The first impression you have of Melbourne (at least,the first impression I had) is that of a YOUNG town, by which I don’t mean a ‘new’ town (quite the opposite, really, as Melbourne is what the Australians consider a historic town, developing and blooming at the times of the gold rush), when I say YOUNG, I mean a town whose life is revolving around young people : shops, bars, pubs, restaurants, entertainments seem to have been created just for the youth and rightly so, considered that there are SO MANY young people round!!! ...not just because the Melbournians make a lot of children (even if it’s true that Australians in general have a lot of them), but because there‘s plenty of universities in town,which recruit students from all the suburbs and the countryside: three of them are public, but up to the moment I haven’t been able to count how many the private ones are... I’ve been so lucky as to get a position at Melbourne University 1, which is considered to be the best in town and one of the best in the whole country (... of course they knew I was coming from Messedaglia...).
Just for the time being, I’ll stick to the ‘look’ of the Uni (the cultural / intellectual side needs a lot of explanations to be understood...), and the first thing is that it’s HUUUUGE. But really so, extending for block after block over a large sector of the city.
Of course all this expanse is not simply for buildings hosting classrooms (all of them equipped with wide screens, TV-CD-DVD sets, computers...), labs, libraries, staff’s offices (I have my own office, with my own telephone, my own computer, plenty of cupboards and cabinet files, two desks and a large window overlooking the city’s skyscrapers... ask your teachers how they’d like it...), there’s an enormous gym, a swimming pool , a sequel of cricket, soccer, football, footy( what it exactly is, I’ll tell u when I succeed to understand it!), rugby, etc etc pitches / fields/ courts... and a quantity of restaurants: just on my way from one class to the next one, I’ve counted an Indian one, a pizza house, a Japanese one , a Chinese and a Thai one , a burger place and two stalls for sandwiches and salads... plus bars and pubs, that goes without saying! And if u feel like shopping (the favourite activity of people in Melbourne) there are shops, a bank, a post office, and a market held twice a week... But, as I said, Melbourne is an old town, and the Uni is one of the very first universities opened in Australia; my colleagues were extremely proud to show me the historical core of it: a really lovely Victorian Gothic building in-between a church with cloister and a castle,dating back to 1856 ,which they seem to consider quite a pre-historic time!!! (when I once happened to tell my students that in Verona I live in a building dating back to the 17th century they looked at me with an expression of real concern and dismay asking me if I was really safe, inside there, in the event of a natural calamity... with perfect elegance and savoir-faire, I overlooked the comment and proceeded to tell how the Arena still resists all the natural calamities plaguing Italy...)
On my 3rd day of work here , while climbing upstairs to my office on the 6th floor, I was rather surprised to see two ladies following me,chatting absolutely normally but wearing rather shabby, old nightgowns and curlers in their hair ... seeing their expression of total unconcern, I pretended everything was quite normal and kept climbing, smiling amiably and feeling greatly proud of my perfect aplomb... but when, a couple of days later, on my way to my office once more, I was overtaken by a boy with flaming red-purple hair, wearing just his underwear and running on bare feet, I followed him ... only to discover that the 7th floor is where the Drama Department is located, for which Melbourne University is especially renowned: there are some 6 or 7 theatres in the uni and there’s some play or concert rehearsal taking place at all times in the courtyards, in the gardens, along the stairs and on the landings...