vi ses

Welcome to the last post of Eliza Goes To Sweden! I’m sitting here with my laptop in the early hours of a Sunday morning, drinking coffee and taking in our magnificent view of the Indigo Valley. Every hill is the same shade of yellowish-grey – there’s hardly any grass left. Ian the Kangaroo was around before, grazing on our front lawn, but he’s gone now. This drought has really knocked Australia for six and change is very tangibly in the air. Every time I turn on the radio or TV or open the newspaper, climate change dominates the headlines. It makes me really hopeful and excited. I feel that Sweden has made me a greenie, but in a sense that I understand what’s going on and believe in it from the inside, rather than just being part-and-parcel of my political views.

Yesterday I arrived home from the Ginnivan Sisters’ First Inaugural Road Trip. This time it took us all the way to Canberra and back. Leah is starting uni at ANU this year, and after winning an amazing fuck-off scholarship, getting a spot in an innovative new degree AND getting accepted into Burgmann College (pretty much the place to be if you’re going to be in Canberra, judging from what I saw of it) she’s understandably over the moon! We took the journey it slow, staying one night on the banks of the Murrumbidgee in Wagga Wagga, then at the Waldorf Hotel in Canberra for a final fling.

Apparently I have a bit of a superiority complex when it comes to Canberra, being from the “prestigious” University of Melbourne and, well, Melbourne in general, which IMHO is the best city in Australia in every way. But I think I could come to love Canberra too, if I can just keep my mouth shut and limit my sarcastic comments about public servants to perhaps one a day.

Georgia and I drove back last night. Since I’ve got my full licence now, I can be the supervising driver for Georgia, who is on her learner plates. I am pleased to report that, except for a slight obsession with speed and a propensity to swear fluently at people overtaking her, Georgia is quite the competent driver, much more than her 7-hours-on-the-road would suggest.

In the first few, admittedly sleep deprived, hours on Australian shores I was stunned by the amount of fat white people. Everywhere! Wearing capri pants and pastel shirts! Kaftans! I saw one overweight person in Sweden, and then they opened their mouth and surprise surprise, they were American. Another thing that took me aback was the amount of skin on display. I know it’s one of the steamiest summers on record, I know that Australia has hotties of both sexes whose wearing of short shorts should be a national obligation, not a personal choice…but after the extreme modesty of Morocco and the wintery past months of Sweden, it was definitely something different.

I seem to be suffering a bit of reverse culture shock. When I went to Sweden, it didn’t really happen. I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t really have any preconceptions, so I was prepared for anything. Coming back to Australia is different. I know the ropes already. I’ve been looking forward to returning so I can restart my “real” life again…the one where I have to extract a ratio from forty pages of stuffy legalese, complicated and challenging essays, looking for work, trying to budget, thinking about my future career and the attendant worries of whether I’m living my life right, rampant parties, gigs, public transport, paying the bills.

My readjustment hasn’t turned out like I thought it would. It’s harder. It’s like, if you’ll allow me a hillbilly metaphor – it’s like, you’re a horse that lives in a small paddock. You know it back to front – where the gate is, where the logs are, the dams, the trees, and you feel safe and comfortable. Then you get shifted to a bigger paddock and although it’s strange at first, it quickly becomes like freedom – you can run (gallop?) as far as you want in any direction, whenever you want - everything is new and different, you don’t know where anything is, but despite of this you eventually feel like you know it and you belong there (not sure if horses have achieved this level of consciousness but, reality aside...). Then suddenly you get herded back into the smaller paddock, and you have to fit back inside it. The first few weeks you’re pacing the perimeter and pawing at the ground. Eventually you get used to it, and you settle down back to eating grass and sleeping and swimming in the dams, happily. I’m pacing, and I think I will be for a while.

On a personal front…I’ve been cocooning on the farm for the last week, hermit-style, which has suited me just fine. I’ve been catching up on six months guitar deprivation, doing a brutal cull of my home wardrobe, drinking cocktails, watching the West Wing (whose events are discussed and deconstructed at every extended family gathering I have attended thus far), reading Zadie Smith, tallying the daily number of bigoted comments in our local rag The Border Mail, thinking about stuff. Although I love them heaps and I’m really stoked about catching up, the thought of seeing my friends again is daunting. It’s all those little insecurities…will I have changed, will they have moved on, did I miss too much, etc, all compounded by the fact I’ve been a rather slack bastard on the communication front. I think slowly slowly is the key. I’m getting a new phone tomorrow which is the first step towards social re-integration.

So I better wrap it up. Thankyou to everyone who has visited my blog, whether you have found yourself here by mistake or are an avid reader (I’m sure there’s at least a few…?). I, personally, have had a great time – in total 41 posts and many hours of writing, ideas scribbled in the margins of my textbooks, great feedback and comments whether it was constructive criticism or stream-of-consciousness musings. Also, thanks to Abs for ironing out the tech and visual problems with my blog. My parting thoughts – someone once said/probably said that travel is the food of the soul. I think they were spot on. If you get the chance to travel, take it. If you get the chance to go on exchange, take it – you won’t regret a moment of it, even the ones you spend with a hangover so bad it could split bricks, cursing your own birth. So until my next adventure – the God Bless America Tour in the winter of 2007 – who knows? - love yas heaps. xox

pinch punch

Changi Airport, Singapore. Many naughty Australians have met their fate here at the hands of the security guards. Now I find myself in a similar position – senile from lack of sleep, feeling slightly worried but mostly idiotically amused that I am about to bring a bag of Moroccan mint tea through the security, a substance which, if not for its pungent scent, would pretty much resemble a 20-years-to-life packet of weed.

I left Europe as I came, through Copenhagen airport, except this time I was so desperate for a coffee that I exchanged my final 10AUD and probably lost most of it on commission. The flight so far has been pretty standard but I’m not looking forward to this final leg – the one where I try to sleep. The novelty of flying in the dark will never fade for me. Tonight the highlight was flying in low over the top of central London, straight up the Thames and seeing all the sights from above – Westminster, the Eye all lit up for Red Nose Day.

I said goodbye to Lund with a bunch of roses in one hand and the remains of my uncompromisingly culled wardrobe/life (21.9kg, to be precise) in the other. Penny, Nikki, Vale and Murray saw me off with the traditional Lund Centralen Farewell by racing the train to the end of the platform. I tried to be brave on the train, aware that by bawling I would be breaking an important Swedish social convention: that of never showing emotion on public transport. It was only when, at an altitude of 30,000 feet, somewhere over Dubai, that my emotions crept on through. The stimulus was Coldplay’s The Scientist piped through my free Qantas headphones. And even though it’s a blatant tearjerker (not to mention being written for Gwyneth Paltrow, who is insipid, undeserving and all in all a right fool) it tugged at stuff inside me and I cried confused tears for the life I was leaving behind and the one I was going back to.

Claire reckons I should write about what I’m looking forward to and what I’ll miss. When I think about going home, I think about summer on my farm. I can almost smell the mix of dry grass, eucalyptus and dust. I can almost hear the cicadas chirping and the house creaking and sighing in the heat. And I can almost taste the beer waiting for me (Australian of course, none of this European stuff) watching the sun set on the hills and the 7.00 News on the ABC. Watching the sun set after 4pm, even! What else. Seeing my friends, both my Melbourne and my Wodonga ones, and catching up on what I’ve missed. The warm embrace of my extended family. Going surfing on the coast with Leah and Georgia before we start a year of living separately. There’s too much I’ll miss from Lund to get started on that half. Perhaps later, when I’m feeling more lucid.

My row is being called. I’ll write when I get home. If you hear from me in the next few days, you know I was successful with security. If not, call my lawyer tout suite.