friends and the city

❀ melbourne is a wonderful city; full of action, colour, variety, culture... a big melting pot of nationalities, fashions, cuisines... it's the second most live-able city in the world apparently, (whatever that means) and very international..
on the weekend, i saw melbourne through the eyes of my italian friend irene, who has just moved there and fallen in love with it...
we hung out down brunswick street, which used to be my old neighbourhood, full of outdoor cafes, quirky bars and vintage clothes shops, and talked about life and love and travel. we realized that once you work on a cruise ship, no matter how settled and happy you are on land, you always forget the down-side of sea life and feel that soft but steady pull back onto ships... at the same time, we're both glad we quit early before we got hooked forever like lots of crew do...

today i met up with my old friends pat and kim for brunch, coffee and an appalling one-hour game of pool at the Evelyn (i can't believe i ever was a pool shark!)... it's funny how even though we now see each other less than once a year, it always feels like no time has passed.

after lunch i went into the city to meet liz, an old friend and housemate from uni. as i got off at the tram stop where she was waiting, we briefly glanced at each other and away, like two strangers, and in that millisecond, we managed the all-encompassing 'size-up' that girls have mastered on each other, before (in shock) we scanned back, recognized each other and burst into delighted laughter...
after three beers we were already pissed in the summer heat and laughed our arses off at old memories; a vintage jacket of mine that we had a huge argument over, bedroom swapping and re-arranging, crushes on next-door neighbours, liz's special telephone trick: when calling to ask parents for money or chucking a sickie at work, hold the receiver 10 centimeters from your ear to achieve emotional distance from the conversation....

it feels like so long ago that i lived in melbourne and even though i've been traveling for years now, i still had considered it my home.... but as i was carried away on the evening train back to my parents house in my hometown, i had a pang of sadness wash over me and i couldn't figure out if it was nostalgia, or the realization that i don't quite know where my home is anymore...