Since the internet randomly shut off at the hostel last night, we had to scramble this morning and check out then take a shuttle over to the Greyhound station. The bus to Brisbane left at 9:20 and we ran up to the desk at about 9:15. Made it just in time and napped a bit for the hour trip up to Brisbane (or Brizzy as the trendy peeps call it here). When we got outside the station we got stopped by some Greenpeace activists who tried unsuccessfully to recruit us to their cause. I had nothing to do though, so I chatted and argued with their points and purpose for a while to entertain myself then we departed in search of accomodation. We had no hostel booked (also due to the internet cutoff last night) so we wandered around until we found a place we had read about in B's Lonely Planet guidebook called Chill backpackers. The place is really nice, so we lucked out that it was the first hostel we came across. We're in a 10-share dorm with a Brit, a Texan, a Scot, two German dudes and two Austrian gals, so it should be a fairly lively place.
After we settled in and said some hellos, going through the where are you from questions, etc. we set out to see some of the city. Conveniently, a short walk from our hostel is the arts district, with a modern art museum, a regular museum, a couple art galleries and a science centre. We perused all these places had to offer over the course of a couple hours. The modern art gallery had a bunch of pieces that made me shake my head, because I suppose in a sense, you could argue that it's art, but in my opinion it's crap and poor efforts. For example, a whole wall of like 500 4x6 black and white photos that look like they were taken by a guy who was drunk and taking pictures of everything he saw as he stumbled around for 3 hours. Or the room full of garbage, old tools, and broken toys scattered over tables. Not art. Just junk. Or a bottle of cooking oil, hung on the wall. That's not art, it's something you bought at the supermarket and because the artist was so high, he thought it was some brilliant statement. There was one very cool display by a photographer (whose name escapes me presently) that took loads of photos of celebrities, had a set of the making of the Thriller video, a bunch of Marilyn Munroe candids, etc.
The weather is even hotter than Surfers Paradise (it was 28 today) and to compound the issue, the ozone is thin in Australia, which makes the UV rays a lot more powerful (or so I've been told by some locals). I suppose the red back I had from a short while on the beach in Surfers is a testament to the heat. There is a really cool pedestrian-only bridge that we walked across to get back to the hostel and it's lit up at night in different colours. The plan for the rest of the night is to watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in the movie room and catch up on sleep with an early bedtime.
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