final note part 4

part 4: across canada (vancouver to halifax) III

day 21: montreal, qb
breakfast on emily's porch+walking up the mont royal and getting a wonderful panorama of the city+montreal allouettes vs. hamilton wildcats: canadian football game+cheerleaders are here!

montreal's panorama from the peak of mont royal

day 22: montreal, qb to quebec city, qb
allo stopping to quebec city with serge in his oldsmobile (allo stop is an organized and legalized hitch-hiking agency, i truly recommend; too bad only qubecois people are smart enough to get it running)+listening to live jazz in the park at night+couchsurfing with alex and simon

serge's oldsmobile

day 23: quebec city, qb to riviere-du-loup, qb
amazing breakfast prepared by simon, our couchsurfing host+walk around quebec vieux+loads of tourists and cycling races+orleans express taking us north to riviere-du-loup, qb, where we stayed auberge de sojour (the only night during the whole trip we paid for)

quebec vieux

day 24: riviere-du-loup, qb
getting to see st lawrence river (in a local language "quebec" means "where the river becomes narrow" referring to this very river)+tim hortons+pfk=kfc in quebec+waiting for a train at 1.09am

by the st lawrence river banks, local "road art"

day 25: riviere-du-loup, qb to moncton, nb to saint john, nb full-service in the train (soooo comfortable!)+catching the bus to saint john, nb in moncton, nb (barely)+@ saint john tourist info being offered to hitch-hike with some random guys who were going to the same campsite+camping in the rockwood park (sausage dinner and gazing at the stars)

riviere-du-loup train station at night

day 26: saint john, nb to digby, ns to annapolis royal, ns arriving at the docks at 12:05pm and catching the ferry which was supposed to leave at 12:00pm+sunny ride on the atlantic waters+again, getting offered a hitch-hike ride from digby, ns to annapolis royal, ns (the first european settlement in north america where settlers survived for more than a year)+candlelight graveyard tour (!)

annapolis royal, ns: the first european settlement in north america
where people had lived for longer than one year

day 27: annapolis royal, ns to lunenburg, ns 50c showers at the campsite+farmers' and traders' market+hitch-hiking to lunenburg, ns (done in 3 cars, the last being driven by the president and ceo of "clearwater", one of the largest lobster-fishing company in canada)+l-u-n-e-n-b-u-r-g at last (unesco heritage site, btw)+seafood stew for dinner, mmmmm...

seafood stew for dinner after a succesful hitch-hiking ride
mmm...

day 28: lunenburg, ns to halifax, ns talking to a retired fisherman at the farmers' and traders' market+atlantic shore+sleepy ride to halifax, ns with "kiwi kaboodle" shuttle+ couchsurfing at luke george's and participating in a random party..

the atlantic waters

day 29: halifax, ns waterfront+pier 21 museum (this is where european immigrants landed when they first reached canada)+looking for a halifax souvenir+finding one in a second-hand bookstore (1942 edition of town's best stories)+public gardens+visiting alexander keith's brewery (the moment i had been waiting for most impatiently - only then i realized that we had made it all the way across!)+midnight walk to catch the airporter

my individualized souvenir from halifax
"tales told under the oldtown clock" (ed. 1942)

day 30: halifax, ns to toronto, on (through montreal, qb) to niagara falls, on sleeping at the halifax, ns airport and catching the early plane to montreal, qb and then continued all the way to toronto, on+greyhound bus (again!) to the niagara falls, on+camping by the youth hostel+niagara falls (majestic, but crowded with people)

niagara falls

day 31: niagara falls, on to toronto, on the last trip with the greyhound bus+street caring around (no, it's not called a "tram" in toronto. street car ffs!): toronto downtown, business district, younge street, chinatown...

toronto, on somewhere along younge street

day 32: toronto, on buying a "toronto star" from a newspaper vending machine and getting decadent and pseudo-intelectual in a "second cup" cafe+toronto cn tower (3 hour long experience, not sure if worth all the waiting)+preparing dinner at anne's and jp's

view of toronto from the cn tower

day 33: toronto, on to vancouver, bc early at the airport with male+immense sadness the trip is over+5 hrs flight back to bc+bussing back to east pender street where everything begun a month ago... knowing that nothing will taste the same ever again...

the immense sadness at toronto airport

T-H-E E-N-D

final note part 3

part 3: across canada (vancouver to halifax) II

where were we..? ah, saskatoon! the prairies! the flat lands of canada and the bread basket of the world, where you can grow anything you'd like, but for the most part the farmers stick to wheat, corn and canola. blah. anyways, let's move westwards:

day 11: saskatoon, sk to wasagaming, mb riding mountain national park (> banff national park)+swimming in the clear lake (really clear!)+getting eaten by mosquitos, which in some cases resembled birds not insects+thunderstorm in the tent (we have gotten washed off and decided to leave one day earlier)+but seriously, if i was to choose one favorite place i had visited during this trip wasagaming would top it!

clear lake, riding mountain national park

day 12: wasagaming, mb to winnipeg, mb
packing in the rain+meeting a crazy couple offering us a place to stay in their tent for the second night and then travel on with them to winnipeg (we refused for time was pressing, but i admit it was very tempting)+ discovering the kindness of the canadian people (yet again!)+to be specific we had gotten our food microwaved in a grocery store...

sad to leave wasagaming

day 13: winnipeg, mb to gimli, mb & back
some city life again+saint boniface cathedral in the french part of winnipeg, looking well medival and celtic+the forks and the granville island-like market (that's where two rivers meet in winnipeg; it was named hastily, but the name stuck)+amazing couchsurfers baking muffins for us+trip to gimli (the icelandic settlement at the shore of the lake winnipeg with the largest dwarf statue in the world)+checking out the theatre fringe festival in the forks ("look ma, no hands!")+exchange district

gimli himself with 4 brave couchsurfers

day 14: winnipeg, mb to thunderbay, on
nightbussing to thunderbay+crossing the midpoint in the middle of the night

portage at main in winnipeg, mb
apparently the windiest intersection in the world

day 15: thunderbay, on
true "middle of nowhere" kind of experience+the great lakes start here (lake superior first!)+watery coffee at the only coffee shop opened downtown+3 hours spent in the local library (plane tickets from halifax to toronto booked!)+lunch in the park+frustration with lack of food (as defined in the former post)+dinner at the bus station

watery coffee in a self-made mug

day 16: thunderbay, on to sault-ste marie, on "velorution" campsite for free (one of the couchsurfers recommended us this campsite run by a bikeshop, outside sault-ste marie; usually they host bikers who travel across canada, but since we had no car they accepted us as well!)+rotary festival in town+going back into the 50s with an awesome dinner at Muio's restaurant in a booth+long, long stroll along st mary's river banks

muio's restaurant

day 17: sault-ste marie, on to ottawa, on (through sudbury, on)
walking the empty streets of sault-ste marie to catch the early mornin' bus+wandering around the capital+stinky place of a couchsurfer (cat pee is not fun when it is not cleaned up), fortunately only one night there

brigdehead coffehouse in ottawa

day 18: ottawa, on to kingston, on bridgehead cafe+walking the streets of kingston (very victorian, you must realize), the first capital of canada+canoeing around in the lake ontario+sunny, sunny, sunny+couchsurfing+playing boardgames and drinking beers

canoeing on the waters of lake ontario

day 19: kingston, on to ottawa, on to montreal, qb much traveling, lots of walking & in the meantime checking out the parliament buildings in ottawa (the clash of glass and steel with victorian bricks)

canadian parliament:
the clash of glass and steel with victorian bricks

day 20: montreal, qb
confronting the french speaking canadians+lunch at soupe/soupe+montreal vieux+cars getting smaller+chilling with anna & emily, co-years from uwc+quebecois cinema: "les amoures imagineres"

i don't speak french, but i think someone meant to say:
"don't park here, please"

final note part 2

part 2: across canada (vancouver to halifax) I

right after dialogue finished i had only couple of days to hand in the assignments, pack up my stuff and move out of the magical house at east pender street. at the beginning of july i was already leaving vancouver for the greatest adventure of my life. goal? to swim in the pacific and the atlantic waters in the same month... more seriously, the goal was to cover the distance between vancouver, bc and halifax, ns by land, on budget, without renting own car and within a month or so. this summer to large extent was to be a realization of my dream to hitchhike across canada, get on a fishing boat in halifax and sail to iceland. i needed to modify it a little bit (ie., cross out the iceland part), cause i still had one final at sfu in august.

in the posts concerning the trip, i will use mostly key words, but also many images (after all, one picture is worth a thousand words!). i will throw in a comment here or there to enrich what you see, or describe an experience that wasn't captured with a camera.

let's go (with a greyhound bus for now)!

day 1: vancouver,bc to kelowna,bc
couchsurfing in kelowna at dillon's+tasting the wine from local wineries (for those who do not know, i want to inform that canadians make excellent wine especially around kelowna, in the okanagan valley)

couchsurfing at dillon's

day 2: kelowna,bc to calgary, ab (through salmon arm, bc)
hiking up the knox mountain+swimming in the okanagan lake

half way up the knox mountain towering over kelowna

day 3: calgary, ab
the calgary tower and stepping over the glass floor at the top+alternative 17th avenue+heritage park, the largest in canada, where the wild west spirits were well alive

the glass floor on the top of calgary tower

day 4: calgary, ab
olympic park 1988+getting frustrated with calgary virtually non-exisitent public transit system

olympic park 1988

day 5: calgary, ab to banff, ab
camping at the tunnel mountain campground+checking out the town of banff, which looked kind of like the alpine resorts except everything was oddly new+writing couchsurfing requests from the local library+netherlands 3-2 uruguay+asking a fellow camper for some boiled water and getting a whole gasburner

the tunnel mountain campsite grounds

day 6: banff, ab to lake louise, ab to kicking horse valley, bc (& back)
whitewater rafting on the kicking horse river(one of the most awesome experiences during the whole trip!)+a hike up to the famous lake louise+troubles finding food at safeway (by definition food is something that does not contain corn syrup, guar guar gum and/or sodium glutamate)

lake louise

day 7: banff, ab to edmonton, ab (through calgary, ab)
night walking (sleep walking) along the north saskatchewan river+sleeping over at lara's relatives

edmonton downtown at night

day 8: edmonton, ab
the 12 hour tour of the city with dana: whyte avenue and the old strathcona district, downtown, the university

edmonton's skyscrapers

day 9: edmonton, ab to saskatoon, sk
riding the nightbus+discovering saskatoon berries and what can be made out of them+checking out saskatoon farmers market+couchsurfing at johana's

streets of saskatoon

day 10: saskatoon, sk
western development museum+fair of agricultural technology+netherlands 0-1 spain at winston's pub downtown+also at winston's: bison burgers and stew+also at winston's: meeting up other local and foreign couchsurfers

fair of agricultural technology

the final note part 1

damn, time flies.

i meant to write the final chapter of this blog right after i returned to poland in the end of august, but off-line life absorbed me and i had no time for blogging. still, i want to have the last word as the creator and the only contributor to this canadian saga of mine. so much had happened in the last months of my stay in canada that i could write a solid book about my experiences. i will try to summarize this magical time here, just to give you a glimpse. also i will tell you what's going on now and what i want to happen in the future (i will do that in parts, so you don't get overwhelmed by catching up with me :D). so. ready for a ride? here we go!

part 1: the end of dialogue

at the end of june, the wonderful dialogue course i have written so much about had come to an end. as a class we organized an awesome public event at emily carr university at granville island. we presented our group projects (remember? what matters most!) and i also installed my artistic collage there. it looked something like this:


this image shows the beginning of the working process. all the pictures of colorful produce and hands were eventually connected with a laundry string. the installation as a whole was some sort of free hanging.. something. :-) but looked well cool and i was impressed with my artsiness. next to the installation i wrote:

FOOD MEANS EVERYTHING

to survive and grow humans have to eat. but food has always meant more than just being a fuel for the body. it is more than a sum of its nutrients; food means everything and leads to things that really matter. food can be a driving force behind physical and mental well-being, community building, moment-to-moment experiences, enjoyment of living, connection to the earth, and keeping the bellies and brains full and satisfied.

alas, the food we eat today is nothing like what our great-grandparents used to eat a hundred years ago. the food-imitations and food-like products constantly scream at us from the supermarket shelves, “save money, time and effort!” we seem to believe them, buy them and eat them. that’s how modern business and hectic lifestyle have driven us away from eating the real food and as a consequence lead us to forsake the things that really matter.

our focus shifted from quality to quantity in many important aspects of life. shift it back! refocus on eating real food and everything else will take care of itself.

keep food simple, colourful and real. keep food yours. where else will it take you?

yes, it was sad the course had finished and i needed to say goodbyes to the people, instructors and the whole spirirt of living dialogue.. but i gotta say that it has been one of the best academic experiences i have had. i am grateful i had a chance to ask the question "what matters most?" and... get deadly confused!

every vote matters: polish presidential elections

don't have much time to write. i will just say: i've done it! here's the proof:

the world cup fever...

less than 8 hours till the very first game of the world cup 2010 in south africa. the other day, together with my roommates - jesse and talia - we geared up with a schedule which then we posted on our fridge.. :-) here's some images:

bear mountain

couple of shots from last weekend's hike up to the top of bear mountain, near harrison hot springs (150km east of vancouver). it rained and the view was stolen by the clouds, but hey! it was still a fun hike...




*pictures are courtesy of rene saucier.

pe(s)ts

so let's talk about our cute friends who share the pender household with us.

victor the mouse and his family: victor lives somewhere behind the oven, no one really knows where. sometimes he comes up from behind the microwave and wonders around on the counter, sometimes he pops up from on of the burners and then disappears in the lower drawer of the oven, other times he just runs happily around the fridge. we named the mouse victor after the company which makes the mice traps. i think that recently victor proved to be a potent mouse.. yes, we suspect that victor found the love of his life and reproduced, though nobody has seen more than one mouse at a time. we tried different kinds of traps, including the violent snappy ones (made by victor ltd.), but nothing seemed to work to get rid of victor... what a resilient mouse!! argh...

flies and bugs: these species live in and around our compost bin (both inside and outside the house), blaaa... also there is an increasing number of bumble bees, mosquitos and other flying creatures in the garden slowly leaking into the house. oh well, summer's comin'.

the skunk: the other day a skunk followed me all the way to the doorstep. he totally wasn't afraid of me despite me trying to scare him away. he returned yesterday spraying our door with a terrible odour, which got into a vent and then spread around the house. if anybody has any idea how to kick out a skunk from our frontyard once and forever, please let me know. alternatively, all the east pender residents would be more than happy to give the skunk away for adoption. we sure would deliver anywhere in the lower mainland for free. :-)

dialogue (5): the group project

so there's another blog in my life which collectivelly written by matt, erin, parveen and i. check it out in your spare time: www.dialoguehealthproject.blogspot.com. it's update daily! ;-)

a perfect sunday

i just had a perfect day:

i woke up early to play tennis with my roommate jesse. i won 2-0 (6-3; 6-2), but we had good time too. after tennis sidney made delicious pancakes with blueberries, strawberries and homemade whipped cream. in the afternoon i did some necessary readings and completed an assignment. after that i went grocery shopping and bought ingredients for today's dinner and tomorrow's lunch. then i was asked to mow our lawn (not law our mown!), which had been a jungle as compared to all the other frontyards in the neighbourhood. 2 hours in the drizzle, grass and dirt - i actually really enjoyed. in the future, i definetely want to have a garden. in the evening i cooked delicious rissotto... mmmm...

now i am listening to a polish radio (7am there) and i am attempting to study kinesiology. at the same table jesse and sidney are making pierogi.

despite all the drizzle, i still wish everyday was like today.

dialogue (4): roller-coaster

i am experiencing a wide range of emotions all at the same time while walking through the process of dialogue. i am happy, inspired, frustrated, angry, interested, tired, hopeless, optimistic, realistic, pessimistic, contemplative, pensive, thoughtful, creative, open-minded, narrow-minded, expressive etc. etc... this course truly is a roller-coaster - up and down, and to the sides. and in directions and dimensions i never thought existed.

university education offers only one possible lens we can look at the world's problems. i feel like i am being taken out of a carefully crafted box called "academia" and i am actually asked to look at the world as it is and as it should be. but it's so difficult to be aware of, let alone control our biases which shape our perception. one of the biggest ironies here is that academia has become so narrow-minded in its vision of the world and detached from the real world that all too often it solves problems that don't really exist or that are not so important all together.

through experiencing feedback on the pitch of my group's presentation, i discovered that people tend to problem-solve before problem-frame... shouldn't the order really be reversed? i mean, did i really understand the scope of the issue? do i know what and why am i undertaking? many "experts" deal with serious stuff, like the recent oil spill in the carribean, are not able to explain in simple language what are they actually doing and why. they don't really know the problem they're dealing with. in this example, the problem wouldn't be the spill - that's only the tip of the iceberg. the actual problem is dependency of our everyday lives on oil. and that may not even be deep enough, but you know what i am getting at here - the solution is not to fix the leaking pipe. wrong definition (or lack definition of the problem) leads to badly targeted and/or futile problem solving.

but when it comes to people (let's call them "experts") who do these jobs, they'd become all defensive of their ideas and what they're doing! and i felt that too when receiving totally valid feedback from the group and instructors during the pitch of our group presentation projects. that day i felt really frustrated, so i went to talk to one of the instructors. he said that this course is meant to destroy us in a way. in a good way. that's what we're paying for. but then, he assured, we will get rebuilt again with a fresh outlook on everything: the world, the people and possibilities to make the two work in symbiosis.

what a random stream of thoughts!! ^^

details

this is a picture of pavement on a corner of hastings and kamloops streets. it states "i am not only a sausage maker. i am a chef." and is signed "andrzej". not "andrew", "andrzej". i started to realize that these patches are all over hastings sunrise neighbourhood with quotes or saying from local businesses. andrzej is quoted here, because on the same block there is a polonia sausage house.

i have walked on this pavement thousands of times before i noticed this patch and other patches. i wonder, why are we (including myself) so often preoccupied with the broader picture and fail to notice the details in our lives?

here's a story from paulo coehlo's "alchemist" that comes to my mind when thinking about this. a wise man tells a boy to go enjoy looking around the palace and the garden. but he needs to carr around a spoon full of oil without spilling it. at first he is unable to enjoy the sights because he is too worried about the oil. in the second attempt he enjoys his walk, but comes back to the wise man with an empty spoon. then the wise man says, “the secret to happiness is to see all marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil in the spoon.”

how about: the secret of live is to notice both what is on and in the pavements? :-P

stawamus chief

on monday we had a holiday - victoria day. do you know a better thing to do on a holiday than going out of the town? yes you do! it's going out of town to climb stawamus chief!!

here's what wikipedia's got to say about the chief:

the stawamus chief (often referred to as simply the chief) is a granite dome located adjacent to the town of squamish, bc. it towers over 700 m (2,297 ft) above the waters of nearby howe sound. it is often claimed to be the "second largest granite monolith in the world. " the skwxwu7mesh, indigenous people from this area, consider the chief to be a place of spiritual significance. the mountain gets its name from their village near its foot, st'a7mes (stawamus).

it was a wonderful hike, but since i don't really have much time to fully describe it right now, i am just going to share some pictures. they're always worth a 1000 words more anyways. just don't get too scared of the cliffs (as i did).

tennis nostalgia

many of you may not know this, but when i was a kid i used to play tennis quite competetively. i went to some national tournaments and i was classified in a national rankings. each summer smelled of clay courts and training sweat. good times!

recently, i came back to playing again, which makes me excited. i mean, it is a wicked feeling to smell the court surface, hold a racket and get blinded by early summer sun. oh yes! i think all things we used to in childhood and we don't do anymore make us nostalgic.. i played in kraków last fall with a childhood friend of mine and now i play with my roommate and a friend of his. and you know what? it's like riding a bike.. once learnt you never forget it! it may feel wobbly at first, but once you get used to it again, you can probably ride tour de france... or play roland garros for that matter! :-)

but really i feel that with every shot i take part of my past skills come back. last weekend i won in 2 sets against mannan from china (6:4, 6:1), which made me immensly happy. not the fact that i won, but the fact that i won in style. :-) i am curious to see where this tennis adrenaline is going to take me again this semester.

diez vistas

diez vistas is a great one day trip if you have a car or belong to the hiking club. but belcarra, where the trails start, is also reachable by one of the small community shuttle supplied by translink. so no place for excuses like "but i can't get my ass there". there's always a way.

the trail was established by bc hydro and cuts pretty much in between the buntzen lake and the indian arm. the ten views are not that spectacular, but definetely scenic and enjoyable. i like looking at vancouver from far away (yes, you guessed it, i am speaking both literally and metaphorically). i must admit that when i do, it seems like a fairytale city. i know, i know, the credit doesn't and shouldn't really go to the city. this thought struck me when i was looking at it from far away, from one of the vistas. it is all the amazing nature surrounding that actually make it so attractive and liveable. the urban vancouver, stripped of its coast and mountains is left with not much more to offer than any other city. but hey, the location and the suroundings are part of the criteria used by forbes magazine, aren't they?? :-)

anyways, below, three snapshots from the hike last weekend that i haven't got a chance to publish yet. enjoy! :-)
.