Brisbane our lucky charm

For the first time in Australia, we reached a real big city and felt very comfortable right away. We were glad to escape the rural area and immerse ourselves in the city life of Brisbane. The city with its 2 million inhabitants impresses us especially with its cleanliness, the many modern buildings, and the diverse neighborhoods. In Southbank, you can stroll along the river promenade between many small cafés, in Westend, every bar lover will find their favorite bar, and in the CBD, Mara can indulge her pent-up shopping lust in the shadow of the skyscrapers. But it's not just the city we like, the people are also super friendly and always helpful, in case we German tourists get lost.

Three highlights that we have experienced so far here in Brisbane: The ferry ride across the Brisbane River was a particularly beautiful experience because you get to see the city from a completely different perspective. We especially liked the ride at dusk because almost all high-rise buildings, bridges, and landmarks of the city are impressively illuminated. Great photos were taken!

On the weekend, we visited the Gallery of Modern Arts, which was highly recommended in the guidebook. And it lived up to its promise because even though we are not big museum visitors, we had fun exploring the various exhibitions of the museum for an afternoon. The exhibition of a Japanese artist was especially amazing! She mainly worked with vibrant colors, curious patterns, and optical illusions, making it a lot of fun for us to explore the different rooms.

And yesterday, as a birthday surprise for Mara, we attended a rugby match. As absolute beginners in this sport, we attended the World Rugby League semi-final between Australia and Fiji. We actually thought that this is THE sport in Australia, but the stadium was only half full with 'only' 22,000 spectators. Nevertheless, the fans from Fiji made quite a lot of noise and created a great atmosphere, and after 2 minutes we wondered which sport we actually landed in when the first players went after each other because someone apparently played unfairly... But that was apparently just the initial exuberance, and so we saw a pretty cool game with a clear victory for Australia. I was surprised how similar rugby is to football.

But actually, we also came to Brisbane to find a job for the time until Christmas. And we managed to do that in record time of half a week, admittedly with a little luck. We ended up in a factory as packers and are now working full-time in the morning shift until Christmas. That means getting up at 5 a.m. and packing and stacking nuts, dried fruits, and chocolate on pallets from 6 a.m. to 2:06 p.m. And if no one is watching, we also quickly snack on something! The weekends are always free, so it gives us time to explore a bit of Brisbane and the surrounding area.

During our time here in Brisbane, we are staying at a small campsite just outside the city, which has everything we need and on top of that, a pool and a huge shopping center right outside the door.

Until next time with Matis' adventure stories :P