Merry Brismas - Brisbane / 24.11. - 04.12.2018

We have been looking forward to a big city even before we finally arrived in Brisbane on November 24th, because no matter how beautiful the beaches, nature, and animals in the small coastal towns are, we are used to Berlin somehow and we love it and miss it a little bit. We were not disappointed, because Brisbane has a lot to offer - apart from all the great Christmas decorations in the streets and on the many trees that line them closely, which gave us a bit of a Christmas feeling despite the extreme temperatures.

After checking in at the hostel - another Nomads - we were shocked when we entered the room. There was a fat old man lying in the dark on his bed, staring at us strangely, and all his things were scattered everywhere, while all the other beds were free. Since we didn't want to spend the night alone with him, we asked at the reception if we could change rooms and were even upgraded to a 6-bed room where only 2 other girls lived.

One of them was also German, named Marieke, and she didn't seem very smart at first impression, but she was quite nice. We quickly noticed that she had a fear of flying and had even canceled her flight back to Germany because of it, which shocked us a bit when she suddenly stood in our room again.

After arriving, we decided to explore the city a bit, which was quite easy because Nomads is centrally located and right on the main shopping street, Queen Street Mall. There, among some unknown clothing stores and boutiques, we even found an H&M, which made us feel a bit at home. We checked it out immediately, and I even bought a pretty bikini top because I only had one with me, and when we later returned to the hostel, we met Anna again, with whom we had already stayed in 5 other hostels. Tomorrow evening, we planned to go to a bar called Viscosity with her, which is themed around science and sells all sorts of toxic glowing drinks. We were already looking forward to it, but today we were too tired to do anything else but go to bed.

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The next day, Linni and I went to the City Hall Clock Tower in the morning - before it was built, it was the tallest standing clock in Australia and Brisbane's largest building until 1960 - now the skyscrapers far surpass the building. We had a private tour for two with a very nice guide at 12 o'clock. He took us up to the top with an old elevator - the original cage from the past, from which you could also look inside to the gears and machines of the bells - From the top, we could see the big Christmas tree standing on King George Square and also the big buildings and the small ones, including the 2 beautiful churches on the edge of the square. The view was very beautiful, although there were also many larger buildings that obstructed it, so you couldn't see everything.

After the tour, we visited the museum under the bell tower, where a few paintings, models, as well as waving fabrics and other strange things were exhibited, along with a detailed description of the history and construction of the building.

Afterwards, we walked a little further to the Botanic Garden - there was a lot going on when we arrived because there was a market between the green spaces today. Here we also discovered Iris with 2 other girls and were very happy to see her again. We chatted for a while until we walked along the wide path all the way to the end, where a cool band was playing on a small stage - The Trespassers. It consisted of 3 older couples - the men played the accompaniment and the women sang, and they were all quite talented and attracted many people - and if not with their music, then with their absolutely cool and youthful charisma and colorful clothes. It was really fun to listen to them, although we soon had to go back to cook noodles for lunch and get ready for the bar tonight.

On the way to Viscosity Bar, it started drizzling a bit, the sun was just setting, and the beautiful lights were slowly turning on, which somehow put us in a good mood, and we ended up skipping down the street hand in hand. After 20 minutes, we arrived and waited a short while for Anna, who came straight from her shopping trip today. After saying hello, we went into the glowing interior of the small, cute (but relatively empty) bar, briefly admired all the liquids, which looked brightly colored thanks to the blacklight, and pulled out our phones to film the preparation of our drinks up close.

Anna ordered a pink-blue Pina Colada cocktail, Linni ordered the blue glowing Snow Globe, and I ordered a toxic green Acid Rain. Mine felt like it had less than a milliliter of alcohol and lemon soda, but it still tasted good and the green slime beads were fun. Anna's Pina Colada was not my cup of tea, although I actually love pineapple and coconut.. I must have had high expectations in that regard (the best Pina Colada ever was in London's China Town).

After a few conversations and some laughter, we decided to share the Shooter Rack, 6 colorful drinks in test tubes that looked really nice - almost too nice to drink. But they were really strong, and after the burning sensation in our mouths subsided, we soon set off again and strolled through the illuminated streets of Brisbane. There were string lights hanging everywhere in the trees, and in a small alley, there were colorful light balls and garlands, which reminded Linni and me of the Magic Giant concert because there were also such alleys there - so we had to take a little photo break.

We made a short stop at McDonald's and treated ourselves to some meat for the first time in a long time - Chicken Nuggets. A dream: eating Chicken Nuggets on the balcony of McDonald's and admiring the colorful Christmas decorations below us. Afterward, we walked around a bit, made fun of the questionable-looking clubs, and heard street music from somewhere.

Later, I had a short phone call with Omsi, and then it was time to sleep.

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On November 26th, we had a Brisbane Greeter Tour at 10 am. It is a free city tour led by volunteers who decide for themselves which highlights they want to show. So, depending on which Greeter you get, the tour can be completely different. Our guide was Marty - an older, lanky, somewhat nervous but cute man with glasses and a stubby nose. Anna and another girl, who grew up in America but has Asian ancestors, were also in our group.

Marty first took us through the Botanic Garden to the Old Government House on the other side of the bridge that crosses the Brisbane River. After showing us a brief old warship museum, we arrived there. The building was huge and very impressive - no wonder, since 11 Queensland mayoral families had lived here since 1863 until it was decided in 1909 that an even more magnificent building was needed.

In one of the rooms, there was a kind of video game that allowed you to walk the grounds as they used to be, which kept us busy for a long time because it was so much fun with the controller in hand. We also looked at the staircase to the basement - which shocked me because it was only covered by a glass pane on which one could stand, and for a moment, I thought I would fall into it -, the magnificent chandelier, and the many paintings on the walls of the old bedrooms. Anna, in the meantime, made plans for how she would furnish the rooms would she live here.

Afterwards, we went to a small café that was also located in this house, and Linni and I shared a Lamington - a piece of cake coated in chocolate and coconut flakes, named after Lord Lamington, one of the governors of Queensland.

Since the Old Government House is part of the campus of the Queensland University of Technology, we also visited one of the more well-known buildings of the university, which was quite interesting. There were different things depicted on the walls, such as animals that you could enlarge or get information about with a touch of your finger, the planets of the solar system, and you could experiment there with wooden blocks that you threw into space to see how the respective gravity affects them, or heat sensors that transform your body heat into artworks. We stayed here for a while and explored everything in detail.

Afterwards, Marty showed us a kind of temple in Southbank - the part of Brisbane behind the bridge, lined with purple flowers. The wood carvings looked very beautiful, and Marty told us that the building was actually supposed to be auctioned off in the past, but the residents of Brisbane pooled their money to keep it for the city.

We then walked to a small herb garden where Linni and I could pick some basil for our noodles tonight, which was very cool. Then our paths separated, and we set off back to the hostel because it was getting hotter and almost unbearable in the relentless sun.

In the afternoon, we cooked our gourmet noodles with basil, which we enjoyed very much because it was amazing how much such a small plant could enhance the taste. In the evening, there was also a free yoga class at the lagoon in Southbank - the artificial swimming area in the middle of the city - which we definitely didn't want to miss. Anna also came along, and together we joined the already present crowd of yogis on a meadow. We quickly realized that we weren't very talented, but we still tried to imitate everything shown by the yoga instructor at the front and breathe correctly. During one exercise, I apparently breathed in such a way that I almost fell asleep and got scared to death when Linni threw a clump of grass or something at me.

All in all, it was a successful end to the day, and when we were done, we even did a few burpees and other killer exercises, including a dangerous partner roll and the airplane pose. The lights of Brisbane were already on everywhere as it got dark, and on the way back, we admired the beautiful purple and red illuminated letters of the Brisbane sign next to the bridge while singing "Last Christmas" to ourselves, and a group of teenagers in front of us joined in.

We soon went to bed satisfied.

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On the next day, we had our first fruit salad for breakfast with the most delicious mangoes ever, which we bought at a small market for a bargain price yesterday, and yogurt. After breakfast, we went to the City Hopper Ferry stop by the river because it was half an hour free of charge, and we just wanted to see how the skyline looked from here. Unfortunately, the weather was not very good - it was quite cloudy, but we still had a good view.

Anna also spontaneously joined us, and when we had made ourselves comfortable on the roof of the small red ferry, we enjoyed the wind in our faces on this still warm day. The tall skyscrapers were very impressive, and we made plans to go to a cool viewpoint on Mount Coot-Tha together later this afternoon and watch the sunset over the city.

And that's exactly what we did - but only Anna and I, because Linni didn't feel well after our lunch break at the hostel and didn't feel up to hiking up the mountain. But I didn't want to miss the experience, so Anna and I took the bus to the Botanic Garden of Mt Coot-Tha at around 4:30 pm, and then we had to walk a bit ourselves. We first looked around the garden and admired the many beautiful and colorful flowers, which were arranged in rows on the grounds. Then we started the steep ascent, and at first, there was still a sidewalk, but over time it became non-existent, which was sometimes quite dangerous with the winding road. Nevertheless, we made it, sweating, all the way up and from a small platform, we had the most amazing view of the entire skyline, which was also beautifully illuminated in orange by the setting sun. However, we couldn't see the sunset from here, which we sadly noticed - because many trees covered the beautiful setting sun.

We took a few pictures here with my camera - which I had dug out for this purpose - and decided to stay even longer to observe the emerging lights in the twilight. It was an incredible sight, and thousands of small lights shone at us in the darkness. But we also started to worry that we wouldn't catch the last bus back to the hostel and soon made our way down again. Going down was much faster. It was dark, but it wasn't as hot anymore, and with flashlights and music, everything went smoothly, so we waited at the bus stop at the Botanic Garden on time. The Brisbane Planetarium was also located there, and I discovered the stargazer statue by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the founder of cosmonautics. I will post it a few times because I also loved looking at the sky at night, and soon the bus arrived.

Luckily, Linni felt a bit better, and we comfortably made dinner in the sauna kitchen because it was always too hot in there.

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On our 4th day in Brisbane, we were supposed to make another delicious fruit salad for breakfast, but our mangoes were stolen, so we only had a rather sparse mixture of mashed frozen blueberries, banana, and apple. We mourned the mangoes for a long time and only reluctantly let go of the heartache.

Afterward, we went to the city because we wanted to check out Sophie's Clothing, and they had really beautiful thin dresses and jumpsuits, but nothing seemed to fit us perfectly.

Afterwards, we met up with Jermaine at the lagoon again because we were planning to attend the free Zumba class here in Southbank, and Jermaine wanted to watch us and make fun of us.

There were quite a lot of people participating, which looked very funny from our spot at the back. We did our best to dance along with the woman at the front, but it was difficult to coordinate our arms and legs at the same time. Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun, especially when we laughed at each other.

Afterwards, the three of us went back to the City Hopper Ferry stop to experience Brisbane's skyline up close at night. We made ourselves comfortable with our sweaters on the deck and took in the beautiful sight of the many lights - what was particularly beautiful was the bridge in the background, as it was completely illuminated in purple. Next to it stood a large tree with a string of lights hanging from its branches.

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The next morning, we proudly opened the first door of our $3.50 chocolate advent calendar. Then we visited the art galleries in Southbank. There were 2 of them, the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art. We visited the QAG first, and it was so nice to go from the blazing heat into an air-conditioned building that we had to sit down on one of the sofas in front of one of the paintings for a while. The painting looked very interesting and was in bright orange tones with some blue contrasts. Then we systematically walked through all the rooms, and the artworks were all very impressive.

We then went to GOMA, which I was looking forward to a bit more because I love modern art. I wasn't disappointed because you could admire new and different exhibits at every turn, from Chinese dragon towers to feathers and stones arranged in storm form on a wall, and rock formations that reminded us of the Berlin Wall, as well as abstract medical drawings of bodies. But one thing impressed us especially, namely two rows of chairs opposite each other, separated by a kind of mirror wall. Now two people had to sit on the chairs opposite each other, and in the mirror wall, you would see a mixture of the two faces. If you sat in such a way that the eyes were perfectly aligned, it was like a flash of feeling through you, and it was so strange to see your own features in front of you, but not really your own face.

As we walked along the grounds again after our visit, we discovered a huge room full of people apparently participating in the very taken seriously Pokémon Championships here, which we found very funny. Then we went back to the hostel, and later there was a small market at the big Christmas tree - the Twilight Market. It was equipped with many cute stands selling jewelry and other little things, but it wasn't as great as the Christmas markets back home. One stand reminded me of Kathi because they sold vinyl art with well-known older artists, such as Queen, Guns n Roses, and Nirvana.

We didn't buy anything here, though, because everything was still very expensive.

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The next 3 days were not very eventful: we moved to another hostel for the last few days in Brisbane, Base Uptown, and as it got even hotter, there was almost nothing productive we could do except chill in parks and write postcards. And since we wanted to test the theory that it is possible to send postcards to Germany without expensive stamps, we went on a mailbox tour after the painstaking writing of love on our cards, as we didn't want to put too many stamp-less cards into one mailbox. We also had to do a big shopping trip for our next stop - Surfers Paradise - because we had heard that groceries would be somewhat more expensive there. I also got a cool black overall, and on Sunday evening, we went to The Victory to have a cider - the small bar was recommended to me by Harry, one of the English guys we met for the first time in Cairns. The club across the street - The Stock House Exchange - also looked very cool and crowded, and we decided to check out the place as well - it reminded us a lot of Soda back home, and they even played Christmas songs that everyone was dancing to! But we also noticed that we had to familiarize ourselves a bit more with the Australian charts because sometimes when everyone around us was partying, Linni and I just looked at each other confused.

Our bus to Surfers Paradise was around noon on December 4th, and somehow we were looking forward to leaving Brisbane again after almost 11 days and discovering a new place. As beautiful as Brisbane was, we didn't have to stay here forever, especially since there was so much more to see.

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The following three days were not very eventful: we moved to another hostel for the last days in Brisbane, Base Uptown, and as it got even hotter, there was almost nothing productive we could do except chill in parks and write postcards. And since we wanted to test the theory that it is possible to send postcards to Germany without expensive stamps, we went on a mailbox tour after the painstaking writing of love on our cards, as we didn't want to put too many stamp-less cards into one mailbox. There was also a big shopping trip for our next stop - Surfers Paradise - because we had heard that groceries would be somewhat more expensive there. I also got a cool black overall, and on Sunday evening, we went to have a cider at The Victory - the small bar was recommended to me by Harry, one of the English guys we met for the first time in Cairns. The club across the street - The Stock House Exchange - also looked very cool and crowded, and we decided to check out the place as well - it reminded us a lot of Soda back home, and they even played Christmas songs that everyone was dancing to! But we also noticed that we had to familiarize ourselves a bit more with the Australian charts because sometimes when everyone around us was partying, Linni and I just looked at each other confused.

Our bus to Surfers Paradise left around noon on December 4th, and somehow we were looking forward to leaving Brisbane again after almost 11 days and discovering a new place. As beautiful as Brisbane was, we didn't have to stay here forever, especially since there was so much more to see.

Aus​blick auf die Skyline Brisbanes vom Mount Coot-Tha Lookout