Melbourne November 2011 – Philipp's TravelBlog

Another month passed, time to report!

I ended my last monthly post with mentioning cup day – which was the first day in November.

In Melbourne, and only in Melbourne, cup day is a public holiday. So all of us stayed at home, we had heaps of food and bets on the races, with an additional sweep on the most important one, the Melbourne Cup.

I was lucky, my horse won 😀 alltogether I won $80 that day if I remember correctly, very luck 😀 needless to say the other’s weren’t very happy. On top of that, my German friend Samira has had the same luck when she was over the year before, so I got to hear “never again allow a German to bet on the cup” 😉

In the evening I went dancing agai with Priscilla. They also had a cup party, it was great fun! I signed up at the dance studio for 3 month now and have been going twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursday nights. It’s great to be dancing again, although it is quite different from the way I learn it at home. I have made some lovely new friends there and love every evening I spend there.

The probably biggest thing this month was my day trip to Phillip Island. On the way there we stopped at a wildlife park were I got to pet wallabies and kangaroos again. Gosh were they lazy! They wouldn’t move an inch to get the food people were offering them. Either you held it directly below their mouth or they didn’t bother.

Afterwards we went onto the island. I did a cheap helicopter flight to see the island from above. Afterwards we checked out the beach, than a lovely coastal walk. We had pizza for dinner at another beach before we went to see the penguin parade. Yes, parade, although it is naturally occurring. They’re ‘little penguins’, the smallest of all types of penguins. After sunset they gather in the shallow water on the beach until they feel strong enough as a group to cross the beach and withstand their enemies. Once they have crossed the beach they have to waddle up to 5 more kilometers to their nests. And why do they waddle? Because they have no knees!

It was a very cute thing to see. Although I enjoyed the penguins, for me the best thing was to be back at the real ocean (not the Melbourne bay) and at the coast/beach. The weather was perfect and the cheap helicopter flight was great!

Apart from heaps of dancing and Phillip Island I didn’t do that much this month. There was the usual catching up with friends, but the weather wasn’t very good most weekends so I couldn’t do much. For the same reason my helicopter training flight was scheduled, I am in the process of rescheduling that now. At the last Sunday of the month some of my new friends from dancing invited me to go out with them at the hottest Salsa club in town, the Night Cat in Fitzroy. First there were lessons and afterwards dancing to live performed Salsa music. It was an amazing night!

The last thing for the month was me dropping by at the monthly meeting of MLUG, the Melbourne Linux User Group. Interesting IT related stories from some people, then 2 interesting presentations. But the best thing: it was at an German/Austrian restaurant where they had proper beer in proper sized glasses 😀 I really like that place and will go there again.

That’s it for November. I have been in Australia for 6.5 months now. Only 3 weeks until christmas! Then there’s new year, and then only 5 weeks until I go travelling again. All very exciting!

Stay tuned for my stories about aussie christmas in summer 😀 so long, enjoy my pics of November:

From 2011-11 Melbourne 🙂. Posted by Philipp Hübner on 11/12/2011 (67 items)