Brisbane is cool! I have been here for two days now and really like it. It's a bit cold (only 21 degrees Celsius, but o.k., it's winter) but the city is pretty, has tons of good bars and a lot to offer. And: I started my English course!

But let me rave about Brisbane a bit longer first: People are very friendly here, for one thing. They are really communicative and open minded and just start talking to you, asking you where you are from etc.. I haven't experienced that in a city of his size (1.6 million) before. And it's nice. Besides Brisbane has a lot of immigrants that make the city a really interesting place. The street signs behind the hostel I'm staying in ("The Bunk", 22 AUD/dorm) are in Chinese and just a block down the road you see Gaelic (Irish) street signs.

Books and computers galore

Besides Bisbane has an amazing second hand bookshop ("The Archives" on Charlotte Street) where I found all the books I had been looking for ever since I came to Australia. I even found something by Dorothy Parker - and I had tried to buy a book of her ever since Broome! And - almost even more important - the city has loads of well equipped internet cafes. And many of them are open 24/7! At approx. 3.50 AUD it's still a wee bit more expensive than I'd prefer, but it's way better than anything I was able to find since Broome.

A kingdom for a parking space!

Unfortunately though, traffic is really bad and it's almost impossible to find a parking space! And even if you find one (as I did) and ask the locals whether you really can park there ("Sure! You could live there if you wanted to") you risk getting a ticket. Grumpf. But considering that parking a car in a parking house costs 25 AUD/day it's almost worth risking the 50 AUD ticket. It was at least some comfort to me that I'm not the only person to have this problem. After getting the ticket I went to the next police station and asked them to kindly explain to me why I had gotten it. And they explained to me that there are small signs on all incoming roads into Brisbane that tell you that you can only park for two hours anywhere in the city unless otherwise signposted. That's a bit ridiculous, isn't it. But I felt better when the cop said: "There's nothing you can do. The City Council will screw you no matter what. I just had to pay a ticket yesterday". It's only little comfort but better than none. In the end I even decided to change my hostel because of this. We stayed at the "Embassy Backpackers" (23 AUD on Queens and Elisabeth Street) the first night. But there simply was nowhere to park, so we had to book into a parking house. But obviously it doesn't make sense to pay more money for parking than accommodation, so I moved into "The Bunk". The other hostel was a bit nicer and better thought through (who forgot to put toilets on the same floor as the kitchen and why is the kitchen in a separate building from where the dorms are?) but it has free parking and some rather good looking staff members :-). God, I'm shallow today...

"Teaching English" or "I still hate grammar"

Last night was the first lesson of my course to Teach English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Come Sunday I will be ready to face classes of students all over the world, using only English in the classroom even if they don't understand a word and I don't understand a word of their language! That's the theory at least. Admittedly I'm still a bit intimidated by the idea of teaching English. I know that my English is good. Very good, even. But I'm not a native speaker. And I do make mistakes. On the other hand my English is way better than most of the teach I had and they had university degrees! So maybe I shouldn't worry too much about it. Having to hold a lesson on Sunday still scares me a bit, though. Besides I think that the timing is horrible! After all, it's my birthday tomorrow (hint, hint) and I'll be sitting in class until ten o clock at night! And I'll miss almost all of the big music festival, that will be held in the area of the city I live in from tomorrow until sunday! Damn! The course seems to be good anyhow. Yesterday I really felt like we were learning something and the two teachers are very friendly and seem to know what they are talking about. So it's all good. If it just wasn't for the homework - 12 modules of English grammar as an interactive online-test. Yucks!

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