No-Flying Trip Through Europe

The Evolution of Sociopaths

2010-07-23T19:32:00.000-07:00

I know how this is gonna sound. I know because as I tell it to myself, that's how it sounds. It sounds like I've been duped, and should have been smarter. I know it sounds that way, but give me the benefit of the doubt here. I wholly acknowledge that this guy could have been a con artist. I'm not so deluded as to write off that possibility. It may even be more likely than not that he was one. No matter.

So I'm sitting at the bus stop, waiting for the bus that goes directly to Tsawwassen ferry terminal. It's from here that I'll catch my ferry over to Victoria for the night. Beautiful Victoria. As I sit down, another fella is there already, waiting for the bus. “Another half-hour” he says to me, as he sees me investigating the signage near the stop. “I got down the steps just in time to see the last one drive off.”

“Bummer.” I say.

I sit down. He appears to wanna chat. “Incredibly hot day, huh?” It is.

“Yeah, nothing but sun for weeks.” I'm terrible at small talk.

The man has a British accent. I ask him where he's from. “Penzance. Heard of it?”

“Only from the title Pirates of Penzance.” Which is true, though of course I knew it was actually a real place too.

“Yeah, that's where that title comes from.” He confirms. Duh.

We get into a conversation about his visit. He explains that he's been in Canada for 4 weeks, but now is having a nightmarish day, as his plane leaves in 3 hours, and he can't secure an additional 13 pounds that he needs to get his boarding pass. The story is long, and I zone in and out of listening, because it doesn't occur to me right away that this guy might ask me for money. Halfway through his story the thought pops up, so I listen more keenly for signs of con artistry I've seen before. The story involved a new tax that was added to airport fees since the time he purchased his ticket last year, and since the airport is private, they have no obligation to inform ticket-buyers of the new fee. His story involves him heading to Tsawwassen to get to some special place or something (this is where I wasn't listening) that can approve a British cheque immediately, and give him the 13 pounds he needs. Yeesh.

He gets a phone call. According to what he says, it's his parents. They had purchased his ticket way back in August apparently. Sounds genuine, I suppose.

Here's the thing. You're probably already looking at this story and saying it's an obvious con. Well, look, I've presented it that way, okay? But the bottom line to me is this: I had no way of verifying whether or not this was true. No way. It was definitely more involved and detailed than your average “I need money for the bus home” story. There was a phone call and everything, right? Also, it appeared to be with great hesitation that he finally asked if there was a way I could help him. There was a break in the conversation. It didn't go straight from “here's my story” to “can I have some money?”

All of this doesn't prove that it's true, of course. Just that it became harder and harder to clearly call it a con job. So what do I do, right? This guy could be telling the truth, or he could have this act down to a science. If so, he's very good. But then, you'd expect him to be. Anyway, 13 pounds worked out to be under 25 bucks. I thought about it. Oh, also, he offered me his iPhone as collateral. He said I could have it, then ship it to him in a few days when he had returned my money, and he'd pay the shipping too. Again, this could all be a ruse. I didn't see the thing on, so it could have been a dummy phone (the phone call he made earlier was another one – a flip phone.) But whatever. In my own way, I level with him. I say there's no way I can know if he's telling the truth, but I'll help him out anyway. 25 bucks isn't much.

Reminded me of discussions in my Law and Morality class over whether you can risk punishing innocent people. If this guy is actually telling the truth, even if the odds are less than 10% that this is the case, is the cost of giving a sociopath $25 so bad that it's worth turning my back on a person actually in a jam? I didn't have my copy of JSM's Utilitarianism to cross-reference.

And, yes, I know that from your point of view in reading this, the man is clearly a con artist. But you are in far too removed a position to evaluate this in the same way I was forced to evaluate it on the ground. You may say that your way is more objective, therefore better, but I hope you can see the moral dilemma I outlined above. Fact is, the guy was saying all the right things.

No matter.

I don't care if I gave a sociopath $25. I don't. It doesn't make a lick of difference. So long as the majority of people are good people trying to help each other out, there will always be some small minority of sociopaths to mooch off of their hard work and good deeds. That's evolutionary. It's like the creatures who evolve to look like a scary predator; they have all the benefits of being that scary predator, but they don't have to actually work to achieve it. Similarly, this guy had all the appearance of being a man in distress, even though I'll never know what he actually was.

So go on and tell me I should have been smarter. In a way, I can think of a few things I could have done to at least better ensure that I wasn't being ripped off. Taking a picture of the guy occurred to me afterward. Even if only to see his reaction to me asking him to let me take a picture of him.

I didn't take his iPhone, of course, by the way. I wouldn't do a thing like that. But maybe he knew that, and that's why he offered.

Hrmph.

Update - Same Day: As is always the case with these things, the more I think about it, the clearer it is that I've been duped. The guy wrote a bunch of information for me on a piece of paper. Email address, name, phone number, address in Penzance. I can't pull any of it up on Google.

New Trip!

2010-07-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

Okay okay okay,
I'm in BC right now on another short trip, also without flying. I'll post more complete entires about what I've been up to soon. I'll also finish writing about my time in Europe, because I never got around to doing that.

Here's a teaser about my current trip: I got a train ticket from TO to Vancouver for $100. Neat!

The following entry was written sometime near the end of my trip. I'll post earlier ones soon. I'll sort this out. Leave it to me, okay. I'll do it.

What should I be doing?

2008-12-27T02:18:00.001-08:00

Let me share with you something that's given me a bit of anxiety while I've been travelling (and it's something that gives me a bit of anxiety in daily life as well; it is magnified by the fact that I'm travelling). It's a thought, that can be phrased as a question, that can be repeated over and over, in the background of what you're doing: How can I best be spending my time right now?
As I mentioned in my "to-do" list, I'm hung up about the fact that I'm not able to write anything. I feel like I'm getting too old to keep saying that it's something I can do a little later. If I wanna have some artistic masterpieces to my name (and I do), I'm going to have to be productive. I'm going to have to write. I don't know from where stems the source of this absolutely paralyzing anxiety on the matter, but it's there, and it's been there for a long, long time now.
So anyway, that thought keeps coming up: How can I best be spending my time? I sometimes feel wasteful if I spend too long in a museum, wake up too late in the morning, turn in too early for the evening, wander too aimlessly in a new city. I just get the feeling that whatever I'm doing, I should be doing something else.
Now, this is, of course, not a rational thought; it's an anxiety. Rationally, I understand that this is a self-defeating anxiety, since I'd be enjoying my time if I could just let it go, but since I can't let it go, I'm not enjoying my time as much. And of course there are times when it goes away. These are typically times that I'm spending with other people; people I like. So what I'm then asking myself is, do I need other people to enjoy myself? Is this why I'm so miserable in those places and times where I feel like I can't find anyone, or when I see people I want to talk to, and just don't?
I relate this to a deeper insecurity I have about needing the approval of other people to feel validated myself.

Man, I just spilled something heavy on you there. Sorry about that. Just thinking and typing...

Also

2008-12-26T14:18:00.000-08:00

Who likes my Ghostbusters-style logo?
Check how the red cross-out line, like, pierces through the plane wing, creating the illusion of depth. And the drop shadow beneath the title text, creating the illusion of depth. And the dark red surrounding the light red in the logo, creating the illusion of depth.

To do

2008-12-26T12:27:00.000-08:00

I know that when people travel, or undergo any kind of dramatic event, they like to talk about all the things that are going to change in their life from then on. And of course, few of the changes ever actually happen. I think people can change, but usually only very slowly and modestly.
Nonetheless, I too have been thinking about things I wanna do when I get home, and things I wanna start doing, and simply writing them off would likely not be wise, so instead, I'll write them here, so I have a record of them. Here are some:

Take French language course
Learn to dance
Start being creatively productive (damn it!)
Host more gatherings
Volunteer to tutor children in science and math

I've got a good start on #3, since I've been drawing more lately, and I got a sweet new music-making tool on my computer. When making music is convenient, I do it more. I still can't seem to write (I mean, this blog, for instance, is one thing; but I'm talking about expressive and creative writing), which is really bothering me, because it's something I yearn to do, and something I've always told myself I was good at.

The Day is Cold and Damp

2008-12-18T14:51:00.000-08:00

- Paris: Dec 8 - 16 -

Phase 1: Dec 8 and 9

I want to make these entries a little more detailed, for a few reasons, all of which I will eventually get to. The first obvious reason, as seen in the header, is that I’ve spent more time in Paris than any of the other stops I’ve made in the last month and a half. I will proceed.

I had a plan for getting to Paris.

First stop: Shakespeare and Company, the English-language bookstore that also houses young writers for their stay in Paris. I was going to check if they had any room, and what the requirements for staying were. The backup plan was to go to a hostel, the address of which I had taken down in Lyon. I knew there would also be a CS event in Paris that evening, so I made that my order of operations: Shakespeare and Co., hostel (if no S&C), quiz night (the CS event). This was thrown off a little when there was no room on any trains to Paris before 6 in the evening. This would mean I’d arrive there at 8, and not have time to do my full plan. Being the sensible young lad I am, I chose to go to the hostel that night, and check out Shakespeare and Co. the next day.

And the modified plan worked well. I checked into the hostel, paying for two nights, and went to the quiz.

Okay, so everyone I’ve met through CouchSurfing so far have been pretty cool people. My hosts, certainly. But before I arrived in Paris, I received a message from someone here who said my profile was interesting, and she’d like to host me. After exchanging a few messages, working out the details, I got a strange vibe – I found it a little odd, though not outright inappropriate, that she asked me to help her buy her groceries and carry them upstairs with her. Just seemed strange. Then at the last minute she said she would only host me for one night, which is fair enough, but it did leave me with no place for the rest of my stay there, and very short time to find one. So with all that, I just said I’d stay in a hostel, since I didn’t want to be going to a new host every day with my heavy bag. And that was that.

Well, this person was at the quiz as well, and the weirdness continued. I don’t think she’s a bad person or anything, but she just really had the ability to push my buttons. I ordered food – a plate of nachos and fries – when I arrived at the pub, and I hadn’t eaten all day, so I was quite looking forward to them. “Maybe we can share them,” Vibes said. “I’m really hungry, so I think I’ll probably want to have it for myself. Sorry.” I diplomatically concluded. “Well, it’s a big plate. We should share.” Call my judgment into question, will you? “I haven’t eaten all day, and I really do eat a lot, so I’d rather just have it for myself.” I say again. “If you’d like, you can have a couple; that’s no problem, but I really am hungry.” See, I bargained. “Well, the cheese on the nachos is very heavy. You will probably be full very fast.” Damn it! I hate having to repeatedly make the same argument. I know I can eat these nachos. There’s no issue there. This was starting to annoy me. “Okay, I’ll tell you what. I’m telling you now, I’ll most likely eat it all myself, so don’t count on sharing, but I will happily share if I can’t eat it.” Quite reasonable of me, I thought. That was basically the end of that little struggle. She pulled up a seat beside me for the quiz, so she would be on the same team (teams were made based on the table you were sitting at). She ordered a platter of food that was on special. She offered everyone bit of her food, which included chicken wings and calamari, but everyone else at the table was vegetarian. One of us said, “Thanks, but we’re all vegetarian.” “Oh, so am I ,” said Vibes. “But you’re eating calamari,” said another person at the table. “Yeah, I eat seafood.” Okay, fine. I know people who do this – say they’re vegetarian and eat seafood and—chicken now too. She’s eating the chicken. Okay, she’s allowed to define vegetarian as she sees fit, no problem.

A question comes up on the quiz: “What does the word [and I’m paraspelling here] ‘hippomonstrosequippmentphobia’ mean?” Ah, we can crack this, I think, using our knowledge of Latin. “A fear of big noses,” says Vibes, “Big noses like on a hippo.”

I try to diplomatically dissuade her from this suggestion: “Fear names are usually in Latin, and ‘rhino’ means ‘nose’ in Latin, so I don’t think that’s it.”

“Put it anyway.”

Okay, the illogical approach. Here’s where my tyranny in game-playing turns me into somewhat of a monster (but a monster of the most reasonable kind): “But there’s no reason to think it’s about big noses.”

“Hippos have big noses. Maybe it’s a fear of big noses like a hippo.” She makes a gesture with her hands to indicate big noses. She starts with her hand somewhat open, close to her face, then pulls it away and closes her fingers slowly, forming an imaginary cone extending from her nose. Okay, she’s confused hippos and rhinos.

“But hippos aren’t really known for their noses.” I try an alternate strategy: “Does anyone know what ‘hippo’ means in Latin? What’s a hippodrome again – that might help.” We deduce that hippo means horse, so I cleverly think we’ve broken through the first part of the riddle. While this is going on, several other questions have come, and we’ve answered them, but I keep coming back to this one when there’s time. We had written, tentatively, “fear of being trampled by horses” as our answer. When the quiz is over, and we’re to hand in our form, Vibes takes the sheet to write in an answer she says she knows. When she hands it back, she had written in that answer, but also had crossed off our horse answer in place of her “big noses” answer. “Did you put ‘big noses’ on the sheet?” I ask, as if I don’t know.

“Yeah, I think it’s good.”

“I’m telling you,” I say, “I don’t think that’s right. There’s no reason to think it is.” I look around at this point, and see that a few people at the table are watching this. Not wanting to look like I’m taking this too seriously, I concede and hand in the form as is.

The answer, by the way, was “a fear of big words.” Stupid.

Vibes then tells me about a restaurant she’s going to the next day, and that I should come to. Another girl, who I did enjoy talking to, also expresses interest in going, so I say sure, I’ll come. Vibes scribbles something on a paper and hands it to me. “I don’t know the name or address of the place, but here is a map.” I look at the paper. It’s scribbles. I can’t make out anything. I don’t know what information I’m supposed to take from this.

“I can’t promise I’ll be there based on this,” I say, “but I’ll try my best.”

“What’s the problem? That map is good.”

I look at the map again. Nope, not good. “I don’t know if I can find it based on this.”

She goes and talks to a few friends and comes back with the address. Fine, I can work with that. I agree to meet at 6:30 the next evening. “If anything changes, I have your number, so I’ll call you,” Vibes adds.

Whatever. I’ll do this, then that’ll be that. It’s one night, it’ll pass, no biggie.

Upon leaving the bar, I start walking to the metro station I came from.

“There’s one closer this way,” Vibes says, encouraging me to come with her. At this point, even if it were better for me to go that way, I would probably opt for the other metro, just to avoid her company. I don’t like having thoughts like this, but I really wasn’t enjoying our conversations, if they can be called that. I wondered if she was having the same experience, but she didn’t seem to be, based on the fact that she was continually setting us up to keep talking. Anyway, the fact is, I’m going to the other, slightly further metro station because it’s in the same direction as I’m going.

“I’m going to the other one, because it’s in the same direction I’m going.”

She looks at me with sympathetic confusion, and there’s a touch of scorn and mockery in there too. “Okay, but this one’s closer. It’ll be faster.”

Stop questioning my judgment! I’m a 24-year-old human being! I’ve obviously made it this far! Obviously things seem to work when I do them this way! I’m not going to agree with you!

“I think I’ll just go this way. I think it’s faster for me.”

“Okay.” Again, she doesn’t seem to agree, but she leaves. Phew.

I go back to my hostel and sleep.

I meet my hostel-mates the next morning. A young Australian couple, very friendly; I’m happy for them. I checked out some of Paris, and when 6:30 rolled around, I made my way to the restaurant to meet. Oh, I also couldn’t help myself, and I bought Rivers Cuomo’s Alone 2 album to upload to my iPod. Nice.

I get the restaurant early by about 10 minutes and wait, while listening to the album. It’s cold and wet, but I wait, because that’s what I do – that’s what I’m good at: waiting. I go through the album maybe twice. It’s now 7:30. No text messages, nothing. If I get sick because of her... I search for a wireless hotspot so I can check my email and see if she ever sent me her phone number. I find one, do the search, and eventually find the number. I send her a message: “I’m waiting at the restaurant. Are you coming?” The reply: “In car. You?” Me: “I’ve been waiting here since 6:30”. No answer. The other girl, by the way, didn’t show up, but she never committed, so no biggie. Anyway, it’s me, Vibes and a friend of hers, who – nothing against him- didn’t speak English. So it was quite unfortunate that I was either talking to Vibes, which I’ve already established I don’t enjoy, or waiting as they spoke French. I tried to make a little joke in French to ease the silence when Vibes would get up for any time, but it wasn’t well-received. My French must be worse than I thought. Then the buffet: I skip the items that look like they have meat in them and eat. Round two, everything has meat, so I return empty-plated. Then: “Try this, I don’t think there’s meat.” She’s talking about a pizza which really looks like it has chicken on it.

“That looks like chicken.” I say.

“No, I don’t think so.”

God damn it. I’m the one who sets my criteria for whether or not I eat something!

“Yeah, look, it’s chicken,” I say, poking at the stringy flesh with my fork to show its texture.

“Well, it’s not a lot.”

“I don’t eat any.” I say, perhaps now a little visibly annoyed, adding for good measure, “Go ahead, you can have it.”

She makes a similar argument about one of the pasta dishes, which clearly also has little bits of chicken in it. Again, I turn it down and make the case that I am the kind of vegetarian who doesn’t eat meat.

On the topic of vegetarianism, she goes into how hard it is for her not to eat meat. “When you go to business meetings, you just have to eat meat. So it’s hard.”

I make the argument that, yes, there can be all kinds of pressures, and that it’s ultimately the individual’s choice. She doesn’t seem convinced. No matter. The rest of the evening goes relatively smoothly, without much more unpleasantness, and I exit after paying. Phew.

I go back to the hostel and vent about this story to the Australian couple, pretty much the same as I vent about it here. I don’t like speaking ill of people, so for the record, this entry is more about capturing my thoughts and feelings during these events than it is about me wanting to talk about a terrible person; I don’t think this was a terrible person, just the kind of person who knew exactly what to say to annoy me in conversation. Perhaps this entry says more about me than it does about her. I acknowledge this, but still don’t wish to spend any additional time with her.

And that was the second night in Paris.

Oh! Also somewhere in there, I visited Shakespeare and Co. to see if they had room. Spoke with Sylvia Whitman, the daughter of George Whitman (I won’t nickname them, since they’re notable and researchable figures; Nicknaming would be an empty gesture), who told me that they would have room the following night. Success! I planned the next week at the bookstore, which would unfortunately cut into Barcelona time, but, man, would it be worth it!

Fete des Lumieres

2008-12-08T06:10:00.000-08:00

- Lyon: Dec 5 to 8 -

Some stories are better seen than told.

Fete des Lumieres

Cool stuff at the weekend-long Fete des Lumieres. Much like a bigger version of Toronto's Nuit Blanche.

Bear Pits

2008-12-05T05:31:00.000-08:00

- Bern: Dec 2 - 5 -
This'll be a short entry for a few reasons. One, I'm falling behind and need to catch up by writing quickly; two, I was only in Bern a short time; and three, not much happened in Bern.
I really enjoyed the train rides around Switzerland. The scenery was just marvellous - mountains and lakes - beautiful. I stayed with a CS host in Bern who had an injured foot, and so couldn't show me around or anything, but we got along well, had some good conversation.
I wandered Bern, which is probably the smallest city I've visited in a while. Bigger than Aalborg and Kristiansand, from the beginning of my trip, but still a small-sized city. Oh, everything is expensive in Switzerland - comparable to the prices in Denmark, for sure.
Bought some chocolate, made some curry. Went to see the film Religulous at a local movie theatre. I'd wanted to see it for a while. It's not exactly an Earth-shattering film by any means - more like a comedy version of Dawkins' documentaries, confronting religious people and asking them to explain their beliefs in a rational way.
I took a few more train rides while in Switzerland - making use of my rail pass for the free travel. Went as far as Interlaken. Walking the city didn't do too much for me, but the train rides, man, they were something. In general, I was growing bored with all the wandering - didn't really feel the drive to see much in the city itself. I still haven't really answered a lot of the questions I've had about travelling - whether it's really worth it. I mean, some things are nice, and it's always a good exercise to meet new people and explore new landscapes, but I don't know what I was getting from the experience beyond this basic mental exercise. If all I want is a change in routine, I can simulate that at home quite easily. But I don't though. Maybe that's the point. Maybe Europe ain't the best place to really find a different worldview from that of North America.

Anyway, that's Switzerland.

Hostel Environment

2008-12-02T14:17:00.000-08:00

- Rome: Nov 28 to Dec 2 –

Goddamn dogs. Okay, so my Couch Surfing luck so far has been flawless. I’ve spoken with other people who have been amazed that I’m able to find hosts after sending out only two or three requests per city. Apparently people are used to sending up to 20 requests before finding a host. Well, friends, I employ some fancy selection tactics, and I craft every request with care, which apparently greatly improves my success. Plus, I have a killer profile. I’m a superstar at writing web profiles that people like. It’s a wonder I haven’t done better with online dating (yes, I’ve tried). But anyway, I was unable to find a host in Rome. No biggie. I’d budgeted for hostels from the beginning of the trip, so I don’t depend on finding hosts; but I also know that with my social habits, it’s possible that I could hole up unless I have someone to force me to interact. Maybe. I don’t know. Sometimes I’m under the impression that I’m socially quite normal, and that it’s everybody who are afraid to talk to people. Cowards, all of us.
So I book into a hostel. It seems like a sweet deal: 15 Euros a night, which includes blankets, pillow, breakfast and a pasta dinner with a glass of wine every night. So I book it. I go to my room and see two other backpacks already there; one has a Canadian flag on it. Okay, something to talk about there. Two girls enter the room – the owners of the backpack. They actually are from not-too-far from Toronto, so we form an immediate comradery, I feel. They explain that the final (fourth) bed in our room is to be occupied by an Australian backpacker they had met in… Somewhere else; I forget. He arrives quite shortly. I learn that one joke they have with him is that they give him a hard time about his age. I can’t tell how old he is, but I’m placing him in the high 20’s. I’m terrible at this game though. I’ll learn his age later.
We go do laundry, which is something we all had to do, then go to the free pasta dinner (small, and crap wine, but FREE!) and out for a short night walk in Rome. Okay, the social problem is resolved. I’ll simply cling like a flea to these people for my time in Rome. It’s an unspoken agreement that is made. They seem cool and friendly, and I’m immediately able to joke with them, so I revert into comfort. I also notice that the girls are generally a little more worrisome about some things than I am, which I think causes me to take the “hey, relax; don’t worry” role. I’m pretty cool anyway, so it’s a role I adapt well to. We wander until some time, I don’t know, then find our way back to the hostel.
Rome is the first of my cities that I’m visiting for the second time (well, in memorable history). It’s an interesting experience, since I’m trying to place things against their image in my memory, but it certainly looks like a different city. I don’t think I was paying attention before, or perhaps all this travelling and mental-map building has caused me to look at cities a little differently – a little more functionally (when last I visited Rome, I took the role of passenger; not really paying attention to the map, just following my sister).
Day 2 we get up and head for the Colloseum. Spell-check is calling me out on that one, but I’m sticking with it. It’s all right, I guess. I remember it being kind of but not really impressive, and it’s exactly as I remember it. Certainly not worth the 11 Euro regular price, but we bought Roma passes, which work out to be a decent deal, so it’s no biggie.

From Italy

After the Colloseum (relax, spell-check) we wander the nearby ruins. I can’t recall their name, but this is a much more satisfying experience than the Colloseum was. I try to use my imagination to recreate the bustling streets, the politicians, the Forum, the togas. We also come upon some orange trees, and me and the Old Man try to retrieve some of the higher-up and juicy-looking oranges using a long stick. Minimal success, but a fun diversion. There’s a ridiculously long line for seeing Augustus’ house for what it is. Just a few frescos in two rooms. The best part is the Forum. There used to be a city here, but now there is a hole. I can’t help but be a little reflective about the whole thing. Always thinking about mortality; anitcha.
We see more stuff, probably, then go back for the free dinner. There are a few flakes of meat in my vegetarian pasta, so I bring it to the attention of the hostel guy, but I do it in a very awkward way.
“I think there’s meat in this.”
“It could be, yeah.”
“Was it prepared with the meat sauce?”
“Maybe, yeah.”
“So you agree that this looks like meat?”
“Yeah.”
Long pause.
Me: “Okay.”
Hostel guy leaves. When he comes back a few minutes later, I managed to turn it into an actual complaint, instead of a series of questions:
“Sorry about that awkward interaction, I know it’s not your fault, but I’m a little upset that there’s meat in this. Can you tell the kitchen?”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
I’m making him out to be heartless and ignorant here, I think, but he wasn’t. I just think he knew what I was getting at, and didn’t know how to react, so he was waiting for me to make a specific request he might be able to fulfill.
Anyway, me, the Girls and the Old Man (oh, by now I had found out he was in his early 30s) go to a gelato place that I was told about by a wonderful girl in Berlin. It’s a little outside the main city, but a relatively close walk nonetheless. Man, oh, man, was the wonderful Berlin girl right. 3 Euros gets you FOUR scoops (each of a different flavour) in a big waffle cone. And this is in-house-made gelato. Top-quality stuff. Great flavours. We all agree this is the best thing, and that we’ll return the next night.
Next morning, Vatican. More idiocy with prohibited photo-taking. Again, I don’t care; I don’t take pictures of junky chapel ceilings; that’s for chumps. But it’s ridiculous that they even pretend to enforce a no-photo policy in the Sistine Chapel. People are snapping photos everywhere – the place is packed – and two “guards” walk around covering random cameras, saying, “no photo.” Then they walk away, and the person is free to continue taking pictures. What a joke. Who hasn’t seen the Sistine Chapel? It’s everywhere. There’s no way the extra money they make on postcards can justify what they pay these guards. Whatever; not my museum. Then into St. Peter’s Basilica. Nice. Oh, in between those, we allow ourselves to be a little ripped off on a meal. But that’s to be expected. And it wasn’t a huge rip-off. Anyway, we go back for the free dinner (doesn’t seem like we did much, but the line into the Vatican museum was a monster – took ages), then pretty much call it a night. After gelato.
Next day. Goddamn dogs. We want to get the most from our Roma passes, so we head towards other sights listed in the pass guide. It’s a little outside town – we take a bus to get there. We then walk a good distance away from civilization, passing several busy and narrow streets before getting to the site, and it’s closed, but a friendly little white dog greets us. There’s two old men sitting on the nearby curb. Ah, the dog must be theirs. It runs up to us, and we pet it (well, my companions do, but I wisely resist). Well, time to go; good-bye, dog! We walk back toward where the bus dropped us off, and the dog is still following us, occasionally running ahead and falling behind, but always in our general vicinity. Okay, these guys don’t seem to mind their dog going far, but surely the dog will realize soon how far we’ve gone and will want to turn back. Several minutes later, closer to those busy roads, and no such thing has happened. The dog is distracted occasionally by other people and animals, but does not leave our side. What a stupid dog. We get to the busy road and don’t know what to do – this dog is jumping on and off the road, oblivious to the amount of momentum being carried by these roaring metal beasts. My mind goes back to the day last Halloween when me and Nemo stumbled upon a dog running around the streets of Toronto. It didn’t end well.
We wait for traffic to calm down a little, then call it towards us on the side of the road to make sure it doesn’t just step out. We had passed a large parkland area a short while ago, so we make our way towards there, hoping that the dog will grow distracted long enough for us to leave it in the safety of the park. We lure it in, and indeed it does get distracted by some people sitting at a booth for something, so we take the opportunity to jet back to the bus stop. Phew, problem solved. As we wait, we can peer down the narrow street (narrow because it’s surrounded by walls) at the entrance to the park. I dread seeing that dog’s head poke round the entrance, and we all joke about it, as if it couldn’t happen. Ten minutes later, no bus and no dog. The bus makes its approach, and we’re almost in the clear, when the dog pokes its head out, followed by a person who appears to be calling it back. Ah, this poor soul is now where we once were – the accidental guardians of the dog that is clearly not meant to live in such a world. But what can we do? We board the bus and leave, the dog and its guardians behind us. I don’t think there’s any chance that dog made it through the night; it was just too stupid.
Rest of Rome passed without incident as far as I can remember. More gelato, exploration, human bonding, and finally, a departure. I took the day train to Bern, because I was told by a nice girl in the hostel that the view from the trains in Switzerland is spectacular – a fact I was soon to verify.

Venice is a 4-Dimensional Hypercity

2008-11-27T12:29:00.000-08:00

- Venice / Florence : Nov 25 to 28 –

Overnight train from Vienna to Venice. Another snorer, and my irregular sleeping patterns in Vienna made it such that I had a late start to my sleep; but sleep did come, and this was a longer-than-usual night train, so I got a good 7 hours or so.

I arrived in Venice in the morning – close to 9 am. I had heard mixed reviews about the city, and it seemed quite small and touristy, so I decided to make a day trip of it, and catch a train into Florence before nightfall, where I would spend the next few nights with a host. Given that I had chosen to spend just one day in Venice, I knew I was taking a weather risk; the one day could be good or bad, but I’d only have the one. Well, turns out it was bad. Luckily I had downloaded two new albums for my MP3 player – Hawksley’s Los Manlicious and Jenny Lewis’ Acid Tongue. Those albums got me through the day.

I felt brave stepping out of the train station, and decided that I wouldn’t get a map, I would just wander and trust myself to find the way back. Was this a good move? Perhaps not, but in another way, perhaps so. But probably not. First direction: 90 degrees counterclockwise to the train station exit. I wandered into a residential-looking part of town; no tourists, loads of dead-ends, and nothing particularly fun. I wandered back to station following the exact route I had taken out, since any shortcut I tried to make lead me to a dead-end. A dead-end in Venice is basically a sudden disappearance of sidewalk, followed by water. Back to the station. Now I went straight out from the station, 90 degrees clockwise to my original direction. More touristy now – it’s an interesting city, but I didn’t see anything to really catch my eye. I ended up at the Architecture College, which appeared to be the very tip of one of the islands, so I turned back. Chose another direction from the train station, and again ended up at the Architecture College. Weird. Turned back, chose a new direction. I knew there was a second island that I felt I had not yet seen. Ended up at the Architecture College again. This is stupid. It was impossible to get away from the college. It was also raining and getting quite cold, so I found a restaurant and grabbed a meal – half decent but pretty expensive. By the end of the day, I kept finding new routes to the Architecture College – even though I felt that I was going in the exact opposite direction. It’s like Venice kept folding that way. So whatever, I hate Venice. Took the train to Florence and that was that.

Got to my host’s place in Florence – Tusk, we’ll call him. He was a really happy and jovial kind of guy. The next morning, I was to explore Florence. Now, Florence was a city I had not at all looked into beforehand. I didn’t know what it was famous for, or what a traveler was supposed to see – besides the David, of course, which I had only quite recently learned was in this city. But I was certainly quite impressed with it all. I found a vegetarian restaurant, had lunch, then wandered into the city centre – the old city. Much like other old cities I’d visited, it was quite beautiful, and I was caught by surprise at the sight of the bridge spanning the Arno River with all the shops on it – it looks like it’s tremendously unstable. I guess that’s part of its charm. I spent the day quite happy with seeing things from the outside, then I drew a statue until my hand was useless from the cold (it was still a beautiful day), and called it a night. Me and Tusk went out for a drink, had a conversation that was more open in some ways than any I’ve had in a long time, and walked home. We passed a pigeon with a broken wing. It clearly wanted to fly away from us but couldn’t. As we walked past it, so did a pair of girls, one of whom kicked it. I know there’s a general annoyance people have toward pigeons, and she couldn’t have known this was an injured one, but I reacted by shouting what I hope was a universal “hey, hey, hey!” Tusk said something in Italian; I assume he told her about the wing. We walked our separate ways, these girls and us, and kept looking back. The girls were looking back too, at the pigeon, as if to suggest they would go and kick it again as soon as we weren’t looking.

Next day, I met with a CS’er who goes to art school in Florence. I say “art school” to simplify the actual name of the program he’s in – some very technical realist painting program. He only had very little time, so we grabbed lunch at a nearby restaurant with some good authentic Tuscan food (I gathered), and a brief conversation about art and other things. Pleasant. Then I went to the museums. Saw the David, and was actually kind of impressed. It’s pretty massive. They had a guard making sure no one took pictures of it. What a stupid and useless rule. I mean, do they really pretend that there aren’t a million photos of the statue easily accessible on the Internet? Do they really think it’s gonna hurt the sales of their lame-ass postcards? (Okay, maybe it actually will, but they should still shut up about it). I just don’t think they have a case. I didn’t even wanna take any crappy pictures of their dorky statue.

Then I went to the Uffizi Museum. There was a pretty girl there who had a very slow pace, stopping to see everything. I recognized the urge to do the same, matching her pace, but that’s usually the kind of thing I talk myself out of. So I said, “I’ll go at my own pace.” Well, despite trying hard to do that, and even getting intentionally far ahead of her, our paces ended up being about the same. This was a mild source of anxiety, you see, because if she’s out of sight, then there’s nothing I can do, and I can feel okay knowing that. But when she’s around, well, there’s this voice saying, “attract, attract, attract,” or something to that effect. Well, anyway, in the very end, we shared a moment where we were both peering into the semi-translucent covering of a statue under retouching (I started, then she did it, so if anything, she copied me this time), then we met at a corner, bumped into each other and smiled. Then went our separate ways. That little interaction was enough to ease my anxious mind.

I caught a view of the city from Piazza dei Michelangelo, which is a nice high point in the city. Tried to make it there for sunset, but just didn’t. Me, Tusk and a friend of his went to an “original-language” film festival at a local theatre, which basically meant English movies. Saw a doc on an American photographer – little boring – and one on the creation of the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing – pretty interesting. Made me want to look into the artist Ai Weiwei. I haven’t done this yet.

The next day, I was to catch my train to Rome. And I did. I’m getting better at being on time for my trains. My train, on the other hand, was an hour late. Better it than me, I suppose.

Oh, I also had some coffee-flavoured gelato in there somewhere.

Savy Enemy

2008-11-24T08:29:00.000-08:00

- Vienna: Nov 20 to 24 -

Late starts. It's hard to wake up when you don't have anywhere to be, and you don't know what you're going to do. Every morning is a struggle with this feeling of aimlessness; If I wake up now or in another hour, what difference will it make? No goal, no drive. I can deal with cold, I can deal with hunger - but the two basic sensations that bring me down the most are tiredness and having to use the bathroom. So I've been getting up late. I think there's a deeper lesson here about choosing to get up every day without the need for a goal. I think goals are a little delusional; there's nothing that's so important that it must be done before I die. I want to be creative though - I want to be at least a little productive. As I walk the streets, I try and write songs in my head. I plan to take a cafe day in Venice tomorrow and maybe write some stuff down. I fear that if I don't at least produce a little bit of creative product, I'll feel that I've traveled for nothing.

Point: If you get home from traveling and have nothing to show for it, why did you even leave in the first place?

Counter-point: No, no, no. The lesson to be learned is that life is to be enjoyed, and creativity comes as a natural by-product of enjoyment and experience.

Okay, counter-point, I'll try to enjoy myself.

Vienna's great. I love the alleys of the old town. I attended the Critical Mass bike event, had some dinners, lunch and brunch with more Couch Surfers. I'm slacking a little on my host-finding - I used to do it at least two weeks in advance, but now I don't know where I'll be in a week. In a way I'm okay with this, because I'll get to see both sides of the planning coin: the nicely planned side, and the not very well planned side. I feel like there's something to the idea of just going somewhere, and not knowing anything about it, and just finding a place to stay. If I can't find a host, I can always stay at a hostel too.

So Vienna. Okay, nice host, though I feel guilty about getting my late starts. I'm sitting here typing away in the afternoons when there's a city out there. I feel like it's shameful behaviour. I am ashamed. But I have seen a fair amount.

We went out to several small Christmas markets here, which is good fun. I'm really quite fond of the smells and lights at night, especially with the snow falling. And gluvine is something else I've grown quite fond of. Perhaps a christmas tradition I'd like to bring home.

I checked out the museums here - there was a Van Gogh exhibit that was not to be missed. I don't know - I got to draw on my host's wall as a parting gift, and I pretty much called it a night on my last night here before catching the night train to Venice. Oh, I also had sushi for the first time in months. Mm-boy!

A Story I Forgot About from my Last Night in Sweden

2008-11-22T01:34:00.000-08:00

When I was heading to meet up with the two Couch Surfers in Sweden for a vegetarian meal, I had to pass through an alley, a wide alley. Ahead of me were four young kids, maybe ranging in ages from 10 to 16. They had their hands on a movable gate - like the kind that goes up around an open manhole or something. I imagine they just found it, and considered themselves very lucky, imagining the possibilities that their new possession presented. So I walk through the alley, and they block my path with the gate. One says something in Swedish. "Sorry, I only speak English." He repeats, "You can't pass here. This half of the alley is blocked. You have to pass over there." He points to his left, to the other half of the alley. I start to walk around, but they carry the gate and block me again. "Now this half is closed." I laugh, and walk some more - every where I go, they block me, naturally. To my left, I see a fence - beyond it a slight drop, then a staircase that leads up into the alley beyond the children. So I make a quick move to hop over it, then run up the stairs, and I'm past them, but they keep chasing me with the gate, so I keep running. Finally they give up.

I thought that was just a fun thing.

I'm so into...

2008-11-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

Free wifi
Thermal long-johns
Couch Surfing meet-ups
Sleep, sleep, sleep

Free wifi, Paid toilets

2008-11-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

- Copenhagen: Nov 10 to 12 -

And now I come to one of those points in the career of a blogger where I must decide how much information from other people's lives I divulge. Not that I have anything huge to divulge, and I'm using nicknames, but anyone with the slightest wits about them could simply go to my Couch Surfing profile and match up a date and place to the person in question. Anyway, no matter. I'll just say a bunch of stuff, and hopefully none of it will upset anybody.

I spent the morning with Burning Man, after getting off of the night train. This night train was much more peaceful - my bunkmates were non-snorers. Me and Burning Man walked around Copenhagen, having a look at the basic sights of a new city: the waterfront, the old town, the statues. We saw the Little Mermaid statue, built as a monument to Copenhagen's hero, Hans Christian Anderson. Crap statue, if you ask me.
I headed towards my host's place, and Burning Man went to check into a hostel. My host, the Guru, took the two of us (my host and myself) to a spa, since he got a bit of a discount. It wasn't exactly what I had expected - it was a very self-guided experience, with no real theme or goal. I guess I pictured spas as places where there were set activities. We had a decent conversation in the 100% humidity sauna room about - I don't know - meditation and happiness and stuff. Turns out his girlfriend had just broken up with him the day before. His friend at the spa had also just ended a relationship the day before. This gave the two of them something to click on. I felt a little weird, since I didn't really know either of them, and couldn't offer any specific condolences, or say anything of much significance, for that matter. And naturally, it was something they wanted to talk about. We all went to her house after closing up the spa (she, the friend of the Guru who worked there). Again, I felt a bit strange, for all the aforementioned reasons. I was also really tired by this point, and was getting up early to meet the Burning Man for a bus tour of Copenhagen. I cycled away by myself, leaving the Guru and his friend to chat, which I felt was appropriate.

Bus tours are crap. Everything in Copenhagen is expensive, sure, but this bus tour was $40. Yeesh. The unfortunate coincidental part was that the tour roughly followed our walking path from the day before. Sure, it was coloured up a little by the bizarre woman who was our tour guide giving us the history, but it wasn't anything more than we could have gotten from a free pamphlet or something. I'm not bitter about spending that money; I just won't do it again. Burning Man then went to catch his ferry into Oslo, from where he would go to Bergen. Lucky guy. That was the last time I've seen him thus far, but we may cross paths again.

I then went to get a lunch at a place that I had noticed on the way to the bus tour, where they offered free wifi. I'm so into free wifi. I think a business giving out free wifi is making a very good decision. On the contrary, a business charging to use the toilets is making a criminal decision. This is a rant that will come later. I'm so into free wifi. I'm so against paid toilets. Anyway, I spent about $17 at this place for a sandwich and a coffee - that's to give you an idea of how comparitively expensive Denmark is.
Was it a good coffee?
Yes.
Was it a good sandwich?
Yes.
Then stop complaining.
Okay.

I wandered to the Tycho Brahe planetarium, which ended up just being a crappy general-purpose educational movie theatre, and had not much scientific merit whatsoever. Then wandered back to the Guru's place to make dinner. Shepherd's pie. Worked out pretty well.

From Nov9-11

Next morning, up and on my way to Berlin. Running late, as always.

- Berlin: Nov 12 to 16 -

It's always a strange experience leaving one city and going to another; leaving behind people who you've only just grown comfortable with in order to have to introduce yourself all over again to new people in a new place. Maybe if I didn't have a generally long phase of shyness after each introduction, I'd be more comfortable with this, but I know my patterns, and I tend to follow them every time. I'm quiet, polite, and a little on-edge when I first arrive at someone's place; I'm so afraid of committing a faux-pas that would put me immediately in their bad books.

Anyway, so I go to Berlin. I pass through Hamburg Central Station, which was quite familiar to me now - I reflected on this fact briefly, with a bit of pride. I was reminded of Shigeru Miyamoto's thoughts on developing the Legend of Zelda games. Something to the effect of: When you first start, you're a frightened child in a world that's strange to you, and you have no weapons. But after you play for a while, places become familiar, and you become a little braver because of your growing familiarity. There's something to this.

Berlin was great. My host there I shall call Bio. She had a wicked flatemate and a tiny kitten, who I shall nickname Prestige. Super-cute little thing.

From Berlin_Prague

Bio took me in as a last-minute guest - me having sent an email to her just the day before. That was the closest I had yet come to surrendering to a youth hostel, which I actually kind of want to try at least once. Maybe Rome.
I checked out some Berlin stuff by walking around the city aimlessly, as I am wont to do. I always seem to find my way toward the major shopping street in every city I visit; maybe I am subconsciously drawn into the light and sound.

I was having insecurity issues about how I looked. I feel a little scummy sometimes, what with my facial hair all wild the way it is, and my clothing having been chosen for functional, not fashionable reasons. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not here to attract girls. I had it in my head that I was going to buy a new jacket. Something black, so that it wouldn't look stupid with my brown quick-dry pants. (I presently have a brown jacket, which certainly does look at least a little stupid with said pants). Then I get into an endless internal debate.

Point: You are at dis-ease with your present jacket, therefore you should just buy a new one and then you will be happy.

Counter-Point: Appeasing your feeling of dis-ease will only send you into a habit pattern of trying to solve all your problems by buying something. Instead, come to peace with your appearance, then the feeling will go away naturally.

Since I'm such a practical guy, my counter-point voice won the day. But it may come up again before the end of the trip.

I went to another CS meetup in Berlin. This one was huge. I get there and start talking to the first people I see: an attractive female, and a male, who I barely see, because he is in the company of the attractive female. Again, I'm totally not here to attract girls or anything, but I was confronted with a sudden and distinct mind-freeze when I tried to talk to them (her). I noticed this quickly, and used the opportunity to use the bathroom. This is what happens; this is why I am bad with girls. I can't push my attraction out of the way in order to hold regular conversations. This would happen again a few nights later in Prague. I can say this now, because though it is in the future of the present narrative, it is in the past to myself, who is now in Vienna. More to come on that.
Anyway, beyond the initial hiccup, the night goes very well. I talk with lots of people, including another Canadian girl - who I'd meet up with the next night - and another really cool girl who basically shared every single fundamental value with me. I call it a night, and head back to Bio's place.

I spend more time wandering Berlin the next day - nothing eventful to report.

I caught my train toward Prague on the 16th. I had planned to make a day trip to Dresden, then head to Prague in the early evening, but I'm much to lazy to be ready to go first thing in the morning like that. I'm always just on time for the train I need to catch. On the one hand, phew, I always make it; but on the other hand, I hate that state of anxiety associated with never knowing if you're gonna make it this time. If I were cooler, I'd be able to handle it.

- Prague: Nov 16 to 20 -

Prague's different, man. I felt a little bad about the homogeneity of all the cities I'd been to before - and, okay, Prague still has its McDonald's's and H&M's like the rest of them - but Prague was different somehow. I got on the subway and went straight to my host's place. I contacted this host because he is quite prolific on the CS discussion boards, and clearly takes much interest in Couch Surfing - I was hoping to gain some insight on this matter by staying with him. In fact, I don't know if I would have even gone to Prague if he couldn't host me; it wasn't included in my rail pass (though it was cheap enough to get in and out).

I arrived, and we headed out to a pub. My host, Monster (an affectionate title - unrelated to behaviour or appearance), took me on a walking tour the next morning, during and after which we met up with a few of his friends in the Prague Couch Surfing community. Some cool blokes. I feel like sometimes I meet cool people, and when describing them here, I just kind of brush over them. Fact is, I found these people really interesting. No great stories here, just wanted to emphasize that.

Toured Prague alone the next day. Late start. Took photos of the nearby soviet tower decorated with babies. (That's what I mean when I say Prague is different. There are babies on the soviet ex-TV tower.)

From Berlin_Prague

Checked out the main castle in the area of Prague's first district. The castle town reminded me of Ocarina of Time. Huh, that's the second Zelda reference...

The next day, I went to do what I've been waiting to do for a long time. That's right: It's the cathedral decorated with bones! It's in a town just outside of Prague (about an hour by train), called Kutna Hora. Again, had a late start that day. Oh, but first I went to the cemetery just outside my host's place - apparently one Mr. Franz Kafka is buried there. I had a look around, but couldn't find him. Still, a really cool cemetery.

From Berlin_Prague

Anyway, on to the Ossuary of Doom! Kutna Hora. This is the town that, of all those visited so far, most reminds me of Resident Evil 4. (Okay, that's too many video-game references now.) This was a creepy place. Farmers out toiling in their run-down-looking yards, dark sky... I made my way to the Ossuary. It was easy to find - there's basically one main road into the town. It was a small place, but very cool. Totally worth the trip out. Loads of pictures. Feel free to check them out.

From Berlin_Prague

On the way back, I shared a room on the train with four Welsh travlers, roughly between the ages of 30 and 60 - two young, two older. They made for a very entertaining ride, the way they jokingly bickered back and forth. They each had their role - there was the smart-ass, the know-it-all, the silent-one and the wise-one. Their argument for most of the ride - mainly between the smart-ass and the know-it-all, since they were best-equipped to riff off each other - was about whether train wheels skid on the tracks when the brakes are pulled in an emergency situation.

Got back to Prague, went out to a meetup that night with Monster. The CS'ers I'd met the other night were there, as well as many others now. Very good meetup. Again, there was an incredibly attractive girl there, and I just felt stupefied by her presence - totally unable to say anything intelligent in front of her. This is a serious defect, y'all. Again - it's not like I have any designs on picking up women, but I'd like to be able to be myself in front of people. I don't know - whatever.
Unfortunately, when we were leaving, a few people had mistakenly skipped out on their portion of the bill, and Monster was stuck bearing the brunt of the extra cost, since he organized the whole thing. Bummer.

I had to be up early the next morning - this morning now (all caught up!) - to get into my next stop, Vienna. Woke up, got ready, and made it to the train with barely any time to spare, as usual.

SNEAK PREVIEW ABOUT VIENNA:
So far, so good.

Overheard in Prague

2008-11-18T16:53:00.000-08:00

One of two American guys who could not have been over 21 years old, dressed in suits on the streets of Prague today:
"I don't see why everyone doesn't wear suits all the time."

EDIT Nov 20 / 08
"where" corrected to "wear." I've been away from subtitling too long; I'm mixing up homonyms.

The Further Adventures in Scandinavia

2008-11-17T05:18:00.000-08:00

Boy, I'm falling behind. I've been through Copenhagen and Berlin, and I'm now in Prague (graphic to come), but I wanna make sure I write about the last few places before talking about the present. I should hate for those memories to grow foggier.

FC, Burning Man and I checked out some sights in Stockholm for the next two days. There was also a sauna party at Silkybeard's place, where about 10 CS'ers showed up, most of which, by coincidence, spoke French as a first language, so it was a good time for all. Silkybeard likes his saunas to approach maddeningly hot degrees, 100 of them. 100 maddeningly hot degrees. The sauna temperature was literally approaching the boiling point of water, that stuff that I'm mostly made of, so I could only stay in there for short bursts at a time.

Next day, me, FC and Burning Man saw the open-air museum in Stockholm. I had a good feeling the whole time, as we talked and walked around, like having friends. This was something I was worried I wouldn't have at all while traveling - that any bond I had with other people would be shallow and fleeting, but I guess I was being too pessimistic. I really felt good, felt like I could joke and laugh with people. This is an important feeling, and I'm glad I've had it, because it means I will likely have it again as I move on.

FC had to leave to catch her flight back to Hamburg, but me and Burning Man hung out a bit longer to check out another museum. He also decided to book the same night train to Copenhagen that I was taking that night, so there was a good chance we would hang out some more there. I'm always afraid that I'm being kind of clingy to people - I know I can act out of fear of being left alone - so I played it all cool, but I was really glad that I'd have a friend in Copenhagen, and it wouldn't be another Oslo.

We parted for the evening, as he made his arrangements, and I checked out the Stockholm Science and Technology Museum. I really dug it. I played a game of "Mind Ball" against this other guy who was there.

How Mind Ball works:
You strap a thingy on your head, so does your opponent across the table from you. You place the Mind Ball in the centre of the table, press the start button, and the thingy on your head reads your brain's alpha and theta wave output. This is connected to relaxation and focus. The ball will move toward your opponents "goal" if you are able to relax and focus more than they are. Then you win.

This guy beat his two daughters at the game, so I challenged him. It was intense. The ball was closing in on my goal, then I really went all zen and shit, and turned the tables. After what will surely go down as the greatest game of Mind Ball ever, I came out victorious, 1 - 0. I was born to play Mind Ball.

I left, had a vegetarian meal and a good chat about ethics, vegetarianism, politics and environmentalism with two other Stockholm CS'ers who I made plans with, and headed for my night train to Copenhagen.

Stockholm was a good time.

An Account of Scandinavia Continues

2008-11-13T15:19:00.000-08:00

- Kristiansand : Nov 5 -
I spent a day wandering through the small city that is Kristiansand, on Norway's south coast. It very much reminded me of Aalborg, in that there was the clear "shopping street" and not much else in the surrounding area. I took the opportunity to develop my mental-map-forming skill, which I knew would be handy later on, in the bigger cities. I climbed up a cliff that overlooked the city, then climbed down and wandered around aimlessly more. Bought a meal of cheese-bread and fruit out of a grocery store, and met back up with the Captain after he was finished work. We went out for Mexican food (while at the Mexican restaurant, he mentioned that the Indian restaurant next door was his absolute favourite Indian place in the world - and he's seen the world. What a bummer). I planned my voyage into Oslo the next day. I wouldn't be staying any nights there, since I hadn't found a CS host, and I had already arranged with my Stockholm host to be there on the 7th. So the plan was, morning train into Oslo, night train out, arriving in Stockholm the morning of the 7th.

- Oslo : Nov 6 -
And that's exactly what I did. Arrived in Oslo at around 9 or 10 in the morning, and just wandered. I'd occasionally stop and use my iPod touch to check for free wireless signals; if you're willing to move around and look like an idiot, it's not too hard to find some.
I think I learned the streets of Central Oslo pretty well, though not by name, just by "feel". I took the day to work on a few more skills: Mental-map-building, WiFi-detection and the ever-important free-bathroom-using. Most washrooms in Europe cost money to use. In malls, train stations and even some restaurants, this is the case. This is absolutely absurd to me, and I refuse to pay to use a washroom, which forces me to be a little bit crafty. I've generally found that the best strategy is to employ the two S's: Smile and Strut. Walk in somewhere like you own the place, and don't be afraid to make eye contact and smile at the employees there. The best places for this are movie theatres and museums - places where you have to pay to enter, but they foolishly place the bathrooms before the point of payment. If a McDonald's is busy enough, these are also good places.
I checked out the Oslo Cultural Museum, which was pretty mediocre. I saw some American tourists in my age group up at the palace. I thought about approaching them, since talking to strangers is on my list of things I've got to do more of while traveling, but I just didn't do it. I think this got me down all day, because from then on, the day was pretty bleak. I stopped at a vegetarian restaurant for lunch (which I looked up using some free WiFi) and just waited for the day to finish so I could get my night train out of there.
The day did indeed come to a close, and I got on the train, introduced myself to the two people I'd be sharing a room with and started the process of going to sleep. But, oh, was the man above me a snorer. It took me hours to get any amount of decent sleep, and even then, all my dreams were about how angry I was. In one dream, I got up and complained to the conductor that this guy was snoring.

- Stockholm : Nov 7 to 9 -
Oh, boy, did I have a good time in Stockholm. I mean, not, like, a euphoric time - by a good time, I mean my mood was good, balanced, and I really enjoyed myself in all that I was doing. I showed up at Silkybeard's house in the morning after the night train. I was tired and a little grumpy. Also, I'm always a little shy with new hosts, and it's hard to be overly polite when you're tired, because you know it would be polite to offer to do things, but you just don't want to do anything. So I was afraid that I was giving a bad impression. Well, he treated me to some muesli - which, I have noticed, seems to be a very popular breakfast here - covered with filmjolk, a Swedish sour milk. Very much like yogurt, but not sweet. Kinda gross, actually, on it's own, but with sugar and muesli, no problem. Anyway, Silkybeard was exceptionally hospitable, and after I had a shower, did my laundry and napped, we got to talking more, and went out to the CS meetup for Stockholm that week (some cities do weekly meetups, some monthly, some not at all). The meetup was great. I made plans with other travelers to explore Vaxholm the next day - an island to the north-east of Stockholm, accessible by ferry.
That night, after the meetup, another Couch Surfer arrived at Silkybeard's place - we would both be hosted by Silkybeard for the next two nights, and it was a tight fit getting all of in there, but we managed. Let's see, I need a nickname for her...
I'll think of that later, when I finish this post, and account my travels in Stockholm

For now, it is night in Berlin.

Song of Praise to Couch Surfing.

2008-11-08T10:05:00.000-08:00

So I've noticed a trend, that I tend to post things with a low slant, as if to give the impression that my mood is generally low. I hypothesize that this is because it is usually when I'm feeling particularly lonely and homesick that I have the urge to sit and type a blog entry, because it's a form of therapy for me, in a sense; a way of reaching out to home. The consequence of only writing while in this mindset is that the mood is generally low, as I have said. This, of course, is a misrepresentation. Homesickness is there, but it is not consistently and continuously there; it is there when I am alone and wanting to talk to someone, because that's when I start to think about my friends and family at home, who I miss. I don't usually relate with the feeling of "missing" people. People sometimes say that they "miss" me, and I generally can't relate. On this trip, however, more than ever before, I can genuinely say I know what it feels like to miss people.

But anyway, there I go again, giving the impression that I'm down.

Well, today, I am up, in general. So I felt I should tilt the scales and post while the high lasts. This will be a short entry, but I want to say that so far, the last two weeks in mainland Europe have been made great thanks to Couch Surfing. I've made brief allusions to my Couch Surfing hosts in previous entries (even going as far as suggesting that I was afraid one was racist - I want to be clear that this was not an accusation, but just an expression of a worry I had, and that he was absolutely not such a thing). All of my hosts and meet-ups have been happy and warm. To the Madman in Montreal, I admire the effort he puts in to showing travellers a good time. The Cop in Rotterdam, Humble in Hamburg, Soldier in Aalborg, the Captain in Kristiansand and now Silkybeard in Stockholm (as well as the people I've travelled with during the days and met with at the evening meets (coming up with nicknames takes time, and I don't wanna use people's real names, but I separately remember them all)) have all been great hosts, great friends, and have made me, a shy Canadian, feel that much better about my place in the International Community. So I want to, for now, sing a praise for the usefulness and good-spiritedness of Couch Surfing and those individuals who gravitate towards it.

Anyway, I'm being rude at a party at Silkybeard's place right now, so I'll wrap this up for now and recount my days in Kristiansand, Oslo and Stockholm a little later - maybe a few days.

Happiness is the state of not wanting anything.

Photos!

Nov3

Stockholm-Vauxholm

Convoluted Passage to Norway

2008-11-05T02:33:00.000-08:00

Right now I´m on a sailboat in Norway - Kristiansand to be exact. I´ll get to that.

After Scotland, I took a ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam, salvaging my plan to get a ferry into the mainland of Europe, which, as I mentioned before, was blown to shambles upon my learning that ferries between Scotland and Norway don´t operate year-round.
On the bus to the ferry terminal, I sat next to another solo guy with a big backpack - I figured he was also travelling alone. I ran into him again on the ferry, and decided to make conversation, you know, making travelling easier for both of us. I approached him and started to say, "How´s it going?" At which point he made eye contact, shyly said "hello" and then slunk away. And that was the end of that. I decided to trim my beard, in case that was some kind of critical factor in the exchange (though I´m sure the more critical factor was this dude´s shyness and/or lack of English proficiency).
Spent one night on the ferry, got into Amsterdam, then immediately headed to Rotterdam, where I´d meet up with my host there. She´s an organized crime investigator who I´d met in Toronto the previous month. I took some photos of Rotterdam´s shopping facilities, which I´ll post later, then I accidentally crossed paths with my host on the street, a few hours before we were supposed to meet. A happy accident. We grabbed a coffee, since she was only on her lunch, then she returned to work.
I hate to say it, but the first few stops along my way to Norway I only saw as intermediate steps to a greater goal. I never really had my heart set on seeing Rotterdam - didn´t even know what was there, but it ended up being nice. I borrowed my host´s bike and cycled around the city. Later, I climbed a tree in a park, and saw a van pull up. A man in a uniform got out and told me to get down. He asked why I was climbing the tree. His English wasn´t too strong, so I explained thusly, "for fun, amusement." Pretty accurate, I guess, and he seemed to accept it, so he gave me a "don´t do it again; you could get hurt" and was on his way. Personally, I don´t wanna spend too much time in a city where I´m not allowed to climb trees. I left the next morning (as had actually always been the plan...)
Next stop: Hamburg. This was my first big trip on Europe´s rail system. I was afraid I was gonna screw something up. But I had the mobile number of my next host, so even a minor mishap would be correctable. But no such mishap occurred. I got to Hamburg and headed to my host´s place. This host, who I´ll call Humble, had the distinction of being the first Couch Surfing host who I had not previously met. Humble got home from work, and we went out to a CS meetup in Hamburg. This was a good time. Lots of travellers and locals. I met a few Americans who teach English in Germany. One of them offered to give me a day-tour the next day, so I took her up on it. Next day, had the tour, which turned out all right, again considering that I had only made Hamburg a destination on the route to Norway. I made dinner for Humble and myself, then we went out to a friend of Humble´s for a poker night. I don´t really play poker, but this is what Couch Surfing is all about sometimes - interacting with local people, so I tagged along. I ended up winning the night, due to a few lucky hands in the end of the game. Not too shabby.

Next day, I tagged along with Humble as we helped lift a dishwasher into his girlfriend´s flat. His girlfriend and her mother then proceeded to take us around for the day, going to a photo exhibit at a local gallery, then to dinner at an Italian restaurant, where they just shout Italian phrases out every now and then, even when they don´t make sense in context. This is the weird part of Couch Surfing, I guess - I wonder how it must seem to this woman and her daughter that I´m a non-German-speaker tagging along with their day, which would otherwise just be them. But they seemed to accept it all right, which made things easy on me. We had a few brief exchanges, which were pleasant, and that was that. Humble then brought me to another friend´s place, where he had to drop off a gift. Here´s where I felt a little awkward, since we stayed for about an hour, and they just spoke German to each other all night. I wouldn´t expect them to speak English for my benefit or anything, but it did feel odd that I would tag along for this. No matter.

Next day, off again, toward Denmark. Again, though, just another stopover on the real quest for Norway´s gold! I stayed in Aalborg with another CS host, who I´ll call Soldier. We went grocery shopping, and I offered to pay, being the nice guy that I am. Then my credit card was declined inexplicably, and I felt like a real chump. We went home, and put on a movie, I apologized profusely for the card deal, and promised to pay Soldier back. He was very nice about the whole thing though - never gave me a hard time about it.
Checked out a Viking graveyard the next day. The place was fenced in, so I let myself in. Then a truck pulled up, and I was reminded of my experience with the tree in Rotterdam. I kind of laid low, which was easy, given the terrain of the graveyard, and no incident occurred.
I felt pretty crummy in the morning - missing home, and wondering why I was travelling in the first place. Me and my sister were just talking about this, though, and it we agree that the cure is to just get out and walk around. It´s a magical cure, really. I walked the streets of Aalborg and it really made me happy. I felt pretty good by the day´s end.
I made it home early, and was looking forward to a quiet evening, when I accidentally downloaded a computer virus on my laptop, while trying to get a serial number for a piece of software I wanted to use. Crap! Then Soldier got home, and he´s a bit of a computer guy, so he spent the next few hours (three, I believe) fixing my mess for me. This combined with the credit card thing (Oh, I had paid him back that morning), and I felt like I took on the appearance of someone who had no idea what he was doing. Anyway, he fixed it, we went to sleep, I got up the next morning to continue making my way up to Norway.

And now here I am. Yesterday I met with my host here, who lives on his sailboat here in the harbour of Kristiansand. We took a short ride out to have a look at the coast, but the weather is very cold here, and it gets dark so early, so it didn´t last long before it was time to come in. I´m gonna go exploring today, see what Kristiansand has to offer, then tomorrow I make a day trip into Oslo.

Photos to come!

EDIT: I've moved this part of the entry to the bottom here so that it cannot be immediately connected with the host I am talking about. I feel this is more fair than what I had before, since I really don't want to suggest something negative about this person.
______________________
We watched Tropic Thunder, and at one point, the host made a comment that made me wonder if he was a racist. I panicked. I remembered a bit by the stand-up comedian I had seen in England: "If I wanted to agree with a racist comment out of politeness, I´d go to a family dinner." Something like that - longer bit, but the theme was agreeing with racist comments out of politeness. I tried to address it, but it turns out he didn´t really mean it in a way that was motivated by race - and he was a very tolerant kind of person, in general, so it just goes to show something, but I don´t know what.

Highs and Lows in Scotland

2008-10-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last few days seeing a vast array of what Scotland has to offer. The William Wallace Monument, the Highlands, the cities (Glasgow and Edinburgh), the theatre (Oklahoma!)* and the family (my family).
I've been very quiet here. Perpetually in one of those moods where I feel like I'm just not saying much, not contributing to conversations, not adding anything interesting. Just saying "yeah" a lot. Or, picking up the local dialect, "aye" (In my head, I'm actually secretly saying "a'ight," but they pretty much sound the same, so no one knows).
I like walking cities alone. It is a fun thing to not be worrying about compromising your own time because you have to see the things everyone else wants to see. Today, in Edinburgh, for instance, I saw a big cliff in the distance and just decided to walk toward it until finally, I was on top of it, looking down on the city. I maybe couldn't have talked someone into doing that. And I really enjoyed it, alone.
But I also long to just be talking to my fellow humans. Here's that recurring theme coming up again - remember the one I mentioned from the bus entry? The theme of shyness and talking to strangers. I said a few short words to someone in the cafe I lunched at - since the place only had one table, at which all the guests sat, talking to a fellow diner was relatively easy and invasion-guilt-free - but it didn't turn into a conversation. I could have turned it into one, but I let it go.
Then there's CouchSurfing. Oh, CouchSurfing. I just don't fully know how to make it work. You know what I said above about not adding new or interesting information into a conversation? Let me relate that to my basic failure in conversation and social interactions: Safety. I play too safely. I can get into a mood or a mind-state where I don't introduce new things, just build on things that have already been introduced. This makes me uninteresting. Well, at least less interesting than is ideal. I also don't know how to start interactions. I don't know how to ask for anything. I usually go into apologetic mode when I need to ask for something, and this can make me come off as, I don't know, desperate or sad or something, and so people react accordingly. This is how I feel with my CouchSurfing interactions sometimes. I don't know.

I do everything by myself. I shop by myself. I went to school by myself. I travel by myself. I just don't know how to ask people to join me. I love to join others, but I don't know how to ask them to join me, without feeling like I'm asking for a favour.

Anyway, if you're reading this, don't feel the need to respond with advice or anything. I'm not looking for advice. I'm just typing things that I think as I think them. I feel like this is not what travels blogs are supposed to be. Let me get back on topic with more photos.

From Scotland

*I'm not that enthusiastic about Oklahoma! The exclamation mark is part of the title. Mediocre show.

Efficiency 1: Budget

2008-10-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

Will post last few days' goings-on soon. Today I wanna take a second to talk about efficiencies I'm implementing on this trip. I'm all about efficiency. In fact, the very reason that I've chosen to abandon flight as a means of travel could come down to efficiency, since boats are about 10-20 times more efficient on fuel - this has much appeal to me.

Today's efficiency post is about budgeting. In the months leading up to my trip, I started a series of spreadsheets on The Google Documents, tracking in great detail my food spending for each day. Well, not great detail, but down to the meal. In this way, I could observe trends in spending, find where costs could be cut, and implement measures to do so. But I love food, so for those who would fear that such measures would serve to reduce the enjoyment you get from your food, worry not; I managed to cut costs while maintaining optimal deliciotude.

Another spreadsheet I made tracked all expenses related to the trip. I estimated preparation costs, daily costs while travelling, and big costs, such as the boat voyages and rail pass. I compared the combined value to my current bank account, and made sure I could afford everything, updating as I went. A few extra costs have come up here and there - for instance, I way underestimated "incidental" travel costs, but I've managed to compensate in other areas so far.

Finally, I'm now keeping a spreadsheet that tracks my daily spending while abroad. I've separated everything into the categories: Food, Travel and Other. These values are then added, and the result is compared against $70 - the approximate amount I've budgeted for each day. Anything not spent from the day's budget carries over into a bonus pot for each month. This gives me an idea of how much I can splurge at the end of the month. Or how much I need to scale back. But because I'm in efficient-spending mode still, from the months before, I find I'm way under-spending so far. This will, of course, change once I hit the mainland, and am getting fewer free meals.

Anyway, that's my efficiency post for today.

What Do You Mean Boats Don't Go Wherever I Want Whenever I Want?

2008-10-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

Falling a little behind here. Let me see if I can access my memories from last week. Whatever details I can't remember, I'll just fill in with frog DNA, and it should create a complete picture.

I met with my friend in London once again on the following night and we went to a local comedy show. There were about 8 comics in the night, and one headliner - Stewart Lee. Or Stuart Lee. Anyway, he was pretty funny. One guy was absolute crap. All he did was tell a long story where the only punchlines involved him and other people performing inappropriate sexual acts to young boys. I don't care what anyone says, that ain't comedy. And it's not that I think it's bad because it's offensive - if you could come up with a clever joke that had sexually inappropriate content, I won't write it off right away - I just hate lazy joke-writing that doesn't really introduce any new thoughts. Anyway, most of the other comedians were all right, and some were pretty darn good. I meant to make a note of their names... one was... Holly... something... GACGTGGACT.

Anyway, final day in London, saw the Tate Britain Art Museum. Really wonderful stuff. Though I'm a little torn if art galleries are the best way to spend time in a city. I do love them, but I keep thinking about the streets that I'm not seeing, and the people I'm not meeting. But it would be a fruitless task to try to take everything in, so I should disregard that feeling, perhaps.

Went for dinner with Cuz then caught my night bus into Glasgow. Sat next to one of two jokers who were on opposite sides of the aisle from each other. They didn't speak English to each other, so I had no idea what they were laughing at, but it must have been hilarious!

Now I'm in Glasgow. I've seen some family here, am being treated to home-made vegetarian meals. I feel almost too much at home; I shouldn't develop any lazy habits right before really trekking out there on my own. I'm forever being eased into this trip.

You know what, I don't think I've even posted my full plan here yet. You could be reading this blog, never knowing when it's going to end, feeling like you're trapped in a perpetual state of travel reading. This is not the case. I'm in the UK now, but next week, I embark for mainland Europe where I'll rail around for two months with my Eurail pass. Then I come home on another boat from Antwerp.
Well, my original plan had me catching a ferry to Norway from Scotland as my voyage to mainland Europe. I read that this could be done, and filed it away under T for "Things not to worry about." Well, now, upon thinking, "Oh, yeah, I gotta do that," I've discovered that it's really not possible, as most of such routes stop running for the fall. I frantically tried to recollect the shambles of my brittle plan and put it back together in such a way that I could still go through Scandinavia without losing too much in efficiency (I hate being inefficient.) So my new plan has me going from Newcastle to the Netherlands, which is great, because I'm friends with a Cop from Rotterdam who I'll get to see - then I go up to Denmark and catch a ferry into Norway, only losing a couple days from the original plan. I guess I'll have to steal those days from, say, Rome. Been there already anyway.

Well, tomorrow I'll check out more of Glasgow. Maybe I'll start posting reviews for the vegetarian restaurants I've been going to as well. I feel like "theme" posts could be fun. Instead of me just writing things all willy-nilly like this.

Scotland

Residual Effects

2008-10-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

What I never reviewed about the boat was the food.

I'm a vegetarian, and told that to the chef when I got onboard (I'd have done so sooner, but the booking agent said it wouldn't be possible to get the information to the crew beforehand). I think I mentioned most of my meals were potato-based. Mashed potatoes, fried potatoes - I'd bet something in the ballpark of 80% of my calories came from potatoes that week. The only other vegetables I got, other than the salads, were boiled to all hell - broccoli boiled to all hell, green beens boiled to all hell - really didn't do much for me. There were some better meals, and some soups that were very good, but in general, the food was depressing.

Now, here it is, a week after my departure from the ship, and there's one meal that, upon thinking about it, brings back that sickness to the stomach I had onboard that ruined my appetite. I don't know how to shake this feeling. It's only when I imagine that meal. It was this fried-potato and onion patty thing. It actually was not that bad, and I ate it all, but just thinking about it makes me feel awful. I'm doing it right now, and I shouldn't be. Blech.

Data Points and Proportions

2008-10-15T04:10:00.000-07:00

From London

Had some good days in London. Monday, just did more wandering around. Had a cheap vegetarian lunch at a place called Futures. It was pretty mediocre, to be honest, but I'd give them another try if I were ever in the neighbourhood again. Went to the Tate Modern Art Museum, where I saw some lovely surrealist paintings and sculptures. There was one that was just a whole bunch of steamroller-flattened silver articles suspended from the ceiling by wire, arranged in the shapes of discs. You had to see it, I guess.

Made Cuz a curry meal for dinner from the veg I picked up in Borough market the other morning. Went over quite well, it did. Also had a glass of wine, which is the first alcoholic beverage I've had in a number of years. I think this is my restless body's way of saying it wants to experiment, so I'll not spend time analyzing or justifying it for now. I'm a little torn about the whole thing, the no-alcohol vs. controlled-alcohol thing, since I'm usually an all-or-nothing kind of person; but in context, it would be hard to argue that it was anything but harmless. Bah, there I went and analyzed and justified it after I said I wouldn't.

Yesterday I met with a CouchSurfer to see the Science and Natural History Museums. Got some good photos, which can be seen here:

London

Then I met with an old friend from Toronto and another CouchSurfer for a strange event at a place near the Science Museum called the Dana Centre, where they put on artistic and scientific events. There were different speakers talking about their imaging systems, which offer unique ways of looking at the human body. Then all attendees shuffled into another room for a life-drawing session with nude models. Good fun, I'd say. I then got my body scanned by a computer. I had to strip to my boxers (in a private curtained area) then step into the machine for the scanning procedure. Thought about stuffing my shorts with something, but opted against it. I like pranks and statements that are so over-the-top immature that they are actually a comment on masculine immaturity; That and making my wang look big.

Buying a Canada Flag in the Wrong Country

2008-10-12T15:39:00.000-07:00

What the heck building even is this?

Been in London a few days now, but I've really only been into the city for one day so far - the next few days will be the real exploration.

Left Liverpool early on Thursday morning, after spending the final night on the boat, and arrived in London around 3pm or so. Got myself oriented, and made my way to my Cousin's house - she be hosting me - which is a little southwest of the city. Just stayed in that night, met some of Cousin's friends, who were visiting her for her birthday, and that was that.

Friday, after subtitling an episode of Melrose Place, I aimlessly went into the city, following signs, people and possibly Earth's magnetic field, much like a migrating goose. Apparently, when consciousness kicked back in, I was in Westminster. I walked past what I could only assume was Buckingham Palace, and a nice park. Saw some trees that looked like they'd be fun to climb, but what with London's obsession with reporting suspicious behaviour, and my shyness in front of a strange city, I opted against it for now. Saw Big Ben - quite extravagent architecture there, though my camera battery crapped out, so I was pictureless for the rest of the day.

Was hoping to hear from two friends who I'd contacted in the city, so I made it a goal to find a wifi spot. Starbucks wanted to charge 4 pounds for an hour. I should really learn to ask about free wifi before buying a coffee from these places. I passed by a "Canada Shop," which was a nice coincidence, since I'd forgotten to buy a little Canada flag patch before leaving. I figure I'd want that in Europe, lest I be mistaken for someone from a country where they talk like me, but are involved in more unpopular wars than I am. Is such an image concern petty of me?

Walked through St. James Park, where the birds in the pond were quite exotic to my Canadian eye. I stayed there watching them for maybe an hour, quite fascinated by the way the geese and swans use their neck and head as a full-body grooming tool.
Oh, yeah, London.
The sun was going down. I popped into a bookstore, since I'm currently out of reading material, but nothing really stood out as being worth its price. On my way to the subway to go home, I noticed a strange pyramidal pillar off the sidewalk, in an alley. It had four "booths" - one on each of its faces - with a bucket-shaped opening, apparently designed for catching liquids. And a man was standing at one of them. What you've got there is a public outdoor urinal. That would never fly in Toronto. I'm used to there being solid walls, impenetrable to visible light, between my business and the public eye.
That was pretty much that day.

Saturday, Aunt and Uncle came down for lunch, then Cousin's roommates gathered round for the England v. Kazakhstan football match. We went out immediately following for Cousin's birthday celebration, about which I already somewhat wrote.

Today, Sunday, we went down to Sussex (I think I saw a sign that read Sussex) to visit Other Cousin. As we approached, OC's husband, who I'd not previously met, was in the process of "storming out," so to speak, over being left too long on his own with their crying baby. He did not return until after our departure a few hours later. Had a pleasant lunch there, came back and started my search for CouchSurfer's in Scandinavia (my first post-Britain point of arrival), and am now calling it a night.

Ahh...

Passenger Freighter Travel Review

2008-10-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

In order that a discussion of passenger-freighter travel be most useful, I'm going to try to sum up my entire experience, the pros and cons, specifically as it relates to the flying experience. They are the same in that they are methods of long-distance transportation, but of course, due to a few drastic differences between them, often one is far more appropriate than the other.

Cost:
Let's start with the categories where passenger-freighter travel (let's just say PF from now on) falls behind. It's more expensive. The voyage from Montreal to Liverpool cost about $2000 Canadian - far more than an equivalent flight would cost. And for those thinking it (and many of you do), no, it's not possible to work your way there; there are more trained crew people than there are jobs, and based on my experience, they contract people from Eastern Europe and Southern Asia for the work (probably a cost-effectiveness thing). The contracts these people are on has them working anywhere from 4 to 12 months straight, before they can return home and wait for another contract. As such, and since it requires a lot of training, it doesn't seem like a position conducive to a curious young person from a rich country.

Time:
Here, again, where PF falls short (depending on how you look at it). My voyage took just over 7 days to cross the Atlantic, much longer than an equivalent plane. The added time, however, has a few benefits, including - no jet lag, since you're updating your time as you go, instead of all at once - and a real appreciation for the actual distance you're crossing. You can't get this appreciation with flight, which is, for all intents and purposes, a magical teleportation pod that you step into in your home country, and out of somewheres else. But, yeah, it's longer, and if you have a short vacation time, it's probably time you're unable to afford if you're only looking at transportation as a means to an end.

Customs:
This is tricky to evaluate. Upon our arrival in Liverpool, three customs agents came onboard to ask me typical customs questions. They were actually from the airport, but were called in for this purpose. It was me, them and the captain, sitting at a table on the boat. They were very friendly, but they drilled me. I assume it's because they see that someone is side-stepping the airports, and they want to know why. If I were paranoid about terrorists, I might think the same thing. They even went as far as to call my cousin here in London, who I told them was hosting me. They drilled me about what I did with my apartment while I'm away, how much money I have, all such things. Again, friendly, but tough. All I can say is, it was far more personal an experience than with flight.

Comfort:
Here's where the scales tip. I had my own room, with a bed, bathroom (with shower), TV, DVD player, plenty of outlets, writing desk, couch and mini-fridge. I was a mighty king. But a gentle king. I also had the freedom to up and walk around wherever and whenever I wanted - even late in the night, I could run down to the mess hall for a snack or up to the bridge for a nice view. On an airplane, there are times you can't even get up to go to the bathroom.
Now, motion - I didn't get full-on motion sickness, per se, though my appetite was strongly affected, quite negatively. It could have been other things though, including the fact that the smell of the kitchen was a little off-putting to my palette. When eating certain dishes, or in my room, I pretty much had my appetite back.
If you're someone who gets motion sickness, I can only imagine this would be a week-long nightmare.

Friendliness:
Here again, where PF shines, in my opinion. There's no get-you-in, get-you-out of air travel. There's no assumption of terrorism when you ask questions, get up, or take pictures. Everyone I encountered was friendly, even the customs agents, as I mentioned. I had free access to the bridge, and could ask whatever I wanted. I got a tour of the engine room and the deck, and it was quite an experience. Hands-down, PF wins here.

Experience:
Well, if you've never flown before, flying can be a fun experience. Likewise, if you've never been onbaord a large ship before, PF can be a fun experience. If you're curious, ask questions, and explore, you'll have a great time. Watch the ocean pass you by. See the vastness of it all. Touch real awesome equipment. It was a great adventure, I'd say.

All in all, I can see how it's not a method of transportation for everyone - but if you're even a little curious about it, then just try it. You're paying for the adventure, and the fact that you can cover great distances is a beneficial side-effect. Can't say it's all good, since there were certainly times when I was bored, but I think had I been better equipped with media on my computer, I could have been just fine. I got lots of reading and writing done, so it was great for my productivity.

If there are any other questions anyone has, let me know, and I can maybe answer.

Can't Find Something I Can Put My Heart and Soul Into

2008-10-11T13:44:00.000-07:00

I hate having to explain to people why I feel like leaving the party. It's humiliating, and it never goes smoothly. And everyone's friendly, and tries to talk me into staying, which just makes it harder.

Twice on this trip so far I've felt the sting of social anxiety. Tonight, in London, it's my cousin's birthday party - she's my host here - and of course I wanted to come out and join the festivities. But a short while into the night, it happened as it always does - I'm finding myself just standing there, afraid to approach a group, looking around at things in the room in pretense to actually being interested in the signage at the bar.
The music was too loud, the groups were forming up - I just can't compete. I've never been able to do anything in those situations. My chest tightens up, I feel ridiculous, and I just want to leave. I know I won't be happy leaving - as I'm unhappy now - but I likewise know I won't be happy staying, standing, pretending to read signs all night.

So I hate explaining to people, in the process of having a good time, why I have to leave. Because, of course, I'm already in a fight-or-flight mode, and so now having to explain this silly problem to people comes out awkwardly. A few of them tried to talk me into staying, and I appreciate that, but I just know my behaviour patterns, I know the likely outcome, and I just want to spare myself.

This has been hanging over me for a while now - in relation to this trip specifically. I don't want this to ruin things for me, but I have real fears that it might. If things stay in small crowds or conversation stays to philosophical banter, I'm set; I'm fine; I shine. But sometimes people want to go out and have fun, and that's where I'm useless. I'm just not much fun. And on nights like this one, it bums me out. I'm torn between wanting to change and wanting to be able to just say, "This is what I am, and always have been; It's okay, and I should accept it."

So, heh, that's London so far. I've been very unsocial - trying to keep up, because I don't want to be rude, but it's just tough. When I feel like this, it's just tough.

Ah, well - I knew there'd be bad days. And I knew that I'd just have to remember on the bad days that there will be good days. So let us keep our thoughts on that.

I guess I just wasn't made for these times.

Still to Come

2008-10-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

Hello,
Just finished uploading my collection of blogs from onboard the ship.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll wrap it up with a full discussion of the experience.
I wanna go through a sort of review of sea travel, comparing it with air travel in various categories.

Cosmos!

2008-10-09T14:50:00.000-07:00

Oct 7

3:52 am – Ah, but as vast as the ocean is, vaster still is space in all its glory. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, so I stepped up to the bridge this evening, about an hour ago, and I was simply blown away by the clarity of the sky. Stars so bright. There are several pairs of binoculars for use on the bridge, and they keep the lights out at night, so the effect is a beautiful sky, untainted by our unworthy glow from the Earth. There is no light in view in any direction, save for the light glow of the necessary instruments in the bridge itself. So densely populated is our sky. This is like a religious experience for an astronomy student – it was really quite something. After about an hour, clouds started to sweep in, so the perfect view didn’t last forever. Quite all right though. I got what I came for.

4:14 pm – Just had a tour of the engine room. Very loud and fascinating stuff going on down there. I’m generally feeling pretty good today, in terms of appetite and mood, despite a few rough days on the voyage. I don’t know if it’s the diet (which consists mainly of potatoes, as a vegetarian at sea) or the rocking or the sleeping patterns, but my emotions feel funny – all of them. Satellite TV kicked in, and just watching the news really evokes an emotional response from me. Quite strange.

Feelin' Kinda Sagan-y

2008-10-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

Oct 5

8:44 pm – As a lover of astronomy, and a dreamer of space, I’ve often imagined what it would feel like to be lost in the huge emptiness where recognizable places are few and far between – to be lost so far from home that the thought of picking a direction and following it seems daunting. The ocean is that, my friends. Now, just beyond the halfway mark on this voyage, ocean surrounds us in all directions. Naturally, there’s little fear of actually being lost, but just the fact that there’s absolutely nothing in sight – no lights, no other vessels, no animals (except for the seabirds that seem to be following us), and certainly no land – is really quite something. Really, a photograph can’t capture this. The ocean is huge and vast, and all I know is that I’m somewhere in the middle of it.

The crew had a bit of a party last night, so I stopped in, though I felt way out of my element. They didn’t talk much, either, actually, so I didn’t feel too bad about generally keeping to myself out of shyness. They just popped in a music video mix DVD and let it do the partying for them. It was just a mix of ‘80s rock songs, culminating for me at the 2-hour mark, when Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” came on. I wish the DVD had ended with that.

Apparently the satellite TV might kick in tomorrow. Whee!

Started reading Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World today, after finishing The Third Chimpanzee (which was generally pretty good, though I was most interested in just the first 100 pages or so or human origins). Sagan described how, as a child, when pondering something his math teacher had said about how there’s no biggest number, he had the urge to write out all the integers from 1 to 1000, and he did so. Made me remember that I had done the exact same thing as a child, though on a typewriter. I just sat there typing out numbers. It was a personal project of mine that my family was well aware of. If they wanted to keep me occupied for a bit, they could just say, “Why don’t you go work on your numbers?” and I naturally would. This maybe only lasted a week or so – once I got into the thousands, since I wasn’t using the space bar, it became hard to tell the numbers apart. Can’t tell you why I didn’t use that space bar. I guess I saw it as a useless and inefficient operation for my needs. Anyway, I like finding out I have things in common with people I admire, especially things in my childhood.

23-hour Days

2008-10-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

Oct. 4

6:46 pm – Every day at 2 pm we’ve been adding an hour to the clocks to keep up with the time zone change. It’s really affecting my appetite. Or maybe that’s the constant rocking motion of the boat… too many variables to adequately discern – the jury’s still out.

I’m trying to keep up with my 100 pushups regimen, from 100 pushups.com, but again, the rocking motion leads to an unaccountable shift in the forces required to lift myself up. Some pushups are worth double, while some only worth half. You’d think it would balance out, but it feels more like it’s overall harder.

As we exited the St. Lawrence yesterday afternoon, there was a short round of whale-watching. You’d clearly see the jets of water spray up, then hope to catch a dorsal (?) fin pop out. If you were lucky, a tail. I saw a few tails, and then, about a half hour later, a few dolphins (or maybe just smaller whales) actively jumping in and out of the water alongside the boat. Couldn’t get a good picture though.

I hate to turn a fun, harmless activity into yet another ecological moral lesson (though I guess that’s gonna be the overarching theme of such a no-flying trip), but I was reminded of the episode of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos entitled “The Persistence of Memory,” (check it out) in which he describes that whales likely had a vast worldwide communications network in the oceans until we silenced it unknowingly with our constantly rumbling loud and large sea machine, one of which I am onboard. I guess the whales that I would see today will have never known anything else, and so they have nothing to miss, but it is something I think about nonetheless.

Wave Race!

2008-10-09T14:20:00.001-07:00

Oct 1 / 08 -

We are moving! We are moving!
Got up at 8 today to make sure I was awake for the big departure. Turns out I didn’t even feel it. I looked out the window at 9-ish, and we had already fully turned around and were slowly on our way up the St. Lawrence. Now, an hour later, we’ve picked up speed, and Montreal is far behind.
The St. Lawrence is beautiful. I mean that in terms of both visual and strategic appeal. I can only imagine the excitement of the first European settlers to arrive here, looking upon all the small islands, the trees, the resources. I can hardly help but look at it and see the potential for colonization myself, what with my extensive days of playing Civilization. But then, aw, rats, there’s already savages here – well, we know how to deal with them! Fitting that I just last night read the section in Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee on genocide, in which he analyzes whether we have a natural propensity for the act. He doesn't use that as a justification, of course – he certainly doesn’t suggest “of course we commit genocide; we’re programmed to, and so it’s okay to do it every now and then.” No, no, no. He just addresses the fact that it’s not only “evil” people who are capable of it, but rather all of us have the potential in us to want to see a group – however you classify them; race, religion, political beliefs – wiped off the Earth.
Anyway, don’t get the wrong idea – I’m not cynical here or anything. I just like seeing the history in the landscape. Or at least the history as a series of stories I’ve been told.
I just got my first view from the bridge, and my first whiff of the fresh air blowing past me from the observation deck off the bridge; it’s really something.

2:05 pm – Passing Trois Riviers. All the TV channels we get are French now.

I notice we’re playing “stay between the green and orange buoys.” It’s like a big slow game of Waverace 64.

7:30 pm – passed by Quebec City.

Port of Montreal

2008-10-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

Sept. 30 / 08

Day one on the boat – boarding procedures.

I was dropped off in the morning by my host at a metro station in Montreal, and spent the morning getting any last-minute items I figured I would need for the rest of the trip, including an electric-outlet converter for European sockets, which I should have gotten ages ago anyway. As well, I picked up some anti-nausea pills, just in case.

I went for a solo vegetarian lunch at L’Escalier, then, when the time was right, I worked my way toward the port for boarding. The whole day I’ve been lugging around this big backpack. Again, it’s neat to think that on my back I hold all my worldly possessions for the next three months. There’s something very appealing about this lifestyle – very freeing. More on that as it arises.

I get to the port at 2 p.m. With all the tall gates, hard hats and security posts, everywhere I go, I feel like I really shouldn’t be there. I approach one security gate, which I had to cross a few truck lanes to get to (don’t get the wrong idea though; the traffic was being controlled by a series of gates and lights, so there was no danger), and tell the guard that I’m a passenger. He checks my passport and radios for a shuttle to come pick me up. I snap some photos while I’m waiting, and the guard tells me it’s not allowed in the port. So for arbitrarily silly rules, it appears that ship ports are equally matched with airports. No matter. The shuttle takes me right up to the boat, past the massive crates and cranes of the port, and I board.

The Picture They Don't Want You to See!

I get shown to my room as soon as I sign in, and I don’t want to get in anybody’s way while the crew shows up, so I stay in my room for the next few hours. Oh, and I’m the only passenger.

After waiting a sufficient period, I head down to the office (where I checked in), grab a bite to eat, as prepared by the cook, and start talking to the Safety officer about safety on the ship. There’s a lot of rules, but it’s all for my safety – I remind you all that as I type this there is a giant frigging crane dropping crates that weigh who-knows-how-much on the cargo bay of the ship. I get the impression that once we depart tomorrow, I’ll have a bit more freedom. For the moment, I’m limited to the accommodation section, which is seven floors of fun, fun, fun*.

*Note: fun is spread over so many floors that the amount of fun per floor is actually quite limited.

Everyone’s very friendly, and Safety is an open book about shipping and sea travel.

Well, it’s night time, and we leave early in the morning, so there’s not much more I can do tonight but wait. Whee!

Why No-Flying?

2008-09-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

Before I do today's post, about my frivolous goings-on in Montreal, I wanna take a bit more time to explain why I've decided to go no-flying for this particular trip.

Firstly, this is not a vow that I will never fly again. I very well may. Heck, under extenuating circumstances, I may fly during this trip, but that's not in the plan, of course.

I think there are a number of reasons to want to abstain from the flight industry. Not least of which is the greenhouse emissions they are responsible for. I'm not gonna cite research here, so my numbers may be slightly off (maybe I'll come back with research in a later post), but all-in-all consumer flight is responsible for about 3-5% of human-made emissions. While this is a smaller chunk than many other things - including motor vehicles - the fact is, it's a preventable amount; just as one likely spends more on food than on alcohol in a month; this doesn't suggest that the best way to save money is to stop eating - obviously, the better choice is to reduce the amount that is preventable. True, motor vehicle travel is also preventable, to a very large extent, so perhaps that argument doesn't perfectly hold. However, flying is basically the biggest and quickest way to increase your carbon emissions for the year.

Rough-calculation example: Suppose you want to congratulate yourself for cycling, not driving, the 6 km to and from work for a whole year, so you fly to Florida for a vacation and fly back. In this mere few hours in the air, your personal emissions (as divided equally among all passengers on a full flight) are greater than what you saved in the whole year.

Now, I'm not condemning flight - like I said, I may do it again. I just find it interesting that many of the travelers I have met are the type of people who are concerned about environmental issues, but still choose to fly. This is why I feel like an important question on this trip is this: Is world travel a right, or is it something that we should just accept is not easily part of a sustainable lifestyle?

Anyway, that's my thoughts on that.

I aslo wanna quickly acknowledge that I'm aware that shipping makes up about the same percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions as flight. This is on an absolute comparison. There are, however, a number of factors that make travel by one different from travel by the other. I won't go deep into it now, but consider the following two things: Supply-and-demand, and efficiency - specifically fuel efficiency.

Okay, on to the Montreal post...

First Two Real Days in Montreal

2008-09-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

Gonna make this short, since I feel like this blog will have little appeal until I finally get on that boat in a few days - that's when the excitement starts! Nine days of continuous, unbridled excitement!

Anyway, first day in Montreal, my host shows me around Old Montreal, which is a very, very European part of town - very nice. We check out the Port from where my boat will depart. It's good to know where you've gotta be, you know?
I've still got some last-minute travel items to purchase - will do that soon.

Second day, I buy a 3-day metro pass and meet up with some couch su rfers with whom I was put in contact by... another couch surfer. Checked out Jean-Talon market - a huge market place with cheap and delicious produce. Man, I wish there was something like this in Toronto. Was gonna take pictures, but my camera was being finicky. No pictures.
Then I went with a second couch surfer to an open-doors event at the Cirque du Soleil campus. He was kinda late in arriving at the meeting point, so I hung out with other people who were also there to meet up, though there was a bit of a language barrier, we still got along just fine. Surfer showed up and took us to the campus. Oh, and he drives like a madman. Kind of fun, kind of scary.

The best part of the open-doors event was getting to watch them practice in their training facility. These people are insane. Cirque du soleil is everything. No question. There was a dude on a trapeze, 20 feet in the air - no mats! None. And he's just all flipping around like it's nothing. Me, I get nervous walking out onto high tree branches. Insane. I knew I should take a picture, so I pushed past my finicky camera's insecurities, and snapped some bad ones. I need to learn to use this thing.
Cirque du Soleil was great, but now I'm late for my 5 pm meeting with my last surfer of the day, since we were a little later in leaving than we thought we'd be. The Madman (and I use that term affectionately) recognizes the situation, and drives me to the meeting point - only now he's in a rush. Ever seen a madman in a rush? Pretty scary ride. But I could hardly complain, since I was happy to get to my destination just in time to catch the surfer, who was in the process of writing me a note that she had left. Hooray! Finished off a good night with a sandwich and a great conversation, and came back.

Ah, all caught up.

Tomorrow is shopping and poutine in Montreal.

The Long Dark Busride of the Soul

2008-09-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, time to pick up where I left off.
Also, just a note, I want to modify the format of this blog - maybe put it in, like, a calendar format, so a date can be clicked, and the entry from that date will come up. Can computers do that kind of thing? I'll figure it out.

Okay - bus to Montreal. Me - shy.

So why don't we talk more to strangers? With me, it's shyness. I wonder with other people if it's the same thing, or if there's a genuine disinterest in talking to people. I've gotta say, from my experience talking to people, it rarely goes disastrously, and often goes pleasantly. So do we just not want to talk? What motivates us to talk to each other? Why are there people who we are simply not motivated to talk to? And then, the alternate question, why would we talk to anyone in the first place? Is there an evaluative "this person has nothing to offer me," and so engaging such a person is simply not worth the effort? Do we think this way? Tough questions. Especially for a shy person.

So anyway, I'm sitting by myself on the bus until we get to the Scarborough Town Centre stop. A whole bunch of people load in, and one sits beside me. She happens to be an extraordinarily beautiful girl. Great. That makes her simultaneously the person I want most to talk to, and paradoxically, the person I'm least likely to talk to. Here's why - well, shyness ranks right up there as a reason why I can't talk to pretty girls, but there's also an element of not-wanting-her-to-think-that-I'm-hitting-on-her in play. I feel guilty if I talk to someone and there's a possibility that I'm just doing it because I find that person attractive - so to battle this guilt, my usual recourse is to not talk to such people, lest I risk acting with impurity. Pretty boring, huh?
So I'm sitting there the whole bus ride going back and forth about whether or not - and how - to talk to this person. There is almost no down side - so why is it so difficult to muster it up? And don't get me wrong - I only want a friendly conversation with a fellow human being, but the fact is, this is an attractive person, and I'm afraid of letting that get in the way of my otherwise quite innocent motivation. Does anyone else relate to this?

So the busride goes on, and I happen to glance over and see that the book she's reading has an evolution chart of humans and their closest relatives, or something like that. Man, I'm all about evolution. There's your conversation-starter. But I keep to myself.

Much of the ride goes by, and this thought process obnoxiously continues, making it even less likely that I'm gonna say anything, since nobody likes doing anything when they've overanalyzed it like this. Especially not me.

Finally, about 20 or 30 minutes before we reached Kingston, long after she's put her books away and is sitting doing nothing, like me, she starts walking her fingers along the seat in front of her like a little person. Okay - we both wanna talk. And I muster a friendly "You bored?" and a rather pleasant conversation ensues. She was indeed a lovely person.

I gave her my blog address, since she was interested in the idea of cargo freighter travel (so, yes, I'm writing with the awareness that she may read, but I don't think I've said anything that might fundamentally alter the conversation.) She got off at Kingston, and the rest of the ride to Montreal was somewhat uneventful.

I get to Montreal, call up the step-uncle (?) who will be hosting me for my stay, and make my way to his place for the night.

That boat still seems far off.

A journey begins with a thousand miles in one step. One big thousand-mile step.

2008-09-26T22:51:00.000-07:00

Current mood: back-ache
Current hairstyle: The "Gregory"

So the trip has started, and everything was left to the last minute, including this post, which I really should have posted a while back, before the trip had started.

Why no flying? That's the question I should have written a post about. But now the trip has started, so this must become a dual post; about why no flying, and about the first day.

Why no flying? Greenhouse gas emissions. Boom - that's the short answer. Ships are 10-20 times more efficient than planes at transporting weight across a great distance. There's no question it's the better way to go, between the two. But another question is, why go at all? Is world travel a right? Wouldn't our impact be minimized by just eradicating that travel bug? Well, maybe I'll come to an answer to that one. This trip is not about being the most environmentally friendly possible, because things could always be a little more environmentally friendly, but it is a consideration, like many other things - and so I've drawn the line at no-flying. Trains, buses, boats - ground things (Yeah, water counts as ground).

Anyway, day 1 - here's the quick version, because it's late. Mad rush to pack. Shouldn't have played so much Mega Man 9. Shouldn't have blown up those 15 blue balloons for no reason. I get weird when I get nervous. Packing is tough. That's a short and easy thing to say, but it's an important thing to remember when you're packing; it's tough.

There was a brief moment of things sinking in, as I hoisted the filled backpack up for the first time, ready to leave the house. A strange feeling - this, here, on my back, is all I will have to call my own for the next little bit. Neat.

Anyway, bus ride. Remember when I said that many other things are considerations on this trip? I said that just a few paragraphs ago. Well, here's where that information becomes important in you understanding how I'm going to relate it to the next thing I'm going to say; that another consideration of this trip - one that has been de-emphasized by the no-flying thing - is the social aspect. I'm way too shy, I'm way too apologetic - I've gotta throw myself out there to improve this. This is gonna come up frequently, I feel.
So I hope to sit next to someone on the bus I can talk to.

Okay - it's super-late. I'll finish this later.