Sydney is a vibrant, diverse city of 4 million. It is loud, fast-paced, and cosmopolitan. It is a city, like many cities in the Western world. I grew up in Chicago so this should be an easy transition. But its not. Sydney is like New York City with an accent. Work is plentiful, but without a specialization it is low paid compared to the very high cost of living. People are in close quarters to each other, which I believe makes people irritable and rude. People yell and scream, honk and traffic and avoid eye contact as you pass them in the street. This happens in Chicago, but maybe its because I’m a native there I don’t notice it as much. In Chicago I just stick to my neighborhoods where I get a smaller town feel. So after I was walking home from my job at the local pub, I thought about this for the first time. Maybe I’m not a city person.
When I first moved to New Zealand I was terrified of living in a small town. I had only visited small towns in the U.S. and I didn’t linger long. Small towns I visited in the U.S. were quaint, but I reasoned I would get bored quickly. It wasn’t until I left the cities (a loose term in New Zealand considering the whole country has less people than Chicago), that I realized the country wasn’t so bad. I spent most of my time in New Zealand in the South Island, areas by the oceans and mountains with low populations. I lived on Stewart Island, a small island of the tip of New Zealand’s South Island with a population of less than 200 and no emergency care. I lived on a boat with 12 people. I lived on the Farewell Spit, a conservation area with only 2 houses and a tiny village nearby. I was happier than I had ever been. When I returned to the city I found it hard to get used to people that didn’t say hello or look at you in the eye when you passed. In small towns people talk to you to find out who you are. Of course there are small towns that would be much to conservative and homogenous for me to enjoy. But the hippie colonies of Golden Bay are the anti-thesis to small town stereotypes.
San Francisco is the exception to my current view on big cities. It was a laid back city, comfortable and welcoming. But its also 15,000 miles away. I’m not letting Sydney wear me down, it’s an uphill battle but I’m going to be here until the New Year. I’m learning a lot about what I like and dislike about the places I live. And that was what I need, knowledge. It would have been easy to “do” Australia, hit the backpacker trail, party and see the tourist sights. But it’s only through difficult times that you come to realizations about yourself. And I wouldn’t trade this knowledge for all the air conditioned party buses headed up the east coast.
