Last posts, last parties. Exams are over, it’s been some insane final weeks regarding project work, presentations and exams. The most surprising element is how unorganized exams are. I had four, none of them started on time, and the worst case reached a 35 minute delay because there was a lecture in the room for our exam. Now, there’s no reason to finish off with some boring stuff about studies and exams, so we obviously planned some partying. We started with a casual evening where it would be easy to talk and say goodbye to one another. About 16 of us had dinner at a restaurant near school after which we went to my place to get some more to drink. In fact, we already started drinking some of the booze at the restaurant, Martin shows off his secret pouring skills.

The following day, Friday 20th, was planned to be the big night. And what a night indeed. We kicked off with drinks and snacks at Melissa’s place, around 15 of us. All of us, plus others that prepartied elsewhere, went to Karma. Karma has simply been the best club for Friday evenings throughout the semester. This night really turned up to be la grande finale. Many of the people I met throughout the semester showed up, and the party was nothing less than amazing.

Ciao grazie.

Early December marks the CEMS Annual and Graduation event. Let’s cut to the chase, there’s a career fair - it’s like any career fair - and it’s not very interesting. However, for the people graduating there’s a large graduation dinner, for students there’s a buffet and after some hours everyone is joined together for a huge party. The location changes every year, last year Dublin, this year Milan (no travel expenses), next year Paris. The annual event attracts cemsies from around Europe, providing a good chance to meet up with people from back home. Anyway, I figure pictures of drunk people dancing speak for themselves…

So the second week was kind of short, not because they have less than seven days a week in Australia, but because Camilla had to study for exams (and I supposedly had to do some group work for the studies in Italy). Anyhow, on Tuesday 13th, as soon as Camilla finished her last exam we left for Sydney… e.g she finished around noon and we got on the flight around 15.

We had booked a hotel in King’s Cross, which basically is the funky part of town - much like Vesterbronx & Istedgade in Copenhagen. The hotel was fine and cheap. That is, it wasn’t that cheap, but our room was cheap because of booking online (saved ~100 Australian dollars/night). The view from the hotel was very fitting with the price, I mean its by far the most interesting light shaft I’ve seen (and only?). There was this really cool fountain nearby, so you can see it both at night and day on the pictures. Anyhow, the first day we just walked around downtown Sydney and went to the movies.

The second day, Wednesday, we kicked off by going to the Opera house. Ironically, we started by going up next to it from where - I’m sorry to say - it is anything but pretty. I’ll spare you the close-up pictures, and we also skipped the inside tour. Instead, you can look at the millions of pictures we ended up taking at a distance. Of other mentionable atrocities in this category you find a bowl made out of melted plastic soldiers and of course the Harbour Bridge, which also happens to be more famous than pretty.

We spent the rest of day in walking around The Rocks, shopping, and eating near our hotel. There were a couple of curiosities such as the totem and probably the coolest sink in the world. Basically the whole bathroom table/sink is one large piece of black marble which leans downwards into the wall. Just open the faucet and the water will run straight into the wall. Must have! Also, it is really weird to walk around in shorts and find Christmas decorations all over the place.

Day three, Thursday 15th. Darling Harbour, Market in Chinatown, Hyde Park, and Sky Tower. We took the train from our hotel to downtown and caught the monorail to Darling Harbour. Lots of shops, lots and lots of fountains, and other kinds of decorations. You can actually see the IBM building on one of the pictures, not a bad place for a corner office.

In the evening we went up in the SkyTower, a 360 degree view of Sydney. Unfortunately, everything is inside making it quite difficult to get good pictures due to reflections. We were also hoping to get good sunset pictures, but ended up with nothing but a bunch of clouds. A bit of a let down, but still a good view in retrospect. Last two pictures show the the Christmas three from the previous day but now fully decorated and the fountain I mentioned before.

The last day of my visit to Australia we opted for a walk through the botanical garden. The botanical garden, which is more like a park with a large assortment of trees and plants, covers a huge area in Sydney, and you can enter next to the Opera House (and tons of other places of course). So I’ll treat you to a few more Opera pictures, before heading back to Italy.

The second week kicked off with a two day trip to Surfers Paradise. Surfers is a town located on Gold Coast which, as the name reveals, is a series of towns on the coast, much like the French Riviera. Surfers, located about one hour south of Brisbane, was originally a place for surfers, hippies, and the likes of trendy people, but as trendy people attract the rich it is now filled with skyscrapers. Apparently the surfers have moved further south to Byron Bay.

We arrived midday on Sunday 4th and spend the afternoon and evening walking around Surfers, checking out stores, the beach, and so on. As you can see, there’s a really beautiful sunset although it goes down towards the country. And although there are many skyscrapers, the beach does not resemble Cannes or Rimini where the whole beach is covered by hotels and their reserved seats. In fact, you could buy something like a 100+ square meter apartment for 3m danish crowns.

The second day we went for a whale watching trip which also gave us the tourist tour of the river and expensive buildings in Surfers. Do note the floating church, interesting place to get married. The picture following the church is the Palazzo Versace, a 5 star hotel created by the Versace brand - unfortunately a tad too expensive for us.

On the water we saw 3 or 4 humpback whales. We got quite a performance, there was a calf that jumped out of the water several times (near-impossible to get good pictures of) and the mother telling us to bugger off with her tail. Not much more to say, the pictures speak for themselves.