What a Weekend

It was a quite an exciting weekend here in Sydney, but just as much so back in the US where my Boilers were battling their hearts out in the NCAA Tournament. The first round victory over Arizona was late in the day on Friday, so it was 10 am on Saturday here in Sydney, which worked out perfect. However, for the second round game against Florida the game was at 2:15 in the US, which meant I was up at 5:15 this morning listening to it online. It was well worth it, even though the Boilers lost. No shame in losing to the defending champs and playing them extremely tough like we did. So now there’s no more Purdue basketball that I have to worry about missing out on and I already can’t wait for next season. Should be a fun one!

As for the rest of my weekend, I spent a lot of time downtown. On Saturday, me and the fellas went to Circular Quay for some food and then just relaxed and had a few beers at the Opera Bar. It’s a great place to hang out, because you can just sit on the wall right along the harbor and look to your left and see the beautiful Opera House all lit up in the night, to your right is the CBD (Central Business District, downtown with all the massice buildings) and then behind you is the Harbour Bridge. Not to mention, right in front of you is the edge of the Royal Botanical Gardens. So it’s just an awesome place to relax and spend time with friends and these guys are probably the closest of friends I’ve got here in Sydney. Dominik is from Germany and is just a real nice easy-going guy who is really into sports, but mainly the big German sport, handball, which I’ve never seen, but soon will. He’s also been teaching me some German words and says that my pronunciation is actually very good. This weekend he was reading a text from a friend which was written in German and I just started reading it just for kicks and he said that my pronunciation was quite good, at least compared to most other people. Pretty neat considering I’ve never studied German or anything, only heard it in the movies and from Dom and my housemates, Jochen and Kati. Anyway, the other guys with us who I spend a lot of time with are Harry, from Virginia, who reminds me so much of my buddy at Purdue, Kenny Stauffer, because he’s so into basketball and sports, and then also Rafael, who is from Brazil. There is so much that we all have to talk about since we have such diverse backgrounds and for Harry and me it’s just fun talking sports. I think he’s into sports just as much as me, if not more. So it was a nice night of chillin at the Opera Bar before we went over to Pancakes on the Rocks, a 24-hour stylish restaurant, with seriously the most fabulous pancakes ever. Gotta give it up to Matt Mechlem for that recommendation. We were absolutely stuffed after eating at Pancakes and got tired awfully quick, plus Rafael had to be up really early the next morning to pick up his wife at the airport, so we headed home.

Sunday ended up being much more enjoyable than I was expecting. I woke up and got to watch a little bit of the NCAA Tournament on ESPN here at home. It’s ESPN Australia so there’s only a little bit of American sports that are shown, so this was a treat. But anyway, I got to see some close, exciting games as is the norm for March Madness. However, Sunday was a very special day, because it marked the 75^th anniversary of Sydney’s Harbour Bridge. So they made a nice little celebration out of it, which to be honest, isn’t very surprising, because here in Sydney there is always something to be celebrating; Mardigras, St. Patrick’s Day, Harbour Bridge’s B-day, always something. But in honor of the Harbour Bridge turning 75 years old, the bridge was completely shutdown all day and people could walk across it from North Sydney, down into The Rocks, Darling Harbour and the CBD. Now, when Dom asked if I wanted to go along, I figured, sure, why not? It’ll be a nice little stroll across the bridge, and when else will I ever be able to walk through the middle of one of the busiest highways in Sydney? So I was in.

We went around 7:30, thinking it would be a good time to go with the sun setting and it wouldn’t be too hot or anything. Turns out it was cloudy and overcast the entire day. So continues my run of crappy weather on days when a nice, sunny, normal Australian day would be just great. It ended up not being a big deal after all, though, because it got dark a little bit sooner, allowing the lights on the bridge to be that much more awe-inspiring. There was also a soundtrack to the walk through the bridge. As we were first walking up to the beginning of the bridge the music was something you might hear at the beginning of a movie. Sort of an up-lifting, here we go type of sound coming from some massive speakers. Then, as we got further in there, there was more upbeat dance club type music playing and it was like being in an outdoor club or something with all the crazy lights and heaps of people. Even further along, they would have various clips of speeches or news casts playing. I’m guessing it was all things that had happened around the world over the last 75 years. I remember hearing, “Germany has invaded Poland,” and also Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. But they were mixed in with music of that time, like The Beatles, so I was really impressed and thought it was done very well. They also used some artificial smoke in certain places, which added to what I described to the guys as a euphoric atmosphere. At the end, of course, there was that accomplishing, “we made it” sounding music that you might hear at the end of a movie. So the whole thing was kind of like we just took a journey through a movie and it even took us a little over an hour, so yeah, sort of like going to the movies, except this didn’t cost anything!

Oh, I almost forgot. At the beginning of the bridge walk everyone was given free hats to wear and the hats had little lights on the front of them. Well, when we got to the end of the bridge at the other side, it was really neat to look back and see all the little lights marching toward us. When we were on the bridge, we wondered why we could see all the lights up ahead as if people were turned around, but when we got there we found out why. Unfortunately, my camera isn’t anything really special and can’t take very good photos at night, so as usual my photos do not even come close to capturing the brilliance and grandeur that I saw that night and it especially can’t describe the enjoyment that I had.