A very quiet night last night guaranteed one of the better nights sleep that I have had in a while. Even though it was -29 degrees outside, it was a comfortable 21 in my room thanks to the air conditioning. Imagine trying to live in those conditions when heating like that wasn't available - crazy. I'm now thinking the settlers in New Zealand never really hard it THAT hard. Maybe though, different situations called for different types of challenges...
Anyhow - a realizing start to my day is slowly going down hill. I started of with a late start, an easy breakfast of oatmeal and a nice late checkout was very nice. Across about 2 roads form my hotel was the train station. My jeans felt rather frozen by the time it took me to walk there (about 3 minutes) and I was glad to be in the train station. Until it was swarmed with a bunch of 14ish year old kids. About 60-70 of them in all. I think they must be like a French class out on a trip or something, as they periodically break into snippets of French. I think I understand why people don't like the French. Why do people suddenly become about 3 times more arrogant when they start using that language? I dunno, but they are really getting annoying and I'm really enjoying the fact that Edmonton will be the most eastern stop on my trip now.
Anyhow, I'm now on the train for Edmonton which left a little late today so I will be getting into Edmonton around 6pm tonight and not sure, but I think that it shouldn't be too hard to find somewhere to stay tonight.
Pretty good actually being a kiwi traveling around. Probably about half the people who attempt to guess where I am from generally say Australia, but their eyes light up and their smiles broaden when I say New Zealand. Makes you feel kind of welcome when you see a little rush of relief or happiness come over them. It seems that Australians are look upon as semi-troublemakers, and there are probably a few too many around for Canadians comfort. I've only had 1 person guess that I was from New Zealand on the first guess, which is surprising. I thought I would have been discovered a lot more. But it's good fun to feel a little special form time to time.
A little bit later...
Well I got to Edmonton. The train I was on was massive (about 20 carriages I think) which is probably about the biggest train I have ever been on. Also, it was pretty full with people and I actually didn't talk to anyone... for a whole 2 hours. Dunno how I managed that. I decided to strike up a conversation with one of the adults who seemed to be trying to manage the groups of teenagers periodically speaking French. His name was Mike and he was from Edmonton. It turned out that they were indeed a school trip who went up to Jasper on Thursday and were now coming back home on the train. On the trip the kids had to speak French all the time as part of their class, which I thought was pretty interesting. I chatted to Mike for over an hour and he pointed out a few things for me to try during my short stay in Edmonton. The mall being the main thing (it actually is the biggest in the world - although not the best if you ask a lot of people) and the main strip for pubs being the next. It was very lucky that I did actually speak to Mike and chat to him, because when we got off the train at Edmonton there were no taxi's, shuttles or anything to take us (me and the other travellers) into town as the train station was miles away from the city... So luckily for me, Mike and his group had all their luggage put on a tour bus with a bunch of Hong Kong tourists (camera city!) and the bus drove away into the night. So they were waiting around at the train station for ages as well. When a taxi driver did turn up to the station he could hardly speak English and I was warned by some of the other travelers to watch it with these guys too so I decided on a cunning plan. I asked Mike if he knew of anyone heading to the part of Edmonton that I wanted to go to, and he was very nice and said he would happily take me and show me some sights on the way as well. I met his wife Michelle and his daughter Brianna, which was cool . I got the feeling that they may have been Christians or something because they were very nice and were all very (almost druglike) happy. So I didn't swear too much on the trip, and just made French jokes instead which seemed to go down well. So I got dropped off on the main strip where all the nightlife is and got a room at a nice motel and almost went straight out and found a pub called the funky bhudda where I sat down and had a few beers. Also got some Poutine for the first time too. I have been waiting for a place that does this stuff well and I wasn't disappointed. Chips, cheese and gravy. Haha what a killer... damn Canadians always putting bloody cheese on everything! hahaha
Anyhow, the pub seemed good to start with. Basically I had walked into some sort of retro 80 pub. Almost everyone wore black and most were wearing leather jackets. The music was awesome, Guns n Roses, AC/DC and loads of 80's and 90's rock anthem classics... I was just wandering around with my beer chatting away having a good time. But, after a while, when the place had filed a bit, the music changed to techno dance music which I really don't enjoy, so I left and headed back to the motel.. Quite an interesting day eh? :-)
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