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Published: November 1st 2006
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Retrospective
... from Jaret's VW I'm back home! After three months in Guatemala and another three months in Canada I have returned to Germany, now already about three weeks ago. And because I've met so many great people during my travels that unfortunately don't speak German, I think it's time to write an English blog for a change.
Three months in Canada. A summary.
On June 9th, beginning of the soccer world championship in Germany, I land at Toronto Airport. After a sleepless night I take the first bus towards "Mapleton" of which I've only got a vague idea where it is. Getting off at a gas station as weekend public transport doesn't get me very far I find out I need to head west instead of north. Asking the first person whether he goes that way I'm immediately lucky- and about 1 1/2 hours later I arrive at
Mapleton's Organic, home of Martin, Ineke, about 70 cows and the best ice cream ever.
There I spend the next two months, learning the secrets of ice cream alchemy and befriending with the calves I daily feed. Of course I do eat a lot of ice cream as well, and in the evenings I enjoy Quebecan
Cape Clear, Cape Breton
Trees and trees and trees... food by master chef Dominique. In between I visit Ontario's "cottage country" for a week (beautiful lakes and rivers further north), see what Toronto has got to offer except its airport, scoop ice cream at Hillside Festival and, together with about 30 other people from the
CRAFT network, stir homeopathic doses of cow manure into a pail of water.
In August I leave for new adventures further east, and after two days in Montreal I take a bus to Wolfville, Nova Scotia.
There I spend one week at an
Arts Centre, weeding the beds and building a herb spiral together with another
wwoofer, Karin from Munich. My next stop is the home of Joan, Kerry, Jenna and Alan on the other side of the island, close to Bridgewater. After painting the barn there isn't much to do for me, so inspired by Dominique I decide to become a chef myself and turn to cooking instead of working. At the beginning of September I leave, secretly planning to come back later without working at all.
From there I go up to Baddeck on Cape Breton. Here I stay on a beautiful, but very remote farm with
Kate, Brooke and their three
Bright blue Nova Scotian Sea
Somewhere between Chester and Brigdewater (I guess) kids. I find out that I will never be able to live in rural Canada by getting an incredibly strong need to see lots of people after only two weeks. Luckily I remember something called the
"Hospitality Club" which makes it possible that the next weekend I am in Antigonish, staying in a student appartement with my host Caleb and three other guys, going out and getting (sort of) drunk. Being sober again, I hitchhike down south, making the 300 km in less than four hours with five different people giving me a ride. The first person to pick me up is a woman taking me about 150 km down to Truro, then I get into photographer
Jaret's beautiful Volkswagen van to go to Halifax and after that it's three more guys helping me to reach my final destination, one of them just taking me about 500 m further to get past some roadworks.
For another few days I am back with Joan and Kerry , taking my well-deserved holidays before I spend my last days in Halifax, staying with Lisa who I found by
Couchsurfing. On the evening of September 26th I fly to Frankfurt, not without returning to
Halifax once more as apparently we have taken off without filling up fuel first.
I spend two more weeks in Switzerland before I really return to Germany, first staying with my mum in the Rhine area and now being in Hannover where I used to live before.
What Canada is like
Of course you all know what Canada is like, but nevertheless I will give you my European view:
First of all, it is HUGE. Only in Canada you can call people your neighbors when they live half an hour away.
Then, Canada is WILD. Although I haven't seen many living wild animals, the sight of a moose-affected car, plenty of flattened skunks at the roadsides and the sound of howling wolves at night let me know there are. And I have never been to a place like Cape Clear where you have a 300° view and still you can see nothing but trees and rivers: No town or village, no TV tower, not even any cleared land.
Where there is no wilderness, there are straight roads with identical small settlements at the grid's crossings: A gas station, a Tim Horton's, some small shops and
Hannover-Linden 2
"Van Alten" garden huge billboards advertising them.
What Germany is like
Germany is neither big nor wild. It is a tiny, crowded country with 80 million people sharing that space more or less successfully. Your neigbors live either upstairs or downstairs of you, and if they are five minutes away you're likely to be either very rich to be able to afford such an exclusive setting or you happen to live in eastern Germany where there are neither people nor work.
There is no wilderness left: Every bit of land is used, either by houses or roads, by fields or by woodland. Somehow it even seems that the countryside is more detailly planned than the towns.
And although I may run the risk of appearing obsessively tidy, I like that. I like the small scale landscape where I can walk through different fields and forests and villages with old, black and white timber-framed houses.
The best of both worlds
There are some German things I now appreciate more than ever:
Walking to the bakery before breakfast, smelling the freshly baked, crispy rolls and buying some bread that is neither white nor soft nor square.
Going round by bike and
Hannover-Linden 3
Power Plant at the Leine river being able to cycle to a friend who lives in a small town not far away, knowing that if I get tired I can just get on the train.
Hearing the sound of churchbells.
Of course, there are some things about Canada I do miss here:
The quietness and darkness of the nights, making the stars appear so bright and numerous.
The clear rivers with dams being built by beavers instead of man.
The intensely blue ocean at Nova Scotia, our North Sea even in brightest sunlight still appearing sort of muddy-green.
But right now it is beautiful here, the leaves being golden and the sun still warming. I know winter isn't far any more, but hopefully me and my boyfriend will be in Greece by then, living on wine, feta and olives until the worst is over. When after that we return to Germany, spring will already have started. And I know that will make it easier than ever to stay in this country and really feel at home.
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