As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve updated all my posts from Canada with relevant photos today. As usual, you can click on them to see a larger version, and if you hover over a thumbnail with your cursor, a caption will appear to explain what’s going on. Thanks goes to Winter for all the horseback riding photos in the Falcon Lake post.
As far as possible, the photos fit the text of the posts, but I chose to put the photos from my arrival at Winnipeg into the Winnipeg post even though that post actually starts the next day and my arrival is described in the second Peterborough post.
When I was done, I had a few photos left over that I didn’t want not to post (pardon the double negative), so I’ve included them here instead. They are pretty random. Feel free to use this entry to send me your comments pertaining to any of my Canada photos 
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Posted in Personal, Photos.
Tagged with Canada, Peterborough, Toronto, Travel, Winnipeg.
By Jonas
– August 7, 2010
I’m in Valby, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Back in the Old Country.
I’m trying to debrief myself onto this blog before the last part of my head comes with me back from Canada. I should probably skip Thursday and Friday and go straight to Saturday, which I remember as the best day of my vacation because it was packed with activities.
Friday evening, Lawrence drove me up to Winter’s family cottage on Falcon Lake to meet with her uncle and cousins. It was about a 2 hour drive from St. Malo, and the night was spent playing Cranium and drinking with the neighbours. I may be generalising too much in either direction, but it seems to me that the Canadians use their cottages for the opposite purpose cottages are used over here: we leave the cities and go to our cottages to get away from people, whereas it seems like the Canadians come to their cottages to be around other people with cottages.
In the morning, we were joined by Winter and went swimming off a tiny, almost private beach. Then we went horse-back riding. Winter used to work at the nearby ranch, so we got a private ride for the price of a normal one, meaning the four of us went alone with a guide. The trail was really beautiful, taking us through coniferous forest, down into an old gravel pit, into deciduous forest, through the water of a marsh area, and over the rocky ground of the Canadian Shield. It was later brought to my attention that I looked quite amusing whenever we went into a trot, but at least I had no problem staying on the horse, so I suppose I’ll just have to learn proper trot technique next time I get a chance to ride.
After the ride, we went down to the lake again to go swimming off a rock outcropping (covered in seagull shit and bits of dead crab – all the more incentive to go into the water). For reasons of squeamishness, I’m not a fan of swimming in the sea, so I really appreciated this chance to frolic in a nice, clean fresh-water lake. As we’d returned to the cottage and dinner was being prepared, a friend of the family came by in his flashy new speed boat and took us for a sail around the lake at unreasonable velocity.
That, my dear friends, is how you enjoy your vacation.
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Posted in Personal, Photos.
Tagged with Canada, Falcon Lake, Horses, Jetlag, Manitoba, Travel.
By Jonas
– August 4, 2010
Tuesday, Lawrence took me back to Winnipeg for a bit of a tour. We started at the Manitoba museum, which had some pretty nice dioramas including a full-sized replica of the 1600′s ship Nonsuch that you could walk around on (the whole thing reminded me of Thief: Deadly Shadows). Then we went to the Forks, the slightly touristy area where the two major rivers of Winnipeg meet, and walked along the partially flooded bank of Red River to Manitoba’s ridiculously extravagant legislative building.
Unfortunately we missed a guided tour about all the masonic traits of the building, but we took a quick walk around by ourselves and found a painted star on the floor where if you stand there and speak, every surface of the room is designed to reflect the sound right back at you to sinister effect.
From there, we went back to the Forks, bought some candy at a store inside an old train car(!), I bought some stuff for my parents, and we had mediocre dinner at a pub because the great Italian place downstairs was full of people. After a trip to a burned-down cathedral where a new church has been built inside the old stone walls (which looked quite striking, photos will be added later), we took a short walk around the French quarter, and then picked up some stuff for the house on the way home.
If it’s acceptable to pass judgment on the town based on a one day trip, I’d say that Winnipeg is a very nice city. It seems not a lot larger than Peterborough, but it has a bit more of a large city mentality because it’s a provincial capital – ie. it actually has a few skyscrapers. Compared to Toronto, it’s a tiny and far less interesting town, but it has more space and much more pleasant air – it’s actually a nicer place to be.
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Posted in Personal, Photos.
Tagged with Canada, Canoe, Manitoba, Travel, Winnipeg.
By Jonas
– July 29, 2010
I’m in St. Malo, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. More importantly I am writing this from within the house of Lawrence Jonathan Laxdal.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
In terms of getting out and seeing things, Warsaw Caves turned out to be the high point of the Peterborough chapter of my vacation. I was hoping we could go to Burleigh Falls, but due to our dependency on finding a driver, as well as the need for spectacular weather in which to go swimming, our plans never panned out. Instead, we consumed more alcohol than I suspect I have ever consumed in my entire life.
Peterborough isn’t actually that small a town; if you count its outlying areas, it apparently has somewhere in the vicinity of 100,000 inhabitants, which is alledgedly the amount of people living in Copenhagen proper. The difference being the greater Copenhagen area has a million people, most of whom work or study in Copenhagen and have most of their social life there. Peterborough definitely feels like a small town, and when you go out, it seems impossible not to run into somebody you know – at least when you’re in the company of an old local party animal.
There’s a certain sort of pre-establishment 20-something social circle that you occasionally encounter in North American fiction, for my part most recently in the (Canadian, as it just so happens) Scott Pilgrim books, which I haven’t had any personal experience with. I’m not sure if this is because circles like that don’t exist in Denmark, or if it’s simply that I fail to get out enough to become part of one. Either way I got a fairly solid idea of what it’s like after meeting what must be every 20-something in Peterborough and even living with a couple of them for a week. It’s fun, and it’s interesting, but it’s also kind of taxing – I’m just not that social; I managed it because I’m on vacation, but I doubt I’d be able to keep it up all the time.
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Posted in Personal, Photos.
Tagged with Canada, Cottage, Manitoba, Peterborough, Travel, Winnipeg.
By Jonas
– July 27, 2010
Every time I get into a moving vehicle, by necessity I become a master of zen. Fighting motion sickness is a bit of a mental battle, and in an effort to minimize the pain and discomfort I suffer every time I have to drive, sail, or even fly somewhere, not to mention minimizing the risk of ejecting my breakfast all over the dashboard, I have a long list of rituals that help me cope. I honestly have no idea how well these precautions apply to other people, but I shall share them here anyway, if nothing else then to help me explain to others what I go through whenever I travel.
You may think I’m making this whole thing out to be worse than it really is, but frankly my motion sickness is one of two problems I suffer from so badly I don’t believe it is possible for me to exaggerate them (the other being arachnophobia).
- Drink cola. Cola has a life-savingly soothing effect on your stomach, which really helps to settle it down when it’s going “OMG OMG WHAT IS GOING ON JETTISON EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY”.
- Do not drink orange juice. It’s very acidic, which has the complete opposite effect on your stomach than cola, and it tastes absolutely dreadful when it comes back up again.
- Bring a bottle of water. Mineral water helps because it has that slightly crisp, healthy taste. Hydrating is always good, especially to counteract the clammy, sweaty feeling you get when your motion sickness is getting really bad. Most of all, you will need the water to get the taste out of your mouth if your zen is too weak to avert disaster.
- Bring at least one opague plastic bag to throw up in. Aside from the obvious damage control purpose, it actually has some significant preventive qualities because the last thing you want is to be worrying about how long you can hold out before you have to ask the driver to pull over. If you have a plan in case you need to puke, it’s much easier to think about something other than how sick you are.
- Sit in the front seat. If there is somebody else in the front seat, threaten to sit in the seat behind them and aim for the back of their head when you inevitably have to vomit because they wouldn’t give you the front seat.
- Look straight ahead and focus on the horizon. Do not look at anything too close to the vehicle. Do not look out the side windows for more than a few seconds at a time.
- Do not talk to anybody. When you get into the vehicle, warn any of your friends or acquaintances with whom you are travelling that you are going to be the most boring roadtrip companion ever because conversation will bring about disaster.
- Open a window if possible. Fresh air is a life-saver.
- Try not to breathe through your nose. If you’ve suffered from motion sickness for a while, the smell of a car or a bus is hard-wired into your brain in such a way that just walking past a bus with its door open is often enough to make you queasy. If you don’t smell the inside of the vehicle, you remove a large part of the problem.
- Regulate your breathing. If you’re not breathing through your nose, this becomes slightly easier. You want to breathe in during acceleration or deceleration and try not to breathe out until your speed is level. Long, slow intakes are good for this, but if you have to choose, breathe in during deceleration and out during acceleration, since deceleration is usually worse.
- If your situation allows it, ask the driver to stick to country roads or highways, and plan your route to take you out of the city as fast as possible. Stop-lights and heavy traffic are the banes of your existence if you have motion sickness.
- Listen to music. Headphones are good because they make the music more intimate so it’s easier to focus on, but a car radio will usually do the trick. The point is to use the music to distract yourself from how terrible you feel and how close you are to upchucking. Try to find new instrumental patterns that you hadn’t noticed before in familiar songs. Mouth the lyrics if you have to.
By adhering to these rules, I’ve managed to endure several car rides while I’ve been in Canada without throwing up. In North America where all of society appears to have been designed around everybody driving everywhere, motion sickness seems like a far worse handicap than it is in Denmark, where the trains can take you anywhere your bicycle can’t (modes of transportation in order of relatively unproblematic to apocalyptically bad: planes, trains, ships, boats, cars, buses).
Fighting motion sickness tends to feel like you’re locked in mental combat against your own body, but I guess it’s the price you have to pay if you want to see a bit of the world, so you may as well take your precautions and accept that you probably will feel terrible a lot of the time while you’re on vacation. There are far worse things in life than motion sickness, it just doesn’t feel that way while it’s kicking your ass.
Posted in Personal.
Tagged with Canada, Motion Sickness, Travel.
By Jonas
– July 24, 2010
Monday I took a Greyhound bus (confirming that they do in fact exist outside of the movies) to Peterborough, the “grocery basket of Canada” as the residents apparently call it. I’m here because my class mate Alex, with whom I worked on both Cometes and ParaDime, lived here for 8 years and so came back to visit his old friends over the summer. I was wanting to go to Canada anyway, to see the country and visit Lawrence, so figured I’d kill three birds with one stone and hang with Alex for a week as well.
So far it’s been completely different from Toronto in exactly the right way. Toronto was huge, smelly, impressive, huge, noisy, interesting, and huge. Even with a population of around 70,000 people, Peterborough is laid back and quiet. It feels like an actual vacation, with open farm country, calm lakes, small bars where everyone knows everyone else, close proximity to beaches and forests, and a charmingly derelict house with two very friendly cats and the largest St. Bernard ever (Huxley is a 10 months old puppy of 190 cm who destroys your foot completely if he steps on it). I’m sleeping on the couch in the attic next to a big TV hooked up to an Xbox 360, a PS3, and a Wii – I feel right at home.
Despite the title of the post, this part of the vacation has been really relaxed so far. Other than a fun night out yesterday, the most exciting thing we’ve been up to so far was going to Warsaw park, a forest with some seriously exciting geological traits. The “trail” we took was mostly made up of rocks aligned at odd angles. One of the areas we visited was full of “kettles”, completely circular holes in the rocks dug out with infinite slowness by expanding and contracting water, some of them big enough to fall through. Another area was full of caves, cracks in the rocks leading far into the ground. We weren’t equipped nor inclined to venture in there, but just sitting at the edges of the caves looking into the cold, damp darkness was enough to get the point. It was exactly the kind of thing I was expecting from Canada before I left.
Tomorrow Alex and I are heading with another of his friends out to a cottage by a lake where we can take the relaxation to the next level. There may or may not be canoes involved.
Photos follow.
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Posted in Personal, Photos.
Tagged with Canada, Peterborough, Travel, Warsaw Caves.
By Jonas
– July 21, 2010
In the end, with my residual counter-aggression excised onto the Internet, my Friday was salvaged by a shower, a change of clothes, and dinner at a nice Indian restaurant name of Saffron Tree secreted away in Toronto’s otherwise uncharming hospital/university district. So far the portions here seem pretty much the same as what they serve in Denmark, but the food prices are consistently low, even despite the unfortunate exchange rate which means I’m paying a lot more for everything I buy here than I would have if I’d visited a year or two ago.
Saturday was set aside for Gelo. I’d quite forgotten, but Gelo reminded me that we met during my stint as a conscientious objector at Greenpeace, which by my reckoning was some time in 2005, which means I’ve known Gelo for 5 years and never met him in person – such is the way of the Internet, and of course this re(?)union will already be outdone when I visit Lawrence on the 26th, who I have known and worked with for 8 years without meeting him.
I was quite impressed and grateful that Gelo could find the time and endurance to make the 8 hour drive from New York City to Toronto, a drive which my mind was slightly boggled to realise took as long as my trans-atlantic flight from Denmark. Gelo had brought his brother and sister-in-law to make the drive more palatable, and we started out by having lunch together at a nice Vietnamese place where most of our dishes regrettably tasted of nothing at all. Whatever, we were there for the company anyway.
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Posted in Personal, Photos.
Tagged with Canada, CN Tower, IMAX, Inception, Tad Williams, Toronto, Travel, War of the Flowers.
By Jonas
– July 19, 2010
Yesterday I left the city without leaving Toronto.
The Greater Toronto Area – the acronym of which I just can’t get over – is cut through by a series of ravines which have somehow been left alone just north of the downtown area, presumably because they would be too expensive to level out and build on (Toronto seems to be ruthlessly pro-development, they’re building new shit everywhere).
I took the subway up to Davisville station, walked through Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, which is indeed quite pleasant, entered Moore Park Ravine, and immediately forgot that I was in the middle of a city of 4 million people. Those ravines are simply fantastic: crooked little streams snaking between boulders, with cliffs on either side tall enough to block out all noise from the city. Once in a while you’ll walk under an overpass or a railway bridge so huge it makes you dizzy, and momentarily remember where you are.
My route took me through Moore Park Ravine to Don Valley Brickworks, an old quarry converted into a small natural reserve, into Park Drive Ravine, looping back across Mt. Pleasant Road through the Vale of Avoca Ravine up to St. Claire metro station. The whole walk took well over 3 hours and left me both rejuvinated and exhausted.
In the evening, I went to an extremely cheap grill party on the 23rd floor roof deck of my hostel (a student apartment complex in downtown Toronto which serves as a cheap hotel over the summer) where hotel guests could eat as much as they wanted for an astonishing $3. The food was pure junk, but at that price I would be an asshole to complain – plus, they served Salt & Vinegar crisps which are all but impossible to obtain in Denmark, so all else was forgiven.
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Posted in Personal, Photos.
Tagged with Anarchy, Canada, Old York, Ravines, Toronto, Travel.
By Jonas
– July 16, 2010
It’s pretty damn hot over here. Yesterday was one of those really unpleasant days where it’s super hot, but the sun isn’t shining – Damocles thunder hangs menacingly in the clouds, but it never seems to drop. There’s too little wind, too much moisture in the air; it’s stifling.
Today was all out sunny summer awesomeness. When the sun is out, the warmth is drier, and you can escape it by going into the shades. More temptingly, you can douse yourself in sunscreen and revel in it.
I walked down Yonge St. (officially the world’s longest street according to Guiness) to the harbour and caught the ferry to Toronto Islands. It was amazing – a series of sizeable islands covered in beaches, super well-groomed parks, and a couple of charming little alternative bohemian communities (also a small airport, but it’s not prominent). If it wouldn’t be such an enormous hassle to get the groceries, I would really envy the people living out there.
After chilling my feet in the shallow beach water, I rented a single-speed bicycle, unequipped my t-shirt, and cruised around the islands for a couple of hours. Pure bliss.
When I returned to Toronto city, I then walked up to the Baldwin Village and spent far too much money on dinner. I’m not sure I have enough energy left to get back to my hostel, I may just have to crash in this Internet cafe overnight.
(I haven’t decided what I’ll do about my photos – I don’t have the time or the software to add them while I’m here, so I may either add them to the posts retroactively once I get home, or I may just post a separate photodump entry. What would you prefer?)
Update: Photos follow.
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Posted in Personal, Photos.
Tagged with Canada, Toronto, Toronto Islands, Travel.
By Jonas
– July 15, 2010
I’m in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
First impression: um… did I accidentally take a flight to the US?
Very interesting city, very friendly people, very much like every depiction of America I’ve ever seen on film. Seriously, my first experience with Toronto was a huge network of the widest highways I’ve ever seen. Who needs six lanes of highway!? If they’d told me they’d flown me to Los Angeles instead, I would’ve totally believed them.
It has this stink of garbage everywhere except in the parks.
The major thing that seems very un-American is that they have quite a lot of bike lanes, which is awesome. They used to have a system called Bikeshare whereby you could get a one-year membership for $30 and then borrow bikes for free, which would’ve been perfect for me, but unfortunately it’s no longer active, so I guess I’ll have to rent bikes by the day 
I bought a shitty pre-paid phone, so now I temporarily have a Canadian telephone number!
Also I’ve visited Best Buy for the first time in my life. It was scary.
That is all for now. Photos follow.
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Posted in Personal, Photos.
Tagged with Canada, Toronto, Travel.
By Jonas
– July 13, 2010
