by I’m writing this from a crummy hostel in central Auckland. I’ve stayed in crummier ones than this, like the one in Boston last year where it was inhumanly hot in my room, particularly the second time I stayed there. But that time there was Boston! ready to be explored. Downtown Auckland ain’t Boston, that’s for sure. It does almost nothing for me. It’s certainly cleaner and smarter than I remember it, but that just makes the place look more clinical and stark, because all I see are big office buildings housing big financial institutions. The Vero tower with the loo-seat roof, the Lumley tower, the bloody Tower tower. As well as the insurers, many of which are owned by the same company anyway, there are of course the Australian-owned banks and the complete grand slam of Big Four auditing firms. There are nice little alleyways like Vulcan Lane but look up and you can’t help but see AIG or IAG, I forget which, towering overhead. At the bottom end of Queen Street there are souvenir shops and high-end clothes shops and Burger King and McDonald’s and not a lot else. I don’t have that big a problem with Auckland having an area like that; I just don’t think it should be the first thing you see when you get off the plane or the cruise ship. For someone’s first taste of New Zealand, it’s not very tasty. It isn’t even Colby or Edam.
On Thursday I walked from Downtown to Wynyard Quarter, part of the city that didn’t exist when I last lived here. Along the way there were new maritime-themed restaurants with mock sails flapping in the strong breeze that I’d brought up from Wellington, but all that newness and unremitting whiteness felt nautically nasty. Wynyard Quarter itself I felt more positive about, even if you still couldn’t escape ASB and ANZ. Kids and families were using the area – it was school holidays – and it was altogether a good place for exercising and socialising and Pokémon Go-ising. The fish market made for an interesting (and kid-friendly) focal point. Maybe the summer weather would bring out buskers. I hope so. I had lunch there and a lovely catch-up with a lady who worked at Autism NZ when I lived in Auckland and for some time after. Our conversation was more me-centric than I’d anticipated, and the message I got from her was clear: I need to be who I am and not ashamed of who I am. Going to Romania would seem to be a good start in that regard. When I started this blog nine months ago that was the overriding positive theme, and it’s time I got back there.
My room in this hostel is absolutely fine really. I’ve slept well – in contrast to my last few nights in Wellington – and have felt relaxed most of the time I’ve been in Auckland. And I’ve saved some money. I fly back tomorrow evening – I’ll write more about Auckland and the people I’ve met here in my next post.
