Day One

I arrived at my hostel in Auckland quite late, but thought a beer before bed might be nice . I started chatting with a guy at the bar, nothing too exciting.

“So what do you do?” I asked him

“Truthfully?”

“Umm yeah?”

“I’m a drug dealer”

Aaaah this was one of those ‘what do I say next’ moments.

“So what kind of drugs do you deal?” I asked as politely as I could

“I used to deal mostly smack but now I do more crack and pills and stuff”

“Oh cool”

That was the first person I met in New Zealand. Great start.

After a moderately successful busking session the next morning, I went to read my book in a park. It wasn’t long before I was approached by a pimply adolescent.

“You look kind of lonely” he said “do you want to have a drink with me and my friends?” He pointed up the hill to where four other boys were sitting. I wasn’t in the mood, I kind of just wanted to read my book. Unfortunately saying ‘no’ isn’t my strong point, so I half heartedly got up and followed the 14 year old up the hill.

We were drinking Codys, a dirty bourbon and coke mix in a can native to New Zealand. Speaking of New Zealand, man did these guys say ‘bro’ a lot. I’m not going to go into what else they said. Some things shouldn’t be on the internet.

I was catching a night bus to Wellington at 8pm. At about 5pm I went to get myself some sleeping pills (I know that’s soft, I’m usually such a hardcore bus traveller). The woman at the chemist told me not to drink alcohol before taking them. 4 minutes later I was in a bar sipping on a Heinekin.

If you’ve never been to a bar by yourself, I’d highly recommend it. It can be quite terrifying at first; I usually take a book or pretend I’m watching whatever obscure sport is on TV at the time, but I’ve met some wonderful and strange people this way.

I didn’t have to pretend to watch the tennis for long before an older gentleman leaned back to say hello.

“Hi I’m Ellen” he said

“Ellen?”

“Ellen” he repeated.

Hmmmm he didn’t look like an Ellen

“Ellen?” I asked again

“Ellen”

“Oohhhhhh Allen!!” I said “Sorry got confused by your accent”

“Oh no, you’re not Australian are you?”

Kiwis aren’t exactly the biggest fans of us Aussies, so the conversation that followed was essentially us making fun of each others countries.

“You like shagging sheep”

“No you like shagging sheep”

“No you” etc etc

After about 20 minutes of this someone sat down next to me. This guy was younger, maybe 30 or so.

“This is the 3rd time I’ve seen you today and I have to ask, what’s in the bag?” he said pointing at my trombone case

“A trombone” I replied

“Aaaaaaah. I knew it was an instrument! See, I saw you walking down Queen street earlier and then by the Britomart and now here. I think we were meant to meet, you know?”

“Mmmmmm”

“Not like that or anything, I’m married, but I felt your energy. It’s like intuition you know? I just felt that we should meet, like I know there is a reason our paths are crossing right now”

So our paths crossed, we had beers, perhaps a few too many, before I stumbled to catch my bus at the end of my first 24 hours in New Zealand. I was going to like it here.