brisbane. what.

i was quite excited to get to brisbane. it feels like ages since i've been in a big city and it made me want to immediately buy a paper and find out what's been happening in the world. i got giddy at the thought of maybe going to the theatre and seeing all the bright lights and watching proper traffic jams and all that lark. i managed to stumble from the transit centre to the hostel and it turned out to be a really delightful old building. apparently, it used to be a ymca type building, built in the early 20th century. it still has the old style cage lift which, luckily, i don't have to use cos i'm only on the first floor. it has a dark wooden boarding school feel to it, but in a good way. makes a change from the beach hostels. it reminds me of the mental hospital dorothy goes to in 'return to oz'. also, in a good way.

so i dropped my bags and stepped out into the city with high hopes. i immediately found a woolworths (which is a supermarket here) which was a good sign. i found the main shopping mall and found out that the cultural centre was going to be closed the next day so decided i'd better head over there. things started to go a little bit wrong when i found out all the shows were closing that day so i couldn't get to see anything. but i found the city beach, which is an artificial beach next to the river. i sat for half an hour watching some kids with a stereo performing dance routines in the style of beyonce. vast entertainment. i then decided to go back to the hostel for a lie down, my tiredness catching up with me.

i'd had enough of lying down, reading my book, so i decided i would go to the pictures that night and, great joy, 'the history boys' was on. i think god was taking this i-want-to-be-alone thing of mine a bit too far, though, by granting me a cinema entirely to myself. it was well weird being on my own amongst the forest of seats. i felt like elvis. clearly, not much demand in brisbane for films based in yorkshire in 1983. but i made myself at home and quietly let myself out at the end.

i got up this morning not in the best of moods and i'm not sure why. i'm just ultra tired at the moment and i was sat staring into space, having finished my cup of tea ages ago, when this blonde lass asked if she could sit at my table for her breakfast. i wasn't feeling very talkative but she got me talking and we both started to ponder what there was to do here. we were chatting for about an hour when she asked whether she could join me for the day. and it was cool. we went up the lift in the city hall. it was recommended by the lonely planet. but it wasn't actually that great. all you saw were building sites and a load of ugly tower blocks. brisbane seems to be an ugly city with a pretty side dying to get out. it's like, they have a few lovely old buildings in a classical style and they also have some nice modern ones, but they have soooo many bluddy ugly buildings that just obliterate everything else. here there is the war memorial and the central station but it's just overshadowed by a nasty 1960s building. and it's the case throughout the whole city.

we spent a really nice day wandering about. we were walking to the botanical gardens when i was trying to remember what the brisbane couple we met in fiji were recommending about the place. a guy with a little girl on a bike walking next to us overheard us and directed us to the waterfront where there was a sunday market and we got a coffee and a pancake and chatted and chatted. we then went for a glass of wine in a bar and chatted and chatted. and then we decided to walk over to the one street of chinatown here and get some thai food (to prepare me for next week) and we chatted and chatted. that pretty much exhausted all brisbane's options. there's really nothing much to do here. in fact, my companion was feeling really depressed cos she's just come here for work and found out that it's actually rubbish. but we've just walked back to the hostel now and we chatted and chatted. i still don't know her name, actually, and she doesn't know mine but it's kind of got beyond that stage cos we've discussed so much about travelling and boys and shopping. i know she's from finland and 28 and wants to do humanitarian work in asia but i don't know her name. we're off to the tv room now in the hope that something good is on. maybe i'll find out her name now but, in a way, i quite like not knowing.