway onto the harbour any second. To my disappointment, Batman didn’t show up. Somebody wanted to show off with sound but didn’t have the courage to show himself or jump.

  • It’s normal for big cities to have free artists performing in the streets. in Sydney they have some weird ones:
    • old grandpa has a discman, a car battery and a speaker and just plays music in horrible quality from a cd 0o
    • an Aborigine in hiphop style clothing plays Didgeridoo to some loops from a ghetto blaster, the result is Aboriginal techno 0o
  • Mc Donald’s is different:
    • they have more choice than in Germany, therefor the structure of the menus is not as easily visible
    • they sell iced coffee instead of hot one (makes sense, and I LOVE iced coffe <3 )
    • not sure if they sell beer here, but I doubt it
  • Aussies drive like shit. No wonder they’re not allowed to go faster then 110 km/h at all. And they seem to never wear seatbelts, although there are big signs on the road “extra police patrols to enforce seatbelt usage”.
  • In King’s Cross, Sydney’s red light district, a fire truck came towards us and at the same time we heard party music becoming louder. It took us a while until we realized the truck had been refactured as a party bus: on the back there was party equipment and a group of young women dancing. It’s like a glimpse of the german Karneval, just really poor 😀 the night parade in my little village is a thousand times more than that, but at least they got the idea here.
  • It’s amazing how laid back many Aussies here are, especially the bus drivers. They’re so relaxed and cool, they almost seem stoned to me. On the other side it’s unbelievable how packed and stressed the day for many backpacker is: exploring the area all day, drink goon, watch fireworks in the harbour, party in night club afterwards. When to eat food or shower or get dressed or do make-up, not to mention washing clothes? I’m almost as laid back as the aussies, I don’t get stressed, I stay relaxed and take my time. I’m on holidays 🙂
  • It’s no question that the English/Australian way to drive on the left side is far worse than the central european way to drive on the right side. But that does not explain why the traffic lights for pedestrians here are timed for doom. The average pedestrian traffic lights here work like this:
    • it’s red literally for ages
    • it becomes green for 2-3 seconds
    • it starts flashing, telling you to hurry up because cars will get a green light soon
    • it’s red literally for ages again
  • Pedestrians are unbelievably disadvantaged here. The thing is, that when the cars in the same directions as the pedestrians have a go, the peds don’t. In Germany, the cars who turn either left or right have to give way to the peds that go straight and have a green light as well, apprently Aussies cannot do that. (I already told you they drive like shit!) Although there are huge signs saying “Cars turning left, give ways to pedestrians”. (That’s another point: traffic signs here often contain long sentences. If your English is bad, you’re screwed.) So either the turning and straight cars have a go, or the cars going/turning across have a go, or the peds going straight have a go. The result: peds have to wait several minutes until they have a go that lasts only for a few seconds. And because nobody wants to wait that long, everybody ignores the lights and crosses the street on red lights. Now that makes the whole traffic lights story senseless 😀 but at least it made me learn to look the right way in this left-side-traffic.

Define inefficiency: aussie traffic lights! 😀 😀 😀
To be fair: I can’t judge the whole country yet, but Sydney is a nightmare ^^
At least they make funny noises ;D

So much for now. Will report new observations soon, stay tuned!