This is a young country. On the global age scale of modern civilisations, Australians are just teenagers. Even though the ancestors of the Aboriginal people arrived in this part of the world already more than 50000 years ago, the first Europeans didn't arrive until about 300 years ago (*thanks Wikipedia), blindly transforming the untamed nature into early colonies according to European standards. One of those colonies is the area around the Botanical Garden in Sydney, whose harbour still welcomes new immigrants every day. Well, most of them arrive by plane now...

Anyway, it explains why virtually every Sydney resident I meet, tells me their story of how their grandparents, their parents or even themselves, arrived in Australia, and how they all stayed here. There is the friend that came over from England just a few months ago and already feels right at home here, the friend that came over from Taiwan when they were just a baby, the host, whose elderly mom immigrated from the United States when she was in her twenties, the friendly stranger whose grandma came over from Germany as a teenager...

Well, obviously, that's a somewhat skewed statistics, because I'm lacking the stories of those that didn't stay, but it gives you an impression of young this culture is. Or better this huge and tangled mix of cultures, who all came here and formed their own unique communities but somehow also seemed to manage to integrate themselves that well, that diversity is definitely one of the defining characters of Sydney. And a mix of strange languages. There are actually so many dialects and accents floating around that I got really confused the first few weeks, because I couldn't identify the common denominator of Australian English. Everyone seemed to talk differently. Until I realized that I hadn't actually met 'true-blooded' Australian yet, and when I finally did, I wasn't too happy, because, my, they had a heavy accent! I understood only about every third word. And I thought my English was good.

A few days later, a local explained to me that Australians are lazy talkers. Words are being slurred shorted as much as possible, like 'Aussies' instead of Australians (well, we knew that, right), sunglasses are 'sunnies', 'cozzies' for your swimming costume and so many more. And now I finally see it, really looking for to getting to know the countryside ;)