It kind of felt like it was the Armageddon. We were huddled in the windowless kitchen of the hostel–like a bright, unusually cheerful bunker. Everyone sat around drinking, discussing their plans for the future, trading exit plans and information. We were all glued to the hostel’s four computers and our cell phones. In between our frantic clicking and texting, we ranted out loud to each other about the sheer incredulousness of it all. Except there was no fire ball–everyone’s flight got cancelled because of an Icelandic volcano, that’s all.

For the two-week Easter holiday I decided to go to Spain, a glaring omission in my European travels. I started in Granada and continued to Madrid. On Wednesday April 17, I arrived in Barcelona–my final stop before home. In vacation mode, I had no access to a television and was intermittently reading the news. At first it seemed like a few people had told me their flights were cancelled because of some volcano thing. They all seemed to be trying to go to the U.K., so the full impact of consequences didn’t fully register with me. I was impervious to that thought I could be affected by it. By Friday, there was enough talk about it that I decided to check the status of my flight from Girona to Karlsruhe-Baden, which was scheduled to leave Sunday morning. The Ryanair website assured me that while all flights to northern France and northern Germany were cancelled, mine would be okay. I went about my tourist existence without giving it a second thought. Then Saturday rolled around and I could no longer be so high and mighty. All flights to France and Germany had been cancelled until Tuesday. In an instant I was in the same predicament as everyone else and scrambling to find out how to get out and where to stay until I did.

As the sheer size of the chaos dawned on me, so did the plethora of options to get back, each with their unique difficulties. I was able to rebook my flight for Wednesday but waiting for it meant putting myself up in Barcelona until then and risking the possibility the flight could be cancelled again. (Which, in hindsight, it was.) But would there any room left in Barcelona’s hostels or had the spaces already been gobbled up already by travelers whose flights were cancelled before mine? How could I get home short of spending hundreds of euros or spending an entire day on a bus?

Some of these questions answered themselves. The website for the Spanish train system, useless as it ever was, told me they were fully booked. The Eurolines bus system didn’t have any buses leaving Barcelona to any place near Strasbourg until the end of the week. Those who had made the trek to the airport, train and bus stations, told me they were flooded with people. Not speaking Spanish was enough to deter me from going in person but having another excuse eased my guilt for not trying. I felt like as long as I got across the border to France, things would be okay. Still, flying was out of the question, work was starting up again on Monday, I had less than 100 euros in my bank account and no idea how to get back.

Over the course of my vacation, I had been a little shy to announce myself as a fellow resident to the hoardes of other French tourists. But now, the French became my countrymen. I heard wafts of French drift up from the lobby while I sat in front of the hostel computer trying to find a solution. I sprang up, figuring that French people must need or know how to get back. I decided to commit one of my most hated traveler faux-pas: asking someone’s nationality as a conversation starter. In my defense, this wasn’t a way to break the ice; this was desperate. This was how I found out the SNCF, the French train system, was still on strike. Two weeks ago when I left France, they went on strike. At the time, I figured it was another one of those random (and frequent) one-day strikes and didn’t even bother to check what regions or routes were participating. Two weeks later I had completely forgotten about it.

In a word, I was overwhelmed. The only thing I felt like I could do was call my parents and ask them what to do. It was then I realized a few things. The first was that I only had six euros of credit left on my phone and it would be best used to try to find a way back to Strasbourg. A call home was a luxury I couldn’t afford. The second, and more chilling of the two, was that my parents couldn’t help me. Yes, they could give me the money to get out and tide myself over until I could get out. In that sense, I was never in a dire situation. But they couldn’t help me figure out what to do any more than I could. What could my parents tell me about the best way to bus or train back? In fact, I could get myself back faster and cheaper than if they bankrolled all my expenses of staying Barcelona. I knew better than my parents did and that was weird. So I sent them an email instead.

After spending hours searching for a solution and finding none, I resigned myself to having a drink with my fellow travelers. At the time of going to bed I had found a flight for Wednesday, a place to stay for free for at least one night, a few leads on other ways to get out and other potential free places to stay but no plan. Right before I headed to bed someone asked me what I was going to do tomorrow. I thought for a second and answered, honestly, “I think I’m going to sleep in.”

One of the leads came to fruition the next morning through Covoiturage, a French rideshare website. In broken French, over the hostel clamour, I found a drive from Barcelona to Lyon for 45€ that evening. My drivers were kind enough to offer me a place to sleep at their apartment since we wouldn’t arrive at Lyon until after midnight. This is how I found myself in a tiny two-door car with two French people, an elderly Spanish woman and a Quebecois for six hours. By the time I woke up in their apartment the next morning, train service had resumed to normal and it was just a hop, skip and five hour train ride from Lyon to Strasbourg.

I had always thought I was incredibly fortunate that, up until now, all my travels had gone according to plan. But now I’m not so sure if that’s a good thing. While everyone in the hostel was frantic and complaining, it was a strange bonding experience. As an individual, it was a moment of self-discovery. When things slip out of your control, you find out what you’re made of. Do you break down? Do you sulk and Google for the entire night if you can’t find a solution? Do you resume routine as fast as you possibly can? After close to three years of living abroad and traveling, this experience brought things out of me I didn’t know I had. Somewhere along the way I picked up how to solve problems and speak French. I can take care of myself and it only took a volcano in Iceland to erupt for me to realize that.

posted by vicky at 6:29 pm under Europe, Spain
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Wintzenheim – 24/02/2010 

posted by vicky at 12:22 am under Europe, France
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Today I finally understood why Albert Camus could write about such length about “the absurd.” He’s French. Of course this revelation came after a dalliance with the Office of Immigration and Integration. The way things work in this country is so preposterous sometimes, it could only be described as absurd. Sometimes the people, offices and bureaucracy make no sense whatsoever. On days when when these things converge and conspire against you, you can’t even feel upset, just numb. And you honestly just can’t be angry at the absurd.

Here is a list of things that irritate me about France:

-A general lack of communication between people/organizations. This is the worst and most evident when you deal with any government-run organization. New laws get passed and the people whose jobs are to deal with the general public have not received or read the memo. Of course, there are always people who are up-to-date and know what their doing but even they will tell you that getting things done or approved is a matter of luck. Different French people give you different answers to the same question. In fact the same person will give you different answers the same question. The official word that is posted on government websites takes ages to trickle down and come into effect in real life. The best people to turn to with your questions are other foreigners. Somehow they are always-up-to-date on new laws and procedures and have experiences to share about how they convinced French people that they weren’t just making these things up.

-The inability to say “I don’t know.” Instead of admitting they don’t know the answer to your question about how to do something or who to see, French people like to send you off to someone else. Sometimes this is done under the guise of telling you this is the person you who can help you. Other times, when it is honest, they send you to the person they think will know the answer. Inevitably, this person will not know the answer, do the same and pass you along. It’s the French version of pinball.

-Everything is more complicated than it needs to be.No one does this better than the French. If I need to deal with bureaucracy, I need to leave the house with every single piece of paper I have to prove my identity and whatever else they feel they need to know about me. Every single piece of paper requires a stamp or another piece of paper from someone else. Why not make it easy for everyone and making ridiculous and irrelevant demands? I complain about red tape in Canada but lately, I’ve found myself saying, “This would never happen in Canada.” It’s a little sad when you grow to appreciate your home only by living through a lower standard elsewhere.

-Opening hours of offices/stores/organizations. If you want to get something done you either need to get up at 8.00 or do it after lunch. The entire country shuts down at 12.00 and does not start up again until at least 13.30. (Sometimes it takes until 15.00 to get going again.) Everyone is on their lunch break except for restaurants, bakeries and some of the bigger stores. Even some supermarkets close for lunch. This collective shut down makes it impossible to run errands during your lunch break. Things re-open for a few hours and only to close between the hours of 16.30-20.30, depending what it is. Most things are closed by 18.00. Naturally, nothing except restaurants and cafes are open on Sunday. And how many times have I showed up at the library on Monday to try and return some things only to realize it’s closed?

-The lack of English speaking people. Yes, I know I came to France to speak French. But when I’m talking to the director of Office of Immigration, it’s not a language exchange okay? I’d prefer things to be clear than to practice my speaking. How do people who don’t speak English get hired for jobs that revolve around dealing with foreign people? It’s a running joke among my roommate (who is on exchange from Spain) and her friends that the international relations officer for their department doesn’t speak English. It’s kind of funny, except not.

-Grèves. Far be for me to tell people they can’t strike but the way the French go on strike makes no sense to me. Workers for the trains, schools, libraries go on strike for a day and then resume normal service. How does this help you get your demands? Yes, I am inconvenienced but too briefly to get really angry about it. The exception happened this week when the cafeteria workers went on strike and German food day was canceled as a result. A few days before the strike, the principal made a cheery announcement about it over the PA and told everyone to bring sandwiches.

In the interest of fairness, here is a list of things I like about France and wish existed in Canada.

-Opening hours of offices/stores/organizations. The fact that the whole country shuts down for lunch is a double-edged sword. It really bothered me at first and does remain an inconvenience sometimes. But there is something incredibly egalitarian about such strictly enforced dining hours. Sure you can’t do anything during your lunch hour, but neither can anyone else. Everyone is required to take a nice, long, unrushed break. I also feel like the principle applies for the month of August when the whole country goes on vacation. The French are on to something with this almost universal vacation time. It’s only an inconvenience if you’re not on holiday with them (i.e. if you’re visiting France from abroad on your own holiday and nothing is open.)

-Overwhelming number of student discounts. If you’re under 26, you’re golden. You can buy a train discount card that gets you up to 50% off. In Strasbourg, as a student or young worker you can get a culture discount card that gets you into the movies, theatre orchestra, opera, museums and concerts for free or super cheap. Unemployed people get discounts too.

-The holidays. The French school system has tons of holidays, many for no apparent reason (at least to me.) So far I’ve had week and a half  off for the Toussaint holiday (October), two weeks for Christmas, two coming up in February (informally known as the French ski vacation) and two more for Pacques (Easter) in April. I will have been on (paid) vacation for two out of the seven months of my work contract.

-The CAF. This is a program that refunds the rent of low-income people. One of the really interesting things is there is no sense of stigma like there is with applying for welfare in North America. They calculate how much money to give back to you based on whether you live with roommates, if your apartment is furnished, how much money you make etc. All students are on it and actually know all the little tricks to get more money back (like pretending you are in a common-law marriage with one of your roommates, regardless of gender.) Actually this entry is tentative in the “like” category and is pending the day when I actually see this money make it into my account. (If ever.)

-Telecommunications. With basically any provider you can get television, internet and a landline for 30 euros. The kicker is you can call landlines in certain countries for free! Canada, United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and all of the EU, aka all the countries where I could ever possibly need to call, I can call landlines for free. Recently, I found out that I can call cell phones for free in North America too, since there’s no distinction in the phone codes between cell phones and landlines. When it comes to cell phones, you’re also allowed to cancel your contract at no cost if you can prove you’re moving to a place where your company can’t provide service. This is unbelievable when you come from a country where a town 20 minutes away with the same area code is considered long distance. Don’t even get me started on owning a cell phone in Canada.

Whenever things aren’t going my way, I tend to blame France, the easy scapegoat. I try to be as fair and realistic about these experiences as possible but there is no denying that the French have their own special way of doing things. If you want the good, you have to accept the bad–merde and all.

posted by vicky at 8:06 pm under Europe, France
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Once I get settled into a city, it can be hard to get me to leave it. I attribute it to Torontonian syndrome. This means always paying lip service when friends suggest you visit them in Ottawa or Kitchener, but secretly loathing the idea of taking a Greyhound out there. Those who live downtown are even worse and balk at the idea of getting out to the 905. Somehow this complex has dogged me during my stints living in the Netherlands and Taiwan. But this weekend, for the first time since arriving in France, I traveled outside of the Alsace region. I took two high-speed trains across France all the way to Rennes. Of course it would take a music festival to get me out west. And the Transmusicales Festival, or Les Trans as the French call it, was a good enough reason for me.

When I decided to do this program, I was convinced I was going to go to Nantes for the longest time. I had met a few Nantais during my travels and was charmed by their friendliness and impossibly cute French accents while speaking English. I thought if they spoke like that in English, if I learned French in Nantes, maybe I would sound like them. In the end, I chose to rank the Strasbourg academy as my number one choice, instead of Nantes. Since then there has always been a little pang of longing for what could have been if I had chosen to live in the Brittany region instead of the Alsace. (And yes I know Nantes is no longer a part of Brittany but I’m talking historically/culturally.)

Even though the festival was in Rennes and not Nantes, I figured this was my chance to see Celtic-influenced French culture (as opposed to the brand of German influenced French culture over here.) I never cease to be amused by the pride the French have for their home region (or their disdain for Paris.) In the Alsace, people tell me it’s not French at all and the Bretons were only too eager to tell me the same thing. One of my students told me how in “Little Brittany,” the Bretons eat crepes and wash it down with cider. Oh cider, I thought, how very English. Here, you will never hear the words choucroute or brezel without the words “regional specialty” following them. I know these things as saukerkraut and pretzel (or at least bretzen, since I learned the German word first.) I love how these regional specialties are just things that, for me, come from other countries.

I was surprised to see quite a few half-timbered style houses in Rennes since I thought they were characteristically Alsatian. However the ones in Rennes looked more rickety and purposely historic while Alsace ones are painted pleasant pastel colours and look like they come out of  fairy-tales. While I thought living in one of these houses in 2009 is quaint (Sélestat has its share), it’s nothing compared to the typical Breton digs. With the celtic culture, comes stone houses and medieval villages that people continue to live in.I took a little excursion to Dinan on my last day in Brittany and it blew my mind that medieval castle is only minutes away from the downtown. I know it’s all perfectly normal to the French but the North American suburbanite in me is still amazed at the idea of growing up with among this kind of scenery.

The vibe from Rennes itself was the opposite of old age. I knew it had a reputation as a student city but was surprised by the extent of it. I had inklings that Strasbourg felt a bit like an old person’s city but going to Rennes confirmed it. Rennes is an anomaly (like the university towns Kingston or London in Ontario) in France because of the disporportionate number of students it has compared to residents. It immediately felt much younger to me as soon as I looked around. There were university students everywhere and the clothing stores were noticeably more interesting to me than the ones in Strasboug. Another thing Rennes has a surplus of is police presence. Around downtown, especially at night, I saw on average seven carloads of police wearing special protective gear while patrolling. I was told this is normal in Rennes in order to control drunken students when they spill out onto the street after last call. Since it was Trans (which brings in its share of drunken tourists) it was only natural that they beef up the force.

The festival itself was a fantastic atmosphere. It was held at Parc Expo, a collection of airport hangars just outside the city. Each hangar had its own line-up and one hangar was a dedciated bar, lounge and water bar. There was a consistent crowd of people who spilled on the tarmac to get fresh air after dancing or to smoke (but those might be the same thing for the French.) The reason that I came to Trans was to see Fever Ray. This tour was the first and only tour for the group and Rennes was the second-to-last show. While I’ve never seen The Knife (and probably never will since they refuse to tour again) seeing Fever Ray was the next best thing. I was so close to the stage I could smell the incense, but not close enough to get a good look at Karin Dreijer, the singer of both bands. The Knife are famous for their stage fright and standoffish ways and seeing Fever Ray confirmed this. Dreijer was positioned half way back on the stage, clad in full on black-and-white face makeup and a witch-like robe. The antique lamps surrounding her and her equally spookily-dressed bandmates flashed while smoke swirled around stage. It was dark, slightly unnerving and great.

I only planned on going to the festival for one day but I unexpectedly came into a ticket the night after, the techno night. Commanding most, if not all the of the hype, was Mr Oizo–best known in North American as that fuzzy yellow bear puppet, a.k.a Flat Eric. I was most excited to see the French reception for their homeboy. By the end, my companion and I had come to the same conclusion. The first half-hour was great but it really petered out by the end. Significant numbers of the crowd were leaving and those who stayed was just because it was, well, Oizo. I was pleased that he played “Blood on our Hands” by Death From Above 1979. (It was the Justice remix, for the record. It’s a fine remix but is it mandatory that everything is Frenched up?) At times it felt like he was falling back on the popularity of other bands to keep the crowd interested. How else do you explain playing two Daft Punk songs in one set? The highlight of the set, hands down,  was the sample he made with a robot voice. It gleefully (as much as a robot can be) declared to the crowd that: “Nous avons le grippe A” (We have the H1N1 flu) and “Nous allons tous mourir à Rennes” (We are all going to die in Rennes.) A cheap trick for sure, but it worked. But hey, to paraphrase Morrisey, if ten-tonne truck crashes into us, to die in Rennes, well..it might be a better way to go than in Strasbourg.

posted by vicky at 11:08 pm under Europe, France, Music
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Two weeks I ago I taught my class before the one-and-a-half week Toussaint holiday. This terminale (the final year of high school) class was the first class I ever taught. It consists of mostly boys who told me about the virtues of pimp rap during our first session together. They were opinionated, funny and pretty good at English so for the next two weeks I looked forward to the vacation and teaching them again. To reward them for being the most animated class, I took printed out the lyrics to “Gangsterz,” a song by English rapper Wiley, blasted it several times and had them play fill-in-the-blanks. This activity meant I got to explain what it meant to “squash the beef” or when “the shells start spraying.” It was an amusing way to end the day, the first two weeks and to send me off on my holiday to London.

My last stop on my backpacking tour last summer was two weeks in London and I absolutely fell in love. After a month and a half traveling nonstop, it was a relief and luxury to have such a long time to spend in one place (especially since I had one friend kind enough to let me stay with her for the entire trip.) This time coming from Strasbourg to London, I felt a culture shock that I never anticipated.

While I’m frequently clueless in France because of a language barrier or the French way of doing things, London makes sense to me but is so big it becomes a mess of logic. The quintessential London experience for me is going through a series of false starts before I finally head down the right road I meant to follow. Londoners are pretty useless when it comes to giving directions. The city is so big even people who have lived there their entire lives plead clueless when asked how to go somewhere. The sheer number of people constantly milling around made me feel claustrophobic. I remember feeling the same way last year but somehow this trip, the feeling was much more intense. Somehow it felt like I had come from the countryside and was being overwhelmed by the city. I had obstained from buying winter clothes in France because I knew I was going to London. When I worked in flagship stores in downtown Toronto, we got people driving from small towns in Ontario and even from Ottawa to do shopping. I had always looked at those customers with amusement and a little pity; travelling so far to Toronto, all just for a shopping trip. And now, here I was, one of those people.

Both times in London I’ve been pumped full of stories by the people who live here about the dangers of the city. Last time it was my friend’s roommate who was off-work during my visit because he was recovering from having his jaw bashed in a pipe in a random act of violence. What happened to him was scary but seeing how much he enjoyed telling the story and watching him smoke weed to cure the pain lessened the impact of his story a little. This time most of my trip with my friend Mark’s apartment in Walthamstow, a borough in northeast London. There I faced foxes running through the streets and in our backyard at night. Bulletholes in windows in windows of stores were pointed out to me during our hurried walks through the streets. I earned the respect and awe of Mark and his roommate when I returned home at 2 a.m. after taking the night bus alone.

Maybe the most bewildering part of my trip was the culture of poverty that exists in London when you look past tourist hotspots of Zone 1. Houses aren’t billed for their gas consumption but instead you top-up your gas credit like a mobile phone. This is why during the first morning of my stay in Walthamstow I had an icy shower and couldn’t turn on the stove to cook. As spoiled and naive as it sounds, the concept of not having credit automatically extended to me is strange. When people here forget or have no money, they just have to do without. Something so basic and essential, like gas, for me, was just always, by some mysterious force, just there.

I regret now not taking any pictures of Walthamstow. It’s the kind of place no one would take a picture of for aesthetic purposes, which is why I forgot. (Apparently, it’s also not unheard of to get jumped for your expensive technology there.) The only reason anyone would is to document what normal London is outside of the glamourous bits. It’s unremarkable, dirty and even ugly. I’ve been told by teachers that my neighbourhood in is dodgy but Strasbourg wouldn’t know dodgy if it got bit in the face by it.

What people will give up and put up with to live in London is both sad and admirable. Surprisingly, living in Strasbourg is slightly cheaper than Toronto. While I don’t earn much or live in luxury, I can live comfortably. People in London pay twice as much as I do for half (or less) of what I have here. After leaving, I could feel already how more culturally alive I felt there. I found myself in an old factory on a Wednesday at what may or may not have been “a dubstep rave.” On a lazy Sunday I sat in on an afternoon of children’s activities at the Victoria & Albert museum. I made my own bejewelled Indian headpiece and followed barefoot women  in saris in a parade around Hellenic sculptures. When I flipped through a copy of Time Out and saw both Morrissey and Brett Anderson (of Suede) were playing on the same night, I really felt like I was at the centre of the universe. I didn’t go to either, but I could have and that felt amazing.

posted by vicky at 8:36 pm under England, Europe, France, Teaching English
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Since I arrived I’ve been avoiding the question about what I think about France. Each time I answer, ” I’ve only been here for (such and such time.) It’s too early to tell. Ask me later.” Then one week grew into two, two grew into three and now I’ve been here a full month and I still have no idea. My hesitance isn’t out of politeness, so I don’t have to utter secret grievances. One month has gone by in France and I have no idea where it went.

I’ve spent the last month not having much of a life while I tried to get my life set up. Going to Ikea, making appointments at the bank, buying a bicycle: these were the building blocks I decided were absolutely crucial for the life I was trying to construct. Indeed, I am grateful for my dish rack and being able to bike the library. Now comes the hard part: making friends (foreign and local), learning the language and mustering up the courage to teach a room full of teenagers English 12 times a week.

For the first time in months I’m waking up at 7 a.m. regularly and I’m back to the commuter life. This time, instead of waking up early to catch the bus and subway from Markham to Toronto, I take the train from Strasbourg to Sélestat.The 20 minute train ride is a little deceiving since it’s about 10 minute walk each way to the station (from my apartment to the Strasbourg station and from the Sélestat station to the school), plus buffer time to catch the train. Although I can’t deny that staring out the window at the Alsatian countryside is a little more enjoyable than taking the TTC at rush hour.

I feel completely wiped after a few hours teaching at school, even though I only teach for a few hours a day. I work with nine teachers this semester (which runs until mid-January), teaching 12 classes. About half of the classes are oral examination classes where students read an article or look at a picture and then make a 10-minute presentation about it to me. Usually I’m lucky if they last three minutes. To get them to the 10-minute mark usually takes a lot of prompting on my part. I have ask countless questions about the same boring articles about the economy or the workplace. This is all in an attempt to get more than one sentence at a time out of them so I can fill out an evaluation form.

In the other half of the classses, I actually teach. Teachers send me one-half of their students (usually from 10 to 15 pupils) to my classroom. The following week, I teach the other half of the class the same lesson. This means I see the kids twice a month and really have no idea about their names. I’m not sure what’s worse: being given boring course material (oral exams) or having to come up with my own for these classes. The class I dread the most is the one where the teacher asked me to teach about journalism (since it’s my “area of expertise.”) Being asked to condense four years of university into lessons for French teenagers made me I feel like I was in over my head and slightly insulted at the same time.

Coming up with my own lesson plans is probably one of the worst homework assignments I’ve ever had. Finding things with educational value, a cultural exchange aspect and engaging for myself and the students is difficult but possible. Even if I am lucky enough to have a 17-year-old who does want to speak, usually, inevitably you will hit a language wall. Every day I will meet this expression–the one where the initial excitement to having something to say turns frustration and then to embarrassment while they struggle to find the words. I can only look on and try to coax it out of them by wearing my most encouraging and patient face and offering a selection of my words as to what I think they’re saying. Sitting on this side of the teacher’s desk, being looked at in this way, makes me feel like a fraud. Every time I come see this look, I think to myself in English, I know exactly how you feel.

posted by vicky at 10:14 pm under Europe, France, Learning French, Sélestat, Teaching English
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I’m sitting inside a Peyton and Byrne watching the traffic of Euston Road and rain pass. The café is housed in Wellcome Collection, a kind of art gallery and museum currently hosting an exhibit about the human body. I had to take a window seat because running the power cord for the laptop from a table to the wall is a safety hazard.

Last night I took a five-minute cab ride from Madame Tussaud’s to Bi Ying’s flat. It’s the same museum that we made a special request and spent well over £20 under the impression we’d see a wax Spice Girls exhibit three years ago. The last time I recall seeing Bi Ying was at my birthday party in June last year.

This is the final stop in my seven-month long trek unless you count: Eindhoven, the only Dutch city to which Ryanair flies; Utrecht, where I have to pick up my luggage; and the airport in Amsterdam. (I don’t.) Most cities I allotted three days (plus or minus one depending on the city) but I’ve got two weeks here.

On my walk to get to the cappucino and wireless, I saw a bus that was going to Mile End and I thought of that Pulp song on the Trainspotting soundtrack. I think I’m going to like it here.

posted by vicky at 12:58 pm under England, Europe
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 Denmark was a last minute addition to our itinerary. We were due to kick off our journey in Hamburg on July 1, a day after my exchange ended. But when our teachers ended school two weeks early, I jumped at chance to complete the Scandinavian trinity. On our first day, we decided to extend our four day trip by one day and shave a day off Hamburg.

The first thing we did after unloading our monster backpacks, the first order of business was renting a bike. We blew a third of our budget on these (200 kroner) but it was worth every last ore. While the number of bike stores here is astounding, there are definitely significantly fewer bikes on the road compared to the Netherlands. In four days of biking, I can only recall one time where I was stopped at a light with more than five people. The traffic system makes a lot more sense here than the Netherlands and apparently bike theft is not nearly as rampant.

Sunday, we headed to the hippie hamlet of Christiania. The town nestled in the thick of downtown Copenhagen is Kensington Market on psychadelic drugs, equally dependent and disgusted by the voyeurs fascinated by their hallucinations. While its residents shun society, it also has bars with slot machines and mass-made merchandise. We had the fortune of coming during a summer music festival (and the misfortune of coming during the Roskilde Festival.) It feels like the only place in the world where you can see a Nikki Six clone fronting the type of band that would cover Springsteen and Bowie while hippie chicks danced wildly in front of them. Or where a Danish hippie selling ethnic jewellery get into a completely non-sensical argument with his female Thai partner and end in them making out wildly at their salesbooth. Or where an old woman knitting hats explains to you that the natives from Greenland have drinking problems but they love them here at Christiania anyway.

The extra day we put towards a day trip to Helsingor, better known as Elsinor in Hamlet. The trip was purely to pay hommage to the high school curriculum in Ontario. The royal apartments were surprisingly boring (probably because all the riches of the Kronborg Castle were plundered by the Swedes in one of their many wars;) All the action lay in the casemates where the felons, soldiers and all-around general ruffians cavorted. The tour was less literary, more medieval but one of the few times history has come to life for me.

Copenhagen is the most livable city I have been to yet. The ex-pats I have been do not seem too enthused about the Danes, whom they describe as cold and reserved but I am not discouraged. This city makes the list of places I would want to live, hands down.

posted by vicky at 10:39 pm under Denmark, Europe
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Nationalistic sports events always reminds me of my favourite bit of “Brave New World.”During the orgy, which was the fashion of the time, Bernard chants along in lip service. He wants to be lost and completely devoted the moment but finds himself on the outside, pretending to be as entranced as everyone else. This is how I’ve always felt about sports. Other than the fact that I don’t follow any, when big events arise (i.e. global football tournaments) I’m always at a loss for who to cheer for.

I don’t want to cheer for China and I’m not even sure Canada has a team, much less qualify. While everyone else in Toronto is driving up and down Bloor Street waving their ancestral flags, I look on in bemusement. Last World Cup I debated supporting either England or Sweden. Sure, colonial ties to England is reason enough (though not a good one) to root for them but they have a strong enough foothold in Toronto that they’re never underdogs. And Sweden is just my random Scandophile choice, just to keep things random.

But not this time friends, this time I’ve finally I have a team to cheer for. The choice is obvious, my country of residence: The Netherlands. Today was the first game for the Dutch and I went at it in full-force. I had no intention of dressing in orange, cheering for the Dutch or even watching the game until I biked around town the day of the game. Everywhere there were orange-clad people going about their daily business. It wasn’t like Queen’s Day where they were outlandishly costumed (at least not until near game time) but a lot of people were riding their bikes, buying their groceries and walking around town in casual orange gear.

As far as I have seen the Dutch are pretty reserved. Three goals against Italy later, they were more rowdy than on Queen’s Day. As someone unable to comprehend Dutch, I am now capable of doing the “Van Der Sar” chant to cheer on the goalie. The Dutch were, uncharacteristically, outgoing and making contact with people they didn’t know. They were smiling and hi-fiving all around Havana, the latin-themed dance club we watched the game at. It was all casually happy until we left the club for the streets and witnessed, what I believe, is just the beginning of the chaos to come.

Hundreds of people flooded into Neude, the town square. They clogged the streets and danced in the middle, blocking traffic. Any vehicle with the misfortune of passing by parted the sea of people, only to have their windows banged on and be screamed at them. Of course, these were mostly buses and taxis as the average Dutch person has more sense than to try to drive through the main street after a football victory, unless they are hooligans too. The rabbit statue, a town landmark, was adorned in a Dutch football scarf and subject to being climbed over by overzealous celebrators. Ahem.

I’m a notorious bandwagon jumper when it comes to sports; I won’t deny it. I only watch during during finals. But watching Canada’s favourite sport and trying to root for the Leafs is a lost cause. So I’m going to jump onto the bandwagon of another sport completely. At this moment I am in Europe, during the UEFA Cup and cheering on a winning team, even if it is their first game. And for better or worse, I understand a little better what being lost in a shouty moment is all about.

posted by vicky at 11:41 pm under Europe, Netherlands
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The experience of going to and being in Bergen, the second biggest Norwegian city and gateway to the western fjords, made me yearn for the past–my childhood and the kind I’ve only known in movies and books. The six-hour train ride from Oslo to Bergen was more amazing than enthusiastic endorsements from anyone I talked to about it. The journey, which has been voted one of the best in the world, is one through a snow-capped mountain-scape dotted with snowboarders being pulled along by kites and crosses paths with running streams and then through mountains with covered in lush green.

It was like being in a real-life intersection of Michel Gondry music videos. If you took the musical train ride in Chemical Brothers’ “Star Guitar” and implanted the scenery in Bjork’s “Jóga,” this is what it would look it. Those are two lofty works to hold something up to but really, that comparison is just a starting point to describe the visual experience that is the train ride. It’s been a long time since I just sat gaping at something new. It was nice to know I’m still capable of doing that. In the age of discount flight, we forget or have never experienced the joy of train travel. For the first time I thought I would have loved to lived in the golden days of the steam engine. The idea of picking up rectangular luggage, covered in locations stickers, off the train and being waited for at central station has never been so appealing to me. The dining carriage, the hat box, the view to keep me company: those were the days.

While I already knew about Norway’s long, dark winters, I got my first real glimpse into the short, intense summers. Bergen is one of the rainiest places in the world; it rains three out of four days there. By some crazy stroke of luck, it was sunny both days I was there. On my last night in Bergen, I climbed a mountain, or at least third of one. We were slow to get a move on and didn’t leave until about 11 p.m. to start walking to Lovstakken Mountain. It was still light out when we left, but by the time we abandoned the mission in the thick brush of the forest about an hour later, the sky was a dark, rich blue. According to my fellow climbers, in some places north of the Arctic circle, this blue would be the closest to daylight some places would get above the Arctic Circle in the winter. Standing partway on Lovstakken, looking onto more outlying mountains, the world has never looked so round and I’ve never felt so on top of the world (literally.)

After disembarking from the mountain, we made a detour to the nearby fjord. The king’s summer residence, a modest home that you can walk right up to, is next to the fjord. My fellow climbers and I lay on a dock in the fjord waters and stared up at the big dipper, the only constellation our collective educations enabled us to identify. I’ve never considered myself a nature person but Bergen has helped me turn a corner. I found myself making mental plans for a future camping trip on a Bergen mountain top. Hiking, canoing, biking–suddenly nature has a new appeal to me, one that perhaps it never did before. Maybe I was never interested in doing these things and these activities incidentally went along with being a kid. Despite all the rugged and varied terrain in Canada, somehow it took going to Norway to discover it.

posted by vicky at 10:34 am under Europe, Norway
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