Melbourne, Australia

The best cultural experience of our trip was attending a footy match at the MCG. We saw the Melbourne Demons take on the Hawthorn Hawks in their season opener. I knew from the local sports page the Hawthorn was predicted to be one of the top two teams in the league; while Melbourne was picked to finish dead last. Thus, we planned to barrack (not root) for Hawthorn, since it's the American way to be a fair weather fan. However I also wanted to purchase a t-shirt to support my adopted footy team. My choices were an ugly brown Hawthorn shirt for $35 or a cool navy blue Melbourne shirt for $20. I switched allegiences on the spot and went with Melbourne. Oh what a mistake.

This was not a close game. The final score was 154-50. The Howthorn fans around us told me things like "You picked the wrong team, mate." and "I'm sorry, this is really unusual, it's generally much closer" The Melbourne players appeared as confused about the rules as I was. They seemed to struggle with the concept of catching the ball and kicking it through the posts for a score.

Just the same, it was a great day at the ballpark. Each team has it's own song that it's fans sing at the beginning of the game. I think one song was set to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy, and the other to Old Langs Ayne. The manner of cheering is different too. This was the common refrain from the woman sitting next to me; "Go, Yes, Yes, Go, Yes, Yes, AHHHHHHHH! Well Done! Well Done, Robbie. Well Done." followed by polite golf clapping. Slightly different from what you might hear at Fenway; "Hey A-Rod you f#$%ing suck! Go back to New York you glove slapping mo*&%$*%$er!"

We perused the art museum and were please to find the pool in front was named after Lindso. They didn't get the spelling right though.

We walked a couple miles down to St Kilda to find the best pub scene in Melbourne. We caught a rock band at the Esplenade Hotel, which is kind of like a frat basement with the volume cranked to eleven.