Canadians eh

Shortly after Emma had left, I moved to Maze hostel. I had so much shit, and a half empty room, so I went to the shared living space to read one of the Game of Thrones books I had gotten from someone earlier on in my journey. Up until then I had watched all the episodes from the series, but never once touched the books even though I'd heard that they'd be pretty good. As I was just getting into the second chapter, a guy walked past me and stopped, then turned around to start chatting with me about the book that I was reading. He asked me if I had anything to do, to which my answer was no, and offered to take me out for the day.

Dane, as he was called, was from Canada. A bit strange but very friendly and pretty worldly. He told me about his travels through China and Malaysia, through Europe and the US, his favourite painting that he now had tattooed on his side, his love for Canada and the leaf that he now had tattooed on his shoulder, and photography and girls and food from other countries and the feeling of learning new languages and more. We talked about many different things while he walked me to a game arcade that I'd never known was there (a street away, in the city where I'd lived for two months). This day I tried many things, food- and drink-wise. He made me taste these hot puff balls with creme in them. I had bubble tea. We talked some more when he took me out for lunch in a Chinese lunchroom with statues of naked people with dog-heads, larger than life. He showed me street art that I hadn't seen before and I felt so touristy that day, but then again I didn't because I was being toured around by this guy who seemed to know what he was talking about. I didn't see him again after that day.

That night Nick and his sister arrived from Melbourne. They had seen the city in a week and wanted to see Sydney too, so they rebooked their hostel and came to stay in Maze hostel with me for a week. After everything that Dane had showed me, I wanted to show Nick the same, shock him a bit with the culture difference here. That week we walked around Sydney quite a bit, visiting more places that I hadn't been before. We walked to Hyde park to visit the St. Mary's cathedral and even though it looked very old, we found out that it was just over a hundred years old. The inside was filled with modern realistic paintings of Maria and Jesus, a couple statues but nothing too fancy really. We went to Bondi with the three of us. And Nick and I visited the Australia Natural Museum together, but just for the dinosaurs of course. We had breakfast at a cool waffle place, which they said was pretty good but nothing compared to Belgium waffles.

Nick's sisters flew back home and Nick went to Falls Creek to start working there. I drove to him a couple weeks later, but hadn't anticipated the cold. The hotel he worked at was amazing, a proper ski resort with hot tubs and movie rooms and a bar. The whole place was like a small village, just for tourists. We went skiing together once, I hugged a tree, I fell down more times than I can count, but it was worth it. I've now learned that it's not easy to ski down a hill when you're afraid of heights, especially if the sky's clear and you can see the distance. There were fireworks on Tuesdays, nice food from the restaurant and Nick had the most amazing co-workers/friends that I got to hang out with once a while. Two parking tickets and a dead car-battery later, we drove back up to Sydney to warm up for another week, before saying goodbye.