Australia Part 3

So, after a relaxing day wandering around Sydney, still experiencing an almost dream-like state, I finally headed back to the hostel about 6 in the evening. Here in northern Japan it starts getting dark about half past four, and by 5 PM it's like night. A little different from Florida, but in Sydney it doesn't get dark until after 8 PM so that was a little hard to get used to. I mean, it would be evening, EVENING, and it still looked like day. I kept thinking, "Oh, the sun is still up so it must be reasonably early," but it was actually 7 at night.
Anyhow, I popped into my room to drop off my camera and bum around, and who knows? Well, the other guy in the room (whose bag was previously mentioned) was there, so we said hello and introduced ourselves. I still find this amusing. His name is Scott and he's British, actually from London. However, he lives in the Middle East, in Oman, where he is teaching the Omanni (sp?) people how to maintain helicopters. Don't hear that everyday. Anyhow, the amusing bit is that he's British, but he lives in Oman whereas I'm American but I live in Japan. So rather than just having two cultures to discuss, we spent the next several days comparing and contrasting four different countries. Pretty fun. Apparently, and there's no joke here, there really are a bunch of camels just wandering around there. They don't actually belong to anyone, they're just wild. However, should one get killed (for example, hit by a car) someone will claim it was their camel and try to get money out of the person who killed it, especially if that person is a foreigner. He told one story where a camel apparently slipped and fell from a cliff, onto a car below. It completely destroyed the car, and of course also died in the process. Someone tried to claim that it had been their camel in order to get money out of the guy whose car had just been totaled, but that obviously didn't go anywhere. The part that I was extra surprised at, was that the guy was IN the car at the time. He was driving it, it wasn't parked, and he apparently walked away without a scratch. Just picture that whole thing from the perspective of the guy in the car behind him. Good stuff.

Okay, so Scott and I became fast friends, partly because we both had this experience of living and working in a country with a significantly different culture (although as far as how different it is, he definitely trumps me), but also because we were traveling alone and wanted someone to hang out with. We headed out to get something to eat and perhaps hit a bar or two. And thus, a pattern emerged. You see, from that day forward, every day in Sydney for me would involve coming back to the hostel from wherever at about 6-7 PM, meeting up with Scott, eating, and then hitting a couple bars. Sounds boring right? Man, it was great.

Sorry, there I go again. So, in Japan, you can usually only get Japanese beer, of which there are really only three: Kirin, Sapporo, and Asahi. There's also Yebisu but that's made by Sapporo. That's about it. I went to a foreign foods store that also had Guinness, Bass, and Budweiser (although why anyone would choose to drink Bud is beyond me) and there's an Irish pub in Sendai that serves Guinness. But seriously, that's about it. And although Japanese beer is decent, it doesn't have much body, and you just don't see anything even slightly dark here. So, I was excited to get some serious beer from a country that takes it seriously, and man does Australia take it seriously. You have probably heard of Foster's because of their delightfully funny commercials. Well, I didn't see Foster's anywhere in Sydney. Not in bars, stores, not even an ad. The two most popular beers in Sydney are Victoria Bitters (VB) and Toohey's New. But most places also carry Stella Artois, which Scott told me is the most popular lager in England. He also warned me that although it isn't a higher percentage than any other beer it has some kind of magical power where it just wipes people out. This, of course, sounded silly to me. And it being my first real night of vacation I decided to have a few. We actually hit several bars, even heading down to The Rocks which was supposed to be where all the nightlife was It wasn't particularly hopping so we managed to go full circle and come back to the sports bar where we had eaten dinner at the beginning, and have another Stella. At some point, I realized I was drunk, and needed to go to sleep. So, I told this to Scott and headed out. Apparently he said he was nearly ready to go himself but I was intent on going to bed. So, I walked back to the hostel which wasn't too far, because it really was a pretty good location, and for the first time I had to use the key for the front door. During the day the door is open so I hadn't needed it before, and therefore I hadn't known that it was ridiculously hard to use even in the best conditions. Put me there with a few pints of Stella in me and I couldn't work it at all. So, I sat down on the sidewalk to wait for Scott. I suppose I could have walked back to the bar to find him, but this just seemed like a better idea. Fortunately he was only 5-10 minutes behind me so it wasn't long before he got there and woke me up...
Ahem...
This was also my first night sleeping on the hostel bed. It was by far the best night of sleep I got the whole time, most likely because I was so tired. Those beds sucked. Still, this was vacation.