The Vimy Shuffle - Part VIII

It seems unlikely that I will ever take a train without being reminded of Meghan and our trip around Europe in 2007 (http://on.fb.me/gs2VNP), that is, of course, unless we're talking about a VIA Rail trip, which more just reminds me of some combination of a cattle cart on the Oregon Trail and Chinese water torture. My trip with Sahar to Mont St-Michel was no different. From Arras, our train took us west through the north of France to the city of Rennes, where we boarded a bus for Pontorson. From there, a short transit bus ride took us towards our final destination. I was pretty interested to see the old fortified city for myself, but as the bus wound down the country roads near the French coast, I realized that I, after three months away from PEI, was actually excited just to see the ocean.

Mont St-Michel rises like a fairy tale from the waters just off northern France. The site of l'Abbaye St-Michel since the 8th century, it is built on a peninsula that protrudes about a kilometer from the mainland, connected only by a narrow causeway when the tide is high. At the top of the imposing mount stands a church that was constructed in the 11th and 12th centuries, and then partially re-configured in the 15th century, leading to a combination of Romanesque and Gothic architecture. From there, a fortified city (current population of less than 50) spirals all the way down to the base of Mont St-Michel where, today, millions of visitors flock every year.

Sahar and I blended in well with the tourists that bound the streets when we arrived, as we settled into the business of taking pictures of every corner and angle that looked even halfway interesting. As is true any such attraction, the passageways of Mont St-Michel have become over-run with tacky souvenir shops stocked with the usual cliché fare. But once you make your way further up and out of the fray, the town offers spectacular views of both itself and of the surrounding tidal flats and waterways. After clambering up and down stairs for an hour or two, we headed down to walk around the island itself, renowned for its merciless tide. They say the tides here race to fill the void left in their departure like "galloping horses", which, at 14 meters is no match for Fundy's 17 meter tidal boar, but is still pretty frightening. Sahar and I didn't end up getting swallowed up in the tide, but we did get pretty muddy, which I'm sure did not impress the staff at the restaurant we went into immediately afterwards.

After dark, we headed off on foot in search of our chambre d'hôte, taking the opportunity to see Mont St-Michel lit up at night. About six kilometres later we stumbled into 'la Bastide du Moulin' and claimed our beds for the night. As far as I can recall, this was my first bed and breakfast experience, (although some hostels I've been to may technically be considered B&Bs) and it more than exceeded any expectations I may have had. Our room had a four-post bed and a double bed on the loft, as well as a newly renovated bathroom and a window/door that led into the backyard. Exhausted, we took a few moments to gush over the place before passing out for a solid eight hours of sleep.

After breakfast we headed back on foot towards Mont St-Michel to see the museum, but were also able to catch part of Mass in the ancient church, celebrated with the monks and nuns who still live in the monastery there. From there we continued back through the streets, where Sahar bought a few of the aforementioned cliché trinkets, and we headed back the six kilometers (that's 18km total, if you're keeping track) to our chambre d'hôte to retrieve our bags and to catch the bus back into Pontorson.

Fast-forward to about six hours and a couple broken down trains later, and Sahar and I are sitting stranded in a Paris train station, still many miles away from Arras, with Monday morning and another day at work ticking ever-closer. Tired from a long day of sight-seeing and traveling, we shuffled into the long line-up where all the passengers whose journeys had been disrupted now stood. Given my past dealings with VIA Rail, Air Canada and the like, I have come to accept such a low level of customer service that I assumed what awaited us at the front of the line was a lengthy argument, resulting in us getting a voucher or some other meaningless coupon that did nothing to resolve the predicament we were in. Fortunately, they do things differently in France. While in line, we were given a free boxed lunch which included a letter of apology from SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français). However, we didn't have time to eat it, because the line moved very quickly, and when we reached the front of the line, we were dealt with efficiently and professionally. As the last train for Arras had already left, he offered us train tickets the following morning so that we would get back in time for work, and a complimentary stay at a hotel next to Paris Nord train station. And we didn't even have to yell or anything.

As the train schedule was fairly extensively messed up by whatever was going wrong with the engines or signals or whatever in France that day, it turned out that about 35 of us were all staying at the same hotel. We were given instructions on how to get to the hotel and then our convoy was set loose on Paris, rolling through train and metro stations like a well-behaved street gang with well-appointed luggage sets. When we came to the RER (Réseau Express Régional) turnstiles, each person politely held the door for the next, chivalrously enabling them to jump the fare while the rest of the group patiently waited for everyone to get through. When we reached Paris Nord, our posse took to the streets, and people stopped or slowed their cars at the sight of us, probably wondering what kind of protest we were mounting at one in the morning. After walking for about a kilometer (stopping occasionally so stragglers and those caught at crosswalk lights could catch up) we arrived at our hotel... or so we thought. But we were turned away and told that the hotel we were actually looking for was ten minutes in the opposite direction. And so we bravely spilled onto the streets of Paris again. We arrived at our hotel and crawled into bed with about 5 hours to go before we had to be back up at Paris Nord. After walking about 14,000 kilometers that day we were very tired and drifted quickly off to sleep.

In the morning we got a free breakfast along with our free hotel room, both of which were actually pretty good (especially considering the price) and made our way back to the train station. After a mishap where Sahar nearly got blasted in the face with a water hose by city workers, we got on the train. As our tickets were actually for the night before, we had not been assigned new seats and so we decided to just take a seat in 1st Class and see where that got us. When the ticket guy asked for my ticket, I silently handed it to him, again, expecting to be land-basted again for having the audacity to sit with my social betters, here in my light hikers and jeans.
"Did they put you up in hotel last night as well?"
I nodded.
"Very good." he said, as he handed my ticket back and continued up the aisle.

What a country.

The Vimy Shuffle - Part VII

Every evening since July 2nd, 1928, a Last Post ceremony has taken place at the Menin Gate, a First World Memorial standing at the entrance to the city of Ypres, Belgium. Containing the names of 54,896 men, it commemorates men of the British Empire who fell during the Great War who have no known grave, including 6,983 Canadians. On March 4th, we had the opportunity to take part in the ceremony and lay a wreath in remembrance of the men commemorated at the gate. Also present were 200+ members of the London Regiment, who marched in full procession under the gate to the beat of drums and the drone of bagpipes.

Two days later, the same regiment visited us at Vimy, getting the full tour of the tunnels and trenches before changing into full parade dress for a Drumhead Ceremony at the Memorial. After giving all the Regiment a brief 5-minute crash course on the Monument, I stepped back to watch as they took time to commemorate the history of the battle and the war, but also to highlight the on-going importance of service and sacrifice, a concept which struck a chord with me. In contextualizing the First World War, it is often difficult to find meaning or sense in the ill-conceived notions that led to war, but on the individual level, the idea of service and sacrifice is one that I believe permeates to all facets of society.

After spending a very busy day with the Regiment and at the site, a few of us decided to go out for dinner, and then took the opportunity to visit Vimy at night and to see the Monument lit up by lights that were, apparently, designed by a Canadian theatre company. Impressive in any light and at any time of day, the dramatic effect of lights provided yet another perspective by which to view the Memorial.

The following week, which took us into Canadian March Break territory, was also the beginning of Lent meaning Pancake Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, and the end of swearing and chocolate consumption for me. On Tuesday we had a feast of pancakes before heading out and having a few drinks to properly celebrate Mardi Gras, France-style. While the next day was not awfully rough, I was charged with the task of waiting for waiting for a new internet box from our provider (which took most of the day) and then setting it up (which was not as easy as it may sound) and then driving one of our cars to some random garage to get a headlight changed. By the end of the day, my Lenten swear jar tally stood at $11.

On the morning of March 17th, 2011, while across the ocean Canadians were just beginning their day, one of our Canadian soldiers of the Great War was laid to rest, nearly one hundred years after falling on the battlefields of the Great War. The somber ceremony at Pozières, shrouded in a morning fog that clung to the thousands of headstones at Pozieres Cemetery, was the second funeral that took place that week, the first honouring another soldier, identified as Private Thomas Lawless, who was laid to rest near Vimy on March 15th. For all of us guides who were able to attend, and I am sure the same was true for all Canadians in attendance, it brought home the importance of remembrance and of honouring the generations that have gone before us, forging a path through far rougher terrain than we have tread. It was certainly a once in a lifetime experience, and not one I will soon forget.

After participating in both funerals that week, the Loyal Edmonton Regiment had gotten well-acquainted with our staff, and so that night (St. Patrick's Day for those of you playing the home game) 30+ Canadian soldiers and 14 Canadian guides congregated at "The Irish" in Arras to properly celebrate the memory of Ireland's most famous alcoholic and Saint. While latter parts of the night became fuzzy to various people for various reasons, most agree that a good night was had by all, and that the gusto with which 'Barrett's Privateers' and 'O Canada' were sung was bested only in their frequency and volume. Understandably enough, guides and soldiers alike were in slightly less fine form when the Edmonton Regiment showed up for their tour at Vimy the following morning.

Canadian March Break translated into a slew of tours for Canadian school groups and tours over the course of the week, and by Saturday, after about 50 or so tours and about 4 billion photos taken by Canadian students, we were well-prepared for a break. After work, five co-workers (Sahar, Maxine, Colin, Marc and Lauren) and I headed for Paris for a night of unwinding. The Great Canadian Pub, located in the Latin Quarter just south of Notre Dame, was my final destination, providing one or two Moosehead beer and a much-needed Leafs-Bruins tilt to ease the lack of Canadian beer and NHL in my life in Arras. The next day necessitated another trip the the Pub, this time for a bacon-saturated breakfast, before heading back to the streets for a lazy sunny Sunday around the streets and riverside of Paris.

Our second round of March Break groups showed up in full-force Monday, with groups of hundreds of Canadians anxious to take another billion or so pictures of tunnel walls and what-not at Vimy. On Tuesday, fresh from the snowbanks of PEI, 23 Colonel Gray students showed up at our front door, floored by the sight of the Vimy Monument and site, but equally stunned by the sight of green grass, sprouting trees and daffodils that are exploding from the ground at an alarming pace. Indeed Spring has struck Northern France, with double-digit and sunny days dominating the forecast for the past week. Many of the guides have ditched their jackets and have taken to wearing only their shirts (most notably of which is Riggs, who is already sporting a painful sunburn). As if by clockwork, a package sent by my parents and aunt sent on February 7th (when it was still quite frigid) arrived today, complete with my gloves and a pair of new mittens. Such is life.

The Vimy Shuffle - Part VI

You know you've been in France too long when walking home from the store with a baguette under your arm no longer seems cliché.

Most of my housemates have gotten onto an intense baguette and cheese routine, to the point that there are literally 7 types of cheese per person in our kitchen. This isn't a bad thing in principle, but every now and then someone will get adventurous with their cheese selection, and then our fridges end up smelling like a poorly-managed waste treatment plant for a few days. And as the French have made the odd choice not to sell baking soda in their stores, the rest of are completely at the mercy of the stench. Fortunately, just as the baguette and cheese stereotypes hold true, so do those regarding chocolate and beer. Though I have always liked chocolate as much as the next guy, I have never eaten it to the extent that it consumes a significant portion of my disposable income. It seems I have developed a full-blown chocolate addiction here and am, by times, flirting on the edge of a diabetic coma. While I hope the same doesn't hold true for my booze intake, beer is ridiculously cheap in France. Last week a 12-pack of Stella Artois was going for 3.66 Euro (roughly $5) at the grocery store. And while the locals consider Stella a small step above Listerine or turpentine, I have absolutely no shame in buying it by the case. The bottles are slightly smaller, so we've done the math, and it turns out that a 12 of Stella here is about 1/3 the cost of a 12 of Tremblays or Boréale in Montréal... and lets remember that once you buy it, you don't have the misfortune of having to choke down 12 Tremblays or Boréale. That's a win-win-win by my count.

Back on the Western Front, our education on the First World War and the commemorative efforts here in Northern France and on behalf of Canada and the Commonwealth continues each Monday. Last week we had the opportunity to visit the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headquarters here in Arras. The Commission was established in 1917 (then the Imperial War Graves Commission) as a result of the concern that there was no coordinated plan in place to facilitate the construction of cemeteries and memorials for the hundreds of thousands of men who were dying in the war. Through the two world wars, the Commission worked to secure land for cemeteries and memorials, standardizing the design of gravestones and cemeteries to ensure some regularity, as well as somewhat of a comforting atmosphere for the families visiting the graves of the men who never came home. The final construction efforts were completed just a few years before the outbreak of World War Two, and then their work began anew. Funded by the governments of Commonwealth countries, their work continues today, maintaining the cemeteries where the soldiers who fought and fell now lay. In France alone, the Commission maintains graves in some 2991 cemeteries, and around the world is responsible for around 23,000 sites in 150 countries. In all, they are responsible for the maintenance of gravestones and memorials that commemorate about 1.3 million individuals.

Needless to say, their work is cut out for them (so to speak). Stones have to be replaced in the thousands each year due to age, and each must be carved in the stone originally chosen for the cemetery in which it stands. The same is true for the aging gates, fences, doorways and metalwork in each of the cemeteries. While the stones are now carved mainly using computerized machines, the wood craft and metalwork is still done very much by hand, and visiting each workshop to speak with the artisans on-site certainly gave a better idea - and an appreciation - for the amount of work that goes into maintaining such a massive amount of aging, yet none-the-less important, sites.

This Monday half of our group drove through Northern France to Belgium and visited several memorials and battle sites where Canadians, Australians, Indian and other Allied and Central Power forces were engaged during the First World War. We visited sites associated with the Battles at Ypres, where Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote his poem 'In Flanders Fields', St. Julien, where Canadians suffered and endured the first poison gas attack of the war and held the Allied line, and Passchendaele, a costly victory for the British Forces, where Canada lost almost 16,000 men in just over two weeks.

The most sobering sights of the day were perhaps Tyne Cot Cemetery, the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world, where over 46,000 men are buried or commemorated, and the Langemark German Military Cemetery, where more than 44,000 German soldiers lie, mostly unknown. The sheer numbers associated with the battles and memorials was certainly astounding, but it was even more incredible to see how extensively the men who fought and died are commemorated and honoured throughout the villages and the countryside. In Ypres, for example, Canada's contribution and losses during the war are still remembered today. Canadian flags hang from several buildings and mark the entrances to some of the stores and pubs along the cobblestone streets of their main square.

Back at Vimy, things are starting to pick up as Canadian University students and families take a mid-semester break, and as March break approaches. In proportion with the increase of visitors, we also get an increase of trouble-makers. Last week I had to yell at some 20-somethings who were trying to take rather inappropriate pictures with one of the female figures on the monument, which is meant to represent a mourning Canadian mother or wife. And on two different tours I was forced to stop the entire group of British school kids to stop them from a. pretending to shoot each other in trenches and b. making the Nazi salute while posing for pictures. In each case I remind them that hundreds of thousands of men died in the surrounding battlefields, many of whose bodies were never recovered. That Vimy is a very important and solemn commemorative park for Canadians, as well as for those countries whose young men died there as well. "So I would appreciate it if you would refrain from making gun noises or making the Nazi salute," I said. "Not only is this the wrong war, but it is also incredibly inappropriate." The sheepish looks on their faces suggested that they got the message, but I was assured they had when one small British boy came into the Visitor's Centre to apologize to me after the tour. "I'm sorry for giving the Nazi salute, Sir," he said in a very quiet voice and with a very British accent. "I looked very foolish."

Perhaps not as foolish as I looked a few nights later when I was charged with the task of getting gas. Usually a fairly simple task, to be sure. However, being a Canadian boy with very little use for diesel, I brashly thrust the first gas hose I grasped into the tank, and, predictably, gassed up our diesel van with 35 Euro worth of gasoline. Stupid as I was, I did recognize the difference in the smell of gas to that of diesel, and luckily had the sense not to start the van, which would've been fairly large problem, instead of a relatively small one. And so, as I sit here writing this, our staff of 14 has been without our much-needed van for four days, and has instead had to jerry-rig an exchange schedule for all the Canada vehicles at the disposal of Veteran's Affairs here in Arras. Swift move, Gallant.

The Vimy Shuffle - Part V

As with any new city and any new job, we have all slowly slipped into some semblance of routine as our surroundings have become more familiar and as the once-steep learning curve has slackened. While I still found new ways to get lost on the drive to work every morning, and while many helpful criticisms were shared amongst co-workers in our first week (which were received on a scale varying between gracious and contemptuous), inevitably we have all begun to settle into life in France. (This also means that our fridge is filled with anywhere between 20 and 30 types of cheese, all of which stink.)

For those of us at Vimy, our workday is centred around the Visitor's Centre, where our schedule for the day is coordinated and where tours are booked. From there we take turns guiding or following tours of the tunnels and trenches, answering questions or talking with locals at the monument, and walking around the parking lot waiting for someone to show up or for someone to step on the grass so we can yell at them. Typically the tours of tunnels and trenches take about 50 minutes, and represent the fruits of our in-depth training session we received in our first week here.

At Vimy, the 172nd Royal Engineers dug a series of 13, sometimes interconnected, subways and tunnels that at the time of the battle snaked for 10-12 kilometers under the surface. The tunnel we now have access to was the second longest on that day in 1917, stretching for 1.2 kilometers, of which about 200 meters are accessible to the public today. Tours consist of explaining to visitors how the tunnels were dug the purpose they served and the risks inherent in the operations and maintenance of them during the time leading up to the battle. The tour takes us into an underground battalion headquarters that consists of five rooms (that at the time housed officers from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry) to the mouth of a deep-fighting tunnel (that would've been used to blow massive mine craters in No Man's Land or under German defenses) and in view of the tunnel where one of the Black Watch of Montreal Battalions would've waited before shuffling out onto the battlefield in the hours that preceded the Arras offensive. The end of the tunnel tour brings us out the original exit of the tunnel into the backside of preserved Canadian trenches where we continue to explain the tactics that were used at Vimy, the awesome power of the rolling barrage that helped secure victory that day and show examples of the effects that the underground mines had on the surface.

The tunnels and trenches are quite impressive, but this is hampered once one realizes that this battle and war was fought for practically no reason, and had few redeeming results. For all the lessons learned from the Somme and Verdun that made Vimy a success, millions of men died. Millions more would die before the end of the war. Some were mowed down my machine-gun fire or smothered by poison gasses, many were vaporized by the exciting new technologies of the day, and still others in the trenches, beaten down by the pneumonia, dysentery or other diseases that come with living in frigid holes in the grounds for months at a time. As one of my co-workers emphasizes in her tour, today the whole nation mourns where one or two soldiers dies in a war zone. On April 9th, 1917, 3,598 Canadian died in a field in foreign land, thousands of miles from home, and mostly just because some oligarchical heads of state had bruised egos.

If I was nervous at all about my first tour (I was), I didn't have to wait long to face my fear. My first tour was a group of 25 French students, the morning of my first day. We had been warned that many groups of French students were very badly-behaved, would make fun of our accents and just be general assholes. That did not help my confidence. Nor my already sketchy French accent. However, this particular group was very well-behaved and were also very attentive, and it was instead my french that failed me. One would think that after nine years of French semi-immersion in a classroom with a chalkboard one would remember the word for "chalk". However, pressed for the name of the material the tunnels are dug in, my ind drew a complete blank, and I had to rely on Jenna, my follow on this particular tour to bail me out. (She also says that instead of saying "messenger" for some of the tour I instead said "mailbox", making for some very confused French kids I would assume. "How did they get the mailboxes to run through the trenches?"). In the end, the tour wasn't a complete disaster, but it definitely sent me back to the books and humbled my "know-it-all" demeanor for a day or two. By the end of the week I had led another half-dozen or so tours and they were starting to come together.

Our week of training and of getting a lay of the land during the battle is also very helpful when stationed at the monument, probably the site that most people would identify with Vimy Ridge today. One look at the land surrounding the monument and the view that spans out from its position atop Hill 145 makes its importance to military strategy immediately obvious. The monument itself, however, has a history of its own. Carved from 6,000 tonnes of Seget stone from a Croatian quarry and built on a base of 11,000 tonnes of concrete, the monument took eleven years to complete, and was unveiled at a huge ceremony on July 26th, 1936. After the breakout of the Second World War, accusations were leveled against the Nazis, alleging that soldiers were vandalizing WWI sites in occupied France and Belgium. In response, who had served on the Vimy front as a messenger in the First World War, visited the Vimy Memorial on June 2nd, 1940 to prove that Germany was not desecrating the war memorials of the Commonwealth countries. Later in the war two Nazi soldiers committed suicide by jumping from the memorial after receiving word that they were being transferred to the eastern front.

This is of course not what I think about in my one or two hours a day that I am stationed at the monument. Most of my time is spent greeting people as they walk up to the monument, and then chasing them around to see if they have any questions about it. Though I am a guide, I feel more like a retail salesperson, whose queries of "Can I help you?" are to be dodged at all costs. The only people who do not seem completely annoyed with giving me the time of day are Canadians who have made the long trek to Northern France just to get a glance at the monument, and old French couples who talk on end about their lives here during the Second World War and the coal mines that dot the landscape over the expansive kilometers in view from the top of Hill 145. As the Battle of Vimy Ridge is for Canadians, the monument is symbolic for those who have lived their entire lives in its shadow, and they teach me more about the region and the effects of war than I could ever hope to convey after reading about it in a book. And I am very much content to listen.

The Vimy Shuffle - Part IV

It is early on a Saturday morning, and I am standing in the middle of a field in Northern France. The morning sun, high above the clouds, has not yet dispersed the mist, and it clings to the trees scattered around me and floats just above the green grass that reaches out in all directions. As the piercing cold stings my hands, I perceive the profound silence here, miles from the closest town. Usually being enveloped in such an environment would be peaceful, but the scene before me today is, in contrast, haunting. Planted around me are thousands of black crosses, marking the final resting place of over 44,000 German soldiers from the First World War. This is the German cemetery at Neuville St-Vaast. It is our first stop of the day in a week that has been filled with site visits and orientation on the battlefields of the Great War in France.

Our training started Monday, five days before, with a whirlwind of administrative processes and briefings on the Vimy and Beaumont-Hamel sites, as well as all Canadian memorials maintained by Veterans Affairs Canada in Europe. Much of our direction was delivered by VAC Admin in France, but also via teleconference from various people back home at Veterans Affairs in Charlottetown. Over the course of two days we filled out tax and employee forms, toured both the Vimy and Beaumont-Hamel site, received instruction on how to drive in France and for over an hour, with much trial and error, were outfitted with our bright green and red uniforms, complete with a couple golf shirts, a dress shirt, dress pants, belt, fleece sweater, rain coat, wind-breaker, splash pants, toque, and neck-warmer, with ties for the guys and scarves for the girls.

By Wednesday morning, most of the formalities had been dealt with, and we settled in for a couple days of solid classroom instruction. What followed could be described as a two-day ultra-intensive University-level WWI course. We covered, at length, the ranks and structure of the Canadian military, with a crash course in HQ organization and logistics on the front. This was followed by instruction on the range, technical issues and evolution of guns, artillery and weapons during the Great War. Then we tried to keep up with a four-hour brief on the First World War in general, focusing on major battles, campaigns and strategies of all sides on all fronts. Then the French Red Cross took an hour of our day to explain how to dial '18' (European '911').

Thursday consisted of eight more hours of classroom instruction, this time with more specific focus on the Battle of the Somme, including Beaumont-Hamel, and the Battle of Arras, including Vimy Ridge. Although the instruction on both Wednesday and Thursday were phenomenal, I still struggled to stay awake, as the lingering effects of jet-lag were allowing me only 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night. Either way, by the end of the day Thursday we had more info and background on the First World War than we know what to do with. The next two days would help us put it all in context.

On Friday we visited close to a dozen sites involving the Battle of the Somme. Braving the biting cold, we took a full tour of the remains of the battlefield at Beaumont-Hamel, before driving to different cemeteries, towns and random fields to get a lay of the land as it stood on July 1st, 1916; the first day of the four-month battle. Seeing the lines as drawn across the miles of countryside, the size of the craters that were blown that morning to initiate the attack, the extensive German fortifications behind their 2nd line at Pozières and the countless war cemeteries that dot the countryside of Northern France were all eye-opening experiences. To trudge through the mud in the path of these soldiers and to visit the cemeteries where they fell (some as young as 16 or 17) quickly brings the reality of war into focus. I am doubtful that a higher-quality tour of the battlefields of the Great War exists.

And so, when I found myself in the middle of a massive cemetery on Saturday morning, I felt better-equipped to comprehend the context of where we stood and the events that led to these men being buried in this foreign field. Over the course of the day we would visit several Canadian memorial sites and get better oriented in how the lines were drawn at the Battle of Arras. By 5:00, as we gazed at the imposing rear slope of the ridge that Canadians had fought and died capturing, we were all freezing, exhausted and hoping that, somehow, all of the info that we had been taught over the past six days would somehow be absorbed into our brains. Most of us were also ready for a beer.

Sunday was a near-carbon copy of the one before, with late mornings all-around. In the evening, I walked through Arras with Reta, Kristina and Becky for Mass at the beautiful L'église St. Jean-Baptiste. It seemed a fulfilling conclusion to what had been an extremely busy, but incredible week. One would expect our next week, however, to include a another steep learning curve, as we would begin to put our training into action. The next day would be our first in uniform.

The Vimy Shuffle - Part III

Sunday started slower than most for the crew both here and at the other guide house at St-Aubert. The sleeping endurance title went to our most recent arrival, Jenna, who clocked in at 14 hours of sleep, on her way to extinguishing some of the jet-lag that we had all incurred over the past week. My roommate Colin, Jenna and I spent our last evening before training walking the cobblestone streets and seeing Arras by night.

When awoke early the next morning to get ready to head to Vimy Ridge, the house was freezing. The stone floors felt like ice, making getting out of both bed and the shower and extra challenge at such an early hour. At some point during the night our heaters had shut off, leaving the house barely warmer than outside. We made it out of the house on time, but to no shortage of grumbled complaints. We, along with the guides from St-Aubs, jumped into two white cars with "Canada" emblazoned on the side for the trek to Vimy Ridge, some 20 minutes outside Arras.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was part of the larger British offensive known as the Battle of Arras, undertaken on April 9th, 1917. It marks the first time that the four Divisions of the Canadian Corps fought together, taking on three Divisions of the German Sixth Army in order to secure a ridge that had eluded both French and British troops in past attempts. After an extensive artillery barrage and meticulous planning, the Canadian Corps advanced at 5:30am on Easter Monday, 1917. By the evening of April 12th, three days later, Canada had firm control of the ridge and the surrounding countryside. The battle established Canada as a formidable fighting force, one that lead the charge in the defeat of Germany the following year, and has been known for generations as "a nation-making moment". Said one veteran after the battle "We went up the ridge as Albertans and Nova Scotians. We came down as Canadians."

The costs were heavy as well, however, as Canada suffered 10,602 casualties with 3,598 killed and 7,004 wounded during the battle. As a result of Canada's incredible success in the battle at Vimy and unprecedented contribution to the war, it signed the Treaty of Versailles as an independent nation, and would later gain complete independence from Great Britain in all matters, including foreign affairs, with the Statute of Westminster in 1931. In gratitude to the Canadian people, France granted a 260-acre parcel of land on the site of where the battle occurred in perpetuity to Canada, where the breath-taking Vimy Ridge Memorial was completed in 1936. As well as a commemoration of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, it stands as a memorial for all Canadian soldiers who fell in France with no known grave, their names engraved in stone around the base of the structure. The site today is also comprised of the remains of trenches and shell craters, as well as 500 metres of underground tunnels that once snaked for kilometres under the battlefield on both the Canadian and German sides.

Vimy remains a watershed moment in Canadian history, and as a proud Canadians and a historian at heart, the battle has interested me since I first heard about it in Grade 6, and my interest has only deepened as I studied it further through High School and during my undergraduate degree at UPEI. Part of my job will be informing visitors about the contributions of Canadians here, and of those of the Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel during the Battle of the Somme. Monday morning, however, was to be my first time seeing it in person.

The Chemin des Canadiens snakes into the commemorative park between convolutions that fold the landscape into mounds around pits and pockmarks carved by artillery and explosives long ago. The soft green grass and trees that have grown in the 94 years since betray the story of the brutal battle, but also create an eerie silence amidst the fog that often clings to the forest here. This is the final resting place of many Canadians whose bodies were never recovered, and there are untold numbers of unexploded and undiscovered shells that hide somewhere deep in these mounds. The impact of this sight was perhaps stronger than that of seeing the monument itself, which is no small statement, as the two white pillars of the Vimy Memorial reaching 40 metres above the French countryside is a spectacular sight.

We began the day with introductions and then progressed through the usual administrative and introductory work to familiarize ourselves with our roles and responsibilities as guides with the Government of Canada. This was followed with a brief tour of the memorial itself, and then of the tunnels used by Canadians during the battle, some eight metres below the surface. We then drove to Beaumont-Hamel to visit the Newfoundland Memorial, about sixty minutes away.

The Battle of the Somme represents for many the senseless and brutal slaughter that was the Great War. In the first day of the battle alone, the British Empire lost 60,000 men - and this was a battle that lasted nearly four months. The Royal Newfoundland Regiment, made up of men from the Dominion of Newfoundland (independent from Canada until 1949), has been transferred to the Western Front from their post in Gallipoli in March of 1916, and was part of the 29th British Division on the first day of the Somme. It remains an infamous day in British military history, but particularly for the people of Newfoundland.

When the Newfoundland Regiment advanced the morning of July 1st, 1916, they faced barbed wire defenses and artillery fire, and struggled to advance over the bodies of the dead and wounded men who had faced the same perils minutes before. Pinned down by heavy machine gun fire, the Newfoundlanders relented in their push and moved back towards their trench, only to be gunned down as they retreated. They suffered a horrendous casualty rate of 90% and of the 780 Newfoundlanders who had gone over the top, 68 answered roll call the following morning.

A lone caribou stands watch over the remains of the battlefield today, representing Newfoundland and the caribou on the crest of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. The land it overlooks is the largest section of the Battle of the Somme that remains, the rest now stretching out as tranquil farmland in all directions.

After visiting Beaumont-Hamel, we returned to Arras, only to find that our house was still frigid. As it turns out, we were out of oil, and none could be delivered until the following day. Mercifully, several space heaters had been dropped off for our use. We plugged in a few of them and began to cook supper. Meanwhile, as we turned on the electrical heaters around the house, we threw the circuit, leaving the house in complete darkness, and our meals cold. Unable to fix the problem with the usual fuse box-flick, we called in a repairman, and went off in search of fries via fry wagon, or some other such French delicacy. We found one down the street and, after ordering, returned home and sat down for our first family meal together at Vauban, bonding over heaping portions of fries and croque-monsieurs, or other such sandwiches.

With the power restored, we re-set our alarm clocks and climbed into out cold beds in our cold house. However, our grumbling complaints from that morning were perhaps somewhat muted after having walked through the fields where Canadians had suffered far worse conditions and awaited far worse fates so many years ago.

The Vimy Shuffle - Part II

Friday started with what I have come to accept as the typical hostel breakfast: tons of bread, Nutella, bland cereal and coffee. I shared it and stories of home and travels with a Vancouverite named Sarah, who was just beginning her own 3-month adventure in Europe. From there, I packed my bags and headed to Paris Nord train station for my trip north. Being as I had left Montreal in -30 temperatures, the +3 Parisian climate seemed balmy by comparison. I entered the station in a long-sleeve t-shirt which was met with some very cold stares from some very cold commuters who were huddled around space heaters, bundled up in what seemed to be every piece of winter clothing they owned.

The beauty of the Northern French countryside as viewed by train is bested only by the small towns that dot the landscape. A 50-minute train ride brought me into the town of Arras, a small town (at 48,000, slightly larger than Charlottetown) in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France, approaching the Belgian border. Arras was founded by Belgic tribes and later became an important garrison town for the Roman Empire. The modern form of the town took shape around the Benedictine Abbey of St. Vaast sometime in the 5th century. Situated in the path of pivotal battles of the First World War, Arras was devastated by the bombing and warfare, and much of the original Gothic architecture of the city was destroyed, though much has been restored, making the two large squares, Grande Place and the Place des Héros, along with the imposing town belfry, some of the most picturesque in all of Europe.

At the train station I was met by André, the Visitor Activities Support Officer here in France, and Lauren Johnson, another guide who arrived on the same train. André gave us a brief overview of Arras en route to one of the two houses occupied by guides here in Arras, and gave me a tour of the house that I would be living in. The house at Vauban is a three-storey residence owned by the Government of Canada that is leased to guides during the duration of their stay here in Arras. The ground floor has a small kitchen and pantry (with 3 fridges and a freezer to accommodate all our food and drink), a large living room and dining room, as well as a large back patio area, garage (for bikes and garbage) and laundry facilities. (It also has a toilet in a closet). Upstairs there are, in total, four rooms, two large bathrooms, another toilet closet, and a very odd hallway filled with abnormally large closets. For my three months here, I will be living at Vauban with 6 other guides (split between those four bedrooms), with the additional 7 guides living at a large 3-floor apartment a short distance from here.

Throughout Friday, my co-workers slowly trickled into Arras with each arriving train, so that by that evening, all but two had arrived. We spent Friday night talking and getting to know each other, but as jet-lag set in, all of us crashed early and hard and retired to bed, where most of us stayed until early the following afternoon.

On Saturday I took my first walk alone around Arras, visiting the town squares and the massive Cathédrale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Vaast d'Arras, which was built on the site of a 1000-year old Cathedral in 1833, after the original basilica was destroyed in the French Revolution. Over the course of the day, Jenna and Sahar, the last two components of our 14-member team, arrived in Arras. The full roster congregated at Vauban for some additional introductions and an animated game of Sociables. And so, along with seven Ontarians*, one Newfie, a Nova Scotian, a Manitoban, an Albertan, a British Columbian and an army brat from all over (but primarily from Ottawa), I headed out on the town in Arras.

*I feel it important to note here that while there are seven Ontarians in our group, not one of them identifies themselves as being from Toronto. (Although, for all intents and purposes, Pickering is pretty much downtown Toronto.)

The Vimy Shuffle - Part I

There is a time and place for changes of pace, and as I fought through the tedium of third-year law this past semester, I felt one was inevitable. Thankfully, I was presented with an amazing opportunity to apply to work as a guide for the Federal Government at Vimy Ridge and Beaumont-Hamel in Northern France, educating visitors on Canada's (and Newfoundland's) contributions and sacrifices during the Great War. It was certainly a chance that was too good to pass up. And so, after an interview process, a request to take a hiatus from law school, and a lengthy visa application process, I found myself standing in line at Charles de Gaulle International in Paris, clearing customs after a long flight where I had accrued all of 30 minutes of sleep, ate the typical airline microwaved chicken dinner and had lost six hours somewhere over the Atlantic.

"Do you like McGill Law?" a lady beside me queried in French, gesturing towards my red McGill hoodie. "Ummm. It's alright." I replied, mustering as positive a reaction as I could in regards to the institution that had helped facilitate much of my aforementioned tedium. We talked about McGill, Montreal, the French language, Acadians, PEI and so forth, as the line slowly snaked towards the sole customs officer. France may have the most ridiculously lax customs process that I have ever seen. After barely looking at each passport, the guard stamped his approval, and each traveler was unleashed on France on their own recognizance without so much as a bag search, metal detector scan or even a question. After a train ride and a crash course in the metro system, I stumbled into St. Christopher's Hostel, claimed my bunk bed, and effortlessly slipped into sleep.

At 5:00 the next morning, however, I was deep in the throes of a bout of jet-lag, and was strongly regretting my mid-day nap. The smell and snores emanating from my bunk mate below certainly didn't help either. Relief from my insomnia and headache finally came at around 6:00 and after two hours of sleep, I promised myself that I would stay awake all day and try to reset my circadian rhythm as soon as possible. I spent the morning reading up on Vimy Ridge and the Battle of the Somme, before falling asleep by accident for a couple hours in the afternoon. At around 17:30 I headed out into Paris to visit Notre Dame and meet up with a friend.

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris towers over the edge of the Seine on the Île de la Cité in Paris. Construction of the French Gothic Cathedral began on the former site of the first Christian church in France, Saint Etienne, in 1163 and was not completely finished until 1345. The impressive, humbling edifice is famed for its stained glass, and attracts 13 million visitors each year, more than even the Eiffel Tower or the Louvres. Although I had already visited the church in 2007, I was still staggered by its grandeur. This grandeur was heightened as they ushered visitors out and turned off the lights to the exhibits for the beginning of evening vespers and Mass. Complete with clouds of incense and the Latin chants of the choir, the stately basilica is all the more incredible when clothed in the ceremony and celebration for which it was designed.

My next stop was to meet up with Thomas Vignal, a native of Paris and one-time exchange student to UPEI. Having met on the plane from Montreal to Charlottetown, I was the first Islander Thomas has met on his trip, so it seemed fitting to be able to spend a few hours with him and his mother during my first full day in France. He met me at the steps of Charles Michel metro, a short walk from the apartment shared by him and his mother. We spent the evening enjoying a magnificent meal prepared by his mother, and talking about everything from great sites to visit in France, to old memories at the Wave. I was especially thankful that the cheese Thomas' mother served after the tremendous meal was, mercifully, mild enough to suit even my unsophisticated palate.

As I laid down to sleep, more or less on schedule for my new circadian rhythm, I tried not to psyche myself up too much for the following day, one that would take me north to Arras and my new home for the next three months.

There Is No Such Thing As A Stupid Question. Usually.

While the pages of The Quid are consumed by the Cégepian inferiority complex and a debate over the shortage of social conservatives, I find that each day I walk into this building something about one of my classmates amazes me. Everyday. Since September I have met students who speak myriads of languages, come from a multitude of cultural backgrounds and whose lives prior to McGill Law include everything from acting to police work, from working in refugee camps to fashion design. Being in complete awe of these classmates has more than a few times caused me to wonder what the hell the Admissions Committee was thinking when they let me in.

And yet, despite such an abundance of diversity, somehow everyone seems absolutely blown away with the fact that I am from PEI. If there is such thing as a positive stereotype, I have certainly been the victim of one over the past few months: “I love people from PEI!”, “My parents were there in 1982!”, “I’ve always wanted to go to PEI!”. The twelve-hour drive from PEI to Montréal has brought me closer to being a foreign-exchange student than I’ve ever been in my life.
By the questions I get on daily basis, it is obvious that the knowledge most students here have about PEI is limited to the ‘PEI Potato Marketing Board’ decision, so I figured that a poorly written article in The Quid would be better than nothing. So here is a crash-course on P.E.Islandology. These are all actual questions that I have been asked.

“Do you know Anne of Green Gables?”
Actually no. She is, in fact, a fictional character, and her stories are set in the early 1900s. So if she were real, she’d be dead.

“Is Anne of Green Gables a bigger deal on PEI than it is everywhere else?”
Actually, Anne is a lot bigger in Japan than she is anywhere else: thousands of Japanese tourists flock to PEI every summer to see Anne’s (fake) house and watch her (fictional) musicals. It is a pretty big deal on PEI though, at least economically. Dozens of my friends have played Anne, Diana, or some other character in some capacity at some point in their life. This total immersion in Anne culture explains in part the angst that myself and a lot of us Islanders have for her.

“Can you jog around PEI in, like a few hours?”
Eff sakes. By area, PEI is about 11x the size of Montréal. Depending on how heavy your foot is and on how well you know the speed traps on the Trans Canada, you can drive from tip to tip in three hours, give or take.
But you would be right if you guessed PEI has a small population. The most recent census sets PEI with a population of 139,818 (139,817 now that I’m gone).

“Why the hell does PEI have four seats in the House of Commons?”
Good question, seeing as with that population, PEI is only slightly larger than a city like Trois-Rivières. After refusing to join Confederation (after a meeting about Confederation that we hosted), we figured we’d shop around, maybe join the States, build an insolvent railroad and I guess whatever else they used to do back in 1870 (growing potatoes would likely be a good guess). But then John A. and the other Upper Canadians came down for another visit, and among other things, promised to assume the colony's debt, basically buy all the land on PEI from absentee landlords and give it to us, build a bridge (or use ferries until the bridge was built in 1997) and to give PEI what is probably the most ridiculous disproportionate representation in Parliament. Not exactly a hard sell. So Islanders said “To hell with this,” (a common Island phrase) “why work if we can get it all for free?” (also a common Island phrase). The Island has been drawing pogey and equalization payments ever since.

“Is there much ethnic diversity on PEI?”
Not unless you include species of trees as ‘diversity’. Ninety-nine percent of PEI’s population is of European descent. In the absence of racial tension, Islanders have adapted by having the Catholics make fun of the Protestants and the Protestants make fun of the Catholics. Then collectively we all make fun of CFAs (come from aways). Upper Canadians are a favorite target of ours, as some Torontonians in the Faculty have already found out from me.

“How are Islanders different from Mainlanders?”
Well that’s a bit more complicated. We all grew up being subjected to the same fads, watching the same TV and listening to the same music as everyone else (we just got them six years later than the rest of you did).
There are some differences of course. Dialect for example. My parents ‘warsh’ clothes instead of washing them. My Dad wears short pants in the summer. When we were kids, they bought us ‘kitbags’ to carry our books in, and when there is ice on the driveway it is ‘slippy’.

There are some paradigmatic shifts as well. The concept of ‘open bars’ that is so prevalent here in Montréal would be completely lost on most of my friends and family. No one is stupid enough to advertise ‘free alcohol’ at any event on PEI. None of the bars have a capacity of 139,818 anyway.

When it comes to politics, there are only two options PEI: only one person who wasn’t Liberal or Conservative has been elected, ever. And your last name and hometown is usually a good indication of how you voted. Seriously.

I also feel that PEI has a good hold on old-fashioned, family-oriented community-ness. I mean, I am sure there are strong communities all across Canada, but the Island seems unique. The bar scene, for example, is a million times different on PEI than here in Montréal. Stumble into any one of the thousands of bars here and you’ll run into the same bunch of non-descript douches and ditzes who scowl and push and curse at you, often in a language you don’t understand. Stumble into any of the five main bars in Charlottetown and you’re suddenly at a party with a ton of your friends: the kids you went to elementary, junior and high school with, undoubtedly some family and that cute girl that was in your first-year History class. Sure, there are drawbacks if you have a penchant for macking randos on the dancefloor and therefore seek anonymity, and sure, some fights break out now and then, but it’s all a lot less serious. No one is going to get knifed or anything.

PEI is the kind of place where anyone who can comes home for Christmas and for at least a few weeks in the summer. It may sound a little morbid, but people keep informed by listening to the obituaries on the radio every day. In my mind, that’s how it’s supposed to be: you are welcomed into the world, spend your life among, and are bid farewell by you friends.

So go ahead. Call me backwards and backwoods. I’d trade a thousand CN Towers for a good bag of potatoes, a day at the beach, a night of camping and a few beer with friends at a PEI bar.

...And now for something completely different: Une Session à Québec

"Ryan!"
It was like déja vu. An early morning wake-up in my sister's living room.
"Ryan!" Ugh. My eyes adjusted to reveal my sister standing beside the couch.
"Ryan, it's ten after 7:00." She said.
My flight was scheduled to leave at 6:55.
"WHAT?"
"Oh, I mean ten after 6:00."
And so began another long day.

By the time my plane began its descent into Québec, the lack of sleep, as well as the glasses of wine and beer from the night before, were beginning to catch up to me. As I dozed on and off and thought about how I was going to live out of two bags of luggage for the next four months, that age-old question slipped back into my mind: ""What the hell am I getting myself into?"

Well, first of all, I was getting myself into a semester of French as a Second Language courses at L'Université Laval in Ste. Foy, Québec, just outside of the capital city. Laval has over 37,000 students, studying everything from Philosophy to Languages, Dentistry to Medicine, and the Languages Department in la pavillon Charles-de-Koninck was to be my home for the next 15 weeks. After landing at Jean Lesage Airport, I hopped in a cab and arrived outside my dorm, la pavillon Alphonse-Marie-Parent, at about 11h00 on Saturday January 12th.

Suddenly I was and eighteen year old all over again, signing in to residence for my first semester at a new school in a strange land. After getting all my stuff packed away, I slept away most of the day on my sheetless bed, and, waking up around 18h00, I decided to check out the nearby mall and to buy some essentials for my room. Like sheets. Of course, no one had told me that the Québécois shut 'er down at 17h30 on Saturday nights, which seems ridiculous. I mean I know that Confederation Court Mall kicks mall rats and prostitots out at the same time, but that's, well, Charlottetown.

L'Université Laval is connected underground by a 15-kilometre network of tunnels, which makes walking around in the winter a lot less of a pain in the ass. And so, even though I had classes in Koninck on Monday and Tuesday, by mid-week I still had no idea what the building actually looked like from the outside. As we started courses we were placed in different levels based on preliminary testing, but some of the placements were messed up, leading to a confusing week for everyone in the program. I somehow started in the 'Débutant' group, where we working on phrases like "Hi, my name is Ryan. How are you today?" (In French, obviously), all of which I had done in about, oh, Grade 2. By the end of the week I was up in 'Inter-Avancé', the most advanced class. Though I'm still not sure if I belong there, you have to admit that's pretty good progress in the language in one week. Haha.

In the class I finally ended up in, there are only three other Canadians, the rest of the class being mostly made up of Thai, Chinese, and Spanish-speakers from various countries. One of the other Canadians and I, along with a bunch of other residents have become the unofficial drinking team of the program, which has been a lot of fun, but which has also taken its toll on the studies, and perhaps also the health, of each of us. We represent a variety of provinces from across Canada: Scott Pickup - Nova Scotia (Or Republic of Cape Breton... and yes, Pickup is his real name), Gillian Irving - New Brunswick, Luke Moyer, Laura McDougall, Debbie Lobbezoo, Barbara Ciochon - Ontario, Sara Lechasin - Manitoba, Tammi Viney - Alberta, and Kirstie Bagshaw - British Columbia. The main topic of discussion is making fun of each other’s pronunciation of different words (I apparently say 'peanut butter' wrong), and sharing regional sayings (Pickup's "Not dat bad... not dat goood, but not dat bad." is an oft-repeated example). Our Mexican buddy Gerardo Sistos Sescosse hangs out too, but his regional diction is in a totally different ballpark.

Designating a different room for pre-drinking each night, one soon notices that the thermostats in many of these rooms are set way too high. The residence has over 900 rooms, and each series of three or four have one shared thermostat, with one lucky resident given the power over the heat of all the rooms within his immediate vicinity. For some people, well for me anyway, this is a problem when it is -22 degrees outside, because there are a lot of Franco-Africans on my floor who like the keep the temperature set at a balmy 30+ degrees all the time. More often than not though, we drink in Tammi's room, first of all because she has candy, and also because from there you can see all the action going on outside. One night last week, for example, four cop cars rolled up with campus security, followed shortly by a media SUV from TQS. Another night, no less than six cop cars sped into the driveway, with an ambulance following close behind. I don't know if some serious shit is going on in Parent on a regular basis, or if there is very little action going on in the rest of Québec. Either way, I don't wander around when the cops show up, just so I don't get caught up in a shoot-out or something.

There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in Québec this year, as it's the 400th anniversary of the city's founding, which adds to the usual Carnivale de Québec, l'Hôtel de Glaçe, and the Red Bull Crashed Ice competition. There is literally too much to do, but so far we have been taking in as much as possible, and enjoying as much as we can without freezing our faces off. One of the big misconceptions that I was wary of before coming here was the idea that les Québécois are rude. I have not found this to be the case at all. If anything, I would say they have been more polite than most people back home. They politely say hi and bye as they get in out of elevators. As far as I know they don't talk about you behind your back or make up rumours about you. As a perfect example, on the third day of school I was stopped in the tunnel by a girl, and I had no idea who she was. She introduced herself as one of the sisters of the kids from the Explore program that I worked with last summer on PEI. She recognized me from Facebook pictures and offered any help that I may need. Now, I would say it takes balls to pick out one student out of 37,000 that you sort of recognize from your sister's pictures to introduce yourself to some random.

Of course once they discover that you to be an Anglophone, all bets are off. Haha.

Half-Assed and Clueless - Across an Ocean

The next morning Meghan and I heisted on our backpacks one last time and lugged them across the huge bridge towards the cruise dock in Barcelona. After going through some security checkpoints, we boarded our ship that would take us across the Atlantic: The Legend of the Seas.

This ship is a Royal Caribbean-owned, offshore-registered cruise ship in a huge fleet of luxury liners. It was certainly a sight to behold. The ship had 11 floors, with a 7 floor-high atrium, and with grand marble staircases with glass elevators spanning the distance between. The ship has an internet café, coffee shop, library, study, two pools, spa, casino, fitness centre, photo gallery, hundreds of rooms, 7 bars, a huge cafeteria, and an 1000-seat restaurant.

Basically everything is jammed in there along with about 2000 old people who will go home and describe the ship like I just did (perhaps with not so vivid a memory), and all of it seemed so gloriously meaningless. This ship has no real purpose other than to cart old people around and sell paintings and photos and internet and phone time ($0.50 and $7.95 a minute, respectively) to their captive audience. It was truly a monument to Western civilization. Luxuriously cruising from poor country to poor country, blissfully ignorant to everything else in the world. Imagine living in an impoverished country and watching a five-star hotel pull into the harbour every other morning, discharge a bunch of rich tourists, who come and haggle about the price of whatever trickets you are trying to sell, and then as you go home to feed your family, the tourists sit up on deck eating all-you-can-eat dinners as their hotel sails off for some other 'exotic' location. Imagine what that would do to your view of the world... and of the people of the West. But I digress.

After some guy died on our ship while in the Canary Islands, we headed out across the ocean, mostly hanging out with our table mates from the dining room; Les and Zoiey, a fourty-something couple from Britain, and Ed and Linda, a sixty-something couple from the US. We partook in a lot of trivia games during the journey, but the majority of our time was spent on the deck in the sun, reading books, or eating. The days at sea themselves were quite uneventful, but it was a good oppurtunity to reflect on the past month. Those five days at sea were really the culmination of my trip, allowing me to read the books and think the thoughts that were hard to get through while we were jumping from train to train and checking in and out of hostels.

One might say that the thought of being 2000 kilometres away from the nearest land and that the ocean floor is seven kilometeres below the bow of the ship is quite unnerving, but what I can certainly say is that the colour of the ocean in the middle of the Atlantic is so beautiful that it is hypnotizing. At first it looks like a black but after looking at it for a moment, you will see that it is actually a deep deep blue, and even as I stared at it, I could hardly believed that such a colour could exist. It was in view of this water and in the presence of absolute solitude (save for the other 1999 people on the ship) that, in many ways, my journey concluded.

I asked myself at the beginning of my trip: 'Why does one leave their home?' It is quite obvious to anyone who knows me that I am comfortable among the people I know and within a community where people know me, but over the span of the two months abroad, I realized that sometimes, one must see for themselves that the world is more than a sum of its parts. That for its beauty, nature reveals most of herself in its variety. That human kind is most gifted in its rich cultural mosaic, and that we share in our own cultural experiences not by insulated ourselves from all others, but in understanding that societies naturally complement the amazing aspects of one another.

One must also travel to understand that beauty exists in many forms, and that everywhere and everything is beautiful to someone, somewhere. Stare at a captivating landscape or at the world's most amazing masterpiece for long enough, however, and the colours will meld, and the lighting will become unremarkable, even commonplace. And so, one must step back, re-focus, and realize that just as the people of the netherplaces of the world are incredible and beautiful, so much more are the captivating and amazing people that we care about, the same people who, over time, have come to seem commonplace.

In that, upon seeing the immensity of the world, one must come to understand that the incomprehensible size and scope of the world does not make one insignificant, but instead, highlights the careful and beautiful intricacies of life and creation, wherever it is found.

For all their adventures and experiences, travel is as much about coming home and seeing it anew. My trip affirmed for me one thing in my heart: there is no place quite like home.

Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Switzerland and Spain

After 28 days on the road, carrying our lives on our backs and jumping from train to train, hostel to hostel, Meghan and I were pretty tired out. After a week in Greece and Italy, with a lot of bar-hopping in between, I was about ready to sleep for seven or eight days. Once we reached Bern, the cold temperature didn't help our ambition to walk around, but we did the best we could, seeing much of what the very small, very beautiful capital city of 120,000 has to offer within the first few hours of our arrival. We checked into the hostel at 15:00, and spent most of the evening sitting around, doing laundry, and reading. On our way to the train station that morning, I remarked that Switzerland was the only country in our travels that didn't have any pigeons. We also noticed that Switzerland is the only country where McDonald's serves 'chicken' wings. Coincidence? Probably.

Anyways, this was to be a long day on trains, switching threes times as we made our way through Switzerland, France and into Spain. It was an uneventful journey for the most part, the only events out of the ordinairy being that there were tons of police at one of the train stations in France and a long delay once we crossed the Spanish border. I have no idea why there were so many police and emergency vehicles around but they were controlling the flow of traffic in and out of the station and had some of the exits cordoned off. I didn't really feel like sticking around until I found out or until a bomb went off or something. As for the delay, we were told in broken English that the tracks up ahead were 'broken', which is a great comfort after a long day of traveling, but we eventually were back on our way, and made it into Barcelona after nightfall.

As we hopped in our cab on our way to the hostel, I smacked my head off the side of the cab and then my head bounced back and smacked the door. I yelled a quick combination of interesting words, grabbed my head with both hands and thought: "Wow, what a great end to a great day." It took us a bit of walking to find the hostel once we got dropped off, but once we did we went into the office, and I shrugged off my backpack and... that was it. My leather folder (with my Eurail Pass, Passport, insurance info, cruise ticket, etc.) was defintely not in my hand anymore.
"Could I see your passport please?" (Hostel lady)
"Uh oh." I said
"Don't say uh oh." said Meghan
"Uh oh." I repeated.
And then I remembered grabbing my head WITH BOTH HANDS after I smacked it off the side of the cab. "Wonderful." I thought. The folder was still in some cab, roaming the streets of Barcelona. To make matters worse, the hostel lady told me there was no way of tracking down who had dirven us there from the train station, even if we called the cab company. As soon as we had finished checking in I told Meghan I would be back, and I headed down to the streets, determined to somehow find the cab that had driven us to the hostel. Just as I stepped down from the last step to the ground floor, a familiar face stepped through the door: Mr. Cab Driver, with my folder in hand. I could not believe it. He had driven around the city, and returned once he had found my folder in the back seat. He asked for some cash, so I gave him 10 Euro... which is quite a lot, but after making a dumbass mistake like that, I didn't care.

As I sat on my bed the next morning (Friday), with a stuffy nose, applying nasal decongestant with instructions that I could not read, and listening to Meghan cough her incessant cough, I remarked about how sick and tired I was of walking. Back-packing around Europe was interesting and all that, but by this point, my legs were ready to tell me to eff off and just quit. And enough of these old buildings and sights to see. And I realize that a lot of people would be pissed at me if they somehow heard me thinking that, while they dug out from 20cm of snow back on PEI. But I was done. And I guess that is an good place to be at the end of a trip.

With the consolation that this would be our last day of walking around and looking at random stuff, we headed out to the streets to see what we could see. It was a warm sunny day and we toured around the waterfront and the sidestreets and bought some supplies for the cruise ship that we were getting on the next day. On Meghan's insistence, we jumped on a dumb over-priced tour bus and went around the city. It was a huge waste of time, and after about an hour I told her I would meet her back at the hostel, jumped off, and walked through the city by myself. It was the first time I had had the chance to go off on my own in a long time, and it was damn near exhillerating. By the time I got back, it was dark and Meghan was just getting back from the bus tour. We found a little place for dinner, and ended the evening (our last in Europe) by having an argument in hushed tones over dinner at the restaurant. Good times.

Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Greece and Italy

On Friday we headed for Patra, Greece to catch our ferry to Italy, but we got off at the wrong station, and consequently missed our train. And so myself, Meghan, John and Richard found ourselves in speeding taxi, racing against time to catch our connectin train at the next station, but we missed it by about 2 minutes. (Either way we appreciated our taxi driver balring 'Bohemian Rhapsody' on the radio and the fact that he was far more interested in telling stories about his trip to Italy in 1972 than to what was going on on the road in front of him).

We were therefore stranded in some random town, with about four hours to kill before the next train. We headed into the town to see what we could see, and we found a beach, which is usually boring in mid-November, unless you're in Greece and it's 25 degrees. I decided to go for a swim while the others wandered the beach and after an hour or so of skipping rocks and other mundane beach activities, we ate at a seaside cafe (except for Meghan, who fed most of her food to a hungry cat), and then I had a nap on the beach. Probably the best nap ever, making the missed train the best mistake of my life. Eventually we got on another train and headed for Patra, this time we were much calmer than we had been during the early morning dash for Patra, and we arrived just in time caught the last boat to Bari, Italy. On the ferry we shared a 4-person cabin for the 16-hour journey, complete with a bathroom and a shower. After sharing some Bulgarian liquor and having gotten up at 6:00 that morning, we all slept tremendously well.

We stuck around waiting for a train in Bari until 13:42 and headed for Rome, and took the time (after John insisting that he wanted to be able to say "I've done Bari"... pun not intended), to tour the city of Bari. After looking at all the fishing boats that Bari had to offer, we headed for Rome where Jared, having flown earlier that day, was waiting for us. Jared and I made a laundry run for the five of us, before we headed to dinner, this time with Phil, student from Niagra, Ontario. Again, dead tired and filled with Italian food, wine, and ice cream, we were all asleep by 1:00.

The next day was Sunday and we all rushed off alll the way to St. Peter's Sqaure in time to see mass (mostly in Latin) and to receive a blessing from the Pope. We got a hell of a lot closer to him than I ever did in my entire trip to Germany for World Youth Day, and we didn't even have to sleep in a field with 1.2 million people. We then found a small Italian restaurant that ripped us off severely, and then wandered more of the city, visiting the Pantheon and the Coliseum. As that would be our last evening with John and Richard, we went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of food, and made a massive meal for ourselves (for a fraction of the price of the meal we had bought earlier), and drank and the five of us played Risk until 2:00 with another two Aussies that we had met.

Despite the late night, we got up early the next day and went back to the Vatican so that we could tour the inside of St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museum. Both of these were, as you would expect, absolutely incredible, except they get real pissed if you take pictures of the Sistine Chapel. Before Richard and Joh headed for the train station, we found a greatItalian restaurant and had lunch together one last time. We saw John and Richard off, I got my hair cut (finally) and we all prepared to go out. It was Phil's (the guy from Niagra) birthday, and as 23 of his Canadian classmates had just arrived, we had been invited out on a Roman pub crawl. It was a great night, (complete with the 'I Am Canadian' speech in one bar), and it ended with us carrying poor Phil back to his room, where he spent a very painful morning the next day.

Our train left at 20:40 on Tuesday, and so we had most of the day to see what we had missed so far in our visit to Rome. We dug deep in our pockets and paid the entrance fee to the Coliseum, and I walked around with my iPod headphones on, listening to the soundtrack from Gladiator the whole time. It was awesome. And dorky. After some lunch we sat around the hostel and hung out with the Canadians for the rest of the day.

We left Jared and Rebecca (one of the other Aussies) behind in Rome, and for the first time in a week, Meghan and I were once again on our own. Our train was another night car, which we shared with an elderly Swiss couple. The husband spoke German, Italian and French, but no English. So him and I chatted about a few things in French (including a debate on stem cell research) while Meghan and his wife sat in silence, awkwardly smiling at each other every now and then. Another couple joined the car in Milan, and we all took up residence in our bunks for the night, somewhere between Milan and Bern.

Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece

The next morning in Budapest, (well technically the same morning), we got up at 11:30 and headed over to the train station to catch our train to Belgrade. At this point I was ready to jettison any thought of staying in Eastern Europe any longer than was absolutely necessary. I just wanted to get the hell to Greece. We hopped on the train and seven hours later ended up in Belgrade, Serbia. We stayed on the ground in Serbia for about, oh six minutes, and hopped on another train for Sophia, Bulgaria. Now this train was the sketchiest vehicle that I have ever travelled in. Imagine, if you will, the old dental mobile home they had around PEI back in the day. (If you don't remember that, imagine the old bookmobile or one of the old replacement school busses. If you don't remember either of these, you are probably a townie, and would not understand the state of anything beyond the Peter Pan Corner anyway). Now imagine any of these structures experiencing traffic upwards of 300 people a day, smoking, drinking, eating, etc. And now imagine that it is mid winter, the heaters are broken, as are many of the windows, and that it hasn't been cleaned since 1987. It was pretty ridiculous. Some guy came to me and asked for 6 Euros so he can get on the train too (God knows why he would want to). I pulled out some change, and he informed me that they wouldn't take Euro coins, so he needed a 10 Euro note. Of course he promised to pay me back. The benevolent heart that I am, I obliged and spent the rest of the night thinking... they don't take coins... riiiight.

I made that money back though, kind of by accident. The tickets booths were closed in Belgrade, so we just hopped on and figured we'd pay on the train. Every time a ticket person barged in (which was several times during the night, usually when I had just nodded off) I wordlessly handed him my Eurail Pass (which is totally not valid in Serbia or Bulgaria) and he would frown at it, and then pass it back to me and mumble something under his breath. I don't know which was the funnest part of the journey, feeling like I was going to get robbed (and keeping my long heavy flash light handy just in case), trying to use the washroom without a proper door or toilet, or being questioned by Hungarian border guards about smuggling. When he pointed to my bag and asked (I think he said something about cigarettes), I just shook my head no. Not five minutes later I read in my guide book that: "Bulgarians shake their head 'no' and nod their head 'yes'." Wonderful. There were about 25 border guards on the train, poking holes in the walls and ripping stuff apart looking for... God knows what. Thankfully they didn't seem to care too much about a dumb Canadian with an invalid ticket and who may or may not have had contraband cigarettes in his bag.

Our original plan was to arrive in Sophia at 6:25 and have 35 minutes to get on another train to Thessaloniki, and then to head for Athens, arriving by 19:50 tthat night. But seeing as our train was a full two hours and fourty minutes late, we didn't quite make the 7:00 train out of Eastern Europe. You know what they say: don't set your watch by Bulgarian trains.

We found the ticket office in Sophia so we could reserve beds on the next train to Athens, and ran into two British guys, John and Richard, who were in a similar predicament to us... that is, wanting to get the hell out of Eastern Europe. Our introductory conversation went something like "Holy shit it's good to hear someone else who speaks English." They agreed, and after we hung out at the hostel, walked around the city and had some lunch (with no meatballs), we made plans to meet up with them in Greece once they arrived the next day. Meghan and I then headed for our train. After being harassed by a bunch of husslers to carry our bags and what not, (I gave one guy $5 Canadian. He gave the blue bill one look and he got really pissed at me. Should've just gave him Canadian Tire money), we reached our sleeper car, locked the door, and slept the night away on a much more comfortable and much nicer train than we had encountered... nay, endured, the night before.

Somewhere in the night we finally crossed the snow threshold as we passed into Greece, and arrived in Athens shortly after 6:00 to somewhat more temperate weather. We found our hostel and ate, then headed off to a landromat to do some laundry until our room was ready. It was a fairly uneventful day, but we did meet an interesting guy at the laundromat who was absolutely obsessed with California, saw some of the city, and the many stray dogs that inhabit it. Even though most of the dogs that roam the street are strays, many of them have collars provided by the locals, and are fed by people around the community. More on this later. Tuesday night we stuck around the hostel and hung out in the pub, meeting more Canadians and Americans, along with a Mexican and two Brazilians. We had a lot of interesting conversations. (I met one girl (Cynthia) from Ottawa who went to middle school with a friend's roommate at UPEI. Small effing world). Before I nodded off to sleep, the Aussie in our room (Jared, who would become one of our travel companions) threw up all over himself and the floor. I dozed off to the sound of him apologizing profusely to the Ohio girl whose bunk was directly below his.

On Wednesday we headed out to see the sights in Athens, you know, all the usual ruins you would see on pictures of the city. It was all very nice, and we ran into a lot of our hostel mates on the hill, most of whom were slouched on benches or drinking water in an effort to recover from the intake of Ouzo the night before. The ruins were beginning to look an awful lot like each other when we randomly ran into John and Richard at one fo the sites, and they had met Cynthia at the hostel, and so, reunited in a more comfortable climate, the five of us went out for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Athens.

That night was much the same as the night before, but considerably more rowdy, as England was playing Croatia for a berth in the EuroCup 2008. England lost, and so there were a lot of pissed off backpackers and staff. In the midst of the angry post-game drinking, Richard, John, and I headed up tp the top of Acropolis (a plateau in the middle of the city with the most prominent ruins on it) to see the view at night. As we left the hostel, as if followed by body guards, three dogs who always hung around the hostel led/followed us to the hill, barking and intimidating anyone or anything that they perceived as a risk to us. By the time we had reached the hill, there were five dogs guarding us, and as we sat down on the rocks talking about history and other boring stuff, the dogs each took a sentry point in a circle around us, alert and ready to take down anything. It was amazing.

On Thursday the weather got a lot nicer, and we (myself, Meghan, John, Richard and Jared) headed to a monastery on a hill in the centre of the city to catch the view from up there. It was beautiful, and by mid-day, the temperature had climbed to 25. We made a final effort to see as much of the city as we could before sharing a traditional Greek meal together, finishing off some random drinks in a trendy local bar, (where Richard, John and I met a couple from the US/Taiwan, and a bunch of Americans, one of which was a girl from Iowa who hated Canadians because one had asked her if Iowa was where all the potatoes come from [that would be Idaho]), and getting set to take off for Italy the next morning.

Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Austria and Hungary

After dragging myself out of bed following a late night in Prague, we made our way to the train station, by which point I was incredibly thirsty. I stopped into a sketch grocery store that devoted about 80% of their shelf space to liquor and cigarettes. (They sell liquor absolutely everywhere; news stands, McDonald's, etc. and people smoke all the time; in restaurants, trains, church... it is very hard not to slap people in the face.) With a few shady characters roaming around the store, I bought some bananas, an apple, carrots, bread, iced tea and a huge bottle of water. Came to a grand total of 66 Koruny (about $3.50 Canadian). I thought it was a pretty good deal. Plus the water was probably the best water I have tasted in my life. See, they carbonate everything here in Europe, even their water, so when I took the first drink of cold water and realized that is WASN'T the gassy crap, I almost cried with joy. Meanwhile, Meghan wussed out and got a Happy Meal at McDonald's.

We made it to Vienna and immediately got lost once we stepped off the tram. While Meghan ate at McDonald's (yes, for the second time in one day), I trudged around in the snow, trying to find our hostel. Eventually, after tracking down streets with no names and getting confused by streets with the same damn name, we found our hostel by about 19:00. This hostel was decent, but the bathrooms were a huge pain in the ass. They had both an automatic light sensor and an automatic shower faucet. What this meant was that once in the shower, one has to push the faucet every 20 seconds to keep the water running. Meanwhile, the lights go off in the room every minute or so, so you have to open the shower door, wave your hand around in the dark until the sensor turned the light back on, get back in the shower, and push the faucet again. Showers therefore take about 3 hours.

Other than being the country that spawned such notables as Mozart, Freud, Hitler and Swartzenagger, Austria boasts tons of national history, as indicated by the number of museums in Vienna: about 3.2 million by my count. We toured around Vienna and decided to check out four of the museums, the largest and most interesting of which was the Natural History Museum, which had thousands of pieces of rock and thousands of stuffed birds and fish and animals. It was pretty intense before it got boring. We also continued our search for ethnic food by getting Chinese for lunch.

When we stepped off the subway in downtown Vienna, we were stopped to help a Japanese girl who looked lost and was looking for some monument or something. Although I obviously had no idea what we were looking for and didn't speak her language, for some reason I figured I could help her out. Then some Austrian lady stopped and asked if we need help. So out came HER reading glasses, and the four of us were standing there, staring at a Japanese map, while I tried to explain to the Japanese girl what some lady was telling me in German. God knows if she ever found what she was looking for.

The next day we took the plunge into the Eastern European states of the former Soviet Republic. I can imagine you may be wondering "I wonder if you can tell the difference between Eastern and Western Europe." Oh yes. You can tell. While we had seen some sketch areas in the Czech republic and in Austria, the journey from Vienna to Budapest was like a trip back in time, a trip from a modern, clean city to a... old,dirty city. Buildings became increasingly shabby and our surrounding were likened to something out of a seventies-era James Bond movie (minus the lair). More than a few times Meghan was prompted to tell me that we weren't in Kansas anymore. I've never been to Kansas, but we sure as hell weren't in downtown Charlottetown anymore either.

And so, of course the first thing we decided to do in this former Soviet Republic was to stand around outside in our bathing suits in 0 degree weather. Yes, with nothing better to do, we checked out the famous thermal baths, and they were awesome, though very very crowded. It took me a while to get oriented in the thermal bath complex, mistakenly walking into a few rooms full of naked men before finding where I was supposed to be. Once we got outside though, the baths were phenomenal. It was basically a hot tub as big as a swimming pool, naturally heated by underwater springs. There were old men were playing chess with other men stood around and watched with eager anticipation, most only able to communicate through the game, as everyone here is from any number of different countries. There were a few couples macking out in the pool (as they do everywhere in Europe), but overall, it was a good relaxing afternoon, and a fitting rest period for what is more or less halfway through the European adventure.

Now comes the fun part of our Hungarian advernture. We had planned on sticking in Budapest for the day and then catching the overnight train to Belgrade, Serbia. And so, after dinner we headed back to the train station and waited three hours for our train. Finally, when we got on our train at 23:25, we settled in for the 7-hour journey to Belgrade... except that about 45 minutes later we were told that we weren't going to Belgrade. I don't know who screwed up, but our train was apparently going to Hatvan, a small town about 80km outside of Budapest. I awoke at 1:20 on the train with Meghan and I the only people left on the train as cleaners were going through the car, which seemed to be parked in the middle of nowhere.

We got off the train and walked through the tunnel into the station and discovered that it was completely empty. Well, realtively so. It was an old Soviet-era stone building, with the door wide open, broken and barred windows and garbage all over the place. When I went to blow my nose, there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms, but there WAS a homeless man sleeping on the toilet that I scared the hell out of when he woke up as I walked into the bathroom. We got to hang out in Hatvan until 3:05, when we got to catch a train to go BACK to Budapest, which I was real thrilled about. Once there, were would wait until 13:15 to catch the next train to Belgrade. When we got back to Budapest, it was 4:00, and I slumped down on a bench, tired, cold, and totally not looking forward to sitting there for the next 9 hours waiting for the next train. To hell with this, said Meghan, and went across the street to rent a room at a hotel. I have never checked into a hotel at 4:00 before, and I'll have to hand it to her. I did not have that much initiative by that point. A bed has never felt that good.

Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Dresden and Prague

Towards the end of the Second World War, when the Allies were looking to bomb the hell out of any remaining Nazi strongholds, they decided to fire-bomb Dresden, a German centre of military industry. Not a very proud moment for the RAF and the USAF. This attack, with arguable logistical purposes, killed roughly 30,000 civilians and destroyed most of the city. Keeping the good times rolling, once the war was over, Dresden was taken over by the USSR a half-century or so of Soviet rule.
And this is where we ended up after riding the aimless train away from Berlin, thanks to my stupid mistake. As we were headed for Prague (just a couple hours south of Dresden) we rolled with it and hung out in Dresden, ate the atypical German breakfast of bread, random meat, Nutella, and some dumb cereal, (reminiscent of the two weeks of World Youth Day 2005 in Germany), did some laundry (the first time I had had clean clothes since London), and hopped on another train headed for the Czech Republic.

We found our hostel, Sir Toby's, by 17:00 in Prague after jumping on the tram and, as usual, walking around for a bit. Sir Toby's is in an incredible old building with a huge kitchen and great dorm rooms, with a pub, common area and chapel in the basement. It was, by far, the best hostel we stayed at throughout our travels. Though it may have been a bit of an exaggeration, I later wrote in the guest book that if I had nothing better to do, I could live there for the rest of my life. Meghan and I hung out in the pub the first night and played Scrabble (I won all three games, if you count the first two, which she quit because I was doing too well). Eventually the basement pub filled, and by the end of the night we were into some deep convos with a bunch of Canadians and some Americans who liked to pretend they were Canadian (so they would get treated better in Europe). And then there was some Brazilian dude, but he didn't say much.

After a lot of snoring from our roommate, and apparently some sleep talking about the Canadian Dollar exchange rate from me, we got up the next morning and took off on the tram to tour Prague. We took a bunch of pictures, ate at Subway (again), and then headed up the hill to see the castle and cathedral. When we reached the top the view was incredible. My first reaction was "Wow!" (Meghan's was "Holy shit!"). The trek up the 287 steps of the spiral staircase to the top of the cathedral tower was incredible too. I was all like "Yeah, no big deal" but even after walking around with a back-pack for 2 weeks, that climb was rough. But again, the view was unreal.
After buying my new favorite t-shirt ("Prague: Czech it out"), we headed back for another night at the pub.

We had intended on going out on the town in Prague, but by 3:00am we were still all in the basement (six Canadians, six Americans, five Brits and a Mexican... I don't know where the Brazilian dude was) telling stupid stories and making fun of each other's countries. After sampling the local beer once or twice, and a traditional Czech shot a few times ...and then the local beer a few more times, I was sufficiently uncoordinated. I remember sitting at the computer completely no longer able to type any word in the English language properly.
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Needless to say, the 10:00 check-out time came and went the next morning without myself or Meghan noticing. Eventually we got it together headed for the train station, on our way to Vienna. Ibuprofen is your friend.

Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Belgium, Netherlands, and Scandinavia

One may be interested to know how Bruges came to be included in our travel plans. After spending a day and a night there, I'm still not really sure. And as I am many tourists think when they visit PEI in the winter, I am inclined to ponder: "Who the hell would want to live in Bruges." Not only that, how could 120,000 people simultaneously think: "HEY! You know where I wanna live?! BRUGES! Yeah! In the middle of BELGIUM! Yesssss!"

Don't get me wrong, Bruges is a nice little town with tons of old buildings and quaint little cobblestoned streets (just like every other town and city on the continent) It received its charter as a city on my birthday (July 27th) in 1128 and was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000 (probably because of the aforementioned cobblestone streets and the like).

Quickly becoming our number one activity, we spent the afternoon and evening walking around Bruges, checking out the town and settling for some local cuisine at Pizza Hut. When we got back to the hostel, I destroyed Meghan at Scrabble twice (which would become an on-going theme) and we headed off to bed. On the way out of Bruges the next morning we stopped for some traditional Belgian waffles. Meghan has not shut up about them since.

Amsterdam wasn't too far of a trek from Bruges, but by the time we arrived at our out-of-the-way hostel it was 16:00 and getting dark in the already dreary city. (We were sharing our room with three Spaniards and a Dutchman, half of whom liked to stay up late and take noisy showers, and the other half of whom liked getting up insanely early. It was wonderful.) The hostel was a brand-new hostel with all the amenities of a hotel, a welcome change from some of the dingier accomodations that we had seen.

Ok, so I know that there is a lot of near-hysteria in the mind of any young traveller on their way to Amsterdam. It is almost like a popularly conceived anticipation, which the city works hard to propogate. In my mind, Amsterdam was ok to visit, and even on that note I was a bit tedious about the child-like fervour that it seems to work some travellers into. Aside from the beautiful canals it is a city trying in every which way to be shocking. I don't know if people like it like that, or if it is just an exagerated sense of Western 'LOOK AT ME!' culture. Either way, after spending the night and much of the next day walking around the crowded streets filled with smoke and red lights, I had had enough. Next country.

Well, I guess it was good that I was ready for a change of pace, as the next leg of our journey brought us the Malmo, Sweden. Malmo was nice, but getting there required a train journey back to Brussels, through the night to Hamburg, onto another train to Copenhagnen, then to Malmo. The trip took, by my watch, just under 19 hours. And if you're keeping track, that is 5 countries in one day. Hostels were pretty expensive in Malmo, so we splurged and rented a hotel room for the night. After 19 hours on trains, we napped away much of the next 24, with the bitter cold not being condusive to exploring the city streets. We took some time to walk around Malmo the next day and then hopped back on the train for Copenhagen.

By this point we had not washed clothes since London, had been through seven countries in as many days, and had logged more hours on trains then I cared to count. Weary as I was, we walked around Copenhagen in search of a laundromet for about an hour, realized that none of them were open on Sunday, and with that, I returned to the hostel and collapsed on my bed for a few hours, exhausted and dirty. Meghan tried to pry me from bed to visit a museum, but I would have none of it. By the time she returned, I had effectively re-charged my batteries and we headed out for some local cuisine. This time at the Hard Rock Café.

We once again walked through the streets of Copenhagen the next day to the train station and headed back towards Hamburg with the destination of Berlin. Unfortunately, as we arrived in Berlin that evening, I missed the right stop, figuring we could get off at the next station, closer to our hostel. The 'nest' Berlin station never came, and instead, the train went for another two hours. Southbound on a German train in the middle of the night, no known destination. Fun times.

Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Britain and France

"That will cost about £300."
I stared at her, incredulous.
"Each?" I asked.
"Each."
"Um, we're going to go think about it." I smiled.
Bullshit we were going to go think about it.

We were standing in the middle of London Waterloo train station, trying to get from London to Paris on Eurostar that afternoon. For anyone not up on currency exchanges, £300 is about $617 Canadian.

"So, what do we do now?" asked Meghan, looking at me with eyes of a child looking to a teacher or parent to answer all their questions about the complexities and mysteries of life.
"How the eff should I know?" I thought.
"We´ll figure it out." I said.
And we did. By noon we were Dover-bound, where we would catch a ferry to Calais, and with with luck, catch the last train out of Calais to Lille, and then on to Paris. It was a hectic day, but the beaches of Dover seemed to calm Meghan down quite a bit, and a drink and a good book on the hour and a half crossing to France had a similar effect on me.

Even though we nearly missed the last train of the night in Calais and had to sit around in the train station in Lille for a couple hours, traveling went pretty wel. Pretty well, that is until we started looking for our hostel. See, European cities have this fun little habit of not putting up street signs at each corner, and so a visitor gets to guess which street he or she is on. To make matters worse, the directions that I had were very basic, telling me that the hostel was on a street just off 'Clichy'. And so, in search of the this elusive 'Clichy' we emerged from the 'Place de Clichy' subway station, which, as it turns out, comes out on the intersection of the 'Rue de Clichy', 'Avenue de Clichy', with 'Boulevard de Clichy' interseting about 100m up the street. Further up 'Rue de Clichy' is a side street called 'Passage de Clichy' and further still is the 'Quai de Clichy'. Over the next hour or so my map and I had a few choice words until I threw it away in disgust. Just then a friendly French couple stopped and tried to help. The guy, who had seen the Canadian flags on our backpacks, told us that he had spent some time in Canada (well, just Toronto) and figured he'd give us a hand. He pointed us down one of the Clichys that we had already walked down twice, and by 0:30, we were in our room at the El Dorado Hotel.

Other than being a complete bitch to find, El Dorado was an amazing bohemian four-story hostel on a pituresque Parisien side street, with a colourful victorian staircase, incredible rooms, and the best showers ever. Within a few minutes of arriving, we had already decided to extend our stay by a night.

The next morning (Tuesday), after sleeping a little late, we did the typical tour of Paris, taking in l'Arc de Triumph, and Notre Dame Cathedral in the morning. In the afternoon we discovered that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays (which I was real thrilled about) and then, of course, we went to take the requisite look at the Eiffel Tower. Once again, jumping from sight to sight almost seemed like we were cheating the city's history and culture, but I slept off the guilt with an evening nap, and then, paying homage to Parisien culture, we had dinner at an unreal restaurant. It was, and remains, one of the best meals I have ever had. With a price to match.

The next day we hopped on a train to Belgium, and as I turned on my camera to check out my pictures form the last few stops, I found out that they were all deleted by a memory card error. Yay! And that pretty much set my mood for that day.