We have arrived...

... physically at least. But I'll get to that later. After a flight from Zürich with stopovers in Dubai, Singapore and Melbourne we landed in Adelaide which is the capital of South Australia. We took the bus to the north of the CBD (= Central Business District i.e. the town center for the ones who do not know) and the very friendly driver showed us which bus virtually would stop in front of our hostel. However, we decided to walk in order to get our systems going again (after a 30 h journey). Apparently our systems were very rusty - in a fit of motivation we walked way past our destination (both with a 30 kg suitcase + hand luggage) and found ourselved on south terrace which is the southern boundary of Adelaide's CBD. We then decided to take the tram back up north which also stops near the hostel...

We have now spent three nights in Adelaide and we absolutely love it so far. Getting back to arriving: we still feel like we're walking around in a zoo or a botanic garden. We are still excited that the main city birds seem to be parrots (rather than pigeons as would be expected coming from Zürich). We still stop at almost every tree or flower because they all look so unfamiliar. We love the fact that all the swans we have seen so far are black. Things that locals do not seem to take notice of any more. In fact, a good way to distinguish locals from tourists is to check whether they still turn around to see a parrot whizz past...;)

The city itself isn't huge - even for someone from Switzerland where a town of 50'000 is already big. Therefore we did a lot of walking to familiarize with the area. Since Adelaide is a planned town (i.e. it is essentially a grid of streets - well known from North American cities) orientation is much easier than in 'organically' grown cities. This facilitates our flat search quite a bit. However, the latter turns out to be rather difficult without having to make concessions with respect to location, price or comfort. 

All in all we feel great here in Adelaide. It has definitely not become 'routine' to me yet and everything is still exciting and new. And to be honest - I hope that it will remain that way and that I will still notice every parrot come the day we leave...