This is part 6 in the eastern Europe trip series. I resolve to finish the 5 remaining parts before one year is up.

When Luke and I were thinking about the trip we were keen on visiting Russia. However, it seems like Sergey was much less keen about the idea. I don't know about Luke, but I have a great fascination with former eastern Bloc countries, how could I not visit Russia when I am in the area, and when would the next time I have the chance to travel there with somebody who spoke Russian be?

To visit Russia one must have an invitation. It seemed like the usual way to do it was to book a hotel in advance and have the hotel "invite" you. We were hoping that Sergey might have Russian connections and so could invite us, however we were not so lucky :) Now I also realize that it's great responsibility to personally invite travellers. We processed the paperwork through a Russian travel agency in Toronto. Sergey recounted that when he first phoned, he got a girl who quoted us a certain rate, and the next time he called he got a different girl who, upon hearing that he previously spoke to somebody else, gave him a better rate. We forked over $200 each for the visa and invitation.

We left on the morning of the 23rd April. I wrote my last final on the 21st April. Luke and I were supposed to go to a concert with Prabhakar on the 21st, Jamie Lidell I believed, but I was just not feeling up for it. One year later I came to realize that yeah, I do experience stress, and I became rather anti-social, and it's not healthy so I must try to deal with it. I just packed for the trip and packed up my room for the evening, as I was moving out of the next day and flying out the day after. My packing strategy was twice as many pairs of socks and underwear than shirts. I also packed a towel, toilet paper, laundry detergent, and tea bags. The laundry detergent proceeded to leak into the tea bags. Mmm... Mountain fresh tea. Powder detergent, next time. Travel reading: Dostoyevsky House of the Dead for the Russian theme.

On the evening of the 22nd we stayed at Sergey's house in Missassauga and as usual his parents welcomed us warmly and as usual I was impressed by their hospitality and their familial relationship. Alex, Sergey's stepdad, was quite a character. He introduced me to rock climbing, took vacation to ice-climb in Alaska, hiked a lot, etc.. Also he made a mean carrot salad. I really enjoyed being offered tea and conversation after dinner, and I wondered if it's a regular thing in their household. I started drinking mint tea there. They had interesting things to say when they heard about our itinerary, ranging from "don't take the Moldovan train" (they took one that was flooded), to advice about Russian police, to tidbits about living in Russia like the state-imposed commodity prices (the 3 ruble bun, the 300-something ruble vodka), and so on. I also enjoyed the Alex in Kazakhstan stories like hunting for mushrooms and using napalm for campfires.

Anyway! We flew Czech Airlines to Prague, then connect to Moscow. I thought the Prague-Moscow connection was codeshared by Aeroflot and was looking forward to boarding an Ilyushin or a Tupolev but it seemed like their fleet was gradually being replaced with Airbuses. For the first leg of the flight we were initially unable to get four seats together, but they were very helpful and rearranged the seating so more of us could sit together, after more people had checked in. They called me at the gate (my first time!) to notify me of my new seat. At this point Sergey was still sitting away from us though... We were put in the middle section. One random girl was seated between Luke and I. She was traveling with her friend, and when we asked her if she wanted to switch seats with Sergey so we could sit together and she could be closer to her friend, she refused, I supposed because it wasn't close enough to her friend. So Luke and I decided on an alternate strategy of talking across her about music. She somehow managed to put up with it for hours, but finally gave in. Victory was ours!

I totally passed out during the Prague-Moscow flight. The folding headrests on the newer Airbuses were the best. When I woke up I could see the brown terminals of the Sheremetyevo airport already. It was a grey day in Moscow. We filled in arrival forms and queued at immigration. While queuing, I tried to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. I am proud to say that a year later I still remember them, and also my random collection of Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish phrases, but it seemed like I learnt the Russian phrases aurally and so could not prove here that I still remembered! Sergey, Luke, and I passed through immigration without much problem, in fact I have to say it's less painful and raised my blood pressure less than passing through U.S. immigration, but for some reason Marge was held back. Luke and I were standing around thinking "OMG" "maybe it's because she's Taiwanese?" while Sergey went back to see what was going on. However I supposed they just felt like holding Marge there for 15 minutes? Never found out what happened. Now that I think about it, there could be no reason at all other than bureaucracy.

It's late afternoon, and time to go to the hotel. We dodged taxi drivers, took a crowded bus to a metro station (forgot which one. I was falling asleep on the bus, and just followed Sergey around), then took the metro to the hotel. At the metro station we saw the police stopped a girl and asked for her documents. We were just like... OMG... kept our heads down and walked away quickly. I remembered Alex's advice about the police.

Our hotel was a huge complex of grey blocky buildings, and we were in the "gamma" building. What I saw of Moscow so far was all dusty muted colors, other than the neon signs near the hotel, and I thought it was pretty exciting. I was traveling with friends to interesting places. It's going to be different from trips I've taken in the past, with my high school friends or with my family. I was fascinated with that part of the world and was glad to have the chance to travel there before the countries all join the EU. I'd count Luke in one of the single-digit number of people I called good friends, and even though I only knew Sergey for a couple months I thought we made a good connection (I had heard of his exploits from Luke for some time before), and it's very exciting to travel with them. Even though there was some conflict, and I got quite unhappy at some point, I thought it was a great experience. We semi-joked that we should take a trip together from time to time in the future, since we (well, me in particular) were going to be in different cities and countries, and maybe we would only see each other on trips. So far it hadn't happened yet, but who knows?

Checking in at the hotel was an adventure in itself, although I participated in little of it, and that's for the next post.

Tags: grad trip, moscow, travel
Current Location: san francisco

As much as I moan and bitch about the meaning of the program I graduated from, I can't help feeling a little proud when I was asked "what do you do?" at the border, and replied "software engineer". I am vain. Well it will pass in time.

In the evening I stared out the window as the plane approached the destination. I looked at the lit bridges and wondered if that's the Bay Bridge, was I looking across the state to the Pacific (clearly I didn't have a sense of direction or knew geography), etc.. I looked at the neat grid of lamps and thought "here comes American city planning", and suddenly noticed a familiar dark rectangular piece of land crisscrossed with a few windy paths, and the diagonal boulevard, more brightly lit than the others. San Francisco is distinctive from 10,000 ft in the dark.

Vancouver: it was cold. Back to reality, now. Took an extra day or so.

Tags: travel
Current Location: san francisco

This is part 5 in the eastern Europe trip series.

We were going to try to stay at the same place in Prague as we did a few weeks ago when we returned to send me off to Canada, but it was impossible. This time we stayed in Karlín, a little off from the Old Town, and I recall the girl in our last hostel advising us to not walk around in Karlín at night, but we loved it! The new hostel was really cozy, and from our room there was a great view of the Vltava. By the way when I was really confused why Smetana wrote about the "Moldau" and not the "Vltava" and where the hell was this Moldau river, and then I found out that they were one and the same, the former in the official German language and the latter in the vernacular. I felt really great at this sudden mental connection between general history and music history, but it shows my shallow understanding of music history as I was only doing it to get my next RCM certificate. When I took the examination, it was pretty silly, and I passed (with flying colors) with not much real understanding and a cheat sheet. Hey, I was already discreet. When the proctor decided to go take a leak, everybody pulled out the textbook.

The relaxed border customs that come with the EU reared its head again... The Czechs stamped our passports, but no Slovak officials was in sight. However the conductor was always there (multiple times) and he (a "he" 95% of the time, unless we're on a Russian train), never forgot to check your ticket. There's more problems to relaxing border formalities than illegal immigrants... I loved getting stamped all over the place when traveling in a tiny continent packed with countries, and I imagine there must be somebody else who shared the feeling, so had I been born ten years later my Europe grad trip would be a little less memorable. My passport and the bag of coins (which disappeared before those currencies were phased out, ugh!) were probably the best souvenirs, better than any photos I didn't take or trinkets I didn't buy.

Ah, anyway. Had I been born ten years earlier my Europe grad trip would be a couple hundred dollars more expensive, all under the item "visas".

The train arrived at Bratislava late, and arrived in Prague even later, late by an hour (what would the Germans think???). I think there was some problem with the locomotive and we stopped at Skalice nad Svitavou for a while to wait for a new one, and then another while moving back and forth in the vicinity of the station as the new locomotive was being attached. At Skalice nad Svit. we witnessed that it took six Czechs to paint a pole, which Luke couldn't help corrupting as "takes six Czechs for a Pole".

Since this is the end of my Europe trip, it's time to settle debts. I gave Luke some 2000 CZKs, and he immediately emptied his wallet by making reservations for a train to Vienna for Julian and he. Welcome to the land of €€€!

We tried the gyro stand outside of the Florenc subway station. At 30 (if I recall correctly?) CZK it seemed like a good deal, but the quality is over 25% lower than the 400 forint gyro that was roughly 25% more expensive. The spice was lacking as was the vegetable content and the grease content. Luke still deemed it worthy for seconds, although it might be because it's much past lunch time and we haven't ate yet. After getting lost trying to find the hostel, eating gyros, deciphering the Prague subway's fare system, we finally arrived in front of the New Jewish cemetery where Kafka was buried... at 1635, precisely five minutes after the last visitors were admitted. Argh! Another one for our list of things we missed due to operating hours.

I didn't have other plans or ideas of what else I'd like to visit in Prague, so we just wandered around in the general direction of the hostel. Luke and Julian bought and drank more of the grep drink product, and I was just feeling down about missing things even though I already tried to plan for this by taking the earlier train. It sounds bad, but by that time I was getting tired of constantly being around people, friends. I suppose I'm a little anti-social. I like to make and have friends, and I treasure the time I spend with them, but I really need some time with nobody I personally know, for the health of sanity and happiness. But not all the time. So, I was not exactly in a very good mood in Prague, again, even as the city became more beautiful on my second visit.

We sat in a park. Some people brought dogs. Some dogs were free to run around, play with other dogs, beg for food, etc., while their owners relaxed, and some were kept on leashes. Here the dogs were not neutered.

We finally tried a worthy beer. On Julian's 5-point scale where Molson Canadian was a 3, it initially received a 5 but was adjusted to 4.5, because we had it in a bottle and had to make room for the draught version. It's called Velkopopovický Kozel and it's a pretty damn good dark beer. Luke and Julian claimed that they must try the draught, and that evening a guidebook found in our room (published by the British, who were always spectacularly drunk at 7pm in foreign cities, unsurprisingly) listed a pub that served this beer, and another that specialized in dark beers, both in Malá Strana. I had no idea whether they visited after I left, but it's none of my business now.

We ended up back on Charles Bridge. We stood there until after sunset, just chatting. The topics included "Polish phrases Julian should learn" (because he's returning to Poland with Luke afterwards), "that horrible HK movie featuring Twins", "the reason Chinese do that hand gesture when somebody fills their teacup", and "guess the nationality of that group of Asian tourists". Definitely a certain regional influence there.

It's not a very eventful second visit to Prague. It's just a transit stop. The next morning we went to a bakery near the hostel where I bought two cheese pastries and a ham and cheese croissant (the one which half was confiscated at the Canadian border). I decided that the pastries were tasty, but I didn't know whether it really was very good, or if my standards changed a bit in the past month. I stood in line at the Czech Airlines counter the same way Sergey and Marge did three weeks ago. Julian lent me his inflatable neck pillow that I still have, that is really essential to me sleeping on a plane unless the foldable head rests are present. I got stamped at customs, officially exiting Europe. I watched the Czech tourism commercial again. I waited until the last five minutes before the gate closed to board.

I bid my two friends farewell.

Tags: grad trip, prague, travel
Current Location: vancouver

This is part 4 in the eastern Europe trip series.

I wanted to begin the Bratislava entry by commenting on how Bratislava isn't on top of the European destinations list again but this was not true, if you were an HKese tourist. Walking in the Bratislava old town was like walking in Tsim Sha Tsui in HK, if every time I heard Cantonese spoken in Bratislava was a time I heard Mandarin spoken in Tsim Sha Tsui. Well, Bratislava is a capital city and thus must be the tourist destination of its country. I wonder why North America is excepted from this rule? Maybe it's because each province, each state is like a country under the European Union.

Apparently the Slovak language almost became extinct a hundred years ago because it was generally prohibited by the ruling Austria-Hungary. It was revived with help from the Czechs when Czechoslovakia was established. I'm unsure why the Czech language didn't suffer the same fate. I could think of a few famous nationalistic Czechs from the 19th century but no Slovaks came to mind. Other than Andy Warhol, I guess, but he really was an American (and not from the 19th century). But but but! I remember reading somewhere (maybe a Slovak source?) about how the Slovaks had the armed uprising during WWII, and how the Czechs had no such resistance, and whatever this implied in terms of Czechoslovak nationalism in the mind of the author... (which I do not agree with) In either case, Czechoslovakia suffered relatively little, not to undermine the sufferings of war.

More on the Slovak language: I was pretty disappointed that the Slovaks used "stanica" for train station instead of using the wonderful and sweet sounding "nádraží" (say it again. na-dra-jzhhi). However it seemed like the railway company (?) used the same winged train wheel logo as the Russians. I liked this very much.

Three wonderful things that formed my first impression of Bratislava were the following: a left-luggage office, similar to the one we used in Moscow, at the train station; the Slovenská sporitelna ATM that was the only ATM I used that gave me my balance; the Slovak 1 pub that gave students free soup if s/he presented an "A" from a recent examination. Our hostel was pretty awesome too. It's too bad that at almost 20 CAD per person per night I almost thought I was in Prague already.

I took out korunas from the ATM, but Luke had to exchange his forints. By now we'd gotten smart and decided that only one person should take out money from the ATM for each currency we need to minimize service charges (really something when we needed 9 different currencies), and Luke was the king (the banker?) of Hungary. We'd built up tabs with each other and paid it with various currencies, and so our extra forints went to Luke. The clerks at the bank could not agree on how to determine the authenticity of forints. One would check all the bills (there were a lot, a lot of small bills), somebody else would mention something else to look for, and all the bills would be checked individually again. Rinse and repeat, etc. for half an hour. Those long-awaited SKKs were sweet, but not as much as my crisp and brightly colored SKKs from the ATM ;)

The Slovaks were smarter in currency matters than their Czech neighbors. Coins were used intelligently and my pockets were light. Czech currency was as annoying as American currency. One had too many coins and the other had too many bills that all look the same.

A priority was to eat Slovakian goulash. Some girls from our hostel in Budapest asserted that Slovakian goulash was better than Hungarian goulash, one of the few things I considered "tasty" and not just "filling" on this trip. I sampled the dish accompanied by the one hit wonders of the 80s. Ah Europe. Luke's hypothesis was that the closer we were to Germany, the more Eurodance we would hear. It seemed that while this was generally true (it pained me to find out), restaurants must only play the greatest hits of the 80s, and every table must hear ABBA at least once no matter how little time they took for the meal. I'm ignorant about 80s music beyond New Division, Fugazi, the Smiths, and U2; my mother didn't listen to ABBA and I'm not European; it's hard to appreciate 80s pop, ABBA, and also, electroclash without irony. (Is "electroclash ABBA" a compliment or not?)

Our waiter was a true European and could name all the songs that were played. Or maybe it's only because the CD repeated all the time.

One cafe near the Slovak 1 pub was the exception to the music rule. Air's Talkie Walkie was playing. The coffee was OK, but they put in the effort to make latte art.

Anyway, back to the goulash. It's a stew, unlike the Hungarian version which was a soup. It contained sauerkraut and little paprika. For the side dish I selected from one of six items that were all one kind of dumpling or another, and they turned out to be the bread-like Czech dumplings that I dislike the most of all European dumplings I've tried, but at least they went well with the sauce. While the Slovak goulash was not bad, I preferred the spicier Hungarian version. I'm aware that they were essentially different beasts with the same name, like gnocchi and wontons were dumplings. However, you know the Hungarians must have the better stuff because they had "goulash communism" and the Czechoslovaks had no "goulash revolution" or "goulash divorce"...

The Slovak 1 pub offered a drink called the "student cola", and the taste was just as imagined...

When we saw a Canadian flags outside a building in the old town we thought it must be Four Seasons Hotels (by now we were convinced that Canadians were indeed good enough to own Four Seasons Hotels), but to our surprise we have seen the second Canadian embassy in Europe in the flesh (the first was in Kiev)! A photo of our passports and the sign was in order.

Atop a hill near the old town was the Bratislava castle. When Budapest was overrun by the Ottomans, the Habsburgs made Bratislava the capital, and the Bratislava castle became their administration centre. Compared to other European castles the rectangular building was unglamorous, like how the St. Martin's Cathedral, the coronation place of the Hungarian monarchy for three hundred years, was unglamorous, but made a quiet statement (the cathedral more than the castle) that they were once very important places. Devín Castle, just outside of the city, that I didn't visit, perhaps was even more so, it being a frontier castle, a gateway to the west. St. Martin's Cathedral also featured a proper crypt, ie., a place where people were buried, to our delight. There was a bit of interesting engineering problem involving the structure—the new bridge over the Danube was constructed next to the cathedral, and apparently the vibrations caused by the traffic was great enough to weaken the cathedral.

Atop another hill further away from the old town was a monument that Luke accurately described as "ah, you know who built this". There was only one kind of people who could have built the unhumanly sized, severe structure, grey, all straight lines and right angles, columns positioned like in Roman temples but bare, a massive phallic object protruding from the roof, at its crown a heroic character waving a flag, at the highest point a golden five-pointed star. Yep, it's the monument to honor the Soviet soldiers who died liberating Slovakia from the Nazis. It's difficult. I don't have a great distaste for military things, and living in HK and Canada military operations was something I only read in the news and in history books, both of which (particularly history, although news become history) were interesting subjects. In my opinion, it's unrealistic to say that they have no place in the world, although I wouldn't want to be caught up in the middle of it. But what about living in a country that initiates war? It's good as long as the country was the more resourceful side. But as a selfish person I have personal priorities, and it's probably best to take it one step at a time, observing the situation, regarding things that aren't in my direct control.

Now the monument's location offered a great view of Bratislava and a nice breeze, and a few locals brought a blanket and a book to enjoy the afternoon on its steps. Below the monument, built on the hill, were expensive-looking houses, some a little avant garde in architecture, and reminded me of the sloping street west of Arbutus between 33rd and King Edward in Vancouver.

We visited the national art gallery, which advertised that it now has the complete Campbell's soup cans series from Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol exhibit ended up being the second least interesting exhibit in the gallery, the first being the Orthodox art exhibit. I could live without seeing yet more Orthodox art, which style seemed to have missed Renaissance. A series of sculptures by... some guy... depicting facial expressions was the most interesting. It's too bad I didn't take note of the artist's name.

The Slovaks do not drink still water! All the water at the grocery store were sýtená. However we needed to make the Frutti powdered drink product we got from the Bulgarian train, one package made 2 L of orange flavored drink! The resulting liquid had a more intense color than the grep drink from Prague, but less flavor, and because we made it with carbonated water it had more CO2. I rated the resulting orange product to be just as poor as the grep flavored drink. I still have one package of Frutti, by the way.

Another priority for Luke and Julian was laundry. I leave Europe on the 25th and so could wait until I was back in Canada (thanks Sergey's mother!). I did bring laundry detergent though, and it finally became useful. I triple-bagged the thing but it still leaked through two layers. Next time, bring powdered detergent... I actually only brought it because it was all that was left from the bottle I had in Waterloo, and I thought why not? Laundry was only a semi-success as they had enough time for only half the load (washing machines in not North America were small!), and since there was no dryer drying clothes was difficult. Well, it should be none of my business but I did wash one t-shirt and my "fleece". "It would never dry!" Luke commented. But it did! That's because it was woven from artificial fibres... Go technology!

The next day we took the mid-morning train to Prague (the same route we came to Bratislava on, and the same route in the other direction we went to Budapest on in our great journey to Istanbul. My favorite pastime on this train was to check the actual arrival times at the stations against the Die Bahn schedule provided on the train, and commenting "what would the Germans think??" whenever the train was late.). I was hoping to see Kafka's grave.

Tags: bratislava, grad trip, travel
Current Location: vancouver

After seeing a CM a few days ago with the catch phrase "only Hokkaido" that listed a few things that were symbolic of the prefecture, and having traveled a bit by JR, I've been itching to find a copy of Asada Jirou's short story "Poppoya" (The Railway Worker). The novella-turned-film made the image of the lone railway worker at a remote, snowy station symbolic of Hokkaido. I've read the manga (expertly rendered by Nagayasu Takumi) but now that I've graduated it's time to read some printed text.

In HK, when I want a book, I can enjoy looking for it at independent bookstores on upper floors of old buildings, accessed only by narrow staircases. Mong Kok, of all places, has a good block near the MTR station with several of these stops, and after visiting no fewer than five stores and wondering why the owners were so obsessed with stocking mostly Murakami Haruki, I found my book. This was so much more enjoyable than buying a book from the websites of two companies whose names shall not be mentioned, my method of choice when I was in Canada, not because there were no independent bookstores but because they were few and far between, and I don't like to have to walk more than five (I'll give 15 in Canada) minutes between stores. In SF there seems to be three bookstores per block near 16th St. and Valencia so hopefully my book shopping would become more enjoyable in the future.

And so I take the MTR home while reading this tear jerker tale of a railway worker.

Tai Kok Tsui, where I live, is quite close to Mong Kok, probably less than an hour's by walking. Back when I actually lived in HK there was no Tai Kok Tsui MTR station but times have changed and the Tung Chung MTR line is built, and the Tai Kok Tsui station is given the name WTF-inducing "Olympic". The way the tracks were laid made getting from Mong Kok to Olympic awkward; either I transfer at Lai King, or cross the harbor to transfer at Central, and cross the harbor again to get to Olympic. The dual harbor crossing is my method of choice because fewer people take the MTR from Hong Kong station and I usually get a seat, and I don't have to deal with the people who are trying to get to Mong Kok from wherever on the Tsuen Wan line they're from (insert HK Island snobbery here; I'm staying in Tai Kok Tsui now but I'm raised in Happy Valley). But there was one caveat to this route: Central station, the end of the Tsuen Wan line, and Hong Kong station, the end of the Tung Chung line, are separate stations, and although MTR, considerate as usual, has connected the two so one doesn't need to go outside of air conditioned areas to transfer lines, walking between the stations still takes a few minutes—outrageous in the efficient HK public transit system!

In the past month I've made the trip between Central and Hong Kong station almost twice daily. I'm leaving HK in three days, and I suddenly became conscious that this was one of the last times I'd make the trip in a long time. I'll miss the MTR greatly. I can't stand the American city where driving is the primary mode of transportation and public transit is grossly inefficient. Trains have been on my mind probably ever since I took real-time, shows what a life-changing experience CS452 is. Walking between the stations was a nuisance; now every step is taking me closer to 2nd July when I leave. Perhaps I should not be so melodramatic since only 1100 CDN (or less depending on how much air mileage I have) and some vacation time (precious in America) separates me from HK, but what about all the other places I want to visit? How would I be able to divide my resources?

It seemed that I only notice the strengths of places I've lived after I've left and returned, like for HK, like for Vancouver. I'm now a proud (colonial) HKer and Vancouverite, and I hang shit from my cell phone and carry around MEC items. The idea that I might one day feel the same about Waterloo horrifies me.

BTW: Germany vs. Argentina in less than 24 hours.

Tags: hong kong, mtr, public transit, travel
Current Location: hong kong

This is part 3 in the eastern Europe trip series.

First of all a somewhat amusing thing about me going to Prague: My sister visited Europe in 2004 on a study abroad program, and her teacher got her passport stolen in Prague. My mother then had an impression of Prague being dangerous and warned me to be careful there. Prague might have a few pickpockets, but looking at my itinerary I think Prague was the least of my worries.

Since we flew into Prague from Canada and made a connection to Moscow and for some reason a return airfare was about the same as one-way, whenever we had to leave Europe we had to come back to Prague. Therefore I visited Prague twice, once when Sergey and Marge left and once when I left. We also waited for several hours for the connection in PRG when we came and being used to airports like YVR, YYZ, and NRT (and now also HKG), PRG was somewhat lacking.

As was the norm of this trip we arrived at Prague on an overnight train. After I came back to Canada I found out that the Krakow–Prague train was known to be especially dangerous and that cars had been gassed and people having everything stolen while they were "asleep". It just shows how these stories are just scare stories, or that we had gerat luck. Anyway, the train ride was uneventful; the Russian train was still the best; we spent most of the time sleeping. The businesses in order when we arrived in Prague was the following:

1. Get Czech money.
   
2. Go to the toilet.
   
3. Try to check in at the hostel.

Getting Czech money was easy enough: reliable-looking ATMs were present at Praha hlavni nadrazi (as I mentioned before I love this word), and exchange rates were the best at train stations. Going to the toilet was more difficult since the stupid ATM gave us large bills only and the toilet attendant refused to break our 2000 kc bills. I suppose paying for a 5 kc fee with a 2000 kc bill was excessive. Finally one place broke one of our bills and we received too many coins.

The thing about Czech money was that there was a lot of coins. Not just coins, but giant, heavy coins. The coins were at least twice the weight of the equivalently valued Canadian coin. The dual-metal fifty koruna piece was particularly quite the looker. I imagine Czech men being plagued with hole problems in their trousers.

Back to the toilet. I peeked in the stall area to see what the Prague train station toilet was like before using the sink to brush my teeth, and the toilet attendant thought I was going to use the toilet and the sink, which had separate charges. Seeing how I spoke zero Czech and had zero understanding of Slavic tongues I couldn't explain myself but somehow I escaped without paying extra. Perhaps she was tired of arguing about five korunas.

The train arrived at the ungodly hour of six in the morning and our hostel did not have a 24-hour reception. So we ate breakfast by the Vltava, enjoying the Prague scenery. I'm unsure why I'm not impressed by the view. After all, people call Prague the most beautiful city in central Europe, and since Prague was largely untouched by the war many of its quaint buildings were originals.

Prague was fine at dawn, and soon it became less fine when the tourists woke up. OK, I was a tourist too, and we were in the tourist area. But my idea of Prague was Kafka and Smetana and the Velvet Revolution, not spires and a town square that looks like every other where tourists sit under beer advertisements and a crowded castle that's not worth the entrance fee. The romantic image was at once broken and I spent my first visit to Prague disliking it very much, and also I was unhappy with our Turkey train ride situation, and Sergey and Marge leaving. We had trouble finding reasonably priced and tasting food in Prague and started visiting supermarkets more often, meaning that we mostly ate bread, cheese, and sausages. I found the fare monotonous and was eating to live and not to enjoy, which added to my dissatisfaction and I longed to return to Canada, or more precisely Vancouver. For 200 CDN, my air receipt said, I could change my return ticket.

I grew sicker in Prague (I say it's the Russian virus) and spent about 20 hours sleeping continuously one day. The next day we took a train to Kutna Hora where the Sedlec ossuary, a church decorated with human bones, was located. Outside the train station was a house labeled "Traveler Hell S.O.S.". Upon closer inspection the second "l" in "Hell" was originally a "p". According to a letter posted in front of the house it was originally a travelers' help place, and the owner left after being driven out by the local officials, apparently (according to the owner) because he was telling the tourists to Kutna Hora to just walk to the ossuary instead of taking a bus or a taxi, and that there was nothing else to see in the town. I must say both of those are good advices. We took the first but not the second.

Sedlec ossuary was interesting. The site was a mass grave for victims of the Plague, and in the 19th century a Czech created the present decoration from those bones to symbolize that the dead belonged to the same community as the living. In the centre hung a chandelier, allegedly containing every bone in the human body. A Japanese tour group came in after us and the eerie atmosphere in the ossuary gave away to chatter that I could somewhat understand. Since the train back to Prague was not until a few hours later, we decided to check out the town of Kutna Hora. There were signs pointing to the town centre and we thought it meant there was something to see. However in the entire town there was a total of three things open, two of them were cafes and one was a sports bar. They must be the entire income of the town. What a waste of half a day. My advice was that you only need at most two hours in Kutna Hora.

Now for the best part of Kutna Hora and also of Prague so far: We found a "grep" flavored drink at a supermarket in Kutna Hora. Earlier we found "grep" flavored ice-cream near the town square in Prague. "Grep" meant "grapefruit" in Czech, but to us it meant the best *nix utility and to eat and drink grep was totally the thing to do. To tell the truth the grep drink was quite vile and I refused to drink it when I returned to Prague later, but for some reason Luke and Julian enjoyed it very much. I think it had more to do with the price than the taste.

We completely underestimated the cost of staying in Prague. We had to withdrew money multiple times, and still we kept running out. We had not realized that we should just have one person withdraw money to save on service fees, and the biggest winner here was probably the bank. We stupidly went to a laundry place advertised at the hostel and had to pay an arm and a leg to wash two loads of clothes. I had known there was also a laundromat at the train station and it probably was better priced, like everything at train stations were.

We sent off Sergey and Marge, bought a six-pack of Czech Budweiser, and went to take care of things related to going to Turkey. Czech Bud was indeed better than American Bud but still nothing to write home about. What was worthy of writing home about was that we lacked a bottle opener. There was not one at the hostel, and we were totally pathetic at opening it with other tools. Every bottle was a struggle.

Everybody spoke English (other than the toilet attendant) in Prague so far. Everything was tourist-priced and of tourist-quality. There were too many drunk Brits at seven p.m., and I didn't know what's so lovely about a bridge with statues or a large clock tower. I didn't know why there were so many "Bohemian glass" shops and why the souvenir shops sold Putin matryoska and "Russian hats", or why anybody thought a "Czech me out" t-shirt was a good idea. When was I going to leave Prague? When was I going back to Canada?

Tags: grad trip, prague, travel
Current Location: hong kong

I'm heading off to Hokkaido (Sapporo, Hakodate, and a few hot springs in between) in a few hours. I'm looking forward to the sea urchins.

I've been lazier than I wanted to in sorting and uploading HK pictures (still more than 100 that I haven't uploaded), and then there are hundreds of Shanghai and Europe pictures (and entries) to work on. I expect the pool of pictures to be processed when I come back to at least double.

Tags: flickr, travel
Current Location: hong kong

I've ran off to Shanghai for the last few days. Shanghai is supposedly one of the most popular places for HKers to visit. A glance at HK travel books will tell you what this implies: the only information contained within involves the latest food and shopping. I await the publishing of travel books that combine intellectual material and food and shopping.

For foreigners and investors Shanghai is certainly a very attractive place, with its growing economy and increasing status, but for HKers I think it's only appealing for the price. Like when visiting any "cheap" place, keep in mind that it's only cheap for me, the tourist. When visiting Shanghai, keep in mind its position in China. Shanghai, being one of the centres of China's rapid development, is really depressing. The night sky around the Bund and across the river in Pudong was lit with tens of thousands of bulbs and spotlights—what is this to the Chinese who live in yet-electrified villages, far away from the coast and the industrial centres? RMBs are burnt in spectacular fireworks to greet the leaders who came to Shanghai to attend the SCO summit—what is this to those who make only several hundred RMBs a month? I sat behind a group of Korean businessmen on the maglev with their cameras out, and my mother asked me what brand I thought they were using. Without even thinking I answered "Samsung", but what would I answer if it's a group of Shanghaiese businessmen?

I also sport some HKese bitterness. I knew HK as the "pearl of the orient", and even though Shanghai–Hong Kong relations have a long history (HSBC is the Hong Kong–Shanghai Banking Co. after all, and many of the old names in HK, like Wing On and Sincere, are from Shanghai) and things have changed since I emigrated I'm used to HK being the investor's choice, it being the economic powerhouse, and I'm uneasy with the idea of Shanghai overtaking HK economically. It's with mixed feelings that I found out that Shanghai has buildings that look almost exactly like Times Square in Causeway Bay, and ones named Hong Kong this, Hong Kong that. I've criticized that the major thing China has going for it is the massive population and the cheap labor and consumer market it represents. While this is not a bad thing I'd like China to be known as more than cheap (in price and quality) "made in China" goods, and copied items!

Here is the end of the serious stuff about Shanghai.

Tags: shanghai, travel

This is part 2 in the eastern Europe trip series.

These two damned days of train travel was the singular source of my stress the entire trip.

When we were planning the trip, Turkey was the stop. My mom questioned my sanity when I told her we were going to Istanbul, saying that given our tight schedule it was too out of the way, especially since we were going by train. Die Bahn claimed at the time that there was a direct train from Prague to Istanbul and so we thought it would be all good. This was untrue!! Maybe the schedules changed in May. In Warsaw we thought we should make reservations for a sleeper to Istanbul, and we could not find the train on PKP's (Polish national railway) website. The other route suggested by Die Bahn was to go to Vienna first, go to another train station in Vienna, go to Sofia, then get on another train to Istanbul. The transfers are very tight and we didn't like this route at all. I was puzzled about the missing Prague–Istanbul train. I didn't like uncertainty when two whole days of travel and a deadline (hostel booking in Istanbul) were involved. Stress level: medium.

I thought perhaps the people at PKP would know about this train and we should call. Both Luke and his stepdad were skeptical that they would know anything about it because neither end was in Poland. The stepdad was especially skeptical of this and kept saying how they would likely have nothing for us even when he was dialing the number. The surprise when the person on the phone let loose a series of train transfers that will lead us from Prague to Istanbul! For whatever reason there was no direct train between Prague and Istanbul, and the Balkan Express, the train to Istanbul, started in Belgrade (this was also untrue. train 491 started in Vienna). We should go from Prague to Budapest, then from Budapest to Belgrade, then to Istanbul. It was also apparently possible for us to make reservations for all these trains in Poland (untrue as we would soon find out!). I thought we would do this in Krakow, our last stop in Poland, since Luke can speak Polish and it would be better than us trying to bicker with the Czechs (wrong!). Stress level: low.

First evening in Krakow we went to the ticket booth at the station. I wasn't sure what happened since Luke did the speaking, but we didn't get anything reserved and it was decided that we better get printouts of all the trains on the route. From what I recall, the ticket clerk looked like she hated her job and since it was late she would rather for us to not bother her. In the second evening we found the amazingly cheap internet cafe, right in the old town square ie. tourist central, and we got lots of stuff printed plus internet usage for a total of seven zlotys. Ahh I love non-euro countries. (note: at this point we hadn't visited Prague, which was expensive as hell, at least in the tourist areas) Armed with the papers we went to the train station again. More Polish was spoken. The clerk complained that since it was late she didn't know how much of the system she could access and might not be able to do much. She suggested that we return the next day but how could we?? We were taking the night train to Prague! "What? You could do all the bookings in Prague and it would be half the price than here!" was her reply. OK, we'd go to Prague then. Stress level: low.

After sending Sergey and Marge off a couple days later, we went to the Praha-Holesovice station to book our mega-trip. We showed the clerk the itinerary we printed in Krakow, she messed around with the computer, and told us she could only make a reservation for the Prague–Budapest train. What!? The Prague–Budapest train was the least of my worries:

From	To	Duration
Prague	Budapest	7 hours (day)
Budapest	Belgrade	7 hours (night)
Belgrade	Istanbul	22+ hours

You see, my biggest worry was the ability to come back to Canada, and I was fed horror stories of train travel in sitting class, about gypsies stealing all your stuff when you were sleeping (the sitting cars were unlocked and everybody could walk through it and into the compartments). The Sofia–Istanbul stretch at night was rumored to be especially popular with gypsies, and I did not like the idea of being stuck in Bulgaria! Reservations were mandatory for sleepers. There was also the possibility of not being able to get on the train in Belgrade, if it was full, because there was only one train per day and if we miss it we would be stuck in Belgrade for one day and be late to Istanbul for one day, meaning that our hostel reservation would be canceled. The Prague–Budapest day train was the least worrisome leg and happened to be the only leg we could make a reservation for. Argh! Stress level: high.

We had to visit the vicinity of Praha hlavni nadrazi (I love this word) anyway and decided to try again with the reservations there. There we encountered the most amazing railway clerk ever: First he tried making the reservations and got the same result as the clerk at Praha-Holesovice. He tried a bunch of other things, checking our printouts with Die Bahn (everybody used Die Bahn everywhere. The Germans knew what they were doing), etc., and after a long time told us he could make reservations for Prague–Budapest and Budapest–Belgrade, but not Belgrade–Istanbul, ie. the major cause of my stress. Well, it was better than nothing and as we were going to just pay for the reservations we could make, thank him, and leave he pulled out a giant book of train schedules, found the Belgrade–Istanbul train, checked our printout with the book station by station and train number by train number, and made sure that the train indeed existed. I personally was very very impressed. "Try in Budapest," he said. Stress level: high.

Next day we went to Budapest on an EuroCity train. It was a really popular route and I made a mental note to make a reservation when we eventually make the same trip in the other direction. In Budapest we tried again with two clerks, one more helpful than the other again, and were told that the Belgrade–Istanbul reservation was impossible to make from Budapest and that we ought to do it in Belgrade. ARGH! "How far in advance do we need to make the reservation?" "In Budapest our computer systems close six hours before the departure time." Six hours?? We were due to arrive in Belgrade two hours before train 491 was scheduled to leave, and if the Serbs do it the same way as the Magyars it sounded like we were screwed. What could we do, but go to Belgrade anyway? I stewed in stress for the next four hours, because we arrived at Budapest Keleti Palyaudvar at 1930 and the Belgrade-bound train was not until 2330. Stress level: very high.

To add to the stress, the Belgrade train did not appear on the departure boards until something like seven minutes before the scheduled departure time, and I kept worrying that maybe the train was super late or had gone missing. Sanity was escaping me.

However there was also the funny and good in Budapest. Here Julian and I tasted the 400 forint fire-grilled, spicy, and tasty gyro, and Luke tasted the 400 forint greasy, spicy, and tasty gyro. They would now be collectively known as the "400 forint gyro", in the same tradition as the "three kopeck bun" and the "312 kopeck vodka". We also saw the "Australian guy and MEC girl", a blond guy wearing a backpack bearing an Australian flag patch and a girl with MEC items. We couldn't figure out their nationality (the singular was important in the confusion). They ended up getting on the same train we did, but to a different destination. Trains often had two different destinations. Cars got decoupled and coupled, and whether you would end up at the proper destination was dependent on whether you got on the right car. This particular train went to Belgrade (us) and Sofia (Australian guy and MEC girl).

The entire night on the Budapest–Belgrade train (we were in a very nice Austrian car) I hallucinated that Sergey and Marge were still with us. I suppose I was too used to them being in the same room as I was while I slept.

We arrived at Belgrade bright and early at six am, and made a beeline for the ticket booth, but not before noting that an Ukrainian girls' sports team were just leaving Belgrade on an Ukrainian-colored train to Kiev. You know the drill at the ticket booth: "We couldn't make the reservation". However we could try to get one from the conductor for fourteen euros. OK, I hoped there was a space for us... Stress level: Extremely high. Two hours. We sat around the platform. There were too many people for my liking. More people meant more competition for a space on the train. A weird Serbian guy named Dragan started talking to us. He originally seem benign, said he wanted to practise English, and told us a thing or two about Serbia. Then suddenly he started saying that he escaped from the military and showed us a beret hidden in his jacket. Things became fishier when he asked us for a couple of dinars so he could go home and escape from the military.

All the people on the platform were actually not trying to compete with us. They were going to Romania. (insert Luke scrunchy face here) Our train arrived on time and in a totally anticlimatic turn of event the three of us and the conductor were the only people in the car. ARGH! All the stress for nothing!

This car was painted "JZ" for "Jugoslovenskih Zeleznica" and it looked as outdated as the term "Yugoslavia", but not as outdated as the Yugoslavian locomotive that was choking to death pulling all of four cars across Serbia at a crawl. As Luke put it the car looked like some guy put it together from planks in an hour, and the water in the toilets was not functioning properly. As for the locomotive, let's say at one point the railway tracks ran parallel to a highway, and a bus sped past our dear train. I was in the habit of checking the time against the scheduled time station by station, and found out that we were late, and Die Bahn did not know about all the stations in the Balkans.

We were crawling across Serbia for most of the day and I had lots of time to observe the landscape. It was rocky and hilly. We passed through tunnel after tunnel. Dilapidated (war-torn?) buildings and sad-looking farms made up the towns. The Czech and Slovakian countryside were stereotypically beautiful and at one point on the Prague–Budapest train ride I marveled at the stereotypical train scenery outside the window: rolling hills in the background, lush green grass all over, a quaint cottage, and a stream running along the tracks. Not so the Serbian countryside.

We crossed the Serbian-Bulgarian border two hours behind schedule. Bulgarians do the border formalities the same way as the Russians. They take your passport, go away for an hour, and come back with them stamped. This, combined with my unstable mental state at the time (still recovering from the reservations adventures) and the broken Yugoslavian locomotive that the engineer was constantly testing by firing it up and down, gave me the irrational idea that the train would leave the border station before the Bulgarians returned my passport. Then I would have no passport when crossing the Bulgarian-Turkish border and I would be stuck at random Bulgarian border town in the middle of the night. A Bulgarian border guard exited the post with a stack of passports and I tried to guess if ours were in the stack. Canadian passports should be something like neon green instead of dark blue! Then I'd be able to pick out mine from the stack. After forever the Bulgarians did return my passport.

We noticed the Bulgarian border guard left our conductor's compartment with a couple of beers and discovered that our conductor sold beer for one euro apiece. To entering Bulgaria! We bought three beers. We tried to cool them by sticking them outside the train window but the train was moving too slowly for it to be effective; in fact the beer might have warmed in the sun. We still had no beer opener (this problem also arose in Prague) and instead of trying to open it by Luke's belt like in Prague we decided to open it by conductor. Apparently, beer could be opened with a train window. The Montenegro beer was less vile than the Ukrainian beer. I nominated Luke to wash our radishes (I was lazy; I didn't want to try to clean radishes when the water came out of the tap at a speed of 1 mL/minute or something) and he managed to get one stuck in the drain, making the sink even less useful than before.

In Sofia the Australian guy and MEC girl returned! I guess like us, their real destination was Istanbul. We left Bulgaria in a similar fashion as we entered in the middle of the night, except with less stress since I was more concerned with sleeping at the time. The conductor woke us up some time later saying it's the Turkish border. We waited in the compartment as usual but nobody came. Turkey does it differently than everybody else: instead of the border guards coming in to stamp our passports or taking them away to stamp, we leave the train to get them stamped. Afterwards, they come in to check that they are indeed stamped. The reason they don't just come in and stamp the passports on the train eludes me. Anyway, we paid an exorbitant amount for the tourist visa, ascertained that Austrialian guy was indeed Australian and MEC girl was indeed Canadian by peeking at their passports, went back to sleep, and got into Istanbul uneventfully but ridiculously late, despite us being free of the Yugoslavian locomotive since entering Bulgaria. It seemed that while cars from different nations get coupled randomly along the route, the locomotive stayed at its home country and we got a different one every time we crossed a border.

Before I left I thought the two day journey would be really painful, but it was not the case. Train travel was much more comfortable than flying. I spent something like 80% of my time on trains sleeping, 10% reading, and 10% eating and shitting. This sleeping ratio was probably less impressive than the conductors', who seemingly spend 95% of their time sleeping, only waking up to wake us up for border crossings and when we arrive at our destination. The swaying motion of the train was most sleep-inducing. I achieved a similar percentage of sleep on my most recent flight (14 hours) to Hong Kong but only with the help of (legal!) pharmaceuticals. On trains, it's zZzzZZzZZZzzz all around.

Tags: grad trip, trains, travel

This is part 1 in an unordered and sporadic series about my trip to eastern Europe. Pictures are mostly taken by Marge, some by Sergey, very few by me until Budapest.

I remember being in Kiev fondly. It is nice to visit a city with somebody local, and in our travel group we have Sergey who lived in Kiev for many years. Kiev, like many of the capitals (not to mention cities) of the former Soviet bloc countries, is not amongst the top European destinations. The only exception I can think of now would be Prague. I knew very little about Kiev and Ukraine before I left other than that it is a former Soviet republic, that they had the Orange Revolution (thanks to Sergey's t-shirt and Yulia Tymoshenko), and that they make pysanky during Easter. There does not seem to be a lot for a tourist to do in Kiev.

We traveled to Kiev from Moscow on the train "Ukraina", painted blue and yellow. They are the Ukrainian national colors and as I would soon find out the Ukrainians really are fond of those colors, maybe partially due to the upcoming ninth of May celebrations and partially due to nationalism. Even now I still associate the color combination with Ukraine. Anyway, not only was the train painted blue and yellow there was a blue and yellow rug in the WC. This immediately put this train above the St. Petersburg–Moscow train because the Ukrainian colored rug absorbs the water or piss or something that always cover the floor of the train WCs... However the toilet paper was still of the state-issued variety.

The Russian tiredness continued. The train left at 2000 and within 30 minutes of departure Sergey and Marge fell asleep. Luke and I decided to sample the Ukrainian beer that might or might not be free that was sitting in our compartment and I must say that beer is one of the most disgusting things I have ever tried. Luckily I had an... accident with the beer some time later and spilt most of it, soaking Luke's backpack and also Sergey's socks. Good for them I say. I was also very sleepy and all I remember of the train ride was disgusting Ukrainian beer, spilling disgusting Ukrainian beer, sleep, Russians grabbing my passport at the border crossing, sleep, Russians returning with my passport (now stamped!), sleep, Ukrainians coming onboard to stamp my passport four hours later, sleep, woken up by the conductor, paying for the food and drink (an incredibly low amount), and we had arrived in Kiev on schedule.

We stayed at Sergey's grandparents' apartment. Sergey's grandfather picked us up from the train in "the limo". The sight that greeted us outside of the train station was a McDonald's and I noted that in Kiev, McDonald's was not in Cyrillic.

The first shower in Kiev felt absolutely wonderful. We slept on trains for the last three nights and so we could not shower. We walked around sightseeing every day, and it was warm in Russia. Luke continued to claim that his feet and socks smelled like a coniferous forest..,

Our days in Kiev passed as follows: wake up mid-morning, eat a leisurely lunch at home, walk around for a few hours, come home to eat dinner, maybe take a walk again afterwards, go home and sleep. We ate kielbasa (which Sergey's grandmother kept telling us that Sergey liked very much) and other sausages, cheese, tasty soups, bread, cheesecake, fruits, so on and so forth. One evening we had dinner at Sergey's other grandmother's apartment and she served meatballs, some kind of small fish that's apparently something Ukrainians must have, varenyky with and without meat, Easter cake, and generally a lot of food. Sergey had to evacuate the apartment because two cats lived there and since he forgot his allergy medicine he was starting to turn red.

My feelings of Ukrainian food are the same as my feelings of European food in general: not something I would eat everyday. I find the food too heavy for my Asian Pacific Rim palate. I did develop a fondness for the soups. I like brothy soups (thick cream soups are not my thing) and the soups Sergey's grandmother made (a borsht and a meatball soup) were wonderful.

The area Sergey's other grandmother lived was what was known as a "bedroom community". All the buildings were the same (literally the same) and people only live there, not work or anything else. I lived in one in California last term too... Because everything looked similar we got lost trying to find the metro after walking along the waterfront for a bit. The manly sense of direction failed and we had to seek help from a minibus.

What did we see in Kiev? We saw some monuments and architecture, squares, statues of the founders of Kiev and of the symbol of Kiev, museums, the forest, the cave monastery. We really just wandered around the city that was built on seven hills, walked down the kashtan tree-lined streets, strolled along the shore of the Dnieper (where there was fish and where Luke dipped his feet), walked about a million steps up the hill, with Sergey and his friend in Kiev Paul leading the way. For some reason we attended a get-together of people from Sergey's high school at a bar that served no Ukrainian beers (we were keen on trying a non-disgusting Ukrainian beer) and Luke and I received the wrong beer (Staropramen instead of Stella). For some other reason I decided that trying to speak French (I took French in grade eight only) would be funny and since one thing led to another I started learning random Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian phrases. Walking around at night practising insulting and not insulting phrases that the Ukrainians may or may not understand was quite something... I was a little annoyed at Sergey for ignoring us at the time (but I understand) and liberally sprinkled his name in the insulting phrases. He was really focused on something else though and didn't notice at all. Oh well, I didn't mind.

The Kiev metro system was very good. Obviously it was not as big or old as the one in Moscow but it passed all my criteria for a good metro system. We never had to wait more than a few minutes for the metro. Because Kiev was very hilly, the stations were built deep underground. In one station we had to take two very very long escalators before we got to the surface. The trains of course had a blue and yellow paint job. At one point we took a tram. According to Sergey the trams and maybe also the trolley buses were being replaced by buses. I love things that run on rails and I felt this was a shame.

In the true tradition of our trip we could not visit Chernobyl. Sergey did not particularly want to go when we were planning the trip but Luke and I convinced him, or maybe he just went along with our enthusiasm for Chernobyl. However the time we were in Kiev coincided with the 20th anniversary of the disaster and the site was only open to official people. Paul did a bit of running around for us before he was told of the situation.

The forest we visited with Sergey's grandfather was planted after WW2, over the front line of Kiev. There were trees, birch trees especially, and leftover pillboxes, barbed wire, and trenches. Sergey's grandfather explained that there was never a big battle in Kiev, and the pillboxes were used for cover fire for the retreating troops. From the empty bottles it looked like the pillboxes were prime locations for vodka consumption. We found the blown-up pillbox. Apparently the people inside blew themselves up to avoid being captured (or something?). How much explosives was necessary to blow up one of those things and they had that much stored inside? There were also monuments and graves to the soldiers who died defending Kiev. Sergey's grandfather told us (and Sergey translated) about Chernobyl as we were walking in the forest. We drove to another area by a lake in the limo afterwards, saw a gecko, and skipped stones.

Marge fell sick on the second day. She probably caught something in Russia. That was one vicious virus and all of us caught it eventually, with varying degrees of severity. In my case the virus stayed with me all the way to Budapest three weeks later.

Sergey's grandparents were great. Sergey's grandmother was especially amusing. She was as equally enthusiastic in communicating with us in English as she was in seeing her grandson. I guess Sergey felt a little funny about this and I found his reactions ("Babushka!") really, really funny. It was like what I expected non-Asian grandmothers to be like. They really were wonderful people, trying to make our stay as good as possible. They took good care of Marge when she was sick and stayed in bed all day, fed us, did our laundry, woke up at 430 so they could drive us to the airport when we flew to Warsaw, and so many other things.

Speaking of the grandparents they had a giant (but still spoon-sized) Nazi trophy spoon from the war that Sergey ate soup from. We saw the same spoon on display in the war museum that we walked a billion steps up to. Paul's friend who worked in the museum told him that there was a corner dedicated to Paul's grandfather and so we tried to find it but failed. It was too bad that the plaques and signs in the museum were all in Russian or Ukrainian because I would really like to be able to read them. Outside there was a little display of military equipment and for a couple of hryvnias we could go inside some helicopter that Sergey and Luke were very excited about. We had already looked at tanks and airplanes in Moscow though.

In our last evening in Kiev Sergey's grandparents asked us if we would like wine. We drank sweet wine in small glasses and toasted to Sergey's grandparents for their hospitality. They proposed a toast to the four of us travelers, that we will always keep in touch, even when we are in different parts of the world, and beware if one of us run off... My closest friends from four years and eight months in Waterloo, the last four months, working on ECE427, playing badminton on Wednesdays and Fridays, talking until sunrise, playing Munchkin and Risk, everything converged in the moment I raised the glass and downed the wine. I am now sitting on the flight to Vancouver, having said goodbye to my friends and to Ontario, soon I will bid Canada farewell, and I sincerely hope that we will keep the promise because these people have made my time in Ontario memorable despite me being on a different stream and despite Luke being the only person in the group whom I knew for more than four months. It was only the first week of our trip but in my mind the goodbyes had already been said, in Kiev.

Tags: grad trip, kiev, travel

I'm back from my whirlwind tour of eastern Europe. I brought no souvenirs but a passportful of visas and a gigantic bag of coinage from 8 countries. Today the bag is lost. Last time I was sure I had it was in Bratislava.

Perhaps it had gone the way of the vanishing apple :( (the story of the vanishing apple may be documented in the future)

Flying back

The flight back to YYZ was mostly uneventful due to my deployment of the vodka strategy. Crossing the border was more exciting: I suppose I look suspicious declaring $0 to customs with my HK looks, and I had to be searched for undeclared goods. Half a ham/cheese croissant from Prague, costing 19 Kc (9.50 Kc for half), was confiscated because bringing meat into Canada was not allowed. The customs official asked me if I wanted a receipt, and I was so caught off-guard that I said "no". I shouldn't have.

Tags: travel

The Liars, my new favorite band, is starting their next tour in Warsaw and Krakow, Poland (of all places! frankly if you have a band, would you kick off your tour in Poland?), conveniently several days before when I'll be in Poland and they're leaving Europe conveniently when I'll be in Europe, and touring North America conveniently when I'll not be in North America. What do I say? I say down with Russia! Let's go to Poland first! Logistics and travel buddies seem to say otherwise though. If my visa application is rejected, I know where I'll make a detour...

Tags: liars, travel

It's fun to travel in Korea when we looked Korean (well, I assume I did, since everybody thought I was until I demonstrate my lack of ability to speak Korean), spoke English all the time, and when one of us could speak Korean. They love English! crazycrazy explained that they actually love education, and education in English speaking places was better. I believe that. I heard that Santa Clara had a decent school system, and hey, there were Koreans everywhere. Some of the various fun experiences related to us speaking English:

• While in the sauna in a fantastic Korean bathhouse in Dongnae, a woman asked us about speaking English and crazycrazy, found out that she could speak Korean, and they had a lengthy discussion. Apparently she ran a language school, and I forgot what it was that they talked about. Later she gave us 50% off coupons for the bathhouse. Yay for English.
  
  
• While on a bus the driver heard us speaking English, found out that crazycrazy spoke Korean (they all start this way), and gave her his business card. Apparently, he wanted to send his daughter to study in Canada, and wanted to find out more about it.
  
  
• On the subway an old guy started yelling "Hey! Hey! Where you from?" to us. I told him I was from Canada, and he didn't believe me! Once again crazycrazy came to the rescue, and explained that I wasn't Korean, but he still looked skeptical. I guess we looked Korean, but spoke English, and so something's not quite right. Applause goes to this guy for speaking out!
  
  
• Not exactly related to speaking English, but Koreans seemed amused at my love for Korean food. crazycrazy's grandmother was worried that I wouldn't like the breakfast (it was very good); her cousin often said "she likes Korean food!?". I didn't know what her uncle thought since she told him to not look at me funny while I was eating Korean sashimi. (I also ate a cocoon. It wasn't bad but it wasn't good.)
  
  
• We ran into three American (we think, by the accent) tourists at the aquarium when the typhoon was coming. They asked us if we were going to the subway station, and if they could follow us since they forgot where it was. Fine, and then they wanted to go to the shopping district near Busan National University and asked us how to get there. You're the one holding the guide book for fuck's sake! Fine, we'll show you, where "show" was defined as "pointing to the station on the station map that said 'Pusan Nat'l Univ.' in English after looking at the map for a minute because we have no idea how to get there either". Turns out that they needed to transfer at the station where we were getting off. They asked us how to get on the transfer. Well, I had about as much clue as you did! crazycrazy looked around for signs, and they just stood around. And there was a big English sign saying where to transfer. Nothing that couldn't be accomplished with a bit of observation skills and a subway map, once again for fuck's sake!
  
  
• The pièce de résistance: somehow we started chatting to a salesgirl in Nampo-dong. We were agonizing whether we wanted to buy pillows, since the ones we wanted to buy were gone. The salegirls must have found our agony amusing. Anyway, turned out that she's a design student, and she wanted to study in Canada, maybe in Vancouver or Toronto. She asked us all kinds of questions about how expensive Canada was, how long we were there to be able to speak English, and so on, and when crazycrazy and I were discussing something she told us that she felt like she's watching CNN. Wow, that's the highest compliment we've ever received about our English. Considering my wonderful HK accent I didn't exactly deserve it :p We talked for a long time and at the end I gave her a TTC token... I hope she'll need to use it at some point. We bought pillows too.

Did I forget something?

The more cynical of you may now think that the only reason I got so much help at the airport was that I spoke English, but I'm not quite cynical enough yet and would like to continue to think that Koreans really were very nice people.

Tags: busan, english, korea, koreans, travel
Current Music: Ratatat - Ratatat (2004) - Seventeen Years

I'm bored so I'll start writing up stuff from Korea. I hope you're bored too because it's long.

Why I Love Koreans: Part 1

I had quite an adventure getting to crazycrazy's grandmother's apartment. The plan was that I'd arrive at Gimhae Airport, and crazycrazy would be there, and we'd go to the apartment. In reality, when I got to the lobby crazycrazy was nowhere in sight. I thought "well, maybe she's late", and waited. And waited. 45 minutes later I was getting worried and tried to call her grandmother, "tried" being the keyword here. Her grandmother picked up but I had no clue what she's saying, and she probably had no clue what I was saying other than that I was asking for crazycrazy. So, I decided to ask one of the airport officials to call her for me, but he also didn't know English, and went and got one of the armed (with rifles!) security guards, who knew a bit of English.

Korean pay phones took calling cards or coins. The biggest coin they took was 100 won, which was a bit more than 10 cents CDN, and if you wanted to keep talking you have to keep dumping in coins. This security guard started putting in his own coins and talked for a long time. His English was pretty crappy too (I get jumpy when I say things like this in English, so let me explain that this is just an observation and my Korean is infinitely crappier) and the whole 10 minute conversation was condensed into one hand gesture (X made with arms) and "home empty". Eventually he got another armed guard whose English was slightly better, and we manage to (1) get crazycrazy's grandmother to call the pay phone when crazycrazy shows up, and (2) understand each other.

Some more time passed, but no phone call or crazycrazy. The security guards now needed to kick me out, because the airport was closing for the night. Somehow we manage to communicate that I wanted to try going to crazycrazy's place myself, and the original airport official called her on his cell phone to get the address. By now, I was in a dark airport with a whole bunch of security guards and airport officials around me, trying to help this foreigner, and I was pretty impressed.

Anyway, after making sure that I had enough Korean money, the plan was that I'd take a cab there. Since they asked me to wait outside I thought they were going to call a cab. 15 minutes later a police car showed up. Apparently cabs didn't come to the airport after closing time, so they called their police colleagues to take me somewhere where they could hail a cab. When I got to the police station one of the policemen called crazycrazy's grandmother on his cell phone again to confirm the address, and got a cab for me.

Eventually I end up at the door of the apartment, and instead of just dumping me in front of the building the cab driver went to knock on the door which I assumed was to make sure I really was where I should be, but nobody answered. He tried to ask me something, but of course I had no clue what he's talking about, so he called crazycrazy's grandmother (on his cell phone again). Nobody answered. My only thought was "WTF" at this point, for I had no plan C. As both of us stood around thinking WTF, another cab pulled up, and thank gcd! crazycrazy and her grandmother came out of the cab! Her grandmother paid for my cab fare (ridiculously cheap by North American standards) even though I had enough money.

That was a fun evening.

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Just wanted to add that whenever we had a communication problem, they would speak in Korean quietly amongst themselves, probably to talk about how to say it in English since I heard random English words in the conversation, and then they would try telling me something in English/gestures again, When I passed through Canadian customs a Korean family whose English competence was slightly better than my Korean competence was at the booth next to mine, and the customs person, after finding out that their English sucked, just asked them the same questions in English but louder, which was pretty funny since the interpreter booth was right behind him. I know that if you speak English loudly enough people would understand you and all and maybe Korean wasn't that kind of language (sarcasm please), but can't we separate ourselves from the Americans some more? (only half kidding.... which half?)

Tags: airports, busan, korea, koreans, travel
Current Music: Murder By Death - Who WIll Survive, And What Will Be Left Of