Couchsurfing.org is not a dating website.

Collingwood is the hippie quarter in Melbourne not only for the Abbotsford Convent but also for the Sophia Mundi Steiner School, the Yarra Bend Park and the events organized inside. Who shows me the quarter is a fellow named Holly Dance. I known him through Couchsurfing.org. I suppose Holly Dance was his nom de plume, anyway, I’ve never discovered his true name because, after that afternoon toghether, we’ve never seen each other again.

At Lounge Bar I get teased by my collegues when I tell them I’m going to meet this lad known through Couchsurfing.org.

«Com’on, there’re all ingredients for making cake: a girl, a guy, a dating website!»

«It’s not a dating website!»

Well, actually I know someone who uses the website for sexual adventures; but the most part of people makes a correct use of it, that is meeting travelers and backpakers, so as to being hosted for some night, or to make acquaintance with someone who is living in the place you’d like to visit, and so on. However, my collegues seem don’t apreciate my explanation, even though after a little time they reply cool.

Holly Dance is 45 year-old and his fairly name is because his profession. He says he’s being a teacher of Creative Dance at the Convent. He looks weird. For the whole afternoon, he has never dismounted his bicycle (because a pain at one leg) and his own means of transport seems equipped for a hypothethical desert crossing, with its light as big as a lighthouse, its reflecting stickers spread everywhere, and its plastic box functioning as luggage rack. When I’m talking he doesn’t understand me very well. That makes him teased. Nevertheless, he’s a kind man and takes me to walk at Yarra Bend Park.

The Yarra River is still a snake before to swell into the belly of Melbourne, and flow into Hobson Bay. We keep walking long the river and lovely trails, where we are passed by runner of all ages. Finally, when we reach the Convent, Holly Dance gets off and parks his armed bicycle.

Here, there’s a canteen managed by volunteers where you can have lunch just living a free offering. It’s almost sunset time, so we decide to sit on lawn in front the Convent. Getting a glimpse around me, it seems we have travelled in time to the 70s. There are long hair and rasta guys, girls with flower crown on their heads and second-hand dresses coming from India or recycled. Also in this case, Holly and me are the ugliest of the lawn. When the sun is by now behind the roofs, Holly take me inside the Convent. No monks, no nuns, just artists. The old rooms has been turned into ateliers where painters, illustrators, musicians, writers and joung teachers whose can have laboratory, exibhitions and classes of students. At the Convent there’s also the Illustrator Australia seat. I applied for become a member but I sould pay $200 at year (they selected me as Gold Member, the expensivest, for professionists) and I can’t afford it. Moreover, the association doesn’t count a lot of members and on Facebook it has only 500 I Like, against 5,800 of the Associazione Illustratori Italiana. For once, maybe, it’s better to stay in Italy.

Getting back to exploration tour, we crosses a courtyard which turns in cinema on plain air in the night and a park for concerts. It’s summer now, and it’d be great to be there, but unfortunatly I can’t because my job, and given that I’m horribly tired when I’m off, I prefer don’t move beyond Brunswick or CBD.

That which looks as an English cottage of the late seventeenth century is the Sophia Mundi Steiner School. Steiner’s schools are based on educational phylosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. The pedagogic principles of his philosophy aspire to an all-round education, to the purpouse of developing a high degree of social competence in the child.

In the teaching programs you can find not just only maths, science, english, but also carpentry, theatre, singing, art, and all that activities which give to the student a strenght experience with the life and himself. Thinks that during the firsts years of school (which lasting until 18 year-old) marks aren’t even assigned, teachers write up a description of student’s attitudes and personality.

Great day with Holly Dance, thanks Couchsurfing.org. I keep on saying it’s the perfect way to know pretty well new places; if you surrond yourself of backpakers only, they are other disperates like you, they think like you and bla bla bla. So, a local is still a local, however weird he might be.