Barossa Valley
Blast! I just tried to enter my first March Madness pool and my computer failed miserably and wouldn't load the page and now I'm left out again. Arrggg... that just happened and is on my mind which is why you are hearing about it. Now on to the events of the past few days.
Yesterday was my day trip to the Barossa Valley, SA's famous wine region, with Anja who I met at the hostel. In addition to four wineries, we also stopped at the Giant Rocking Horse and the Whispering Wall. The Giant Rocking Horse is my first giant thing, amazing since Australia is filled with them. There's a giant banana, prawn, pineapple, and much much more. I don't know how I coped without seeing any till now. The Whispering Wall was less picturesque, but much much cooler. Its actually a dam that was built in the early 1900s and just happened by chance to be a perfect acoustic arch. This means that if you stand on one side and your friend stands on the other, you can talk as if you are standing right next to each other just from the echoes bouncing off the wall. It doesn't sound like much, but it is very cool- even cooler since it was done by accident. I'm sure if they had tried to do it that way it would never have turned out right. After those two sights we went to the wineries, got to see wine sitting in big vats fermenting with yeast, which made it seem very unappealing I thought. The Barossa Valley is a very strange place because you look out and you see all these green vineyards, and then right next to them are completely barren stretchs of brown dirt and dust. There hasn't been enough rain in this area in 7 years- it just amazes me that anything is growing at all.
When I got home in the evening I was all set to go out and volunteer until I got a message from Tricia, the volunteer coordinator, that my shifts for the next few nights were being cancelled because they had overbooked volunteers. I was a little upset about that because now I had the whole evening with nothing to do- until 10:15 when I was planning to go to a show. I decided to try and not mope though, and walked into town without much of a plan. At the last minute, I decided to go into a movie, and ended up seeing The Good German, which was very good. It was upsetting to see Tobey Maguire play such a creep though. After the movie I went to wander around The Garden of Unearthly Delights, where my show was happening. The Garden is part of the Fringe, set up in a park next to the city, with some performance venues, side show type tents, food stalls, ferris wheel, trampolines, and other entertainments. I watched a couple magicians for a while- one did this crazy trick where he guessed a number that a guy in the crowd was thinking of, but he did it by drawing a 4x4 grid of squares and drew a number in each square and each row of 4 numbers added up to the guys' number, which was 69. It was so bizarre- CJ, do you know how to do that?? I also went into a side show tent where this weird mystic kind of guy was presenting a 10 year old girl who could move things with her mind. I thought the dynamic between these two people was so interesting that I wanted to see what their 10 minute show was like. What happened was that she seemed to move dirt around on a sheet of paper without touching it, and also she seemed to break a light bulb that the man was holding in his hands. It was just odd to see the pair of them doing these tricks- like something you wouldn't expect to see unless you were living before 1900.
Eventually I went to the show I had tickets for- it was called "Die Roten Punkte" and it was a music/comedy act of two people, posing as a brother and sister from Germany, who have a punk band and think they are very cool but are of course really bad and constantly disfunctional and fighting on stage, etc. It played a little like an SNL skit- but a really funny SNL skit! I talked to the woman afterwards and she said they were going to the Montreal Fringe this spring and then to NY, but not to perform, just to have fun. Too bad- I kept thinking that I would like to bring Lydia to it! Even better then the actual show though, was that right before I started chatting with the woman who was trying to coax people into the show. Her name was Tina and she seemed really cool. I talked to her after the show too, and she introduced me to another guy working in the Garden named Joel. I felt so like a desperate man in a bar- wishing that I could get their numbers! I'm hoping to go back to the Garden and chat with Tina some more, just so maybe we could hang out some time. I just felt too weird to ask them if they wanted to hang out when we just met- easier to do that with backpackers then with real people with lives! But they did seem like very cool people. Then after Joel gave me a tour around the Garden (definitely gay by the way, in case anyone was thinking otherwise), I ran into one of the girls I volunteered with. She was with her boyfriend and another girl and we all started talking. I felt so cool! Like I actually knew people!
Anyway, that was yesterday. Today I hardly did anything. I still have a bit of a cold, but it seems to be going away especially now that I've been taking drugs. I read in bed for a lot of the morning and then called CJ to plan for Hawaii. Then I got a call from my aunt Cathy's friend, Robyn and I got to meet her for coffee in the city. She was very nice and friendly- even offered me her room out in a suburb on the beach if I wanted a place to stay while she was traveling for the next week. Its much too far out for me to stay there, but it was such a nice offer! After seeing her I ate dinner, bought some books, and went to today's show- Animal Farm. Yes, I finally got to see it- went into the right theater this time. It was pretty good, although I never quite got past the weirdness of one man pretending to be various animals of various genders. It was suitably disturbing though- more disturbing then I even remember the book being when I read it a long time ago.
So that brings us up to date. Tomorrow I'm going back to see some shows in the Garden and try to build on the tenuous friendships with Tina and Joel. Could be a total failure, but I might as well try it! I've also got a busy weekend ahead- despite being asked by Tricia to give up some volunteer shifts, I was also asked by a different Fringe coordinator to volunteer at this weekend's Family Day. I'm not sure what Family Day entails, but I know that I'll be setting up for it on Saturday and manning an Info Desk during it on Sunday. I should find out more details tomorrow evening when I'm meeting some people for an info session. Yay for being busy!
Love,
Emma
Yesterday was my day trip to the Barossa Valley, SA's famous wine region, with Anja who I met at the hostel. In addition to four wineries, we also stopped at the Giant Rocking Horse and the Whispering Wall. The Giant Rocking Horse is my first giant thing, amazing since Australia is filled with them. There's a giant banana, prawn, pineapple, and much much more. I don't know how I coped without seeing any till now. The Whispering Wall was less picturesque, but much much cooler. Its actually a dam that was built in the early 1900s and just happened by chance to be a perfect acoustic arch. This means that if you stand on one side and your friend stands on the other, you can talk as if you are standing right next to each other just from the echoes bouncing off the wall. It doesn't sound like much, but it is very cool- even cooler since it was done by accident. I'm sure if they had tried to do it that way it would never have turned out right. After those two sights we went to the wineries, got to see wine sitting in big vats fermenting with yeast, which made it seem very unappealing I thought. The Barossa Valley is a very strange place because you look out and you see all these green vineyards, and then right next to them are completely barren stretchs of brown dirt and dust. There hasn't been enough rain in this area in 7 years- it just amazes me that anything is growing at all.
When I got home in the evening I was all set to go out and volunteer until I got a message from Tricia, the volunteer coordinator, that my shifts for the next few nights were being cancelled because they had overbooked volunteers. I was a little upset about that because now I had the whole evening with nothing to do- until 10:15 when I was planning to go to a show. I decided to try and not mope though, and walked into town without much of a plan. At the last minute, I decided to go into a movie, and ended up seeing The Good German, which was very good. It was upsetting to see Tobey Maguire play such a creep though. After the movie I went to wander around The Garden of Unearthly Delights, where my show was happening. The Garden is part of the Fringe, set up in a park next to the city, with some performance venues, side show type tents, food stalls, ferris wheel, trampolines, and other entertainments. I watched a couple magicians for a while- one did this crazy trick where he guessed a number that a guy in the crowd was thinking of, but he did it by drawing a 4x4 grid of squares and drew a number in each square and each row of 4 numbers added up to the guys' number, which was 69. It was so bizarre- CJ, do you know how to do that?? I also went into a side show tent where this weird mystic kind of guy was presenting a 10 year old girl who could move things with her mind. I thought the dynamic between these two people was so interesting that I wanted to see what their 10 minute show was like. What happened was that she seemed to move dirt around on a sheet of paper without touching it, and also she seemed to break a light bulb that the man was holding in his hands. It was just odd to see the pair of them doing these tricks- like something you wouldn't expect to see unless you were living before 1900.
Eventually I went to the show I had tickets for- it was called "Die Roten Punkte" and it was a music/comedy act of two people, posing as a brother and sister from Germany, who have a punk band and think they are very cool but are of course really bad and constantly disfunctional and fighting on stage, etc. It played a little like an SNL skit- but a really funny SNL skit! I talked to the woman afterwards and she said they were going to the Montreal Fringe this spring and then to NY, but not to perform, just to have fun. Too bad- I kept thinking that I would like to bring Lydia to it! Even better then the actual show though, was that right before I started chatting with the woman who was trying to coax people into the show. Her name was Tina and she seemed really cool. I talked to her after the show too, and she introduced me to another guy working in the Garden named Joel. I felt so like a desperate man in a bar- wishing that I could get their numbers! I'm hoping to go back to the Garden and chat with Tina some more, just so maybe we could hang out some time. I just felt too weird to ask them if they wanted to hang out when we just met- easier to do that with backpackers then with real people with lives! But they did seem like very cool people. Then after Joel gave me a tour around the Garden (definitely gay by the way, in case anyone was thinking otherwise), I ran into one of the girls I volunteered with. She was with her boyfriend and another girl and we all started talking. I felt so cool! Like I actually knew people!
Anyway, that was yesterday. Today I hardly did anything. I still have a bit of a cold, but it seems to be going away especially now that I've been taking drugs. I read in bed for a lot of the morning and then called CJ to plan for Hawaii. Then I got a call from my aunt Cathy's friend, Robyn and I got to meet her for coffee in the city. She was very nice and friendly- even offered me her room out in a suburb on the beach if I wanted a place to stay while she was traveling for the next week. Its much too far out for me to stay there, but it was such a nice offer! After seeing her I ate dinner, bought some books, and went to today's show- Animal Farm. Yes, I finally got to see it- went into the right theater this time. It was pretty good, although I never quite got past the weirdness of one man pretending to be various animals of various genders. It was suitably disturbing though- more disturbing then I even remember the book being when I read it a long time ago.
So that brings us up to date. Tomorrow I'm going back to see some shows in the Garden and try to build on the tenuous friendships with Tina and Joel. Could be a total failure, but I might as well try it! I've also got a busy weekend ahead- despite being asked by Tricia to give up some volunteer shifts, I was also asked by a different Fringe coordinator to volunteer at this weekend's Family Day. I'm not sure what Family Day entails, but I know that I'll be setting up for it on Saturday and manning an Info Desk during it on Sunday. I should find out more details tomorrow evening when I'm meeting some people for an info session. Yay for being busy!
Love,
Emma
2 Comments:
This post has been removed by the author.
You were in my dream last night and you had returned from Australia with long, straight hair and bangs. It was a good look for you! Hope you're having fun. Love Ter
PS - I deleted my first comment due to grammatical errors.
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