Happy New Year

  Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Wednesday, December 31, 2008

I touched down in Sydney about 7 AM on New Year's Eve.  Coming in, I had a pretty good view out the window of the city and got a look at the skyline and harbor, though I didn't catch the Opera House.  My initial impression was that the city looked really flat, though that impression would quickly change later in the day.

Sydney from the air

After getting my luggage and figuring out just where the heck I was staying (which was at the home of Stephanie, the 20 year old Brown University student who had a listing on Craig's List's place), I hopped a cab to her apartment.  Stephanie had told me she worked nights from 10 PM to 6 AM each night and that she was taking a semester off just to work and travel.  Seemed innocent enough to me- my friend Mike Salzman says it is pretty routine at Dartmouth to take a quarter off to work so I didn't think much of it since Brown is a fellow ivy league school.  After buzzing up to Steph's place, she let me in, and we chatted for a while.  I asked her what I should do for New Year's Eve, and she said to go to the harbor, which is pretty much what everyone else had told me, but that she couldn't go since she was working.  After mentioning that it was too bad that she had to work on New Year's, she said she had volunteered since she would make a lot more money.  When I asked what she did, she responded that she was a stripper in the red light district.  "Oh" was basically my reaction.  Since she had just gotten back from a late night on the stripper pole, she went to bed, and that was basically the bulk of my interaction with her.  Either way, it's funny to say that I crashed at a stripper's apartment on New Year's Eve.  I decided to take a little nap, and then explore the city on foot so that I could get a feel for where I wanted to live.  Tempting as it was to live with Stephanie since she has a spare room for rent, the neighborhood where she lived, which is right next to my school, was pretty lame-o. 
I took off to explore the city around noon, and I wouldn't return until after the fireworks display later that evening.  Between that time, I hoofed the city on foot (approximately 15 miles or so according to my calculations).  I first walked up to UNSW, and saw where I would go to school.  It's a pretty nice campus, but in my opinion is not as nice as most major U.S. colleges I have been to.  My building where class will be looks to make the Jacobs Center at Kellogg (which, if you've never been, is considered a dump by most top business school standards) look like the Taj Mahal.  I didn't go inside though, so that judgment might be a bit premature.  I then walked over to Coogee Beach, a legendary expat and backpacker enclave that seemed like it could be a pretty cool place to live and is located near UNSW.  As for my initial impression of a flat Sydney, this was disproven right away. The area between UNSW and Coogee is extremely hilly, and all along the coast are huge cliffs, of which I took approximately 800 pictures.  Coogee Beach is beautiful, as is the entire coastline, which I walked for several hours to the north, all the way to Bondi Beach, one of, if not the, world's most famous beach.

Coogee Beach

One thing you read a lot about when reading travel guides for Australia is that the ozone layer is much thinner here and that you always need to wear sunscreen.  Perhaps I should have heeded that advice. Australia has by far the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world, and if I keep it up, at this rate I will have skin cancer by the time I leave.  My pasty white skin quickly became a shade of lobster red over the course of the day, but I didn't really realize it until I got back later that evening. 
Also, I've noticed I need to buy a pair of sunglasses for two reasons.  One, the sun is way brighter here than I am accustomed to.  It noticeably hurt my eyes when I walked near the beach, which is something I've never really experienced in the U.S.  Secondly, there appears to be some sort of contest amongst the people here to see who can have the craziest/trendiest/largest sunglasses.  They make Fritz's from the Kellogg ski trip 80's party look like a pair of standard issue aviators. 
One other initial impression of Sydney- this is going to be really expensive.  I stopped in a mini-mart and bought a Vitamin Water.  I about choked when they charged me $4.00 for it.  I regularly buy 4 of those in the U.S. for that much when they are on sale at Dominick's.  Thankfully the U.S. dollar has increased dramatically since this summer, when the Aussie dollar and U.S. dollar were trading on par.  When I landed, the Aussie dollar was only worth about $0.70 on the dollar, so everything is roughly 2/3 to 3/4 the cost of what the sticker value is, depending on the currency fluctuations.

Lawn Bowling

After exploring the coastline all afternoon, I walked inland through Bondi Beach, Bondi Junction, Paddington, Darlinghurst, and a few other less notable neighborhoods.  Bondi Beach and Paddington look to be places I'd like to live, and Bondi Junction would be good because it has great transit options and one of the biggest malls I've ever seen.  I bought a pre-paid cell phone at a Target in that mall while I was there, which has caused me Blackberry-deprivation syndrome since my new phone sucks, but is very cheap. 
After that, I made my way up to Sydney Harbor for the grandiose fireworks display. I got there about 8 and spent the rest of the evening there, wandering around the crowds, watching the fireworks and the drunks, and checking out the Harbor Bridge 

Sydney Harbor Bridge

and Opera House from afar.  After a spectacular show, I thought about staying out.  However, by this time, thanks to my jetlag and 6 am wake up call, I was ready for bed.  Getting home was a hastle on the bus since they cut all road traffic from downtown Sydney, but I finally made it back and crashed, utterly exhausted.  

Fireworks at the Opera House