Category — Thoughts

I’ve got some friends who came to Sydney and have fallen in love with the city. They weren’t one or two, but a number of them who lived in Sydney or just spent holidays there and came back telling that the city is amazing. I can not say that I think differently than any of them. Sydney is really wonderful.

The four days that we spent in Sydney were a change of views and thoughts all the time, it was funny to see how since the first minute we were trying to form our concepts about the city, but in the following minutes that concept used to be replaced by another and it was like this until the end of the fourth day. Perhaps because Sydney is not only one city, but several cities in one.

At the first moment we thought it was quite similar to New Zealand, the streets, the shops, lifestyle and culture of the people and didn’t understand the amazement of our friends. After the first “day-tripper” day we realized that yes, the Australians are really New Zealander’s brothers, but Sydney is the oldest sister, successful, dizzyingly beautiful, the kind of sister that the smaller sisters want to be when they grow up.

If Sydney can be a four times amplified Auckland, as I said in the previous post, it is if only when it is seen from above. Looking from the inside the two cities are very different. Sydney is immense. There are points of the city centre that reminded us of Sao Paulo. But it is clean, organized and secure.
It’s got the sea all around, as Auckland does, but it’s got water inside it too, it’s got water everywhere, what makes it even more beautiful and that also allows each suburb to seem like a small town with its markets, its beaches and its inhabitants. And I think it is precisely these people who distinguish Sydney from Auckland, although much larger in size and importance, people are on the streets of Sydney, in boats, buses, trains… Both the centre and the suburbs we saw  many people walking on the streets, going to work, to school, or exercising, the streets are always full of people. The city is not made for cars. I was very impressed with the public transport system, you can go from anywhere to anywhere by using the ferries, trains and buses of the city, it’s impossible to get lost there, and walking around is a delight.

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Today was our last day of work. More mine than Felipe’s, since he’s got a “bonus”: had to change a little the plans and will be working on Monday again.

We left home earlier than we normally do, took the 8:00 bus and not the 8:45 one as we usually do. I couldn’t recognize anyone in the bus, odd. I didn’t take my breakfast to work to have it later, because I was late, however, we had breakfast at a nice cafè, calmly and I got to work before 9:00.

At 2:30 PM my boss said “Have you finished everything? You can go anytime you want”. The feeling of leaving early on my last day was weird, saying goodbye to everyone and simply leaving in the middle of the afternoon, something I’ve never done before… No… I preferred to stay until the end of the day, give the last tips to Amii, the girl that will be replacing me, send the last emails that someone may need, delete my personal files and passwords from my computer, let everybody go, one by one, passing by my desk and giving me a hug - enjoy your trip / see you again in 6 months.
I was the last one to leave, already without my keys, as I didn’t look back I had the feeling that today is another Friday just like any other, it was 5:30 in the afternoon and the shops were still open, the streets and bars full of people… Because tomorrow is Saturday.

But from now on everyday will be Saturday. Perhaps with some Sundays in between, when the shops do not open and people are not running. Week days will no longer exist until March next year.

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Photo by Taro416

Ahhh the so dramed trip, you’re already feeling like if you were in that place, you can almost taste that typical food. Any travel at the beginning is pure enchantment with the fresh new things you experience. This can be in a holyday or effectively moving to another country. It’s irresistible to pay extra attention to the qualities of the place and people instead of defects.

But time passes and reality shows a different face, a face that is not in guidebooks, promoted by travel agencies and even less in your dreams of perfect travel, and at this time you ask yourself, what am I doing here? You spend a few days repeating this mantra and voilá you are homesick.

You will miss your people, the food, service, culture, climate, the price and suddenly you’ll catch yourself facing the exact opposite of your dreams, even if for only a short period of time. There are people who cry, get in a bad mood, lock themselves in the bedroom and in the most extreme cases they end up buying a ticket and go home in the first flight.

None of these attitudes will make things more pleasant and here are some tips to deal with this (based on personal experiences and pub conversations):

Be prepared before leaving home

Before going somewhere read about it, try to understand the history, geography, politics, religion. Go through wikipedia. Understand what’s to come and get psychologically prepared to go through certain experiences so you can avoid the cultural shock that may be one of the symptoms of “home sickness.”

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I am writing about inertia and already suffering from it, I took at least 10 minutes get out of the first sentence. But what really prompted me to write about this is a feeling that I am starting to have on this trip. We will be 6 months out of our routine, a routine that even after changing countries remains virtually the same, home-work-home and counting the days for the weekend.

When we bought the tickets we started wondering, how would be the life in the country X, how would be the food, how we would communicate in the language Y, but lately, thanks to the rain and cold in recent days, we’ve been living our routine in a more intense (read as repetitive) than normal, and I am kind of having a special joy with my last few weeks of routine, like trying to have the most of it before jump into a “what are we going to do today” life. This repetition is something that we inevitably seek, is comfortable and easy to know that we will wake up at the same time, have the same breakfast, go work by the same way, see the same people and so on, and how difficult it is to change or to adapt to a new environment.

Many people have told me they would like to make a trip like ours, but always comes shortly after an excuse, “I don’t have time”, “I don’t have money”, “it’s not safe”, “I will lose my job”, “I don’t know how to cook”. The fact is, we all can do it, just leave the comfort zone and make it happen. See how you can make it:
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Since we decided to make this journey, I’ve been reading many blogs of other travellers that often make a trip like ours look like kids play.

There are people travelling for 20 years, travelling with 8 children, but what called my attention was a couple working without a fixed place, he is an illustrator and she a business strategist, of course they are not alone and not the first, but their merit is to transform this lifestyle into something accessible to ordinary people like us.

After a little research we discovered the concept of “Lifestyle Design“, a concept without a precise definition so far.

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