Australians swallow letters whole. Canberra is Ca'b'ra, Melbourne is
Me'b'ne. I laugh whenever anyone says 'accountable' because it sounds exactly like
'a cannibal'. It's rubbing off, too - Aurora was reading Lions are
Amazing aloud in bed just now, and read, "lions are well adapted to
their habita'."
So I guess we're truly Canberrans now, at least for these few weeks. Planned cities are like planned erotic trysts - so tempting, but probably it would have worked out better to just let it happen. The city looks like a green gem from above, lined with parks and shot through with ring roads and vast memorials. Rush hour is delightful; it starts at 4:55 p.m., lasts for 20 minutes, and even then doesn't slow you down much. Nobody sits in the back seat of a taxi, charmingly - instead, you ride shotgun and chat with the driver about Bangalore.
In Melbourne, we lived in Fitzroy - a neighbourhood that mirrors Montreal's Mile End. When moving to Canberra we knew, based on grim reports, how happening life would be. We decided to at least set ourselves up for success by choosing a hip neighborhood. Of course most Australians will claim that just as there are no bad neighborhoods in Canberra there likely aren't any hip ones either. So, here we've gravitated to Braddon, which is like Mile End in the same way that the Ottawa Exhibition is like Six Flags. In true Canberra style, the hip strip is all of two blocks long. If you don't look closely it really doesn't look like much. But after you walk it a few times you realize it is pretty hip. About three different condo complexes are being built, there are two bicycle shops, three outdoor shops, a lot full of food trucks, a few microbreweries, cafes galore (Lonsdale Roasters having a cafe on each of the two blocks), a thrift shop, a couple yoga studios, fancy kids shop, a bulk organic goods shop, and numerous restaurants all in the span of two blocks. It is all very new looking and almost seems as if some gleeful politician or city planner was told to do something about Canberra's poor reputation and their response was Lonsdale Street. See Australia, Canberra can be hip too. Either way Jakob is quite pleased about the cafes.
Breaking
news: Aurora is on the last chapter of 'Five Children and It.' As she
mused on what she'd wish for, Sophia burst out "I'd want an extra leg
and an extra arm! So I could ride a horse, AND a pony, AND a donkey, all
at the same time!" She also reads the same book every night, Ambulance
Paramedic, just because there's a picture of an ambulance on the
second-last page that has a 3 painted on it, and that's her favourite
number.So I guess we're truly Canberrans now, at least for these few weeks. Planned cities are like planned erotic trysts - so tempting, but probably it would have worked out better to just let it happen. The city looks like a green gem from above, lined with parks and shot through with ring roads and vast memorials. Rush hour is delightful; it starts at 4:55 p.m., lasts for 20 minutes, and even then doesn't slow you down much. Nobody sits in the back seat of a taxi, charmingly - instead, you ride shotgun and chat with the driver about Bangalore.
In Melbourne, we lived in Fitzroy - a neighbourhood that mirrors Montreal's Mile End. When moving to Canberra we knew, based on grim reports, how happening life would be. We decided to at least set ourselves up for success by choosing a hip neighborhood. Of course most Australians will claim that just as there are no bad neighborhoods in Canberra there likely aren't any hip ones either. So, here we've gravitated to Braddon, which is like Mile End in the same way that the Ottawa Exhibition is like Six Flags. In true Canberra style, the hip strip is all of two blocks long. If you don't look closely it really doesn't look like much. But after you walk it a few times you realize it is pretty hip. About three different condo complexes are being built, there are two bicycle shops, three outdoor shops, a lot full of food trucks, a few microbreweries, cafes galore (Lonsdale Roasters having a cafe on each of the two blocks), a thrift shop, a couple yoga studios, fancy kids shop, a bulk organic goods shop, and numerous restaurants all in the span of two blocks. It is all very new looking and almost seems as if some gleeful politician or city planner was told to do something about Canberra's poor reputation and their response was Lonsdale Street. See Australia, Canberra can be hip too. Either way Jakob is quite pleased about the cafes.
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| Lonsdale street: epicenter of hip |
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