I'm going to attempt to write an insightful and intelligible entry here, despite being sick and on powerful cold medication to combat said illness. I admittedly may need to revise it in a few days before posting it. So, apologies if my writing isn't up to its usual standards.
One thing I now realise that I dearly missed in the last few months are my peaceful mornings. There is nothing quite like that wonderful 7:30am morning light streaming in through the windows, a still and quiet house being illuminated and woken slowly by the rising sun, and a nicely caffeinated large mug of tea by my laptop as I read various headlines, analyse the latest breakthroughs in my field, and catch up on correspondance and writing. Although this morning, I admit I would much rather not be sitting next to a large box of kleenex and cup of cleansing tea for my sinuses and throat.
However, I also notice that there is something distinctly different, special about the mornings here in rural small town Saskatchewan than in the many other places I have lived in the last 2 years. For one, the extremely flat topography lends a certain unique quality about the sun, letting it stream practically horizontally in to windows and across the seemingly endless landscape, casting shadows and light to the white and dark high contrast backdrop that is present here for most of the year, creating unparalleled scenery, effects, and sense of surroundings. There is also an incomparable sense of stillness and tranquility one finds in the rural Canadian Prairies where the population density is a meagre 1.67 people per square kilometer that is difficult if not impossible to find elsewhere, even in a small town in the Swiss Alps. As a result, just sitting here at the kitchen table looking out the window almost has that meditative quality I cherished so much about hiking and walking in the Swiss Alps. Of course, at present moment this could partly be due to the cold medication.
I've been back in Redvers almost three full days now and I'm going on the third day of my cold. This parallel is no coincidence as I'm positive that it is my body manifesting a physical protest of going from the 15C to 20C brisk fall weather of Switzerland and Belgium to the -10C to 0C frigid dry cold, snow and wind of the Prairies. Not to mention the intense sleep deprivation and time upheaval. At any rate, with the medication hereand the fabulous English meds I have, as well as the inordinate amount of free time I have here, the cold is manageable. The only problem really is that my inability to drink at the moment is severely hindering my integration in to the social life here that is almost completely and totally centered on drinking. Not that they're all alcoholics mind you, it's just, well, its different here. But this is a topic for my next entry I believe.
Back to the topic at hand though. This intense sense of isolation and tranquility tends to understandably have an effect not only the air of mornings here, but on the very character of life and people. Just as when you are embracing the meditative nature of a hike, and time feels like it is ceasing to exists as you feel at one with nature and your surroundings, time has a very different conception here. Life is not centered around time as it is in many other places, but as you have an overwhelming sense of a vast abundance of time, both in hours, days, and of a lifetime itself, time does not seem to play an important role in structuring your day. Your day rather seems to flow naturally from one event to the other. Rather than a schedule and events planned accordingly, people characteristically tend to only have a sense of what they would like to accomplish in one day, leaving the flow of life to fill in the blanks.
Some people call it a "go with the flow" mentality. Here however, it seems to be a way of life. As you run in to people you know at every turn, be they friends, family, or acquaintances, and as everyone is incredibly friendly, due to the isolation and tranquility, small town nature, and Canadian nature itself, and finally, as everyone drives and has a sense (again due to the isolation) that a 5 hour drive is perfectly acceptable afternoon activity, anything is possible.
Indeed, brunch at the only restaurant in town may turn in to a country drive, which then turns in to visiting friends in another town, which then turns in to drinks with these friends, which then turns in to some crazy adventure stemming from a 'brilliant' idea. Or like just the other day, a friend coming over to visit in the early afternoon, turns in to a drive, which turns in to picking up another friend, which turns in to driving to the nearby town to get beer, which turns in to running in to friends that are drinking there, which turns in to many drinks with them, which ultimately turns in to a 'tour'. But again, this last example will be further analysed and discussed in my next blog.
The main point is that while I have always possessed this 'go with the flow mentality', and share it with a few non-Prairie friends such as Vera, here it is the norm. This makes it so that despite the obvious lack of viable entertainment and activities here, with an adventurous spirit and a bit of creativity, anything can happen.
But I have to end this entry here, on a somewhat ambiguous note, as the house has officially stirred and woken up, and my cold meds aren't letting me concentrate. This is of course the downside of the often deafening silence and calmness of the Prairies: Once you get used to this atmosphere and embrace it, as I do in the mornings, almost anything can seem like a disturbance. Particularly when everyone's blackberries start going off...
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Part 2 of Voyage au Canada
As I write this next entry, my head still feels hazy from the travel and my surroundings are a little ridiculous, but I have time to kill. But I feel that this just exemplifies the disaccord I'm about to try to explain. It's currently 7:47am, or maybe 6:47am, I'm not sure.. But either way, I've been up for close to 3 hours now, because as predicted, it felt like 11am my time, which is the latest I can ever manage to sleep in. So I'm running on 4 hours of sleep again. Or maybe 3, I'm not sure.. But with a 26 hour day between my last bit of 4 hour sleep. I think my body may start revolting soon. Either way, I digress (probably due to the lack of sleep). I'm currently sitting on the floor in a corner of a Holiday Inn room in Winnipeg. Of course, since it's very early, my brother Kyler, his girlfriend, and Jasmin who picked me up at the airport last night are all still sleeping. Since the sun also doesn't come up for another couple hours, and they are all fast asleep, its pitch black in the room, and the only source of light is my laptop screen and backlit keyboard emanating like a mysterious glow from the floor of the corner of the room. I even got dressed and did my hair/make-up to kill time, and went down to the front lobby to get the password for the wifi.
I feel like I'm viewing everything from an outsiders perspective. However, as I am technically an insider, that I'm privy to viewing the inside and core of the culture, but again from an outside point of view. Everything from the taste of the tap water, to the thickness of the air in the extremely well insulated and thick walled rooms, to the sheer amount of space and abysmal amount of people feel odd to me. I almost feel like I'm viewing Canada and Canadian culture for the first time. The accent sounds strange, the clothes and style, the speaking patterns, and the ridiculous friendliness, all seem foreign to me. I mean, my last flight from Toronto to Winnipeg had landed and we were waiting to disembark, the woman sitting next to me just starts talking to me about the BC and Montréal football game. Talking about the stats, the score, the strategies, the current team standings, the upcoming playoffs, etc. etc. I was beyond exhausted at this point, and don't care about football even on a good day, but she was so damned friendly that I had no choice but to give in and politely but distantly engage in the conversation.
Landing in Toronto was hard. Not only were the customs people pricks, thinking I was lying about my "story" (seriously though, why on earth would I make up doing a Masters Degree in International Conflict and Security?! If I was going to lie I'd pick something more plausible and recognized than that!), but of course the luggage was extremely late and the queues long. So it ended up taking me a good 2 hours to get through customs, pick up my luggage, make my way to the check in counter, drop things off, and proceed to my next gate. Once I was passed customs however, the staff were of course, beyond friendly. But friendly in a strange way. I mean strange probably in the sense that a foreigner does. To me they seemed almost unprofessional. Female security staff sitting on the counter in the bathroom texting, men standing in a circle jeering, staff walking down the halls in animated cell discussions, security scanning personel and luggage personel cracking jokes and jests left and right. Staff that seemed to be paid to stand there coming up to me to 'explain' to me where to go, when a) I had not asked them, b) knew where to go, and c) they gave me false directions for what I needed, as I had already asked someone. Yes, that first 'someone' was actually one of the few staff that seemed, well, for lack of a better word, 'normal' to me. She was very clearly not North American, I would guess German actually. And was an extremely professional, direct, polite, and curt kind of helpful.
When I finally got to a café next to my gate, everything was disconcerting. The way the staff (who looked and seemed to act like she was 15) took my order. The way the food looked. The fact that it tasted like deep fryer to me. Not deep fried food, chicken as it happened to be, but just deep fryer grease. The texture and taste, or lack thereof of the vegetables. Even Starbucks off all places didn't feel like it used to. The fact that they gave me two cups for me tea struck me. In Europe that practice is so unsustainable, I don't think I've ever seen it. However, the fact that I could give a slightly complex and customized order with absolutely no problems or confusion on their part was very nice.
I think one of the most noticeable disconcerting and 'foreign' things for me, was the space itself. It felt.. expansive, capitalist, and uncultured. First of all, because there was just so much of it. Even the spaces between the chairs at the gate waiting lounges was at least triple what it was in Amsterdam. The width of the hallways was at least double. Everything so open. And that was just inside the airport! I have yet to really be outdoors yet. But I feel like as open as it was, I felt the pressure of advertisements and 'sales' everywhere. It felt like things weren't there for your convenience, it was there for the convenience and pocket book of the owner. Europe tends to be the opposite extreme, where the 'convienice' tends to be lacking. But this was too much. Just things and advertisements selling more things absolute everywhere. And speaking of 'things' everywhere, I never noticed the sheer volume of Washrooms here! I mean, it's like their afraid people will piss themselves if they can't wait for the next one. Lastly, I don't mean 'uncultured' in an uncouth barbaric sort of way.. But, you can feel the youth of the place. The lack of history. In Europe history and culture basically beat you over the head they're so pervasive. After living in that practically culturally oppressive atmosphere for a while, here it feels just like a void of culture. I don't know how to explain it more than that.. Culture is obviously made up of many things, so it's hard to pinpoint certain things that give off this vibe.
Again, none of these observations are meant to be negative, or bad. Like I said, I just feel like I'm seeing them for the first time. That I'm landing with new eyes. Seeing things as a foreigner would. The differences are just striking. Désagréable parfois, it's true, but simply because I miss Europe terribly and here it all just feels so different. Even small innocuous and mundane things like background music also practically shouts of difference to me. It feels too young, the music that is. It feels like its catering to the youth specifically. And not simply the youth, but a capitalist, corporate American youth. But that's a whole other discussion I believe.
In all, the last half or third of my flight to Toronto sitting next to a Nigerian man that kept talking to me about my kindle while I was trying to read on it, the 6 hour waiting time in Toronto, and the 2h30 flight to Winnipeg all felt longer than the last. It felt like time just kept slowing down only to stand still about 1.5 hours before the flight to Winnipeg was scheduled to take off. I was so happy to finally get out of that last flight, pick up my luggage, and leave, just to be out of airports. But not relieved, not quite yet. As technically I am still travelling as we only made it to the Hotel that night, and I still have the 400km trip to Redvers to make. But thankfully for this leg of the journey, I have my brother who just picks up my 25+ kilo duffle bag and slings it over his shoulder like it was my handbag.
I feel like I'm viewing everything from an outsiders perspective. However, as I am technically an insider, that I'm privy to viewing the inside and core of the culture, but again from an outside point of view. Everything from the taste of the tap water, to the thickness of the air in the extremely well insulated and thick walled rooms, to the sheer amount of space and abysmal amount of people feel odd to me. I almost feel like I'm viewing Canada and Canadian culture for the first time. The accent sounds strange, the clothes and style, the speaking patterns, and the ridiculous friendliness, all seem foreign to me. I mean, my last flight from Toronto to Winnipeg had landed and we were waiting to disembark, the woman sitting next to me just starts talking to me about the BC and Montréal football game. Talking about the stats, the score, the strategies, the current team standings, the upcoming playoffs, etc. etc. I was beyond exhausted at this point, and don't care about football even on a good day, but she was so damned friendly that I had no choice but to give in and politely but distantly engage in the conversation.
Landing in Toronto was hard. Not only were the customs people pricks, thinking I was lying about my "story" (seriously though, why on earth would I make up doing a Masters Degree in International Conflict and Security?! If I was going to lie I'd pick something more plausible and recognized than that!), but of course the luggage was extremely late and the queues long. So it ended up taking me a good 2 hours to get through customs, pick up my luggage, make my way to the check in counter, drop things off, and proceed to my next gate. Once I was passed customs however, the staff were of course, beyond friendly. But friendly in a strange way. I mean strange probably in the sense that a foreigner does. To me they seemed almost unprofessional. Female security staff sitting on the counter in the bathroom texting, men standing in a circle jeering, staff walking down the halls in animated cell discussions, security scanning personel and luggage personel cracking jokes and jests left and right. Staff that seemed to be paid to stand there coming up to me to 'explain' to me where to go, when a) I had not asked them, b) knew where to go, and c) they gave me false directions for what I needed, as I had already asked someone. Yes, that first 'someone' was actually one of the few staff that seemed, well, for lack of a better word, 'normal' to me. She was very clearly not North American, I would guess German actually. And was an extremely professional, direct, polite, and curt kind of helpful.
When I finally got to a café next to my gate, everything was disconcerting. The way the staff (who looked and seemed to act like she was 15) took my order. The way the food looked. The fact that it tasted like deep fryer to me. Not deep fried food, chicken as it happened to be, but just deep fryer grease. The texture and taste, or lack thereof of the vegetables. Even Starbucks off all places didn't feel like it used to. The fact that they gave me two cups for me tea struck me. In Europe that practice is so unsustainable, I don't think I've ever seen it. However, the fact that I could give a slightly complex and customized order with absolutely no problems or confusion on their part was very nice.
I think one of the most noticeable disconcerting and 'foreign' things for me, was the space itself. It felt.. expansive, capitalist, and uncultured. First of all, because there was just so much of it. Even the spaces between the chairs at the gate waiting lounges was at least triple what it was in Amsterdam. The width of the hallways was at least double. Everything so open. And that was just inside the airport! I have yet to really be outdoors yet. But I feel like as open as it was, I felt the pressure of advertisements and 'sales' everywhere. It felt like things weren't there for your convenience, it was there for the convenience and pocket book of the owner. Europe tends to be the opposite extreme, where the 'convienice' tends to be lacking. But this was too much. Just things and advertisements selling more things absolute everywhere. And speaking of 'things' everywhere, I never noticed the sheer volume of Washrooms here! I mean, it's like their afraid people will piss themselves if they can't wait for the next one. Lastly, I don't mean 'uncultured' in an uncouth barbaric sort of way.. But, you can feel the youth of the place. The lack of history. In Europe history and culture basically beat you over the head they're so pervasive. After living in that practically culturally oppressive atmosphere for a while, here it feels just like a void of culture. I don't know how to explain it more than that.. Culture is obviously made up of many things, so it's hard to pinpoint certain things that give off this vibe.
Again, none of these observations are meant to be negative, or bad. Like I said, I just feel like I'm seeing them for the first time. That I'm landing with new eyes. Seeing things as a foreigner would. The differences are just striking. Désagréable parfois, it's true, but simply because I miss Europe terribly and here it all just feels so different. Even small innocuous and mundane things like background music also practically shouts of difference to me. It feels too young, the music that is. It feels like its catering to the youth specifically. And not simply the youth, but a capitalist, corporate American youth. But that's a whole other discussion I believe.
In all, the last half or third of my flight to Toronto sitting next to a Nigerian man that kept talking to me about my kindle while I was trying to read on it, the 6 hour waiting time in Toronto, and the 2h30 flight to Winnipeg all felt longer than the last. It felt like time just kept slowing down only to stand still about 1.5 hours before the flight to Winnipeg was scheduled to take off. I was so happy to finally get out of that last flight, pick up my luggage, and leave, just to be out of airports. But not relieved, not quite yet. As technically I am still travelling as we only made it to the Hotel that night, and I still have the 400km trip to Redvers to make. But thankfully for this leg of the journey, I have my brother who just picks up my 25+ kilo duffle bag and slings it over his shoulder like it was my handbag.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Part 1 of Voyage au Canada
As I start writing this entry, I’m sitting in the secure waiting area of Amsterdam Schipol Airport, enjoying my slightly melancholic departure from Europe while waiting to board my flight to Toronto. This entry is also partly dedicated to Vera, for reasons that will become clear, but also, to provide her with the “full detailed report” of my travel to analyse how long her ‘Vera magic’ and ‘Vera luck’ lasted, and if it indeed “knows no borders”.
So far, this has been one of the most delightful, smooth, completely stress-free departures mornings back to Canada I’ve ever had. Again, I’m mostly crediting all of this to Vera and her amazing luck. For those of you who don’t know, Vera has the most amazing timing and luck of anyone I’ve ever met. She claims it mostly happens when she’s with me, but I’m not sure if I believe her. She can leave for her flight no more than an hour before it departs, but always makes it. She can leave for a train 15 minutes before it leaves, but still makes it. She can procrastinate buying movie tickets until the point that they are sold out, and the movie starts in an hour, only to have someone walk up to her offering her tickets. These are of course, but a fragment of the examples. So this morning, like the wonderful friend that she is, Vera left her place 20 after 7 in the morning to arrive at my place for 8 to accompany me to the airport and help me with luggage, that ended up weighing about 75 kilos. Yes, that’s right, KILOS.
But before I get to that, everything went smoothly catching the bus to the airport, despite it being late, and taking an eternity to get there. Even the two Arabic men that caught the bus with us, asking us random questions about directions, bus times, etc. the entire way, made the journey more interesting. At one point, as Vera and I were speaking English and laughing about something random, at this point it was probably about the Wikipedia entry of Annessens, in French one of the men says to the other man that we are probably making fun of them. I guess he had forgotten that we had been speaking in French to them not more than 30 minutes earlier. And as Vera and I love to feign innocence and ignorance with languages, we played along, looking straight at them, and laughing to ourselves. In the end as we were getting off the bus, the one cracked some joke about my giant heavy duffle bag that Vera was struggling to get out of the luggage rack, asking Vera if she had her mother packed away in there. Lol. He also asked where we were going, I said Canada. He says, “Oh, that’s why your English is so good!”. I don’t understand this, and its not the first time someone has said that to me. Does my English, when I’m speaking to a European, take on a neutral accent? I mean, you would never hear someone going up to an American saying, “Oh you have such good English!”. If they do complement them on language is usually congratulating them for speaking something other than English.
So after arrived at the airport, leisurely with 1h30 until my flight departed, we unloaded my third bag, each heavier than the last of course, from the luggage locker, with the 50 cents we were missing from the nice latino behind us, and we proceeded to drop off my bags. I was very worried that, due to the number and weight of my bags, I would be paying 200, 300, or 400 euro to check them. So as soon as we got to the check in, I stuck up a very friendly conversation with the middle aged woman working this desk, complaining good natured about the difficulty of packing up ones life in to two suitcases. After this, we started chatting, her asking why on earth I was ‘moving’ to the Prairies. Then exclaiming, when she learned I was in fact going to Saskatchewan not Winnipeg, that her friend’s boyfriend is living in Saskatchewan! She said he is a physiotherapist named Serge with a beard. Lol. Sadly, I almost guarantee that someone I know, knows Serge. I told her this last bit as she was weighing my immense bags totally up to 75 kilos. Miraculously, she not only solely charged me 75 euro (the price of one excess baggage, completely dropping all the overweigh charges that would have totalled to an additional 150), not only waved the fee I would have had of RE-checking my bags in Toronto, but let Vera and I climb up behind her desk to transfer 4 kilos from my smaller bag to the larger ones to avoid having to check it and pay an additional 200 euro.
So Vera with her Mary Poppins skills, managed to fit 4 kilos worth of stuff in to my already swollen incredibly overweight bags. Vera and I said our goodbyes, I went through Security, and still made it to my gate precisely as people started queuing up to board. I even had time to stop along the way to grab a late breakfast of a croissant and orange juice, where the man waved the 85 cents of the 5,85 euro it came to, as I only had a 5 euro bill. Standing in line I met this very nice funny middle aged Swedish man, Oly, who I think was taken by me, as he tried convincing the Flight Attendant to change his seat to sit next to me, unsuccessfully of course.
The final sequence of my incredibly quite enjoyable departure and Vera luck of a morning was having my flight to Amsterdam land a full 25 minutes early, giving me the exact amount of time needed to leisurely make my way past Passport control to my gate at the other end of the Airport. Funnily enough, as my flight was so short, I landed in Amsterdam the same time that Vera arrived home from the airport. I think that says something about either KLM or Brussels Transit.
So I’m going to save this and continue later, as my flight is about to start taxiing now. But as part of our experiment in how far Vera’s influence will stretch, I will write again during my 6 hour layover in Toronto. I swear to god, if travelling with Vera means all travel is this easy and stress-free, I’m dragging her with me everywhere.
PS. Boarding the flight I’ve already started to see many farmer jeans paired with sneakers, crocs, and hoodies. I’m a little nervous already.
So far, this has been one of the most delightful, smooth, completely stress-free departures mornings back to Canada I’ve ever had. Again, I’m mostly crediting all of this to Vera and her amazing luck. For those of you who don’t know, Vera has the most amazing timing and luck of anyone I’ve ever met. She claims it mostly happens when she’s with me, but I’m not sure if I believe her. She can leave for her flight no more than an hour before it departs, but always makes it. She can leave for a train 15 minutes before it leaves, but still makes it. She can procrastinate buying movie tickets until the point that they are sold out, and the movie starts in an hour, only to have someone walk up to her offering her tickets. These are of course, but a fragment of the examples. So this morning, like the wonderful friend that she is, Vera left her place 20 after 7 in the morning to arrive at my place for 8 to accompany me to the airport and help me with luggage, that ended up weighing about 75 kilos. Yes, that’s right, KILOS.
But before I get to that, everything went smoothly catching the bus to the airport, despite it being late, and taking an eternity to get there. Even the two Arabic men that caught the bus with us, asking us random questions about directions, bus times, etc. the entire way, made the journey more interesting. At one point, as Vera and I were speaking English and laughing about something random, at this point it was probably about the Wikipedia entry of Annessens, in French one of the men says to the other man that we are probably making fun of them. I guess he had forgotten that we had been speaking in French to them not more than 30 minutes earlier. And as Vera and I love to feign innocence and ignorance with languages, we played along, looking straight at them, and laughing to ourselves. In the end as we were getting off the bus, the one cracked some joke about my giant heavy duffle bag that Vera was struggling to get out of the luggage rack, asking Vera if she had her mother packed away in there. Lol. He also asked where we were going, I said Canada. He says, “Oh, that’s why your English is so good!”. I don’t understand this, and its not the first time someone has said that to me. Does my English, when I’m speaking to a European, take on a neutral accent? I mean, you would never hear someone going up to an American saying, “Oh you have such good English!”. If they do complement them on language is usually congratulating them for speaking something other than English.
So after arrived at the airport, leisurely with 1h30 until my flight departed, we unloaded my third bag, each heavier than the last of course, from the luggage locker, with the 50 cents we were missing from the nice latino behind us, and we proceeded to drop off my bags. I was very worried that, due to the number and weight of my bags, I would be paying 200, 300, or 400 euro to check them. So as soon as we got to the check in, I stuck up a very friendly conversation with the middle aged woman working this desk, complaining good natured about the difficulty of packing up ones life in to two suitcases. After this, we started chatting, her asking why on earth I was ‘moving’ to the Prairies. Then exclaiming, when she learned I was in fact going to Saskatchewan not Winnipeg, that her friend’s boyfriend is living in Saskatchewan! She said he is a physiotherapist named Serge with a beard. Lol. Sadly, I almost guarantee that someone I know, knows Serge. I told her this last bit as she was weighing my immense bags totally up to 75 kilos. Miraculously, she not only solely charged me 75 euro (the price of one excess baggage, completely dropping all the overweigh charges that would have totalled to an additional 150), not only waved the fee I would have had of RE-checking my bags in Toronto, but let Vera and I climb up behind her desk to transfer 4 kilos from my smaller bag to the larger ones to avoid having to check it and pay an additional 200 euro.
So Vera with her Mary Poppins skills, managed to fit 4 kilos worth of stuff in to my already swollen incredibly overweight bags. Vera and I said our goodbyes, I went through Security, and still made it to my gate precisely as people started queuing up to board. I even had time to stop along the way to grab a late breakfast of a croissant and orange juice, where the man waved the 85 cents of the 5,85 euro it came to, as I only had a 5 euro bill. Standing in line I met this very nice funny middle aged Swedish man, Oly, who I think was taken by me, as he tried convincing the Flight Attendant to change his seat to sit next to me, unsuccessfully of course.
The final sequence of my incredibly quite enjoyable departure and Vera luck of a morning was having my flight to Amsterdam land a full 25 minutes early, giving me the exact amount of time needed to leisurely make my way past Passport control to my gate at the other end of the Airport. Funnily enough, as my flight was so short, I landed in Amsterdam the same time that Vera arrived home from the airport. I think that says something about either KLM or Brussels Transit.
So I’m going to save this and continue later, as my flight is about to start taxiing now. But as part of our experiment in how far Vera’s influence will stretch, I will write again during my 6 hour layover in Toronto. I swear to god, if travelling with Vera means all travel is this easy and stress-free, I’m dragging her with me everywhere.
PS. Boarding the flight I’ve already started to see many farmer jeans paired with sneakers, crocs, and hoodies. I’m a little nervous already.
UP NEXT....
Toronto and first impressions
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