Friday, September 12, 2008

Day 5: Canberra




The morning started with making the travel arrangements for tomorrow. I will be going to Narooma to enjoy some days at the coast. I hear it must be very pretty there. I'll see and let you know ;-)
Although Canberra has only a bit more than 300.000 inhabitants the city is very extense, so I rather preferred to hop on the explorer bus to take me to the main attractions. This way Barry the driver explained with a lot of humour the history of the places we were passing. The first stop to get off the bus was the war memorial and I have to say it was most amazing. As claimed by the Australians it must be one of the best, if not the best, war memorial museums there are. It has different sections about the several wars the Australians fought in like the WW1 and WW2 as well as more recent conflicts, always well explained, illustrated and even making you experience it with built up trenches, simulations of airraids at night and so on. It really made me shiver and even drop some tears.
The the next stop was the Parlament. The guided tour was great and I learned a lot about the Australian government. Just to give you an idea, the new parlament building is build the way that it is part of a hill, where everybody can step up and walk over the parlamentarians making it a symbolic way of saying that the people have the power over what is happening in politics, pretty amazing, isnt' it. There would be much more to tell, but I don't want to babble along for too long.
Last stop after driving through the embassy area, with really pretty buildings in the typical country style of the nation they are representing, was the national museum. It is also a building where the arquitecture is symbolic of what it is hosting. This museum is basically about the history of Australia, from the eary settlements to now. Very well done, but unfortunately I had to rush through it to make it to the bus in time. Again I was astonished about the friendlyness of the Australians, even the tour guides took their time to accompany me individually and talk to me about the expositions.
About all the above mentioned places, the most amazing thing for me is that there was no entrance fee at all, everything for free and with a smile. We can learn from that.
Now I will grap a bite.

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