Sydney I love you, but you're bringing me down
If you've been reading my recent posts (if so, thanks for being here), then you'll know i've been travelling back to Australia for a short trip to see my family in Sydney. Sydney really is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The way the sun bounces off the water in the harbour adds this sapphire-emerald sparkle to the cityscape. The sandstone is gorgeous, somehow making everywhere in the city proper feel like the beach, even though its a few kilometres away.
There's good food everywhere, superb coffee seemingly on every street, beautiful people roaming about in the sportswear even though it's 4pm on a workday. It's easy to fall in to this very easy-going lifestyle.
As I got back to Berlin after my trip, I was trying to nail down a few feelings of why I was so happy to be back. Sydney had made me restless. Being back here made me calm.
Maybe it was due to where I was spending a lot of time, more so in the city itself as opposed to up north on the beaches, but I'd never realised just how loud Sydney is. There's an endless supply of cars criss-crossing the streets. Everywhere I walked, there were people. People being loud and having a good time, which I love for them, but I began to notice this very stark difference to Berlin that for some reason I hadn't clocked before.
I spent a Saturday in Sydney walking across town to get from my sister's place to mum's house. There was only one moment where there was no one near me in the entire five kilometre walk: when I'd accidentally gone on the bike path behind the TikTok Entertainment Centre by crossing a street where I shouldn't have. That lasted five minutes.
Everywhere I went, it was pandemonium. A bombardment of noise: people and cars, pubs filled with folk shouting to their mates, traffic idling at the lights, buskers, music spilling out of restaurants. It just didn't end.
We've travelled to Nepal recently and spent time in Kathmandu trying to hold our elbows in to not get them removed by a passing motorbike, I've been to India many years ago and got sucked in the Delhi street vortex with people caressing my red hair; I'm no stranger to busy cities. I don't know what it was, but it only hit me when I got back to Berlin: it's so quiet here.
The first Sunday back, I went to the climbing gym. I had gotten off the train at Humboldthain and needed to traverse a few smaller streets to get to the gym itself. There was a moment when I realised I was the only person on the street. No cars. No people. It was completely devoid of life except my own. It was glorious.
In Australia, I met friends who had been forced to move further north to the coast, because life in Sydney had become too prohibitively expensive. One friend is a single mother and had been forced north about a year ago after her parents sold their childhood home, which she and her two children had been staying at.
After the parents sold up, securing their millions, they went south while my friend went north. She found a tiny house in a beachside town costing something like $500 AUD a week. The house was neighbour to a literal meth dealer. One day, she told me, there's a meth'd up lunatic with a knife and a Hard Solo box on their head running down the road. Her and her daughter were just about to leave the house, stopped on the porch, she told the daughter to go inside, and then she immediately began to find a new place to live. Luckily, they found somewhere: two streets away. For $680 AUD a week.
It was small, but had a room for the kids, and was cosy enough for her to work on their dining room table. Then, she told me that her single parent payments had reduced for some reason or another, and she now received $250 a fortnight for two children, down from $400. Great, so in order to move away from the meth dealer for the safety of her children, she needs to pay more rent, and then their support from the government drops, so now all savings are likely out the window. I was saddened and infuriated to hear this. I'm sure you are too.
Australia is really hitting its stride when it comes to inequality. The cost of everything was so much worse than I remember. I paid $22 for a sandwich, which was delicious, but dear god what are they doing over there. I just couldn't fathom how anyone on a standard wage was affording anything from the supermarkets while also paying these outrageous rents. Let's not even bother talking about the petrol prices coupled with the absolute need for a car in Sydney. You're now paying top dollar to sit in traffic. What a steal!
It was fun to cosplay as a fancy Sydney-sider. Staying at my mum's place in Glebe, walking around Pyrmont and the harbour, running over the bridge just because it was so close; but deep down it felt like the inaccessible place, that, given the way we live our lives in Berlin (cheap rent, four days a week work, riding bicycles everywhere), there was no chance I would be convinced to give it up and move to Sydney. Ok, maybe if I lived directly on the beach by the ocean. Maybe.
I like that Germany has strong social security (even though there's future risk with an aging population and less workers). That Berlin really embraces green initiatives and often succeeds in getting them integrated (the huge push to get add more bicycle paths has been a godsend for us, for example) is another boon I've come to really appreciate. For groceries and even for some, rent, it is cheap, especially compared to Sydney.
And while Sydney does have a deep respect from its population there, it felt so much more "fuck you, I've got mine" than I'd felt in a long time when it came to how people are living amongst each other. It had this Americanisation (the USA I mean) that was disheartening to witness. I don't feel that here in Germany. I hope it's not just a naïveté that shows I just haven't been paying enough attention.
It's nice to be back. The sun is shining, the streets are quiet. I've fixed my bike and get to glide down the bike path or even the entire bicycle priority street on my way to work. The cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom. Berlin really is god's country.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful long weekend break: you deserve it.