Today I’m going to write about Melbourne again and about the life in here. I could rewrite the title of the post for ’Melbourne in a student’s point of view, after 4 months’ easily because it has been at least a month since the last part :-)
After our arrival we recognised fast that also in this country tax file number has an important role in one’s life (TFN: Australian Tax File Number) :-) If you don’t have a tax file number, the state claims almost 50% from the interest on the Australian savings account. If you have a tax file number, there is no deduction, the bank enters all the ca. 5% interest to one’s credit. Claiming for the tax file number is easy: you have to fill in this online application form and after approximately one month they send you the appropriate sequence :-) Kata’s arrived in time, mine was mislaid somehow. After Kata had received hers, I waited for a week but it still didn’t arrived. Meanwhile they were crediting the account with interest again and the 50% was deducted from the interest revenue. I was very upset so we went into the local taxation office.
The customer waiting room of the taxation office is a very big open office with loose furnishing. Three clerks in all were working in the whole office. After 5 minutes of standing in a row we got to a clerk who knew after two sentences what my problem was. He noted some figures on a piece of paper (I almost thought he knew my tax file number by heart :-) ), pointed to the couches at the other part of the office, asked me to sit down onto one of them, take the phone from the table there, tip the numbers from the paper, and talk to a clerk about my problem. Making the phone call was a bit difficult (it was more than three months ago), but at last I managed to arrange everything, and at the end of the conversation I already had the tax file number. It was strange to see this kind of administration, but as I didn’t have to stand long in a raw, the phone was for nothing and the clerks were fast, I really liked this method. Reportedly the clerks are hidden somewhere in a small Australian village :-) One is for sure: this method can really be cost-efficient for the Australian state.
The inner gangway looks like this:
After having received the tax file number I reported to the bank quickly and after three days they transferred the total amount of the deducted taxes back.
Another curiosity I would like to write about is the Australian alcohol consumption habit. Now we can understand why in American films people in the streets are carrying their beer and wine bottles wrapped up in paper. If you want to drink alcohol in the street, this is the only way to take your open bottle with yourself :-) Most of the time people here, who try to obey the rules, also behave like that :-) Those, who ignore them, drink alcohol somewhere and throw the bottles away in the park. :-) All the festivals in Melbourne are alcohol-free, they all are without beer:
Could you imagine this in Europe? For example, what do you think a big and popular festival in Germany would be like without beer? Or what would it be like if at street festivals in Budapest you could only have coloured, candied drinks to your small sausages. Or what would the Sziget (=Island) Festival in Hingary be like without beer and beer tent? And you could only have beer in a small, crowded place girdled with fence. I think all the Sziget residents would move into that zone and would live there for a week :-)
Here it is not like this. People queue in order to get behind the fence, there they drink and like well-mannered children they come out to watch the programmes of the festival:
The police are very happy if sometimes, very-very seldom they run up against a man half-drunk, lying on the grass because in this case they have a job to do. Then all policemen (usually 4-5 policemen) enclose the sad drunk dog eagerly and start to act. After the acting they call on the drunk man to go home and rest, and they get on :-)
Even New Year’s Eve isn’t different, you are not allowed to drink in the streets. And the strange thing is that they keep to it. We felt uncomfortable with Kata when after the fireworks we clinked glasses with wine in the crowd :-)
I have already written a lot about the prices here, but I have to bring up this interesting topic over and over again. You know money is one of my favourite topics. :-) so I would like to share a curiosity connected with it with you again. This is totally natural for the people living here, but also this was strange for us. A few weeks ago we attended an auction of a very big house. Of course we didn’t dare to bid because as we saw the put-up price, we were knocked down. :-) 750 000 AUD were the put-up price for a totally normal, ordinary house here (4 rooms, 2 bathrooms). The chaffer of the houses is very professional and clear. The whole story begins with that that all houses for sale can be seen once in a week at an appointed time. There is no chaffering that I only have time now to see the house and I want to buy it badly, and if I cannot see it at a for me convenient time, I won’t buy it… There aren’t such confused conversations here. The agent (almost all real estates are sold by agents) appoints the time and who is interested in the estate braces himself up to go and see it at that given time. This time period is maximum 1-2 hours long per a week. This procedure goes on for a few weeks then at the end it is announced when the auction is. During the showing the owners go out. They must get movie tickets from the agents :-) That’s why one cannot be surprised to find the clothes of the owners in the closets, their books on the shelves, and the toothbrushes in the bathrooms, etc. during the showing. Of course they try to put away most things into the drawers before they let the visitors in. However, all closets can be opened. At this period of time visitors are only told of a minimum and a maximum price. Sometimes the interval might as well be 200 000 AUD.
During the showing the agent sizes up the interests and so by the time the auction begins, they already know how much the put-up price should be.
The agent really takes all tasks and weights from the owners here. They have a run for their money! You won’t feel that they steal a lot of money from you for nothing. I always had this feeling at home when I asked an agent for help. Indiscrimately, totally unexpectedly and at a completely inconvenient time customers were brought to us, I always had to stay at home when they came, they were always late and I had to speak to the customers. But this topic would be for another post, I wouldn’t go on.
Let’s go back to the auction. On the day of the auction the owners go out again. The agents put out instructional signs everywhere in the neighbourhood so that the new arrivals could find the way to the estate easily. In the first hour everybody goes through the house again. The copies of the bills are all on the kitchen table, if there is a mortgage on the estate, those papers can be read unasked, too. Every important document is on the table and can be looked at.
We also went through the flat like we were serious customers :-) It was like walking in IKEA :-) And after an hour one of the agents started to ring a big bell and people left the house bit by bit. It took about a quarter of an hour. In front of the house there was a big crowd and the public-address system had been put together :-)
One agent told every detail about the neighbourhood and the estate itself in a short, 5-10 minute introduction then the bid began. People were bidding at an easy pace and the agents were cheering up the people, sometimes they banged their little hammers once or twice like: "going, going...", but the time of ”gone!" hadn’t come yet. :-) After about 15 minutes the house was sold:
”Our” house was sold for 140 000 AUD more than the put-up price. The price was 890 000 AUD, which is 218 million HUF. An ordinary villa costs so much in a bit above average neighbourhood, far away from the beach, 18 km from the city centre, and 20 minutes from the next subway station. :-)
On the way home we were thinking about the prices here, but I still don’t understand why rates are entirely different (more real) than at home:
Simple house with 2-3 rooms,
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Australia
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$380 000
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87 400 000 HUF
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1-2 bathrooms, one garage, lame neighbourhood
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Hungary
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$34 782
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8 000 000 HUF
|
Medium house with 4 rooms, two bathrooms,
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Australia
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$850 000
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195 500 000 HUF
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pantry, garages, small garden, terrace, medium neighbourhood
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Hungary
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$78 260
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18 000 000 HUF
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Ferrari (new)
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Australia
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$250 000
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57 500 000 HUF
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Hungary
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$217 391
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50 000 000 HUF
| |
Ordinary, average car (eg. Toyota)
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Australia
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$27 000
|
6 210 000 HUF
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Hungary
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$17 391
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4 000 000 HUF
| |
80 qm flat, rent/ month
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Australia
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$1 600
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368 000 HUF
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Hungary
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$521
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120 000 HUF
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* I exchanged AUD at the exchange rate of 230 in spite of the fact that now you have to pay 245 HUF for 1 AUD. But I hope the exchange rate won’t stay at that rate and it falls back to 230 L. At the exchange rate of 245 a house, which costs 87 million, would be 93 million :-(
** The original prices in the countries are in the red fields. The others are the exchanged prices
With a little calculation we have the following resuls:
- In Hungary for a price of a Ferrari one can buy 6 simple flats, In Ausztralia for a price of a simple flat one can buy 1.5 Ferrari.
- In Hungary a simple flat earns its price within 66 months, in Australia within 237 months
Here everything is upside down. Not only is there left-hand traffic, but also the price rates are inverted. Why is it different at home?
If I had to sum up my impressions within one sentence, I would write that as a foreign student with an average knowledge in English, more than 40 years old, with little money spared in Hungary, life is not easy to start here. All students and non-students coming here have similar problems: accomodation and work. The first problem to be solved is to find suitable accomodation. We were lucky because at arrival we got to know Kriszti with the help of Edina at StudyTime. She was very-very kind to us, shared her life with us for three months, and housed us. We could start our lives here in a civilized, European environment. We faced the difficulties of finding accomodation after the third month. It is not easy to find the right place to live. It is more complicated here than in Hungary. It’s because the law defends the lessor not the lessee. At home is is also on the contrary. If you don’t pay here, you are put outside of the flat/room the next week. No bargain about the deposit, either you pay what they ask or you move out. If you don’t move, the police will come and put you out. It is hard to rent a flat with clean, somewhat trustworthy flat-mates, an acceptable distance from the centre and the future workplace for a reasonable price.
So the two most important things are the flat and the workplace, which are indispensable here. I already wrote about the flat, now let’ see the topic of searching for a workplace. :-)
One of the following posts is going to be about it.
translated by Ágnes Lupán