Halifax to Montreal: 1 300 Km, 23 Hours

Today was the big day of the start of my train trip to Vancouver. It also seemed to be the start of a journey for every one else in my room. The German above me was heading out to Hamilton (why?), and my Danish friend, Mr. Hollensen, was getting ready for a pot luck barbecue. He had originally invited his son to a "pot roast barbecue" before he figured out there was a difference. He said to me, "Something is wrong here. Why would you put a pot roast on a barbecue?"

Mr. Hollensen also had to go do some community cleaning and free lawn work, because the local government employees "had their priorities mixed up," and had let things look untidy. This bothered him because, "as a Scandinavian" he was "used to civil servants keeping things in impeccable order."

In my Scotland trip blog I mentioned that I had met four people in my hostel who had gone to the UofA. This morning though, I met a former UofA student who was actually in one of my classes in my final year. At this rate, I fully suspect that by the time I end up in Vancouver I will actually run into someone I know personally.

Remembering how expensive snacks/food on the train are, I decided to make a quick dash to the Superstore beside the train station to pick up some budget saving confectioneries before the trip. However, I ran right into the Blue Nose Marathon, and what Korean drivers would call "runners pollution". I made a mental note to leave for my train a little earlier, in case I have to wait a few minutes to cross the road to the train station later.

(This lady is in her sixties and running a marathon in 27 degree centigrade weather. Don't you feel pathetic now?)

In the supermarket, I noticed that Jona Gold apples were selling for $4.79 for a 4 lb. bag. Since the apples I bought at the Farmer's Market yesterday, and quoted as 6 for $3 actually weighed three pounds exactly, a quick bit of mental maths will show that I actually paid less for my locally produced apples at the Farmer's Market, straight from the hand of the farmer himself, than I would have paid at this large supermarket. Oh yes, I like this city a lot.

At about 10:10, I left the hostel to catch my 10:30 AM train to Montreal (The Ocean #15). About ten steps from the door though, I was stricken with a great panic that perhaps my train had left at 9:30 AM. I had not actually checked the time of its departure since arriving on Thursday, so it was a definite possibility. I was wrong, it was neither 9:30 or 10:30, but in fact 12:15 PM.

Back inside the hostel I went to torture myself watching Republican politicians make an absolute mockery of themselves and the American democratic process, on Meet The Press with David Greggory. I had to stop watching after ten minutes though, because I got so upset that I actually started yelling at the television and cursing the lying scum bags. It's bad enough when people yell at the TV during sporting events or movies, so I figured I didn't need to be part of the problem by yelling at the TV during a civilized interview.

On the train, I chose my usual single row, window seat. However, just a few seats in front of me were three young families with young kids, all travelling together. Over the course of the trip, these kids would annoy just about every one in the train (but of course!). Finally, at Moncton, the selfish brats and their kids got off the train. I gave a silent cheer, but I also felt sorry for the other passengers who also alighted at Moncton, and were robbed of the opportunity to actually enjoy their trip.

Because of my stash of snacks and goodies, I decided that my budget could handle one trip to the dining car each day I rode the train, as a treat. Knowing full well that whatever I ordered would be smaller than its description in the menu, I asked the waiter what she felt the most filling meal would be. She suggested the haddock, and this is what I received...

To be fair, the fish fillet in the middle was quite dense, and this meal filled me up exactly perfectly, although the $12 price tag seemed a bit steep. However, it led me to wonder why I was not able to order this "half-sized" meal at other restaurants, in addition to the BMI boosters they usually serve? I understand the economics of size when it pertains to these sort of things, but if Jeffrey's cafe in Grande Prairie can offer "half-size" sandwiches, why don't other restaurants?

Misc. Pics:

(The view from the train of the other side of the train yard in Halifax.)

(My station: All set up for a 23 hour trip.)

(A red river in New Brunswick.)

(Cranes in a ship yard somewhere in western Nova Scotia.)

Halifax: Day 1

I'm finally here in Halifax, and I'm going to try and explore the city as much as possible before I leave for Vancouver. I'm not as interested in actually visiting the museums or galleries this time though, since I'll be moving back to Halifax at the conclusion of my trip anyway. However, I would like to get an idea of what is available in the down town area, and so that will my goal for this weekend. Thus, armed with my special tourist map of down town Halifax, I decided to start at the waterfront this morning and work my way back to Fort George (The Citadel), at the top of Citadel Hill by tomorrow.

I was in Halifax eight years ago and somehow missed the Board Walk all together. I'm still not sure how I did it, since I arrived in Halifax on the ferry from Dartmouth, which lands on the Waterfront (Board Walk).

(One of many painted dolphins along the Waterfront walk. They were commissioned to promote the upcoming Naval Centennial this summer. I'm not sure what Family Guy has to do with the Canadian Navy though.)

(A wonderful tall ship, out for a cruise of the harbour on a beautiful summer day.)

(I'll let this one speak for itself.)

I enjoyed the Waterfront so much, that I more or less spent my entire day there. I walked from one end to the other; had breakfast with some women in their 70s, on a cruise ship trip from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to Toronto; and then turned around and walked all the way back again.

After breakfast, I checked out Halifax's version of The Distillery District, The Historic Properties. While not a fancy arts district, the Historic Properties, as the name would suggest, were once old buildings - warehouses specifically - designed to support the privateers who made Halifax a regular port. Today it's where you'll find what is likely the best gift shop ever, with some of the most unique gifts from local companies and artists.

Near The Historic Properties I also found the excellent Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. It contains two floors of artefacts pertaining to the history of life on the sea in Atlantic Canada, including a powerful exhibit on the Titanic, with recovered items from the remains near Nova Scotia. The most powerful exhibit though, was that of the 1917 Halifax Explosion.

In 1917 two ships collided in a freak accident coming out of Halifax harbour. One of those ships happened to be an unmarked munitions ship, containing cases and cases of explosive gunpowder. When the ships collided, sparks created from the two hulls rubbing lit the munitions on fire. The resulting explosion blew away an entire section of the city, and even sent one girl up on the hill flying half a kilometre.

In the exhibit there were pictures of children with limbs charred black, and skin peeling like burnt paper, along with audio accounts of the tragic events from survivors. It was quite hard to take, and after this I felt I had learned enough about life with the sea life for one afternoon. I headed for home.

(The engine from a roughly 3.5 metre long torpedo.)

(A volunteer painstakingly recreates a miniature model of... well, whatever that is.)

(Marvin, the Museum's Macaw.)

Along the way I couldn't resist checking out a traditional Chinese tea store I saw called Mu Lan. This store imports real Chinese teas and other products, and then sells them at incredibly high prices here in Halifax. The owner was selling the store, and so everything was reduced from 25%-75% of its original price, but I still couldn't bring myself to pay $15 for a small packet of ginseng tea (especially when I have at least twenty packets remaining from a gift I received in Korea). I did however order a pot of Qi Men red tea.

The owner also asked me if I'd like some mung cakes she had made herself. She had mung bean and lotus cakes, but told me most "foreigners" like the mung bean while most Chinese people prefer the lotus. I figured the Chinese must know something the Westerners don't, and that I would miss some secret Chinese health secret if I ordered the mung bean, so I went with the lotus, and it was great.

* * * * *

Back at my hostel I met perhaps the most interesting man in the world. Mr. Hollensen, from Denmark, was a professor of nanotechnology in the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. He's retired now, but in his spare time he leads a team in Houston (at NASA?) trying to develop the carbon nanotube super battery.

The carbon super battery works much the same as the current graphite super battery, but it does not lose its charge at extreme temperatures, and would therefore be of greater use in space. I'm not really sure what a nanotube is either, but Mr. Hollensen seems to know everything about it.

Mr. Hollensen also once made it to the third round of the World Blackjack Championships, and rode the subway with the president of Sweden, as the president's guest, while he was still president of Sweden. The subway story is actually quite an interesting one:

Mr. Hollensen was a young man at the time, going to university in Sweden. He had heard that the president rode the subway to work every day, and being naturally a curious individual he had to go see for himself.

The young Mr. Hollensen positioned himself discretely across the road to see the president come out of his modest home, without any security guards. The president noticed young Mr. Hollensen and motioned for him to come out from hiding. When he told the president why he was watching him, the president invited him along to see his morning routine.

The then president of Sweden (this is in the 1960s) always sat in the same car every day, and so every citizen of Sweden knew exactly where to find him any time they had a problem.

On this particular day, one of them did have a problem, and he told the president quite angrily that there was an error with his tax statement and that he wanted it fixed. The president looked at the man's form, and noticed that he had in fact been overcharged. He told the man, "go to the office where you pay your taxes and tell them the president said there was a mistake. They will fix the problem right away." Now that's democracy.

Another great story Mr. Hollensen told me, was that of his first trip to America in 1968. He had to make a connection from JFK airport to one in Washington, D.C. He asked an agent at the airport if there was a flight to Washington, and how he could get on it. The agent told him, "this is your lucky day, the flight is just about to leave. Hurry, you have no time. Just leave your bags with me and run through those doors and you will find the plane. Don't worry, I'll take your bags and radio ahead to the stewardesses at the door."

Mr. Hollensen ran to the door and says he "can still remember the stewardess opening the door for (him)." Later, the agent to whom he had originally spoken came onto the plane and handed him his ticket personally. Think about this story the next time you stand in line at airport security, or are treated like rubbish at an American airport.

Mr. Hollensen remembers this story fondly, because it was an example of the "can do" American spirit that originally made him fall in love with the country. In Mr. Hollensen's words, "here was a man who needed a seat on a plane (him), and there was a plane with an empty seat. And this agent knew what needed to be done, and so he put that man in that seat."

I wonder how many angels die when a nation that was once the most respected and admired country in the world, now finds itself the laughing stock of the universe?

Ottawa to Halifax

The problem with moving to a new city, is that you have to take most of your belongings with you. The trouble with taking most of your belongings with you, is that you need to take many suitcases. The problem with taking many suitcases, is that when you're kicked out of your hostel at 11:00 AM, and your bus to Montreal doesn't leave until 2:00 PM, you have to find something to do with all of those bags and yourself for three hours. Finding myself in this exact situation this morning, I decided go to the bank, and then walk 45 minutes to the bus depot to eat up some time.

Before I left though, I took a minute to take stock of my hostel dorm. Some time ago, or possibly in my Scotland blog, you might have remembered me saying that every hostel will have a Canadian and an Australian (and also a German). In my room alone, there were four Australians and myself (I'm sure the German was in the hostel too somewhere).

Along the way I met a homeless hitchhiker named Dave, who was originally from Nova Scotia. He was excited to hear I was heading to Nova Scotia myself, and started telling me all about shark fining and trying to sell me on the importance of ocean conservation. I had already seen Sharkwater though. In fact, I owned Sharkwater, so he was preaching to the choir.

At the bus depot I noticed there were many people buying tickets for a 1:00 trip to Montreal. Since I had a 15 day open ticket, and I figured it would be more comfortable to wait at the train station in Montreal than the bus depot in...well, anywhere, I jumped in line and boarded the earlier bus instead.

My seatmate for the 1:00 "Express", Lisanne, was from just outside Gatineau, Quebec, the city attached to Ottawa. She was on her way to Montreal to visit her boyfriend, or more accurately to use his place to study while he was away. With Lisanne being a bilingual Quebecois, I thought it prudent to take advantage of the opportunity to brush up on my grade three French which was better than I thought, but still quite pathetic, by getting her to teach me how to count to 100. As Lisanne told me later though, "it's nice that you're making an effort, but you won't get very far just walking around pointing at your head and saying 'chapeau'." It's alright though, because I can now also say "fish" and "fat".

When we got to Montreal, Lisanne stayed with me and helped me buy a ticket for the metro and also find the right platform. I'm very thankful for her help, because all of the signs in the Montreal metro are only in French. There is also more than one train station, so I would have had to know that VIA Rail leaves from Gare Central in order to board my train without her help.

* * * * *

When I bought my train ticket online originally, I remember it being the most complicated process in the world. First I gave all of my credit card data and entered my dates and destinations. Then I was sent an e-mail that said my order would only be reserved for two days, and that I needed to phone the office to order my tickets officially. When I phoned the office, I gave my reservation number, and the employee spent ten minutes going back into the the website to find my order. When she found it, she had me resubmit all of my personal/credit information.

That brings us to now, where it appears as though in the three months since I purchased the tickets, the prices/policy had changed and it took a half-hour to straighten out the problem. Thankfully it was decided that I could have my tickets at the original price. In hindsight, it was a good thing I took that 1:00 bus.

* * * * *

The train station in Montreal provides wireless Internet, at a fee. However, the volcano ash from Iceland apparently produced a slight "service disruption", and so to make up for it Gare Central made the Wi-Fi within the station free until everything cleared up. I hardly call it "making up" for the inconvenience that volcano caused me on my Scotland trip, but it's nice to finally be benefiting from it instead of suffering.

It's also pleasant to vacation in Ottawa, because as a city of government workers, there is a sophistication and base level of intelligence and class generally lacking in the northern Alberta communities around my home, or in which I have lived. The Montreal train station is where all the "other" Canadians come to soil that class and sophistication.

Case in point: the twelve year old girl behind me in the boarding line who thought it a good time to sing out loud and dance to the music on her iPod. While annoying in its own right, this disturbing breach of good "line etiquette" was exacerbated by the fact that she couldn't sing or dance, and only knew some of the words.

It's time now then, for more Words of Wisdom from David. One: If you're a pre-teen/middle school girl who thinks she can sing/dance, but really can't (all of you), and you get the urge to sing or dance to pop songs on your iPod in public, don't. Two: If you just can't help it, and you absolutely must be annoying, don't do it in public. Rather, find an abandoned, condemned mineshaft; gather as many of your annoying friends as possible; and hold your dance party there, at the bottom. That's not unreasonable, is it?

While the government of Alberta seems to think passenger train travel is a Bolshevik plot, down East, attitudes are a bit more civilized, and so my #14 Ocean train was sold out and full. It was no concern to me though, for unlike the Greyhound, Economy class VIA Rail seats are large and comfy. I even found a seat on the right side of the car, which was a single seat row, so I had both a window and an aisle seat all in one (complete with my own electrical socket).

Unfortunately, there is no Wi-Fi on The Ocean, or even The Canadian (only The Corridor between Montreal and Toronto). Lucky for me though, I forgot to delete a number of videos from my hard drive after transferring them to my XHD before the trip, and so I filled the long boring hours, when I wasn't reading, watching my favourite show, Sasuke.

(A Quebec grain elevator. Part of it, at least.)

At 7:00 AM, as we crossed into New Brunswick, the dining car opened up for breakfast, and I was afforded a rare opportunity to leave Loser Class and mingle with passengers from Old People Class, er... First Class. The prices of the plates even seemed downright reasonable for the diners essentially being the equivalent of sitting ducks, but after I received my order it became obvious why it was so "reasonably priced". If anyone is looking to lose weight, I can now say "ride the train". Before the end of the trip you'll either be skinny, or broke, or both since it costs so much to ride the train in the first place.

* * * * *

One of the down sides of being a passenger on a train in Canada, is that you're travelling with a company that makes virtually no money. That means you're so far down the pecking order of trains, that you have to stop or slow down every time a freight train comes towards you on another/same track; it reminds me of driving in Scotland. Although in Scotland. this only happens when you travel in remote areas, not on the major route to a metropolitan city with a train popular enough to be sold out.

(Ha ha! That's right CN train; you wait for us this time.)

(Finally getting off the train in Halifax.)

(Yes, the train was painted green. I'm not sure it that point needed to be written on the side of the engine though.)

We did eventually make it to Halifax, and despite the aforementioned delays we managed to roll into the station at precisely the scheduled time. After picking up my luggage, I set out for what I assumed would be another long walk, but was surprised to find the hostel just 200 metres from the train station's front door, right around the corner. There was even a Superstore next to the train station, meaning I'll be able to stock up on fruits and snacks for the long trip back to Montreal on Sunday.

As I've mentioned in probably every post now, there is always an Aussie and a German at every hostel, and at the excellent HI-Halifax hostel the two staff members behind the desk were from Australia and Germany; so I was able to complete my regular Aussie/German search before even paying the bill.

Speaking of bills, I had booked each of my hostels online through the popular Hostelworld website. When customers book online at Hostelworld, they pay a booking fee of 10%, and are then supposed to pay the remainder of the bill when they check in. However, I realized today that HI-Halifax was the first hostel along my trip to actually notice that I had booked online and give me my discount. This explains the current deficit in my "hostel budget", and I will need to pay closer attention to what I'm charged on the way to Vancouver next week.

When I had finished paying, I turned to head to my room, when I was met by a screaming six year old kid, who was chucking a ball around and generally annoying everyone. Honestly, who brings a six year old to a hostel? And more importantly, why was he left alone to run around and yell in the hallways? As I've said before: if you have kids, you don't also get to have fun and adventure; you pick one or the other. At the very least, you don't get to go to sleep while the staff members at the hostel baby sit your kid, because you can't be bothered to do it yourself.

After unpacking and taking a much needed shower, I headed across the street to a pub I saw on the walk from the train station (everything is close to everything else in Halifax). It was full though, because it was University graduation weekend, so I sat at the bar and talked to Adam the bartender.

While waiting for my lamb and beef meatloaf, I found an excellent independent street newspaper lying on the bar, called The Coast. On page three I read that my threat to write a letter to my MP in a few weeks must have scared Prime Minister Harper, because he was planning on turning Sable Island into a National Park. This supposedly puts an end to all this clubbing of baby seals, but I'll probably still throw paint on some lady's fur coat when I get back.