Mardi Gras

Friday night, 2/29/08 was Toga night. We spent the day at op shops (opportunity shops a.k.a. thift stores) getting our togas. Turned out to be a ridiculous night, so much fun. We caught the bus in and stayed at Finnies till closing, then went for kababs. Typical.

The next day on 3/1/08, a big group of us went down to Sydney via the train for Mardi Gras. It was a 3 hour train ride, not bad considering the train was 3 levels- we sat on the top for the sweetest view. The seats were nuts, you could fold em down and make like a conference for 4 people... hard to describe but fun to play with. We were suppose to catch the train which has a station right on campus, which is very convenient and only about 15 minutes away from IH. We ended up having to run when we saw it pull up at 11:15, saw the conductor standing outside, he saw us, then pulled away. We missed the train by literally 15 seconds... AH! Then as it pulled away some little kid flipped us the bird. So we sat on a bench for an hour till the next train came, sweet. The scenery was awesome though, passed lots of lakes, farms, and mountains.

Ended up getting to Sydney around 3:30... immediately stopped at Hungry Jacks (Burger King) and got a Whopper. I upgraded to the larger size to get a larger cup to put goon in, then forgot Aussie has the smallest sizes ever. Their Medium is a kiddie size at home, their large is a small and their XL is a medium... GR. But they do have .30 cent huge ice cream cones (not sure how a Whopper meal costs $7).

Immediately opened the goon sack since we were told you must be intoxicated to be able to handle Gay Mardi Gras in Sydney. That was an understatement. Some 300,000 people turned out from all over the world for the 30th anniversary on Oxford Street where it all went down.

Here's a view from the hotel we booked which happened to be overlooking the parade route:


Sydney is crazy nice. It's similar to NYC but cleaner, with lots of more asians and huge parks everywhere. And they have a mono-rail that rides above the city in addition to buses and trains.

So we checked into the hotel and my roommate from IH, Ben, was marching in the parade since he's a member of NUSA, some student organization on campus. He got dressed up in some hippie/revolutionary outfit while the rest of us drank. Then he found out he had 1 extra wristband for someone to get into the parade. who nabbed that?! ME. I don't mean let into the parade to watch... I mean to literally be inside the gates IN the friggin parade. When else in my lifetime will I be in Sydney for Mardi Gras and be able to actually be IN IT? NEVER. So I skulled and said what the heck.

NUSA's theme color was red, luckily I had this nice hoodie Lizzie found ahem gave to me - perfect. Off we went. The things I saw that day could not be put into words. I had a vague idea of what it might be like... I'm sure you do too- well multiply that by 1000 then quadruple that. It was an experience I'm glad I got to see. There was an INSANE amount of people everywhere. Lots of drags putting on makeup and platform shoes... wow.

Here's one of the crazy get-ups :

This is the massive amount of asians who all had first row. They sold milk crates to them so that could see. Luckily I got the wristband because before it started I got to walk all around and see all the floats up close, then there's sooo many people watching it, they say the only way to see it is to actually be in it. Can you spot the one white guy??

Here's a pic from actually inside the parade. I'd say the whole thing was about 2K but lasted about 2 hours maybe? Insane:


Here's a video from inside the parade... they do this crazy line dance I just couldn't seem to get down. It was to a Madonna song, how more typical can you get?! :



Did you catch my appropriate "WOOOOO"?

The end of the night came around 5AM. The streets were covered with trash and you were literally walking on a sheet of broken glass bottles. Next day we woke up at 8am and went to get sushi and to a market for typical Sydney souvenirs. Oh, the sushi here is HUGE. It's about $3 a roll, but instead of getting little guys, you get 1 massive like 4 inch long piece of seaweed wrapped deliciousness. We hopped on a train and was back in Newcastle around 5pm. Ready for class the next day... Have many more photo's I deemed inappropriate for this kosher blog. All in all it was a great weekend experience. Definitely going back to Sydney to see it on a normal weekend though.