Deppert.se

Just as I settled down here, found a good job and spring arrived, it is time to leave. My last day at work is Tuesday next week, the last day in the apartment Wednesday next week. So it all kind of fitted all together. Except for the fact that I am not willing to go back to Sweden. Not quite yet. The compromise is a small vacation. It will definitely eat up all the money I made here, but it will be worth it. Few of you would think that I would choose a sunny location and just relax on the beach for three weeks, that is just not me. Instead I will grasp the once in a lifetime chance and go north to southeast Alaska (yeah, that is a weird sentence, but if you look at a map, it is correct in terms of directions). Technically, I will not go further north than Oslo (Norway) is located, but I still look forward to this experience!

Anyhow, leaving Vancouver also had me realize that I have not seen that much touristically speaking and not seen my friends nearly as much as I should have. Pressing everything into a week and timing it with their schedule has made me as busy as usual, but it all seems to work out. Yesterday I even took a chance and visited the Quayside Village, a co house in North Vancouver. It is really a nice place, different from my house in Lund, but the spirit of integration was the same.

Every time I move on to a different place, I mentally go through pros and cons with the place I am leaving. With Vancouver, this is not easily done. But there are some highlights:

Transit – it is great that these buses are so accessible for everyone; but I am still surprised every time a bus driver stops the vehicle and says “Just going to grab a coffee” in the middle of a tour.

My apartment – nice and cosy and very open for interaction with my housemates and the international setting; but otherwise nothing is functional. All the taps are dripping, no one but the Japanese guy and me takes out the trash, and people take showers at 2am even though they have just been home the whole day and had plenty of time.

Canadians – friendly and nice; until you cant answer their question in the deli and have to look for help. I have never been yelled at so much just because I did not know the answer and admitted this. Also, Canadians seem to have little understanding for us who do not love ice hockey.

Canada could be any country in Africa due to homelessness, the lack of hot water in the showers, the extreme weather conditions and the fact that bus never ever arrives on time. On the other hand, it is also obvious why Canada is a part of the industrialized world: there are buses, there is the possibility of a hot shower and it can snow in the most unexpected times.

With this said I am sure that I will one day come back here. But for now I will enjoy my last days and my well deserved vacation as well.

Cheers,
Ulrike

This entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 17:37 and is filed under Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.