Since I was a little girl I have always been fascinated with Australia. I have family here, they moved to Australia in the 80s but visited Hungary quite regularly. By their stories and gifts I have fallen in love with this place. I also was obsessed with nature shows as kid and I started branching out into Australian ones, most specifically to Steve Irwin. He taught me about the wildlife of Australia and kangaroos and koalas quickly became my favourite animals.

I don’t think the little girl who was sitting on the carpet all those years ago, watching ‘Crocodile Hunter’ and fighting with her own imaginary crocodile, would have believed that she landed in Australia at the age of 20. The flight was excruciatingly long, but as the tiny screen in front of me showed that we were just above Perth my excitement level rose from the ashes of my exhaustion. To be totally honest I did cry some tears as the plane touched down. I couldn’t believe I am here finally.

I had the most amazing welcoming committee one could ask for. My boyfriend James and his parents picked me at the airport. James is the second reason why this trip is so special to me. Without him I might have never had enough motivation to save up and invest all my money into this adventure. Leaving out the cheesy details here is a picture of us after our reunion at the airport:

On my first full day here we had a walk around the city centre. We took a train to Flinders Street Station. Melbourne is such a unique city, it’s a mix of art deco-ish buildings and arcades, modern skyscrapers and artsy laneways.

We started with Hosier Lane, one of the iconic laneways, where every square metre of wall was filled with street art. Along with other tourists, we took pictures of the ever renewing artworks and also posed a bit in front of the ones that we liked the most.

Walking around the city we had to stop a lot, since I was taking so many photos. I just found it magical how randomly mixed the architecture is. The arcades had an elegant 20s feeling, with pastel coloured tiles and golden decorations. Then on the next street, between two all-glass buildings, there was a New York style apartment building with some kind of ads from the 50s painted on its side.

We had a short break from exploring, when James took me to his favourite crêpe place called Roule Galette. Beside having amazing food, this place was a great demonstration of another wonderful thing about Melbourne: its multiculturalism. It was an authentic French crêperie with all the waiters speaking with a French accent that we had trouble understanding. After having a savoury crêpe each we couldn’t resist getting a sweet one to share. We ended up choosing sugar and lemon flavoured, which was strange idea for me, but a pleasant surprise at the same time.

As the sun set was approaching we walked across the Yarra River, which is Melbourne’s cute little river. Not Danube sized, but more like the Tiber that snakes through Rome (casually flashes her past travel experiences to seem cooler). The view from the bridge was just perfect with the last rays of sunshine flashing between the skyscrapers.

We spent the night with James’ friends, playing card games and having some casual cultural exchange, where I tried Vegemite flavoured Shapes (cracker shaped like Australia) and some dark chocolate Tim Tams. They also had a taste of homemade pálinka straight from Hungary.

Couldn’t have wished for a better first day. Thank you for reading this first post and hope you will come along on this adventure with me. You can also see what I am up to on my Instagram, which you find on the bottom of the Homepage .

G’ Day Mate! Raccoon is out.