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2009-02-21T13:57:00.005-05:00

I took much longer to write these entries than I would have liked. I'd prefer to update every 2 or 3 weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to find time to get everything written down on a more regular basis, which will be easier when I'm not spending so much time in parks.

Also, I've published some more pictures, which can be found
here

Patagonia 7

2009-02-21T13:31:00.002-05:00

The last few days of my week in Ushuaia were spent at the home of Yanina and Veronica, who are both from Buenos Aires but have been working in the tourism industry of Ushuaia for the last several years. Both were very kind, and because of their work, know just about everything about the area, and were happy to share it with me.

After leaving Ushuaia, I headed a bit northwest into the Chilean part of the Patagonia. It's a very isolated area, where the only way to reach the regions of Chile farther to the north is by ferry or plane. Unfortunately, the ferry is much too expensive ($500) and so I had to settle for a plane. It would have been very nice to take the cruise, as it passes through many fjords, but it will have to wait for next time, along with other prohibitively expensive excursions such as Easter Island, the Isle of Robinson Crusoe, the Falklan (or Malvina) Islands, Antarctica, and Port Williams, the southern most colony on the planet. The prices of all of these were hundreds, if not thousands of dollars just for transportation. Yet the distances aren't anywhere near as far as the prices would imply.

It will be nice to get a bit farther north and take advantage of some nice weather for what's left of the summer. I've had a great time here, but after so many weeks in the Andes, mountains are starting to lose their thrill. It's the same for everyone, I think. After a while, even something spectacular can become routine, and it's good to get some distance to be able to be properly awed by it again later on.

It will also be very nice to get back to a region where public transportation is a bit easier to find. In a way, I feel a bit trapped here. Even though it's only a few days till my flight, knowing how isolated the region is brings an odd feeling. Yet it's been nice to find places that are a bit off the beaten track. Still, the village that I'm in at the moment exists mostly as a supply depot for hikers heading to the Torres del Paine trail, which has been fitted with so many conveniences that it can lose a bit of it's splendor.

Previously, this village, Puerto Natales, had existed more for fishing than anything else. The people here and in Punta Arenas, the other major town, feel distinct from the rest of Chile due to the isolation from the rest of the country. They feel that they have more in common with those living in Santa Cruz, the Argentine province on the other side of the border. It's not hard to understand why...

Patagonia 6

2009-02-21T13:30:00.001-05:00

Finally, after Rio Grande I arrived in Ushuaia, the southern-most settlement in Argentina, and which is described as the end of the world. It's nestled in a lush valley, made possible by the mountains which block the wind. Still, the temperature is very cold, even during a South American summer, and the people here rarely see anything higher than 15 degrees. Yet the winters are comparatively mild, averaging about ten degrees below zero. All of this is much more consistent than in northern countries, where temperatures can vary from 35 in the summer to -35 in the winter.

Despite the consistency in temperature, the weather itself changes very rapidly. Blue skies can turn to torrential rain in a matter of minutes. This makes planning outdoor activities a bit of a challenge, and it's always advisable to bring a warm coat and rain gear.

There are many activities here, and I tried to do as many as possible. One of the most memorable was an organized tour to a penguin colony, where we got to walk among several hundred birds. They were close enough to touch, and very curious. It's amazing to see birds with so little fear of humans. The tours are tightly controlled to avoid any abuse of the animals, and touching is officially forbidden. Still, some penguins walked right up to my feet. It was also amazing listening to them singing. They would break the soothing sound of the waves crashing on the rocks with high pitched cooing, which was unfortunately a bit hoarse.

The story of the aboriginal Yamana peoples here is amazing but tragic. They had quite possible the hardest lifestyle that I've heard of, having lived for thousands of years in the region wearing nothing but a layer of oil to help generate heat. The idea of always being naked, even in -15 degree weather with piercing winds, is hard to imagine. The logic was that since it rains so much here, it was more trouble to wear furs than it was worth, since they were usually wet. And during the winter, they were still constantly needing to dry off, as they navigated in small canoes. I can't even begin to comprehend being naked in a small boat in the middle of winter, being constantly splashed by waves coming up over the sides. It's not really surprising that at their peak, they numbered fewer than 3000. But when exposed to western diseases, almost all were dead in less than 100 years. Today, there is only one full-blooded Yamana left, and at 80 years old, she probably won't be around for much longer.

Raul, one of my hosts here, is a fascinating person. Born into extreme poverty, he never attended school, and didn't learn to read until he was 28. Today, at the age of 48, he's a history teacher in a public high school. It's amazing how far people can go if they have the proper motivation.

Patagonia 5

2009-02-21T13:29:00.001-05:00

Farther south, Argentine tourists are rare. Prices rise substantially, and in general those that you meet are European or North American. The bus that I caught to go farther south along the Andes was an example of this, as although the bus was full, there were only two Argentines on it. This was a major change from where I'd been, as January being Argentine summer, the buses and hostels had been packed with tourists from within the country.

The stretch of road going from Perito Moreno to El Chalten, the next village down, is the most desolate of a very desolate route. During the 500 km. trip, there's only one sign of civilization, a collection of about 6 houses that's called Baja Caracoles. And as luck would have it, the bus broke down in this hamlet. I say that with only a little sarcasm, as it would have been much worse had it broken down anywhere outside that area. At least we had a cafe to sit in, where we could drink overpriced beer and soft drinks and play cards till the replacement bus arrived.

The next couple of stops were some of the most beautiful sites in the Andes. El Chalten is a newly established village, built mostly as a supply station for people hiking the nearby trails. I ended up doing the hikes there with five people that I met on the bus, which turned out to be quite an international group. With one person each from America, Israel, Scotland, Belgium, and Germany, there was quite a variety.

The hike itself was spectacular, with mountains towering over lakes and valleys, and amazing views that went on for many miles. Often it seemed that the summit of a mountain was only a few kilometers away, when in fact it would have been several days hiking to get there.

A few of us stuck together afterwards and went farther down the country to El Calefate, which is mostly known for the Perito Moreno Glacier, one of the last in the world which is still growing. The entire glacier is in water, forming a huge rectangular block of which pieces fall off every couple of minutes. The sound of the cracking cutting through the air makes it hard to believe that you're standing half a kilometer away, and the waves produced by the falling blocks of ice hitting the water ripple for minutes afterwards.

After stopping for a few days in the industrial city of Rio Gallegos, which is in many ways capital of the Pategonia, I continued to the southern-most province, the island of Tierra del Fuego.

Rio Grande, the largest city on the island, is quite wealthy due to oil in the region, but in many ways one of the harshest environments I've seen. The land is so flat and the wind so strong and frequent that there are no trees and very few birds. It's not uncommon to have winds in excess of 150 km an hour, and often times emergency warnings are issued to stay home to avoid flying objects. While there, I stayed with Cristian and Clara, who gave me tours of the region and explained a lot of the history.

Patagonia 4

2009-02-21T13:28:00.001-05:00

Esquel is the last common destination going south on the 'ruta 40', or highway 40, which goes all the way down the country along the Andes. From that point on, bus schedules become much more sporadic, and the road much rougher.

To get to the next town down, Rio Mayo (May River), the bus schedule fell to only twice a week. And no one working for any of the bus companies was able to say anything about how I might continue once there. The only option was to go there and ask.

It's a very depressed town, not accustomed to tourists at all. Perhaps one of the most interesting things that I saw there were the horses, roaming freely in the streets. Beyond that, not much. Something that struck me as strange was that, despite the town being very small, no one seemed to know about where and when buses arrived and left, even the person working at the bus station. Only certain buses went to the station, and others stopped instead at the local gas station. Still, everyone told me to wait for the bus at a different time, and in the end, my only option was to call the company in Bariloche. To be honest, the lack of organization in public transport is pretty common all over the Patagonia.

It turned out that the next bus south was not for another two days, so I decided to try hitchhiking to the next town down, where buses farther south were a bit more regular. The road itself, known as Ruta 40, is something like Route 66 in the U.S. It covers pretty much the whole country, starting in the north at the border with Bolivia and finishing in the south, at the end of continental Argentina. At times it's paved, but often it's barely even graded. It was something of an experience to be standing on the road, waiting for rides, in what is one of the most desolate places I've seen. The land is completely flat, and too dry for trees. Beyond the bushes, there really aren't many signs of life. Cars pass only about every 15 minutes or so, making for something of a surreal atmosphere, like being on a different planet.

My first ride was in the back of a pick-up truck, which gave me a great panoramic view of the area. Again, it's hard to explain how impressive so much emptiness can be. This ride took me as far as a ranch, and after waiting for another couple of minutes, a mini-bus chartered by Estonian tourists took me the rest of the 200 km. trek to Perito Moreno, in the province of Santa Cruz.

A popular stop near Perito Moreno is a village called Los Antiguos, but to be honest, I didn't really see why. The village is by no means ugly, but at the same time, nothing special compared to many other villages in the Patagonia. Their main claim to fame is a large cherry industry.

As I was staying in a rather small camp site in Perito Moreno, I didn't expect to meet many people while there. Yet I was surprised at how friendly the locals were. While killing time one morning, I wandered into a hardware and toy shop, thinking about browsing more than anything else. Yet the shopkeepers were fascinated to talk to me, as they don't get many tourists in their town. They invited me to their house for lunch, and we also went out for drinks later on. It's amazing how friendly people can be in quieter areas.

Patagonia 3

2009-02-21T13:27:00.000-05:00

My next destination was Epuyen, a village about 100 k.m. to the south. My stay there was quite uneventful, with the highlights being the tranquillity of a place which could barely qualify as being a village. It was the first time in ages that I'd been in the countryside at night, away from all types of light pollution and able to take in a star-saturated midnight sky.

Next up was Esquel, which is known for being close to both one of the nicest national parks in the Andes and also to a village founded by Welsh settlers. The park, Los Alerces, is indeed something to behold. With trees that are over two thousand years old, and lakes that look like something out of the garden of Eden, it's a very special place indeed.

This was also the first time in almost ten years that I spent a rainy day camping. Sitting in a tent, with little else to do but watch water slowly dripping through a hole in the roof wasn't the most enjoyable way to spend an evening, but the feeling of having such a fragile shelter between you and the storm is something that's hard to describe, in a way, cosy.

Trevelin, the Welsh colony, was a bit of a disappointment. Although the people who originally founded the village spoke Welsh fluently, after several generations the culture has been largely lost. What's left are English tea houses that boast wide varieties of biscuits and something of a British complexion in the locals, meaning lighter skin and more freckles than their compatriots of Latin ancestry.

Patagonia 2

2009-02-21T13:26:00.000-05:00

From the oil plains of Neuquen, I caught a bus to San Martin de los Andes, near the border with Chile.

It's surprising how similar it is to other mountain resorts, for instance in Canada and Switzerland. The same log cabin architecture, all buildings no more than two stories high, and all signs made of hand crafted wood.

Moving south, my next stops were Villa La Angustura and Bariloche, which took me through the Seven Lakes Path, a stretch of winding dirt road that connects the towns. It was amazingly beautiful, one of the prettiest pieces of scenery I've seen.

Whereas Villa La Angustura is a relatively quiet village nestled in a valley, Bariloche is the long established economic center of the region. Most tourists head straight there, and it's one of the only towns in the region with a notable night life.

From Bariloche, I headed south to El Bolson.

This is basically the hippy mecca of Argentina, one of the few places where dreadlocked teenagers still roam the streets commonly. It was interesting to note the differences between the Argentine hippy and the North American variety. While both tend to be quite into handcrafts and talking about abstract ideas such as positive energy, the overall peaceful mindset seems to be missing in Argentina. And where most American and European hippies tend to be vegetarians, the Argentine type still love their asados (a slowly barbaqued beef).

The town is most known for it's crafts market, which is very nice, but at the same time a bit limited for the size. It tends to be 5 times bigger than others, but it ends up just being 5 of the same thing, over and over again. There are some nice things on offer, but nothing that would stand up to being in a backpack for the next 6 months.

While exploring the very nice hiking trails in the area, something that stood out were the decrepit hanging brides that connected sides of river banks. It was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie...

On my way out of El Bolson, one of the most depressing experiences of my trip happened as I was getting on a bus heading south. A crack-head (or someone on paco, a much cheaper, much more destructive Argentine version of the drug) walked up to me and told me that I owed him money. I say he was a crack-head because of the absolute crazed look in his eyes and his rotten teeth, despite only being in his twenties. He asserted that he was the owner of a campsite, and that I had stayed there the previous night and not paid. I had actually stayed in a hostel, but that didn't matter much to him. He showed me a piece of cardboard with a number scribbled on it, which was supposed to amount to proof of what he was saying. There were about 75 other people around me, all getting ready to get on the bus. When I told him that it wasn't mine, and that I had stayed in a hostel that night, he picked up on my accent and told me that as a gringo (roughly translated, a stupid American), I had to pay him. When I refused, he started punching me in the face.

Since I still had my bags on, I couldn't even defend myself. And of all of the people around me, all young and in good shape, not a single person offered to help me. I had to run around the group, while getting punched in the back of the head, into a shop (of which the girl threw me out because she 'didn't want to get involved'), to the door of a bus (of which the driver wouldn't let me on because my ticket was for the bus behind him, and capped things off by laughing at me), and finally around to another bus of which the driver reluctantly let me on board. Of the Argentines that I've told this story to, few are surprised. The degree of 'look after yourself, first and last' that actually goes on here is still shocking to me, even after having been here for a year. Luckily, I came out of it with only a slightly blackened eye, but things could have easily gotten much worse.

Patagonia 1

2009-02-21T13:23:00.002-05:00

After leaving Buenos Aires shortly after the New Year, I flew to Neuquen, a petrol city in the south-central part of the country.

Luckily I was able to make use of Couchsurfing while there, and stayed with Daniela, a local girl who lives with her 5 year old daughter. Since Neuquen is largely an industrial city with little tourism industry, it would have been quite boring to stay in a hotel.

The streets often aren't named, but divided into blocks, where each block has a letter and number. Yet even these aren't marked, and the only way to find a street is to ask for directions while wandering around.

Also, the buses only accept pre-paid cards, and to get such a card, you have to be a resident of the town. Anyone from out of town has to ask if someone will swipe their card for him in exchange for the money the trip is worth.

Still, it's obvious that Neuquen is a city of opportunities. There is much more wealth on display than in other parts of the country, which is of course due to the amount of oil in the area. You can also tell that the city was assembled quite hastily. For instance, it's very difficult to walk along the sidewalks, as they aren't in a straight line, but tend to zig zag between the curb and the houses, and often go up and down in the form of stairs.

It also feels like a fairly protected city, spared from as many ghettos as other towns. There's also a sense of tranquillity that's missing in many other parts of the country.

Photos

2009-01-15T15:24:00.002-05:00

I finally got some pictures up, and they can be found at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ian.barrett

Forward

2009-01-04T15:13:00.002-05:00

I'll be leaving Buenos Aires in a few days. Although in some ways sad, it feels like it's time to move on.

I've had a very good time here this past year. It's been great to have such an immersion in a country, as the only other place where I've had such an opportunity is France.

My job was great, as, although the salary and hours weren't wonderful, working as an English teacher got me out in the community, and had me in constant contact with the local people. I've also been lucky in that, with very few exceptions, all of my students were friendly, interesting, and motivated. It's been a great experience.

I've also enjoyed the dance classes that I've taken, especially tango. It was a pity that I was never able to find a permanent partner, as there aren't many girls, or people in general for that matter, interested in dancing more than a few times a month.

Dancing 'rock' has also been fun. The closest comparison to this that I can think of would be that of an American high school dance from the 1950's. It's funny that it's so popular with the local twenty-somethings. In contrast, the crowds in tango classes are usually aged 40 plus. It's been a great way to meet locals my own age.

Yet despite feeling in many ways comfortable here, I have the feeling that if I were to stay next year, not much would change, and I'd be in the same situation that I am now. Even for local people, opportunities here are hard to come by. It's accepted (and expected) that you need contacts to get ahead, and I don't have any strong connections. Plus, I'd like to take advantage of the freedom that teaching English gives me, and see more of the country and continent. Also, the size of Buenos Aires is a bit much, particularly in the downtown core, which swells to more than 5 million people during the day. My girlfriend, Maria, and I having broken up means that I don't feel much tying me to the city.

At this point, my plans don't really extend past the summer. I'm going to spend the summer (January and February here in the Southern Hemisphere) exploring the south of the country, which is one of the most sparsely populated regions of the continent. Afterwards, I'll pass through the vineyards in the west. Unless I decide to stay there for the coming school year, I'll keep heading north afterwards, to Peru, Ecuador, and into central America.

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Something that will come up quite often in the coming posts are hospitality networks such as Couchsurfing and Hospitality Club. For those not familiar with them, they're organisations based through the internet. The members offer to show you around the city they live in, and may even invite you to stay with them while you're in town. To many this sounds crazy, but I've found it be an invaluable tool when travelling. It's amazing how much deeper experiences can be. For instance, travelling around the Balkans in Eastern Europe was a fascinating experience, but only because I had local people to show me around, explaining the various parts of the culture and history of the area. Staying in hotels and going to the few museums of the region would have been a bit boring. Meeting and staying with families that had been on both sides of a war just a few years earlier was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life.

I used this site recently in Misiones and Paraguay, and I'll keep doing so in the coming months in the Patagonia (southern Argentina).

So for anyone wondering about what this was, this is the idea in a nutshell.

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A few words about the blog in general... I'd like to keep posting regularly, but I doubt that I'll be able to. In the end, it's a bit boring to write this unless I have some interesting stories to tell, which is when I'm travelling. Otherwise, I just end up ranting about politics, either here or in Canada. Writing about daily routines is a bit tedious.

I think it would be realistic to post once or twice a month, but not necessarily at regular times. I won't always have access to the internet, as I'll be spending quite a bit of time in national parks and villages. So to follow what I'm up to, just check back every couple of weeks.

When I do update this, I'll probably announce it through my status on facebook. For anyone whom I'm not connected to via a friend link on that page, just search for Ian Barrett in the Argentina network. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one!

Also, I recently bought a digital camera, and will be posting a few pictures from my trip. I'll post a link here as soon as I get them up on the internet.

================================================

Someone anonymously posted a comment a few entries ago, telling me that I'm a bit of a snob when I write, and that I criticise Argentina too much. I hope this isn't how things have come across, as I've been quite happy here. When I first arrived, there was definitely a bit of culture shock, mostly due to the amount of poverty and the sheer size of the city. Still, I think that in general I've criticised the government of Canada more than anything else over the years, since it's frustrating to see things going so much worse than they were, or than they need to be. I could rant about Stephen Harper, the current Prime Minister, for quite some time.

Finally, I feel badly about not responding to many of the comments that were left in the last year. I do read them, and will try to be better with that in the future. If anyone does have any comments or criticisms, I'd very much appreciate hearing them, as of course I'm looking for ways to improve my writing style or in selecting what I choose to write about.

Retrospect

2009-01-01T16:30:00.005-05:00

I've been teaching English in Buenos Aires all year. It's been a great way to get to know the local people, and hence the culture. My days, although long (most days I worked 14 to 16 hours including transit), are basically spent socializing, as Argentine English teachers are perfectly capable of teaching grammar. Those students lucky enough to have a native speaker as a teacher usually just want to converse as much as possible.

It's given me a fantastic window into how people here view their country, and the world. Although proud of many aspects of their culture, Argentines also tend to ignore very large parts of it. Very few dance, either tango, folklore, rock, or otherwise, despite having one of the most vibrant dance scenes in the world. Also, relatively few drink wine, yet their country produces some of the finest in the world, and at a very affordable price. And as with most countries, very few local people have properly explored regions outside of where they live.

Yet there is also a sense of relativism that the rest of the world could learn from. Due mostly to the number of financial crises the country has endured over the last 50 years, people don't put nearly as high of a concern on financial issues as in other parts of the developed world. Although obviously concerned about their economic well being, they have learned to concentrate more heavily on other aspects of their lives, such as family, sports, or cuisine. After all, so many people lost everything (for many, a lifetime's savings) in period of a few days in 2001, that if they hadn't looked elsewhere, they might well have gone insane. This view has been especially welcome given the current world economic situation. Despite my savings having slimmed considerably, due both to falling stocks and the falling Canadian dollar, and a very uncertain 2009 already underway, I really don't feel stressed. I have no idea how long I'll be able to travel, but people here have taught me to make the most of what we have, and handle whatever the future brings in the best way possible. Argentines have learned to be very resourceful.

An example is my landlord, who, although at an age where he should be thinking of retiring, realizes that isn't likely. Pensions here are virtually non-existent for many people. A combination of financial instability and poor governmental and/or personal management has put many in a very difficult situation. Many pensioners get less than $200 a month. To put this into perspective, my rent, for a very small room in Buenos Aires, is $290.

So, as a way to compensate, he uses what he has: A condominium with 3 spare rooms, left over from when his children were younger, which he rents out to foreigners living in the city. In this way, he makes enough to get by, but not more. Still, he has a very positive attitude towards life, always looking on the bright side. He, and many others.

The attitudes of the middle class are in stark contrast to the government. The endemic corruption and short-sightedness of several generations of politicians have brought the country from one political problem to another, of varying degrees. In the year that I've been here, the biggest was a farming strike which brought the country to a standstill. There was also an abrupt nationalization of a private pension scheme, which wrecked havoc on a banking industry already reeling from the international crisis. The private scheme was in many ways poorly planned, but it would have been hard to pick a worse time to nationalize it. Many Argentines felt it was a money-grab by the government in a time of falling commodity prices, which had severely reduced government revenue. Politicians are often accused of spending pension money whenever they please. Thus the low payments to people who are collecting pensions after they retire.

On a brighter note, something fantastic is the cuisine. Even though the most well-known parts of it involve meat, I've been able to enjoy things like fresh raviolis, which I'd never even thought of before. It's hard to describe fresh pasta until you've tried it. But it will definitely be hard going back to eating the boxed variety when I leave Buenos Aires.

Perhaps even better than the pasta is the ice cream. Argentines have really mastered it. In my neighborhood, there are about 12 gelato cafes, each with between 20 and 40 different flavours, and all reasonably priced. The extremely strong Italian influence on Buenos Aires is the source (almost everyone here has some Italian heritage), but the people here have managed to surpass the teachers, and by quite a bit!

Despite having delicious food, people manage to stay in good shape in general. This does have it's darker side, as eating disorders are extremely common, but at the same time, people appreciate the need to exercise and not over-eat. It's not to say that everyone should have the same body type, but in Canada and particularly the U.S., it's sad when someone can't walk up a flight or two of stairs without feeling like they're going to fall over.

Something else that I find interesting is that there isn't much individuality in terms of fashion here. Everyone could be more or less categorized in a similar way, in sharp contrast to North America or Europe, where people often define themselves by what they wear, especially teenagers. There really aren't many punks, hippies, goths, etc. Whether this is a good or bad thing would depend on who you ask, but people definitely take care in their appearances!

Grasp 3

2008-12-27T19:17:00.001-05:00

The bus came a few minutes early, and after bargaining with the driver over the price (their reflex is to try to charge foreigners as much as possible, and since the driver could again barely speak Spanish, working out a fair price took a bit of time) and convincing him that, unlike Americans, Canadians don't need visas to enter Bolivia (since Canada and the U.S. are not the same country, something that he had a hard time grasping), I was on my way.

I only spent a few hours in Bolivia, but from what I could gather, there is a very strong anti-American (hence the visa requirements) and as a consequence, anti-any-foreigner-that-seems-American sentiment as well among the officials. All of the offices of immigration had giant paintings of Evo Morales, the current president, and the first aboriginal to hold the position. He's very outspokenly anti-American. I don't know if this acts as throwing gas on the fire, or if Americans are always treated so badly there.

Overall, I didn't have any major problems, except for being yelled at by the officials a bit, for instance to stand here, or sit there, not to move, not to talk back, as they wanted to show me who was in charge. Yet after a few minutes wait, they stamped my passport and I was on my way.

In the southeastern part of the country at least, there is absolutely no organization in terms of public transport. The other lady who had been on the bus with me (there were only two of us making the trip, which was hopefully just a slow day for the bus company...) asked me where I was going, and I answered the border with Argentina. She said that she was going the same way, but that we had to get a cab there, and so it would be best to look for three other people to fill up the car. The border was 100 k.m. away, and with 5 people, she said the cost would be $2 each, much more affordable than the $5 it would have been with just the two of us. It only took a few minutes to find others who were interested in making the trip, and we were quickly on our way.

Two things that I was very thankful for during this whole escapade were being able to speak Spanish and having thought of picking up twenty one-dollar American bills before starting the trip. It made life much easier, as I could pay people easily without requiring change. Yet I get the feeling that someone who isn't able to communicate in Spanish would be in for a rough ride. I tended to get a bit more respect for being able to talk to them, but in the end, I still had to argue with many people I met in order to get information or a fair price. As far as money goes, it's not so much about the amount in and of itself, as much as a matter of general principal. If you don't stand up for yourself, you won't get any respect at all. It's no fun traveling through an area where you're treated like a joke.

Crossing the border into Argentina was a hassle, as on top of the usual bureaucracy, there's a long (but completely inefficient) process of checking people at the border for drugs. Apparently, most drugs in Argentina come in through the border with Bolivia. The process is basically that they make you wait for a few hours, then ram their hands around in your bag, and send you on your way.

More strange was that apparently, some very stupid tourists cross here as well. I was approached both before and after crossing the border, by local people with ridiculously obvious scams. The first, before the border, told me that he could get me across in a fraction of the time if I gave him my passport. In return, he would give me an Argentine I.D. and meet me on the other side to trade back.

The other, who was walking around on the other side of the border, had a strange uniform and was yelling at foreigners that they had to show him their passports. When he started hassling me, I told him that I had already shown my passport, and wasn't going to do so again. If you use an aggressive enough tone, they don't persist very long, and move on to look for tourists that are a bit more clueless.

Once moving again in Argentina, I caught a bus to Salta, the capital of the one of the mountainous northern provinces. The bus was extremely slow, due both to stopping in every collection of houses that passed for a village, and because the provincial government has set up a series of 'check points' along the highway, which are just like borders. Here the provincial police hassle anyone looking suspicious and ask to see documents.

Seeing as it took 14 hours to make it from the border to 500 kilometers inside the province, I started to appreciate the anything-goes style of Paraguay and Bolivia. There, if you can get the hang of things, it's possible to make very good time. I covered the 600 kilometers from the Paraguayan village where I started to the border between Bolivia and Argentina in 7 hours. I wouldn't complain if it seemed that the bureaucracy that I went through on the way to Salta was achieving something, but the customs officials or provincial police really weren't doing anything. Just sitting around and then briefly poking through bags. At the very least they could have kicked the con-artists out of the area around the border crossing.

Salta is a very beautiful area, where the landscapes change very quickly. Dry plains dotted with cacti give way to fields and mountains in the space of a few hundred meters.

A German man staying at the same hostel offered to rent a car if a few other people would pitch in to split the costs, thereby allowing us to explore the parks and villages around the main city. It was nice to see the local landscapes, as they are indeed very beautiful, but in the end I didn't have a good time. It started to feel more like a high school field trip. It was me, the German driver, an Australian guy and his Korean girlfriend, who had only met a few days before and were extremely affectionate, and a very strong-willed teenage Dutch girl.

I didn't really have much in common with the rest of the group, as they stopped every 5 kilometers to take pictures of the mountains, but were not at all interested in exploring the villages or trying to get an idea of what life is like in the area. It was a pity, because I was very curious. It's a very isolated area, with service only by dirt road. There are hardly any houses, and the people are all of aboriginal origin. The houses are made of a strange pink clay, the same color as the soil.

Grasp 2

2008-12-27T19:15:00.000-05:00

Paraguay has been described as an improvised country, which seems to be pretty accurate. After a long string of dictators, they tend to be quite suspicious of authority in any form. Though currently, their democratically elected president is a former priest and overall nice guy, so hopefully things will improve.

Another example of their difficult past is that, a bit more than 100 years ago, 90% of the population was killed or executed after losing a war with Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. They also lost 75% of their territory, and obviously ceased to be a major regional power.

Today, the language of the middle and upper class is Spanish, but everyone speaks Guarani, a native language which is the mother tongue of the lower class. Many people that I met could barely speak Spanish.

Taking a bus to Asuncion, the capital city, was another example of how chaotic things can be. At every stop, some people would come on the bus selling everything from pastries to balloons for children. Many people make a living by roaming the streets, selling whatever they can. You buy what comes your way, as the prices are lower than in shops.

In Asuncion, things can be even crazier. The markets are something to behold, as they stretch for many blocks, and have no order to them at all. The shopkeepers are very aggressive, and the girls who work there come up to when you walk by, rubbing your arm and asking you (in a very suggestive tone) what you're looking for. To find something in particular, you either need someone with you who knows that particular market, or you need enough luck to find it by chance.

Also, it would be a very difficult place to get around not speaking Spanish, as hardly anyone speaks English, and prices are hardly ever marked. Meaning that no matter who you are, you have to have an idea of what things are worth before going shopping, or you'll end up having your pants pulled down over the price. Particularly if you're a foreigner.

One of the most interesting parts of Asuncion is the trade fairs, which are much smaller than the markets, and specialize in crafts and other traditional hand-made decorations. It's amazing how intricate some of the designs are, and how little they cost. A piece of cloth that took someone a month to weave might sell for as little as $10.

Luckily, I had people to show me around the whole time I was there. I stayed with Malvi, who lives just outside of Asuncion in San Lorenzo. She was very kind and showed me around the whole region, from hectic Asuncion to the quieter villages a few kilometers away, such as Altos and San Bernadino. I also met Rocio, who studies history at the local university, and explained a great deal of what happened over the last couple of centuries in Paraguay.

After leaving the Asuncion area, I headed to the extremely isolated west of the country. There are hardly any tourists, and only a few villages, most of which settled by German Mennonites a few generations ago. The contrast of day-to-day life was quite striking. The Germans have maintained their language and their trademark efficiency, having built a community in one of the least hospitable regions of a relatively poor country up to a point where their towns have a similar standard of living to certain areas of Europe. At the same time, you can tell that they are used to isolation, as although some are very friendly, many can be rather rude, ignoring you when you talk to them or just answering you with a grunt.

The heat in the region is absolutely incredible. It topped 45 degrees at one point. It's hard to describe. Like a warm globe enveloping your whole body. When you have to walk anywhere, it's important to go slowly, or you may pass out. Plus, it's necessary to carry water on you at all times. There's a certain sort of insect indigenous to the area that's something like a cricket, but much louder, and which chirps incessantly at all times. They're everywhere. You can really get the feeling that you're in a different world.

The Mennonites of the region feel a very strong connection to Canada. Their history in a nutshell is that they were originally expelled from Germany over 300 years ago, and found refuge for several centuries in Russia. Yet when Stalin came to power, they were again forced to flee, and the original destination was Canada. Unfortunately, immigration laws had recently been tightened due to the Great Depression, and only the fit and able-bodied were accepted by the Canadian government. So although many still settled in various regions of Canada, others had to look for another answer. Paraguay was chosen, as it was one of the few countries offering them both land and the possibility to bring whoever they liked, in particular the sick and elderly. As a consequence, many of the Paraguayan Mennonites have family in Canada, and in some cases, even have Canadian citizenship.

A darker side of their history is that it was also a destination of choice for Nazis fleeing prosecution in Europe. I wasn't able to find out exactly how much influence they had over the community, as it's not the sort of thing you can safely bring up in conversation with a local person. One thing that I did find rather shocking was some of the material for sale in a local bookshop. Some comics for children dealt with religious matter in a very disturbing way, equating Catholics, Nazis, and members of the KKK. Apparently, the last Pope will be the Antichrist. I wish that I'd had more time to dig around the shop, but the shop keeper was giving me strange looks, so it seemed better to quietly exit. Getting on their bad side, considering that it really is the middle of nowhere, would have been a bad idea.

Getting from western Paraguay back to Argentina was also a bit of a challenge. There are no direct roads to the northwestern region of Argentina. There are buses that cover the route through Bolivia, but they only go at 2 in the morning. As a consequence, I had a 6 hour stop-over in a small, mostly aboriginal village after catching a local bus from the regional capital, Filidelfia. There really wasn't much to do, but I found a small canteen where a few of the locals had gathered, drinking beer and playing volleyball on a court to the side. It was all somehow a bit surreal, as the idea of watching a group of aboriginal Paraguayan men, joined by an local ethnic German girl, all speaking Guarani, playing volleyball in the dark, was not exactly how I expected to spend the evening. They spoke a bit of Spanish, and so we were able to communicate somewhat, but the conversation couldn't get much beyond where I was from and how in the hell I had found my way to their part of the world. Several of them tried to talk me into staying, and offered to let me sleep at their houses.

Something that I find fascinating is that they have only been sedentary for a few generations. As recently as 1975, many were still hunters/gatherers, roaming the land dressed in hides. Yet as they say, 'Once you've tasted bread, you can never go back to the bush'.

There was no bus station per se, and as most people never go to Bolivia, none of the locals could agree on the best place to catch it. Since customs for the border is located in the town (though the border is a few hundred kilometers away), it seemed as good of a place as any to wait for it. Apparently Bolivia and Paraguay are still on bad terms due to a territorial war 80 years ago, of which Paraguay mostly won. As a consequence there isn't much traffic to speak of on the (dirt) road connecting them, and so figuring out how to go from one country to the other is a bit difficult.

Grasp 1

2008-12-26T12:34:00.005-05:00

A few hours after finishing my classes for the year here in Argentina, I caught a bus to the north of the country, which I've been eager to explore for quite some time.

My first stop was Posadas, the capital city of the province called Misiones.

Posadas is a quiet town, but large enough to have everything you could need. I stayed with Fabricio, an Argentine who, although not from Posadas, has lived there for several years.

He was kind enough to show me around the town, and give me all the information I needed to explore the region farther.

One of the main attractions were some of the Jesuit ruins about 50 k.m. outside the city. Although they were mostly a collection of stones piled up to form walls, it was interesting to learn more about their cultures. Apparently, the Jesuits were a group of Catholic missionaries (which is perhaps where the name Misiones came from) who arrived to 'do the work of Christ'. They built up villages from scratch, forging their way through the jungle. Perhaps their most important contribution was protecting the local aboriginal tribes from the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers. As a consequence, Guarani, the aboriginal language, is still the official language of Paraguay, whereas aboriginals in the rest of Argentina were either assimilated or exterminated.

After leaving Posadas, I continued north to the Iguazú waterfalls, which border with Brazil. They are very impressive, but at the same time very developed, to the point where it can lose it's charm a bit. Still, some of the hikes through the rain forest and away from the waterfalls were very lovely. The variety of insects that you meet along the trail is amazing. There are also many interesting animals, but they tend to be a bit shyer. I saw a sign saying don't feed the monkeys, but unfortunately no monkeys came by to say hello, so it didn't really matter.

Delve

2008-07-31T17:37:00.001-04:00

At the beginning of the month, my girlfriend Maria and I took a trip, first to Cordoba, and then to Uruguay.

Cordoba is the second biggest city in Argentina, and about ten hours from Buenos Aires by bus.

The inter-city buses are extremely comfortable, complete with a stewardess, meals, and an extra large reclining seat. They also play movies, though the DVDs usually skipped. We ended up playing chess until the volume was finally cut so we could get some sleep.

Once in Cordoba, we stayed with Maria's brother, Mati, and his girlfriend, Raquel. They were both kind enough to show us around for the week, taking us to various villages in the area.

Perhaps the biggest difference that I saw was the attitude of the people.

Having spent most of my time in Buenos Aires, it wasn't really clear whether the rudeness of the people in the capital city was just a trait of people there, or something more general. Yet I finally confirmed that Buenos Aires is to Argentina what mega-cities are to most countries; the heart of it's culture, but at the same time somewhat cold and in many ways unwelcoming.

The majority of people that I met outside of the Buenos Aires area were very polite, and the overall feeling of stress in the capital city didn't extend much past the city limits. Cordoba is a nice size, roughly one million people, meaning that there's always something to do. We went to a melonga, which is a bit like a slow version of tango, as well as to a few parties. I found that my Spanish improved somewhat while I was there, as I was usually surrounded by people who either didn't speak English, or, at the very least, were speaking Spanish to each other. Unfortunately, I still wasn't able to jump easily into conversations, but if I concentrated, I could usually follow what others were saying.

During the days, we went to villages such as La Falda (which translates to The Lap) and Carlos Paz. Both were very pretty. In La Falda we walked around a small park and climbed up behind a waterfall, and in Carlos Paz we had a picnic by a lake. One thing that was a bit depressing was the amount of pollution all over the area. People in Argentina really don't pay much attention to the environment, and in order to be able to sit on the grass to eat our lunch, I had to push the trash out of our way with my foot.

After Cordoba and a quick stop back in Buenos Aires, we continued to Uruguay, to see my friends in Montevideo, Gonzalo and Alejandra. As before, Montevideo was pretty, and very quiet. Though it seemed like there was a bit more hustle and bustle there than the last time I was in town.

We mostly walked around the city, and also went to a party being put on by friends of Alejandra. It was quite international, and was open to Couchsurfers, a social networking website that organizes parties all over the world. There were, among others, people from Slovakia, India, Germany, and the United States.

===============================

The cultural make-up of Argentina is quite interesting. Although there is a complete lack of Africans and Muslims (I haven't seen more than a handful of people from either ethnic group) there is a significant Korean and Chinese population here. Most of the Chinese people own grocery stores, or internet and calling shops. Yet at the same time, I notice that many of the owners of these stores are quite strange. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why and how. Yet most times when I walk into one of their stores, the owners are arguing and yelling at each other. They very rarely seem happy. It may have something to do with their not speaking Spanish (or English, for that matter). They don't seem to be motivated to learn the national language at all. Their lives must be quite isolated, as the Asian communities are quite small.

Overall, most of the immigrants come from neighboring countries, such as Paraguay and Bolivia. There are also a large number from Columbia. Many people come here to study, as the universities are free to everyone.

Although I haven't been to either Bolivia or Paraguay, I find it hard to understand why so many come here. They almost always get stuck in low paying jobs, and Buenos Aires is not a cheap city by South American standards. Making minimum wage, it's almost impossible to afford even rent and food. Yet it must be better than how things are in the countries that many of these people come from. Bolivia and Paraguay have reputations as being the poorest countries in the continent, yet not having been there, it's hard to imagine what it could be like. Strangest of all is why more don't head farther south, as I've heard that the economy in the oil rich regions of southern Argentina is much stronger, and it's relatively easy to find a good paying job.

Scope

2008-06-25T10:16:00.003-04:00

Winter is coming...

This month was the first time I celebrated my birthday in winter.

I spent the evening with Maria, looking for a place to dance tango. Unfortunately, as June 9th fell on a Monday, we didn't manage to find anything. Even in Buenos Aires, the early part of the week is rather quiet in terms of dancing, so we postponed tango for a few days and just went for dinner.

July here means winter break, so we're planning a trip to Uruguay on Thursday the
3rd. I like Montevideo and Colonia very much, but the trip is forced, as I need to do a border crossing to renew my visa. Afterwards, we're going to visit her brother in Cordoba, one of the larger cities in Argentina. I'm looking forward to exploring a bit more of the country, as I've really only seen Buenos Aires and a bit of its surroundings.

==============================

Argentina has been facing some serious problems lately. The conflict of the government with farmers and other agricultural businessmen has become more bitter. It's been causing problems for over 3 months, yet neither the unions nor the government are showing any signs of backing down.

The dispute originated over a major tax increase that President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner (affectionately [or not so affectionately] known simply as 'Christina'] passed by decree. It was necessary, as Christina and her husband Nestor, who was the President before her, went on a spending binge last year during the elections. They needed to raise some revenue to cover holes in the government's checkbook, and decided to up the tax rates by up to 15% on the relatively prosperous farmers. The farmers revolted, and the Kirchners responded by provoking them farther, insulting them and daring them to resist. So resist they did. The situation has alternated between a hissy fight and a full-on confrontation since, with the rest of the population caught in the middle. Neither the Government nor the unions care about anything besides their own self-interests, and the country has been suffering tremendously as a result. Most of the pain is from lost tax revenue, but there are also shortages of specific foods.

In the last week many people around the country have been particularly edgy. More and more of those who weren't overly concerned now fear that things could get out of hand, perhaps violently. There isn't much hope in sight, as neither side is willing to give an inch, and their demands are quite far apart.

Whereas the farmers have enjoyed popular support from the middle class, the Kirchners have resorted to hiring supporters, paying people roughly 50 dollars to attend their rallies. They usually manage to gather about 100 000 people, a huge waste of tax dollars. Yet this is somehow legal.

The farmers draw several times as many people, and those that come are there of their own initiative. A popular Argentine pass-time of walking around banging on pots to express political frustration has also come back into fashion recently.

Whether the damage done to the Kirchners' grip on power is repairable is yet to be seen. Their popularity has plummeted from 55% in January to less than 20% now. If they're deposed, it will mean a long period of political instability for the entire country. Their hair-brained economic policies, combined with their flat-out lying about the inflation rate and their own approval ratings (officially 10%, independently verified at 25%, officially 60%, independently verified at 18% respectively) could add enough dissent to bring things to a boil.

==============================

On a Canadian political note, Stephane Dion has decided to do something unheard of. He's going to campaign for the next election on a carbon tax, where people will be made to pay more if they pollute more. In effect, he will be asking voters to think of the world as a whole instead of their own short-term interests.

If Canadians elect the Liberals based on this platform, it will say a lot about our country. Or we could choose the mantra of the Conservatives, which is that we all wish the damage to the environment could be reduced, but that we refuse to do anything that would be so much as a mild inconvenience. If we opt for the latter, one of the richest countries in the world (with one of the highest per-capita rates of pollution) will have said that it only care about its own comfort, and nothing else. If this happens, how can we ever expect poorer countries (pretty much every other country in the world) to do things any differently?

Dry

2008-06-02T16:11:00.002-04:00

I've been having a hard time finding motivation for this blog lately.

It's not that I don't enjoy writing it, at least when I can think of interesting things to say.

The problem is more that my life has slipped into a bit of a routine, so it's difficult to come up with interesting perspectives on what I'm seeing.

For instance, in the last few weeks, there have only been a handful of things that have happened of which I'm able to write much about.

The first is Maria, my new tango partner, who I've also been doing language exchanges with. We've been getting along very well. She's studying translation, and thinking of going to America for a semester next year.

The second is that Alejandra and Gonzalo, my friends from Uruguay, came for a visit. I spent Sunday showing them around, and I'm looking forward to seeing them again when I go back to Montevideo next month.

Since I've been having a hard time coming up with much to say, I'm thinking of only updating this every month or so, and thinking about some interesting, smaller aspect of Argentine life to discuss.

=======================================

One thing that I'd like to add before I close is that everyone has been saying how bad Clinton's staying in the race for the Democratic nomination has been for Obama. Although it is dividing the Democrates, it's also kept Obama in the headlines pretty much constantly. McCain, on the other hand, has been somewhat forgotten. As they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity. At the very least, I think the extra exposure hasn't been hurting Obama. It might not be a completely horrible thing if Clinton does stay in until August, even though I see no reason why this would be good for her.

Solace

2008-05-19T16:31:00.002-04:00

Things have been pretty calm these last two weeks.

At the beginning of the month, I moved to a different part of the city, called Belgrano. It's clean, quiet, and has many conveniences close by. Plus, it's not as shady an area as where I was last month, which, although technically in a tourist neighborhood, was unconfortably close to the hooker and drug slums.

The farmers are back on strike, blocking many highways, though there haven't been any food shortages yet. Most people in the city think it's the farmers' responsibility to pay higher taxes, as with the high prices of food, they're earning quite a bit of money. But smaller farmers complain that their profit margins have been cut to almost nothing. Since there is no transparancy here at all (the government doesn't even talk to the media, accusing them of being incompetent), and both sides at the negotiating table don't care about anything but their own well being, it's hard to imagine the conflict ending any time soon. At least no one has started any major fires in the last couple of weeks.

Mark

2008-05-04T11:55:00.004-04:00

To start with, I'd like to talk about a common problem when I write about my travels; most of the stories tend to be a bit bleak. This is mostly because the negatives tend to be more interesting than the positives. It's unfortunate, and I've tried to change perspective that the stories give. In the end, some of my favorite things about the places that I see don't require much explanation, and so are very short when I include them.

For instance, one of my favorite pass times here is to dance tango. Tango was born here, yet most of the people my age aren't very interested in it. It's quite rare that I find anyone who wants to study it, and the classes that I've tried have been mostly of an older crowd.

One exception is a class that I take in the older neighborhood of Palermo. There, pretty much everyone is in their twenties. The class is good fun, and I try to go each week. Since there are often new students, it's difficult for the more experienced students to advance to higher levels. So far I'm only at a high beginner stage, so it's not an issue for me. Yet even if I stop noticing major progress, I'll keep going. The instructor is very friendly, and the class is always enjoyable.

Another class that I've tried is much more serious, and there's little doubt that the teacher is a true maestro. He's very passionate about what he does, and like many other artists is a bit testy. I learn much more there, but most of the students are middle aged or older, and I rarely relate to my partner. I try to go as often as possible, as together with the more casual class, I tend to get the best of both worlds.

Other enjoyable aspects of daily life here are things like food and transportation. I'll miss being able to buy fresh pasta, something I had never tasted till I came to Argentina. I'm sure it's quite popular in Italy as well, but I didn't get to spend much time there. The empanadas are also nice, small pastries with cheese and vegetables inside. And there are plenty of nice cafes, with at least one or two per block in the commercial areas.

The local buses are excellent in terms of frequency, though they can be a bit dirty. Usually they go every 2 minutes, and they cover the city quite well. Most shops sell little books called GuiaTs, which would be interpreted as Guide Yourself. These explain where each bus goes. The buses only take change, and as a consequence, coins are very hard to come by. Often shops have no change at all, meaning that if you don't have the exact amount for what you're buying, they won't sell it to you. Many yell at you for not carrying change. It's hard to follow such logic, or why the government just doesn't put out more coins.

Perhaps the best part of life here is the weather. The temperature is somewhat cool now, as winter is approaching. But a freezing day is anything under 6 degrees, and it never goes below freezing.

It's unfortunate that I arrived just in time for the smoke crisis, which I've already written about, and will write about again soon. Hopefully this will be resolved in the next week, but it hasn't rained much in almost a month. There isn't much equipment to cope with such a large-scale problem (70000 hectors were burning), so it may be a while before it's truly under control.

===================

Negotiations between the government and the farmer's union regarding tax rates have broken, and the farmers have decided to apply more pressure. So far it's not as severe as last month, when they blocked all delivery of meat and vegetables into the city. It's difficult to say how it will turn out, as neither side has the best interests of the people at heart. The government is only concerned with it's own political survival, as governments here always have been. This in turn has lead the country from one political or economic disaster to another. The farmers are riding high on record food prices and a deeply undervalued currency, though small scale farmers still struggle.

Corruption is endemic in most parts of the society, possibly due to the huge wave of Italian immigration over the last 200 years.

Almost everyone here has some Italian blood.

The reason that this relationship has been on my mind so much lately is that Silvio Burlusconi was recently re-elected as Prime Minister of Italy.

He only ran for office in the first place because he had lost favor with politicians of the time, in 1994. A billionaire media tycoon, he was facing multiple charges including, but not limited to, mafia collusion, false accounting, tax fraud, corruption and bribery of police officers and judges. Running out of loopholes in the Italian legal system, he no longer had enough friends in high places to protect him. So his options were either to go to jail or to become prime minister and change the laws. He chose the latter.

In his second term, he buried most serious charges against him by reducing the amount of time allowed for many crimes to still be prosecutable. Yet Italians still re-elect him. His virtual monopoly on Italian television is no small factor - he owns most of the channels. Most 'news' programs are overtly biased in his favor, often doing more campaigning for him than he does himself.

During the Italian campaign last month, there were many political posters here in Buenos Aires. As I said, many people here have Italian citizenship. So his incessant grin was to be found on billboards, buses, and walls all over this city. And he won, by a large margin.

Last week, the municipal elections in Rome went in favor of one of his colleagues, who runs a neo-fascist party directly descended from Mussolini. It sounds like a fun time to be in Italy.

But I digress. The reason that I brought all of this up is that the political trends in Italy and Argentina are unmistakably similar. In both, corruption is seen as a mild shortcoming, or at the very most, a flaw to be expected. Everyone here complains about how corrupt Cristina Fernandez, the not-so-popular president, is. But there is absolutely no expectation of change, as anyone with morals finds it almost impossible to break into politics, even if they had the desire to do so in the first place. People in most western countries complain about corruption, but after seeing how bad things are either here or in Italy, the petty problems of Canada, America, or most western European governments tend to lose some of their shock value.

Pace

2008-04-18T15:46:00.003-04:00

As my three month tourist visa in Argentina was set to expire, last weekend was a good time for a border crossing.

I'm legally allowed to work in Argentina, and to pay taxes, but not to stay in the country for more than three months. It's a bit of an odd system.

Luckily, Uruguay is only an hour's ferry ride from Buenos Aires.

Going across was a bit rough, as the waters were wild and the ship small. It wasn't possible to walk around the passenger area, and the crew had to pull themselves along by the hand grips on the seats. They spent most of their time delivering doggie bags to the passengers, as anyone without an iron stomach was feeling queasy.

After arriving, I explored the village where we docked, Colonia. It's a very pretty town, complete with an historic center and several small cobblestone streets leading to the main docking area. The high season is over, and so everything was very quiet. Many restaurants had reduced their hours to just Saturdays, and it being
Friday, finding dinner took a bit of wandering around.

While walking around the next day, I made a friend in a stray dog, who tagged along for a few hours. After about 10 blocks, one of his friends joined in, then a third, and finally a forth. It was interesting to have become the leader of a pack so quickly, but they were all friendly, and I didn't have the heart to try to ditch them. I had planned on feeding them when they were only two, but with four (very big) mouths to feed, I wasn't sure I had enough Uruguayan pesos on me to offer them much in the way of breakfast.

A few general comments about Uruguay...

The population is a bit over 3 million, and about half of the people live in the capital, Montevideo. The rest of the people are mostly huddled along the coast, meaning that there's quite a bit of open space in the north, heading towards Brazil. When I have more time, I'd be curious to have a look around.

The differences in the culture with Argentina are subtle, but definitely noticeable.
Uruguayans are still quite close to Argentines, both geographically and in terms of how they act. Still, Montevideo is much quieter, and the people are friendlier than in Buenos Aires.

Uruguayans are, like Argentines, addicted to Matte. It's a regional tea served in a
wooden cup with a metal straw. The difference is that while Argentines mostly drink it at home or at work, Uruguayans walk around with a Thermos of hot water under their arm, the wooden cup in their hand, sipping away as they wander the streets. I still haven't developed a taste for it, as without sugar it reminds me of raw tobacco on my tongue.

Montevideo is pretty much shut down on weekends, which is a welcome contrast to the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires. I went there straight from Colonia, and was lucky enough to have a few connections in the city. Silvia, who I had met at a party in Buenos Aires a few months before, and Alejandra and Gonzalo, whom I contacted though Couchsurfing, a hospitality network on the internet, walked with me all over the city for the two days that I was there. I wish that I had had more time, but unfortunately I had to get back to Buenos Aires for work on Monday morning.

===========================

Argentina is burning. Or smoking, at least. Some interesting farmers had the interesting idea to set much of their land on fire, apparently to prepare it for next year's crops. Now 70000 hectors are burning. Now the smoke from said fire has been blowing down to Buenos Aires, covering the whole city in a thick cloud. Almost all flights are canceled, major highways are closed, and trains are delayed. And it's been going on for a week.

The air is orange, about 300 people have been hospitalized with respiratory problems, and 10 people have died in traffic accidents due to the lack of visibility. Yet the smoke continues. Plus now it's made it's way across the river to Uruguay, whose people now get to suffer as well from the incompetence of the Argentine authorities.

This follows a few weeks of strikes by farmers, who were angry over the raised taxes. There were major food shortages for several weeks. The situation was further exacerbated by the government's policy of calling the farmers evil, and calling in paid thugs to beat up protesters who were on the side of the farmers.

As the negotiations between the government and farmers continue, it hasn't been ruled out that the fires were set as a way to pressure the government.

The best way to sum it all up is with what my students say when this topic comes up. 'Welcome to Argentina.'

Fluster

2008-04-02T16:51:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted for a while. Things have been a bit hectic.

A few weeks ago, I went on a boating trip with Teresa, the lady that I live with. It was in Tigre, one of the large cities in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.

She goes there every week, usually with her friend, rowing around the canals. It's great exercise, and a great way to get fresh air.

The problem was that without training, I wasn't allowed to row. So Andrea, the daughter of her friend, offered to take me on a tour. At just 17, she's already competing in rowing tournaments, and is in excellent shape. Still, the trip lasted for about three hours, and I wasn't allowed to help her at all, just sit facing her as she paddled me all over the area. It must have looked pretty sad to anyone who saw us pass by, as she's really not very big. Still, she was happy to do it, and never stopped to take a break, only slowing down occasionally so that her mother and Teresa could catch up. She was going about twice as fast as they were, despite both of them paddling at the same time.

The canals were interesting in that there are many houses along the banks that have no connection to the outside world aside from by boat. It must be a very quiet life. Yet they have a well planned system, with a grocery boat coming by once a day, and river buses sailing the canals every couple of hours.

It was a great way to unwind, as it's about as quiet as any region of Buenos Aires gets. Again, I would have preferred to be able to help Andrea with the rowing, but in the end I probably would have just slowed her down had I been allowed to paddle.

Later, things went from quiet to hectic pretty quickly.

Laura, Teresa's daughter, had been grumpy for some time, and had decided to stop speaking to me a few weeks ago. At first, Teresa just wrote it off as a reaction to Laura's boyfriend leaving the country for a couple of weeks. Yet even after he got back, she still wouldn't speak to me.

The problem was basically one of discipline. Laura really hasn't had any rules imposed on her at all, and is used to doing whatever she wants. Apparently she became angry at me for using the computer and eating some things from the fridge, both of which I had been told to do by Teresa. I enjoyed cooking for Teresa as a way of thanking her for all of the things she did for me. For instance, she insisted on washing my clothes, despite my having told her several times that it was unnecessary. And she also came with me several times to help me deal with government bureaucracy, making things much easier for me to get settled.

Still, Teresa was becoming deeply concerned with Laura's behaviour, and didn't know how to stop her. When Laura locked me out of being able to use the computer without any warning, it became clear that things were out of control. I told Teresa that it would be best if I moved out, and took a cab to a hotel the next morning.

Looking for an apartment in Buenos Aires can be a draining experience. Almost all of the ads that you come across are from those wanting to take advantage of tourists, charging three times a reasonable price for a room, and demanding that you share it to top things off. It's not even worth reading any that contain the words student or foreigner.

I eventually came across something centrally located and at a fair price. There is no common room, just a shared kitchen and bathroom, which means it's more like a series of apartments than a boarding house. At least this way things will be quiet for a bit.

I'm also working more hours, and slowly getting settled into life in a big city. I'd like to stay optimistic, so here's hoping for a smooth couple of months...

Scrutiny

2008-03-12T19:37:00.002-04:00

A few things have been starting to sink in recently...

The first has been the amount of poverty in the city. Apparently, this is a relatively recent phenomenon, only becoming noticeable in the years following the economic crisis of 2002.

The seats on the train are set facing each other, one pair on each side. When I was taking a train to work early one morning, a mother and child were sitting in front of me. The daughter was about ten years old. They were clearly homeless. The girl was sleeping on her mother's lap, looking very sick. Her skin was a slight shade of gray. She was convulsing when she coughed. The train ride lasted about twenty minutes. Her mother passed the time by picking head lice off her daughter's head, occasionally scratching her own scalp.

What disturbed me the most was the kindness in the eyes of the mother. She asked me something that I didn't understand, and when she realized that I was not from the country, she just smiled and went back to slowly picking through her daughter's hair.

I never give money to the homeless, as it doesn't help much at all, and most times it ends up being wasted on drugs or alcohol. But I couldn't remember the last time that someone made me feel so depressed. I dug around in my pocket for cash, and came up with 5 pesos. This is the equivalent of $1.50, but given the cost of living and salaries, it has about the same value to the locals as $5 in Canada.

What really put me over the edge was what I saw on her leg a few moments later. I don't know what it's called, but there was a thin black line, some sort of parasite, that was working it's way over her leg, usually in a somewhat circular pattern, just below the surface of her skin. It looked very serious, and if she doesn't get it fixed up soon, she will have some _very_ serious problems with her leg.

In the end, I was feeling sick, and also a bit annoyed with how badly part of me wanted to get away from her. As the train got to the end of the line, I gave her the only other bill that I had, 20 pesos.

Though she took it graciously, thanking me, her daughter jumped up, grabbing it from her mother and sticking it in her own pocket. At this point my feeling of nausea mixed with a feeling of being dumbstruck.

I'm sure that the little girl wasn't faking her condition, and the mother certainly wasn't faking hers. But the contrast between the expression of the mother and that of the daughter left me feeling somehow dirty. Despite being in such a bad way, the look in the eyes of the girl was so different than that of her mother. It was the same look as so many people that try to hustle you the world over. Yet from the look of her, she might not last very long. When I try to consolidate these two images, I'm really left at a loss.

==========

Later that night, I was waiting in the commuter station for the train back to the suburb where I live. There was a dog roaming around the area, barely able to walk. It's leg was severely injured. Worse, it had some bizarre infection that left it so itchy that it kept gnawing at its skin. It had already chewed off all of its fur and was bleeding in several places. Yet it kept gnawing away.

It, like all stray dogs here, had a mixture of fear and utter submission in its expression. I find it strange how easy it is to identify street dogs by simply that. Their eyes almost always have that look, of utter defeat.

===========

Another strange part of life here is the contrast between how people treat you if they meet you as a friend versus as servers or clerks in stores and restaurants.

Most people here are extremely friendly, to the point where I come across as being cold. Men routinely kiss each other on the cheek as a greeting, something that I've had a hard time getting used to. It's fine if they shave, but it's also very common to have a bit of stubble here, which usually ends up getting rubbed across your face. It gives an appreciation of what girls have to put up.

My students are also very nice. Almost everyone that I meet in offices and on the street are very kind, a pleasure to work with or talk to.

Yet when I walk into a store, I expect to get the stink-eye from whoever is working there. Often I end up arguing with the clerks over their flippant attitudes. This is especially true in nicer clothing stores, despite my being well-dressed when I shop there. They act as though I'm not worthy of being in their stores, especially if I tell them that I'd just like to browse.

Blur

2008-02-21T18:08:00.006-05:00

A few weeks ago I went camping in a town called Gualeguaychu, about 3 hours from Buenos Aires.

The camp site was interesting, as it had a bar, grocery store, and movie theater. In the end, it was more like squatting in a very noisy park than anything else. But the group that I was with was fun, and we were about 30 all together.

The point of going was to see the annual carnival, which is a scaled down version of Rio de Janeiro's. The costumes were pretty, but it was a bit repetitive, with a few dancers coming through the center of a stadium, then a colorful float, and repeat. It went on for about four hours, but I had had enough after one.

Perhaps one of the most memorable parts of the trip was seeing how poor the town was compared to Buenos Aires. It's sad, since parts of the country never recovered from the economic crisis a few years ago. The roads are run down, there are stray dogs on many street corners, and there really isn't much to do at all outside of the Carnival. I was walking around downtown with a few other people from the group (from Ireland, Romania, and Norway) yet we couldn't even find a pub. We had to go for drinks in a pizzeria.

Back in Buenos Aires I've had quite a few job interviews over the last few weeks, and am now working part time for four schools, though my classes don't start until Monday. The hiring season for teachers here is the opposite of Canada, as both coincide with the end of their respective summers.

=====================

I read an article on the website of the C.B.C. recently that talked about a man who was denied jobs for the federal government because he could not pass security clearance. The reason was that he had spent several years in China, a country that does not exchange information freely with Canada, thus preventing them from verifying his background during those years.

There is of course a very good chance that this could be very relevant to me, as I've been wandering around quite a bit these last few years. I started looking around on various government websites, until I finally found the department which is responsible for issuing security clearance. It's none other than the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, our very own equivalent of the C.I.A. Unfortunately, their website didn't list any email addresses, only regular, long-distance telephone numbers. Apparently emails are too risky, but phone lines are completely secure.

I called the national headquarters in Ottawa, and was surprised by someone answering with a simple 'Hello?'. No automated menu, no 'Thank you for calling the C.S.I.S., how may I direct your call?', just a surly sounding lady on the other end, sounding generally annoyed.

After I confirmed that this was indeed Canada's main intelligence agency, I politely explained my situation, that I was worried about being black listed by the Federal Government for living in another, unfriendly nation. I'm not too worried about Argentina, but if I ever end up teaching in the United Arab Emirates, for instance, I may have some problems. So I asked for a list of countries to be avoided. Her response was that she didn't think such a list existed.

So, I asked the obvious question... How is it fair to discriminate against people who have lived in certain countries if you don't tell them which countries to avoid going to before hand? She answered that the best way was just to go where I want, and when I come back to Canada, to apply for a federal job. If I get rejected, I'll know that I should have avoided one of the countries that I went to.

That last bit is absolutely true. This was her advice.

I honestly had no idea how to respond. She represents the agency which is responsible for keeping one of the wealthiest countries in the world safe from foreign threats.

I (and the rest of the country) can only hope that no one else in the agency is so completely out of it, or our country would be in a lot of trouble. Until recently we didn't have many enemies, but now there are actually people out there who would be quite thrilled to attack us, mostly because of our military presence in Afghanistan.

After my trying to explain the sheer idiocy of what she said, in terms varying from fairly to not so polite, she told me, in a very condescending way, that she was very busy, and was going to hang up. I yelled a bit more, asking if I was really wrong to want to know which countries to avoid, but eventually gave up when it became clear that it was about as useful as yelling at a brick wall.

After that rather mind boggling experience, I switched gears and decided to call one of the regional offices in Halifax. This receptionist was very polite, and transfered me to someone who apparently knew a bit more about the subject. He didn't give me much more information, but at least sounded like he wanted to help. He sounded a bit nervous. In the end, it seems that if you spend a significant amount of time outside of first world countries, you are likely to have problems getting certain jobs with the government. The good news is that less than five percent of such jobs require high security clearance. Still, it was clear that he was afraid of saying too much. I don't know why general information on the subject would be so sensitive. The Canadian government is routinely ranked one of the most transparent in the world. Granted, we have fallen a few places in the last two years, but it's disturbing that citizens are kept in the dark about something that could directly effect them later on.

=========

Kosovo recently declared its independence. This was really a very difficult situation. The state was stuck in statutory limbo, mostly because of the way that the international community handled things during the conflict of 1999. Every nation with a separatist movement was quite disturbed by a region being able to proclaim independence without prior consent by either the U.N or the country it is breaking away from. China and Russia in particular see deep domestic parallels here. What Serbia did in Kosovo several years ago is what China may do in Taiwan, Tibet or Xinjiang, and what Russia is doing in Chechnya. Even Spain has raised deep objections about the situation.

It really makes Canada's policy towards Quebec shine. There aren't many things that I can say I'm exceptionally proud of in Canada (I'm not very patriotic in general), but this is certainly one. Canada has shown the world that when a population is unhappy being part of a country, the country shouldn't have the right to hold them prisoner. The fact that we've offered not one, but two referendums on the separatist's terms, and will possibly have a third in the future, is absolutely astounding to many people of the world.

I'd like to close by bringing up the huge pink elephant in the corner that the media has thus far managed to completely ignore - the similarities between Kosovo and Palestine.

Both are Muslim, although Palestine is of a _much_ more conservative brand. Both have minorities that practice (or for Kosovo, practiced) terrorism on innocent people, though Palestinians like to blow themselves up while they're at it. Kosovars did more of a hit and run approach. Both were brutally oppressed by the ethnic majority of the ruling nation after they were provoked by said violent minorities. About the only differences are that, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, the West has consistently sided with Israel, but against Serbia. Kosovo has always been part of Serbia (which doesn't mean that it shouldn't have the right to separate if it chooses), yet Palestine was conquered by Israel a bit over 40 years ago. What the Serbs did in Kosovo was completely wrong, as was what they did in Bosnia and Croatia, but they had never attacked Western interests outside of their own borders. So why the double standard? As far as I can see, both wars are completely horrible, and should never have happened in the first place. Yet other countries insist on taking sides, and the techniques that they have used have only made the situations more complicated.

Terrorism should be condemned on all sides. Any time innocent people are killed, the perpetrators should be tried. The K.L.A. (Kosovo's version of Hamas) never was. Many of the Serbs were rightfully prosecuted for their roles in the conflict.

If we want peace in the region, we have to start acting as mediators, and not taking sides. Be it in Kosovo or Palestine. In the end, it's in everyone's best interest.

Fuse

2008-02-04T17:24:00.000-05:00

I'm beginning to get settled here in Buenos Aires.

My original plan was to take a trip down to the southern areas of the country and into Chile before coming back to the capital city in March to look for work. Now, I find that I'm getting comfortable here. I'd prefer to spend February getting to know the city before I start working when the school year starts next month. Plus, I've been getting a steady stream of interviews, so I should be able to find a better job if I spend the next couple of weeks searching.

Here are a few of my impressions of the city so far...

Everything is very European. The city reminds me of Spain or the south of France. The sidewalk to the architecture, the weather, the layout of the shops and kiosks, the charges for phone services, the look of payphones, and even the amount of dog crap on the sidewalks is all similar to the Mediterranean.

Argentines are some of the most beautiful people in the world. People here are very well proportioned. Unfortunately, this comes with a heavy price. Anorexia is very common here, to the point where it's considered almost normal for people to have eating disorders. Friends and family get a bit worried, but it doesn't generate anywhere near the concern that it would in North America. Also, plastic surgery is _very_ accepted. Breast surgery tops the list, but having a nose job or having your lips done are very common for the women here. The bar is much lower for men. It's important to stay in reasonable shape, and to keep your hair neat, but beyond that there aren't so many expectations.

Also, soft core porn is present pretty much everywhere. There are about 3 kiosks per block, and all have prominent displays of such magazines. This obviously contributes to the obsession with body image.

The people here are very nice. I've already made many friends, mostly through Internet sites like conversationexchange.com or couchsurfing.com. The best part of all of this is that all of the people that I've met are locals, which has done wonders for my Spanish.

My living situation has also been great for my language skills. I've been living with Maria Teresa, the mother-in-law of Sofia, a friend of mine who immigrated to Montreal last year. Also in the house are Maria Teresa's daughter Laura, and Laura's cat. The cat (I don't know it's name, as it's always referred to as El Gato, which is Spanish for, well, cat.) was found on the street as a kitten, almost dead from starvation. As a consequence, it's still extremely skinny, and it's eyes didn't form properly, being very sunken in it's head. It also has no killer instinct at all, only eating dry cat food, with no interest whatsoever in meat. Still, it's very friendly. If it only had enough sense to not get under people's feet (and hence get stepped on), it's life might be a bit less painful.

The area where I live is in the suburbs, quieter (and cleaner) than the main city. It's called Martinez, a wealthier neighborhood. Plus, the train to get into the city center takes about 30 minutes, less than the time it takes people who live in the residential neighborhoods of Buenos Aires proper.

Everything here is very cheap. For instance, the bus costs between 25 to 50 cents, depending on where you're going. My haircut cost 3 dollars, and clothing that I bought was also much less than in Canada. A pair of jeans costs between 15 and 25 dollars. Of course, you can always find trendier (and more expensive) styles, most of which are clustered in neighborhoods populated by Americans. In fact, the hip clothing costs more than in North America, with specialty shops charging upwards of 150 bucks for pants that are pre-torn.

Salaries are proportional. Most people working average jobs make between three and four dollars an hour. Languages being in higher demand, I should be able to pull in between five and seven.

Although the beer here is a bit bland, the wine is excellent, and again very cheap. There are many Wineries, and if you're feeling classy, you can pick up an excellent bottle for less than 15 dollars.

One more comment about the pollution here. There's definitely a problem with smog, as there are no emission limits or laws to keep the exhaust from cars relatively clean. Still, it's to be expected. What's a bit sad is how polluted the harbour is. It literally stinks. It's a shame, because it should be quite beautiful. But it's full of sludge, tires, bottles, and many other things that are more difficult to identify. I tried to take a walk along the waterfront, but the stench overpowered me, and I had to hop on the first bus that came by. I sometimes wonder what the governments were thinking (bribes?) when they allowed this to happen. It's destroyed what should have been one of the nicest parts of the city.

Slow Train Coming

2008-01-20T18:58:00.000-05:00

I flew from Montreal to Halifax on January 1st. It was in the middle of a snow storm, which made getting to the airport a bit of a problem, as the roads were a mess. Still, Norm, a very dear friend of mine, was happy to drive me. In the end what should have been 30 minutes took almost 2 hours.

I was expecting that the flight would be canceled, but in the end we boarded the plane only half an hour behind schedule. Once on board, it took another half an hour to de-ice the wings, which was understandable. We were just about to leave, when the captain announced that there would be another delay. Apparently they had just discovered (at that moment) that one of the stewardesses had worked the maximum number of hours that she was allowed by Quebec law (welcome to La Belle Province). So they had to usher her off the plane and search for another stewardess to take her place. This took another half an hour. By the time that they got the new stewardess on board, ice had again formed on the wings, so they had to re-de-ice them. Another half an hour.

By the time that we took off, we had been sitting on the plane for almost two hours, for a flight that would be in the air for less than 60 minutes. Because of the weather, some delay was understandable. But the incompetence of not knowing the stewardess was overworked until we were a few seconds from take-off was ridiculous.

Halifax is the city where I was born. Yet I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it's a city that I know very well, and the people there are very friendly. Walking down the sidewalk, if I passed someone (a total stranger, of course) shovelling his sidewalk, he would always say hello. It would often catch me a bit off guard. On the other, I feel a bit trapped there, which is probably because I've changed so much since I left 10 years ago, yet it hasn't changed that much at all. It's strange, but I feel as though I'm being forced back into a time that I barely recognize anymore. In many ways, I feel a bit of relief when I leave, yet I still don't entirely understand why. After all, it is a nice place, and everyone that goes there loves it.

After Nova Scotia, I stopped in Fredericton to see some family there. They live on a farm just outside of the city, which was a nice way to rest before heading for busier places later on. Next up was Saint John and my uncle Pat, who was kind enough to offer to drive me into Maine, as buses have a fairly bad schedule going across the border.

Maine surprised me in how rural and poor it is. As soon as we crossed over from Canada, the houses became decrepit, and towns were few and far between. It had been several years since I went to the U.S., and unfortunately it's usually the bad things that you notice first. The people in towns there were quite overweight (as in obese, unhealthy), and it wasn't hard to see why. We stopped into a restaurant for lunch, and the portions were enough for two meals. I ordered pancakes, and asked the waitress for some butter as she was giving me my food. She looked at me like I was a bit strange, which was when I noticed that what I assumed was whipped cream (completely) covering them was, in fact, pure whipped butter.

I was also a bit surprised by the number of patriotic bumper stickers and flags that I saw, even on the most beaten up and run-down cars and houses. One bumped sticker read 'My horse just bucked your honor student!' I still don't know what that means. Plus the sheer size of the vehicles always leaves an impression on me. It's sad, but these are things that America is most known for. It's so in-your-face that it's hard not to get hung-up on it.

Yet at the same time, people were very friendly. Again, it's sad that the negatives always leave the deepest impression.

My next stop was Boston. It's a nice city, and it's much richer than blue-collar Maine. Most of the tourist attractions are based around the American Revolution, which doesn't interest me so much. In the end I spent most of my time walking around, enjoying the architecture. The city is much smaller than I expected, and I was able to cover most of it in one day.

From Boston I went to New York, staying in Queens with Lamar, someone that I met through Couchsurfing, a hospitality network. He's a teacher, working at a school in Harlem, under fairly difficult conditions. It was interesting to hear about how he's been completely restructuring the curriculum, trying to improve the abysmal results that the students had before he came. He's already up to teaching them calculus, something that was unheard of just a few years ago.

New York is a fascinating city. It's reputation is well-deserved, as there really is always something to do there. It's also amazingly multi-cultural, with most of the communities getting along rather well. What impressed me the most was how friendly people are there. There are of course exceptions, but in general people were very nice, often going out of their way to help me. When I was walking on Wall Street, I saw someone dressed in a nice suit, on a quick break from his office. He was talking to the vendor who was selling him a hot dog. The vendor was telling him about a problem that he was having, and the businessman was listening intently, giving advice. You don't see that sort of thing very often elsewhere in the world.

In many ways, New York is like a country of it's own. It has been used so much in movies, music, television and books that you know quite a bit about the city before you even arrive. And it can be difficult to see outside of it. It felt like the sort of place where I could spend years without being concerned with anywhere else, a bit cut off. There is hardly any mention of the rest of the world in any of the media there, which is one of the main reasons why people don't know much of what happens elsewhere in the world. The information just isn't easily available. The country needs to find a way to improve it's education, and change the role-models that the media promotes (hip-hop culture doesn't exactly promote critical thinking). Otherwise it's unlikely that the average American will take an interest in what happens elsewhere.

Aside from this one negative observation, I had a very good time in N.Y.C. I met up with Jane, another teacher from the same hospitality network as Lamar, who explained a lot about teaching abroad. It was a very fun evening.

I walked around many different neighborhoods. In Brooklyn I spent some time in a Hasidic Jewish area, which was interesting because everything was written in Hebrew. It felt like I was in another country. Many of the people walking around didn't even speak English. One thing that I found interesting was that the men were very nice to me when I asked for directions or the time, but many of the women gave me the stink eye if I tried to make any contact with them at all. Is this a cultural thing? Are ultra-orthodox women discouraged from talking to men, or at least men who are not from their community? Or were they just rude?

I was also surprised at how Spanish the Bronx was. Many stores wrote things only in Spanish, and many of them couldn't speak any English at all.

The next day, I dropped by to see Derrick, a friend from Montreal who is doing his doctorate in New York. We explored Central Park together, as well as what was Hell's Kitchen, before it was gentrified ten years ago.

Later on that night, I joined Amylin, a friend of mine from New York that I met in Montreal. We met up at Rachel's place, a mutual friend of ours. Amylin is on a bit of a drawing kick at the moment, and was planning on drawing Rachel. Since Rachel was in a bit of a rush, we spent a few minutes taking photos of her for Amylin to draw later on before heading off to a bar. There we met up with several other people from the area, including Aurora, a girl I hosted in Montreal a few months back. Although I didn't feel like staying out too late, Aurora and I decided to have breakfast together before my flight the next day.

As a matter of coincidence, Nicky, the guy Aurora was staying with, was going to J.F.K. airport at the same time that I was. He served in the Marines for a few years, but was never sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Still, he had some interesting stories to tell on the train ride to the airport.

I was worried about my flight, since a few days before, there had been a riot at the airport in Buenos Aires. Apparently, the national airline (and the one which I was taking) had overbooked several flights, and the people who got bumped completely lost it. But in the end, the only hitch was that the check-in in New York wouldn't give me my boarding pass unless I had another ticket out of Argentina. Saying that I would buy a bus ticket to Chile upon arrival wasn't enough. So they forced me to buy a ticket to Uruguay, setting me back $130. The reason that they gave was that customs wouldn't let me into the country otherwise. Yet when I arrived in Buenos Aires, they didn't ask me any questions at all, and just stamped my passport and sent me on my way. Extortion, perhaps?

I've been staying with Maria Teresa, the mother-in-law of Sofia, a friend of mine in Montreal. She's been very kind, offering to do everything for me so that I'm as comfortable as possible. She picked me up at the airport at 6 a.m., and has been offering to drive me everywhere since. Today she took me shopping, and then drove me all over Buenos Aires, giving me a tour of the most interesting places.

In the few days that I've been here, I've already landed two part-time jobs, and will probably get a third soon. The only problem is that I don't know how many hours I will get at each.

Motion

2007-12-29T17:54:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm about ready to kick off another journey.

The reason that I stopped writing this was that it had become a bit tedious. I really couldn't think of much of interest to write about, at least from my end.

Now that I'm set to hit the road again, odds are that at least a few interesting stories will come up. [For those who haven't read this blog before, the most interesting posts from my previous trip were from late 2005 to early 2006, so if you're feeling bored, I'd recommend checking that out to get an idea of how I write.]

Presently, I'm finishing up preparations. My cousin came to take my things to her place in Ottawa for storage, which was a huge help. I also spent Christmas there with her and her family. It was nice to have a traditional Christmas for a change, as last year I crashed my car after hitting some black ice, and ended up being stuck in Montreal for the holidays. The year before that, I spent Christmas in Albania, a very poor Muslim country. Anything but traditional.

I had my going-away party last week, and was surprised at how well it went. I was flattered that so many people came, including some friends that I hadn't seen in almost three years. We spent most of the night at an eclectic cafe drinking herbal teas, smoking shisha, and eating chocolate pyramids. It was nice to do something that felt different from typical bar gatherings.

About the only other thing that I've been doing is trying to transfer some songs onto my mp3 player. Ordinarily this shouldn't be very complicated, but for some reason things always go wrong. The first issue is that I don't own a computer. Yet every time I go to a friend's place or to a cafe, either the computer won't recognize the player, I can't rip the songs onto the hard drive of the computer, or the software won't label the tracks. In the end I've managed to get it half full so far, so I'll have to hold out till I can mooch a few songs off of random computers that I come across over the next few weeks.

My traveling will kick off on Tuesday, when I fly to Halifax for a few days to see some family. I'll hop around the Maritimes for a couple of weeks before heading to New York.

===================

And now for a rant about things that have been happening in the world. After all, it gets boring just talking about myself...

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a Pakistani politician, is scary as hell.

Unfortunately, people in the west tended to think of her as a savior, yet her past stints as prime minister of Pakistan weren't exactly amazing successes. Often times she ended up being caught in one scandal after another, even leaving office in disgrace in the mid 90's, amongst allegations of corruption.

Yet she was still a symbol of secularism in the middle east, with her being a woman perhaps more important still. Now there is a very real risk of a civil war breaking out in a nuclear-armed, volatile nation, and some people who are set to win from this are extremely terrifying. It is a very real possibility that hard line Muslims could come to power, or at least get their hands on some very ugly bombs. Perhaps the Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan will get some new toys to play with...

Search

2007-01-31T17:04:00.000-05:00

The first month of 2007 has come to an end...

Although I still haven't found a full time job, I've been figuring out a broad idea of what to do in the next couple of years.

I've spent a good chunk of the last couple of weeks doing an application for a masters program at L'Université de Montréal, which would be something in the field of the economics of climate change. It's strange how much of a hot topic (no pun intended...) it's become lately. The thought of doing such a project first crossed my mind about two months ago. A couple of weeks after I started the application process, the topic came to dominate the headlines of all of the local and national newspapers, as well as parliament. Still, even if they accept me, I haven't decided if I'll end up doing it.

Another option that's floating around in my head is to teach English in South America for a few years, starting either at the end of this year or the beginning of the next. To see if teaching languages would be something I'd enjoy, I'll drop off some resumés at language schools around Montreal. I'm also still waiting to get a finalized schedule for a part time job that I've taken, giving chess lessons to school children through a local chess academy.

Of course, if I land a job that I enjoy here in Montreal, I'd be more than happy to stick around for another couple of years. But the odds of that are looking pretty bleak, as none of my friends have jobs that they enjoy that allow them to make a decent living. Still, I try to send out a dozen C.V.s per week, so hopefully I'll turn up something.

---

I saw Pan's Labyrinth, a movie from Spain, at the Paramount last week. This impressed me for several reasons. The first was that a foreign movie was playing at that theatre, as I'd never heard of a subtitled movie being shown there before. Beyond that, the film was memorable simply for being so good, one of the best movies that I've seen in years. It was set in the Spanish civil war, and told the story of an imaginative little girl who blends a magical world of her own creation with the war-torn nightmare going on around her.

The one thing that bothered about the film was that it portrayed the Republicans (also Communists) as being the good guys. This war, which took part mostly in the late 1930's, was like most others, where both sides committed atrocities throughout the conflict. It was in reality a very long and drawn out military coup. The Fascists, led by General Francisco Franco, and backed by the similar regimes in power in Germany and Italy, ended up winning. Still, the Republicans, which were an unholy alliance of the democratically elected officials and national and international Communists, were supported by Joseph Stalin and the U.S.S.R. Britain and France stayed neutral, as they were preparing for conflicts of their own.

Although the brutality of Franco was well documented in the movie, the Republicans were portrayed as righteous and romantic. Yet if you look at the facts about the war, they were known to express their cause by, among other things, burning churches to the ground with the clergy locked inside. This happened all over Spain. Although certain factions of their group were honorable, many others openly employed the methods of Communist Russia. In the end, whichever side won, Spain as a whole was set to be a loser. The only way to escape oppression would have been to head for Mexico, as many Spaniards did.

Highs and Lows

2006-12-31T15:14:00.000-05:00

Another year comes to an end.

Looking back, it's been a rough ride.

In my personal life, I started off 2006 in eastern Europe, which, although an amazing learning experience, was also one of the hardest and most painful adventures that I've had.

Whether being jerked around in Bulgaria, wondering if I'd survive Moldova, nearly freezing to death in Ukraine, being stuck on a broken down freight ship in the Black Sea for almost a week, or being kicked out of the place I was staying late at night in a run down neighborhood of Istanbul, January and February weren't easy. I won't go into too much detail about all of that here, as I wrote quite a bit about it in the blog entries from that time.

The next couple of months were less extreme, as I spent most of my time studying Spanish in Alicante, a town in the southeast of Spain. Learning Spanish is the one of the best things that I've done in the past couple of years, but in the end my time there was mostly to study, and I didn't enjoy myself so much as to try to learn as much as possible.

After moving on from Spain, I toured around Ireland and the U.K. for about a month, which was a great time. No near-death experiences, no major dangers, it was much less tiring than eastern Europe. Still, in many ways I missed the adventures.

Two days after getting back to Canada, I caught one of the worst flus that I've ever had. I set a personal record of 22 hours straight of sleeping, and couldn't stay on my feet for more than 15 minutes at a time.

A week after getting back to Montreal, I separated my knee while climbing with some friends. It was the worst injury of my life, from which I'm still recovering. I spent 2 months on crutches, and ever since have been stretching for half an hour every day to get the flexibility back in my leg. I was lucky that I didn't tear any tendons that can't heal on their own.

Next up, the job that I had turned out to be a sham. What was meant to be a position on salary as an analyst at an insurance company turned into nothing more than being a salesman paid on commission. The saddest part was that I spent over a month writing tests to be licensed to work in the insurance industry.

I quit the job a few weeks ago, and am now looking into a job teaching chess to children. Hopefully this one will turn out to be on the up and up.

My roommates went insane at some point in October. The one, by far the bitchiest, is completely bipolar. After having shouting matches every night, I finally started to look for a new place in the middle of November. I found one the first day I was looking, where the rent is half what it was with the bipolar girl, and the roommates are actually friendly. In fact, they all seem great. It will be a fantastic change being able to have a conversation with the people I'm living with, instead of being scowled at for saying hello in the morning.

To top the year off, I crashed my car on my way to the Maritimes, where I was planning on spending Christmas. The weather conditions were horrible, as it was raining when the temperature was -1. Since the road was covered with ice topped with a layer of water, I was driving slowly and carefully, but in the end it didn't matter. The wheel started to jerk back and forth, and the car ended up rolling over twice in a field. All things considered, I was extremely lucky not be injured. The car was totaled. Insurance will cover the costs of buying a different one.

In terms of what's happened in the world, it seems like most of it is bad. War is breaking out all over, with predictions of things getting even worse in the near future. The good news (from my point of view) was that the only politician that I respected won the Liberal leadership, and results from the elections in the U.S. mean that their foreign policy will hopefully become a bit more polished.

Here's hoping for a calmer 2007.

Hypocrisy

2006-11-06T14:59:00.001-05:00

So Saddam Hussein's 'trial' is now over, and he's been sentenced to death by hanging. The Western World rejoices.

Hanging?!? It feels like we're back in the middle ages.

Will this be on Pay-Per-View? Will the DVD be on Amazon.com the next day?

What Hussein did was absolutely horrible, but at the very least he (like everyone) deserved a fair trial. When two organizations that I trust impeccably, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, condemn the process from top to bottom, I don't know why media sources that I more or less respect jump on the propaganda band wagon.

The biting irony is this: Most of the crimes that Hussein was being 'tried' for were committed in the 1980's. At that point, he was the darling of America, for the simple reason that he was the enemy of their enemy, namely Iran. The Americans were arming him and giving him logistics support up until the early nineties, at which point they realized that he had outlived his usefulness, mostly because he was so uncontrollable. If he hadn't tried to conquer oil-rich Kuwait, the Americans never would have made so much as a peep about his human rights violations. Look at their attitude towards Saudi Arabia.

Who was part of the Reagan administration, who was only too happy to turn a blind eye to all of his crimes? Bush Sr. was his vice president. Rumsfield held very influential positions as well. You've probably seen the infamous photo of Rummy shaking hands with Saddam, dated 1985, 3 years AFTER he gassed over 150 Kurds.

For the trial to have had any real meaning, most of the current administration (who either worked under Reagan's crew or were directly trained by them) should be tried as accomplishes to the murder as well.

Plus, it's a shame to say it, but the only leader of a major world power to have the guts to state the obvious, that Saddam's execution will exponentially increase the insurgency [mostly driven by the Sunnis, who still support Saddam] was Russian President Putin, himself guilty of more war crimes than I can count. People say this is a great day for democracy. More likely, it shows how retarded the people who run Iraq are. The violence there is about to get much, much worse.

Motivation

2006-09-29T17:03:00.000-04:00

I've been pretty slack with this blog lately. The reason is that I haven't been able to find interesting things to write about.

Since the last time I published something, a short summary of what's been going on in my life...

-I took a temporary job to generate some quick money. It was working nights doing data entry, which was terrible. In the end all I was doing was sleeping and going to work, and the work itself was about as boring as I could imagine. I had to look at a scanned document, find a reference number, and enter it into a spread sheet. Then repeat with a new scan. Do that for ten hours straight, and each minute seems like an eternity.

-Sara, a Swedish girl that I met in Spain, was passing through Montreal. Unfortunately, she got pretty sick towards the end of her stay, so I don't think that she enjoyed herself very much.

-After looking around at different jobs, I've started training for a job with an insurance company. Although I'm not sure if selling insurance is the sort of job that I will want to do in the long run, I'm happy to give it a shot for now. Assuming that I'm a good enough salesman for them to keep me, I'll do it till I've saved up some money, and gotten a bit of experience. I'd still like to go to South America either next year or the year after, either to just travel if I have enough savings, or to teach English if I don't.

I think that's about it. Anything else that I've done has been just meeting up with friends, not really something that would be interesting to read about.

Until my life becomes more colorful, I won't update this regularly. And when I do, it will probably be in short segments. Sometimes every couple of days, or sometimes every couple of weeks.

Clinch

2006-08-14T14:22:00.000-04:00

I'm finally walking normally again, although my leg is still stiff. Hopefully I'll be able to start looking for a job soon.

This weekend I went to Ottawa to pick up some things that I stored with my cousin, Debbie. Things worked out quite well, as Katie, a friend of mine now living in Montreal, was driving to Ottawa on Friday night and coming back Sunday. This made moving much easier. For the first time in ages I have more than 3 shirts to choose from when getting dressed in the morning. After living out of a backpack for over two years, it feels good to be getting settled in to my own place for a change.

---

Apparently the conflict in Lebanon has finally ended, at least for now. It's true that it went on much longer than it should have, and the U.N. has been rightly criticized for this. With the U.S. and France trying so hard to look after their own interests, it wasn't really a surprise that there was so much deadlock. Yet looking at it from another point of view, what would have happened if there was no U.N.? It seems that every time you pick up a newspaper, it's filled with editorials calling the U.N. out of touch and ineffective, sometimes even calling for it to be disbanded. Without it, though, it seems unlikely that this crisis would have been resolved at any point in the foreseeable future, and there would surely have been thousands more killed. For all of it's faults, the U.N. still serves a very important role. Yet with nationalism on the rise all over the world, it seems almost certain that future mandates will be significantly weakened, as countries are increasingly hesitant to hand over any authority to it. This is dangerous and short-sighted. Those who argue that N.A.T.O. could fill the void left by the U.N. don't realize how distrusted that organization is outside of Europe [excluding Serbia] and North America. The rest of the world sees it as little more than a tool of American foreign policy.

Light

2006-07-30T14:44:00.000-04:00

I've spent the last two weeks hobbling around on crutches, showing me just how wonderful it is being able to walk.

Still, things are looking much better. In the beginning they told me that I might have to wear a leg brace for the rest of my life [no joke!], and in the very best case scenario, that I'd be on crutches till the end of the summer. Yet a few days ago the doctor said that my knee is doing fine. I can start to put as much weight as possible on it, in order to build it's strength so that it can support me again when I walk. Right now it feels like it's asleep, as there isn't much pain at all, aside from a little stiffness. The problem is that my leg tends to collapse under my weight if I'm not careful, as I haven't used it at all in three weeks.

Some things that I've noticed these past couple of weeks...

I've been very surprised by how kind people are to you at times like these. Strangers have constantly been going out of their way to open doors for me, and to tell me their own stories of when they were on crutches, giving me advice of how best to get around on them. I hadn't expected people to take notice of me so often.

Crutches are a great work-out. My arms are stronger than they've ever been, and my good leg is also in great shape, from my having hopped around on one foot so much recently. Still, the feeling of being able to walk again is incredible, even though up to this point I still have to use one crutch as a cane. Hopefully I'll be back to full mobility in a week or so.

Today, I've started to move into my permanent apartment, which I'll be sharing with three others. Two of my roommates, Melissa and Lucie, are nursing students at McGill. The third is Lucie's boyfriend. My room is very spacious, with nice atmosphere to boot. It's shaping up to be one of the nicest places that I've lived in.

----

A few comments on current events...

One thing that really bugs me with the situation in Lebanon is how Israel refuses to take any blame for the civilians they kill. They recently killed over 30 children in one blast, and still refused to admit any wrong doing. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. There's no question about this. Israel says that Hezbollah is refusing to let civilians leave dangerous areas, using them for human shields. This could very well be true. But to look at Israel's logic on a smaller scale, consider someone who just robbed a bank, killing the teller in the process. This man is a serial criminal, very dangerous, impossible to reform. As he runs from the police, he takes a hostage, a ten year old girl. The police responde by shooting blindly, killing both the hostage and the murderer. They then refuse to take any blame in the killing of the child. If this would obviously not fly in the local scenario, why isn't it condemned on the much larger scale where this argument is being used by Israel?

Also, why is Harper aligning us solidly behind the U.S. and Israel? What possible gain is there in this? Well, moral gain, anyway. Canada should be working with every other free country in the world [well, except of course for the U.S.] in finding a solution to the crisis, not standing on the side doing nothing but pointing fingers and playing the blame game.

Heat

2006-07-17T15:18:00.000-04:00

I've been laid up for the last week, as I tore my knee pretty badly last Sunday.

I injured it jumping down from about three and a half meters. Stupid. I should have known better than to get into a situation where I'd have to jump so far. When I landed, my knee popped right out of joint. I popped it back in on reflex before collapsing to the ground.

My friends took me to the hospital, and stayed with me while I was there. On the bright side of things, it didn't take that long to be seen. I didn't wait for more than half an hour in any one room without being seen. The bad part was that they didn't tell me very much. The doctor was a bit of a jerk, and after telling me that I might have to wear a leg brace for the rest of my life(!), refused to respond to anything else, saying that everything was just speculation. A lovely note to put me on when I'm leaving the hospital.

The hospital has called me back in a few times since, and the last doctor told me that eventually everything should be fine, and I should be back on my feet anywhere from the middle of August to early fall.

Getting around on crutches is annoying, especially given that Montreal is experiencing one of the worst heat waves in memory. Still, it would be much worse had this happened in winter. Walking on crutches on the ice would be completely impossible.

For the past week I've been staying with David, a Russian friend from university. He lives downtown, but his place is quite small, and the situation has been hard on him. Most of my other friends live farther from town, such as Simon, a friend from Laval who I was staying with for the past several weeks. The commute is just too difficult as things are now. So I've decided to sub-let a place downtown for a couple of weeks, so that I'll be relatively close to the places and things that I need. The apartment that I'll be moving into permanently will be ready at the end of the month.

I could comment on other things that are going on in the world, but it's so depressing that maybe I'll pass...

Journey's End

2006-07-03T13:59:00.000-04:00

After leaving Halifax I spent a few days in Sheet Harbor, a small village on the east coast of Nova Scotia. It was mostly to see family, as my mother was raised there. Unfortunately, there are almost no buses going to the smaller towns anymore, and so although I was able to find one going there, there weren't any going out for another two days.

I tried to hitch hike, but didn't get anywhere. My plan was to go to the ferry terminal and to sail to P.E.I., but in the end I couldn't even get to the next village. In the end I had to wait till the next morning for the bus back to Halifax, and afterwards take another to New Brunswick.

My first stop was Fredericton, where my father's cousin Sandy and her family own a farm. It was nice to rest up for a little while, away from the pace of city life. I also went to Saint John, to the south, to see my uncle Patrick and his wife Patricia.

Last Wednesday I finally arrived back in Montreal. Unfortunately, the buses to Montreal from the east also run on a horrible schedule. There's a choice of either arriving at 1 am or 6:30 am. So for the first day here, I was pretty out of it.

I've been staying with my friend Simon in Laval since I got back, while I come in to Montreal in the day to look for an apartment. So far I haven't settled on anything, but it's only been a few days since I started searching.

Although I'm still planning on updating this every two weeks, I doubt that it will be about myself so much anymore, for the simple reason that my life probably won't be very interesting. My plans are to find a place to live, find a full time job, and live a quiet life for at least the next year. So I'll probably use it mostly to vent about things other...

The first is all of the hoopla around the one percent cut to the GST. It's a silly thing to do, as it amounts to little more than a tax cut for the rich. Those that will see more than a few dollars of savings have large enough disposable incomes to buy new cars and other such high priced goods. But with such salaries, a few hundred dollars in savings isn't likely to make a very big impact on their lives. Most of the necessities in daily life are exempt from the tax anyway, and the prices of the smaller things that aren't exempt [which also make up the largest chunk of the revenues from the tax] will likely be rounded up to compensate, as retailers like to have the final price as a round number, say $1.50, instead of the $1.485 that it would now be with a 1% reduction. So the real winners here might be the owners of the convenient stores more than anything else. As for the losers, it will probably be the majority of the country, as the lost revenue will probably be made up in income tax hikes once the budget surpluses disappear.

One interesting thing that's come out of this is that the war of attrition between [Canadian Prime Minister] Stephen Harper and the media is in full swing. Harper told the media, in slightly different words, to go fuck themselves earlier this year, accusing them of having a grudge against his government. This is completely ridiculous, as the media has been tearing down governments, both Liberal and Conservative, for about as long as Canada has been having elections. Without the media blowing the sponsorship scandal up to the proportions they did, Harper wouldn't have become prime minister in the first place. Yet he now thinks that he can beat them into submission by brushing them off every chance he gets. It's obvious that the media has been at this a hell of a lot longer than he has, and aren't going to be out done by such tactics. They're going to bide their time, and get in their shots when it will count the most. In the current situation with the GST, they immediately jumped on how horribly thought out the idea was, and pasted it on their front page. They might have done so regardless of what Harper said earlier this year, but now they're going to be all the more rabid.

Also, Israel has stormed into Gaza, giving the reason that they need to free a captured soldier. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Israel is in the middle of a very long war with Palestine. I'm not trying to say who is the good guy or bad in this situation, and civilians are never, under any circumstances, legitimate targets. But soldiers are. War is horrible, yet when people insist on waging it, this is a simple fact. As such, the soldier is entitled to be treated in a human way until his release. If he is killed, Israel is justified in retaliating against strict military targets, avoiding killing any bystanders at any cost. But it's not a justification for the dozens (hundreds?) of Palestinian civilians that will be killed, either directly or otherwise, in Israel's military aggression. If Israel has another reason for invading, they should state it, and not use this.

To end on a more positive note, the rain cloud that's been following me for the last month seems to have finally gone away. I hadn't seen sunshine for more than a couple of days in all of last month, so it's a welcome change to see some sunny weather...

Shadows

2006-06-19T14:50:00.000-04:00

I've spent more time in Halifax than I originally planned. I've been taking things one day at a time, since I'm not in any major rush.

Shortly after I got back, I saw Michael again, the friend from high school that I met up with in London the week before. He was running errands with his finance. They were leaving for the Yukon in a few days, where they're planning on getting married. He invited me to a party at the end of the week, which happened to coincide with my birthday. As I didn't have any special plans, aside from hanging out with my cousins, I brought them along to meet up with the rest of his friends.

In the end it turned into a bit of a high school reunion. It's amazing how much we've all changed. Although I wasn't very close to most of the people there, it was interesting to see how much old social circles had broken down. Most people have moved on from Halifax in the last several years, much like myself. Although some expect to come back in a few years.

Aside from that, most of my time has been spent either taking care of some loose ends [renewing my driver's licence, reactivating my health care, going to the dentist, etc, etc] or seeing family.

I've been staying at my uncle Dougie's place, which has been the first time in a while that I've had a room to myself for more than a couple of days.

The night before last, I hung out with Charles, whom I met in Alicante, Spain. Also from Montreal, he was studying Spanish at the same time as myself, but at a different school. And now he's working in Halifax for the summer. Strange how paths can cross so many times in such a period.

Also, I spent a bit of time with Candace, one of the few friends from Halifax that I've kept in touch with over the years. She's a great artist, and one of the people that first inspired me to start drawing. I worked on a drawing of my mother as a gift for my grandmother recently, which was the first time I've drawn anything in almost a year. Unfortunately I didn't have time to scan it before giving it to her.

I added some pictures of my time in Alicante. They can be seen at http://www.couchsurfing.com/image_gallery.html?id=400346 under Alicante.

I'm running out of things to write about, and am a bit low on time, as the bus to New Brunswick is leaving in a few hours. So I'll stop before things get a bit too mundane...

Without a Hitch

2006-06-05T18:31:00.000-04:00

Cork [Ireland] was more or less uneventful. A pretty town, I spent my time wandering around both it and other villages in the area. Sometimes I would go on my own, other times with people that I met in the hostel.

The person that I hung out with most was from Argentina. Again it gave me an opportunity to practice my Spanish, but it was difficult, as accents vary quite a bit across South America. One of the hardest parts is how people pronounce two consecutive l's. For instance, the word in Spanish for arriving is llegar. In Spain, this is pronounced like yegar. In Argentina, it's said more like jegar, where the j sound is quite soft. In Uruguay, it sounds more like chegar. Since the two l's occur in many words, it's very difficult to understand, especially when people speak quickly. Plus, my level of Spanish is shaky at best.

After Cork, I made my way towards England. The ferry that I caught went to Penbroke, a small village in Wales. During the trip, I met a guy from Waterford, a small Irish town in the south east. He was going to London to take part in a reality television show, similar to Big Brother. What made him even more interesting was his accent. He sounded exactly like the character Brad Pitt played in Snatch. Complete with the bouncy hand gestures and grins. Apparently Pitt didn't event the accent after all.

We had a three hour wait after getting off the ship before the train left to go farther east, and went to a pub to play some pool. Despite it only being two in the afternoon, several of the locals were already hammered, and looking to fight anyone that would give them attention. I guess that there's not much else to do in such places besides get drunk every chance you get.

My next stop was Cardiff, the capital of Wales. Like in Ireland, the Welsh also post all signs in both English and Welsh, which is amazing considering how much the language was suppressed for the last thousand years. It's very different from any other language that I've seen, looking nothing like any of the forms of Gaelic.

Unfortunately I arrived in the city just as a big football [or soccer] game was ending. The fans were extremely rowdy, as the match was between Cardiff and a nearby town where the rivalry goes back quite some time. Everyone was wearing the colors of their team, be it red and white for Cardiff, or black and white for their opponents. Many of them were completely shit faced, one guy even pissing in his pants on the sidewalk. The train station was completely swamped, and the police were dividing people according to which team's colors they were wearing. The one type of fan was sent to the front of the station, and the other to the back. Trains were also divided. Apparently this is necessary to avoid brawls breaking out. Such problems erupting over a sports game goes beyond being sad. At such times, the reputation of football fans in Britain being hooligans seems well deserved.

From Cardiff I spent a night in Bristol, a bit farther east. The town was a little bland, as it had been the site of several munitions factories in the Second World War, and hence was heavily bombed by the Germans. Still, I had a good time in the hostel where I was staying, as there was a very diverse crowd there. Some of the long term guests were from Spain, and were holding a language exchange conference that night. This means that they would spend an hour teaching the English speaking people some Spanish, and then would ask for some English lessons in return. It's strange, but it feels like I've been learning more Spanish in the month since I left Spain than in the last couple of weeks I spent there.

My next stop was Oxford, a town between Bristol and London. Ania, a friend whom I took classes with in Montreal, is doing her doctorate in applied mathematics at the university there, focusing on biological modeling. Although originally from Moscow, she spent some time in America and Canada before doing her undergraduate degree at McGill. I wrote her saying that I'd be passing through, and she invited me to stay with for a couple of days. Unfortunately, she had a cold while I was there, but still showed me around town and gave me a tour of the university. We even went to a lecture, on suicide in Judaism. It was interesting being back in an academic environment, but I also realized that it's really not where I belong, at least not for now. It's hard to explain, really. The best way I can describe it is that it's a bit too structured. Right now I think it's better that I be either working or studying in a less formal way, such as what I've been doing for the last year and a half. Perhaps in a few years I'll feel more able to do some sort of graduate work.

My next stop, and my last in Europe, was London. Will, a friend that I met in France in 2002, invited me to stay with him, and as always, gave me some great tours, showing me all the best of what London has to offer. The first night was a little pub crawl, and the next morning was the National Gallery, probably the most famous museum in the U.K. We were also joined by Michael, a friend of mine from Halifax who, by coincidence, was passing through London at that time. Michael and I go way back, having gone to school together from about the age of six all the way through high school.

In the afternoon, Will had to leave us for a little while to go pick up his wife, Lucy from the airport. She was in China for a week setting up a teacher's exchange program the British government runs in Shanghai. Michael and I spent the day walking around the Soho district, which is probably one of the most culturally diverse in the whole city. We were hoping to be joined by Mish, a friend of mine that I met in Spain, but who is originally from Kuwait. He's been going to University in Nottingham, and offered to come meet me in London while I was there. Unfortunately, he had several problems that day, culminating in his train breaking down, and was unable to join us. Still, we had a great time, as Will and Lucy joined us in the evening for a dinner of Sushi and other traditional cuisine at one of the best Japanese restaurants in town. Afterwards, the four of us wandered around a bit more, before ending up in an Italian cafe. It was a very enjoyable evening, and a great way to round out my time in Europe.

The next morning, Will drove me to the Gatwick airport, which even though being dubbed as a London terminal, is halfway to Brighton. It takes an hour to get there by car, and Will's offering to drive me there again shows how nice he is.

Now I'm back in Halifax, where I'll probably stay for about a week and half.

It's hard to believe that after a year and a half of wandering around europe, my time there is over. Also, after so many adventures, it feels strange to be back in the city where I grew up. One of the things that strikes me the most is the amount of open space here. I understand why so many tourists love it here, as the people are very friendly. I'd forgotten what it's like to go into a shop and have the clerk come up to you and start a conversation, just to make you feel welcome. Still, I don't think that I would ever want to live here again. I'm not entirely sure why. And I'm even less sure how to explain it. I guess it's mostly a matter of moving on, leaving the past behind.

The Green

2006-05-24T13:42:00.000-04:00

[This was originally part of the entry called 'Hope', but since it was getting a bit long, I cut it into two parts. I'm not sure how related they are, but maybe it's better to read that one first...]

After leaving Belfast, I went to Dublin. It's a nice city, but it's growing very fast. Ireland has a huge number of guest workers, being one of only three E.U. countries to have opened up it's labor market to eastern Europeans. And most of them are concentrated in and around Dublin. In fact, in certain areas it's more common to hear foreign languages than English. Although this makes for a very cosmopolitan atmosphere, it doesn't feel like you're in Ireland. The problem is that because of the rapid growth, the locals tend to be getting big-city attitudes. As in they're becoming quite rude, and drugs are becoming a major issue. In fact, most of the public washrooms have blue lighting to keep people from being able to find a vein.

There are still some people that are very nice. When I was eating lunch in a pita restaurant, the owner came over to me personally and asked me how I was enjoying my sandwich. Yet earlier that day, when I was standing on the sidewalk reading my map, some guy walked right into me. Instead of apologizing, he started yelling at me to watch where I was standing. I thought he was going to attack me. It seems that people are either extremely polite, or extremely not. Very few are in between.

Perhaps the best part of the city is the music scene. Mostly for the sake of tourists, pubs usually offer live Irish music in the evenings. But you have to go out early, as by ten o'clock they've usually switched to dance or rock. Also, you can usually hear good buskers on the main streets.

From Dublin, I moved on to West Port, a small village in the midwest. It had a typical Irish feeling, very quiet, but with lots of rain. In fact, I've heard that in the area it rains sixty percent of the time. As a consequence, the countryside is one of the lushest in Europe. Vines and flowers cover most of the fences, climbing up the trunks of trees as well. The country is well deserving of it's reputation.

After West Port I went to Achill [pronounced Akill] Island, which is one of the most isolated parts of Ireland, still relatively undiscovered by tourists. Unfortunately, without a car, it's hard to get around, and so I spent my time walking the roads near the hostel, enjoying the countryside. In the end I only stayed for one night, as the second day was wet and windy, and it was better to spend my time in a bus than sitting around in the hostel.

While I was waiting at the bus stop, someone drove up and offered to drive me to wherever I was going, as he was heading east. Typical Irish hospitality. He told me stories of the history of Ireland, plus recommended some places to see. Although I was on my way somewhere else, he talked me into stopping in a town called Oughterard, which is very pretty, before he kept going farther inland.

As usual, the weather was a bit of a downer. The wind was exceptionally strong, and the rain seemed to be going more horizontally than anything else. I was hoping to hear some Irish [or Gaelic, depending on who you're asking]. Unfortunately, the first day wasn't so successful. All that I heard of it was an old lady yelling at her dog [does that even count?]. And the next day wasn't much better. Again, I only heard it once, in a bar. This time it was an old man who was doing the talking, but to himself. Since the weather wasn't improving, I decided to go the Aran Islands, which were just off the coast.

Although Aran refers to a collection of three small islands, most of the people that live there are on the biggest one. They aren't as accessible as Achill, which is connected to the rest of the country by a bridge. Instead, you have to take a ferry for half an hour. Yet they've done a great job of promoting their tourist industry, which has done wonders for the local economy. The islands are very beautiful, but they have only a few inches of top soil, with the rest just being a big hunk of rock. Hence tourism is about the only industry they have.

Apparently, when the island was first settled, there was no top soil at all. But over the centuries, the people who lived there would cover their property with sea weed, trying to make it suitable for farming. The cliffs on the far side of the island are very beautiful, being about one hundred meters high.

Despite all of the tourism, it's one of the places where the Irish language is best preserved. Most all of the locals speak it to each other, although sometimes they mix in a bit of English. For instance, they'll be chatting away, and just stick in a 'And lemme tell ya'.

Most of the island is has also been covered in a sort of stone grid. Without using anything to properly stick the rocks together, the locals constructed walls about one meter tall all over the island, dividing it into a series of squares where the cattle graze. The rocks are just stacked on top of each other, but fit in a way so that it's more or less stable. I have no idea how, but the walls have stood up to the harsh winds for centuries.

After the Aran Islands I spent a few days in Galway, which is the center for Irish culture. It's a lovely city, my favorite that I've seen so far in Ireland. It has all of the pluses of Dublin, but minus the urban sprawl.

While there, I met two more people from the Couchsurfing website, Saera and Rose:

Saera showed me around town, and told me stories of life in Conamara, where she was raised. It's along the coast, a bit north of Galway. Some of her family members don't speak much English at all, and her brother has an especially hard time speaking it, as he doesn't travel much. They get many students of Irish that come to stay with them, so as to get a full immersion in the language.

Rose [who's last name, by a bit of a coincidence, is also Barrett] was amazingly nice, offering to drive me all around County Clare, which is where the famous Cliffs of Moore are located. Although the cliffs are quite lovely, they're a bit over-hyped. Those on the Aran Islands were a bit nicer, plus much less commercialized.

Much nicer was the drive around the rest of the county, which lasted for eight hours. Yet it felt like much less. The scenery was gorgeous, green as always. At times she had to stop the car and wait for cows or sheep to move away from the center of the road.

To top things off, she refused my offer to pay for our lunch, and insisted on picking up the tab herself. Her reasoning was simply that I was 'a guest in her country.' What's said about Irish hospitality is if anything understated.

One of the things that I enjoyed the most was the local accent. Although all of the Irish accents sound pretty, the one from this part of the country is exceptionally nice, more like singing than anything else. Sometimes I had a hard time to concentrate on what they were saying, as just listening to the rhythm was almost hypnotic at times. And every other sentence was punctuated with a 'Dooyeknou?'.

After moving on from Galway, I headed for Dingle, in the southwest. The roads in that part of the country are mostly curves and turns, so getting anywhere takes quite a while. To go about 250 km takes almost six hours by bus. Dingle is a very nice place, and at this time of the year quite quiet, as the main tourist season doesn't start until June. The couple of days that I was there were spent either strolling around the back roads or reading by the fireplace in the hostel.

Today I arrived in Cork, in the midsouth. It's a pretty town, bigger than any place that I've been to for the last week or so. As usual, the weather is a bit nasty, so I haven't seen as much of the town as I'd like. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit sunnier.

Hope

2006-05-21T17:11:00.000-04:00

[Because this is getting a bit long, I'm splitting it into two parts. The other half is called 'The Green']

My time in Alicante ended on a high note. I spent my last night with several friends that I had met there, including Gill from the U.K., Charles from Laval, Annika from Sweden, and Andrej from Poland, along with several of Gill's friends from the U.S. We drank wine on the beach, and given that the nicest part of Alicante is its castle, which rises up in the city center, the beach has a nice atmosphere. Listening to the waves from the sea and having the illuminated castle behind is hard to beat.

The next day I flew to Belfast. It's a very pretty city, but the violence [or as the locals call it, The Troubles] of the last forty years overshadows most everything. The people tend to be somewhat closed, and with good reason. During the height of The Troubles, over twenty bombs were set off in the city on the same day.

Although most people tend to regard the fighting as being of a religious nature, the Protestants versus the Catholics, the problems stem more from politics. The Protestants call themselves Loyalists, meaning loyal to the British Crown. The Catholics are referred to as Nationalists, who want all of the island to be part of the Republic.

Religion and political beliefs coincide because the Protestants are descendents of British colonizers who arrived in the 17th and 18th centuries, and who mostly settled in the northern part of the island. Very few Irish converted from Catholicism to Protestantism.

The reason that the Irish resent the British so much is that the British oppressed anyone Irish (and after the Lutharian movement reached Britain, anyone Catholic) for centuries. Because most of the Loyalists were concentrated in and around Belfast in the north eastern corner of the island, they were able to keep their area a part of the U.K. when the rest obtained independence in 1922. The Catholics in the north felt that they were being held hostage. The Republic even broke down into a civil war for several years after independence over whether they had conceded too much to the British by leaving them the northern chunk of the island.

The Catholics in the north were kept out of government jobs, which were reserved for Protestants. The Protestants argued that it wasn't possible to work alongside the Nationalists, and so this was the only way to keep the peace in the places where Protestants worked.

Still, there was an uneasy peace for the next forty years. The tensions finally boiled over in the late 1960's. The Catholics decided to copy the civil rights movements of the black community in the United States, but when they held mostly peaceful demonstrations, they were brutally oppressed. A spiral of violence ensued, culminating in perhaps the most infamous tragedy, Bloody Sunday, on January 30, 1972. 13 peaceful protesters were killed by the British army in Derry, a town west of Belfast. The violence continued for thirty years. During this period, the arguments of the Loyalists were more popular due to the Republic being stuck in a horrible economic depression since it's founding.

Over the years, two major things have changed. The first is that the Republic's economy exploded in the 1990's. In many ways, Ireland has become just as rich as the U.K. And as the economy shows no signs of slowing, it may even surpass the U.K. in the next decade or two. The second change is that the demographics in the North are changing. Mostly because the Catholic church bars birth control, Catholic families tend to be much larger. Within one more generation, the Catholics will make up the majority of the population. These two factors laid the ground for a peace deal, often referred to as the Good Friday Agreement, signed on that day in 1998. Perhaps the most significant part of it was that in the future the status of the north would be decided by democratic referendum, which heavily favors the Nationalists. It's of course uncertain that the peace will last through such a referendum, regardless of the outcome.

The I.R.A [Irish Republican Army] formally abandoned violent actions last year, and have not killed anyone for several years before that. They have transformed themselves [hopefully permanently] into a purely political organization. Though they have had a political wing, Sinn Fein [pronounced Shin Fane, meaning 'I, Myself' in Irish] since the mid 1970's, it has always co-existed with the terrorist organization up until last year. Incidentally, it was strange to walk through the Catholic neighborhoods and see memorials dedicated to the 'soldiers of the Republic who have given their lives in the fight for freedom'. Everywhere else in the world the I.R.A. is considered simply as a group of terrorists, and with good reason. There's no excuse for killing innocent people in London in the name of freedom for Northern Ireland.

The most striking part Belfast are the wall murals, which are gigantic graffiti paintings, either on houses (authorized by their owners) or on the so-called Peace Walls, gigantic barriers reminiscent of the one in Cold War Berlin, designed to forcibly separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. These murals are very impressive in terms of artistic talent, but the message very disturbing. Most of the murals feature large 'soldiers', their faces covered by ski masks, pointing rocket launchers at you with such messages as 'This We Will Defend', and a British flag in the background. The Catholics counter with tributes to members of the I.R.A. There are also many impressive murals in Derry.

For a sample of the murals, check out http://peacelinetours.g2gm.com/murals.html
and for a complete list, go to http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/mccormick/albumlist.htm

While there, I also met two people from the couchsurfing website. The first, Maria, is from Paraguay, and is teaching Spanish classes in Belfast. I was quite surprised to be able to carry on most of the conversation in Spanish. The other person that I met, Paul, gave me a nice tour of the various areas of the city. Being born and raised in Belfast, he was able to explain the history of the town very well. Still, he said that he wouldn't be comfortable stopping his car in certain neighborhoods at night.

Turn

2006-05-06T12:05:00.000-04:00

Most of Europe [most of the world?] celebrated Labor Day on May 1st, and since this was yet another long weekend, it was a good time to explore another of the regions of Spain that I've been curious to see, the Basque Country.

The Basque region is most famous for the E.T.A. [Euskadi Ta Askatasuna], a terrorist organization who's name translates [from the Basque] to Basque Homeland and Freedom. Their goal was to 'liberate' the Basque regions of Spain and France, and to unite them into a sovereign nation. Still, considering that the majority of the population doesn't support separation, let alone the violent methods of the E.T.A., they've been steadily losing credibility for the past 30 years, ever since Spain became a democracy.

One of the biggest sources of cultural pride for the Basque people is having been the only region in modern-day Spain to have resisted every single Arab invasion from the 8th to the 16th century. It wasn't until Napoleon came along that they were finally conquered.

The Basque language is completely unique, and doesn't belong to any other family of languages in the world. They use the letters k and x several times in most words, which looks funny at first. I learned later that the x is meant to sound like 'ch'.

My first stop was San Sebastian, which is on the northern coast, near France. It's the area with the strongest concentration of Basque nationalism, and is often referred to by it's name in the Basque language, Donostia.

It's a beautiful city, very green, with a mountain fortress overlooking a beach, well-known for it's surfing. The region is easily the wealthiest in the country, as most industry is placed there in order to placate the nationalist movement [other countries have similar situations...]. In general this plan has worked, as public support is usually less than one third of the population. Still, it means that if the region ever does separate, it will substantially hurt the rest of Spain.

Despite the low overall support for separation or violence, tensions are easy to recognize. I'd been told before I went to avoid talking about politics. As an example, both Basque and Spanish are official languages, and all street signs are required to be written in both. Yet the Spanish text is usually spray-painted over...

After leaving San Sebastian, I went a bit south to Pamplona. It's the capital of the region called Navarra, still Basque, but less radical. It's known mostly for their 'Running of the Bulls' festival in early July. This is where they release a dozen or so bulls, which rampage down the streets of the city center, trampling over drunk tourists who are stupid enough to try to outrun them. It's not to say that there are that injuries. Apparently, it's usually less than half a dozen. Still, I don't understand why people are attracted to this sort of thing. The tourist shops were selling postcards with pictures of some of the dumber tourists getting whacked by the bulls as they charge through.

I stayed with Eisi, a friend of Rally, whom I met in Sofia, Bulgaria [Rally is the cousin of one of my very good friends from Montreal, Ivo, who was born in Bulgaria]. He was amazingly nice, doing everything he possibly could to make me as comfortable as possible. Still, I got the impression that he's pretty depressed living in Spain. In fact, he said it straight out. He's looking for a way to move back to Sofia to be close to his son.

Perhaps the most memorable thing that I saw while I was there was a demonstration for a 'Free and Socialist' Basque country, which gathered around 500 people. There were two reasons that I found it so interesting. The first is the use of the word 'free'. The people there didn't seem very oppressed, especially compared to the Franco years [Spanish dictator from the end of the Second World War until his death in 1975]. But of far more significance is that this is exactly the same slogan as that of the E.T.A. and of their political branches. This means that some [or many?] of the people there were at least E.T.A. sympathisers, if not full-fledged members. Keep in mind that the E.T.A. is well known for their brutal execution-style murders [a bullet to the back of the neck], as well as extortion. It's amazing how normal such people can look from a glance...

Still, the vast majority of the people that I met while I was in the area were very nice. I'd been told that the people in the south are more laid back, and that those in the north are more hard working. But in general, the northerners were quieter and seemed happier as well. Their personalities didn't seem to be nearly so loud. Minus the loudness factor, I found the same difference between people in the north and south of France.

---

This is my last day in Spain. Tomorrow I fly to Belfast. It's been a great experience, but at the same time, it will be good to move on. I've more or less reached my goal of being able to have a simple conversation in Spanish. There is, of course, an enormous amount left to learn.

I'm not sure how or why, but my French has also improved quite a bit since I got here. Odd, considering that I don't get many chances to practice speaking French at all. And when I do, for the first couple of minutes of a conservation, it tends to be mixed with Spanish words. Still, I've gotten much better at remembering words in French, even ones that I've only used once or twice before. My listening comprehension is much higher than it ever was as well. I understand very nearly all of what I hear now.

I'm not sure if I want to come back to Spain again. It's not that I dislike the country. It's just that nothing here really grabs my attention. Then again, not many countries do. The only places that immediately pop to mind are Norway, Latvia, or western Ukraine. And even with those, I can't really imagine living there for the rest of my life. I suppose that in the end, it would come down to the type of job I was offered. Under the right circumstances, I would be happy enough spending a year or two in many northern European countries, such as Germany, Denmark or Sweden.

Kick

2006-04-23T12:59:00.000-04:00

I've spent most of the last week in Portugal and Sevilla, a city in Andalucia, the southern province of Spain. Easter in Spain is quite the event, and they give you the whole week off from classes.

Portugal is one of the nicest countries that I've been to. The things that I like most about Spain [i.e. the weather] are also in Portugal, but in addition, the people there are very laid back, and at the same time friendly. It's true that it's poorer than Spain, but as a consequence the cost of living is lower.

From Thursday till Sunday, I was in Lisbon, the capital city. I stayed with Fred and Igor, two Brazilians that I met through the couchsurfing website that I used in eastern Europe. They were amazingly nice hosts, and showed me all of the nicest parts of the city. Plus, we were joined by Silvia, one of Igor's friends from Rio de Janeiro, and her German boyfriend, Mark.

Mark was one of the originators of the rave scene, having done his first gig as a DJ in 1988. He met Silvia when he was working in Rio.

On Friday, Marc Olivier [aka Marco], my ex-roommate from Alicante, came to meet me as he backpacked across Spain. Fred, being the amazingly nice guy that he is, didn't mind in the least if Marco crashed at his place as well.

The nicest thing about Lisbon has got to be the architecture. Most of the buildings are covered in ceramic tiles, similar to what you would expect on bathroom walls in most other western countries. It's very pretty, as each building has a different style of decoration. Sometimes a pattern in blue, other times in green or red. For pictures of the city, check out Fred's website at http://www.flickr.com/photos/flopes74/

I met two other 'couchsurfers' while I was there. Filipa, a very friendly native-Portuguese girl who lives in a village just outside of Lisbon, showed us some of the night life, and introduced us to more Brazilians. Since Brazil is one of the only other countries in the world whose native language is Portuguese [and whose population is about 15 times that of Portugal], most of the immigrants tend to come from there.

Also, we met Irina, who, although Austrian, has lived in Lisbon for a few years. She speaks 6 languages, and understand 5 others. This is amazing to me. It's good to know that it's possible...

On the last night, we went to one of the trendiest nightclubs in town, Lux. It was the first time that I've enjoyed a night club in quite some time. I think I'm a bit claustrophobic, and usually clubs aren't my favorite scene. The difference with this one was that the music was very good, as well as the overall atmosphere. They had a giant screen where they played clips from vintage 1920's cartoons, designed so that the characters moved to the beat of the music. Also, space wasn't a problem, as clubs in Portugal don't really fill up until 5 a.m. I have no idea why people come out so late, or what they're doing until then. I was pretty much asleep on my feet by that point, but all of the locals were just getting warmed up.

I'll be adding a few pictures of the people that I met at http://www.couchsurfing.com/image_gallery.html?id=400346, so give it a look if you're curious.

Something that surprised me is how much the Portuguese resent the Spanish. Although the language is quite similar, they refuse to speak it. Yet they're quite happy to speak English, whereas the Spanish hardly speak a word of anything but their own language. It's true that Portugal is at times overshadowed by Spain, and most people expect the culture to be quite similar. I made the same mistake, but in fact, they are very much distinct. The relationship reminded me in many ways of that between the United States and Canada.

After leaving Lisbon, I went south to a town called Lagos. I knew it was going to be a touristic place, but it turned out to much more so than I expected. I only spent one day there, and in all of that time, I heard Portuguese being spoken only a handful of times. Everyone was either British or German. It had that generic tourist trap layout, with the buildings being mostly modern.

After Lagos came Sevilla, a Spanish city close to the border. It's a very beautiful place, but unlike other Spanish towns that I've been to, the efforts to preserve the town's historic feel were much more obvious. For instance, all of the street signs were in a fancy font, which makes it hard to tell the difference between them and the signs of the shops [all street signs in Europe are attached to the walls of the buildings].

Most of the people staying in the hostel were French, as the people in France get at least a week-long holiday for Easter. We visited several gardens, as well as some very impressive cathedrals and on my last night went to a Flamenco dance/concert.

The city really challenges your sense of direction. The map of the city center looks more like a spider's web. The streets tend to be very short, and are hardly ever straight. To make things even more fun, many aren't even labelled. The first time that I went for a walk, it took me half an hour to find my way back, despite having walked less than a kilometer. It's the first time that something like that has happened to me in a very long time.

I've been back in Alicante for a few days now. Most of the people that I knew here have moved on, and almost all of those who are left are Swedish. They're all nice, but being the only person around who doesn't speak Swedish makes things a bit odd. It's impossible to jump into conversations [which are, as you'd expect, in Swedish].

I only have two more weeks left, so it's best to enjoy Spain while I'm here. I'm still making progress in Spanish, and I think that I'll reach my goal of carrying on basic conversations by the time that I leave.

Just Lose It

2006-04-10T12:00:00.000-04:00

This weekend I went to Granada, in the southern province of Andalucia.

It's very beautiful, both the city and the Province. The area is a sort of 'high desert', very dry, but with shrubs coving most of the hills in green. The city is very well preserved, with the architecture showing many Islamic influences. The area was under Arab control for almost 700 years, up until the late 15th century.

The most memorable part of my time there was seeing the Gypsy caves. As the name implies, it's a collection of caves near the top of a mountain, which are home to Gypsies as well as a few hippies. I'm not sure if I'd want to spend much time there, as it was pretty filthy, but they seemed happy enough. I didn't ask exactly where they go to relieve themselves...

I stayed in a hostel, which was one of the nicest that I've been to in a long time. The roof was made into a terrace, and each night they would cook paella (a Spanish national cuisine) on a barbecue, while guests played some of the instruments that were laying around. Combined with the view of the city, it made for a great atmosphere, laid back and friendly, blended with the Spanish culture.

Most of the people that worked there spoke English, French and Spanish fluently, and when they talked to each other they would switch between all three during the conversation. To put it mildly, it was challenging to follow. It's the best sort of practice, though, as switching back and forth between French and Spanish has been giving me pretty big problems. I've been having a hard time keeping the two languages straight, so it was good practice going back and forth.

Also, I think that I have a new hero. Or at least, someone who left quite an impression on me. One of the girls that worked at the front desk was born in Canada, though her parents are from France. She moved to Spain three years ago with her father [she's one of those perfectly trilingual people], but when he took off for New Zealand a year after that, she decided to stay in Granada and get her own place. Still, she's been taking trips to Asia and South America every few months when she has the chance. The part that got me is that she recently turned 16. Which means that she's been living on her own since she was 14.

She is of course very mature for her age, and talking to her I would have assumed that she was more like 18 or 19. But still, I was proud of myself for making it on my own at 18. I guess some people just grow up faster than others...

---

[And yes, now it's time for more rants about France. Apologies to those who aren't so interested...]

It seems that the strikers, demonstators, and mobs have won. Chirac, the President, withdrew the national working law that had pissed off so many people. After two weeks of massive demonstrations [involving up to three million people, who blocked most major road, rail and air routes, crippling the country], he finally blinked. It seems that democracy is, well, malade in France.

The reason that the demonstrators seem to be so out of touch is that the jobs they're fighting to protect simply aren't there in the first place. For the people concerned, the only jobs available are for a fixed amount of time, say 6 months. These jobs have no security anyway, and thus the employers get around the rigid laws of regular full time employment. So either way, the unskilled workers lose.

It's also said that employers will just hire people under 26 so as to be able to fire their workers at will. Still, most skilled workers are at least 26 when they enter the labor market, if not a few years older. So the effect shouldn't be that great.

Don't get me wrong, I think the working contract was a stupid idea. Instead of just singling out the youth, it would be more logical to revamp the entire system, giving progressive job security depending on how long you've worked with the company. This would be more along the lines of other western countries where it's not so hard to find a job in the first place. Sometimes it's better to be realistic than idealistic. It's better to have a decent job than no job at all. In countries that protect their workers, but to a less rigid degree, the standard of living is not lower. In some cases, such as the U.K., Scandanavia, and Canada, it's actually a bit higher.

But such a change is now impossible, given that the demonstrators have tasted blood. Such a change would be much, much more unpopular.

All this aside, the biggest question that this raises about the French system is why the people have to take to the streets to get their point across in the first place. If the majority of the population isn't happy with what the government does, come the next election the opposition should offer to undue the changes, and hence get elected. Yet most French presidents stay in office for at least ten years. So either the French aren't voting for what they believe, or the people on the streets are in fact a minority. If it's the second case, the government giving in to them goes against the very principles of a democratic society. It's in fact mob rule. Hopefully the people will learn to express themselves in the ballot box. If the majority still can't get what they want, then it would be time to take to the streets. But this time to demand the total overhaul of the French electoral system.

Think Twice

2006-03-28T13:17:00.000-05:00

The last couple of weeks have been more or less uneventful.

About the only thing that I've done is to take a trip to Madrid.

I only spent a few days there, but it was still a great way to collect myself, and to get a different perspective of Spain. Madrid is a great city. Perhaps most importantly of all, I learned that many of the things that annoy me here in Alicante are not found in the rest of the country.

For instance, mullets are definitely an Alicante thing.

As well, Alicante is extremely noisy. Motor scooters are very trendy, even if they're so old that they barely chug their way down the street. And if they're new, it's trendy to modify them to make as much racket as possible. Apparently some people think that they look good wobbling down the street on these, mullet flapping in the breeze as they go. They need everyone to notice them as they sputter on by. When one of these broken down pieces of crap drives by you, it's impossible to hear yourself think, let alone what the person next to you is saying. These sort of people aren't nearly so common in Madrid [and hopefully not in the rest of the country either].

Madrid's culture is vibrant, it's architecture beautiful, and it's tourist attractions interesting to boot. The Prado museum [the Spanish equivalent of the Louvre or Vatican] had a fantastic collection of works by Raphael, as well as a few by another of my favorite Renaissance artists, Luini. Although nowhere near the scale of Louvre, it was still too much for one day. In the end, I only saw about two thirds of it. To be able to get the most out of the visit, it's nice to spend at least a few minutes on each interesting piece. After the 200th or so, it starts to become so much effort that it's hard to enjoy them.

Although I was aware that the trains going back to Alicante on Sunday night were sold out [I'd tried to book one last Tuesday, but all of the tickets were sold out even then], I had assumed that the buses wouldn't be a problem. After all, most intelligent companies run a second bus if the first one is full.

Of course, the company servicing the route that I needed didn't operate this way. And it was of course sold out. The girl at the ticket window told me that they are always sold out on Sundays. This struck me as a bit strange. It seems rather clear that if you're sold out every week, you might just need to run more buses. But making this connection was completely beyond her.

Also, Marc-Olivier, my Quebecker roommate, moved out. He had a bit of a falling out with the landlady. I didn't understand exactly what happened. Something about massive tension due to his having taken three strawberries more than he was allowed one morning. Plus he took too many showers. It was very strange. But now she's being extra nice to me. I suspect that she's afraid of losing me as well.
But as long as she's treating me in a civil manner, I might as well stay quiet.

---

There have been a few stories in the news that are interesting [well, to me, anyway]. My two cents...

ITEM: The French are holding massive demonstrations, often turning into riots, to protest a change to the labor law concerning those under 26 years of age.

It seems that the French are being, well, French. As in, like what people expect of the people in France. This is the thing that I disliked most about France. It's a shame, really, because otherwise I would like to have stayed there much longer than I did. They're crippling the country over an issue that's really not worth the attention. It's true that the new law will reduce job security, but this may be the only way to kick start their economy. The unions are far too powerful, the result being that a person who cleans the train station makes twice as much as an associate professor with a PhD in one of their leading universities. Plus he only works 35 hours per week and gets six weeks paid vacation. Something has to give.

Another annoying part of this is that most of the people in the demonstration aren't even there for the cause. These sort of things are considered very hip by the French, and most people are just there to 'make the scene'. The media doesn't help matters, as even the most credible papers romanticize the hell out of it. The titles loosely translate to 'The Struggle of the People' or 'The Fight for Justice'.

ITEM: The pro-Russians win the parliamentary elections in Ukraine, reversing the momentum behind the pro-western 'Orange Revolution' two years ago.

The press has treated this as the death of pro-western sentiment in Ukraine. Apparently they can't add up two digit numbers. The problem is that Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Timoshenko, the co-leaders of said revolution, had a nasty falling out last year. This time around, Timoshenko ran in her own newly created party, thus dividing the vote from the pro-western supporters. If you add up their combined take, they did even better than last time. Unfortunately, the pro-Russians, led once again by Victor Yanukovych [why is his name so bloody similar to Yushchenko?] were much more united, and hence picked up a larger percentage of the seats. Although I'm sure that this is oversimplifying the results, why hasn't the media recognized this obvious factor?

ITEM: Belarussian president Aleksandr Lukashenko holds a fraudulent election, and brutally suppresses demonstrators that protest the result [although compared to old Soviet tactics, this is just a slap on the wrist].

It seems that Lukashenko is a complete retard [there's that word again...]. Belarussians would probably reelect him even in a fair election, although with a somewhat narrow margin. The majority of people in Belarus are all very much pro-Russian, as most of them can trace their ancestry back directly to Russia. And Lukashenko keeps the country very close to the motherland. The pro-Western opposition is this country is squarely in the minority. Apparently Lukashenko is insecure [putting it mildly], unsatisfied with any results that are less than 80%. Or maybe he just likes drama.

Balance

2006-03-13T11:00:00.000-05:00

It's been brought to my attention, albeit in an inoffensive way [Hi, David {Clark}] that most of the entries I've done lately have been a bit negative.

It's really not how I meant it to sound at all. In fact, I've been having the time of my life ever since I started travelling, almost two years ago. After all, if I wasn't enjoying myself, I wouldn't have kept going for so long.

Looking back, the main reason that most of the stories I've told here are on a lower note is that the good times don't make for stories that are as interesting. For instance, for the last couple of weeks my afternoons here in Spain were mostly spent on the beach.

Still, I'm going to use this entry as a recap of some of the good times that I've had in the last several months.

One of the first things to come to mind is the Balkans. Perhaps it was the contrast of how war torn the countries were, and yet how hospitable the people are. Staying with Berengere [From France, but she's teaching French in Bosnia] for nearly a week in Banja Luka, before travelling with her to Sarajevo was one of the nicest parts of the trip. The problem is that I'd have a hard time explaining why. Even though she was working in the day [she works at the French cultural center], we would usually meet for lunch, and then go to a bar with some of her friends in the evening, as well as others that I met through the Couchsurfing service, such as Ivana and Alex.

The hospitality that I was shown by Zlatan in Beograd was second to none. I mentioned this before, but I wasn't alone at any point for the whole time I was there. For five days straight, one person would drop me off with another of their friends when they had to go to school or work, who would then continue showing me around. Novi Sad was much the same way, where I stayed with Slobodan. We also hung out with Dragana, [another] Ivana, and Sonja. Then there was Ivan in Podgoriza, and Tim in Prestina, both of whom showed me the best parts of the their cities, places that I never would have known about on my own.

While in Sofia, I stayed with a girl named Milena, who also showed me a great time. We spent most nights sitting around discussing everything from American politics to cat psychology. Plus, Ivo, a friend from Montreal, gave me the phone number of his cousin Rali. She and another cousin, Dodo, showed me a great time, giving me a tour of Sofia and some of the surrounding areas as well.

While in Moldova, staying with Irena was wonderful in more ways than one. For starters, she showed me some great areas of Chisinau, the capital. But most importantly, she gave me advice on how to stay out of trouble, as the country can be very dangerous for tourists.

While in Istanbul, Aylin gave me a very nice tour as well. She was very nice, and helped to make me feel more relaxed in an absolutely massive city. It's by far the most hectic place that I've seen. At the same time, the culture was the most diverse that I've ever seen.

I should also mention Mirta in Zagreb, Luba in Bratislava, Mirechka in L'viv, and, well, I could go on for ages. I think that you're starting to see where I'm going with this. By far, the best part of travelling is the people that you meet. And I've been lucky enough to meet some that are absolutely amazing. Yet as I said, it's hard to capture it in a forum such as this. It's one of those things that you have to enjoy for what it is. It's very hard for me to communicate the feeling or the memories to other people. Even pictures don't help that much. It's enough to have pictures of the people that I met, but to show them to other people can't communicate what those in the picture meant to me.

As for what's been going on since the last entry, it's been mostly spent at the beach with friends, three of which are named Sara, all from Sweden. Most of my friends here seem to be from Sweden. The reason that so many of the students come from there is that the Swedish government is one of the only ones in the world that offers low interest loans to it's youth, so that they can learn languages in other countries. When I was taking French classes in France several years ago, most of the students were also Swedish.

Something that struck me as a bit odd was that my roommate, Mark Olivier, who moved in last week, turned out to be from Laval [only a few kilometers from Montreal]. I'd been told that he would be Dutch, and he was told that I would be American. It's funny how things work out. Though I doubt that he'll be staying long. He's not getting along with the landlady at all. She's a bit... well, touched. So I make it a point to stay out as much as possible. He's been a bit more confrontational. Usually, I would be as well, but there really isn't much point. Neither of us is fluent enough in Spanish to be able to get our points across, and even if we could, I don't think that logic enters her head very often. He's also getting very annoyed at the parrot, which is usually squawking at full volume by 8am. Some sick bastard even taught it a bizarre, diabolical laugh. It's along the lines of a kooky mad scientist from one of those cult science fiction movies. I'm not sure how much longer he'll last. Still, many of our class mates seem to have even worse living conditions, so as long as things don't go even farther down hill, I should be able to last until it's time to leave Spain.

On a bit of a side note, the landlady's name is Dolores De Los Rios. Translating it word for word, this means 'Pain of The Rivers'. Maybe her mother didn't like her...

This weekend I took a trip to Valencia, a city a few hours north of here. It turned out to be a great vacation from my, er, vacation. I stayed in a hostel, where I met a very nice German girl named Wiebka [pronounced like Vipka]. We walked around the city all weekend, and had some very nice conversations, which were all over the place. Everything from German politics and demographics to the meaning of life and our lack of any long term life plans.

Strange

2006-02-26T09:52:00.000-05:00

My Spanish has been improving faster than I expected. That's not to imply that I'm able so say very much, but reading is getting easier. After I bought some comic books, I was able to understand almost everything without looking up much at all. Of course, the pictures helped quite a bit.

Also, I've been studying more than I though I would. This is mostly due to there not being much else to do around here. Alicante isn't a bad place, but most of what goes on around here is geared towards the beach. For now, though, it's still too cold to sit around outside [usually around 10 degrees]. Most days I try to memorize between fifty and seventy-five words, in addition to doing some exercises from a grammar work-book that I bought.

One of the hardest things about understanding what I hear is how the Spanish pronounce certain sounds. For instance, if a c comes before either an e or an i, it makes an s sound, like in English. But the Spanish just lay their tongue on their bottom lip and blow, making the same sound as a five year old with a bad lisp. I always hear it as a 'th', and by the time I think long enough to make the difference, I've missed a couple of the words that followed.

It seems that the mullet is still considered trendy in this country. Most of the men have one, as well as many of the women. When I was getting my hair cut last week the barber tried twice to give me one, before it finally sunk in that 'short in the back' means a lot less than two inches that he wanted to leave me with. To be honest, I haven't been very impressed with the style of many of the people here, especially the men. I've seen way too many neon orange and yellow track suits, often topped off with a raging [ie more than three inches long] mullet.

And then there's my host family. Said family consists of an old lady, [Mrs. De Los Rios], a small white dog, and a parrot. The parrot is usually riding around on Mrs. De Los Rios' shoulder, since if it's left alone, it breaks out into a fit of whistles and 'hola's. The dog is usually reasonably normal, except when someone comes in the door. When someone does, it hops up on it's hind legs and does some sort of weird dance, back and forth, while shaking it's front paws. And no, I'm not exaggerating. I'm not sure if it taught itself how to do this or not.

Mrs. De Los Rios doesn't speak any English or French, so communication has been a bit of a problem, especially for the first couple of weeks. Still, she manages to get her point across when she wants to. For instance, part of the deal was that she would prepare lunch for me, but that I would take care of my own supper. What I didn't realize is that I wouldn't be allowed to use the kitchen to do so. Apparently she's afraid that I'll set fire to something. It's been a long time since I've been treated like I'm retarded.

Still, at least the house is comfortable. Although the situation is far from ideal, I'm reluctant to change houses. Some of the other students have it even worse than I do. One, from Sweden, ended up with two Moroccans as roommates. That's not a problem in and of itself. But they either have a very warped sense of humor, or are most likely quite dangerous. You see, sometime during the second week that they lived with him, they started to ask his opinions about Al Qaeda. They've since been telling him that the organization is misunderstood, and gets a bad rap from the media. After which they start to rant about the failings of western society. He's still not sure if they're trying to make a joke [and failing miserably at it], or are being serious.

Last night was the Spanish equivalent to Halloween. Unlike the North American version, however, it's much less commercial. Most people make their own costumes, and do so with a tremendous amount of effort and care. Sometime around midnight, everyone gathers by the port to wander around and see what other people thought up. The most impressive part of the whole thing was the size of the crowd. There must have been 15,000 people all crammed into a three block stretch, and almost everyone was wearing an extravagant, and usually very colorful, costume. Also, unlike Halloween, very few costumes are designed to be gloomy or gothie. My personal favorites were those dressed as Gypsies, as well as the colorful 'cat' costumes [more the style from the musical than actually trying to look like the animal]. After seeing this, North American Halloweens will never be as interesting again. I can't imagine what it would have been like in a bigger city, like Madrid or Barcelona.

I've posted a few pictures of when I was in Bosnia. If you'd like to check them out, go to http://www.couchsurfing.com/image_gallery.html?id=400346&folder=6309

---

The news has been somewhat slow these last few weeks. At least the rioting over the cartoons of Muhammad seems to have died down. It's one of the only issues that's put me in line with [western] conservatives. It seems that 'small c' conservatives were the only ones willing to stand up for free speech. I was following several billboard conversations over the Internet, and most of the politically correct would condemn any newspaper that would print them as just provoking a minority. The irony of all this is that most [almost all?] of these people had never even seen the cartoons. They seemed to think that they were horribly disrespectful, some even thinking they depicted Muhammad sodomizing a goat. Had the pictures been printed in at least some papers, people could have known what they were arguing over.

Aside from that, there doesn't seem to be much going on. Iraq is ever closer to civil war. Dick Cheney shot someone in the face. All business as usual.

Sunny Hours

2006-02-12T12:48:00.000-05:00

Istanbul was one of the most memorable places that I've been to.

As I mentioned before, it's absolutely huge. Plus, there's a huge contrast between neighborhoods. Some are extremely rich, others dirt poor. There are areas that are very religious, and others that are much more modern. It's an odd contrast to see many women wearing hijabs, or in some cases covering their entire faces, passing bars wherein there are Turkish girls that are dressed, well, to the other extreme.

While I was there, I met three people through Couchsurfing [a website that I've been using as I travel]. The situation with the first, Esin, didn't turn out very well. In fact, it was the first bad experience that I've had with the site. I suppose something was bound to go wrong sooner or later.

At first everything was fine, and we seemed to be getting along well enough. But on the third day, she got a call from a Turkish man that I had met when I was in Sofia. She had given me permission to call him from her phone earlier, but he hadn't been home. He called back later when I was out, but must have had me confused with someone else. He was certain that I had been to Istanbul several times and that we had met at a party in Istanbul several months earlier. Despite him not having asked for me by name, but instead by my email address, and my having proved to her that I had never been to Turkey before by showing her the stamps in my passport, she became convinced that I was lying to her. The whole situation struck me as very odd, but she told me that she wasn't comfortable having me stay with her any longer, and asked me to leave immediately. It was 10 pm, and putting it mildly, Istanbul isn't a very safe city to be walking around at night looking like a tourist [i.e. wearing my packs].

Luckily, I had just had dinner with another girl whom I'd met from the same site, Aysun. When I called her she was more than happy to have me stay with her, even on such short notice. Her sister Aylin even offered to show me around town the next day, as Aysun had to work.

Aylin and I spent the day taking in as much of the city as we could. She mentioned that she was considering doing a PhD in film, and is looking into several universities in Canada. I'd heard that Concordia has a strong theatre program, and she said that she'd check it out. Perhaps the next time I see her will be in Montreal.

From Istanbul I went to Athens. Just as with Turkey, I didn't have time to take in any more than the one city. I'd been told not to expect much from Athens, and that most of the historical monuments were destroyed. I found that to be a bit harsh. The city had an energy, as if things were on the mend. Granted, it has a major traffic problem for a city it's size. There are around 3 million people living there, but compared to others cities of the same size, the air absolutely reeked. They've had absolutely horrible city planning for the last hundred years. But recently they've built up the metro, as well as improving the bus system. Apparently hosting the Olympics a few years ago helped to pick up people's spirits.

From Athens, I flew to Alicante, in Spain. I'd signed up for Spanish Classes here, which will last for three months. Perhaps the best part of being here is the weather. I'd forgotten what it's like to be warm when I'm outside.

I've been here for a week so far. I'd forgotten how tedious learning a language is in the beginning. I've spent most of my time memorizing words, and although I've already learned about 400, it's really not much to speak of at all. I can barely form any coherent sentences. Still, I feel as though I'm progressing faster than when I started learning French. I'm hoping that things will start to fall into place in a month or so.

---

It seems like the world just gets more and more depressing. Especially where the Middle East is concerned.

Arab governments are allowing [or in some cases encouraging] massive, violent demonstrations against a cartoon. Think about it. Despite all of the important problems facing Muslims now-a-days, a huge number seem to be hung up on a couple of drawings that appeared in a newspaper in Denmark. Most of the people demonstrating against their publication probably couldn't even find Denmark on a map. But they would say that's beside the point. Apparently their religion has been humiliated by this. Fine. By all means, feel free to voice your complaints. Perhaps publish some lewd cartoons about the Danes in their local papers. But sacking Danish embassies? And asking for the cartoonists to be executed? Doesn't this amount to the laws of Islam being applied to people who are in no way connected to it [not to mention proving that the cartoons were right on the mark]? How in the hell do you justify that?

Perhaps the most disturbing part of all of this is how little western governments have stood up to this bullying, and defended free speech. Particularly America, where free speech is supposed to have originated. And after having looked at these drawings, I have to say that they were pretty tame. Certainly compared to what the Arab press routinely publishes about Israel and America.

Also, I felt a little dumb when I couldn't remember the name of one of the favorites to win the forthcoming leadership convention of the Liberal Party [of Canada]. It's Michael Ignatieff. As I recall, he's been teaching at Harvard pretty much his entire life, meaning that he hasn't even lived in Canada since he graduated from high school. Yet for some reason he decided to come back to Canada to be a politician. Quite a few people are very impressed with him, and see him as the fresh face the Liberal Party needs to get it back on track. I think this is a crock of shit. The man was vocally in favor of both the Ballistic Missile Defense System and the war in Iraq, putting him either on the same grounds as Stephen Harper, or even farther to the right. I have no idea why he choose to run as a Liberal candidate. I realize that what I'm basing this on isn't enough to get a full view of his opinions, particularly domestically. Unfortunately, he hasn't really said enough to give people a clearer picture. That doesn't stop the thought of him as Prime Minister giving me the willies.

Also, it seems that Harper didn't waste any time stepping knee deep into a big pile of doodoo. So far he's only appointed his cabinet, and already he's lost most of his moral credibility. I understand that he wanted to have some cabinet ministers from the big cities [from which the Conservatives were shut out]. But accepting David Emerson as a Conservative and a cabinet minister a week after he was elected as a Liberal [and who represents a riding that has only voted Conservative once, in the 1950's] left him wide open to calls of hypocrisy by the media, and rightfully so. Plus he gave a cabinet post to Michael Fortier, a man who didn't even run in the election. Harper got around this little hitch by appointing him as a senator, although I believe that Fortier promised to resign from the senate if Harper should lose any coming elections. This means that Fortier won't even be on the parliamentary floor to answer questions about the decisions he makes.

Shiver

2006-01-30T04:04:00.000-05:00

It's been a long week.

After leaving Transylvania, I caught a night train to Moldova, between Romania and Ukraine.

It's officially the poorest country in Europe, but that's mostly because much of the economy is illegal. They're much more developed there than Albania, for instance.

Moldova is known mostly as a route for people smugglers, meaning trafficking girls that have been abducted and forced into prostitution. Most of the tourists that go there have less than pure motives. Laws there are lax at best, and easy to get around. Corruption is everywhere, and even if the police catch a foreigner doing something illegal, they'll usually just hassle him till he gives them some cash.

I spent most of my time there in the capital, Chisinau. I stayed with Irina, a nice girl that works in a travel agency. We had a great time talking, and she showed me around town quite a bit.

The poverty in the country is pretty easy to see. One thing that was striking was walking around the outdoor markets, and seeing the old ladies standing at their booths, despite the horrible weather. The temperature was around 17 degrees below zero.

Most of Moldovans associate themselves with Romania, and speak the same language. However, there is a significant Russian speaking minority, and many have clustered along the border with Ukraine, in a region called Transnistria. Thanks to military aid from the Russians, they fought [and won] a war with the Moldovan army for succession in the early 1990's. Yet ever since that time, Russia has been the only country to recognize their independent status.

Although it's quite long, parts of Transnistria are only 15km wide, and every problem in Moldova is hugely magnified there. It's completely lawless, and completely poverty stricken. Still, I wanted to see it. I'd heard stories that they have people acting like border control as you cross into it from the rest of Moldova. They even have their own currency.

I caught a bus to Tiraspol, the capital of the region. Everything went fine till we got to the border. The thugs calling themselves border guards charge everyone 7 Moldovan Lei (50 cents) entry. They moved quite quickly through all of the locals, but things didn't go so smoothly for me...

As soon as they saw my passport, they pulled me off the bus and shut me in a little room. The one person in their outfit that spoke a bit of English came in, and told me that I was trying to smuggle drugs. Keep in mind the lunacy of someone coming from a first world country to smuggle drugs into the biggest shithole in Europe. I didn't have any bags with me, but he demanded that I empty everything out of my pockets. He then reached inside each of them and pulled them all inside out. Next, he went through everything that I had, including pulling apart my dirty Kleenexes. Since I didn't have much on me to search, he ran out of things to do, and had to let me go. He was obviously hoping for a bribe, and I imagine that if you're carrying baggage, he spends so much time dissecting it that people cave in and give him money.

When I went back out to where the bus was, it had already left. If I had left any bags in it, they would have been long gone. Keeping in mind the temperature, I was fast losing any enthusiasm that I had left for going any further. I decided to take the first bus that came along, regardless of it's direction. That bus happened to be going back to Chisinau.

After leaving Moldova, my next stop was Odessa, a port city in the south of Ukraine. I arrived in the middle of the worst cold snap in 80 years. -22 degrees. As well, the wind was stronger than anything that I have felt at such a cold temperature. It was almost enough to knock me over. While going from a taxi to the ferry terminal, I accidentally left a small part of my nose exposed. Within a minute, it was completely frozen. I couldn't feel it for ten minutes after I got inside.

I went to the counter to buy a ticket for the ship leaving on Monday to Istanbul [I had checked the schedule on their official site on the internet], but was told that it was cancelled. The next ferry going to Istanbul wasn't until Saturday. A very long time to wait in a city that's too cold to walk around and explore. And my visa for Moldova was only good for one entry, meaning that even if I wanted to go back there to get to Romania, I would have to go to Kiev to get a new visa. And Kiev is 12 hours from Odessa by train.

The woman working at the counter was not helpful at all. After some yelling, she told me about a ship going to Bulgaria that left the next day from Illichevski, a village a bit south of Odessa. Although it was a freight ship, they took a few passengers as well. She had no idea where exactly the port was, though.

So I took a bus to Illichevski, and from there asked a cab driver if he knew where the ship left from. He said that he didn't, but would ask around the port once we got there. Luckily they charge a flat rate for destinations, and don't work on a meter. After half an hour we finally found it.

As I was boarding the ship, they mentioned something about a possible delay, as the elevator for loading freight was being fixed. But it shouldn't take more than two hours. But the two hours came and went, and still the ship didn't budge. When I asked them how much longer it would be, they again said two hours. After which, still no sign of departure. Now they were saying that we couldn't leave until the next morning.

To add to things, the other passenger, who was sharing my cabin, was quite possibly the most bitter person that I've ever met. A middle-aged Brit, he had been living in various countries in Eastern Europe for the last several years, looking for a place to 'drop anchor', as he said. But every country that he tried turned sour for him after a few years. He had just lived in Bulgaria, and was now moving to Ukraine. The reason was because he couldn't take the corruption in Bulgaria anymore. The irony of moving to Ukraine to escape it seemed to elude him. He was only on this ship to go pick up his dog in Varna, on the coast of Bulgaria, where the ship was going to dock. He absolutely hated Bulgaria, and decided to tell me about every bad thing that had happened to him during the last three years. He kept talking, and talking. And talking. And then he talked some more. If I ignored him, it didn't make any difference. Even if I pulled out a book and faced the wall, he didn't notice in the least. And the passenger cabin was the only warm place on the ship.

After the morning came and went, with no sign of us leaving, I asked to get off. They told me that I couldn't. Customs had already stamped my passport saying that I had left Ukraine, and until I had a stamp showing that I had arrived in another country, I couldn't come back to Ukraine. So İ was a prisoner.

After 47.5 hours of delay, the ship finally set sail. Incidentally, the Black Sea is well named. At least in the north. The water is completely black. Though as you go south, it turns into more of a lime green.

Upon arriving in Varna, we had to wait for the customs officers to finish their tea and biscuits. After which, they finally put themselves out enough to check our passports [it took them an hour and a half to get comfortable enough to do it], and we were finally able to set foot on land again. From there, I took a bus six hours to Sofia [which is in the wrong direction, but trains and buses going to Istanbul leave from there], and managed to arrive 15 minutes after the night train had already left. So instead of getting a bed on a train, I got a cramped seat on a Turkish night bus, complete with old man hacking and wheezing just behind me. I didn't expect him to survive the trip. Also, when we passed the Duty Free shops between borders, the driver took advantage of the opportunity to open up a bunch of secret panels under each of the seats, and load them with contraband alcohol. On and on...

A full five days after leaving Moldova, I finally arrived in Istanbul. The sad part of this is that a train from Odessa to Kiev to Bucharest [thus avoiding Moldova] would have only taken four.

Istanbul is a huge city, by far the largest that I have ever been to. It's population is around 17 million. I've only been here for a day, and so haven't had a chance to properly digest it yet.

A brief comment about the elections in Canada... At least the Conservatives didn't get a majority. In fact, it may even work out for the best. Martin resigned as leader of the Liberals, which makes me very happy. And the Conservatives probably won't last long, as forming any coalitions would mean having to betray their base. So they either become moderate, or their government falls before too long. My biggest concern right now is who will win the leadership of the Liberals. Some of the front runners are even worse than their predecessor...

Jinx

2006-01-15T11:53:00.000-05:00

[I've been in Europe for a year now. It's hard to believe. Time really flies.]

Ivo, one of my good friends from Montreal, was born in Sofia. Most of his family still lives there, and so he suggested that I look up some of his cousins while I was in town. I managed to contract three: Rali, Dodo, and Darina. All were very nice, and showed me some of the nicer parts of town that are easier to miss, as well as explaining the history of many areas and monuments.

After spending four days more in Sofia than had I originally planned, I decided to take a bus to Bucharest, the capital of Romania.

The woman who was working at the bus station was in a pissy mood, and sold me the ticket as fast as she could. She scribbled something under destination that was completely illegible, and she didn't even tell me which platform to go to until I asked. The driver of the bus that was waiting there nodded when I said Bucharest, and so I hopped on and away we went.

The drive to Bucharest was said to be six hours, and after five I started to wonder why we hadn't passed customs, and why all the signs were still written in Cyrillic. It was pretty clear that I was going in the wrong direction.

When we got to the end of the line, I got off and checked the bus station to see where I was. It seems that to Bulgarians, Burgas sounds a lot like Bucharest. Because that's where I ended up. 400 km. in the wrong direction, on the Bulgarian sea side. The worst part was that it was already dark, and I of course had to wear my bags. I may as well have had a big neon 'TOURIST' sign over my head.

First came the cab drivers. Bulgarian taxi drivers are notorious for ripping off foreigners, and they didn't waste any time jumping me. About three of them came running, all acting like my best friend. It didn't matter how many times I told them that I didn't want a cab. They all followed, no matter which way I turned. Each one trying to shout out over the others. After five minutes, I nearly screamed myself into a fit. They mumbled something about me being crazy and let me be.

That was a cake walk compared to what came next. The cab drivers must have hidden me from view, because as soon as they left, something much worse moved in. The hookers. And as persistent as the cabbies were, they were in a league of their own.

One was particularly bad, and followed me even after the others had given up. She kept growling 'SEEEXXX' at me, followed by grabbing at my crouch. No matter how many times I smacked her hand away and shoved her back, she just kept coming. In the end it took a massive 'FUCK OFF' [which I screamed so loudly that my voice almost gave out] to make her do just that. She spat a big wad at me as she leaving. Luckily she missed.

As if all of this wasn't enough to sour my opinion of Burgas, all of the hotels had special tourist prices. And I don't mean a discount. They charge about twice the price you'd pay in Paris. It was much cheaper just to take a night train back to Sofia and start over.

So after that lovely sidetrack, I arrived the next morning, back where I started. Minus 18 hours of my life and 25 euros to boot. As one might imagine, I wasn't in the best of spirits. I went back to the information desk, and asked quite plainly for a schedule to Bucharest, ROMANIA. Yet the only answer that they would give me was 'I don't know.'

'Do you know where I can find out?'

'Across the parking lot maybe.'

Once I went across the parking lot, another person in a little booth.

'Do you know how I can get to Bucharest, Romania?'

'No.'

'Do you know WHERE I might find out?'

'Across the parking lot.'

This of course was the same place that I had started from. After playing this little game a few more times, back and forth, I finally lost it. Although I didn't scream. Instead I just glared at the bitch. And told her, in a tone that I'm sure was as nasty as I felt, that I wasn't going to move until she told me how to get to Romania.

Apparently I witnessed a miracle, some sort of divine enlightenment. Because somehow the answers came to her. It was best to take a bus to Russe, a town on the Bulgarian side of the border, and transfer to a mini-bus to get into Romania. Why she just didn't say that in the first place, I have no idea. They make a conscious effort to be as useless as possible.

After another seven hours, and a few more hitches that I won't bother to go into, I finally arrived in Bucharest. The distance between the two cities is 400 km.

Bucharest turned out to be a bit boring, and very grey. Most of the classic architecture was destroyed by the communist dictator, who ruled the country until 1989. Still, I met some very nice people while I was there, and heard some interesting stories. The most memorable, and disturbing, was about the wild dogs that used to roam the streets a few years ago. Most were set on the street by owners that could no longer afford to feed them after communism ended, or are the descendants of dogs that were. And there were thousands of them.

What brought the situation to a head was when their numbers got so high that they started to form massive packs, sometimes as large as 60 or 70. And sometimes, when there wasn't enough food in the garbage, they would start to hunt. Mostly for cats or pigeons, but over time they got progressively bolder. Finally, bodies started to be discovered in the alleys. Human bodies. That had been eaten.

The dogs were finally rounded up, and destroyed. Although animal rights activists voiced their discontent, I find it hard to object when people are getting eaten on their way home at night.

After a few days in Bucharest, I started to get bored, and so headed off into Transylvania. Just in time to pass the 13th, a Friday. It's strange, but it isn't creepy here at all. Even Dracula's castle, which was in fact that of a cruel [but not blood-drinking] prince, was rather cheerful. It was almost entirely white, not gothic at all. The only gothy part of it was the merchants outside. They were selling 'Prince of Darkness' t-shirts, among other tacky things.

The three towns that I've visited, Brasov, Sibiu, and Alba Iulia, are all very pretty. Perhaps the most surprising thing that I've found here, outside of the lack of gloom, is that the Gypsies have a king. And an emperor. And they both live in Sibiu. It seems that after the Gypsies stopped being so transient [roughly 60 years ago], one of the more influential ones decided that he was in fact royalty. Though I'm not sure how much clout he has. And not to be outdone, one of his rivals decided that, although he didn't believe the Gypsies should have a king, he himself should be considered emperor.

Though I didn't see where the emperor lives, the 'Royal Palace' was a bit of a disappointment. It looked more like a typical middle class house in the 'burbs. Complete with over-sized satellite dish. Still, I suppose it's definite luxury compared to how most of the Gypsies live. That being in shanty-towns, to put it nicely.

As I read the news from Canada, it seems that Stephen Harper is a changed man. A moderate. All in the space of three or four months, which is how long it's been since he's gone on one of his hard-liner rants. It now looks as though the [Regressive] Conservatives are heading for a majority government. Four years of them having free rein to do with the country as they please. Maybe I'll stay in Europe permanently.

The Dogs of War

2006-01-03T03:18:00.000-05:00

[What's written here was meant to be included with 'Oh, Mercy', but in the end it was turning into a book, so I decided to cut it in half. I'm not sure how useful it is to read that one first, but there will be a few comparisons to Albania, so perhaps it might be best to start there.]

After spending Christmas day trying to escape Albania, I arrived in Pristina [Kosovo] early Monday morning. Guide books [and popular opinion in Serbia] is that it's a very dangerous place, but all of this is exaggerated. At least for Westerners.

The province is technically still part of Serbia, but all of the administration is handled either by the Kosovars or the U.N. Still, there are peace keeping soldiers all over the place. And they come from just about any nation that you could name, including African countries that are quite possibly worse off than Kosovo itself.

Kosovo is populated almost exclusively by 'Ethnic' Albanians. The term seems a little odd to me. But the point is that they can trace their ancestry back to Albania, even though they don't even speak the same language anymore. It's something along the lines of the German spoken in Germany versus that of Switzerland.

Despite the ethnic ties to Albania, Kosovo is much more organized. This could be because of the presence of the U.N., but I think it's more a leftover of the much greater efficiency of the ex-Yugoslavia. Although Yugoslavia was also run by a dictator [Tito], he was much more intelligent than the nut-case who was running Albania. Yugoslavia became one of the most prosperous communist countries in history, with comparatively little poverty. It stayed that way until Tito's death in 1980. Things slowly started to unravel, and ethnic tensions started to rise. In the end, Milosevic decided that might made right, and the whole thing went up in flames.

Most of the Serbs that had lived in Kosovo for generations were driven out by reprisals committed by the Ethnic Albanians after the Serb troops had withdrawn. This was an embarrassment for N.A.T.O., as ethnic cleansing was one of the main reasons that they intervened in the first place. At that time, though, it was the Serbs that were trying to drive the Albanians out of the province, mostly towards Albania, but in some cases to Macedonia or Montenegro.

The Serbs that remain generally live in enclaves, which are like glorified prisons. They can't go anywhere without being followed by either Albanian Kosovars or N.A.T.O. forces. Yet they're too proud to leave. One starts to wonder when pride becomes more of a liability. It's hard to imagine what would possess someone to subject their family to living in such conditions. The closest comparable situation that I can think of are the 'settlers' in the occupied territories in Israel, but there, the heavy artillery is on their side.

I had the contact of a very nice guy from Pristina, Tim. He offered to let me stay at his place, along with his brother and two sisters. Especially in Kosovo, it's rare that a family has less than four or five children. They all live in a two bedroom apartment, but the girls offered to sleep in the same bed so that I could take one of theirs. Again with the amazing Balkan hospitality.

Tim told me stories of the horrible abuses his family was put through during the war. They were forcibly evicted by the occupying Serb forces, and his father narrowly escaped being killed, which would have happened had they left a day later. Being a doctor, he was accused of aiding the enemy forces by the Serbs, for having cared for injured soldiers of the K[osovo].L[iberation].A[rmy].

It's hard to understand exactly what happened leading up to the war in the first place. The argument of the Serbs is that the K.L.A. was a terrorist organization [they had planted several bombs prior to the outbreak of the fighting, killing several Serbs], and they took appropriate actions to stop them. At the very least, these actions were far too extreme, about as logical as trying to swat a fly with a sledge hammer. But this was a typical strategy of Milosevic. The Serbs don't want to let go of Kosovo as a province [despite having no jurisdiction over the area since 1999], since they consider it to have always been Serb territory. In the popular Serb opinion, a small number of Albanians immigrated to the area centuries ago, and slowly out bred the Serbs, eventually becoming the majority. They also consider it to be a center of Serb culture, yet tragically, most of the churches and other buildings of cultural significance were all destroyed during the fighting.

The Ethnic Albanians say the opposite, that they have been a majority for many centuries, but at times most of their population was driven out, reducing their numbers to a minority. Hence they consider themselves to have the natural claim to Kosovo. Unfortunately, everything that I've read says that it's not really possible to know which side is right.

The two ethnicities have never gotten along, with one of the only quiet times being the more prosperous years under Tito. Still, Kosovo was always the poorest province of Yugoslavia, and by a wide margin. The average revenue in Kosovo was only about one quarter that of Yugoslavia as a whole. The vast majority of Ethnic Albanians will settle for nothing less of full independence, which includes the northern strip which is still mostly populated by Ethnic Serbs. I'm told that that region is the richest in natural resources, and the Ethnic Albanians see it as a key to advancing the Kosovo economy. Yet because of the demographics, Serbia has an especially strong claim to being able to hold onto it.

Negotiations about the status of Kosovo are set to begin this month, and will hopefully conclude by the end of the year. The problem is that unless a compromise can be reached, there is a very real chance that fighting might break out again, yet probably on a smaller scale. Serbia may even try to send in troops once more. Although this is hopefully just a hollow threat [For the sake of all parties involved], the Serbian government being willing to make the threat is very sad. As though the Serbian people haven't suffered enough, the government may be willing to subject it's citizens to yet more sanctions and hardships. And it will be over something that is of comparatively little value.

The biggest question in this whole saga is whether N.A.T.O. was justified in intervening. The mainstream Western media gave an almost unanimous yes, in some cases calling it the first 'good' war [there's a sickening phrase] since World War 2. It was said that N.A.T.O. was stopping a genocide. Yet, after the conflict was over, there weren't nearly enough dead found to justify the term. The war in Bosnia resulted in over 20 times as many dead. There is no doubt that parts of the Serbian military were committing horribly acts of brutality, similar to what happened in Bosnia. Killing innocent people to intimidate others, as well as setting up rape camps. Yet the worst atrocities started after the N.A.T.O. bombing began.

Although it would be nice if politicians were always honest, and if N.A.T.O. really did intervene on a purely humanitarian basis, there are many other arguments given that seem quite plausible. One that the American tacticians themselves gave was that Macedonia was being flooded with refugees, which was a major strain on the economy. Should Macedonia have been sufficiently destabilized, not only by the economy, but also by the large minority of Ethnic Albanians that had been in Macedonia for generations, the country may have collapsed. Albania, Greece, and Bulgaria could all make claims on Macedonian territory, and might have been drawn into the conflict themselves in one way or another. Turkey also piped up about defending their former subjects [as well as fellow Muslims]. This was starting to sound very similar to how World War 1 began. Milosevic was constantly trying to talk Russia into intervening on his behalf. Although it was almost unthinkable that the war would have gone global, it might have grown to encompass the entire region.

There's no question at all that how the intervention was handled was retarded. Most of the people that suffered in Serbia from the bombing were [as always] civilians. N.A.T.O. destroyed, among other things, the Beograd television station, the Yugoslavian Chinese embassy, and many bridges over the Danube River, which runs through Novi Sad and Beograd. They killed many civilians while they were at it. The destruction of these bridges caused havoc for the residents. The Americans could have easily targeted Milosevic himself, instead of dumping more problems on the innocent.

Equally disgusting was the strategy of the K.L.A. [or at least the hard-liners there-in]. They've said that, since they couldn't hope to match the Serbs on a military footing, there plan for independence was instead just to provoke the Serb government to the point where they would start to pound Kosovo. This would in turn bring in the Americans, who would drive out the Serbs, thus giving Kosovo the independence that it wanted. If this really was their strategy, the disregard for civilians here is sickening. What's also sad is how things turned out almost exactly as they wanted.

---

Moving on to a lighter note, after leaving Kosovo, I caught a bus to Macedonia. Macedonia is one of the few countries in Europe that I needed a visa for. They were also a part of Yugoslavia, and were the only province to have obtained independence peacefully. This was in large part due to timing, as they declared independence when the Yugoslav army was already completely tied up in Croatia and Bosnia.

The capital, Skopje, was a typical big city, somewhat grey. I also visited a town called Ohrid, in the south, which was very pretty. There was a small monastery next to a lake, called St. John's, which had an appeal that's hard to describe. Sitting in front of the monastery and watching the sun set over the lake was a nice way to end a day.

After leaving Macedonia, I went to Bulgaria, arriving in Sofia just in time to celebrate the New Year. I spent the night with a Bulgarian couple, Cvetelin and Sonia, drinking wine and chatting at their apartment. I've been staying with Milena, who was raised in a smaller town in central Bulgaria before moving to the U.S. for a few years. Now she's living in Sofia in order to figure out if she wants to move back to Bulgaria. Just as with the other people that I have stayed with, it's been a great time.

---

I've written enough about these last two weeks to fill ten entries, but in the end, it's been quite nice to get all of this off my chest. It's been a fascinating learning experience.

Oh, Mercy

2006-01-02T05:58:00.000-05:00

After leaving Novi Sad, I took a night train to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro.

Montenegro is a beautiful region, very mountainous. I stayed with Ivan, someone that I met through hospitalityclub.org. A very nice guy, he showed me all around town.

Podgorica has more gypsies than anywhere else that I had been to up to that point. Apparently most of them came from Kosovo during the war several years ago, and decided to stay even after it was over. One of the things that struck me the most about them is how fast their children mature. They wander around by themselves from about the age of 3, and are usually smoking a cigarette while they're at it. They already have all of their techniques down for hitting people up for cash, hanging on to your sleeve, sounding like they're about to die. They give amazing performances. About the only thing they study besides how to ham it up is how to sing and perform, and despite the chain smoking, when they break into a song and dance number, it really is a good show.

For an afternoon excursion, I went to one of the famous monasteries in the area, Ostrog. It's built into the side of a cliff, and is a place of pilgrimage for members of the Eastern Orthodox. The strangest part was that they've kept the body of one of their saints there for the last couple of centuries, covered only by a red blanket. People go to it and pray, before kissing the cloth. Not being able to communicate with anyone (no one spoke English), I didn't know what it was. I was just about to peek under the cloth when it struck me what was probably under
there...

As well, I went to a small town called Kotor, which is probably the best kept secret in the entire region. On the bay, it's surrounded by mountains, and has very well preserved architecture, as well as the ruins of a castle in the mountains just above it. Every bit as nice as Split or Dubrovnik, it's almost completely unknown to tourists, and usually only gets tourists from the area. Granted, there aren't any beaches in the immediate area, but I've heard that there are some that are just a short drive away.

My destination after Montenegro started to cause difficulties even before I left. I wanted to go to Albania, which borders on the south of Montenegro. There was a nice road that went from Podgorica to Shkoder, a city in the north of the country. Yet for some reason, buses didn't service it, and the only advice that I could get from the guy who worked in the bus station was to take a taxi. It's about 100 km, and you have to switch cabs at the border, so there's no way of telling how much it will be. Luckily Ivan offered to go talk to the guy himself, and [apparently since he wasn't a tourist] he got a bit more co-operation. To get to Shkoder, the nearest city in Albania, you have to take a bus to a village in the southwest corner of Montenegro, then transfer to a second bus to take you across the border. The guy had no idea how often the second bus runs, if it even still ran at all.

Since this sounded like a better option than getting taken for a ride by a taxi driver [in more ways than one, being a tourist], I gave it a shot. The driver of the first bus turned out to be very nice, and asked around in the village, Ulcinj, till he found someone who knew where the second bus went from [it wasn't from the bus station]. Luckily I only had to wait for three hours, as having gotten there in the late morning, it could have easily been over night.

The second bus went through a glorified dirt trail, taking two hours to cover fifty kilometers. And there was no question that I was going into another country. The roadside was lined with shacks, and chickens and cows roamed freely. It seemed to get worse the farther we got from the border, culminating in the city of Shkoder itself. This town is the biggest shit hole that I have ever seen. I only spent three hours there before I finally found a way out. There was poverty everywhere, every building that I saw looked like crap, if not like it was going to fall over outright. People were driving horse driven carriages around town. But these aren't your quaint Victorian models. They looked like they had been strung together from odds and ends collected at the local dump. The roads were a complete disaster, the driver of the bus had to zig zag to avoid full blown pits. There were more deformed people than I could believe, which I would assume was due to malnutrition when they were children. The driver of the bus that brought me there didn't know where the bus to Tirana [the capital] went from, and had to ask around to find out. There aren't any bus stations, or bus companies, in the country. Joe Blow just buys a bus, decides on a route to drive, puts a little sign in his window, and tries to drag as many people as possible into the bus before he goes. It took him half an hour to find out where the bus left from, during which time I sat by the road side in a mild daze. After all, this country is in EUROPE, for crying out loud. How do they manage to be so poor when all of their neighbors are very much industrialized?

In the end, he told me that he would drive me to where the other bus left from. This seemed nice enough. Except that he hit me up for two euros after he dropped me off. Keep in mind that this is half a day's wage in this country. In the end, I was too out of it to care if he was taking advantage of me.

The bus to Tirana was going from a flea market, if you can call it that. They were selling things that most garbage men wouldn't want to pick up. The exception here was the produce. All freshly grown from the local gardens. And to be fair, some of the clothes were fine. But on other stands, it really did look like absolute garbage.

As soon as the bus to Tirana took off, one of the kids sitting next to me started to turn a slight shade of blue. His father asked the driver something, and he handed him a plastic bag. The kid proceeded to hurl up into it for the entire trip, which lasted about three hours. Having the roads in such a hopeless state made for mad traffic congestion outside of Tirana, despite the city only having a population of around 250,000.

Although the people seemed to be a bit better off in Tirana than Shkoder, it wasn't a massive improvement. Most of the sidewalks were again non-existent, and what was left of the pavement had become more like little stones in the mud, that you could hop along on, to avoid getting mud all over your pants. As much as possible, anyway.

Even in a city of such a size, you could still see people riding the same sort of horse-driven carriages downtown. Or just riding along on donkeys. Or walking their sheep or cow down the main street. The absolute winner was a guy walking his pet bear. Yes. A bear. On a leash. It looked very intelligent, very alert. But still, seeing as how it didn't even have a muzzle on, this was bizarre, even for Albania. Yet the most bizarre part of it all was that the locals didn't bat an eye in the least. Just business as usual.

I took a day trip to Durres, a port town an hour west of Tirana. This city should be just as nice as those in Croatia, and I suspect that it used to be. You see, like most tourist destinations, it has a different name in every language. Durazzo in Italian, Dyrrhachium in Latin. Yet because of the incredibly fucked up politics of the last century, it's been completely forgotten. Now, the sea has been so polluted that the water is completely brown, complete with floatables on top. Although there has been a small effort to build a tourist-friendly area a few minutes walk from the port. Still, the water is so dirty, that I can't picture it flying at all.

Another thing that I found odd, and sad, was the state of housing in the city. Even worse than Tirana, I walked through kilometer after kilometer of some sort of abandoned housing project. Abandoned in the sense of being unfinished. That didn't stop people from living there. What I mean by this is that someone had apparently decided to build about 500 houses at the same time. But after they had finished the frames [and sometimes the ceilings], they just stopped. So there were no walls, just skeletons. It's been like this for some time, as what was there was already showing signs of wear and tear. Yet people still lived there. As well, there was a perverse sort of patriotism. Most of these 'houses' proudly flew the Albanian flag, sometimes tattered, but waving in the wind non-the-less.

The biggest problem in Albania by far was the complete lack of organization. Any sort of co-operation is so rare as to be strange. Ukraine was also very poor, though nothing like this. Still, in Ukraine there was a vibrancy, as though change was coming. The people looked to the future with hope and anticipation. In Albania, I couldn't feel anything but a jaded pessimism, where no one expected anything to improve. Everyone just wanted to get ahead for the day at hand, at the expense of anyone else who might be in the way.

Even getting out of the country was difficult. I was looking for a bus to Pristina [capital of Kosovo] or Skopje [capital of Macedonia]. This didn't seem like it should be difficult, as there were four or five travel agents per block. Again, though, I failed to take into account for the complete lack of any organization. Each travel agent ran their own bus, which would usually go once a week, and to only one destination. For example, to Athens, every Tuesday. So when I would ask them a question, they would go into a big monologue, trying to convince me why I should go to Athens on Tuesday. After I finally succeeded in convincing them that I wasn't interested, and would ask them if they knew of anyone going to Pristina, they would just shrug no. Did they know of anyone that might know? Same no. Again and again.

In the end, I finally found the 'Pristina Spot', where several people ran buses to Pristina. They went once a day, at 6pm. The problem is that I couldn't figure out if they went to Kosovo directly, as they didn't speak English, and the roads are so archaic that a small fall of snow is enough to close them. Trying to get a road report for anywhere at all is impossible. So I bargained with the guy until he gave me a fair price, got on the bus, and hoped for the best. In the end we made it through, but it took 14 hours to cover 300 km.

I realize that most of what I said here has been very negative, but it's not just my opinion. I talked at length with two Albanians, one that lives in France but was back visiting his parents, and another that had just gotten back from Stockholm, of which blew his mind. Stockholm would have to be the polar opposite to Albania. Most Albanians haven't travelled at all, and think that the rest of the world is somewhat similar to their own country. They were definitely dealt a hard hand for the last hundred years, having been under the iron fist of one of the biggest nut cases in recent history, the dictator Enver Hoxha. This lasted from the mid 1940s to the mid 1980s. This guy effectively closed the borders to the country completely, feeling that the entire world was out to get him. A communist hard-liner, the only person he respected was Stalin. Feeling that Khrushchev made far too many reforms after he took over from Stalin, he severed all ties with the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Similarly, China became far too free for his tastes in the 1970s, and got the same treatment. And Tito in Yugoslavia was on his shit list from day one.

Still, this horrible past can't be considered an excuse to keep things in such a complete mess. In the end, the people are only screwing themselves over.

All of this has covered about 5 days, and although there's still a lot left to say, mostly about Kosovo, I'm starting to go bug eyed from looking at the monitor. So I'm going to break this up into two parts, and post the second in the next day or two.

Scar Tissue

2005-12-19T07:15:00.000-05:00

After saying goodbye to Berengere, I continued south from Sarajevo, going to Mostar. This is one of the towns that was hit the hardest during the war. It's hard to describe how disturbing it is seeing bullet marks on pretty much every building wall in town. The majority has been rebuilt, but every block has several buildings that are still completely bombed out. The roofs are totally gone, and there are holes from the shellings all over what's left. It's hard to believe that the war has been over for ten years.

Walking through the grave yards was also quite moving. Almost everyone buried in some of them died on the same day.

Last year, they remade the town's main tourist attraction, called the Old Bridge. The original was built about 500 years ago, but was destroyed during the fighting. The Serbs damaged it quite heavily, but it was in fact the local Croats that finished the job. They were fighting both the Serbs and the local Muslims [who they had lived along side for decades], and found that the Muslims were using it to carry back supplies...

George Bernard Shaw once said that 'Those who seek paradise on earth should come to Dubrovnik'. It's a town in the south of Croatia, and it was my next stop after leaving Mostar. The quote is perhaps what the city is most famous for.

The borders with Bosnia are set in a very strange way, so it in fact made sense to go back to Croatia, rather than having gone there directly from Split. Even so, I had my passport checked four times on the way, as the road keeps going between the two countries.

The town is lovely, being built into a huge medieval castle overlooking the Mediterranean. Of the four days that I spent there, the weather was only nice for one. It was incredible how much this improved the ambiance there. Looking out at the sky blue waters when the sunlight is reflecting off was incredible.

For accommodation, I stayed in a B&B. It's quite odd when you first step off the bus, as the little old ladies that run the B&Bs wait at the station to grab tourists as soon as they set foot on the sidewalk. Sometimes, if there aren't many tourists on board, things can get really ugly. It's in some ways entertaining, in others disturbing, watching them fight over you. I didn't understand when they were yelling at each other, but I got the feeling it could get physical pretty easily if someone provoked them. In the end, I bargained for the lower price, and a few of them lost interest.

From Dubrovnik, I caught a night bus to Beograd [pronounced Belgrad], capital of Serbia. I had arranged to stay with one of the locals, Zlatan, who offered to meet me at the bus station. I had sent him the time that the bus was supposed to arrive, but unfortunately there was a snowstorm in the mountains that the bus had to cross. In the end, we got in four hours late. Of course, I didn't expect him to still be there, and was planning on calling him on his mobile once I arrived. When he was standing right outside the door of the bus as I got off surprised me, to put it mildly.

I stayed with him for five days, and the hospitality that he and his family showed me didn't let up in the least. His parents were concerned that if I slept in the living room, they might wake me up on their way to work. So they insisted on taking the couch themselves, and putting me in their own bed.

Zlatan is part of a Serbian dance team, and along with his three close friends, travel around Europe doing competitions. Together they showed me a wonderful time, taking turns bringing me to different places when each had free time. Check out http://www.couchsurfing.com/image_gallery.html?id=400346&photo=147231.

This sort of hospitality seems to be a Serb thing in general. In addition, I met quite a few other people through the same website who also brought me to great cafes and museums. Elena, Milena, Nebojsa and his girlfriend Desa, Jovana, Marianna, just to name a few. In the five days I spent there, the only time that I was alone was when I was sleeping.

After Beograd, I went north to Novi Sad, the much smaller capital of Vojvadina, one of the few provinces of the former Yugoslavia that never had a strong separatist movement. Just as in Beograd, the highlight of my time here has been the people that I've met. I've been staying with someone named Slobodan, who has also been a great host. As well, I've been shown around by two others, Dragana and Ivana.

I find it very sad that, although on the surface everything seems normal here, everyone expects another war soon. Recent history almost always comes up in the conversations, and although I've only met people who are very nice, there are of course others who are a bit different. I've seen several street merchants selling calendars. Some feature pictures of convicted war criminals. For too many in these areas, they are heroes.

Over the centuries, there has been so much fighting here that it seems to be bred into many people. Even the nicest have come to expect war, and in some ways see it as a part of life.

Floored

2005-12-04T09:43:00.000-05:00

After leaving Slovenia, I spent a few days in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. I stayed with a very nice couple, of which the girl, Mirta, was born in Canada. She moved to Croatia, oddly enough, in 1992. This was when the war of independence with Serbia was in full swing. Though luckily, she never saw much of the war, as Zagreb never came under major attack. Apparently, her father was very patriotic, and felt it was his duty to come back to fight the Serbians.

As near as I can tell, most of the tensions in the region started to come to a head when Slobodan Milosevic started to nationalize the political structure in the late 1980s. In the past, regions such as Slovenia and Croatia had much more autonomy, but Milosevic wanted to centralize most of the decision making in Belgrade. He didn't do this with enough grace, and in the end alienated these regions to the point where they were wanting to form their own countries.

In 1990 and 1991, Slovenia and Croatia held referendums on independence, which passed by a landslide. But keep in mind that the Serbs in Croatia boycotted these, so it wasn't quite so unanimous as it appeared. They both declared their independence shortly afterwards, and the Yugoslavian army rolled in a few days later.

Serbia's official motivation was the protection of the Serb minority. It's hard to say how much the violence escalated things, but the ethnic Serbs mostly fled to Serbia. In the international media, it's seen as having been more of an operation to keep the country together, similar to tactics used by the Soviets in eastern Europe. Yet since the Serbs lacked the absolute military dominance of the Soviets, the regions were able to fight back with a hope of winning, despite still being heavily out-gunned.

In the end, the major fighting on Croatian soil only lasted for about two years, though there were little spats until the official end of the war in 1995. Most of the fighting in the later years took place in Bosnia.

After Zagreb, I went to Split, a coastal city and the focal point of Croatian tourism. It was hard to believe I was in the same country as Zagreb. Being in the mountains, it treated me to a blizzard, perhaps to keep me from feeling too home sick. Yet Split felt just like Italy or the Cote D'Azur, not just in terms of architecture, but also climate. Unfortunately, the blizzard must have been following me, as a small hurricane hit the town the next day. But instead of snow, it was more like a tropical storm.

While in Split, I met two locals, who had interesting perspectives on their history. The first was Ivana, a girl who was half Serb and half Croate. Understandably, she wasn't very accustomed to talking about the local politics. Her family had learned to keep a lower profile. The other was Mara, who told me stories that left quite an impression. She talked about growing up in Split in the early 1990s. Although the city didn't come under any major attacks, Serb airplanes used to approach from time to time, and everyone had to run to bomb shelters. Each time the alarm would go off, someone would wait on a tall building for everyone to start the dash to the shelter. He would then try to pick off as many people as possible with a sniper riffle. She was about fourteen at the time, and would make this run clutching her teddy bear, while bullets were hitting the sidewalk around her. These sort of situations are impossible for most of us who were lucky enough to grow up in safe countries to imagine. Of course, the saddest part is that she had it relatively easy compared to people in the towns that were actually shelled, or of course, to people in Bosnia.

Bosnia. It held a referendum on independence in early 1992. Again, it passed by a landslide, but this was again due to the Bosnian Serbs having boycotted it. All hell soon broke lose.

Ethnic Serbs represented a much larger percentage of the population in Bosnia than in Croatia. Still, they were the minority. Throughout the war, the combined army of Serbs and Bosnian Serbs was out-manned, but were much more well armed. There was also a sizable ethnic Croatian population, and so Croatia got involved in the conflict from the early stages as well.

Over 100,000 people died in the war, mostly civilians. I'm told that convicted rapists and murderers were commuted and brought into the army, as they didn't have enough recruits. This led to horrible abuses of prisoners of war and civilians by all sides, with some of the worst examples being rape camps to 'ethnically improve' certain regions.

Though the war was fought between three groups, the Bosnians and Croatians were usually on the same side. Sometimes they would break down into squabbles over territory that they mutually controlled, leading to a complete battle royal.

Both the Serbs and Croates justified their actions as protecting their kin. Although the ethnic Serbs suffered horrible abuses as well, as in Croatia, it's hard to say how much the military actions escalated this. How many atrocities would have happened had the war been avoided and Bosnia been allowed to democratically succeed? It's impossible to be sure.

The Croates and Bosnians officially made peace in 1994, and the Serbs signed a similar agreement the next year, effectively dividing the country into two autonomous regions, drawn along ethnic lines.

The 'capital' of the Serb region is Banja Luka, in the north of the country. This was where I wanted to go after Split, but the bus schedule was a rude surprise. Although there were four buses a day to Sarajevo, there was only one a week to Banja Luka. It left at 11pm Sunday night, and got into Banja Luka at 5am the next day. Apparently there's still a fair amount of resentment between Croatia and the Serb region of Bosnia, and both sides take little jabs at each other when they get the chance. Sometimes tourists get caught in the middle.

I'd been in touch with Berengere, a girl from France who was teaching French in Banja Luka. She offered to let me stay with her, and didn't even mind me getting in at such a horrible hour to let me in. She showed me a great time while I was there, and introduced me to several other people in the French community there, some of which had been refugees in France during the war.

I also got to meet two other Bosnians, Alex and [another] Ivan, through the Couchsurfing website. Ivana told me about how much she wants to travel, but how her visa applications keep getting rejected. Bosnians need a visa for almost every country in the world. Canada is in fact one of the hardest countries to get into, with a completely anal immigration process. I already knew about this from friends in Montreal who had gone through the process [Eugene, Mehdi], but after meeting such a nice person who so desperately wanted to see some other places, it reminded me of exactly how stupid the whole thing is. Canada has more than enough space to absorb the entire population of the Balkans, if we were to just tell them that they couldn't move to Toronto.

Berengere was planning on going to Sarajevo for a conference at the French embassy, and so after spending the night at a concert put on by Alex's band, we went down to catch an early morning bus.

The drive to Sarajevo left quite an impression. Seeing the bombed out houses, mostly near the ethnic divide, was the clearest testament to the violence that ended just ten years ago. It's also considered quite dangerous to go hiking in the forests, as they still haven't cleared the land mines.

Sarajevo is the capital of the country, and is almost entirely Bosniak [Muslim]. Although most in the middle of the city aren't very religious, you're much more likely to see the girls wearing veils in the poorer suburbs. I can't help but find it weird to see girls with blonde hair and blue eyes dressed in traditional Muslim attire. Apparently their ancestors were converted from Christianity back in the days of the Ottoman Empire.

Reprieve

2005-11-20T04:02:00.000-05:00

After leaving L'viv [Ukraine], I went to Krakow [Poland]. The train ride was painful, putting it mildly.

The other trains that I've taken in Belarus or Ukraine were quite comfortable. They were both night trains, and had four bunks per cabin, two on bottom and two on top. Despite this train running in the day, it was also a night train. The difference was that in half the space, it had three bunks, one of top of the other. At this point, they become more like shelves. There was no longer enough room even to sit up. I was assigned the top bunk, which was above the window. So my view consisted of the ceiling and a wall. Still, the trip was only about 300 km, so it would only be about 3 hours, right?

Unfortunately not. The tracks in Ukraine are not well maintained, and the train ends up being so wobbly that it can only go about 50 km an hour. It took three hours to get to the border with Poland, which was only half the trip.

I'd been warned that the tracks are narrower in Poland than in Ukraine, and so I was expecting that we would switch trains. Hopefully to a proper day train, complete with seats. Half an hour after the customs officers came through, [we still weren't moving again], a guy came into the hall and started to take apart the walls. Unscrewing every bolt, taking off each panel, and looking inside.

The first thing that came to mind was that one of my cabin mates was smuggling cocaine or heroine. They both stunk of alcohol [that smell that alcoholics give off in the morning when they're hung over, which made the trip even less pleasant]. When I stuck my head out the window, I noticed that all cars in front of and behind ours were missing. The car was completely isolated. Did they get a tip about a mother load of drugs being stashed somewhere in the car? I could imagine being stuck there for days, especially if they didn't know who was smuggling the drugs.

There was a waitress in the hall. Not that she was doing anything. The train had been out of food since we started the trip, meaning that in addition to everything else, I hadn't eaten anything all day. When I asked her what the hell was going on, she just shrugged me off. I started flipping out at her, and was told by one of the other passengers that the sort of thing that was happening is standard.

Somehow it's logical that every time a train passes the border into Poland, they stop it, take apart all of the walls [searching mostly for contraband cigarettes and alcohol which are much cheaper in Ukraine than in Poland], and change the wheels to fit the Polish tracks. The whole process takes three hours, during which no one can leave the car.

On the one hand, we could all switch to a different train, and they could immediately send the Ukrainian train back across the border. This would solve both problems in about five minutes. Any smuggled goods would be sent back where they came from. On the other, they can take apart the whole train, then dismantle every wall panel, lift each car up in the air, and take off every wheel and axis to put on different ones. And do this every trip.

In the end, the only reason that people could give me for this completely retarded procedure [remember that we didn't even have seats, but instead shelves] was that it was a game to them. Kind of like treasure hunt. In the end, they found five garbage bags full of cigarettes, though since they didn't know whose they were [the people who hid them were probably not even on the train], they just confiscated them without charging anyone. Apparently this happens almost every trip.

In the end, it took nine hours to cover 300 km. Apparently buses that run the entire route are no better, as they get held up at customs for as much as five hours, and every single piece of baggage is opened and searched from top to bottom. Locals who are smart take a bus to the boarder, walk through, and take a different bus to the nearest rail station, finishing the trip by train.

Krakow turned out to be a very nice city. It was where Karol Wojtyla used to give sermons and conduct mass before becoming Pope in 1978. As a consequence, there is memorabilia of him everywhere, and every magazine shop has several books about him.

The architecture was very pretty, the people very nice, and there were great bars, pubs, and cafes. It's been a long time since I've seen a night scene that I liked, but there the pubs have great atmosphere and music, with a large selection of places that are designed to be relaxed, and clean. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to explore Poland any more. When I was in Vilnius I had to choose between Belarus and Ukraine or Poland, and I was already behind schedule. It's a shame, because Poland seemed very interesting.

From Krakow I went to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. Slovakia, together with the Czech Republic, had formed Czechoslovakia until 1994. Then they broke apart, sighting unreconcilable political differences. Slovakia seemed to get the raw end of the deal, as Prague brings in a lot of money from tourists. Still, I think that I liked Bratislava more, as although it is much smaller, it is also quieter. It didn't feel like a zoo in the way that Prague did.

I met some really nice people while I was there, who showed me around town. Strangely enough, there is quite a bit of French spoken in Slovakia. Apparently France has been investing quite a bit there. In the end I spoke almost as much French as English, which hasn't happened since I left, well, France.

After Slovakia I went to Budapest. Like Prague and Vienna, it was a little over-hyped. All three are very pretty, but being the major tourist destinations in eastern Europe, you tend to expect something spectacular. In the end it was a nice city, but unfortunately I had some problems at the train station on my out. Ending on a bad note makes it hard to remember the good points. Something that's interesting is that Buda and Pest were two different cities, separated by a river. The amalgamation got the name Budapest. Am I the only one that thinks Pestbuda might have sounded better? Probably.

Now I'm in Slovenia, in it's campial, Ljubljana. It's pronounced Lyublyana, as a J makes the sound of the English Y in every language that I know of besides English and French. It's extremely small for being the capital of Slovenia, only about 200,000 people. This is due to Slovenia having almost no cities. It's a small country, but very developed. The economy here is doing great, which meant that prices were a bit of an unpleasant surprise. They're very much on par with western Europe. This is even stranger considering that this was part of the former Yugoslavia. They, along with Croatia, separated as quickly as possible after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Serbs sent troops to persuade them to change their minds, but they only stayed for ten days before they decided to pound Croatia instead. In the end, Slovenia's succession was almost completely bloodless, a rare thing in this part of the world.

These last few weeks have been a bit easier, as every place that I've been to has been in the E.U., and thus more geared towards tourism. Still, in some ways this made it less exciting. I'm going to keep heading south, so things should get intense again very soon...

On a side note, does anyone else get the feeling Boisclair is going to cause a lot of problems? He seems like the sort of person that can really motivate the youth vote, which was always a bit of a problem with the PQ, being a party run almost entirely by old people. I think this could end very badly...

Echoes

2005-11-06T05:00:00.000-05:00

Vilnius [Lithuania] turned out to be very nice. A pretty city, I'm told it's halfway between Latvia and Poland, in terms of culture as well as geography.

There aren't many stories to tell, as most of my time there was spent either going to bars or cafes. Meeting people who lived there was easy. Though it would be a nice town to live in, there isn't too much geared towards tourism.

While there, I managed to get a visa for Belarus. This surprised me. I'd talked to people that had paid about 150 dollars for various processing fees, only to have their application for a tourist visa rejected. I tried a different approach, applying for a transit visa instead. Telling them that I wanted to go from Vilnius to Kiev [capital of Ukraine], they let me in for 48 hours. Not too much time, but better than nothing. It's enough time to look around Minsk, the capital, but not much more.

It's so closed because it's the last dictatorship in Europe. Although the country has become more capitalist [the first thing that greeted me when I got off the train was a McDonald's], the enforcement of rules hasn't changed much in the last 25 years. They still have an agency called the KGB, and although disappearances aren't as frequent as they used to be, there is almost no political opposition or free press. Apparently President Lukashenko's last real opposition vanished about 6 years ago, and hasn't been heard from since. There have also been a few jouralists that got a bit too critical and disappeared.

It quickly became clear how challenging the country would be. Hardly anyone spoke any English at all. And all street signs are written in the Cyrillic alphabet, so it was a good idea not to get lost. I had expected to find a hotel near the train station, but there were none in sight. After wandering around for five hours [carrying your packs make this even less fun...], I finally found a girl who spoke a bit of English in a cafe. She told me about a hotel on the other side of town, one of only three in the city [Minsk is about the same size as Montreal], and the only one that was not geared towards wealthy diplomats.

The town itself was immaculately clean, as well as very modern in terms of architecture. Sometimes on the bizarre side, very avant-garde. This is eerie considering that Belarus has a very low standard of living. Apparently the government bleeds the country side dry, and channels all of the money in the country into the capital. As a consequence, it's more well kept than any other city that I've seen, save perhaps Monico. But Monico is a city of millionaires. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to see anywhere else in the country.

There were soldiers watching everyone on the street constantly, about three per block in the center of the city. This makes for a feeling of stress that is hard to imagine. But it was apparently daily life in the Soviet Union. Perhaps I should be thankful to have had the chance to experience it, even for just a few hours.

Belarus was also by far the cheapest country that I've been to. A bus cost just 400 Belarussian rubles, but keep in mind that it takes over 3000 rubles to be an American dollar. So it translates to about 15 cents. A full meal cost between two and three dollars. And a 12 hour night train to Kiev [with sleeper bunk] was just ten.

Arriving in Ukraine was in many ways a relief. I could actually feel my blood pressure drop a little. It was obvious how much more free Kiev is. This also meant that it was quite a bit dirtier. There were stray dogs and cats all over the place. Still, this felt much more natural.

Kiev was a very pleasant surprise, as it's very pretty. Similar to Belarus in terms of the preserved architecture, very much on par with the biggest tourist destinations [Prague, Vienna, etc.]. But although it's much more open [Westerners don't even need visas to enter as of last summer], it's still very much undiscovered by tourists. This is probably a combination of how little time the visa regulations have been relaxed, and how far it is from Poland. To get from the Polish border to Kiev is only 700 km, but because of how slow the trains are, it takes about 14 hours. It will probably take a discount airline to change things.

The highlight of Ukraine was all of the open markets. Run mostly by old ladies, they sell anything that you could imagine, and pop up pretty much anywhere. I found most of them by peeking into back alleys. I suppose that the reason that they're run by old ladies is that they need some income to supplement their pensions. As well, it might give them something to help pass the time. It's a shame that I couldn't really talk to them, but unfortunately Russian isn't really my strong suit. Everything that's sold there is at rock bottom prices, and the products are very fresh. The vegetables still had moist soil on them, the fish were still twitching in the baskets, and the pastries were still warm. You could easily buy enough groceries for a very nice dinner and not spend more than a dollar. The markets were also frequented by stray dogs, some looking healthy, others not. But they were all very well fed...

After leaving Kiev, I caught a night train to L'viv, near the border with Poland. This city is mostly known for it's well-preserved architecture, and it is a very pretty place. Still, it wouldn't have been so interesting had a not been offered free accommodation with a Ukrainian family [Marichka, the girl who first contacted me, as well as her father, mother, and grandmother] that I met through something called Hospitality Club. It's a great service run mostly through the internet, and although I'm a bit apprehensive about staying with people I don't know, I really wanted to get a better understanding of the culture here. It's been great to meet so many people here, as Marichka introduced me to her friends, who in turn introduced me to some of theirs.

Look Closer...

2005-10-23T02:50:00.000-04:00

I spent a few more days in Helsinki, mostly just wandering around town, or hanging out with Karoline. Helsinki is the most bilingual city that I could imagine, with it's two languages being Finnish and Swedish. In some ways it goes a bit too far. All of the streets have two names, one in each language. And the names are sometimes not similar at all. To make things even more confusing, maps sometimes have a street labeled in Finnish, other times in Swedish. So when you're trying to find where you are, it can be a little irritating if you've been staring at the right spot, but for some reason that street is labelled in Swedish.

Leaving Helsinki, I took a ferry across the Gulf of Finland to Estonia. It's one of the Baltic states that was part of the U.S.S.R. until 15 years ago. I tried to get a visa to go through Russia, but despite only wanting to spend two days in St. Petersburg before heading for Estonia, the Russian embassy told me I would have to wait at least 1 week for the visa, and pay close to $200. It's a shame, because I really would have liked to see Russia.

Most of my time in Estonia was spent in the capitol, Tallinn. Like the other Baltic States, you can tell that it's still in development. From what I've heard, there have been major advances in the last couple of years, especially since joining the E.U. Still, there are entire neighborhoods that are abandoned, windows boarded up, it's quite spooky. Other areas of the city are extremely modern, with brand new towers, office buildings, shopping centers, and fancy hotels.

The hostel where I stayed was in the old town, which was separated from the rest of the city by a medieval wall. The locals consider the old town too touristic and expensive, and so the streets were quite empty. It's strange walking around such a place and not seeing anyone for blocks at a time. It made it feel even more like the middle ages, along with the preserved buildings and cobblestone streets.

The last couple of nights there I had three Irish guys for roommates. Two of them were fine, but the third was extremely loud, and quite obnoxious. The hostel was very small, so there wasn't a way to avoid him. At one point, most of the people in the hostel went out to dinner together. I ordered a glass of orange juice with my supper, but apparently every meal should be washed down with beer, and anything else is a bit strange. At least according to him. So from then on, he decided to call me Vitamin C, and made it a point to shout it out every time he saw me.

Moving along, the next stop was Riga, the capitol of Latvia. Riga is a bit larger than Tallinn, and has much more energy. Where as most nights in Tallinn are a bit quiet, there's always something going on in Riga. Unfortunately, a fair chunk of this is due to the sex trade. There are a lot of strip clubs as a result of this. A good chunk of the tourists apparently come with one thing on their minds, and the local girls are pissed off because of it. Most times they go out, they get lewd comments or are even groped, usually from drunk Americans or Brits.

If you're able to see past Riga's unfair reputation, there is a lot to enjoy. You can wander around the open markets for hours, going from vendor to vendor. They sell a bit of food or clothing on a little wooden table in a back alley. It's one of the largest markets in eastern Europe, but most of it is pretty repetitive. There might be fifteen people in a row, all selling almost identical merchandise. It's hard to understand how all of them can make a living.

Something that really surprised me was that the Latvian currency is one of the most valuable in the world, about equal to the British pound. In every other eastern European country, the currency is worth only a fraction of the pound at best. I asked around quite a bit to find out why, but no one was sure.

Something that happened on my first night in Riga struck me as a bit strange as well. I was in a bar, and I tried to order a vodka and orange juice. But the bar tender refused to sell it to me. He told me this is a 'girlie' drink. Was he serious, or just messing with the tourist? Probably the latter. In the end I managed to get a beer out of him, but I was wondering what might qualify as a manly drink there. Gasoline?

I also started to use a new web site that was recommended to me recently. The URL is http://www.couchsurfing.com. It's intended to be a way to connect people who are looking for a place to stay to those who offer their couches or spare bedrooms to backpackers passing through. Still, the idea of staying with a stranger seems a bit shady, as it would be awkward if we didn't get along. Or it could turn out downright dangerous. So I decided to use it instead as a way of meeting local people, saying in the message that I sent them that I'm not looking for a place to stay, but would instead like to go for a coffee or beer.

On the first night of doing this, I met a group of two Latvian girls [Ilze and Dace] and a Spanish guy [ack, can't remember his name] that was staying with them. They recommended some nice towns to go see as day trips from Riga, as well as some bars that weren't so touristic.

The second night I met a Latvian girl named Agnese that was a wee bit reckless, if not downright crazy. She was telling me stories of how and where she's traveled. She was very proud of never having paid a cent for accommodation or transportation. This means having either slept on the street or staying with strangers, and having hitch hiked everywhere, including Jordan and Palestine. And people say what I do is dangerous...

I took short day trips to Sigulda and Liepaja, one in the forest and the other on the sea. This was to get an idea of what life is like in rural Latvia, as it's not really fair to judge a country based on the capitol alone. These towns are very quiet, and as I expected, not many people speak English. They're not very developed. It was an insight into what life would have been like under the Soviets.

A good part of the population in Latvia and Estonia are of Russian ancestry, as the Soviets encouraged Russians to relocate to the Baltics for many years. This was probably to outbreed them. Though the tensions aren't as high as I would have expected [given the tactics of the Soviet oppression and occupation], things aren't completely calm. Strangely enough, in the small towns many men would walk around with jackets that had 'Russia' written across the shoulders. This is weird for two reasons. First of all, it's spelled with the western alphabet. Secondly, it's in an area that suffered tremendously for many years because of the Russians, with about one third of the population being killed, jailed, or abducted.

Right now I'm in Vilnius, the capitol of Lithuania. Though I've only been here for a day. I haven't really been able to get an impression of the town yet.

It's been a great learning experience spending a few weeks in countries that most people can't even find on a map. Up until last week, I wasn't even sure if Latvia was north or south of Lithuania. And now, with this new opportunity to meet local people, I'm hoping to get a better understanding of where I am than I would have thought possible when I started this trip. I've gone on about it so much, but if you only meet other tourists, you can't do much more than admire the architecture in a city.

Top Of The World

2005-10-09T07:20:00.000-04:00

After leaving Oslo, I headed north with Anna, the Finnish girl that I met in Gothenberg.

On the way, we took a trip to the Geiranger Fjord, the most famous in the country. It was like the earlier one that I saw, between the towns of Bergen and Flam in the south, but more spectacular. The cliffs were higher and steeper, the valley narrower, and the waterfalls more frequent. Pictures wouldn't do it justice at all. Norway is easily the most beautiful country that I've ever seen.

Anna's cash started getting low as got further north, so I suggested that she stay down south, to find a job and get some more cash. She gave me a few things to drop off to her family when I got to Helsinki, and then we parted ways.

As I continued going north, I was surprised by the size of the towns. I was expected something the same size as in northern Canada, but things were much more developed. This is probably because the temperature is much milder, but even more so because most of Norway's oil is up there.

Trains only went up as far as the arctic circle, and so my rail pass only got me about half way to where I wanted to be. Buses were the only option past there, and they were not very well networked. Every five hours I had to switch to a different company, and was told the only way to find out the other's schedule was to ask upon arrival at the town. Interesting when I was getting dropped off at 10:30 at night. But I managed to get a bit of information in advance by calling the local tourist offices.

There was one night where I was planning on sleeping outside. It was way up in Alta, a small oil town on the 70'th parallel that has no hostels. After getting dropped off at 11 pm, the bus out wasn't until 6 am, and hotels started at 200 dollars per night (for a relatively shitty one!), not worth while for a 7 hour stay. Plus the weather wasn't too cold, staying above freezing for the most part.

My plan was to hang out in a bar till 3 am, then go squat somewhere. While hanging out there, I was lucky enough to meet a guy who insisted that I stay with him, as it was 'simply not possible' to do what I was planning. A professor at the local college, he was on vacation for the week, and was hanging out with a couple of guys that he'd met in a shop just a few hours before. He also insisted on driving me to the bus station, despite it being a ten minute walk from his house, as otherwise he would consider himself a poor host. Keep in mind that the bus was leaving at 6 am, and that he'd only gotten about four hours sleep. I'd heard stories of how friendly the northerners are, but didn't expect anything quite like that.

After leaving Alta I finally made it up as far north as roads go, something that I'd tried to do in the Yukon some years ago, but never managed to pull off. The town that I ended up in was called Honningsvag, a small fishing town. Seeing the reindeer on the tundra was an incredible sight, especially since the tundra was a mix of red, yellow, and green at this time of year.

The following night I rented a log cabin in a town called Karasjok (on the Finnish border), owned by a couple that does dog sledding expeditions. The cabin itself was decorated with animal skins, which didn't make me feel very at home. Still, it was interesting to walk around the grounds, as they keep more than fifty dogs there. The adult dogs weren't interested in the guests, but the puppies were quite friendly. The town itself was mostly populated by an ethnic culture called Samies. About the equivalent of the aboriginals in North America or Australia, the major difference is that they were displaced to the north about 2000 years ago. They've kept their own language and customs the whole time, but look like any other Norwegians on the surface. Although they might be a bit shorter on average. The major regret that I had was not being able to spend more time there to learn about the culture, but my rail pass was expiering in a few days, and so I had to get down to Helsinki as soon as I could.

I'm told that northern Finland can be very beautiful, but unfortunately it's very flat, which makes it extremely boring scenery from the road. I took two stops on my way down, on the arctic circle in a town called Rovaniemi, and in an industrial city in the south called Tampere. The first was destroyed by the Nazis and rebuilt, so there wasn't much character. The second was nicer, and it was a good way to keep my entire idea of Finland from being just Helsinki. The people are very nice, but there are a lot of problems with alcoholism here, and it's not uncommon to see people falling all over themselves, drunk in the middle of the day. Or maybe seeing 'play fighting', friends beating the shit out of each other, all the while busting a gut laughing.

Helsinki itself is nice, the town itself feels very metropolitan, but not too big. I dropped off the parcel to Anna's sister Caroline last night, and ended up going to a club with her and her friend. It was a bit of a meat market, but being able to hang out with local people in a different culture is always a treat, and I had a great time.

Sometimes I want to fill in more details of what I've done, but I also don't want to make this too long, as I've heard moans and groans from some people about the length before. At the same time, I am a little impatient, as I usually don't have enough time to write things out properly. Right now I'm extremely hungry, as it's 3 pm and I still haven't eaten today. I guess in the end this will leave me with stories to tell you all in person that you haven't read before.

Feels Like Home

2005-09-25T11:37:00.000-04:00

For the first time in a while, what follows should be mostly positive. This is way overdue.

In the last two weeks...

Barbara showed me around Berlin on my last night there. It really was a shame that she wasn't with me for more of my time that I was there. Having someone that knows the most interesting places in a city makes things so much more enjoyable. After walking around for a while, we ended at an outdoor cafe listening to live jazz and folk music.

Copenhagen came next. It's quite possibly my favorite city in Europe. The most important thing was also a bit subtle. Most of the people there seem very happy, and even smile at you when you pass them on the street. After being in Prague and Vienna, this was absolutely huge.

As far as tourist attractions go, Copenhagen was a little lacking. But after being in Paris and Rome, most cities are. Still, it's not a big deal. More importantly, it felt like a place where I could live for a while. The pace of life is very nice, not too fast, but at the same time not being lazy at all. In addition to a feeling of vibrancy, there was a good deal of soul, old buildings mixed with newer ones, all the while without clashing at all.

The most interesting part of the city was a place called Christiania. In the early 70's, a group of hippies stormed an abandoned military base on the edge of town, claiming it for their own and wanting to establish a new type of society. People flocked there, and before they knew it they had over 1000 residents, so many that the police didn't know how to forcibly move them. The government decided to ignore them for a while, just letting them be. Over thirty years later, they're still going strong. They build their own houses, have their own schools and government, as well as their own market place. The people that live there try to make Christiania as self sufficient as possible, growing as much of their own food as they can, and offering free accommodation to anyone, so long as they're willing to help out around the village.

Unfortunately, the community became known mostly as a place to buy pot, and in time this became their main industry. All of this changed last year, when the police raided 'Pusher Street', as it was called. This was a result of the change in the Danish government, which for the first time in many years became more conservative. Unfortunately they're thinking of shutting down the whole thing, as the squatters don't pay any property tax. Still, the people there justify this by using as few government services as possible.

The rest of Denmark didn't seem very interesting, as it's mostly farms. So Sweden [in particular, Malmo and Gothenburg] seemed like a reasonable next destination.

The most striking thing about Sweden is also what they're most famous for. And it's very true, at least in the south. Most of the people are tall, blonde, and very good looking. Most of the women don't even wear make-up. To top it off, they're also very friendly. Though I suspect that things get a little less nice as you move farther north. Most of them say that the niceness is linked to the amount of sunlight.

Also, while in Gothenburg, I met a Finnish girl named Anna that was looking for someone to travel with. We've been traveling together around Norway. Still, she likes to live it up whereever she goes, and I'm worried that she might run out of money. [She's not even sure how much she has left...]

Our first stop was Oslo, which is one of the most cosmopolitan cities that I've been to. In fact, it's sometimes hard to tell exactly who is the minority. It's probable due to the Norwegians having such a strong economy that they're actually short of workers. This in turn is due to having more oil than they know what to do with.

After Oslo we headed west to check out some fjords in Bergen. They really are one of the most beautiful pieces of scenery imaginable. Huge mountains, towering over canyons filled with water connected to the ocean. The mountains themselves are covered in forest, which is only broken by a waterfall every couple of kilometers. And on the boat ride through, you're able to see a rainbow every half hour. It's also common to see seals, porpoises, or even salmon jumping out of the water.

Since Bergen, we teamed up with a Swisse fellow named Jean. As of now we're back in Oslo, taking a break on the train ride north. Though Jean will probably head south to Copenhagen, as his friends are going to meet him there next week.

One thing that's really surprising me about Norway is how similar it is to Canada. The geography [although Canadian mountain valleys aren't filled with ocean water], architecture, and even the people are all very much like that of Canada.

Perspectives

2005-09-11T02:47:00.000-04:00

I've spent the last two weeks in Halberstadt, a small town in the middle of Germany. I didn't know exactly what I was getting into when I came here. All that I was told was that it was a camp to combat racism, which is pretty vague. Still, it's rare that you get the chance to live in a country as it's citizens do, even if it's only for a short time. It wasn't a chance I wanted to pass on.

There were about ten other Germans here with Barbara [whom I met in France, and the person who asked me to go there] and I, making me the only foreigner for the first week. This made for some awkwardness. On the one hand, it's nice to be able to see how a people live in their own country, but when you don't speak the language, it's easy to feel isolated. The people in our group gave more of an effort to speak in English than any group from a different culture that I've been around, and I appreciate that effort very much. Yet at the same time, it's only natural that people in such a group revert back to their native language, especially when they get stuck for words in the one they're trying to speak. Most times they didn't even notice that they had switched to German. Luckily, we were joined by two Spanish girls in the second week, neither of whom spoke German. This made things a bit easier.

Things were more challenging walking around the town itself. Although a few of the younger towns people spoke a bit of English, they really didn't want to use it. The adults had learned Russian when they were younger, and didn't speak any English at all. This didn't bother me too much, as I was willing to switch to charades. This solved most of my problems, but sometimes people weren't satisfied with it. They'd look at me like I was retarded, and then hit me with full speed German. They've probably never been very far outside their town [I'm told there are quite a few people here who haven't], and this place isn't exactly a tourist mecca. So I suppose it's rare that they have to deal with someone who doesn't speak German.

In camp itself started off with a little less structure than I wanted. Most of the people here would be considered hippies, and one of the points of the camp [which, unfortunately, I didn't discover until a few days into it] was to run it in a 'Basic Democracy' model. This amounts to the same thing as running everything on consensus. Although I was annoyed at how much this slowed everything down [sometimes we would spend 10 minutes discussing how long the break in the discussion should be], after I accepted things for what they were, things went fine. It was more about taking the whole project as a learning experience, without any expectations about what to accomplish.

By the middle of the first week, we were taking daily trips to the refugee camps to visit the people seeking asylum. The German system is to stick people applying for refugee status in run down apartment building, with fences built around it and one or two security guards. Still, the refugees aren't prisoners, as the fences are described as being 'protective', to keep vandals out. In eastern Germany, where the unemployment rate runs around 25%, it's popular to blame everything on the immigrants. As a consequence, they get neo-nazis causing trouble for anyone who's not part of the 'master race'. For the most part the refugees are free to come and go as they please.

We invited them over for dinner, as well as any other outings we could think of, as much as possible. The majority were from western Africa. About half were English speaking, while the others spoke French. I was elected translator for people of the French speaking group who didn't know any English, as English was the language for most of our discussions. Still, at times even the accent of the English speakers gave me a hard time, and with the French I could barely understand anything. Still, every time I asked them to repeat, they would always give me the same musical but indiscernible accent.

Still, most of them were very nice. Others were a bit quiet. Several had quite a few scars, sometimes on their faces. It's hard to imagine what they've been through. I talked to a few from the Sudan, but most were from Western Africa. And a few were even insane. One, named Zoul, always had a cocky look on his face, told every girl in our group that he was in love with them, and kept reminding me what a wonderful name he had [apparently it's a VERY STRONG sounding name].

One of the places that we found to hold events was a local youth center, mostly frequented by punks. Watching African refugees partying with German punks was a memorable sight, since the punks only spoke German and most of the refugees didn't. I spent most of the night at the foosball table, with a bulky partner from Benin who only spoke French. It didn't stop him from trying to trash talk the opposition, who didn't understand a word he was saying, but would fire back in German, which didn't work much better.

Now I'm back in Berlin, but I'll probably just spend one night here. I want to get to Scandinavia, and the longer I wait, the colder it will be. Tomorrow I'll head for Copenhagen, and after a few days there, move on to Sweden.

Improvise

2005-08-28T04:59:00.000-04:00

In total, I spent 5 days in Vienna. It's a beautiful city, complete with lots of buskers in the streets and a trendy downtown.

Unfortunately, it rained for a good part of the time I was there, so I didn't get to see as much as I would have liked. Of the things that I did see, a tour of a royal crypt was one of the most memorable. But not in a good way. Back in the days of the plague, they had more bodies than they knew what to do with, so they just piled them into large rooms below the royal tomb. And now, for the pleasure of all the tourists, you can come see these big rooms of bones. And yes, the bones are still there. Thinking that it would be just like any other crypt (ie empty), I didn't know what I was getting into until it was too late. It just seemed so disrespectful to be charging admission to look at a big pile of bones. Apparently, there's a place in the Czech Republic that takes things a step further, using the bones as decorations.

The next day was also oriented around death. I went to see the graves of Mozart and Beethoven. Although Beethoven's grave was the real deal, Mozart's was only a monument. He died penniless and alone, and although buried in that cemetery, the exact place is no longer known. He was given a popper's burial, with only the grave diggers in attendance. And the grave itself was unmarked.

I spent my last night in Vienna with Rita, a friend from when I lived in Nice in 2002. We took french classes together. Unfortunately, she was in Salzbourg for most of the time I was in town, but as I'm planning on being in Slovakia as I make my way around eastern Europe in the fall, we're hoping to meet up again then.

Prague came after Vienna. It was quite similar in terms of architecture, and I understand why people consider them sister cities, together with Budapest. I met quite a few nice people there, mostly fellow tourists, as well as a few odd balls. For instance, on my last night there my roommates at the hostel were quite colorful. A bunch of Australian coke heads. They kept going on about needing to score some blow, and their plan was to wander around downtown asking all the pot dealers until they finally tracked some down. All of this made leaving much easier.

The highlight of Prague was learning about all of their struggles over the centuries, constantly being conquered, released, and then conquered by someone else. I get the feeling that only Poland has had a harder time. Still, the locals weren't very nice at all. I'm told that it's just people that live in Prague, but the servers and waitresses were some of the rudest that I've met. The worst of the lot was a cocktail bar, where I was yelled at to sit down when I asked for my bill (no joke!). Me and one of the others that I was with started yelling back, but were just laughed at us. I would have walked out without paying, but part of our group was staying longer, and to do so would have only stuck them with our bill.

To get to Berlin, I tried using a carpooling service. I'd been taking buses for the last while, but Germany has a service where you go to an office of a carpooling agency, check the schedule for drivers that are going where you're looking to be, and for a small fee, you get to ride with them. It cost me just 15 euros (about $20) to go about 400 km. The driver was a real piece of work. One of the most stereotypical hippies that I've met in a long time. Dreadlocks, Green Peace shirt, the works. Plus he ate like a horse. Four submarine sandwiches for lunch! Can anyone say mega munchies? To top things off, he was going to Berlin to busk with his instrument of choice. A didgeridoo! Overall, he was very likable, if a little hyperactive (I don't know why, but most hippies are. Maybe all of the pot is just to keep them from completely fiering off into the stratosphere?) The only annoying point of the trip was that his car nearly broke down. Twice. But in the end, we made it. All's well that ends well.

I've been in Berlin for the last four or five days, and it's not a bad city at all. The biggest surprise is how cheap it is. Things cost less here than almost anywhere else that I've seen, including Canada. It's even on par with Prague.

It took me a few days to find the interesting spots of town, as the official downtown seemed a little bland. But there are a few different trendy neighborhoods, and quite a few nice cafes. Geographically, the city is huge, being as close as you get in western Europe to urban sprawl.

My main point of interest in coming here was the Berlin Wall, and although mostly torn down, I managed to find a few pieces here and there for souvenirs. It's hard to imagine what life must have been like in West Berlin back in the 60's, as their half of the city was walled off on all sides. They had to airlift supplies in, as the Soviets cut off all shipments to pressure the Americans and British out. They were living in fear of being invaded at any time, and they couldn't leave the city at all for over two years after the wall went up. Even after they were allowed transportation, it was very limited and required a mountain of paper work.

I spent the first few nights here in a hostel, but Barbara, a friend of mine that lives here, got back yesterday, so I stayed with her last night. She was in Tanzania for the last two months, and is now leaving to go work in a camp to combat racism, in the south of the country. She thinks that I could be a help, so I'm going to go check it out for a while. I have no idea how long I'll stay, though. It's just nice to be able to interact with the locals, as it gives a much better understanding of the country.

High Tide

2005-08-14T04:50:00.000-04:00

I finally left Paris, and I've been traveling for the last week and a half.

My last night there was actually one of the most enjoyable that I'd had in that city for a long time. One of my biggest problems there was loneliness, as except for my one neighbor, I hadn't made any friends my own age in the whole time I was there. But on the second to last night before I left, I was asked by my landlord to switch apartments for a day. He needed to give my place to someone else, who had to find somewhere to live as quickly as possible. Since he was letting me out of my lease a couple of weeks early, I didn't mind.

After seeing the other building, I wished that I'd moved there a long time ago. It was a lot like a university residence, but with people from all over the world. Along with people from Germany, Mexico, Spain, Venezuela, and Columbia, I snuck up onto the roof to watch the stars that night and take in the night sights.

Still, the next day it felt like a good time to go. I caught a train to Geneva [Switzerland] to see my friend Seb, whom I know from Montreal. He's doing a postdoc there [the program that follows a PhD]. I stayed with he and his girlfriend Marina, arriving just in time to take in the Swiss national holiday.

Geneva is a city of diplomats, with almost as many as in New York, but packed into a much smaller city [pop. 400K]. As a consequence, there are quite a few upper class areas. The Rolex shop was selling a selection of watches starting at $20,000 and going up to $60,000. Though I'm sure that if the right person asks, they'd be happy to dig up something even more extravagant.

After three days of enjoying their hospitality [not the least part of which was Marina's traditional Japanese cuisine], I headed for Interlaken, a ski resort in the alps. Although it's obviously not the season for that sort of thing, having already seen the French and Italian alps, I was curious to take in the third region as well.

unfortunately, I didn't have a very good time there. The alps themselves were lovely, but I think I preferred the Italian part moreso, as well as the Rockies in Alberta. And the people that were at the hostel didn't make for the best of times either. Although I met several nice people, the majority were very clicky highschool football and cheerleading types. After trying several times to strike up conversations (and being mostly brushed off), I ended up going to bed early most nights.

My next stop was Munich, in the south of Germany. The city itself is mostly known for it's beer festivals, culminating in Oktoberfest, which takes place [oddly enough] in late September.

Munich's other claim to fame [and shame] is that it was the birthplace of Nazism. Although Hitler tried to take power in the city several years before going to Berlin, he didn't succeed, and in the end was thrown in jail for a few months. In fact, the Nazies had such a soft place in their heart for Munich that they even gave it the honor of having the first concentration camp, which is now a museum. To visit it is quite an experience. Although they built a gas chamber into it, the Nazies didn't get the chance to put it to use, as apparently they already had more bodies lying around than they knew what to do with. The incinerators [and they were quite huge] couldn't burn them fast enough.

Something else that left a deep impression was learning of the number of groups that were sent there. Massacring Jews and Gypsies was the Nazi party's main goal, but they also targeted priests, gays [who were dumped in the camps after being castrated], outspoken intellectuals and Jehovah Witnesses. If your neighbor didn't like you, just saying that he heard you speaking out against the FÃ¼hrer was usually enough to get you carted away.

The people in Munich are always in a rush. I found myself being constantly pushed out of the way, without so much as a word of anapologyy. Even standing over to the side of the street (away from heavy foot traffic), people still managed to shoulder block me as they rushed off on their way to do nothing. The exception to all of this were traffic lights. Even if there wasn't a car in sight, people would wait patiently, standing tall and straight, until the little green man would give them permission to move. As soon as the signal was given, they were back to their typical pace, walking full and not about to let anyone get in their way. I'm told that there, rules are rules and are never to be broken. People don't even question them.

Moving on to the positives, the nicest thing about being in Germany is the selection of meals in restaurants. In Munich, not eating meat was no problem at all. For longer than I'd like to recall, I've considered myself lucky to see even one vegetarian option on a restaurant menu. There, every place has at least three or four. Also, they love spinach. Not that I complained. A restaurant by the hostel had delicious spinachlasagnaa.

I also had a much better time in the Munich hostel than the one in Interlaken. Nights were usually spent at the hostel bar playing pool or wandering around the oldtown with my roommates looking for bars.

As of last night, I've arrived in Vienna [Austria], which in terms of architecture is the prettiest city that I've seen. The old town is very beautiful. Although the buildingsaren'tt the oldest that I've seen [I'd guess they're around three or four hundred years old], the design is so nice, and they're so well preserved, that walking around the old town is a real treat. And the old district is large enough to be a town in it's own right, as well. Plus, there are dozens of much larger buildings which are even more impressive, although I'm not yet sure what they were used for. It's not really a surprise that Vienna is so nice. It was at one time the cultural capital of the world, as the majority of the most famous classical composers all made their names here. And it was spared most of the ravages of World War 2.

One last thing that's been on my mind is that every country in Europe seems to attract a certain nationality of tourists. Hostels in Switzerland, Holland, and Germany are almost entirely filled with Americans. France is mostly for Germans and Canadians [for some reason mostly anglo], England for Australians, and Ireland and Scotland for [strangely enough] Quebeckers.

Urban Heat

2005-07-31T09:23:00.000-04:00

I'll be leaving Paris on Tuesday. And to be honest, it won't be too soon. Still, I realized that although I'm not having a good time in Paris, I've been confusing my feelings for this city with the rest of France.

I took a trip out to one of the small villages near by a few days ago for a break from the pace of the big city. I was a bit shocked at exactly how relieved I felt. Although there are quite a few things that I don't like about France [not the least of which is an annoying wave of nationalism and protectionism that's been building since the end of the spring], there are also quite a few things that I like about this country. The slower pace of life is not a bad thing at all, but it's quite strange when mixed with the mad pace of Paris to produce some strange hybrid. Here, everyone's constantly in a rush, but a rush to do nothing. It's very hard to explain. But people fight viciously to be able to work less, all the while not relaxing at all. As well, there are way too many nut cases wandering around. It seems like every night I'm getting hassled by some sort of weirdo on the street. And other people that I've talked to say they have the same experiences.

At any rate, I'm going east, with my first stop being Geneva. Eventually I'll loop around and head north.

As far as what I've been doing these last few weeks, there really hasn't been much at all worth mentioning. Mostly I've been reading. The French [written] media really is the best that I've seen, and I've been enjoying it while I can. I've also been working on some drawings, although not portrait style like the ones that I've posted on the deviantart website. So I doubt that I'll bother scanning them. I've been trying to find a style that I like in terms of doing cartoon characters, but haven't come up with anything quite yet.

Seeing as how there hasn't much going on in my life lately, I'll fill out yet another of these entries with a rant about politics/current-events.

So the Bush administration has been caught telling bold-faced lies yet again. And as usual [always?], there aren't any consequences. No big surprise. But this time something is different. And it's something that I find scary as hell.

A few months ago, the name of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, was leaked to the media. This is a serious federal offence in the U.S., as it's seen as jeopardizing national security. No one knew who spilled the beans, but Bush promised that if he found out that person was working for his administration, he'd be fired on the spot.

So the story cools off for a while. Then, a judge at the inquiry into all of this demanded that the reporters who broke the story divulge their sources. What was shocking was that when they said no, one of them went to jail. Judith Miller, who works for the New York Times, was sentenced to four months in prison. Even worse was what happened afterwards. The news magazine Time, which had also been involved in the story, went against the wishes of their staff and released the name of the source.

This amounts to the death of confidentiality in the media. Although the article in question isn't of massive national [or global] importance, the next time there could be much more at stake. The main source for Watergate was also leaking confidential documents, and the reporters who broke that story could well have gone to jail under similar circumstances. The next time that someone feels they should report a scandal, even if doing so is illegal, they might think twice about it. They could very easily go to jail.

Now in this particular case, the stool pigeon was Bush's #3 man, Karl Rove. It seems that the CIA agent's husband, Joseph Wilson, who had been conducting investigations into Iraq's weapons capabilities back in early 2003. He told the truth about his findings, thus [as expected] contradicting what the Bush administration was at the time trying so desperately to peddle to the world. This was of course frowned upon in a big way by the Republicans, and Rove took it upon himself to punish Wilson by outing his wife. All of this is completely illegal. But seeing as how this is Bush's butt buddy, the government has changed their stance. It seems that Rove only said that the wife of Joseph Wilson, the American ambassador, was a CIA agent, and didn't actually give her name outright. So this is apparently fine, despite the fact that any idiot that Googles his name will get her's as well. And so Rove will likely go completely unpunished, and if the past is any indication, he'll probably end up with a promotion instead, ala Wolfowitz, Bolton, etc. Of course, had it been a Democrat who had leaked the name in the exact same way, it goes without saying that Bush would have had him strung up by the nads. But no one in any position to do anything seems to care, and so the accountability of the U.S. government slips even more. Of course, it was already dead when Bush was re-elected, after lying so obviously and consistently all the way through the Iraq fiasco. And that's only to give the most obvious example. Still, I guess we can say that accountability in the U.S. is now (in addition to being dead) buried and forgotten.

I'll end with something that I found quite funny, in addition to being well written. The author's name surprised me. Although I don't respect the man at all, he really did a good job here.

--

I have decided to take a page from George W. Bush's foreign policy. If it's good enough for the United States of America, shouldn't it be good enough for me?

Thus, I would like to announce to all of my neighbors in the Santa Monica Hills that I am reserving the right to launch a preemptive attack on any of them - should I feel threatened. The nature of the threat need not be clearly defined in order for me to initiate, at my sole discretion, this first-strike option. After all, I don't want the first warning of an attack on me to be a mushroom cloud, right? To ensure that my neighbors comply with my security needs, I will be sending a personal emissary to their homes (probably a guy named Doug) to determine that they are not armed or - if indeed they possess weapons - to encourage them to disarm.

Of course, I want to reassure my neighbors that most of them have nothing to worry about. I would never resort to force unless it were absolutely necessary. However, like the United States, I've already been attacked once (and severely wounded), and I don't intend to let that happen again. So keep your stereos turned down, folks, stop complaining about the naked women hanging out at my pool, and I'm sure we'll all get along just fine.

Larry Flynt
Publisher

--

Tapping Out

2005-07-17T09:35:00.000-04:00

I finally came to a decision about what to do for the next few months. Although I'm somewhat comfortable here [having a place of my own and a steady job are nice changes], I realize that I could never be happy in Paris. It's just too big. I've never really felt welcome here. I've given my notice to my boss and landlord, and should be out of here at the end of the month. Perhaps a bit sooner. It's sad, because my boss turned out to be very nice. Finally. I've had 5 jobs in a row where the bosses were horrible. But she said that she couldn't hire me full time until the fall, and since I can only work here until the end of the year [at which point my visa expires], it doesn't seem worthwhile to stick around.

In hindsight, I think that I made the right decision in coming here. My other options were Ireland, Britain, and Holland. In the end, I feel that I've learned quite a bit these last couple of months, and not just in terms of the french language. I always suspected that I might want to live in France, and would have regretted not finding out for sure. Now I can leave without any doubt in my mind. France is a great place to visit, but it's not the sort of place where I want to spend any more time. It's just not for me.

I'm going to go wandering around again starting next month, but I'm not really sure exactly where or for how long. I've always wanted to see Norway, so I'll head north for the first while.

In terms of my own little world, the last few weeks have been quite uneventful. On a larger scale, it's been anything but. Everyone's heard of the terrorist attacks that happened earlier this month in London. What some people don't realize are the consequences.

[Most of what follows I've read in either news magazines. I found a really great one, that translates articles from all over the world into french. It's called Courrier Internationel. Also, I saw a movie a few months ago that seems very pertinant now. It was called either Yasmin or Yasmine, I forget which. But it's worth checking out]

To start with, these were the first suicide attacks on European soil. Ever. So the insanity that plagues the Middle East has finally spilled over to here. Now they have police armed with semi-automatic weapons patrolling the streets. Probably not any worse then after the World Trade Center was destroyed, though.

Secondly, and much more importantly, the suicide bombers were all home grown. This means that on top of being British citizens, they were second generation immigrants, born and raised in Leeds. Things may never be the same for the Arab communities in any European country again. These suicide bombers were believed to be well adjusted, had white friends, and seemed to be happy and normal teenagers or twenty-somethings. Then they took trips to Pakistan earlier this year, and decided to blow themselves up and take more than fifty innocent people with them. Not to mention the hundreds that were horribly injured. And of course, they've completely ruined the lives of their parents and siblings, who might as well go back to the Middle East. They'll never be able to keep their businesses afloat now. As well, brown people in Europe, no matter how integrated into the European culture they might be, will all be treated worse from now on. So the idiots have fucked everyone over.

The thing that I find the most frightening is that this is almost definitely going to repeat itself. The second generation of immigrants, mostly my age or a few years younger, tend to be a mix of Muslim and occidental culture, and can be quite confused. By wanting to rediscover their culture, they reach out to Islam. At the same time, they're sometimes angry. They want equality in British society, and some don't feel they get it. Whereas their parents still see living in Europe as a privilege, and as such are less reactionary to prejudices, their children aren't so passive.

Others see their lives as failures, and think that by serving Allah, they can redeem themselves. Their insecurities and weaknesses of character are exploited. In the end, the four from last week were stupid enough not to think of their families, gullible enough to believe all of the bullshit about going to heaven for blowing the fuck out of yourself and innocent people, and evil enough to carry it out. The Arabs will feel more isolated, and the younger generation will be even easier prey for the evil pieces of shit that preach about being martyrs. And on and on.

I think it might be time to move onto a lighter note. I finally finished a drawing that I've been working on for way longer than I want to think about. It's of the lead singer of Green Day, and you can check it out at http://driftin.deviantart.com

The main reason that I started it was because of the way that he was standing. Getting the perspective right looked like a challenge. Then I decided to do the background, a series of stripes. They took forever, and in the end the shading still didn't look good. And I'm also not happy with the scan, but I'll put up a better one later.

Now more sad news. I suffered my first heart break in a long time. I'm sure that everyone heard of the Live 8 concerts that happened earlier this month. Well, the London show featured something more than huge. Pink Floyd, who haven't spoken in more than 20 years, agreed to reunite for this one show. And somehow I didn't hear about it. I'm a glorified stone's throw from London, I could have been there in about two hours, and I didn't know about it. Making me feel even worse, I saw a video of their performance, and they were really in form. Of course, maybe now there's a chance that they'll get back together and do another album. They seemed to be getting along quite well on stage. One can only hope.

I'm going to close by saying that if anyone wants to comment, feel free. There's no need to sign in. Just click on the option below the blog. It's nice being able to vent, but at the same time, this blog starts to feel like a monologue sometimes. Which I suppose it is, really. Still, I'm sure that people have opinions on what I wrote here, and if you agree or not, I'd be happy to hear why.

Year Long Haul

2005-07-04T13:56:00.000-04:00

It's been a year since I left Montréal.

In some ways, it's hard to believe it. Time has really flown. This year has easily gone by faster than any other in my life.

At the same time, looking back at how much has happened, it feels like so very much longer. Although I still have no idea what I want to do in the future, I do feel that I've figured out a few things that I don't want. Such as staying in Europe any longer than this trip. However long this trip lasts.

As little organization as I've had with my plans before, I have much less now. As I should have expected, after I'd given up on looking for jobs here I got a call from someone looking to hire me. They were responding to a resumé that I'd left a few months ago. It's to work nights in a hotel, which is the easiest job imaginable. I can do anything that I like, such as watch television or go on the internet. I just have to be awake to let guests in and to call for help in an emergency.

When I say that I'd given up on finding a job here, it wasn't because I didn't think that I could find something. It was mostly because I was tired of France in general. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike the country. It's still where I feel most comfortable in Europe. But I realized that no matter how happy I could be here, I would be much more so in Canada. Or in Montréal, to put a finer point on it. That's not to say that I'm coming straight back, though. I still do want to travel around eastern Europe a bit, and take some Spanish classes in Spain as well. This should take at least till the end of the year.

So now I'm completely on the fence as to whether or not to stay, and for how long. Not helping the staying part is that the hotel keeps pushing back the time that I can start, and telling me that I can only work part time till September. This doesn't seem very promising, as I was told I could work full time starting in early July. The main reason that I'm still here is my lease, of which I have to give a month's notice before I leave. Which I still haven't done. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's likely because I'm feeling very passive lately on top of everything else. Too passive to make a decision, I suppose.

Something that might push me towards deciding sooner is that my shower is leaking water onto the old man who lives below me, and he and the super intendent came up shouting at me today. This seemed out of line, as I hadn't done anything wrong. I didn't KNOW it was leaking. After I started shouting back at them, they threatened to call the police. The acting landlord said that they're both totally nuts, and he's been trying to get the super intendent fired for a while. So depending on how I play this, I might be able to get out of here sooner than I thought.

Mostly, though, things are pretty slow. I had my first somewhat social day yesterday. Sundays in Europe are a bit boring, as any sort of shop is closed. So to kill the day I went to pay my respects to Jim Morrison. I'd already been to his grave once before, but at the very least I figured that a cemetery would be open, and that it would give me something to do. Morrison's grave is a huge tourist attraction, and there's at least a dozen people there at any time during the day. Plus three or four security guards. Apparently, his monument has been stolen. Twice. Despite the security. Go figure.

I got to chatting with a couple of goth/punk Scottish girls while I was there. I think it was the combination of the accents and tattoo body suits that I found most interesting. We hung out for the day, wandering around between bars. They were going to Amsterdam the next day though, so I didn't see them again after that night.

Usually I end up either going to libraries, drawing, or seeing movies to pass time. Of the movies that I've seen, two have stood out. Sin City was the best movie based on a comic book that I've ever seen. Due mostly to the director having written the comics in the first place. It's a crime story, very dark, but I won't try to do it justice here. Just go see it. The other that stood out was Garden State. It's been out for a while, but I only got around to seeing it now. It's mostly a drama, but was one of the few movies to make me laugh out loud in a while. And the soundtrack is awesome. Very chill. It includes a track from my favorite band of the moment, Zero 7. Plus it starred Natalie Portman. Incidentally, I found out that we share the same birthday. She's exactly one year younger than me. The only other famous person born on the same day as me that I know of is Johnny Depp. But he's way older. 40 something.

I'll close with yet another rant about the working conditions here in France. Mostly because it's pertinent. Right now there's a mandatory thirty day trial period before starting any job. Which means that you can be fired at any point in that period for no reason at all. Except for that you're like any other employee. After the thirty days, the boss needs a reason to fire to you.

A major problem facing French politicians is the very high unemployment rate, which has been over ten percent for a few years now. Instead of talking about the real reasons for this [overly powerful unions, 35 hour work weeks, low productivity and unreasonably high wages for even menial jobs, etc], the prime minister has decided that he can solve the problem by increasing the trial period to two years. The theory is that this should entice employers to try hiring more people. Any idiot should see that this will lead instead to younger workers being treated like shit for two years, then fired so that they can bring in a new trial worker and repeat.

I'm beginning to understand why the economy here is so stagnant. Whereas the last generation worked so hard making this country a world power again after the war, the current generation wants nothing but to be able to maintain their 'socialist model'. This is a fancy way of saying people demand to work as little as possible (or less) for more pay and benefits than they deserve. And my generation seems even more resistant to change then their parents. They were the driving force behind the rejection of the Constitution, mostly wanting protectionism out of fear of an invasion of cheap Polish labor. I'm not for globalization, but at the same time it isn't going away, and hiding from it for a generation or two isn't going to help anything. The British are embracing it much more, and their economy is doing very well, with an unemployment rate half that of France. I've always considered myself a socialist, mostly for the sake of state sponsored health care and education. Here, the term socialism seems to have been very heavily distorted, being driven by individual greed. Whereas capitalism is the pursuit of as much money as possible, Rrench socialism is a mechanism to work as little as possible.

Mirage

2005-06-19T11:49:00.000-04:00

First, I lost track of how long it's been since I last updated this. I've been trying to post every two weeks or so. Though I guess I'm not that far off...

I'm pretty tired of France. I'll probably leave in about a month or so, when my lease runs out.

The reason that I don't want to stay is that I'm sick of all of the shit that gets shoved onto someone when they're not unionized around here. I started yet another job last week. This was in a hostel, and for a few days it seemed like I finally had something decent in this country. I was training for the front desk, and the job seemed super chill. The person that was training me was very nice, and all of the customers were great. They were almost entirely backpackers travelling across Europe, so I felt quite at home.

Then the boss showed up, and everything went to hell.

I showed up for my first day of post-training work sick. Very sick. I could barely stand. And her approach to testing her workers is to stand over their shoulders and yell at them every time they move. This was quite possibly the angriest woman I have ever met. And the others told me that she wasn't just having a pissy day. More like a pissy life. It's no exaggeration that she had some of the guests in tears. There was a Russian girl that had her wallet stolen the previous night, along with all of her identification. So she wasn't able to pay for the previous night's bill. The girl was already very upset. The owner decided that she was trying to steal from the hostel, and completely went off the deep end.

By the end of the day, I was about ready to pass out. I'd been sleeping for about 14 hours a night the previous couple of days. When she started yelling at me for not being fast enough and not smiling enough [the irony seemed totally lost on her], it didn't really help matters any. All of this shit is not the reason that I came to Europe. I've had enough. Quiet desk jobs are becoming much more appealing. So, although I'm not coming back to Montreal for at least a little while, the pull of working there is much stronger than sticking around here and getting yelled at all day.

I'm planning on doing some more roaming, though I'm really not sure where I'll go yet. Still, I'm tied up with a mini-lease here in Paris until the middle of next month, so I won't be leaving right away. My landlord tells me that he might be able to get me some casual painting work till I leave. So I'll either do that or just concentrate on drawing for a few weeks.

For the next couple of days I have a girl and her sister staying with me in my apartment. I met the girl in a hostel here in Paris last month, and she asked if she could stay with me when she was passing through the next time, if I'd found an apartment. She's very nice, but the apartment is [well beyond being] very small, so it's quite cramped. My social life isn't exactly booming right now, so it's a welcome change to have some company.

The E.U. has apparently fallen into a full blown crisis. The eagerness of the French to bass the blame onto someone else is absolutely incredible. The media dropped any major references to the French rejection of the constitution, which is the real cause of the crisis. Instead, they're blaming the British for not wanting to increase their payments to the E.U. and thereby blocking the future budget. It's true that the British are being greedy, but almost half of the E.U. budget goes into farm subsidies, and farms don't even employ 5% of the population. And France is the principle beneficiary of those subsidies. In the end, they end up dumping all of their surplus produce on third world countries, thereby driving farmers in these poor regions to starvation. The whole situation is complete bullshit. But most of the bureaucrats are siding with France.

A small rant about Canada. The B.Q. is completely full of shit. By siding with the Conservatives, they shot down every amendment by the N.D.P. to the Canadian budget, for the sole reason of pissing off the Liberals. Despite the fact that the amendments matched the Bloc's platform very well. By being petty, they've hurt Québec more than they realize.

On a closing note, I realize that these entries have been very negative lately. I've been trying to improve them, but it seems like almost everything that's worth writing about comes out as a complaint. I hope things will change soon.

More Of The Same

2005-06-04T14:35:00.000-04:00

It looks like I'll finally be in one place for a few months.

I've taken an apartment here in Paris, mostly because it's irritating as hell traveling in the summer.

It's incredible how many more tourists are wandering around this time of year. This means that hostels are almost always fully booked several days in advance, as are trains. I really don't like having to plan my travels in advance. So staying put for a few months not only gives me a chance to wait out high season, but also take advantage of it and find a job. And of course there are worse places to spend a summer than Paris.

So far I've already had one job, which I was hoping to keep. But unfortunately, some things don't change, and like the other jobs I've had here in France, this one went downhill quickly. This job was in a restaurant, and although not as bad as the other that I had a few months ago, I was being shouted at all the time. Although I was working and running as fast as I could [my feet felt like they were going to burn up by the time I went to bed], it was never enough. I also had to work late almost every night, for little or no pay, as it was technically illegal for me to work that much in a week. After just a bit over a week, things came to a head. I'm not sure if I was fired or if I quit, but I'm beginning to wonder if there are _any_ decent jobs in this country.

The irony that I see here is that the same people who campaign for worker rights so vigorously [for themselves and their unionized friends] treat their non-unionized employees like shit. The number of strikes in this country is disgusting. The employees of the train company go on strike about every three months for pay raises. And those same employees refused to work an extra one minute a day for a charitable cause. That's no exaggeration, it was in the papers here.

On a slightly less bitter note, the last time that I was in France [in 2002], I arrived just in time for a big uproar. Here's some background. French presidential elections are designed to take place in two rounds. In the first, many parties present candidates. The two with the most votes go into the second round, from which the president is chosen. Because of the fracturing of the left in the first round [there were twice as many socialist parties as conservative] the two parties that made it to the second round were conservative [Chirac] and ultra-conservative/neo-Nazi [the Front National]. What followed were massive protests and demonstrations from the left. The majority of the country was ashamed that someone who openly campaigned to expel all non-white people from the country had made it to the finals.

This time it seems to be something even more serious. Currently, the European Union is trying to bring a constitution into effect, which would make the relations between European countries more fluid. The E.U. would become more like one large nation. To come into effect, the constitution has to be ratified by all the member states. Some chose to do the ratification directly through parliament [i.e., the elected politicians are the only ones to vote on it], others were pressured into calling referendums.

France [one of the founding countries in the Union, and along with Germany, was one of the two most influential] had such a referendum. The French are a funny lot, and are very disgruntled with how things are going in their country. A lot of it is just paranoia. For instance, a lot of people are afraid that workers from the newly admitted countries in the east are going to steal their jobs. They had the same worries when the Union was first created, but then it was fear of the Italians. In the end, nothing ever happened, and it's unlikely to happen now either. There's also a large movement against globalization, which actually has very little to do with the constitution and more to do with the W(orld).T(rade).O(rganization). But again, try telling them that. Or that the odds of being able to stop globalization at this point are pretty much null. And of course, there was a large chunk of people that thought by voting against the constitution, they were voting against their president, Jacques Chirac. Instead, they were really voting against Europe.

So the French rejected the constitution. And another of the founding six countries of the Union, Holland, did the same two days later in a referendum of their own. Now Europe is in a bit of a crisis. Not because the Union is likely to dissolve, as some paranoid types are predicting. But more so because any progress is likely to be halted for quite some time to come. The Euro plunged in value (the Canadian dollar rose four cents in two days against it [which is of course good news for me]). And the French have lost a large chunk of their credibility in Europe, as most other countries don't think very highly of the French rejection. As near as I can tell, what was being voted on the most was whether to keep a lion's share of influence in Europe. Now it looks like Germany alone will take center stage, at least for a while.

The reason that I say that the vote on the constitution itself wasn't so important is that the British also scheduled a referendum for next year. Although not an original member, they are one of the major financial contributors. But they always keep the rest of Europe at an arm's length, and would almost certainly vote to reject the constitution. So it likely wouldn't have been ratified in it's current form regardless of how the French or Dutch voted. But a French rejection shows much more serious rifts in Europe than would a British.

The weirdest thing is that most of the votes against came from the younger generation. It's strange that those who would be expected to be the most open minded seem instead to be those most afraid of change.

Without A Net

2005-05-22T06:38:00.000-04:00

Things have continued to be pretty weird since I left Amsterdam.

The weirdness peaked when I was almost mugged before leaving The Hague. I was out walking with a French guy that I met in the hostel when two North Africans came up to us, whacked out on what seemed to be was mushrooms. They tried talking to us in both English and French, but didn't really speak either. One of them tried to take me down with a leg sweep, while ramming his hand into my pocket to nab my wallet.

At this point the smart move would have probably been to let him take it. But I've been paranoid about losing my cash cards for so long that I reacted on instinct. I grabbed his wrist and started shoulder blocking him into a wall, all the while yelling bloody murder. He finally let go, and walked away after people started coming around.

This is the second time that I've almost been mugged by North Africans in Europe. The first time was a few years ago in Lille. There is a reason why even liberal Europeans are becoming so hostile to immigration. A loud minority of second generation Arab immigrants form gangs, vandalize, steal, and act like all around assholes. The problem is especially bad in Holland. Being as liberal as they are, they tend to clash all the more with Islam. That, combined with few integration programs [they're attitude has been to more or less let the Arabs be as they like] leads to many problems and quite a bit of crime. A lot of the immigrants that live in Holland don't even speak Dutch.

Afterwards, I went back to the hostel, but things didn't improve much. It was pretty clear that one of my roommates had a crush on me, as [operative word] he tried repeatedly to get me to go to a sauna with him, even offering to pay for me. Of course, in Dutch saunas, you go nude. That night, he woke me up by caressing my face. I slapped his hand away, told him to get the fuck away from me, and caught the next train to Rotterdam.

Seeing as how weirdness seems to come in surges, things weren't much more comfortable with my roommate in Rotterdam. He wasn't there when I arrived, but he was kind enough to leave his porno collection out. Lovely way to make your roommates feel welcome. About three big stacks of magazines, and ten or twenty videos. The word creepy just doesn't do this justice. He turned out to be German, complete with weird grin and accent. Nothing happened (that I know of, at any rate), but I'd really rather not think about what he was doing in there when I wasn't around. Needless to say, I made it a point of always knocking on the door before going in.

After leaving Holland, I spent a few days in Belgium. The first stop was Antwerp, the diamond capital of the world. Apparently, 85% of all diamonds sold in the world are cut in Antwerp. Most of the shops sold jewelry, and were much more than just expensive. There's something very disconcerting about seeing a necklace that costs about five times what most people make in a year.

The last stop on my little side trip was Brugge, one of the most preserved towns in Europe in terms of architecture. This is mainly due to the city having been almost completely abandoned for many decades, and hence not developed or modernized. Still, quite a few of the buildings that seemed to be from the 16th century were in fact built quite recently, and just made to look much older. The town was very pretty, but overall more of a tourist trap than anything else.

One thing that I found quite strange about Belgium was the tension and animosity between the two regions. Anywhere north of Brussels is Flemish speaking, which is basically Dutch with a bit of an accent [I'm not entirely sure why they decided to call it something else. Perhaps it was because the Flemish and Dutch didn't get along for many years. Holland went Protestant, Flanders (Flemish country) stayed Catholic, and bad feeling followed]. South of Brussels is French speaking. Seeing as how the country is bilingual, I figured it would be more polite to talk to people in French than English, even in Flanders. But for some reason, the people weren't very friendly. I learned later the Flemish hate (or at the very least resent) the French speaking Belgians because the French oppressed the Flemish for centuries, with Flemish being the language of the poor, and the rich speaking French. Similarly, the four cultures in Switzerland don't get along very well with each other, particularly the Germans and the French. All of this doesn't seem to hold well for Canada ever working past it's cultural differences.

As of now, I'm in Paris, a huge city with huge city problems [lots of crime, lots of crazies, etc.]. If a decent job comes my way, I'll stick around for a few months. Otherwise, perhaps I'll head for the eastern boarder.

As for what's going on in Canada, hopefully all of the politicians will finally pull their heads out of their asses and stop acting like a bunch of children. I'm glad that the budget finally passed, as it is quite good. There's a substantial amount of funding for social programs such as education, urban transportation, and the environment. I'm glad that the N.D.P. managed to influence it so heavily. But the media circus around all of this has been nothing short of sickening. It's more like a soap opera slash sitcom than anything else, especially the coverage of Stronach's defection. Not that I blame her for wanting to jump ship. How any sane person could co-exist with those Reform nutballs, I can't fathom.

Lastly, it's now been over a year since my grandmother died. It's been strange how much has happened since. As she was the one that raised me, getting used to not having a parent figure around was a bit strange. Having so few strong ties to one place is the main reason that I've been able to wander aimlessly like this...

Sin City

2005-05-08T11:39:00.000-04:00

France was becoming a bit frustrating and irritating, so a small side trip to Holland seemed like a nice change of scenery.

Before leaving France, I spent a few nights in Lille. I'd been to Lille before, and enjoyed it quite a bit. Lille feels much more like home [Montreal], mostly because things feel less pretentious there. Baggy clothes and dreadlocks are much more common there then anywhere else in the country. People don't feel as required to fit into a mold (and a very tight pair of pants) as in other regions. Perhaps it's the influence from Belgium, as it's right on the border.

My next stop was Amsterdam. I hadn't had time to go there on my last trip, as I was sure that I'd need at least a week to see it properly, and I had to boot it back to London at the time. And Amsterdam is indeed a lot to take in, mostly for better, but sometimes for worse.

The first place that I headed for was the hostel, which was absolutely wonderful. After spending so much time in French hostels, which feel more like institutions, I'd almost forgotten what a good hostel was like. Instead of being filled with groups of school children, this one was entirely backpackers. And the atmosphere was extremely comfortable, with lots of couches and common rooms to lounge in and talk to people. After meeting one or two people a day [if I was lucky] in the French hostels, here it was about fifteen an hour, and from all over the world.

The city was very much overwhelming. As you'd expect, downtown is overflowing with tourists. The difference here is, since pot and shrooms are legal, most of them are either in a stoned haze or completely tripping out of their minds. And most of them are American. U.S. laws being what they are, the relaxed Dutch attitudes are more appealing still for them. And the Dutch are well known for speaking English, another thing attracts a lot of people from the U.S.

Hitting the Red Light District was a bit more than I was prepared for, despite the stories that I'd already heard. Prostitution is legal in Holland, and it's also very well organized. To start with, the hookers are unionized. And they don't need to worry about catching a cold from standing around on the street in a mini-skirt. Here, they have windows set up along the side of the sidewalk, where they sit on a stool [usually in a g-string], and look as erotic and sexy as possible as tourists walk by. If they catch someone's eye, he comes into her booth, the curtain is closed, and skankiness ensues.

The part that struck me the most was that it's also categorized. Each street has a theme (ex. blonde, busty, classy, etc). That's all well and good. The thing that was the most traumatizing was that they also cater to some very nasty fetishes. There are also fat, old, and extremely experienced sections, as well as combinations thereof. And you have no idea when you're going to hit one of said sections.

To compound the problem, the district isn't just sex. There are restaurants, museums, and churches(!) all mixed in. So as you're walking around taking in some of the cleaner scenery, you'll suddenly see a 60 year old, 300 pound hooker squeezing her almost naked boobs against the glass while licking her lips and staring directly at you...

I've moved on to The Hague, an apparent political center of Europe. Today I went to one of the largest gardens on the continent. I was a little disappointed. In April, there are huge fields filled with different types of flowers. Unfortunately they were already harvested, and exported to other places. The pictures that I saw of what they should look like are quite beautiful. I'll try to add a link to them later.

There are a few other weird and interesting things about the Netherlands. First of all, everyone here is absolutely huge. Walking around, I honestly feel short. Most men are at least six feet tall, and it's not uncommon to see someone who's six foot six. The women are usually at least my height [5'10], if not taller. And they also like to wear heels that add several more inches. I was asking my Belgian friend [ex-roommate from when I lived in Nice several years ago that I saw again last week] why they're so tall, as the Belgians are more average. She said that it was hormones that were put into cattle back in the 70's that turned out to be dangerous to humans. As fucked up as that sounds, the old people are just as tall, so unless the hormones were being added for the last several generations, it might be just hereditary.

Also, this country is extremely flat. Extremely. Like, not so much as a hill anywhere. In fact, Neederlands [the name in Dutch] translated directly means low lands. And a good part of the country is actually below sea level. Perhaps as a consequence, bikes are extremely popular. In Amsterdam, most of the traffic was bicycles and not cars. As a result, the amount of noise [and pollution] is cut drastically.

Lastly, the leaders of all of the federal political parties in Canada are here for a World War 2 memorial. What perfect timing. Don't ask me why they chose here and not Moscow, where most of the political leaders in the world are right now. It's the 60th anniversary of the fall of Berlin, which was accomplished by the Soviets. Martin and company are here to celebrate the liberation of Holland, but that was celebrated nationally here last week...

On The Shores of Normandie

2005-04-26T11:55:00.000-04:00

These last few weeks have been very educational.

After leaving Rennes, I spent a few days in Brest, which is in the extreme west of Bretagne. It was interesting in that it didn't really feel like Europe. After the Allies had taken back most of France in 1944, there were about one thousand Germans still holding Brest. In order to get them out, the Americans completely leveled the city. After which, they rebuilt everything, but in an American style of architecture. So basically, I could have believed that I was somewhere in either the U.S. or Canada without much problem, ignoring of course the people. For some reason, the feeling in the city reminded me of Timmons (Ontario). I have no idea why. As well, the locals still resented the Americans for the way in which they drove the Nazis out. In a way, I understand how the Brestians (? [I don't know what to call them in English or French]) feel, but at the same time, they came across somewhat as being ingrates. At least the older ones that had lived through the whole thing and gave a damn one way or the other.

Something else that I found out is that there exists a small separatist movement in Bretagne, being at it's strongest in Brest. Seems that the Bretagnians [refer to comment on Brestians] are in fact Celtic (I saw some of them playing bagpipes on the streets !), even having a language that somewhat resembles Gaelic. Of course, the language is pretty much dead, but there's a movement to revive it that's gaining momentum. Very similar to mainland Scotland. And just like the Scottish, they were conquered and assimilated [but by the French] back in the day, with resentment being retained more and more the farther into the region you go. Still, it's much less pronounced then the separatist movement on Corsica.

After leaving Brest, I spent a few days in Mont St. Michel. Apparently this is one of the most popular tourist attractions in France, second only to the Eiffel Tower. True enough, when I got there, I could barely move for all the tourists. But I have no idea what all the fuss is. It was at best a mediocre church, complete with admission booth, tickets (5 [$8] a pop!), and a crusty security guard checking everyone before they went in. The whole thing seemed nothing less then obscene [after all, this is a _church_]. I was told that they still do masses there, but of course, to go to one, you have to buy a ticket...

My next stop was much more enjoyable. I ended up in Bayeaux, which is the closest major town (and train station) to the landings of the Allies on D-Day (June 6, 1944). There are three major sites: An American, a British, and a Canadian. Unfortunately I didn't manage to see the British.

To start with, I stayed in another monastery [or convent, I'm not really sure which]. Run by nuns of the order of Saint Benedict, it's main purpose is to act as a sort of hotel service for travelers. On the first day, I met three other people that were going to Omaha, the American landing. The first was from America, the second from Argentina, and the third from New Zealand. So we all rented bikes and cycled 25 km west to the beach and graveyard.

I've read about how many Americans died retaking France, but still, seeing the number of tombstones at the grave site was shocking. I'm told that there are about 10000 soldiers buried there. One of the things that left a deep impression was that after walking through the tomb stones for about 15 minutes [stone crosses with inscriptions of name and date of death, as well as rank and home town] something seemed seriously wrong. I only saw 4 stars of David! This I cannot understand for the life of me.

I met one other memorable person that day. The others were staying at the hostel, and after we went back there, we met another American. Whereas the guy that had gone with us to Omaha Beach was from California, this guy was from Arkansas, and the differences in culture showed quite clearly. He had just gotten back from a tour of duty in Iraq (yes, he's a soldier), and was quite loud and boisterous. For instance, it was very obvious that he liked the Argentinean girl. His way of flirting was a little less then smooth, though. Her name was Julianna, but in Spanish, the j is silent, so it sounds more like Yulianna. He kept telling her how wrong that is. She didn't seem very impressed. And later, he managed to work into the conversation that one of his fantasies was to see a girl driving a tractor wearing nothing but a straw hat... And of course, he was very much Pro Dubya. The reason that he left such an impression is that people like that hardly ever travel outside the U.S. (I forget the exact numbers, but most Americans don't even have a passport), let alone come to France.

The next day I hit the Canadian beach, Juno, but had to go on my own, as I didn't find anyone else that was interested. Again, I learned quite a bit, such as about the failed attempt to take Dieppe [A port town not far from where the Allies were ultimately successful]. The attempt was made in 1942, and instead of being a joint effort, this was a project for the Canadians alone. It turned into a complete disaster. About 1000 soldiers died, which is to the best of my knowledge the worst loss to our army ever.

Through talking to the locals and hanging out in museums, I've learned more about World War II then I expected. Plus, cycling about 50 km a day was a great workout, even if it left me sore as hell. I've met a few people that were cycling through France, and now I realize that they must have buns of steel. Those seats freakin' kill after about two or three hours...

Come Down

2005-04-13T04:51:00.000-04:00

I've been kicking around Rennes for about two weeks now. Mostly, I've been looking for a job. Unfortunately, I've come to a bit of a disappointing realization.

Long before I looked into the details of coming to France, I realized that it would be an uphill battle finding a job, as France is a very closed society. I expected most employers wouldn't want to hire foreigners.

For the last while, I've been hitting as many employment agencies as possible, and what I've learned is that for almost all jobs here, you need a 'specialized' diploma. For instance, to work as a cook almost anywhere, you need a diploma for cooking, and one from France, at that. Fine. But it gets worse. To be a bartender, same deal. To work at the front desk of a hotel, as well. Or to be a temp. And of course, working in sales is pretty much impossible if you don't speak French like the locals (as I learned the hard way).

This diploma is certainly not intensive. Quite the contrary, I'm convinced that it's just to lock immigrants out of most jobs. For instance, I was talking to a French woman who was studying to be a florist. This struck me as being nothing short of retarded. Making bouquets isn't exactly rocket science. Yes, some training is required, but making a year long course mandatory? This is completely over the top.

As a consequence, the only way that foreigners get by around here is by opening their own restaurants. This took a while to sink in. For the first while, I thought that not seeing anyone but pure-bred French working in unionized jobs was a coincidence. But after having seen the majority of the country, I'm beginning to see that it can't be anything less than a big plan.

The saddest part of all is how organized the discrimination is here. The government is what drives it. The diplomas example that I gave for instance; France is the only country that I know of that requires such silly programs. Diplomas for working in a hotel? More than just strange. Still, although it is annoying, for the most part it just makes me feel sad and disappointed with the way things work here in general.

Mind you, this isn't to say that I'm giving up. In the worst case scenario, I'm sure that I can find something in Paris. And I'm told that it's rare to find a job without looking for at least two weeks, which is all that I've done. Still, I'm getting tired of Rennes. The biggest problem here is the amount of homeless people. I'm not going to use the word poverty. The simple fact is that it's not the problem at all. Just get a diploma and you're fine. Instead, as near as I can tell, it's just exceptionally 'cool' to be on the street. This is nothing new. I've seen this in Canada, and in my more depressed days, I've even thrown in with these kind of groups. But here they're so freakin' aggressive! They come at you from all sides, acting all charismatic, giving various spins on the usual 'spare a few cents?' line. If I'm walking with a friend, it's sometimes so bad that they butt in between us, interrupting the conversation. Sometimes they absolute mob you. And with the number of social programs here, they don't want or need for food and shelter. It's all available free of charge. It's just some sort of bizarre trendy way of fitting into an image that's thought to be cool, or bad assed, or whatever. The weird part is that it's only been in this city.

Now, I was intending to go on about the positive things in France, but I got a little sidetracked... Now that all of that is off my chest, I'll repeat what I wrote last time. Rennes IS very pretty. Just a combination of little things is giving me itchy feet again. As well, I should mention a few of the numerous things that I like about this country. After all, if there weren't good points, I wouldn't stay here.

a) Pretty much everything is sold through specialty shops. For instance, to get bread, go to the bakery. To get fruit or vegetables, go to the produce shop. Meat is from the butcher's shop. Any style of clothing is in a clothing shop of just that one fashion. Although the same thing exists in other countries, there's a much heavier emphasis on it here. Big department stores or grocery stores are much rarer here than in other countries that I've been to. And all of this adds a feeling of class to buying even small things. Getting a baguette is more of an experience. Of course, it takes longer to get things done. But as a consequence, people are much more relaxed.

b) There's hardly any emphasis placed on violence here whatsoever. This again adds to the feeling of ease. It's strange, but the obsession in America carries over more heavily to Canada then we suspect. Here, people seem to have nothing more on their minds then sex. America is almost as bad, but here it's much less paradoxical. Sex is fully embraced, and nudity isn't shunned at all. Sex is fully explained to children in a classy and healthy way, so as not to confuse them. In America, the story line in every movie or sitcom seems to center around people 'sleeping' with each other, but as soon as you show a nipple, the whole country goes apeshit. And the only form of sexual education allowed is to preach abstinence. Then the kids turn on the latest big show, like Friends... No wonder there are so many problems there.

Moving along, I've been following the news in Canada, and Prime Minister Paul seems to have really stepped in it this time. For once, government workers have been caught red handed being as corrupt as anyone who thinks about it should already have realized. Seems like a bit of a Watergate. What's strange is how naive Canadians seem to be. With hardly doing any reading in between the lines at all, his (and the Liberals) level of corruption has been more than clear for years. To give just one example (there are MANY), when he was running for the leadership of the Liberal party, Pretty Boy Paul had two opponents. John Manley and Sheila Copps. After the convention was over, he drove them both out of politics altogether. In the case of Manley, he was offered the job of ambassador to the U.S. Manley was Chrétien's second in command, and it's no secret that the Chrétien Liberals weren't exactly popular with Dubya. This was as close to saying 'Ha ha, fuck you' as could be. For Copps, her riding was 'amalgamated' with another, and after a corrupt vote to see who of the former two ridings' MPs would get to represent the new one, her ass was shown the curb. And amalgamations don't happen often. Just so happens that after she challenged Mr. Martin...

It should of course be noted that Martin's first leadership bid was against Chrétien, which he needless to say lost. Afterwards, Chrétien made Martin Minister of Finance, the second most powerful portfolio, next to [of course] the Prime Minister. Compare the policies.

Still, it's come as a big revelation that the government is corrupt. Well, I'll be naive for a moment and hope that this will finally motivate people to clean up our politics for good. But this is the only scandal likely to get attention, even if others are right under our noses.

I guess I really am kinda jaded. And of course, our politics are incomparably better than our southern neighbors...

Start Again

2005-04-01T04:32:00.000-05:00

I've been touring around for a few weeks now, spending a few nights in each province, but now I think it's time to settle down and start looking for another job.

I've been in Rennes for a day now, which is in the province Bretagne, in the north west of France. Ever since I left Marseilles, this was my ultimate destination. I've had a feeling that this would be a nice city to hole up in for a few months. And from what I've seen so far, my intuition was about right.

The architecture here is very beautiful, and the people here are all very nice, much more approachable than in the south. I'll give a few examples. Yesterday, I had a craving for a falafel sandwich, and went to the tourist information center for directions. One of the locals, an older lady, overheard me asking at the desk and offered to personally walk me to where it is, about five blocks away. Or today, at breakfast, it was just much easier to approach people staying at the hostel [most people that stay at hostels in France tend to be from not too far away, and are in town for a short time for either work or school]. All little stories, but things like this add up to an overall feeling of friendliness in a city. This seemed to be lacking in the south. Sometimes I'd ask someone for directions on the street and be completely ignored.

Still, on the way here, I was very tempted to stay in Bordeaux. I'd have to say that it was my favorite city that I've seen in France. Very pretty, clean, and more importantly (and subtly) it had a vibrancy that was lacking in most French towns. I really don't think that I can describe how the vibrancy feels, but most towns that I've been to give off an aura of fatigue, if not depression. Despite liking it very much, I was more curious to see the north, as I've spent virtually all my time in the south, both on this trip and my last. In the end, I don't regret having moved on.

It's strange, but writing this blog has gotten a bit trickier. Before, it more or less wrote itself, as I had more than enough zainy adventures to fill it two times over. Lately, though, things have gotten much more conventional. Not that I'm complaining. Quite the contrary, if things had kept going at the same pace as when I first got to Europe, I'd probably be completely nuts by now. Still, it's strange that the pace changed so much, as I tried to do things any differently.

So this means that I get to rant for a little while longer than I usually allow myself. Here's something that's been on my mind for a while...

Things that bug me about France:

a) This I find completely disgusting. There are WAY too many public washrooms in this country that don't have any soap in the sinks. To make matters worse, a lot of what people eat here is designed to be handled (ie crossants, chocolate breads, bagettes, etc). I'm sorry, but every time I touch a doorknob in a bathroom, I cringe. Am I neurotic? Probably. But for fuck sakes, a bar of soap costs 30 cents! Maybe I should buy some and leave a bar on the restaurant counter on general principle.

b) Every French city that I've been to has a political demonstration every freakin' day. Sometimes they only attract 50 people, but they still manage to close the main street to any traffic. And what they're protesting is usually so minor that I've stopped even asking why they're there. Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful to be politically active, but with things that rely on shock value, making them common place completely defeats the purpose. The Quebeckers are much more likely to do these sort of demonstrations than other Canadians. But they do them seldom enough that when you see people marching in the streets, it still attracts enough attention that you bother to think about their cause.

I'll ramble on about the things that I like in the next post. But having brought up protests, there's something that I've been reading in the news that confuses the hell out of me. In Québec, apparently most of the students are currently on strike. Now, that sentence just doesn't make any sense to me. Being a student, you have paid for your classes. Deciding to not go would seem to just be voluntarily wasting your money. The point of a strike (or at least from what I understand) is that by not working, you're showing society how important your job is, and thus that by being neglected by whoever, you're deciding to neglect society. As a student, you're not really doing a service to society. You're building up your own future earning potential, or in the purest case, pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Either way, it's a pursuit that's very much for your own benefit.

But what do I know? I'm probably just out of touch.

On and on...

2005-03-19T05:11:00.000-05:00

First off, I've been a little tardy with this. The main reason is that Blogspot sucks arse. The last time that I tried to post, it wouldn't accept it. So I lost about half an hour of time. And I haven't been able to find the motivation to try again until now...

Right then. So the last few days have been a bit irritating. I've been in Marseille for a few weeks now. The first two were spent waiting for a permit so that I could start work. Fine. The job seemed nice enough, so the wait seemed worth it. Working in a book store is a chance that most foreigners don't get. And after five days of working, everything seemed to be going well. The people that I was working either for or with seemed to like me, and the job was pretty laid back.

Then of course everything has to go down the commode. On my first day off I get a message on my voice mail saying that I'm fired. And after being told that I could work for at least a month, and be reevaluated at that point. So now I've lost three weeks. The strangest part is why I was fired. Apparently my accent is too strong. This would be an understandable reason to not get the job in the first place. The reason that I find the whole thing strange is that it's the same accent I had when I was first interviewed and hired...

Yet the last three weeks haven't been a total waste. Marseille is a nice enough city, and the weather really is lovely. Still, I don't feel like staying in the same area that I lived in before [the last time I was in France I lived in Nice for four months]. The only reason that I agreed to come back here was for the sake of having a job where I would interact with people, and hence improve my French as quickly as possible. On the other hand, it's irritating that I came back here solely for a job that ended up jerking me around...

So today I'll be heading for Carcassone, a town a few hours to the west. Though I don't expect to stay there long. I'd rather keep making my way north, as I'm told that the culture is quite a bit different there. It would be nice to get a feeling for the rest of the country, instead of always staying in the same region.

On a brighter note, I [finally] finished the drawing that I've been working on for the last month and a half. It's the most involved that I've ever done. I used about 14 pencils of different darknesses to bring out the shading, and I think it shows. And yes, Dave (Clark), I know you thought I was crazy for buying so many pencils, but check it out, and see what you think. For those interested, it's the picture of a little girl holding a rabbit, and can be found at http://driftin.deviantart.com

The photo that I based it on is found under scraps. I don't know why, but I find the emotion in it extremely powerful. A few people have told me that they prefer my drawing, which I take as a huge compliment, but I find the drawing is still much more beautiful.

Something that I've been trying to figure out lately is what the big stink is over the European Constitution. Apparently it's a formula for establishing personal and economic rights, and I tried reading it, but even I found it too dry to stay focused. The point is that France is holding a referendum [why is it that referendums aren't popular in English speaking regions? I can only think of one referendum in English Canada in my whole life] as to whether to accept it or not, and for some reason, the no side is likely to win. This is important because Chirac (the President of France) is so deeply tied to the constitution that if it doesn't pass, he'll likely have to resign. Apparently, for the people to reject this constitution would be somewhat comparable to Chrétien having seen the seperatists win by a margin just big enough to piss him off in 1995 [ie 51% wouldn't have really been enough to allow the country to break apart]. And Chirac resigning is a big deal considering that presidents here usually last at least 15 years.

Roots?

2005-02-26T06:37:00.000-05:00

First, I should really comment a bit on my last post a bit. The biggest problem with it was that I wrote it when I was dead tired [hadn't slept much the night before, and the reason was explained, as I recall]. As a consequence, I didn't read it over, and I think that I might have scarred the shit out of some people without really meaning to.

Don't get me wrong, what I did was very stupid. But not quite as stupid and crazy as it ended up sounding. The reason that I stuck around was that there were enough people in the group that originally approached me that I didn't expect anything to go horribly wrong too fast. And the reason that I didn't go to a hotel or hostel was that the cost of hotels on Corse are sky high. There are no hostels, and hotels usually start around $75, but getting in at the last minute made getting even one of those unrealistic. And there were other positive signs. I really don't feel like dwelling on this long enough to go into them. In the end, the bar [there were 5 employees total, plus about 10 regulars] all wanted me to stay for at least another month, but I really didn't feel like sticking around. The point is that it wasn't the grand escape that it came across as here. In hindsight, the title of the post didn't help, but I'm too lazy to change it now.

So with that out of the way, there isn't a hell of a lot new. I got fed up with the hostel in Aix-En-Provence, and took off for a town called Nîmes, a bit to the west. The hostel there was a blast, but the town itself was a bit smaller than was to my liking. Something that struck me as being strange was the amount of architecture left over from the Romans. It's bizarre seeing a huge, decrepit collision in the middle of a small French town, surrounded by modern buildings. Rome's done a better job of incorporating their ancient architecture into a more contemporary atmosphere. And of course, there's the question of why the Romans chose Nîmes...

But just as I was preparing to keep going west, I got a call from two businesses in Aix, offering me an interview. So now I'm back in Aix, having done a bit of a circle. I've had both interviews, and already been offered one job. It's in a book store, and it sounds pretty relaxed. The only problem is that it's about 45 minutes from Aix, in Marseille. The reason that this is such a problem is that Marseille is the second biggest city in France, and a little too fast paced for me to feel confortable. The other interviewer won't be able to get back to me till the middle of next week. That job would be much nicer, as it's in Aix, and has a higher salary. I'd be in charge of reception at an English school. The interview itself went quite well, or at least so I thought. So that means that it comes down to the amount of experience I have versus that of the other candidates. But regardless of whether I get the job or not, it looks like I'll be sticking around for a while.

I feel like ranting a bit on various things that I've been reading, but I'm at a fairly high priced internet café, so I'll spare you and cut this short :)

Stupid Decisions/Narrow Escapes

2005-02-14T13:58:00.000-05:00

I'm beginning to wonder what the hell is going on. It seems like I can't get a peaceful couple of days to save my life.

So as I recall, my last post was when I was in the polish monastery. After leaving the town of Bastia, I went off to explore the rest of the island. All of the towns that I went to were very beautiful, though the island itself was extremely expensive.

First was Calvi, a smaller but very popular village. As there was no accommodation in the price range I was looking for, I ended up camping out in a park again. This time, however, there weren't any rude awakenings.

Next up, I headed south. The places that I had already been to were very French, but as you work your way down the island, the true Corsican culture becomes stronger and stronger. And to be honest, it wasn't a culture that I was particularly fond of. The people were extremely aggressive, and in the end, I felt lonely and edgy being around them. They're basically a cross between Arabic and Italian, with the only thing French being that they speak the language. I'm not sure where the Arabic influence comes from. Perhaps the original settlers (who came centuries ago) were of Arabic origin.

Still, when I say that the island is beautiful, it's an incredible understatement. After a few days, I ended up on the southern tip, in a town called Bonifacio. This is easily the most beautiful place that I've ever seen. Hands down. The town is built into the side of a 200 foot sheer cliff, and looking over the cliff side, the water is so clear that you can easily see the bottom. I'd never seen anything like it. And watching the sun sets were magnificent. My being taken-aback by the town brings me to the climax of weirdness of my current (or any other?) trip.

Just after I got into town, I'm walking by the port. Someone shouts out "Quebec, Quebec!" I have no idea how they knew I live there [I don't wear a flag on my back pack, as I think it's sort of silly. Just my opinion]. The voice was coming from a bar/restaurant, and so I go over to talk to the guy. Picture Napoleon on speed. He asks me what I'm doing in Bonifacio, and I tell him that I'm just passing through, before going to look for work on the mainland. He tells me to come into his restaurant so he can talk to me.

It turns out that he's the owner, and he tells me that he's looking for workers. Strange, considering that it's off season. But the chance to spend some time in Bonifacio is very tempting, so I hear him out. He looks over my resume, and offers me a job as a cook. The pay is 1500 Euros per month, including food and accommodation. The only hitch is that I have to work 14 hours a day, seven days a week. The offer sounds very good, and he offers to let me stay at his place that night, as there's no cheap accommodation in Bonifacio [I was planning on camping out]. My naiveteé combined with my really liking the town gets the better of me, and I give it a shot. He tells me that I'll only have to stay at his place for a week if I take the job, then I can move to staff accommodation.

The next day, I start work. Grueling, but I'm ready to handle it. I had left his place a few hours after him, and locked it with his key (very trusting guy!). And as if I'm in a bad movie, you can guess what happens next. Of course he gets robbed that afternoon. So I figure that I'm toast, good and proper. Somehow, though, he doesn't suspect me. He has one of the kids that hangs out in his bar pegged as the robber.

On a bit of an aside, pretty much every kid in the town is a hooligan wannabe. This was slowly becoming apparent to me. So he has a big argument with the kid, the kid denies everything. He doesn't bother going to the cops (the cops are pretty much non-existent on this island. I learned a bit later that it's all controlled by the Mafia).

Keep in mind, this kid is in the bar almost always. Hardly ever leaves. So naturally you expect him to take off after all of this. Not so. The next day, he's right back in the bar, and the Napoleon is still serving him drinks. All the time, still accusing him of robbing him. This whole thing just gets stranger and stranger.

Now, I'm not very popular with the other workers. They keep telling me that I'm not doing a very good job. The irony is that I'm doing all the work. They just sit around all day while I clean the bar and kitchen. Fine. I'm there to get the cash and experience.

Still, I'm beginning to become more and more concerned (about freaking time!). Everyone keeps dropping hints about which team I'm playing for, if you catch my drift. So I'm becoming pretty sure that Napoleon's intentions are less than pure. Still, in a few days I get to move into staff accom, so again, because I really love the scenery, and jobs are next to impossible to find there, I stick around. And I'm told that the reason that people aren't taking kindly to me is that I come across as a snob. Why is this? Because when you enter the bar, you're expected to shake the hand of every single person in the bar, whether you know them or not, and introduce yourself. If you know them well, kiss them on both cheeks. This includes guy - guy. And they're questioning MY sexuality... Sorry, but it's weird seeing two Ginoes laying big sloppies on each other.

Through all of this, I still haven't got the motivation to leave. Finally, I get the kick in the ass I need. I was told that I could move in with the other cook, but we'd have to share a one bedroom. Fine. Then I find out that he's already living with his girlfriend! This means no apartment, which means I'm stuck in Napoleon's living room. This, plus him making a pass at me is enough. I'm off to the road, where I hitch hike out. Still, I can't believe how close I was to staying, just because of how pretty it was there. I thought I was old enough to know to better...

After getting the heck off that island, and swearing never to go back, I ended up in Saint Tropez. This is basically the Malibu of France. Way too many rich people with way too much money on their hands. After a night there, I end up in Aix-En-Provence, which has been my long term goal for a while.

Last night I was looking forward to a nice quiet night, but not to be. I'm staying in a hostel, and at around 2am, I was woken up by a mad rush of very loud... paramedics! Seems one of my roommates got food poisoning, and the other called an ambulance. He pukes all over the floor, and feels better. The paramedics take off with a very loud exit, just as they came in. Given that I was half asleep, and unable to comprehend what was going on (let alone understand what they were all screaming about), I was having a hard time deciding if this was really happening, or just a bad dream. Maybe the entire past two weeks were just a weird dream. I wonder what I ate...

Before, Again...

2005-02-01T04:58:00.000-05:00

It's hard to believe, but I've been in Europe for more than two weeks.

The last time that I updated this, I was in Norwich with my friend Nick. After leaving there, I met up with Will, a friend of mine from my last trip to France, who took french classes with me in Nice. Will is now married and living in London, and he invited me to stay at his place for a bit on my way from Norwich to Brighton. It was great to see him and his wife, Lucy. Unfortunately, my time in England was running a little short, so I was only able to spend the one night with them. Still, we had a wonderful time, first taking in a movie, and then going out for a few pints at a local tavern. Although I didn't have extremely high expectations for the film, it turned out to be one of the best big budget movies that I've seen in ages. It was the new Clint Eastwood movie, Million Dollar Baby, about a boxing trainer who decides to work with a woman boxer for the first time. From the blurb alone, it stunk of clichés, but had hardly any what-so-ever. And to top things off, an ending that by the middle of the film, you would never expect, and were unsure of up until the very end. It's also been nominated for the Academy Award for best picture, but that's not always saying much.

After leaving London, I spent a few nights in Brighton, a city of which I'd heard many good things. It lived up to most of it, and is probably my favorite place in England. A coastal town, it's very pretty, but above all else, there was a vibrancy that I didn't expect at all. I find that most English towns are sleepy and at times downright gloomy, but Brighton [as the name implies?] escaped from all of that. There was an extremely colorful carnival on the port that was open year round, which in some ways set the tone. But all over, there were nice buildings, beautiful parks, and wonderful beaches. I also met up with an old friend, Ben, who I first met in B.C. [Canada]. It's strange, but our paths seem to cross at odd times. The first was when we were both in a small town in B.C., Kamloops. I saw him again in Vancouver, and a third time when I randomly bumped into him at a drum fest in Victoria.

This time he responded to the mass email I sent, saying that he was in East Sussex, very close to Brighton. I was planning on going to Brighton anyway, as it was the only place in England that I had wanted to see but missed on my first trip to Europe a few years ago. Now he says that he might come to France, so our paths may cross again in the near future.

Speaking of which, while I had a good time in Brighton, I was eager to move on to France, so leaving England wasn't painful. My flight was from London to Nice, Nice being where I had lived for four months back in 2002. It was very strange being back there, as almost everyone I knew had moved on. A consequence of having made most of my friends in a language school. Now I know lots of Swedes, as well as a few Germans, Austrians, and English. But not many locals from Nice itself.

Still, the one person I was sure would still be around didn't disappoint. She was my old land lady from when I lived there, and she has to be one of the strongest personalities that I've ever met. Affectionately [at least by most] known as the pink lady, I don't think that I stand a chance of doing her justice here. She's around 65, always (and I mean always) wears pink, and works the most ungodly hours of anyone that I've ever known. She runs a restaurant, but refuses to hire any help. This means that she works from about 7 am till 2 am, seven days a week. On top of that, she owns two buildings next door, which she rents out. One of them being a hostel, she's always running back and forth. She mentioned once that she hadn't taken a day off in 11 years. That includes Sundays. The only help she gets is from her sister, and though both are very nice, they spend more time bickering with each other than actually talking.

A few things had changed with her, though. The first, and most shocking to me, was that she had changed the color of her restaurant. Formerly (as you probably guessed) pink, it was now bright red. And secondly, her dog had died. Finally. I call it a dog, but back when I lived with her, sometimes I wasn't really sure. It was one of those little lap dog things, but seeing as how it was pushing twenty, it looked more like an oversized hairball. It couldn't really move [like, at all], but knew enough to make some sort of gurgling sound when it needed to relieve itself. The gurgling was a queue to the Pink Lady to carry it outside and hold it while it did its business. Then it was back to it's chair, where it would lie, seemingly lifeless, until feeding time. At which point it's head would be placed into the bowl, as it couldn't do it itself.

After staying in the Pink Lady's hostel for a few nights, I realized that my time in Nice really was over, and that it was time to see if not greener, at least different pastures. So I caught the next ferry to the Isle of Corse, a French island close to Italy. The ship was run almost entirely by Italians, and [coincidently or not] was about two hours late. After docking in the town of Bastia at about 10 pm, and seeing as how hotels are very much over priced here, I decided to camp out on a beach for the night. I awoke to some homeless guy telling me that I was in his spot, of which he'd staked claim to about two months earlier. This was a wake up call that maybe, just maybe, my life style was getting a bit iffy.

I tried the tourism office, and was told about some affordable accommodation about 7km out of town. What I hadn't realized was that it was a monastery, run by an order of polish nuns. So yes, I'm now staying in a monastery. It's definitely the quietest place that I've stayed at in a while, and I've taken advantage of the opportunity to work on some more drawings. The one that I've started is of a picture that I find completely fascinating, you can check out the photo under scraps on the web page where I keep my drawings. Tomorrow I'll probably take off for a different town on the island, as it really is very beautiful here, and since I only have a week, I want to explore as much as possible in the time that I have.

On a bit of a side note, typing this has helped me get used to french keyboards again. For some reason, the french switch the w, q, a, z, and m keys around, which makes typing a bit of a challenge. Most Mediterranean countries do similar mix ups, hence typing becomes even more of a pain if you're travelling around a few different countries.

Courtney Does the Math...

2005-01-23T07:09:00.000-05:00

Here's the article (or at least the first part) by Courtney Love that I mentioned a few days ago. I never would have thought she could form such coherent thoughts, or talk about something with such good detail. The full article is too long to post here, but if you like what you see, check out the rest at

http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html

By Courtney Love

June 14, 2000 | Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software.

I'm talking about major label recording contracts.

I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:

This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.

What happens to that million dollars?

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make?

They grossed $11 million.

It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.

The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.

They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.

Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.

Of course, they had fun. Hearing yourself on the radio, selling records, getting new fans and being on TV is great, but now the band doesn't have enough money to pay the rent and nobody has any credit.

Worst of all, after all this, the band owns none of its work ... they can pay the mortgage forever but they'll never own the house. Like I said: Sharecropping. Our media says, "Boo hoo, poor pop stars, they had a nice ride. Fuck them for speaking up"; but I say this dialogue is imperative. And cynical media people, who are more fascinated with celebrity than most celebrities, need to reacquaint themselves with their value systems.

When you look at the legal line on a CD, it says copyright 1976 Atlantic Records or copyright 1996 RCA Records. When you look at a book, though, it'll say something like copyright 1999 Susan Faludi, or David Foster Wallace. Authors own their books and license them to publishers. When the contract runs out, writers gets their books back. But record companies own our copyrights forever.

The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid.

Old Country Again

2005-01-19T09:02:00.000-05:00

So I'm back in Europe. It's been a few years, and after having traveled around Canada for the last while, it's strange to be a tourist in a place where I obviously stand out as such. Still, I've been in England since I left Canada, and I'll be sticking around for the next week or so, so the culture shock is relatively mild.

In a way, I didn't feel like leaving Montreal. My friends had shown me such great hospitality since I came back, and at the very least, I should mention it here. I've already talked about my friends Eugene and Xin, but after leaving there, my friend Andrew put me up for a week, followed by staying with my friend David for damn near a month. All of this, with no complaints, and the offer to stay longer if I needed to. Still, I wouldn't have felt right crowding them for any longer, and I was starting to get stir crazy anyway.

Luckily, I was able to get my French work visa sorted out before I left. After having tried repeatedly to get it for the last two months, and consistently getting caught up in bureaucratic red tape, I was beginning to feel like throwing in the towel. But in order to make one last stand, I spent about four hours going though all relevant parts of their web site, and printing off anything that might be useful. It's amazing how the bureaucrats that work at the consulate are so out of touch with their own rules and regulations. In the end, I was able to finally side step attempts to use obscure rules to pan me off onto someone else, mostly by showing them copies of what the web page itself said. To put it mildly, a huge headache, but in the end, I'm finally authorized to work for a year in France. All of this beats washing dishes in some under-the-table job in Paris.

A few comments on Britain, as I'd forgotten what it felt like being here. Seeing how small all of the cars are is very refreshing. With the new macho trend in North America of owning hummers just to drive around down town, I was starting to wonder when I'd finally see a full blown privately owned tank rolling down the center of the city. Apparently SUVs just don't guzzle enough gas, despite costs for petro going straight through the roof. Maybe they're trying to compensate for something else...

On the flip side, an oddism about Britain is how polite everyone sounds. Hit the word sounds. On the one hand, everyone sounds just oh so sweet, but on the other, they're shoving you out of the way at the same time. It seems that manners are only skin deep, particularly in London.

Something else that's strange about England is how early the bars close. I was out with an American girl that I met in a hostel in London, Renée, and after looking around for two hours for pool tables, all in vain, we finally decided to just go for a pint or two at a tavern. It was only 10:45, so we figured we had a good couple of hours until we should head back to the hostel. But there was a bit of a surprise. I hadn't taken more than a few sips of my drink before I get a tap on the shoulder from the Bartender. Seems that closing time was in five minutes. That's right. 11pm. A bit of a piss off taking into account the price of beer, and that chugging isn't exactly the best way to enjoy a drink.

As of now, I'm in Norwich. It's about 200km north east of London. I came up here to see my friend Nick, who I first met several years ago in Jasper, back in Canada. He's the manager of a subsidized housing project here, and the town itself is very pretty. Lots of old, classy buildings [by North American standards, anyway]. Basically, a typical English town. It's a relief being out of London, as the pace of life there could easily eat someone alive. I felt my blood pressure finally start to drop after the train starting crossing open fields on the way here.

I'll round this off with a few things that I want to vent on:

First off, the outpouring of support for the Tsunami victims is wonderful in principle, but it seems like everyone [at least the media] is missing the point by a pretty hefty margin. For instance, as of yesterday, only 30 cents of every dollar given actually reaches victims. The rest is lost in that endless void of bureaucracy. Second, a full two weeks after the disaster actually went down, only 1 person in 4 had received any aid whatsoever. Yet these facts were hardly reported. We were too busy patting ourselves on the backs for the record amount of pledges that had been gathered. Note the word pledge. In other words, not nearly so much hard cash had been collected. Just promises of donations. And to put this into perspective, after the devastating earthquake in Iran last year, there were over one billion dollars in pledges collected. Yet a full year later, only 17 million dollars had actually been given. That's less than 2%. After the media got tired of the story, everyone conveniently 'forgot' to make good on their word. And one last thing on this subject. In the time since the tsunami happened, more people have died of AIDS (again, just in these last three weeks) than all of the people that perished in the tsunami and it's aftermath combined. But nothing is heard about them at all. If only media coverage for these sort of things was consistent, and thereby charities were able to raise desired amounts for every disaster that happens, more lives could be saved then most aid workers could hope for. But the public's attention span is sporadic and short, so malnutrition, and the Darfur region of the Sudan, among MANY others, become forgotten, but are anything but resolved.

Second, I've heard that for the first time in six years, the sales of CDs has increased as compared to the year before. The record company of course was very quick to blame internet piracy for the decline in the first place, while attempting to make themselves come off as the poor victims. This reminded me of an excellent article that I read years back written by none other than [*gasp*] Courtney Love. Will wonders never cease? Yet, it really was excellent, and rather than try to sum it up here, I'll repost it for you to have a look at in a few days.

One final word on how often I'll be posting on here. A few of you have complained that I've been getting lazy when it comes to how often I do a new blog. It's true that I am lazy when it comes to this, but it's in a different sort of way. I don't like to sit down at a computer too often, which would be what I'd have to do if I post short entries every couple of days. So what I usually do is wait till I feel like I have enough to say, and do one long entry every two weeks or so. If I happen to get enough stories to tell in a shorter time, I'll post more often. But thanks for reading :)

Reflections

2005-01-04T15:45:00.000-05:00

Well, every year it seems that New Year's is a time when everyone looks back and meditates over the last twelve months. Seeing as how I'm always one to jump on a trend [cough, cough], here goes...

In hindsight, it's been a pretty trippy year. Sorry for the hip hop lingo, but I honestly can't think of a word to better describe it. Mind you, it's not just the traveling that I've done for the past couple of months. Not wanting to go into too much detail about things that have happened since July [just check past entries of blog] I'll sum it all up as a good way to unwind after finishing school, and as a good way of putting some of the past to rest. It's not good to forget the past, but being stuck in it isn't any better. Maybe I'll explain what I mean by that farther down the road.

The first part of the year was different from my experiences with school in the past. Being almost finished, I was able to choose courses that were interesting, and yet not too difficult. After four and a half years of a steadily increasing work load, I finished my last higher-level courses the previous fall, leaving me with more freedom and less stress. For instance, I was able to feed my cravings for politics by taking courses in international development, something much more applied than the other theoretical courses that were required by my program [economics and math].

The weirdest part of the year [and possibly my life] just happened to coincide with graduation. Since before I can remember, I was raised by my grandmother, and she was by far the most important person in my life. Still, she had been fading for some time, after having a heart attack last year. After I finished my classes in May, I went back to Nova Scotia to see her. The family knew that she didn't have much time left. After seeing her, it was obvious that she was in a tremendous amount of pain. The strange thing was that in the end, I was the last one to see her. She passed away a day after I got back to Halifax. For me, the most shocking thing was I was in seeing her, as I always expected to hear of her passing over the phone. As well, we were all very thankful that she had as much time as she did, as after her heart attack on Easter of 2003, she was given no more than three days to live, with no possibly of more than a month. Thirteen months later, she finally slipped away.

After the funeral, and before I was scheduled to come back to Montreal, I managed to squeeze in a quick tour of the Gaspesie, a peninsula in Quebec that runs north of New Brunswick. It's interesting because for the majority of Quebeckers that don't speak English, it's the only real tourist destination. Hence, the only place where I've backpacked through where I encountered very little English. Although the landscape was very beautiful, in the end it was the language quirk that made the trip stand out. I think my French improved at least two or three levels over the course of the week.

Although I'd finished all of the requirements for my degree, a teacher of mine from the past semester had told me about a summer course that sounded very interesting. So upon my arrival back in Montreal, I hit the books one last time, if you can even call it that. This course was just for pleasure, and in the end delivered in full. Called Comparative Religions, it was a graduate class that was more of a seminar than anything else. With ten students and five professors [each a specialist in one of the world's main religions], this was the sort of course that I'd always hoped to take since arriving at university. Unfortunately it didn't come until the very end, but at the same time, it was nice to be able to end on such a high note. To see especially the scholars of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam getting along to the point where they all became fast friends was incredibly encouraging. To get a full grasp of what this was like, consider that each professor was extremely religious (rabbi, minister, etc), and that the classes lasted 12 hours a day for two weeks straight. And then pick up a newspaper...

I started keeping this blog shortly after I finished the class, so I'll skip ahead to a quick word on recent happenings. Christmas was the first without my grandmother, and also the first that I've spent in Montreal. Yet, in the end, it was better than I'd ever expected. For the night of the 24th, I stayed with my friend Norm, and we did a make-shift orphans X-Mas [sorry, I couldn't resist :)]. The following evening, we were joined by two other friends for a Christmas of pool and foozeball. The rest of the week was fairly quiet. For New Year's, Norm and I wandered around the main entertainment district of Montreal, before settling on a cafe to do some people watching. Of the people that we saw come through, quite a few were comical, others not so much so, and still others were downright scary. Some looked like they were completely dead. What a way to start the new year...

To end this, I'm going to put my finger on something that I've been asked more times than I can count. Which, out of places that I've seen over the last year, was my favorite? Well, I've been thinking about this for a good five minutes now (!), and, in part just to be different, I'm going to have to go with Saskatchewan. In particular, Saskatoon. Perhaps because it was so underrated, but mostly because the people there were just so darned nice. For more on that, I think the blog entry that centered around Saskatoon was called Flatlands, as well as possibly the one that came after it.

-end, part 1-