Playing the part of the Romantic Wanderer is easy with a return ticket in your pocket
“We’re horribly far from Paris.” I admit, as we’re walking down the main streets of Melbourne. “I know. Welcome to the hood!” The boyfriend replied, with the usual sarcasm.
I landed in Melbourne at the beginning of Winter, which would have been the beginning of Summer for me, wondering, until the very moment the airport’s sliding doors opened before me, if bringing a jacket with me was really necessary.
How cold could it be? It’s Australia!
When the doors opened, I knew how cold.
All I knew about Australia was: Crocodile Dundee, gnarly surfers, shrimps on the barbie, and surely not winter coats.
The boyfriend was at the airport waiting for me with a sign and a welcome basket containing warm slippers, shampoo and conditioner, and a photo of my cat. I may or may not have cried a bit. After a twenty-six-hour journey, I was severely sleep-deprived and dehydrated so I don’t think I remember everything that happened. I knew it, I should have earthed, instead, he drove me and my big suitcase to his family home and I went straight for a shower-bed combo. The next day, I properly met the family and the dogs, both things novel and exciting to me: a single child from a single-mother household with several unsuccessful goldfish experiments under our belt and a current cat stolen from the neighbours.
Before anyone panicks: we didn’t ‘steal’ the cat… She chose us.
The rosy-cheeked mountain girl in me couldn’t wait to explore the “Big Smoke”. Of course, I didn’t tell him I’d never heard of a city being called ‘the Big Smoke’, nor that I almost didn’t bring a jacket, or that I didn’t even Google ‘Melbourne’ to see what it looked like, or where it was. If you’re like me and Geography simply isn’t your thing: Melbourne is literally the last city in the World. So far south that it’s closer to penguins than kangaroos. It’s also a gorgeous city, much better than Sydney. So it’s ‘pretty cool’ in all aspects.
I came to learn that every State (and Territory) down under has its slogan, and sometimes they update it. Melbourne itself was called ‘The World’s most livable city’ until a few years ago. ‘Melbourne: pretty cool’ seems arguably better and more accurate.
Every little thing amazed me about Marvellous Melbourne (another nickname, apparently).
First of all, it’s a real city, with tall buildings and people walking around all the time. Not the place for those late-night cardboard shenanigans that went on in my hometown. Supermarkets had all sorts of food, including my two personal favourite items that I often had to travel for: sweet chilly sauce and pop-tarts. Because of the overall multicultural vibe, there are plenty of ethnic restaurants and all sorts of stores. Plus the amazing implementation of a city grid with parallel streets instead of a church-centric spiderweb situation. As much as I liked the idea of a well-structured city, I had no clue about where the city centre was, and why that wasn’t the church, or why a city needed multiple train stations. Also, because there’s nothing past Melbourne, no planes are flying over the city, which added to the staggering lack of mountains meant the sky was huge. Looking up reminded me of Romantic period art pieces, but instead of the potency of nature, it’s just me trying to take in all that sky. That was one of my favourite chapters in my High School’s art history book.
The modern concept of Wanderlust was not so modern after all, and I was just starting to wrap my head around the idea that certain cities around the World could attract you for no apparent reason. Until not long ago, that was Tokyo for me. I’ve always dreamed about going to Japan to the point that it became the focal point of a particularly bad date I had been on.
Gather ‘round kids, we’re jumping back in time!
It was a normal Saturday afternoon and I just came home from high school. My mother told me there was some sort of anime or manga event in a nearby town. That sounded like the perfect occasion to dress up in anything that could vaguely be called gothic lolita for the very first time. To be fair it wasn’t a great outfit per se, but I felt cute as heck.
I was awkwardly standing in a corner, as one does when a supposed manga and figurines market turned out to be a cosplay event, and I use the word ‘event’ quite loosely here, when a photographer approached me with a giant camera covering his face to take a picture of me. Then he quickly left his business card and moved along to take photos of all five cosplayers. When, a few days later, I retrieved his card from my bag I decided to check out the photo from his website. Against all odds, the photo turned out nice and since it was my first picture in gothic lolita clothes, I saved it and sent a brief thank you e-mail to him at his official e-mail address ‘smalltownbigdreams@pleasehireme.it’. The next thing I knew, I had a coffee date with him the following week.
On the day of our coffee, not even considering it a date, I did not dress up and I drove to his town. As I was waiting for him, I realised I could not remember his face. Did I see his face at all? I had plenty of time to evaluate my options before he got there. Should I hide and check him out? How would I know when he walked in? Should I go back to my car and be the one showing up late? Should I just leave? What if he couldn’t recognise me in my common clothes and we both stood across the place squinting at each other? We only communicated via e-mail and smartphones hadn’t been invented yet so we had no way to contact each other.
I would ask you not to backdate me, but I suspect it’s too late for that.
I managed to recognise him from context cues when he walked in fixing his hair and looking around hopeful. Then again, he was probably looking forward to seeing a cute girl dressed up like a baroque doll, not a multi-layered blob of black clothes.
He ordered a triple hot cocoa with whipped cream, then proceeded to tell me all about his cameras, his variety of jobs, his new crib above his parent’s garage, and how much money he made at weddings. Halfway through devouring his hot cocoa with gusto, he looked up at me and, I kid you not, asked: “By the way, what was your name?”
At this point I may act all shocked and in disbelief but, to be fully honest with you, I barely knew his from the initial he signed his emails with, and his website’s ‘about me’ section. It was either ‘Mark or Mike’.
I did not tell him my name hiding behind a facade of ‘mystery’. He did not insist.
Then, again, he didn’t show any interest in knowing about my life, goals, and studies, all he cared about was talking about moving to Japan. Interestingly, he did not mention ever visiting Japan, which made me believe he never went there himself. When I pointed out that it’s hard to talk about ‘living in Japan’ when you’ve never been there, he argued that was a perfectly normal question and I was close-minded. He didn’t know I was also new to the Japan-obsesses side of the internet.
I resisted for almost an hour and, when he dug up the very last drop of cocoa from his cup with so much force that I thought he would either break the cup or bend the spoon, I stood up with a parking timer excuse, said goodbye, and I am almost sure I told him I wouldn’t have access to the internet for a while.
I don’t ‘ghost’ people. I choose the higher moral ground of lying to their face.
I have always thought of this “date” as a massive failure, clearly blaming everything on him. It made for a fun story to share with girlfriends and a bottle of wine, I cannot lie. However, I would not be surprised if, from his perspective, I was the weird one.
I did, eventually, visit Japan, and to answer his ‘Would you live in Japan’ question: Tokyo was such an amazing city and everything was the complete opposite compared to Italy in both a good way and a bad one. Everyone behaved so politely that it made me extremely self-conscious it was all a facade and everyone had a terrible secret to hide. Nonetheless, I felt dazzled and thrilled the entire time as a tourist, yet I was perfectly aware that I couldn’t live there. Thank you very much.
When I returned home from my trip to Japan (not from the “date”!) I experienced something strange, while everything looked the same, something had changed and I felt more lonely and misunderstood than ever, and I kept chasing that thrill across Europe for years to come. But then I knew I wasn’t just the strange girl in town, it was the town being the wrong place for me.
A classic ‘it’s not you it’s me’ rom-com situation but neither romantic nor comedic.
Someone, likely in a movie I have forgotten all about, said that it’s easy to play the part of a Romantic Wanderer when you have a return ticket in your pocket. Well, I am not playing that part, despite all that sky I am far more concerned about culture shock than I am about Romanticism.
I lied, I did have a return ticket for a year later.
Until I didn’t.
I know, I know, this is not very Romantic or Wanderlust of me, but this is how the immigration department wants us to do things. I came to Australia on a Working Holiday Visa, meaning I could work for up to six months for the same employer, and I could chill the rest of the time, change jobs, or do rural seasonal work for an extra year in Australia. Clearly, I did not have a job lined up when I left so I was chilling and getting to know myself, the city, and this new girlfriend-boyfriend thing. I thought this Visa was a great deal to test out a new lifestyle on the other side of the world, and it was relatively pain-free.
Remember these words because that’s the last time you’ll hear me saying that something about my immigration journey was easy.
In a futile attempt to maintain some connection to my roots, I was still actively engaging with the various communities I used to be part of, including a national group of girls united by shared fashion interests. One of these girls introduced me to a couple of her friends who had a funny podcast that made me feel better about not understanding Australian inside jokes yet. As much as I tried to consume locally produced entertainment, I did enjoy the sense of camaraderie and belonging of this very Italian podcast. In one episode, they were talking about a random Japan-obsessed guy who had an allegedly cringy YouTube channel from Tokyo, they described him as a bit odd and well-known for flirting with all the girls on Japanese-related forums. He had a peculiar mountain dialect, his name was Mark or Mike.
There’s no place like gone.
Directly from the archives, please enjoy this authentic photographic evidence:
Dodged a bullet there.
Haha I love your description of the date and how he drank his hot chocolate. Brilliant character observations. 😅