Canada: The Beginning

I arrived in Vancouver with no friends and even less dollars. The first choice I had to make was where to stay. I decided initially to stay at the YHA Hostel. This is where boring people stay. Across the road was the Samesun hostel, where fun people stay. Since I need to get myself sorted, I decided to stay at YHA.

When I first got there, the weather was relatively good, so I did some exploring downtown, which is the core of Vancouver and is almost an island. Here's a view of one side of downtown:

Here's a beach, in downtown.

There's also a giant park (Stanley Park) in the downtown area. I upgraded it's status from big to giant after running around it. Add to all this, the bays, harbours and marinas, with the mountains in the background, and you've got a very nice city. When it's summer and the weather is good, Vancouver is teeming with people walking, running, cycling, rollerblading, skating.. you name it. And the vibe is so good. People are happy.

So that's the good part of Vancouver. Now it's time to commence complaining:

The street my hostel was on, was the main street of downtown (Granville St). This street seems to have more homeless people and drug addicts, than 'normal' people. And don't even get me started on East Hastings St. And after applying for a gazillion jobs, I kept checking my resume to make sure the correct mobile number was printed on it, cos no-one was ringing. And that good weather I had when I first got here? Well it lasted almost a week, and then it started raining, each and every day. And it got cold. By the end of week two or three, I was quite literally looking at flights back to Australia.

I can't stress just how close I was to going back to Australia. In fact, for a few days, I had pretty much decided I was going back, and was just trying to work out the how and when. And, if it weren't for one conversation with my brother-in-law, David, I would be in Australia right now. I don't remember exactly what he said, but the point was that I needed to give Vancouver a proper shot. Three weeks is not a proper shot. And if after giving it a real shot, I still wanted to go back to Australia, I could do so with no regrets.

I knew one person in Vancouver, Andrew, who I had met on my travels in Vietnam. We hung out a lot when I first arrived, mostly sampling food and beer. Among other things, he introduced me to Japadog and poutine. Japadog sells Japanese style hotdogs, and this:

That's a deep fried bun with ice cream inside. Enough energy content in one bun to sustain the human body for years. This is how I believe Osama Bin Laden survived in his cave for so long without coming out.

Poutine is a Canadian 'dish', which is fries with gravy and melted cheese. This is an even less creative national dish than Australia's meat pie. Probably best to leave the Europeans and Asians to invent cuisine.

Andrew also introduced me to Wreck beach. This is a clothing optional beach near the University of British Columbia. Basically a bunch of naked people on drugs. Technically the drugs part is illegal, but it seems largely unenforced by police.

I also met Adriana earlier on, who is from Slovakia. Slovakia is of course the place where people check in to their hostel and wake up in a dungeon, whereupon people bid for the right to slice and dice you anyway they please (Source: Hostel film). Naturally, I was cautious when she invited me out into the woods, but it turns out we were just going to the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park:

Here's another pic:

We also went to a few other things, including my first fashion show:

I took a photo of this lady. I don't care for her dress, but she was pretty hot, so that warrants a photo.

So here I was, after around a month. I had decided I was staying in Vancouver, and was going to do whatever it took to make that happen. I needed three things, and I needed them quickly. A home. A group of friends. A job. In case your wondering, yes that was a segue into my next blog.

Summary

Awesome:

The thrill of arriving in a new city to live

Craptacular:

No money, no job, no home, no friends. The outlook was a bleak as the weather.

What's Next

Making friends and making money. 

UK

My final destination was the UK. Well this is not entirely true. In an effort to prolong my holiday, I flew from Paris to Krakow and stayed there for a couple weeks. Due to poor planning, and for financial reasons, I was forced to get on a 25hr bus from Krakow to London. At the start of this trip, I wouldn't have even considered such a ridiculously long bus ride, but by now I was travel hardened. The bus ride was fine, but I encountered an obstacle I hadn't considered, UK immigration.

The bus stopped at the French port of Calais. Everyone had to get out of the bus to go through customs,  then we were going to get back on the bus, drive onto the ferry, and cross the English Channel. Everyone got through France's departure procedures with no problem. However, due to problems with illegal immigrants, the UK has now also has customs in French territory.

I explained to the UK immigration officer that I intended to stay in London for approximately a week, at which time I would fly to Canada to live and work. The problem was, I had no proof of this. I hadn't yet booked my flight to Canada, because I wasn't entirely sure whether I would fly to Toronto or Vancouver (or even go to Canada). Also, the only proof of my Canadian work visa was in an email, since an email is all you receive when you're approved for the visa. Given this, UK immigration decided that I would be detained, pending further investigation. This meant I had to go and collect my baggage from the bus, and tell the driver to leave without me.

This all made my pretty furious, given I was certain they were going to let me in eventually, and were mostly just detaining me out of boredom. I realise that I should have had paperwork with me, but really, it's the 21st century, they shouldn't be reliant on paperwork. There would have been no problem if they simply had an internet connection that I could use. I could have shown them the email confirming my Canadian visa, which they had said would be reasonable enough proof that I was planning to leave the UK. But apparently, this wasn't an option. It also wasn't an option to call, telegraph, or send a carrier pigeon to Canada, in order to confirm my visa status.

Anyway, after initially venting my frustration at the customs official, I decided I was going to be around for a while and I might as well just chill out. And chill out I did, in style! I was put in a room and told to wait until they were ready to interview me. They gave me sandwiches, fruit, biscuits and coffee. They put on a movie for me. It was some crappy 'Nicolas Cage is a ghost' movie. I told the security guard that the movie was crap, but he said he didn't know how to change it, but we got to talking about travel stories. I was hoping I would be detained long enough to make it to dinner, since there was a delicious free menu for detainees that are around for dinner. 

Eventually, I was taken into a room an interrogated. The tables and chairs were chained to the walls, just in case I decided I wanted to attack her with them. I was asked a lot of boring questions, and then sent back to the room to await my fate. The crap movie was put on again and didn't get any better. Then, three hours after I initially entered customs, I was granted permission to enter the UK. Now what was supposed to happen next, was I would get escorted to the ferry terminal, where the UK officer would get me a free ticket on the ferry to England. After some discussions in French, she relayed that this was not going to happen, and I was going to have to buy the ticket myself. I was too tired to care at this point, so I bought a ticket and got on the ferry. Finally, I arrived at the English port of Dover:

This was a Sunday evening though, a bit after 6pm, and there was quite literally not a single employee in the entire port complex. There was a sign saying that someone would turn up at 8pm. So I waited until then, and a guy turned up in the office for the bus company, National Express. I asked to buy a ticket on a bus to London, but he said there was only one more bus that night, and it was full. Thankfully, there was a still another train. I was the only person on this train for quite a while, which is kind of a creepy feeling. Then a few drunk people got on, which kept things entertaining. Finally, I arrived at London Victoria bus station and walked to my hostel. Finally, at around 11:30 pm, I arrived at the hostel, more than 31 hours after my bus departed from Poland. 

First on my agenda was to visit some of my friends in London. No scrap that. First on my agenda was to indulge in my favourite British dish: bangers and mash. I went with Elina, a Canadian girl in my room, to acquire this. We went to a place called Mother Mash, which specialises in the very basic, but delicious dish, that is pork sausages and mashed potatoes. I also arranged to meet Shane here, one of my friends from my time in London five years ago. After lunch, me and Shane continued on to a pub near Tower Bridge, where I met up with Mike, and some of his friends. I met Mike in Ko Samui, Thailand. Mike is my hero, mostly because if he decides he wants to go somewhere or do something, he makes it happen. He's traveled quite extensively and he's not afraid to make a life change. Anyway, we all had a few pints and that was that.

While I was here, I wanted to revisit some of the sites in London that I had enjoyed whilst living here. But first, I needed a hungry man breakfast. Elina also wanted a hungry man breakfast! This would become a daily tradition. I ordered a cappuccino with my breakfast, and this is what came:

Elina also ordered a coffee, and hers was normal size. I have enemies it seems.

I was now ready to do some power tourism. I headed to the Tower of London.

Then across the tower bridge:

Headed back to Westminster to photograph Westminster Palace and the Big Ben:

And on the other side of the river, the London Eye:

Then, I headed to Trafalgar Square, where they were showing coverage of the Paralympics, which was on at the time:

I did none of London's massively overprices tourist attractions, although one good thing about London is that nearly all the museums are free. Not that this made any difference to me, because I didn't go to any of them.

London all-round looked a fair bit sharper than when I lived here five years ago. They had definitely put in a fair bit of work for the olympics. The tube (metro) was in overdrive. I don't think it's even possible to have trains coming any more frequently than they were.

Finally, I went and saw Bhaveen and Chris. I met these guys in India. We ate some KFC, went to the pub, had a few beers and watched a premier league game. Good times!

Now it was time to make some life decisions. I wasn't sure if I should fly back to Australia, or fly to Canada. And if I flew to Canada, would I go to Toronto or Vancouver? I had initially intended to go to Canada after this trip, but I predicted that my trip would be 2 or 3 months long, not over 6 months long. I had much less money than I would have hoped, and I had missed nearly the entire summer in Canada. In the end though, I knew I would have had regrets if I didn't given Canada a try. I chose Vancouver over Toronto, mainly due to Vancouver having a much more David friendly climate (relatively speaking).

I got an incredibly good flight deal.. only $300. There was one catch though - the flight was from Glasgow, Scotland. But that was only a mere 10hr bus trip from London, which by now seemed like a cakewalk. So off I went to Glasgow. I arrived around 6pm for the final night of my trip. It was quite an anticlimax. I simply watched some TV shows on my laptop. I was hoping to get a good nights sleep before my flight the next day. But alas, I encountered possibly the worst snorer in my extensive hostel history. In a strange way this was a blessing, as it help reinforced my belief that I had now traveled enough, and it was time to resume some sort of normal life.

The next day, on Wednesday, September 5, at 11am, my Air Transat flight departed, bound for Vancouver.  I had 8 or 9 hours on a plane to absorb the fact that I had just spent half a year travelling half way around the world to 20 different countries. It seemed almost surreal.

I landed in Vancouver just 1 hr later local time (due to the massive time difference). And that was it. The holiday had ended. But a new set of challenges and experiences in Canada awaits.

Summary

Awesome:

Catching up with my British pals.

Craptacular:

Overpriced everything

France

Paris, the most visited tourist destination in the world. And for good reason. It's one of those cities everyone should see at least once in their life. I had already seen it once, but since I was in the area (Belgium), I thought I might as well go see it again. I intended to take the short (1.5 hour) train trip from Brussels, but this was going to cost me over 100 euros, which is ridiculous, so I instead waited around a caught a 4 hr bus, for something like 30 euros.

I returned with the same camera I had 5 years ago to take pictures of the same things I took pictures of 5 years ago. But there are endless things to see and do in Paris if you look around.

Firstly I did a tour of Paris, mostly to learn more about the history of Paris. I don't know what's happened to me, but I've somehow gone from having absolutely no interest in or knowledge of world history, to actively trying to learn it. I blame the Australian education system for not teaching me any history in the first place.

On this tour we walked along the River Seine, where many of Paris' main tourist attractions are. Here's a picture with the Eiffel Tower in the background:

Here's another shot, with the Notre Dame cathedral in the background:

Next we headed to the Musee du Louvre. With my mad French skills, I can translate that to 'The Louvre Museum'. This museum has a crap ton (not a real measurement) of art and (spoiler) the Holy Grail (if you believe the Da Vinci code). I had already been inside the Louvre on my last trip, so I just took the typical tourist photo of the main courtyard and the pyramid, which has served as the main entrance to the museum since it was built around 20ish years ago.

Here's a closer up photo of the pyramid, facing away from the Louvre.

We continued in the direction of the last photo. If you go in this direction, you walk through a giant park (Tuileries garden):

and eventually end in a big public square (Place de la Concorde). Here they have a big obelisk that Egypt gave them:

The Place de la Concorde is at one end of the Champs Ellyses, but I left the Champs Ellyses for the next day.

The world didn't end overnight, so the next day happened and I was off to the Champs Ellyses. It is a busy street (source: Art vs Science - Parlez-Vois Francais). It's also notable for being the finish to the Tour de France, where many of the worlds best drug cheats, such as Lance Armstrong, have rode to victory. The street is about 2km long. On one end is the Place de la Concorde I was talking about earlier, and on the other end is the Arc De Triomphe:

This was build around Napoleon's time. There is also a crazy roundabout going around the Arc De Triumphe, which connects maybe 9 or 10 roads. The Champs Ellyses is a shopping street, with generally high end retailers. Not really the place for a cheap backpacker, but I thought I would check out Mercedes-Benz, just incase they had any specials going on cars:

I looked at this car:

.. but decided it wasn't within my price range ($100 or less), so I walked out without making any purchases. I purchased one thing on this street, an ice cream from Haagen-Dazs:

For 5 euros, I got one tiny scoop of ice cream. Value! Here's some useless trivia: Haagen-Dazs is an American company, that just uses a foreign sounding name. They should be reading by blogs in schools all around the world with gems like that.

Next, I was off to the granddaddy of tourists attractions, the Eiffel Tower:

More useless trivia: Apparently, when the Allies were on the verge of reclaiming France, Hitler ordered his general to destroy the Eiffel Tower, but the general disobeyed his orders. I should be a tour guide.

I witnessed a lot of tourists getting tricked by touts here. On the bridge to the Eiffel Tower, there was a tout playing the shell game. This is where he places a small ball under one of three shells, and moves the shells around, and then you bet on whether you know which shell the ball is under. He moves the shells around really slowly, so that even an old lady without her glasses could probably tell where the ball is. I saw people losing $50 a game on this. It's actually impossible to win this game, because the dealer uses slight of hand to remove the ball from under the shell, and put it back under a shell other than the one the player chose, when 'revealing' the shell the ball is supposedly under. They are fast though, and even though I knew how the trick worked, it was hard to see them removing and replacing the ball. I wanted to tell the tourists not to play the game, but that probably would have got me bashed, because the dealer has 4 or 5 fake players that play occasionally and always win (to trick tourists into thinking it's an easy game to win). Usually one of them is big, and I'm assuming he's the one that bashes you if you reveal the trick.

Finally, I went to Montmartre. It's a very artsy district, and dudes like Picasso and Dali apparently lived here at some point of their life. This is also the area where the Moulin Rouge and lots of clubs are in Paris. There's also a giant hill, which is one of the highest areas in Paris. You can get a lift up the hill, but to achieve street cred, I took the steps. Here a pic from the top of the hill:

There's also the Sacre Coeur basilica at the top of the hill:

That was enough tourist attractions for me. Time to have a drink. I knew a French girl in Paris, Melanie, who I had met 5 years ago in London. She took me to a few bars and we drank a fair bit of Guinness. At one bar, I waited for ages while a patron and a bartender were arguing in French. I had had enough of this and asked the friend of the patron what the argument was about. The patron was angry because he ordered a Jagerbomb, and the bartender tipped the yager into the redbull, instead of floating it on top in a shotglass. The bartender said it was still the same thing, but the patron demanded another drink. I was asked for my opinion. I told them they were both wrong. The bartender should have floated the jager shot on top of the redbull, but the patron should man up and just drink it. Anyway, it was good to see Melanie, and a nice end to my time in Paris.

Summary

Awesome:

The parks, squares, open spaces and monuments that make Paris one of the nicest cities in the world to see.

Craptacular:

Annoying, dumb tourists everywhere, taking way too many pictures and walking way too slowly.

What's Next

My final destination of the trip, the UK.

Belgium

So I was in Belgium for my first time! I completely skipped Belgium last time I was in Europe, and was considering skipping it again this time, but thankfully I didn't.

First stop in Belgium was Antwerp, known for being the biggest diamond trading city in the world. I don't care about this, I just though I should point it out. There's nothing entirely that fascinating here, but they have a main square:

I believe the building in the picture is the city hall. They also have a castle:

Castles are cool. Well done Antwerp. I'm still trying to work out the meaning of the statue at the front left of the entrance to the castle:

After some walking I arrived at a river, and due to my ample reserves of time, I decided to cross this river. Some 80 years before me, someone else decided they wanted to cross this same river, and built a pedestrian tunnel under it. There is an escalator to help you make the descent underground:

It's the original wooden escalator from the 1930's and it's sslllllooooooowwwwww. If you have time to let this escalator take you down without walking down, then you must hate life. Anyway, in my typical style, I power walked down this escalator and then power walked across this seemingly endless tunnel:

When I got to the other end of the river, I looked back across the river, and was greeted with this pretty average view:

I promptly returned across the river.

The next day I was off to Brussels and despite the short distance, the predominate language was now French, instead of Dutch. Not that this matters, since I was transitioning from one language I didn't speak to another language I didn't speak.

There's nothing really happening here. My only recollection was consuming an ice-cream. It was a good ice-cream.  Here's a picture from Brussels anyway:

Next, I went to Ghent, a student town in Belgium. The beauty of Belgium is that, because it's so small and has such good transportation, you can literally just wake up every morning and pick a new city to go to. Once again, I had a castle in close proximity:

Ghent is a nice city. As nice as any other Belgium city, but nicely compacted, so it's easy to get around. I'm told when the uni students are around, this is a very lively town, but it was holidays when I was there, so it was a ghost town. But definitively worth a visit. One more picture from Ghent:

Next I made the obligatory stop in Bruges. Bruges is the uber-tourist spot of Belgium. Even more so now, due to the popularity of the movie 'In Bruges'. But just like the movie, I think Bruges is a bit overrated.  It's a postcard city, and that's a good thing, because it otherwise seems to lack any liveliness. But rather than spend $1 on postcards, I roamed around the city in poor weather to take some crappy, very un-postcard-like photos. First a visit to the main square, with the belfry in the background:

Next, I took a horrible up close picture of the belfry:

Went to the other square:

Went to a canal:

Done.

Finally, I went to Leuven, another university town, similar to Ghent. Leuven is also well worth a visit. It has this random bug on a needle statue:

And some very detailed, intricate architecture (which you probably can't make out on the photo I'm about to present):

It's also an alcoholic's paradise. Leuven is the home to InBev, the worlds largest brewing company. They brew Stella Artois there. Additionally Leuven has 'the 'longest bar in Europe', not because there is one very long bar, but an entire street of connected bars.

Again, given it was school holidays, it wasn't that lively, but, like Ghent, this would be a mighty fun place during the school year.

One cool thing happening in Leuven while the bell tower songs. In many places in Europe, the bell tower rings a large bell on the hour: Dong, dong, dong, dong. Boring and annoying. In Leuven, at least while I was there, they play entire songs on the bells. I recall some Coldplay and Celine Dion being played.

I should mention, the only reason I had even heard of this town, is because this is the home town of Lise, a Belgium girl I met in Poland. We caught up over dinner on my last night in Leuven, which was nice.

So that was the end of Belgium. For a small country, Belgium really outdoes itself. I haven't even mentioned the best two things about Belgium - the food and beer:

Beer:
The best in the world. Strong, tasty beers, and so much variety.

French fries:
Every Belgium person will tell you that French fries were invented in Belgium. Not sure if that's true, but they certainly are damn good here in any case, probably because they deep fry them twice, to lock in the fat.  People eat fries with mayonnaise in paper cones all the time here. There's entire shops dedicated to this nutritional product.

Waffles:
Waffles are the best here too, because they put loads of sugar in the batter. They are so sweet, you don't even need to put anything on top.

Chocolate:
Didn't try it, but it's renowned, so I'm gonna go ahead and assume it's good.

Considering the above list, you would imagine all Belgians would be suffering from mass organ failure, but it doesn't appear to be the case.

Summary

Awesome:

Beer, people, architecture, beer and beer

Craptacular:

Every city in Belgium looks exactly the same.

What's Next

A quick trip to Paris, since I'm in the neighborhood. 

Netherlands

I headed to Amsterdam, one of my favorite cities of my first European adventure five years earlier. Obviously Amsterdam is mostly known for hookers and weed, but I was a good boy and stuck to generally more wholesome activities. The first night though, me and another dude did the man equivalent of window shopping. When girls window shop, they walk around a mall, stopping anytime they see something they like through the window, but they don't actually buy anything. Well we did the same thing, only instead of a mall, there was a series of tiny dark alleys, and instead of clothes in the windows, there were hookers in the window. Same thing. 

The next day I went on a bike tour of Amsterdam. Amsterdam is probably overrated as a debaucherous city, but underrated as a scenic city. There's a ring of canals around the centre of the city:

There's the ubiquitous windmills:

That one is the oldest, or is significant for some other reason I can't remember. I think it's still fully operational as well.

There's also some nice open areas, like parks and general chill areas:

Which reminds me. Amsterdam was the location for my first run in nearly six months. It did not go well. There's also a billion cyclists in this city, and they're well protected. Any accident between a bike and a car here is assumed to be the fault of the driver of the car. I wouldn't blame any car driver for running over this idiot though.

He's riding his bike sideways, which has zero advantages over the conventional way of riding a bike, and many obvious disadvantages. With inventions as stupid as this, I can only imagine that my transparent toaster invention will go gangbusters if I ever choose to market it.

After some time in Amsterdam, I decided to try something different. I went to Google maps and picked a city at random, and went there. My only criteria was that the city have a hostel. The lucky city was Utrecht. I picked well, very well. Utrecht is a like a smaller version of Amsterdam, complete with canals, a red-light district and big tower.

The hostel was an interesting experience as well. Here I firstly met two Scots, Liam and Jimmy. Liam and I had a great time listening to Jimmy's stories. Jimmy could have been anywhere from 40 to 70 for all I know. He had done a LOT of drugs in his time. He was an expert in smuggling drugs and had been to prison three times, in three separate countries. Now you may wonder why I would want to talk to people like this. Well the reason is, I get a different perspective on life and learn a lot of new things. For example, Jimmy gave me a detailed comparison of prisons in England, Scotland and Spain. Turns out English prisons are the best, Scottish prisons are OK and Spanish prisons are really bad. So now if I feel like committing a crime in Europe, I know that England would be the logically place to do it. But I should mention that for a guy that spent 99% of his waking hours smoking weed, he was surprisingly sound of mind.

But truly the highlight of my time here was attending 'Summer of Darkness'. This was an internationally renowned goth festival that just happened to be on at the time I was there. I headed there with Finish Hanna and a Dutch guy, whose name I've forgotten. There were these guys (the guy in orange was the aforementioned Dutch guy):

And these guys:

And then I saw her. I don't know if it was her pitch black eyes or her gas mask, but my heart skipped a beat and I knew I had found the girl of my dreams:

Actually she's kinda hot. Can't wait for her to meet mum and dad.

Unfortunately I lacked the courage to speak to this beauty, but I stuck around for a burlesque show.

Now I wanted to go to Belgium, but because the Tommorowland festival was on, everywhere was booked out for a few days, so I decided to go visit another Dutch city - Rotterdam.

Rotterdam was also good to visit. It's a more modern looking city, probably thanks to the Germans bombing the hell out of it in WWII. It has some interesting and unique architecture. Let's have a look. First, a bridge:

I guess that's pretty boring, but I do this intentionally to lower your expectations. And now I blow your mind with a picture of this freaking cool apartment complex:

I'ts a bunch of angled, cube shaped apartment buildings. Totally impractical, but who cares, it looks cool. Here's a pic of one up closer:

I guess the biggest problem of living in these buildings is you have annoying tourists taking pictures of your house all day. I was honored to fill this role for one day.

Here's a building that looks more like a game of Jenga:

Summary

Awesome:

The scenery of Amsterdam and Utrecht (both the land and the people)

The interesting architecture of Rotterdam

Prison stories

Goth festival

Craptacular:

Amsterdam is expensive as hell

What's Next

Belgium. Creators of the best beers in the world and French fries