First impressions of Sydney by Hannah Vogel
By Hannah Vogel
Sydney: Sydney is the biggest city in Australia. It expands from the Pacific Ocean to the foothills of the Great Dividing Range at 7500 km2.
Me: I am nineteen-year-old Hannah Vogel. Until now I lived in Germany in a small town, having seven thousand inhabitants. Now I am staying in Sydney doing an internship at Eastside Radio.
There are a lot of people like me, coming to this metropolis from all over the world for any number of reasons. But what happens when a German small town girl like me lives in a huge city like Sydney? I am going to show you…
First impressions of Sydney: Part 1 – “The RIGHT side of the road”
In Germany we drive on the right side of the road. Of course I knew that there was left-hand traffic in Australia before I came here. However it seemed to be strange when I had my first car ride on the other side of the street. I felt like a wrong-way-driver, prepared to crash into another vehicle every time we turned around a corner. But of course nothing happened. “It just seems to be the WRONG side to me”, I told my host father, Spencer, sitting in the right front seat behind the steering wheel. “No, it is not the WRONG side. It is the RIGHT side”, he repeated in a playful voice. I tried to calm down, still convulsive, holding on to the inner door handle like it could save me in case of an accident. Yet I did not start to feel comfortable again until getting out of the car and having the safe ground under my feet again.
After being in a country full of wrong-way-drivers for one week now, I slowly get used to it. I am pretty sure I will not end up as roadkill beside the streets of Sydney. Nevertheless I will be happy returning home on Christmas where we drive on the RIGHT side of the road – in the double meaning.
