MY BROTHER, MELBOURNE AND I
My brother and I met again at the end of May 2021. We hadn't seen each other for more than three months, even though we live in the same country for two years now. Joaquin and I are the yin and the yan, that's why we chose two totally different Australian lifestyles: he opted for a sedentary life in Sydney, a cosmopolitan version of the shirt and suit routine he had in Argentina. I am, on the other hand, the family "crazy one". By the time we met, I was on my sixth move around the country and had already worked in ten different jobs.
But the family dose of energy is essential in this travel life. That's why nothing nor nobody affects our semestral meetings, always in cities, our favorite ecosystem.
Our last chosen headquarter was Melbourne, the coldest southern city in the country after Hobart, Tasmania. I didn't even have a handkerchief in my suitcase, I came from living on a remote island with 30 degrees in the shade for the last two months. I always escaped winter, it's the only way to stop the chronic colds that haunt me since forever.
But Melbourne was a pending on our Australian bucket list, so I resigned myself: I borrowed a puffed yellow jacket and a wool scarf and said goodbye to the tan and the palm tree for a while.
…
The second floor was a hanging train carriage. The lighting was dim and yellow as a farm chick. The red neon light on the sign with “The Easy's” name on it was about to short-circuit. “One of the best burgers in town”, the guide with Parisian chef's face had told us. With such a headline we couldn't start the weekend anywhere but in this famous burger restaurant in the city.
We taste hamburgers in every city as if the ritual gave us the secret key to understanding it. As if somehow the bread with seeds, fluffy or integral will speak to us about its inhabitants' idiosyncrasies or as if the most iconic architecture is embodied in the cheddar or Sardinian cheese that melts within it. It's actually one of the excuses we use to do what we like the most, eat. Our passion for food and gastronomy, inherent in the Wade's DNA, has always swept the boundaries between us. It is present in all our family generations and in every breakfast, lunch or dinner table. This is why cities are our best allies, because we have more options to evoke the high cement table where we ate for years.
We found a table in the far corner. They had those long American roadside cafeteria benches that can fit at least three people. I took a childish trot towards it with the idea of sliding through it but the sticky leather stopped me dead. The laughters, shrieks and giggles scattered among the tables filled with group of friends and The Strokes's music in the background made "The Easy's" seem more like a recital rather than a typical burger bar. I respected my brother's motto to eat without alcohol (he says they don't go along) with the only condition that the beer came right after it. My goal was the Fitzroy neighborhood, famous for its cool bars and restaurants. "Okay, but just one" he warned me. The night life isn't his type, even less after the daily 14 km walks on top of us. Paradoxically, for me its the opposite: the longer the day, the more beers I deserve.
The bars that always call my attention are the squirky and kind of hidden ones. Those clubs whose only dim light comes from a couple of light bulbs above the bar, where the bass is the main melody and where you can breathe a mixed cloud of tobacco and men's perfume. That's why I chose The Kent already half a block before arriving. A bearded man and a redheaded woman came out of the Thai food joint next door and went inside to the beat of the music.
—Let's do a selfie for María Laura —my brother proposed me with the frozen pint of twelve dollars in his hand.
I agreed and laughed at the idea that my mum had been the third member of this trip so far. She didn't want to miss a minute of the entire weekend we spent together. The same happened with the rest of my family, that's why we agreed to video calls with the different branches of it every morning. Instead of a trip, those days seemed like a presidential summit.
***
If the virtual date was at nine, Joaquin would wake up an hour and a half earlier to do his daily routine: go for a run, buy coffee for breakfast, take a bath, make toasties and, if he still had time left, boil the water for the "mate", our famous Argentinian kind of tea. At 8.45 a.m. he woke me up with the energetic “CHIZOOO!” with which he nicknames me. When I managed to reborn from the depths of the white sheets, my family was already on the other side of the screen.
Melbourne mornings felt like lashes of ice against our bare skin. So much that every two or three blocks we raised a white flag to take refuge in the closest heated place. One of them was the public library, one of the most popular “must-sees” in the city and one of my favourites spots. The external façade has Greco-Roman columns of the weight of four elephants and red carpet steps. We went through the glass door and got into a sound capsule: the only thing that we could hear were the stealthy footsteps on the floor's hollow wood. The reading room was at the end of the hallway. The sensor caught our footsteps a couple of meters ahead and opened both doors at the same time. I was one trumpet and glitter powder away of being teleported to Disney-world. The library was a 360 degree amphitheater with a glass dome on the roof. But with the green nightstands on the wooden tables, the open notebooks, the scattered computers, the internal balconies and the thousand of books surrounding it the place looked a more Hogwarts type of setting. We are both super fans of the books and its movies, the only ones we read in common: the rest of his library are sports books with less than a hundred pages. Mine, on the other hand, is a mix of cobblestone-weight soap operas and classic pocket books.
The concentration was flying through the air and we posed euphorically for the photo.
PHOTOS: SKYDIVE AUSTRALIA
@SKYDIVEAUSTRALIA
PHOTOS: SKYDIVE AUSTRALIA
@SKYDIVEAUSTRALIA
photo: mw
Photo: MW
Photo: MW
...
The alleys filled with urban art are Melbourne's most photogenic and artistic side. Most of the cultural tour revolved around these nooks of the city filled with graffiti, murals, and decoupage-style stationery. In any other city, these oversaturated corridors of garish colors and hanging lights would be a dump place for rubbish and rats: for Melbournians, on the other hand, they are their artistic hallmark and also a meeting place. They not only bring together the joint work of hundreds of local artists, but also early risers, with the best coffees in the city.
—Our coffee is as good as the Italian espresso —the young guide proudly stated.
Faced with such national pride Joaquín took his eyes off the fourth mate he was drinking and looked at me with a “look how Argentinean this Australian is” face. According to the guide, there was a dry law many years ago that forced citizens to reinvent coffee as a reason for reunion. It became so fashionable that they wanted to start making it themselves. The Italian immigration and the machine they brought with them were the perfect match.
Among so much talk about infusions and drinks my brother, phobic of social exposure, went under the spotlight. He was hugging the metal thermos tightly, as if it were a defenseless baby. The guide kept telling his curious city stories with full body expression included but the group's attention seemed to be more on us. Some looked at us out of the corner of their eye but others didn't even bother to shoot their gaze directly at us. The Argentina-Spain group of women behind us was getting closer. I don't know what they stared at more, if the mate or my brother. Do they think we're a couple? I had never thought how we would look from the outside.
"Can I ask you for a 'matecito' (diminutive of mate)?" the brown-eyed brunette asked cautiously.
That sharing ended up having an impact on the rest of those present: the bald man in the blue waterproof jacket whispered something intelligible to his daughter; the lady with the tired eyes and yellowish smile also turned around. Meanwhile I continued indifferently taking pictures of everything, selfie included.
—What is it? —the lady shyly asked.
—It's like herbal tea. It comes from our country, Argentina (As to why we tend to share it among the group and pass it from one person to another I explicitly chose not to explain it).
The woman nodded without saying anything and turned her gaze towards the "Shrine of Remembrance", a historic monument in the shape of a pyramid temple built to honor the Australian soldiers' fallen at wars . Joaquín took the last sip and we laughed softly. She probably still thinks it was boiled marijuana.
...
My “holding and refilling mate in the background” moment (just as my brother did in the tour) was the following night, at the AAMI Park rugby stadium. We went to see a match between two local teams whose names I don't even remember. What I do remember is my excitement at seeing the fast food stand before entering the stadium (yes, junk food had been our thing that weekend). We bought the famous half-meter hot dog with more toppings than meat and a draft beer for each one that, once inside, we had to hold up to avoid the classic movie scene where the beer spills all over the seated spectators. The whole atmosphere was a Yankee scene: the costumed mascots that paraded on one side of the field, the sport fan that waved the foam rubber glove with the index finger up and the families dressed in the winter collection of the team's official merchandising.
It was hard for me to think of anything else that didn't have to do with the freezing cold, my worst enemy, coming through the open stadium. My brother, on the other hand, didn't even complain about it. His fanaticism helped him forget it: he narrated me the game's development with the same burning passion as the guide and refreshed me the basic rules that even after years I still don't know. Watching a rugby match he did smiled for the pictures, his Colgate smile was brighter than ever. This was definitely his habitat. It's also my dad's, my cousins' and even my sister's. Rugby is that never ending conversation over dinner table that after five minutes makes me want to get up and go to the toilet. Having to watch a whole match was quite a challenge.
There was still half an hour to go before the game ended and I already had two beers and drank a full thermos of "mate". My body was two degrees away of becoming a cube and my brain was already in airplane mode. The human wave that crossed the entire stadium returned my soul to my body. The two skater-looking teenagers sitting two seats below us were the ones that started it. We stood on the seats and followed them with open arms.
—Oooooleeeee!— we shouted in unison.
With that injection of energy we laughed and sang like the typical sports fan gang in Argentina do until the game ended. I no longer cared about the result, the rules of the sport or even the cold: the only thing I now truly enjoyed was the intensity of being an Argentinian far away from Argentina means. But above all, being brothers living away from our family.
