Australia seen by an American

“Is their way of living different from ours?”

That's the question many people asked me when I came back from a trip to Sydney.

Yes, the Aussies drive on the left of the road! I gasped every time our car took a turn, thinking we were going to hit the incoming traffic.

At first sight, Sydney may look like an American city. From New York, the Statue of Liberty greets the visitors. In Sydney, the Opera House is the world-known landmark. Other than that, the downtown big hotels, high-rises, MacDonald’s are everywhere.

The differences are not in the big cities appearances, but in the way the Aussies live. I noticed they were more laid-back. Work is not the main goal of their lives as it is for us. We were invited to dinner at three clubs. Apparently, it’s common practice to be members of clubs where you can enjoy drinks or dinner, play at the mini-casino, watch a show or a movie, or dance on a Saturday night. I never heard of similar clubs in the U.S.

In Sydney, the winter temperature is mild. Most Aussie houses don’t have heating or air-conditioning. If it’s too cold in winter, they use electrical heaters in the room where they sit. Remember that their winter months are June, July and August. I saw the laundry drying on ropes in the backyard. No dryer. They consider the sun and wind a healthier way to dry the laundry.

Food and clothes are more expensive than in the U.S. But the people I met dressed quite elegantly, spend a lot on their clothes and often eat out. Gasoline is outrageously expensive, $ 4/ gallon. Jewelry and luxury items, silver, gold, diamond, are almost twice as expensive as in the U.S. So how do the Aussies manage to live well, better than we do?

They have kangaroo, koala bear, austrich, and an awfully ugly pig-like animal (can't remember it's name).

And the Botanical Garden have the weirdest trees with swollen trunks.

I tasted and loved the Tim-Tam (chocolate wafers), vegemite (low-calorie yeast spread you eat on a buttered toast), Pavlova (a delicious almond and meringue cake).

The Aussies I met are more relaxed than my American compatriots. They don’t try to save for the future. They don’t need to. Their social security (I can’t remember what they call it) is by far better than ours. They have great health care plan, better fringe benefits, long maternity leaves, fantastic hospitals, easier public transportations (we used the train to downtown twice).

Mona Risk's BABIES IN THE BARGAIN is medical romance in the genre of ER and Gray's Anatomy and a bestselling romance at The Wild Rose Press. Also selling at Amazon.com, Fictionwise, Barnes&Noble,...