Upside Down

In the language of Indigenous Australians there are no words for ‘left’ or ‘right’. Since they are kids they learn how to indicate and use cardinal directions to describe the location of anything. Years of practice make them be able to do it regardless the place of their staying. 

One day a simple experiment at the University has been made. Group of Indigenous Australians were invited to the lecture hall. Aboriginals have never been there before in contradiction to the teachers who were having there their classes quite frequently. Both groups were asked to indicate the north. Aboriginals did that without any hesitation and as you can expect results of teachers were not that clear and correct ;) This experiment proves that language that we use can determine the way we are seeing and understanding things around us. 

In the language of Inuit living in Greenland there are more than one hundred names for snow when in Ethiopia in Amharic language there is none! In Great Britain there are probably dozens of ways to describe fog or rain and in Bedouin tribes passing the deserts probably another dozen for the sand.

I am not sure why I am writing about that experiment… and why the hell I am mentioning Bedouins and Inuit in the post about Australia? Well maybe simply because this is an Upside Down post, so why not? :)

But coming back to Australia, nowadays it is very hard to meet Aboriginal people there. Most of them are living in the interior part of the continent where it’s difficult to get. I had this luck and I met two of them in Sydney by the harbor when they were playing on didgeridoo some modern ethno-electronic music! Well that’s definitely not what you are expecting, right?

In Melbourne I was astonished by street and modern art which you can find basically everywhere. Some of them have some simple meaning (at least for me), some are like out of the space, but most are just really weird so in order to remember and understand them I gave them my own names, such as: ‘Gigantic anti-rape ring’, ‘Huge eyes of Gaudi in the form of snail’, ‘Skyscraper beehive’ and ‘Migrant’s bridge statues’. Well I am sure that they have got some other names but this is my imagination so better don’t ask ;). Melbourne has got another interesting feature – the weather. I asked somebody in the Hostel what the weather forecast for the next day is?

- 19 degrees – He answered.

- And how about rain? 

- It’s Melbourne! Rain is always possible :)

Although I spent only a couple of days in those two cities I managed to try some good food, have great party, long walk back home afterwards and I met some new friends! Some of them a little different you would expect ;) But hey, this is a place where people are walking upside down ;) so why friends cannot be a little different!? :)