So after the gruelling exercise of arriving at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and falling into an exhausted sleep, we started our lives for the next week as graduate students.
Allow me to explain.
Green College is a graduate facility at UBC. It houses around 100 graduates where most of them spend several years excelling in their field of choice whilst they diligently forgo most of the fun things in life (except maybe Civ4) and work many many silly hours for a degree (doctorate usually) in their field of choice. So Simon and I were technically living like students only without all the hard work and study that usually goes along with it - probably more like the pauper friends of students, as we were actually sleeping on the couch of students.
One of the first things I noticed was the abundance of squirrels. (actually that's a lie, the first things that I noticed was the beauty of the Green College facility - but then my attention was right onto the squirrels) Australia is completely squirrel-less, so I wasn't used to their playful antics... bouncing across the grass... just so cute. Every time I commented on something of this nature within earshot of a native Canadian, for some reason they would shoot me funny looks mutter something about vermin. I guess that time spent with my rat Max Factor skewed my definition of what was cute. Most commonly the possum that you see in Melbourne are the Brushtail possums. They are about the size of domestic cats and they are very noisy at night. They often hiss in disconcerting ways if you wander around the suburbs where I grew up. They are also known to destroy houses if they are left unchecked in your roof.
Simon & I had a great time mingling with the students and meeting everyone. We had a bit of celebrity status because we were travelling and had seen the outside world. This Maciek put to good use by sampling our brains for the cool internet videos that we enjoy and putting together a showcase of them for his fellow students. Apparently they don't even get time to look at things like Zero Punctuation... tragic I know...
Vancouver
One of the most beautiful cities we have seen so far. Breathtaking snow capped mountains stretching far above the city skyline. What more could you want?
Mika, Maciek's amazing girlfriend at some point in her busy doctor-learning schedule found time to create a scavenger hunt for Simon and I in order for us to familiarise ourselves with the city and campus. When we get to upload our photos I will make sure to update this post with a scan of our scavenger hunts, the hints and our photos. For anyone that is in Vancouver or UBC, I would love for you to do the same scav hunt and post links to your work in our comments.
It was very strange to run into a friend of my friends from home who attends UBC. (more scarily it was an ex of an ex) I hope that he got back in contact with some of the crew from home. I'm sure they would all love to hear from James.
Being put to good use
Our good hosts demanded very little of us for our stay. Only company and to not be too distracting on our stay. But we were able to immortalise our stay in a video about trust that Maciek was putting together. Simon and I were required to show interest and disinterest (at different times) to people explaining the names of objects. It was a fun if strange task for the day.
Highlights
Having a bike. Riding around the lakes in Vancouver and a bit of the city was just brilliant. I didn't realise how much I missed having my own independent form of transport, my own way of getting around under my own power. I think that when we get to Holland a bike is going to have to be an early purchase.
Indiana Jones 4 - for those who haven't seen it yet. Please skip the next section - spoilers ahead.
We had a fantastic time heading out with Maciek's housemate Grant. Midnight screening of IJ4. The surprise sequel (I sure wasn't expecting a fourth film) to the beloved Indiana Jones trilogy both Simon & I grew up on.
The most surprising thing when watching the film was the wooden acting by Harrison Ford in the opening scenes in the warehouse scenes. It was almost like he had forgotten how to be Indiana. I have seen him play some amazing characters in his time from the scruffy scoundrel Han Solo to the hunted John Kimble in The Fugitive and it really surprised me to have the first lines of dialogue seem so stiff. I love Cate Blanchett... however I think the character was a bit like Darth Mall... potential (apart from the occasional accent slip) but ultimately no substance. She also didn't have the menace of some of the other villains from previous films.
I did absolutely love how they brought back Marion from the first film... ah... that woman has a pinball smile if ever I saw one. The ending was so disappointing. It was like Spielberg has run so completely out of ideas and so is re-hashing his old hits and trying to mix them together and hope no-one notices. The ending of this film was seriously a big let-down. The bad guy explodes because she had too much information in her head... um... that would probably leave someone catatonic or maybe Spielberg was trying to re-live the excitement of the bad guys melting from the first film. In my opinion, not a patch on the earlier films - but it was a fun action/adventure.
Second Hand Bookshops
Simon and I both love to read. We both have many many books at home and we are starting to carry quite a library with us on our travels. Here in Vancouver we have spent many hours wandering through many many book shops... And I found Player of Games - Ian M Banks (recommended to me by Michelle (thanks honey) which was awesome).
A real roller coaster ride even if it was a little like listening to Rimmer describe his Risk campaigns at times.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
The little detail...
And so we rolled into Seattle, in the summer twilight - on a collision course with our next travel adventure. :)
The moment we looked at the near empty baggage carousel we guessed something was wrong. The staff confirmed what our bag check-in slips had clearly stated for our whole train journey - our bags had gotten off the train at 'SLM' (Salem, Oregon) not 'SEA' (Seattle, Washington) with us. (We hadn't even thought to check the details on the slips, trusting that the staff in the Berkeley Amtrak station knew what they were doing - naive, I know.)
And so we entered the bag retrieval bureaucratic treadmill I'm sure most seasoned travellers are familiar with. Luckily the staff member we dealt with at Seattle was the most cluey and friendly cog we'd come across in the Amtrak mechanism - she promised to not only ensure personally that Salem would be contacted first thing in the morning, but that she'd start her next shift early to ensure she did it herself. With nothing more to we could do but wait for word via our next host's girlfriend's mobile (the only contact method we had available at the time) we boarded the bus that would take us north, to Vancouver.
The bus trip was uneventful (our lack of bags actually made our initial crossing into Canada easier, although there was some confusion at the border over which part of the building held the staff who would process non-US travellers, and then how to leave that part of the building...) but soon we were in another confusing city, in another confusing country, with the most problematic set of instructions yet.
Theoretically we would take the easily accessible (to locals) public buses to the University of British Columbia campus, and would then simply navigate to Green College. But we had seemed to have arrived after the buses stopped running. And the Amtrak station (bizarrely) has no public phone. And it was raining. In desperation we hunted for a cab - finally finding one, we attempting to overcome our lack of local knowledge and the driver's thick Jewish accent, to communicate our destination. After several false turns in the university campus, we managed to find navigate our driver to Green College, and our final surreal challenge.
Green College is an unexpectedly beautiful (for student accomodation) set of buildings, which in our exhaustion seemed majestic, ghostly, and completely empty. (Imagine something between a classic English university college and an Ewok village. I'm serious.) We staggered from door to door trying to find Matt's place (or rouse someone who could direct us) with a growing sense of unease. Finally, we found the correctly-numbered door - but pounding on it roused no-one. Another door was opened by a nervous student - in broken Canadian Mandy tried to communicate our plight. The poor girl had never heard of anyone called Matt living behind the door in question, but offered to call the occupants on the phone. This finally rouse the occupants - who turned out to be Matt and his housemate!
The confusion was soon explained. In Australia Mandy's friend had chosen to Anglicise his (originally Polish) name to Matt, but in Canada he was using the original. After a few brief introductions (to Matt's girlfriend, and to his housemate) we collapsed exhausted into our already prepared bed (thanks, Matt) and were soon fast asleep.
As an epilogue, I can tell you we did get our bags back - in less than two days, too. (And our travel insurance applies in this eventuality by covering $500 of new clothes - which goes some of the way to justifying that particular expense.) The final gauntlet involved retrieving our bags from the customs officials in the Vancouver Amtrak station, where they seemed to be taking special interest in one of mine. After asking me to unlock it (and taking special care to open it facing away from me) the staff member called over her cow-orker to point out something in the contents. She commented, "oh, they're only books." Alarmed, I asked, "Why, what do books look like on an x-ray?"
"Big bricks of drugs."
Travel is exciting, I'll be the first to say it. :)
The moment we looked at the near empty baggage carousel we guessed something was wrong. The staff confirmed what our bag check-in slips had clearly stated for our whole train journey - our bags had gotten off the train at 'SLM' (Salem, Oregon) not 'SEA' (Seattle, Washington) with us. (We hadn't even thought to check the details on the slips, trusting that the staff in the Berkeley Amtrak station knew what they were doing - naive, I know.)
And so we entered the bag retrieval bureaucratic treadmill I'm sure most seasoned travellers are familiar with. Luckily the staff member we dealt with at Seattle was the most cluey and friendly cog we'd come across in the Amtrak mechanism - she promised to not only ensure personally that Salem would be contacted first thing in the morning, but that she'd start her next shift early to ensure she did it herself. With nothing more to we could do but wait for word via our next host's girlfriend's mobile (the only contact method we had available at the time) we boarded the bus that would take us north, to Vancouver.
The bus trip was uneventful (our lack of bags actually made our initial crossing into Canada easier, although there was some confusion at the border over which part of the building held the staff who would process non-US travellers, and then how to leave that part of the building...) but soon we were in another confusing city, in another confusing country, with the most problematic set of instructions yet.
Theoretically we would take the easily accessible (to locals) public buses to the University of British Columbia campus, and would then simply navigate to Green College. But we had seemed to have arrived after the buses stopped running. And the Amtrak station (bizarrely) has no public phone. And it was raining. In desperation we hunted for a cab - finally finding one, we attempting to overcome our lack of local knowledge and the driver's thick Jewish accent, to communicate our destination. After several false turns in the university campus, we managed to find navigate our driver to Green College, and our final surreal challenge.
Green College is an unexpectedly beautiful (for student accomodation) set of buildings, which in our exhaustion seemed majestic, ghostly, and completely empty. (Imagine something between a classic English university college and an Ewok village. I'm serious.) We staggered from door to door trying to find Matt's place (or rouse someone who could direct us) with a growing sense of unease. Finally, we found the correctly-numbered door - but pounding on it roused no-one. Another door was opened by a nervous student - in broken Canadian Mandy tried to communicate our plight. The poor girl had never heard of anyone called Matt living behind the door in question, but offered to call the occupants on the phone. This finally rouse the occupants - who turned out to be Matt and his housemate!
The confusion was soon explained. In Australia Mandy's friend had chosen to Anglicise his (originally Polish) name to Matt, but in Canada he was using the original. After a few brief introductions (to Matt's girlfriend, and to his housemate) we collapsed exhausted into our already prepared bed (thanks, Matt) and were soon fast asleep.
As an epilogue, I can tell you we did get our bags back - in less than two days, too. (And our travel insurance applies in this eventuality by covering $500 of new clothes - which goes some of the way to justifying that particular expense.) The final gauntlet involved retrieving our bags from the customs officials in the Vancouver Amtrak station, where they seemed to be taking special interest in one of mine. After asking me to unlock it (and taking special care to open it facing away from me) the staff member called over her cow-orker to point out something in the contents. She commented, "oh, they're only books." Alarmed, I asked, "Why, what do books look like on an x-ray?"
"Big bricks of drugs."
Travel is exciting, I'll be the first to say it. :)
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Trains (not planes)
So apparently, the rail system in the US isn't as well subsidised as air travel, so people don't think to use it to get around... which is a shame because it is a beautiful and peaceful way to travel.
Even as we were leaving SFO Airport to Berkley in the Bay Porter I was promoting it as a way to get around the country and convincing US locals to travel by train rather than fly. Chatty me was unloading upon some poor lady about our trip so far. She was excited about us being Australian and was sharing tips with Simon & I about the city sights and where we should go... and we happened to mention the train and spent the remainder of the drive talking about the pros and cons of air vs rail travel. She travelled about once every month or two to Vancouver - I wonder if she will actually take up the train trip adventure.
(I love it how one of the travel tips under what to do on the "Official SF Visitors" website is 'gay travel'.)
The scenery from San Francisco was spectacular. Beautiful mountains sprinkled with snow (in mid May) blue lakes and fir tree forests line the train tracks. The other passengers seem to be pretty much exclusively well travelled Europeans. Every time we turned around there was another chatty person to talk to.
The roomettes were really worth the extra $70. They were much smaller than they appeared online however. When we boarded the train in Emeryville, the beds were already set up and we were a bit taken aback by how much space they took up in our little section.
I went for a wander along the train and saw what it would have been like if we were staying in seats instead of in the cabin... much less comfortable. People crawling and trying to sleep everywhere, one guy was even snoring happily in the videogame room... it seemed like the only place where kids weren't wandering around and yelling at the top of their lungs. Actually there were no kids in there... I don't know if that was because of the guy or because most of the games were old (original Ms Pac-Man, a weird version of Tetris) or broken.
The food was ok - Simon tried grits, which are like a strange grainy kind of oatmeal, apparently you eat it with butter or some other form of sweetener... Next time I think I will have the continental breakfast.
It was a wonderful experience... except for one tiny detail...
Even as we were leaving SFO Airport to Berkley in the Bay Porter I was promoting it as a way to get around the country and convincing US locals to travel by train rather than fly. Chatty me was unloading upon some poor lady about our trip so far. She was excited about us being Australian and was sharing tips with Simon & I about the city sights and where we should go... and we happened to mention the train and spent the remainder of the drive talking about the pros and cons of air vs rail travel. She travelled about once every month or two to Vancouver - I wonder if she will actually take up the train trip adventure.
(I love it how one of the travel tips under what to do on the "Official SF Visitors" website is 'gay travel'.)
The scenery from San Francisco was spectacular. Beautiful mountains sprinkled with snow (in mid May) blue lakes and fir tree forests line the train tracks. The other passengers seem to be pretty much exclusively well travelled Europeans. Every time we turned around there was another chatty person to talk to.
The roomettes were really worth the extra $70. They were much smaller than they appeared online however. When we boarded the train in Emeryville, the beds were already set up and we were a bit taken aback by how much space they took up in our little section.
I went for a wander along the train and saw what it would have been like if we were staying in seats instead of in the cabin... much less comfortable. People crawling and trying to sleep everywhere, one guy was even snoring happily in the videogame room... it seemed like the only place where kids weren't wandering around and yelling at the top of their lungs. Actually there were no kids in there... I don't know if that was because of the guy or because most of the games were old (original Ms Pac-Man, a weird version of Tetris) or broken.
The food was ok - Simon tried grits, which are like a strange grainy kind of oatmeal, apparently you eat it with butter or some other form of sweetener... Next time I think I will have the continental breakfast.
It was a wonderful experience... except for one tiny detail...
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