Sending you a Postcard

Sending you a Postcard

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Living and getting started at UWA campus

Hi all,

UWA campus is looking great and there has been lot of stuff to do. Orientation week is going on at the moment and it has kept me quite busy.

During o-week I have met so many new people, locals and other exchangers from all around the world. Both UWA and our college (the place I'm living in) is organizing tours and other happenings to get to know the city, campus and other people better. The campus itself is very beautiful with its parks and old-fashioned buildings located by the Swan River right next to Kings Park. It is tho' located further away from the city center than I expected: it's about 10 minutes' bus trip to the center of Perth and 20 minutes to the Cottesloe Beach. In addition the business school happens to be right at the very other end of the campus so from the main entrance and colleges it's about 10-15 minutes' walk there. Nevertheless, so far I haven't mind the "distance".

Getting started with the studies during orientation week, it's mainly about the enrolments. I enrolled into the units (meaning courses) one month in advance, but ended up changing few of them so I've spent few days studying UWA Handbook for suitable units and running back and forth between Study Abroad Office (to get the form to change units) and the business school (to get the changed units accepted and signed before returning the form to the Study Abroad Office). At the moment I have "Enterprise Systems" and "International Finance" (no laughing.), "Global Economy" and one easier unit called "Consumer Behaviour". I've also tried to organize my timetable in CAS (Class Allocation System) in order to have long long weekends for travelling :) At the moment I have school only from Monday to Wednesday, whippee!

Winthrop Hall

Walking around the campus
Business school is the newest building on campus, very neat from the inside too!
Regarding accommodation  I chose to live at the campus in one of the colleges. Unfortunately it's pretty much the most expensive way to live here but it's also the easiest. Other option would be renting a room from a shared house which usually costs around 150-200AUD per week (and they're gonna be fancier and newer than UniHall), you can find one for example from gumtree.com.au or flatmates.com.au.

I struggled between the options for a long time but at the end applied for the colleges during fall, before leaving for exchange. Hard to say yet whether I did the right decision or not :D
There are five colleges out of which I'm living in UniHall. I have my own room here (not exactly a five-star-hotel room), and I'm sharing a kitchenette and a bathroom with five other girls in my corridor. The rent includes a meal plan (14 meals per week, can be used as you wish between breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week), and all the colleges are located perfectly just next to the campus and bus stops. We have an access to the campus gym, and in UniHall area there are neat yards, common areas, free wifi (that doesn't work in the dorms very well tho'...), happenings such as Café Crawl organized by ResLife etc. Best thing is that I've met so many people here that I wouldn't have got to know otherwise. However, the rent is ridiculously high, 410AUD/week so over 1000€ per month, making it the most expensive way to live in Perth. And as said, the dorms aren't too fancy, and the food is quite heavy, would prefer not to pay for it and cook my own stuff and eat oudoors every now and then. However, you'd meet so many people in the dining hall, it's a good place for a chat.

UniHall (The new building. Dorms aren't in this one.)
All in all first days in Perth have been great. We went to the Cottesloe Beach with few exchangers and it was just beautiful, the water was incredibly clear and blue (better than Bondi or Manly!). Then we spent few nights with UniHall residents hanging out in the common areas, going out to Matilda Bay, gossiping in the dining hall and planning our upcoming trips. I also met my local friend for the first time in years who took me around the coastline to beautiful beaches and harbours :) I got a feeling it's gonna be good four months!
Cottesloe Beach
Old school café at the Café Crawl
We even have peacocks living at the campus, who else can say that?

Friday, February 19, 2016

Melbourne & Great Ocean Road

Melbourne felt like an intriguing mixture of classic European and urban hipster style. It has no grandiose sightseeing, but behind every corner we found something surprising – like a break dance show, magicians and a bar under a bridge. Melbourne is a place of good food, small special stores, and different kind of happenings. 

During our first day we attended St Kilda festival, free music festival with loads of food trucks by the beach boulevard, a nice concept. Heard new kind of music from local bands and ate delicious vegan food and coconuts!



Otherwise we mainly hung around the city: took a free tram tour around the city center, checked out many things from the “Things to do in Melbourne” list in TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet, such as Hosier Lane’s graffiti and Block Arcade, went to the Queen Victoria Night Market, did some cafeteria hopping, took a long walk in Fitzroy and Collinswood and admired the city skyline from Eureka Tower. Another cool place was Federation Square by the Yarra river, (it’s like Melbourne’s “Kansalaistori”) with outdoor free cinema and free Art of Moving Image Center (like a free “Kiasma”).
Block Arcade
Royal Arcade
Café Hopping
One of the many many many pieces at Hosier Lane
View from Eureka Tower
Great Ocean Road
Of course we also drove through GOR to the must-see Twelve Apostoles. The road starts near Geelong and heads to Adelaide. This time our road trip took two days – just enough time to drive back and forth and stop wherever we (or our chauffeur Ville) wanted. And yep, in addition to the main sight we found many curious and beautiful lookouts, beaches and other spots. I enjoyed the roadtrip just as much as in Tasmania, it has a great freedom to it, deciding yourself where and when to go and what to do.

Melbourne and Great Ocean Road really were a beautiful ending for our trip together with Ville and Roope. :)

The Road goes ever on and on...
Burned forest after a recent wildfire by the GOR which had reached the news even in Finland
A curious place by the road.
Another place by the road.

Bells Beach
The Twelve.
Basic view
Gonna miss you guys and our trips together!
Hugs and kisses,
Anni

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Roadtrip in Tasmania

An island of black swans, thousands of sheep, white naked trees and rolling hills covered with pinot noir yards. Good place. With Ville and Roope we flew to Hobart from Sydney and rented a car for four days to drive around the island.

Wineglass Bay
Our first stop was the Wineglass Bay. A small place but the sceneries were even more beautiful. What surprised me tho' is that the bay and the beach can only be reached by a two-hour-hike.

So continuing our mountain adventures we hiked up to Mt Amos through "a hard, challenging track" (too true, I think half of the three-to-five-hour-track was more like climbing instead of hiking). However the view was awesome - not a bad place for a snackbrake - with refreshing wind. After we had survived back down we ate delicious pizzas (mushroom-brie pizza with local cabernet) in a small, cozy place called "Tombolo" (number one in TripAdvisor - out of five or so places in the whole town). Next morning we also hiked the traditional track - an easier one thank god - to the Wineglass beach itself. So beautiful with white sand and gracious tourquoise waves!

Wineglass Bay remained as my personal favorite place in Tasmania.

Through these rocks we had to climb up. Literately. No ready-made-trail.

"Hug each other or do something that guys usually do!" - with these two I spend two weeks after Sari left.


On the top of Mt Amos

Bay of Fires
The name comes from the history, story goes that aboriginals used to travel to the Bay and set fires there. However also the rocks by the coastline are colored with shades of orange and red. It was another beautiful place where we stopped by different beaches during our roadtrip. In St Helen, Mohr Cafe, we also had our best coffee table moments so far, just happily lying on the sofas, gossiping and sipping  good coffee with no hurry. :)


Bay of Fires

Bennet's wallaby and its cub -
 met her in Wineglass Bay but up there are already too many pictures

Cradle Mountains
After a night in Launceston we headed to Cradle Mountains (couldn't possibly brake our climbing-hiking-for-three-soon-to-be-four-days-in-a-row-exercise now). By the road the nature changed from fields inhabitated by fluffy sheep and Black Angus cows into the forests of dead white trees and mountains.

We spend one day and one night in Cradle Valley and wondered to Cradle Falls, Cradle Lake and to Marions Lookout (1300m above surface). The hiking tracks were easier there (only 10m of climbing, rest was regular hiking), but nonetheless the views were magnificent and we breathed the freshest air. If you seek something even more extreme you can cross the mountains hiking 80kms from Cradle Valley all the way to the other side to St Clare Lake through the "Overland Track".




Before leaving Tasmania we went back to Hobart, the second oldest city in Australia after Sydney. Small but quite cute, with dozens of restaurants and oldish buildings at the waterfront.
All in all, I'm glad we went to Tasmania, even just for few days. It's different from East Coast, a mixture of NZ and Australia. It's also more peaceful with small towns and only few backpackers - instead of all the fuzz it's all about the nature and some local treats.

Friday, February 12, 2016

Sydney and Blue Mountains

When arriving to Sydney I woke up perfectly just on time to see the Harbour Bridge when our nightbus drove through it. Also Opera House greeted us by looking majestic in the fresh morning light. We were to spend four days in Sydney, Ville, Roope and I, and Sari was to stay with us for the first day before going to Canberra for her exchange. In Central Station we stepped out of the Greyhound bus for the last time – final stop of our East Coast Trip together.

During the first (and Sari’s last :/ ) day we spent time by getting to know the city, we took a Hop on Hop off –bus to see Sydney. We walked around the city, visited shopping center Queen Victoria Building (very fancy), passed by Hyde Park and UTS (University of Technology) and of course went to see the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Surroundings of the Opera House were very posh, but my favorite place was The Rocks neighbourhood near Harbour Bridge with all the little cafés, bars and restaurants. During the next days we checked out other parts and places around and near Sydney.

Bondi Beach
At Bondi we tried some surfing again. Waves were definately rougher than in Byron, and in addition after 10 minutes in the water me and Ville got stung by a bluebottle jellyfish – ouch! – Ville still has some red marks on his leg… I decided to give up on surfing (and my surfboard hired for one hour) and safely just lie on the beach and "warm up" my jellyfish burns under hot water as advised by the lifeguards.

Bondi Beach and few lifeguards
Circular Quay
Same night we headed back to the city, once again to the Opera House. And not just to admire it, but actually to see an opera called "Barber of Seville" -  definitely worth going, a fun piece and the best way to experience the Opera House.




Manly Beach
I found Manly more charming than Bondi thanks to its cozy boulevards and restaurants and bigger beach. Also surfing seemed to be easier and actually doable there (for some reason though Roope was the only one who dared to go), and during the ferry trip (15AUD) you’ll see the skyline of Sydney pretty well.







Blue Mountains
These mountains two hours away from Sydney pretty much blew my mind. Best waterfalls so far without doubt! Three Sisters turned out to be an easy attraction full of tourists, but other tracks offer so much to see and in addition climbing back and forth the steep mountain stairs gave an intense workout for gluteins… We went up and down both the grand staircase and the giant staircase. However one should book enough time for Blue Mountains, most of the hiking tracks take 2-5 hours, spending a night or two there wouldn’t be a bad idea!

The Three Sisters
Little Darley Lookout
View from Grand Staircase
Wentworth Falls (went there and yep, worth it!)


 
...and Wentworth is only one waterfall out of many.

Katoomba Station