Vaguely Travel

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Train pt.1: Vancouver to Winnipeg (50hrs)

Time to share a little bit about my itinerary, I guess. Day 1 was pretty rough. It included 2 flights, brief touring of vancouver, and the start of my first train ride. There is probably going to be a lot of talk about trains in this blog series, but for now I will simply say that train rides are long. Really, really long. 4 hours in and we're nowhere near even thinking of done and an entire gaggle of teenage girls has gotten on the car at the very next station. They are very loud and will be there for pretty much the entire trip. I'll be honest, As I was trying to find a way to fall asleep that first night in a seat only slightly more comfortable that coach class in an airplane, I was thinking that I had made a terrible mistake.

But then, when I woke up at 5:30 that morning I saw this out the window. Maybe the picture doesn't convey this (actually, I know it doesn't), but it was an incredible sight. Something about the pale blue of the light on the mountains combined with my delirium-inducingly bad night of sleep.

A thing I have to apologize for is that many of these pictures have slight reflections that I couldn't always avoid while taking pictures through the train window. Oh well, such are the issues one has to contend with when travel-blogging (or blog-traveling).

The train was traveling through the Canadian Rockies for pretty much the entirety of the first day, and the views didn't stop being incredible throughout. Here are a few highlights

Some waterfall was the first thing that was pointed out to us over the train's PA system.

One of these is the tallest peak in the Canadian Rockies. It has some impossible to remember name like Mt. Thompson or Mt. Johnson or something.

View from the 'dome car', a very important feature of the train

We also passed by something that was called ‘boob lake’. I’m sure that this was the name because the woman who announced it as we passed by had a telling pause before she said it, as if to say ‘are they putting me on by making me read this?’ Lac-boob in the French. Everything on the train is repeated in French. It's a little bit disonent with the setting. Like the Old West has suddenly collided with the French Countryside.

This is the town of Jasper, where we had our first stop. I spent my time here searching for a place to find a shower. No showers on the trains, at least not for the underclass (more on this later).

I realize this is mostly a photo blog today, but I'm saving most of my observations about 'The Train' for when I've been on it a few more times. Besides this is what a train ride is like- long periods of silence while natural wonders pass by you at an easy pace.

For right now, let's just say that train travel is like a confusing cross between flying coach and being on a cruise ship. One of the interesting things about the train is eating on it. Every day you must make reservations for what time you want to eat, and you are seated at a table of 4 no matter how many are in your party. For efficiency, I suppose. It has the great effect of making you talk to a variety of people, even if you aren't the type that normally does so. Each person I've met so far has been a friendly and interesting dining companion. Maybe more on this later.

Not much to report on day 2 besides kilometers and kilometers (I’m trying!) of hi-lighter yellow canola fields. I’m learning about the provinces and their identities from my dining mates There’s not one person who has not made the Winnipeg=Winterpeg joke yet. This seems like it may be important.

A lot of flooding now, as we leave the mountains of British Columbia and Alberta, and enter into the plains of Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Next time we explore Winnipeg, capital and only real city of Manitoba.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Vancouver: City of Me Not Getting It

Vancouver is widely considered to be an interesting and vibrant city, with attractions in abundance. So why didn’t I care about it at all? Maybe my timing was just wrong- because of the unintuitive way that the ViaRail system works, I had to get on my first train on the same day I arrived in the city, leaving an awkwardly shaped space in my day- too long to do nothing and too short to do anything. As a result, I spent my time in the city exploring a few downtown neighborhood- china town and the gas lamp district.

Here are some of my impressions of Vancouver, unfair and limited as they may be. Plus there are pretty pictures, so who are you to complain?

This place was predictably weird. But at least it had a ghost.

I first walked though China town and got a distinct feeling of 'who cares?' Billed in my guide book as ‘the continent’s third largest’ (we’re number 3!), it just seemed underwhelming. Maybe a few years ago vaguely Chinese looking buildings and mandarin street signs would have been fascinating to me, but I’ve been living in the bay area (which I would guess takes the 2^nd place spot in that ‘list of china-towns by size’). Not that it wasn’t ‘nice’, but I certainly don’t think it was any more than that.

SunYat Sen Garden was easily the coolest thing in Chinatown

The Gaslamp held slightly more interest, with the main points of interests being a statue of a famous early Vancouverite named 'Gassy Jack' and something called a Steam Clock. The statue pictured him standing on a whiskey barrel. This is a man who was apparently instrumental in the founding of the city, by the way. The clock was really interesting looking until my guidebook deflatingly informed me that it was powered by electricity. This is the kind of information I think I would have been ok not knowing.

It was a nice place to take a walk, with cobbled streets, old architecture, good statues, and cool graffiti. Again though, my feeling was of someplace that doesn't set itself apart from other cities.

Oh, and there's literally the Space Needle, to make matters worse.

There were also a lot of strange people there, but not only strange in the positive way and interesting way. Strange in the mentally ill and addicted to drugs while simultaneously also just being strange kind of way. The only other place I’ve seen such self-assured crazy people was back when I was living in San Francisco’s infamous Tenderloin.

These sentiments made me wonder if maybe living in the Bay Area has ruined traveling for me. Whenever I would travel from Florida I was invariably find myself someplace better. Now that I've lived someplace truly great, can a trip end up disappointing? Sobering thoughts for someone planning to spend a month in a place.

NB- These posts were written some time ago, so their tone may not convey how things are going now, only how they were going. The trip is turning out great, more soonish.

Introduction to Canada: Why are you here?

Somehow I always manage to be taken aback by how unfriendly customs agents are. I guess it ought to be no surprise- after all, tasked with the mission of preventing unsavory-types from entering their homeland, the job must be a unique combination of high-stakes and incredibly boring. Plus you have to deal with stupid Americans all day. I always approach these people with the cheerful euphoria of someone about the set out on a great adventure, forgetting that to them travelers are both annoying and potentially dangerous. They do not, generally speaking, want my “hello!”s. This has gotten me into trouble before.

The last time I entered Canada I found myself being questioned by a very pretty young woman. Petite with a blonde bob and big black sunglasses covering half her face. I smiled at her, as one tends to do (I tend to do), as she asked me, in increasingly hostile tone, about my Canadian intentions. When she asked me if I was bringing anything into the country, I told her ‘just some souvenirs (smile smile)”. “What kind of souvenirs?” Now getting really pointed “Like guns?” The smile instantly dropped from my face as images of time consuming and unpleasant searches and detentions filled my head. It was now clear to me that this woman intended to be taken very, very seriously. I did my best to match her businesslike tone and may have even called her ma'am. Eventually I got waved through. Although at the time I considered it a close call, I now imagine that as I drove away terrified that she laughed about the incident with her coworkers “Did you see when I asked him if he had guns? He was scared shitless!”

I learn nothing, of course and as always, and approached the interrogation counter today with the same sort of gee-whiz optimism. It didn’t last long. While my customs official today was not quite as hostile, he seemed to be an exceptionally dour and unhappy man. He took a look at my declaration form and was able to quickly spot the standout piece of information. “What are you doing here for a month?”

“I’m planning to take a train across the country!” I enthused

“And why are you doing that?”

It’s a valid question, I guess, but there’s nothing like a direct remark from a stranger to make you unsure yourself. Why am I doing this, exactly?

“I have the summer off” I said, pausing before adding an explanatory “and I wanted to.”

He arched an eyebrow at me as if to say ‘your funeral’ and stamped me through.

His question stuck with me, though- what am I doing here? What possessed me to think that being on a train for more than a full week would be anything like fun? I guess, ultimately, this trip is not about having fun. This trip is meant to be an experience more than a vacation. An experiment in time and solitude. What I’m hoping for is an opportunity to reset my life, a time to figure things out, and come to terms with everything that the last year has been, good and bad. This time last year I was still unemployed, still married (if reading this blog is the way you find out I'm getting divorced, all I can say is 'whoops!'), still living in San Francisco. At best, this trip is what I need to figure out my new normal. At worst, I’m going to have a lot of time to relax. Enjoy the blog everyone, I’ll keep you updated.