Me: so what do you want to do? (I am practising being less controlling and more free, easy, flexible and compromising)
Frenchie: meh... I'm not sure there's much to see here.
Me: you mean... in Australia's second city, historic, trendy, boho arts town?
Frenchie: meh... It just doesn't have much charm; it's not like Sydney, you know?
Me: ...?*
So obviously, whilst Frenchie was paying toll fees, I mapped out a colour coded route on the town map that included a variety of artistic, cultural and historical sites and Frenchie contributed a pretentious coffee stop (because he loves pretension!) and cross referenced the Lonely Planet information with what I could find on Wikipedia and drafted a set of guided tour notes to keep us informed for the rest of the day.
Flexible, easy, free and entirely uncontrolling.
Obviously my efforts paid off as we explored a beautiful city full of historical buildings, arts centres, laneways, free self-guided tours of concert halls, awesome wicked cool hip hop dancers and beat boxers and pretentious, expensive but delicious breakfast, lunches and dinners. Have a selection of photos:
Nowhere was Frenchie happier than the very cool Shaun Tan exhibition at the Australian version of the BFI. There was quirky animation, introverted characters, imaginary friends and informative plaques, so Frenchie was fascinated and even agreed to pose for an embarrassingly adorable photo with the character he empathised with the most:
At this point I suspected that Frenchie had realised that Melbourne did in fact have personality, charm and character, but I didn't want to push it so I stayed quiet until we'd seen an exhibition on Geoffrey Rush, eaten some more, and spent a lot of money on tickets to see the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra play Mahler's 5th. I warned Frenchie that this wasn't easy listening like the Puccini and Brahms that he knows, and he struggled his way courageously through the first half of a modern, Australian composition named 'The Death of Socrates' (they always sell an awesome symphony with weird modern mumbo jumbo to ensure there's an audience and trick you into listening), studiously reading the programme and watching the conductor with a perplexed, scrunched up expression to gain a more informed and educated understanding of this world of classical music I am constantly dragging him into, and exited the theatre at the interval looking very confused:
Me: weird, right?
Frenchie: I didn't understand anything at all.
Me: I know, quite weird.
Frenchie: I thought you said there were five movements.
Me: ...?
Frenchie: and where was the trumpet solo at the beginning?
Me: ...?
Frenchie: no wonder that Mahler guy said it nobody understood it at the premiere. A hundred years later and still nobody gets it. I mean, he must have been really ahead of his time. He even had everything translated into English.*
This is slightly amusing, if you know anything about Mahler's 5th. If not... sorry.
Anyway, luckily, when Frenchie realised that he'd read the wrong page of the programme, he quite enjoyed the real Mahler and we were both fascinated by conductor Simone Young (woman - hoorah!) and I only got told off twice for using my iPad and camera during the performance. Honestly, the youth of today with their new-fangled technology gadgets, right?
So, just before we left to go to Cairns, Frenchie declared an official, royal republican decree, stating that Melbourne was 'impressive'. Very good!
For those of you who are aware, which is none of you because I kept this story quiet in order to protect my reputation as a Responsible Person: my credit card has finally caught up with me after being left at the hostel in Brisbane, forwarded on to the hotel in Sydney, where we missed it, and then forwarded on to Melbourne. Ahaha. When will I learn, hey?
*Frenchie claims liable and slander as he says I have entirely invented this conversation.
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