Built by free settlers and not convicts
The coastal city of Adelaide is the capital of the state of South Australia and has about 1.2 million inhabitants. The population is very proud of its past, as South Australia is the only Australian state that was built by free settlers and not by convicts. Adelaide is known as "festival city" because of its cultural events and is also called "city of churches" because of its many churches. The area around Adelaide is also famous for good wine and food.
Shisha bars & strip clubs
The route between Adelaide and Melbourne is the only one that is not served by my bus company Greyhound for some reason. So I had to pay another AU$ 60 to get a ticket with the Firefly bus company. It took me a whopping 12 hours. When crossing the border from the state of Victoria (Melbourne) to South Australia (Adelaide) there are occasional bag checks to prevent the import of fresh food or fruit. This is meant to counteract the spread of the fruit fly plague. Around 7 pm I managed to check in at my hostel, which fortunately was only one block away from the bus stop. In my hostel, the YHA, a lot of hustle and bustle was going on. The common rooms and the kitchen were full of people, apparently an entire school class had just settled here.
Later, I wanted to buy something at the supermarket to cook in the hostel, but shortly before 8 pm all shops were already closed. This is very untypical for Australian cities, even more so considering that Adelaide is a state capital. Finally I had to be content with a Subway sandwich. On the way back I walked past the many Arabic-Turkish shisha bars and kebab shops. I felt almost a bit like in Germany, only here were a lot more strip bars. This did not really fit into the image of the city, which was described as conservative and city of churches.
Ice skaters next to the beach
The next day I went by tram to the district Glenlg, where you can also find a long beach. The autumnal temperatures didn't invite people to swim in the ocean so much as to ice-skate in a hall on the beach. I only went for a short walk on the beach, but the wind blew so fiercely around my ears that it gave me little pleasure. I drove back to the city center and walked through the city's central shopping mile, Randle Mall. The locals usually meet there at 2 huge metallic balls when they have a date. Another iconic monument are the few pigs that roam over the garbage cans there. Of course they were not real pigs but made out of metal.
Seeing the Tasmanian Devil at the Zoo
The next day I went with the North African Nour to the fantastic zoo of Adelaide. We saw pandas, capybaras, hippos, dwarf penguins, pelicans, meerkats, anteaters, tigers, hyenas, monkeys, snakes and many more. And we even got to see a Tasmanian devil. It is the mammal with the strongest bite and even in the zoo it is difficult to see it because it is nocturnal. His devilish screams earned him his name. I also saw the lyrebird, which can imitate any sound it hears. For example, one specimen could imitate the sound of a chainsaw or a camera shutter sound. Unfortunately I did not hear any such sounds from this bird, it was just running around like crazy. While drinking coffee at the local zoo, we searched for a place inside the café, because the people sitting outside were busy fending off the voracious white ibises (bin chickens).
Then we walked to the Adelaide Oval, a large cricket and Australian football pitch. We were even able to enter the stands for free, even if there was no match going on. The iconic oval can be reach via a short walking distance from Adelaide's CBD on a new foot bridge above the River Torrens. The area around the river is certainly a nice place for the locals to hang out in summer, but now in late fall it seemed pretty bland.
Meeting a Russian woman who visited nearly all countries
One day later I visited the central market with the North African Nour and the Malaysian Isabelle. For lunch I met the Russian Janie, who has travelled almost all countries of the world. I would have liked to hear much more about her various exciting stories. I liked that she was very realistic and did not glorify travelling like others. Because as I know from my own experience, travelling often involves a lot more than you hope for (good and bad). She is also writing a book called "99 Disasters - a journey through the world". Even a broken foot or multiple malaria infections from which she almost died do not stop her from travelling. In African countries, she had to flee from the windows of her couchsurfing host because he got crooked ideas at the sight of a slim blonde woman travelling alone. She lives half a year in Adelaide and the rest of the time she is travelling somewhere in the world.
High life quality, but more quit than Melbourne or Sydney
In the afternoon I reunited with Nour and Isabelle to go to an art museum. Well, I did not like that. Strange statues full of nails, a carcass of a horse hung upside down or a hermaphroditic figure with the body of a man but with a vagina instead of a penis. In the evening me and the Malaysian had a few beers in a cheap bar inside a hostel, but there was relatively little going on. In general Adelaide is a city with a high quality of life, but there is much less going on than in Melbourne. My Russian friend had chosen Adelaide as a place to live especially for this reason, because in bigger cities she would otherwise feel guilty if she didn't go to the events that are offered to the city.
For the last night I changed to the hostel of the Malaysian girl. The Tequila Sunrise hostel was not only much cheaper than my previous one, but on top of that it offered a much more pleasant atmosphere. On every second day there is even a free dinner. It wasn't only for this reason that I moved to the hostel, but also because my German buddy Marvin, whom I had met a few months earlier on the east coast, was there. He was quite astonished when I entered his room all of a sudden and he saw my face when he emerged from behind his curtain. He was working here cash in hand to save money for his trip to Bali.
