The most liveable city in the world

Shortly before my 30th birthday and thus almost at the latest possible time I started my Australian Working Holiday Visa (WHV). As first city to land I had chosen Melbourne. Many backpackers I had met before were talking excited about this city. Melbourne has the reputation of being Australia's undisputed cultural capital, teeming with Victorian architecture, famous cafés, great bars and restaurants, extensive shopping, museums, galleries, theatres and large parks and gardens. Its nearly 5 million inhabitants are both multicultural and sports-mad, and the city hosts festivals, sporting and cultural events all year round. In the 2010s Melbourne was often ranked number 1 of the most livable cities in the world.

In the middle of February, the late Australian summer, I reached the city in the southeast of Australia via a 6-hour night flight from Bali. At the Australian immigration desk everything happens automatically and electronically. You put your passport on the scanner and smile shortly into the camera and the sliding door in front of you opens provided everything is correct and the visa is valid. The whole visa cost me just over 300 €, which entitled me to do light work in Australia for 12 months (for a maximum of 6 months with the same employer).

Originally, I had planned to work on a winery with my buddy Daniel from Germany. He had worked there before, so it would have turned out well. But as so often in life something came up (he got robbed in Europe) and he couldn't get to Australia in time. And unfortunately I also arrived too late in Australia, so the wine harvest had already started. I was a bit foolish there and thought you could just come any time you liked and find a job on any farm. At least others told me that it was that easy when they did the WHV in Australia. That the reality looked very different, I should learn very quickly.

Many great cafés in Melbourne

The SkyBus took me from the airport to the city centre, which was still calmly sleeping, because it was Sunday morning. I only passed by the last partygoers and the few early birds. It was so early that I could not check in to my hostel yet. So the first thing I did in Melbourne was what the city is so famous for: its thriving coffee scene. Chic little cafés with high quality coffee beans and baristas that conjure up great creations can be found on almost every other street corner in Melbourne. At Hudson's Café I found a café that was already open. There I leafed through the Sunday edition of the Herald Sun, the biggest Australian newspaper, enjoying an excellent capuccino with lots of chocolate powder.

terrible internet in Australia

Afterwards I bought a SIM card for the cheap price of only 15 AU$ (10 €) I received 15 GB per month. Where the mobile internet is really good in Australia (except in the outback where you have hardly any reception), the cable internet is a disaster. Australia is only ranked 62nd in Internet Speed worldwide, trailing countries like Kazakhstan. Australia has neglected the expansion of the fiber optic network. In some hostels you even had to pay if you wanted to have internet. And all this in the year 2019!

Afterwards I walked a bit along the Yarra river, which divides the city into 2 parts. The river has beautiful promenades, where you encounter a lot of sporty cyclists and joggers. It was so nice and quiet here, very different from the hectic and dirty Bali, where I was before.

If you walk a little out of the busy central business district (CBD) you hardly see any people in the other districts. Australia is rather sparsely populated, nearly 25 million call it their home.

Alleys full of graffiti

The next day I joined the free city tour which covers the alleys, the art, the café culture and the hidden bars. We came to the famous ACDC Lane, which is named after the famous Australian hard rock band. Melbourne is full of such little alleys where you can find lots of colorful graffitis.

We also got the chance to try a Flat White. This coffee drink is very popular in Australia. Unlike cappuccinos, where a lot of air is added to the milk when it is heated, the Flat White only adds a little air to the milk, so the consistency of the milk is almost liquid and there is no foam. When we reached the end of the tour, I just thought  "And that was it?"

Melbourne is a nice city to live in, but for tourists it's a boring city. There are hardly any sights and as the city has a relatively young history, there are only a few historical buildings scattered over the city. The best places are often a bit tucked away in Melbourne and you will only find them if you live there long enough or know a local.

Exploring the hipster area with my local friend

Luckily I knew a local. In the evening I met with my friend Laura who lives and grew up in Melbourne. She gave me lots of tips and places to visit. We met at the beautiful State Library, where a lot of tourists with their cameras hang around and take pictures of the great architecture.

Walking by she showed me some of the many parks of Melbourne and we wandered to the trendy hipster quarter Fitzroy. She took me to one of the hippest restaurants in the city, the Veggie Bar. Even on a Monday evening it was packed and we just got 2 seats at the counter. The vegetarian food was excellent, I came back here later many times.

A good city to be vegan/vegetarian

In Melbourne there are many vegan and alternative places. I mostly visited Indian restaurants, because they are the cheapest. I liked "Gopals" best, where you could get two portions of salad, rice and 2 portions of the main course for almost 11 $. Also I often dined in the Crossways, because there you could refill as much as you wanted for 9$. There was a different dish every day.

Lentils as Anything also implements a wonderful concept. This is a vegan restaurant where you can pay as much as you want. All the employees there work there on a non-profit basis and the food is often made from food near the expiration date that the supermarkets have already sorted out. There are 3 of them in total, in St Kilda, Thornbury and Abbotsford.

Getting (into) naked for Satan

With Laura I also went to Naked for Satan, a bar in Fitzroy that is so famous that I had already read about it in a German newspaper. As the name says, all over the bar there are weird old pictures of naked people. The lovely roof terrace overlooking Melbourne was so packed on Monday evening that we only got a table on the ground floor next to the bar. The shop is known for its great vodka infusions. My cocktail had the great name Naked Bitch. This small glass cost me around 10 €. Australia is one of the most expensive countries in the world, especially for alcohol.

St Kilda beach - The most popular beach in Melbourne

Melbourne also offers beaches, but rather not so beautiful. You will never find shade, sunbeds or parasols. Most Australians lie down in the blazing sun and this although the UV level is very high here. Besides the water felt quite cool despite the hot air temperatures in summer. In the St. Kilda district there is one of the beaches closest to the centre, but you shouldn't expect too much. Nevertheless, there are nice cafés and bars closeby, where also a lot of backpackers hang around.

The smallest penguins in the world

Near the beach, at the Breakwater pier, you can see the smallest penguin species in the world, especially at sunset. The penguins come back to the pier just after sunset, and they leave to go back to sea just before sunrise.

I observed 2 examples of them hiding behind the rocks. The so called little penguin (Eudyptula minor) grows to an average of 33 cm in height and 43 cm in length. They can be found in Australia, New Zealand and Chile.

Colorful bathing boxes in Brighton

A little bit more beautiful is Brighton, a little further out to the south, which is one of the most expensive areas in Melbourne. The Dendy Street Beach became famous for its 82 colourful bathhouses painted in different motives.  The boxes share a uniformity of size and build, and a regular arrangement along the beach, and are the only surviving such structures close to the Melbourne CBD. They cannot be rented, as they are all privately owned. Together with 2 Swiss guys I did not stay long at the beach, because the thermometer rose over 40° C that day. The weather in Melbourne is very inconsistent and it got much colder in summer than I imagined. In the night time sometimes it was only around 8 ° C.

Cashless and cashierless supermarkets

Melbourne is one of the most modern cities I have visited. At the supermarkets there are usually no cashiers anymore, you usually scan the barcode of the products yourself and then pay by credit card or mobile phone. Within the city centre, you can use the tram for FREE.

People are also pretty relaxed. To use the train, you have to scan an electronic card when you get on and off the train. Once I didn't scan my card when I got on the train, then I couldn't get out of the station because the barrier didn't open. I thought I would have to pay a fine, but the security guard at the station simply waved me through and opened the barrier for me.

Many language exchanges to meet new people

In the evenings during the week I usually attended a language exchange, which always took place at different places. Most of the time it ran from 6 pm to 10 pm and if you fancy you could move on to the next bar with the people you met there. Upon entering, first, you get flags of the languages you master or want to learn. Therewith, you can quickly spot which one has to go to in order to learn the desired language. Beside the exchange of languages, this event also serves the purpose of getting to know people.

On Tuesdays it took place in the White Hart Lane Bar with an open air bar and fine craft beer selection, on Wednesday in the European Beer Cafe with fine carpeting and cheap beer, where the event had reserved the entire floor, and on Thursday in the Lion in Melbourne Central Station, which I liked least of all because it was too spacious and the few benches were quickly taken up, so that you had little chance to meet people if you were late because groups had already formed.

Expensive hostel, expensive city

Beyond that I didn't have much experience with the Melbourne nightlife until then. Melbourne is a pretty expensive city, especially for going out. There is actually only one cheap bar in the center and that is the Asian Beer Cafe, which is very crowded on the weekends and especially frequented by very young party people.

My hostel in Melbourne, the United Backpackers, did not really satisfy me. The price of 27€/night is a joke if you look at what you get in return. Many hostels in developing countries offer much more at a considerably lower price. For the breakfast, a ridiculous pancake, it was not worth getting up before 10 o'clock. The worst thing were the communal toilets, for which you often had to queue even when you just wanted to brush your teeth, because wash basin, shower and toilet were all in 5 lockable cabins. With more than 60 people in one floor, the cabins quickly became occupied for a long time. Often some of the cabins were also locked for maintenance reasons. Moreover, the atmosphere was very impersonal. The hostel also organized events in the basement every evening, but with Beer Pong, Karoake & Co this was more aimed at the younger western crowd. In general, the clients came mainly from Germany. For them it is already normal to go to Australia for at least 1 year after graduation.

Swedish black metal in the center of Melbourne

The highlight of my two-week stay in Melbourne turned out to be a black metal concert by the Swedish band Watain. The concert took place not far from my hostel in a venue called Max Watts, right in the centre of Melbourne. Usually they always shift metal concerts to the outskirts of the city. That this is not the case also shows how alternative the city is. It was a really great concert with a brilliant stage show and a full sound. Also the local support band Nocturnal Graves impressed.

In between the crazy Swedes even sprayed artificial blood into the crowd. Me and my buddy Ben, that I met there, looked like bloodthirsty psychos afterwards. 2 other rugged Australians had gotten even more blood on them than us and looked like they had just escaped from jail! When I walked back to my hostel after the concert some of the pedestrians looked at me confused or sceptical. As it happened, the police was also standing in my hostel, but they recognized immediately that this was just fake blood in my face.

Leaving Australia for a while after difficulties with job hunting

I had imagined the job search to be much easier, but the competition, especially in the big cities, is immense. There are now so many backpackers that most employees probably don't even respond to electronic applications anymore because they get flooded by it. A lot of things happen in Australia through personal introductions or contacts. Some backpackers run with 100 printed CVs, from one café or restaurant to another to be hired somewhere. This way seemed too intrusive to me. To the electronic applications, which I sent, I did not get an answer. As my birthday was approaching, I didn't want to spend more money in Melbourne than I already did, so I booked a 3.5 week trip to New Zealand at short notice and left Melbourne after 2 weeks.