Characters on the Tram

Tram rides home aren't always this interesting.  But I guess, over the course of an hour and it being after midnight you can meet some interesting characters.  Usually I hop on, sit, and mind my own business listening to my i-Pod or just watch the stores, cafes, and pubs go past.  But last night I had some more excitement than usual.  I was taking the hour long tram ride back to the city from the suburb Bundoora, where I'd been visiting my friend Mark at La Trobe University, when a couple of girls stepped on and literally fell into the seats directly across from me, apparently having just come from a wilder place than another public tram.  Before these Australian white girls had jumped on the tram, the occupants in my immediate area were myself, several Indians speaking another language I couldn't begin to name, a black Muslim couple with the male in very modern day clothing and his significant other in the traditional head scarf and full length dress, and what I assumed was an Arabic couple, again, with the man in modern day clothes and this time the woman in head scarf, long plain dress, and some fabric covering her entire face leaving just enough space for her eyes to look out.  

Before these two girls sat down, no one had been speaking English on the tram.  They both had helium-filled balloons and those very Melburnian/European razor-straight-bang haircuts.  They were talkative, but I was not in the mood to chit chat at the moment and continued listening to my i-Pod.  The tram began to fill up more and more as we approached closer and closer to the city center.  Then a girl dressed up as a pirate got on the tram and sat down next to me.  Suddenly it just seemed silly to continue listening to my music with all these characters surrounding me, so I took them off and the girls soon engaged me in conversation.  Oh... we talked about everything you could think of: the party they'd just come from, why this girl was dressed as a pirate (21st birthday party), the engagement story of one of the girls involving her high boyfriend asking her to marry him in the middle of a mosh pit at a concert... You know, the typical things strangers strike up conversations about.  The best part about being in a foreign country and talking with strangers is the minute you open your mouth, you suddenly expose an excellent conversation point: where are you from?  Melbourne is full of different languages and ethnicities, but they don't get too many Americans.  A lot of times I get asked if I'm Canadian.  I briefly got in a word or two about where I was from when the two girls with the balloons and strange engagement story departed.  Just me and the pirate girl.  

My stop was next, so I said goodbye, or arggg if you like, to the pirate girl, and walked to the next tram stop to wait for my final leg of the journey back to my apartment.  A guy sitting one bench away from me asked for the time, and when I told him, he again noticed my accent.  He asked where I was from, and I told him Kentucky.  "You're a long way from home, mate."  Sometimes I forget that I'm almost 10,000 miles from home being here for almost four months now.  We struck up a conversation because it turned out he worked with racing horses and knew about Kentucky's reputation for being horse country.  This guy gets up everyday at around 3 am to go take care of the horses before they do their training.  Why on earth he has to get up that early I have no idea.  It ended up that both of us were catching the same tram, so we continued our conversation.  He was originally from New South Wales, just over the border, and was the first non-Victorian Aussie I've met.  Of course, he downplayed Melbourne's dominance as Australia's best city and talked up Sydney a bit.  He said that Sydneysiders call people from Victoria Mexicans since they're south of the border.  I found that an odd but flattering comment, as it sort of suggested a comparison between Sydney and the U.S.  It was like the guy was saying, "You know what I mean," with a slight elbow jab and a wink.  I told him about Lexington and the beautiful horse farms surrounding the city, and he seemed pretty excited to find out something new about Kentucky horses.  The tram arrived at my stop, and we said goodbye.

I mention all this because I think it speaks to how life is different in a big city like Melbourne.  Meeting people on a tram, hearing their crazy stories and then parting ways never to run into each other again is something that never happens in small towns and even most American cities lacking Melbourne's unique public transport system.  Before those girls got on the tram, I was the lone American, lone white person, lone English speaker.  I guess that points to Melbourne's multiculturalism as well.  What a funny night.