2-1

The First real day in Sydney was one of exploration. Traffic lights here turn green with a ‘pew’ worthy of a video game and I still have to get used to the fact that every walks on the left, except for the tourists/backpackers, so collisions on the street are hard to avoid.

We also made the first trip to the supermarket, which already tells a lot about the Australian way of eating. Almost all the packages are big. Large meat containers, large juice bottles, large packs of sprinkle cheese and many more large packages which are not suitable for carrying for a distance over 5 minutes. However, vegetables are packed in halves or even quarters, so half a cabbage is possible. The peanut butter jars are also very tiny, since as proper Dutch money saving students, Lisianne and I got a bread (or something that has to pass for bread) and peanut butter for our breakfast. There is also no vegetarian meat replacement product in sight and the cheapest product in the store appears to be Asian Noodles. Hardly any juice is without bubbles.

After that we went back and cooked our very first meal, which took longer than normal as we tried to find the proper pans in the big hostel kitchen. In the end we ended up with enough food for three days, and as there were only community fridges and no freezers, we have actually eaten the same pasta with some other side dishes for the two days after as well. Afterwards we were discussing to watch the Brazil-The Netherlands game in the bar that is a part of the hostel. This plan was changed by our new roommate, who had just arrived from the Netherlands as well. She convinced us to go with her to Darling Harbour to watch it with other Dutch people. Since she had just flown thirty hours without much sleep, our excuse of ‘we’re tired’ wasn’t valid, so we decided to join. Expecting to end up at someone’s house, we were surprised to end up in front of an enormous screen hoisted up by Fifa. We watched the game with hundreds of people, including a lot of enthusiastic Dutch and Brazilian fans. It was cold, but we loved every minute. After ten minutes I thought it would be over, so I was shouting in Portuguese, English and Dutch, hoping for our team to score. Imagine three girls shouting that van Persie should be taken out and jumping up and down. We got more and more excited as the first goal was scored (such a beauty by Sneijder) and the second got us even more crazy and we were counting down the seconds. All the way back to the hostel we were in a party mood, but secretly I also looked at the little Brazilian bracelet hidden under my sweater, wishing I could have watched it with him and also that it would be a pity if we would finally win a world cup while being away from home. Still, my sleepshirt proclaiming that Brazil would be a six time world champion made me fall asleep with a smile on my face.