Lake Louise is the original Winter Wonderland

The whole of the Chateau as well as their children and dogs were out skating on the lake today.

All day teams of jingle-belled horses pulled sleighs around and over the lake. You can hear them coming from miles, and they sound exactly like a track from a Christmas sound effects collection. Incongruously, they are driven by cowboys.

No staff accomm for me (I'm a tan M&M)

The place I'm working at is a 'heritage lodge', which is a sort of euphemism for 'no phones, no TVs'. Part of it was built in the 1920s, another wing was added in the 60s and various additions have been made since. Each renovation was made with wildly contrasting construction materials, so that log-cabin runs on to stone runs on to brick runs on to weatherboarding. But it's a pretty little place. Mostly.

Since it's so tiny, Lake Louise employers are required by law to provide accommodation for their staff. As a result most of the village is actually staff accommodation.

The staff here live in a run-down wing at the back, hidden from the view of guests and rumored to be condemned. In a former life this was the 'youth hostel' area of the lodge, but seems to have regressed slightly since it was closed to guests. Passing through the door from the lodge to staff quarters is often like passing into a new climatic zone.

My own room isn't ready yet so I am staying in one of the cheaper guest rooms at the lodge. It's small but cosy and the duvet is a good two feet thick. It is -15 outside and I have no complaints about this whatsoever.

The Majesty of the Rockies, unappreciated

Yesterday I caught the morning Greyhound from Vancouver to Lake Louise for my new job. This took 13 hours. It was a miserable day and although I'm fairly sure we passed through most of the Rockies it was difficult to tell through all the fog and rain.

According to my guidebook the village of Lake Louise is the highest inhabited region in Canada. It was dark long before the bus stopped at the 'mall' of seven or eight shops that is Lake Louise village. The lodge is about 4km up the hill from here, so fortunately someone from the lodge had come down to pick me up.

It's difficult to appreciate the majesty of the Rockies from a Greyhound, but once I was outside even in the darkness I could see the huge, white shapes of the snowy mountains that surround the lodge. The Rockies are distinctive in their stripiness and pointiness - quite unlike NZ mountains and probably something to do with sedimentation. One of them, Mt Fairview, has stripes that run nearly diagonally to the ground and actually makes me slightly dizzy if I look at it too long.



This morning I discovered the lake, which has recently frozen over. It's somehow a lot smaller than I'd imagined it and you can walk to the far end in less than 20 minutes. You can do this either by following the little trail that goes along one side of the lake, or by walking actually ON the lake.

The Chateau - the other and much grander hotel here - has created two smooth snow-free rinks on the lake's surface. One is full of small children whizzing around expertly on hired skates. The other is set up as a hockey rink, and contains unsteady foreigners playing what I'm sure is very, very bad ice hockey. Lots of dogs around also. It seems funny they are so commonplace in a national park, but I suppose there are many fiercer wild animals here, even if they are mostly asleep at the moment.

I wish *I* had a dog

I found a really nice dog park on the banks of False Creek, right in the middle of downtown. Many cute and interesting dogs were running around the multiple levels, chasing after sticks and smaller dogs.

I was sitting at some sort of structure in the middle of the park, probably representing something very meaningful, when one of the dogs ran up to me and dropped a frisbee at my feet. It looked up at me and wagged its tail happily. A long way away a small group of people looked very exasperated.

All around the park are residential high rise buildings with ugly blue-painted water features that look like they were envisioned and possibly last maintained in the 1980s. Canadian cities seem very keen on water features, both outside and even inside some public buildings. I'm a bit disappointed I will not be here for winter to see everything freezing over. I'm curious to see what a 7-foot tall fountain looks like when it freezes.

Auditing, at night time

Now I'm working for a few weeks at some sort of government office. It's not yet clear what they do although everyone is extremely nice and don't seem to care how useless I am (yet). Still have no idea what I'm doing but I suppose I will pick it up sooner or later.

My weekend of madness applying for boring-sounding retail jobs paid off this week, when I got calls from nearly all the places I had applied to. This was encouraging but I can't help thinking that I didn't come to Canada to work at Staples, so it's a good thing I was also offered a permanent job at a lodge in Lake Louise. Vancouver is nice but a lot like what I imagine working in Auckland might be like. Lake Louise, on the other hand, is IN a Canadian national park, complete with pine trees, log cabins and large quantities of snow for much of the year. This seems a lot more like what I should be doing on a working holiday in Canada.

So, in a few months I get to be a night auditor at a small 'heritage lodge' in the Rockies. Exactly what this involves is still a bit of a mystery, but then so is my current job and this hasn't yet proved to be a problem.

temp temp temp...

The job turns out to be easy filing at an insurance office near Renfrew SkyTrain station. The first day I turn up my new employer casually informs me that she hasn't actually requested a temp but will find me work for the next two weeks anyway. This has to be a Good Sign.

The office I'm working in is part of some sort of office park, and slightly scary in that there is nothing within walking distance besides other offices, a small staff cafe and gym and some sort of grassy playing field, around which everything is inexplicably arranged. Everything is slightly too spread out and although it's deep in the Vancouver suburbs there are no signs of houses or shops anywhere.

I am, however, deeply impressed with the coffee machine, which is one of the ones with flavoured sachets you insert, and spend large portions of my breaks inventing new creations (swiss-mocha-choc-espresso, anyone?).

Apartment salvation

Finally found a place to stay near the Vancouver/Burnaby boundary, and am moving out of the hostel tomorrow. Yay.

Also found a job for 2 weeks. The agency were strangely reluctant to describe what sort of job it is, but I suppose just 2 weeks of anything can't be too terrible.

I am an Excel Master

Temp agencies are great. They have offices with pretty views over the city and make you feel intelligent with their 'technology proficiency' tests (according to one, I am an 'Excel Master'). Even my typing turns out to be not so bad, despite the fact I never learned to do it without looking where my fingers are going. So far I have registered with Spherion, Temporarily Yours, Manpower and a few others. These are downtown and easy to get to once you understand the (actually very logical) street/building numbering system. I was also briefly perplexed by Canadian elevators. Having entered the lift after one particularly harrowing proficiency test, I was unable to find the 'Ground' button to get me back down. The doors closed and I stood there like a peasant as the lift moved up to another floor. A man entered, noticed there were no buttons lit, looked at me and politely asked whether I was trying to actually get somewhere or just having a nice ride on the elevator. He then revealed that the 'M' button stands for 'Main'. Which means Ground. Thankfully we were both headed there.

I've also found a really useful job hunting center on Davies Street. They are vaguely connected to a Vancouver college but welcome anyone enthusiastically and warmly. There's free internet and phones and they even let you use their mailing address for job applications - particularly useful for me as I am STILL AT THE HOSTEL.

It's proving rather difficult to find anywhere to stay here for under $450/month. Every day I look in the papers for shared accommodation but so far the only viable option I have found turned out to be a 'single occupancy residential hotel' on Main Street, above a bar (which I'm fairly sure was a euphemism for 'homeless shelter'). The nice Fijian man at the door asked me four separate times whether I was on drugs. I am trying hard not to interpret this as a comment on my physical appearance - corpse-like from a London summer, scarecrow-like from my recent travels.

Temp salvation

Today, at the suggestion of the strange hostel man and against my better judgement, I went to several different temp agencies in search of work. Surprisingly, they all seem sure they can find me work within the next week, even the one that interviwed me on the spot when I'd really just come in to make an appointment.

It was an extremely patronising interview, the sort where an 18 year old asks you very clearly and slowly 'Please describe an occasion in the past in which you have displayed INITIATIVE'. Despite previously resolving never to bring it up in a job interview again, I ended up retelling the story about when I was 17 and working in a bakery, and somehow managed to lose a huge custom-decorated cake when the customer came to collect it. It is my standard response to any question I'm unprepared for. My version of the story is subtly different from what actually happened, in that someone else loses the cake and I end up heroically dashing down the street to hand-deliver it to the distraught, formerly cakeless customer. I really should update my interview strategy. Despite this, I'm now hopeful I will find work soon.

Job hunting (really)

Today I went on a mad job application spree, filling out forms for Toys'R'Us, MEC, Staples, Safeway and a little Italian icecream shop on Broadway. The fact that I don't really want any of these jobs in now less important than my need to get out of the hostel.

An incentive

After a good week spent trudging around downtown on the lookout for interesting job opportunities and religiously scanning every local & free paper available, the final motivator came this morning, as I woke in my windowless closet to discovering large red welts all over my legs and feet. I was pretty sure these had not been present the night before, and first thought they must be from some sort of invisible flying insect lurking in my room. Then I realised that it was fairly unlikely that such an insect would crawl all the way down the bottom of my sleeping bag for the express purpose of biting my toes, ignoring the rest of me. After a surprisingly unhelpful exchange of text messages with my family (Mum suggested I was probably suffering from the effects of skin-burrowing parasites), I resolved to consult Dr Google.

Some internet research, hanging halfway out the window to pick up the hostel's wi-fi signal, revealed something rather alarming. Bed bugs, far from being merely a cute way of getting children to go to sleep, are apparently making a 'comeback' in North America, and are commonly found at downmarket youth hostels and backpackers.

It was only slightly comforting to also find an article about an unnamed 'celebrity couple' in New York suing their building manager after they were 'bitten all over' by bedbugs in their apartment. I suspected this was not an option available to me, if only because it would involve having to listen to several more hours of 'forks' rambling, so I have vowed to find work and move into a normal place of residence as soon as humanly possible.

Job hunting (kind of)

Although Vancouver is 'booming' (apparently), I'm still looking for work. This is due more to me being picky than anything else, as literally every other retail and food store here has a 'help wanted' sign. But I strongly feel more dishwashing and checkout operation will seriously impair my will to live.

The Historic Inter-Urban Tramway of Vancouver

After completing my previous day's goals of getting an SIN number (unfortunate acronym for 'Social Insurance Number' and weirdly easy to acquire) and opening a bank account (BMO has branches at most Safeways & doesn't mind if you don't have a permanent address yet) I resolved to be a tourist for the day.

Science World was difficult to miss when I got off the Greyhound a week ago. It's a big spherical building on the waterfront that lights up in an interesting way at night time, presumably full of scien-teriffic exhibits and displays. I had just got to the entrance when I came across a tall glass-enclosed box full of plastic balls traversing many interesting obstacles on their way from the top to bottom ('The Magic of Gravity'). The exhibit was there mainly to entertain small children waiting in line for tickets with their parents, but I was fascinated and stood there for about half an hour watching as the balls rolled down tracks, effected various chimes and hooters, dropped into vortex-buckets and were lifted slowly back up to begin again. After this (and noticing the entry fee) I decided I'd probably had enough scientific enlightenment for one day, and left.

'Toot toot', went something behind me. A small red tram was pulling into a bus stop immediately opposite where I was standing. It looked almost exactly like a child's drawing of a small steam train, complete with brilliant red paint job and clouds of steam billowing from the chimney. As I got closer two elderly men in navy amateaur dramatics-looking conductor's uniforms emerged to show the three or four passengers off.

I had no idea where it was going but the train was so cute I had to get on.
'Could I buy a ticket?' I asked one of the uniformed men. He pulled a book of tickets from his conductor's bag, stamped one of them, took my money and gravely handed me the ticket.
'Now,' he explained carefully, 'you take it to the engineer.'
I looked at the other man, who was standing at most two feet away from us.
'Here you go,' I said, passing it to him. He took it solemnly, punched it with an antique clipper and gave it back to me.
'All aboard!' he said.

There were a couple of familes with small children already inside as, with generous use of both hooter and dinger, the tram chuffed merrily off. After running alongside the main road for a short distance, we split off on a scenic tour of Vancouver's prime warehouse, back lot and rubbish loading areas of the harbourside around False Creek. As we passed under a particularly ugly highway bridge a group of hooded youths waved to us cheerfully and without a hint of irony. The small children onboard waved back. It was charming.

"If you look to the left you can see where they're building the new tunnel for the Canada line." The conductor made his announcements in a strangely apologetic tone, wandering along the aisle unamplified.

The 100-year old carriages are restored beautifully with airy wood-panelled interiors and green glass, blinds and basket seats. I watched as the 6 year old in front of me, obviously a regular, casually flipped one over to convert it into a backwards-facing seat for her mother.

The authentic 1920s ads along the tops of the windows also added to the experience ("Looky mother, Martha Washington's own recipe for devil's food cake!").

After a few minutes we passed an identical tram coming the other way, then some sort of mid-way station deep in backlot land where, unsurprisingly, noone got on or off. We went on for a bit more. Then we stopped. In a kind of cutting, under another bridge. Where ever we were, this was as far as my cheapy-cheap one-way ticket would get me. It turned out to be close to Granville Island Market, where you can buy sweet cheese bagels, fudge, ragelach and many other interesting and delicious products. Unfortunately the lack of any obvious signage from the train stop prevented me from discovering this, and I bought another one-way ticket back to whence I'd come.

Prettiness, and sustenance

Look how pretty Vancouver is. You really can see the water and mountains from nearly anywhere downtown, which is very nearly an island. There are bridges all over the place.

It's also the first city I've been in with the American-style street grid system. All the streets running east-west are numbered, and each block contains certain building numbers (eg. 100 - 200), which is actually a fairly sensible way of doing things when you think about it. Having spent most the last year lost in London, the constant terror of losing my A-Z is almost completely gone.

More differences - Vancouver only really 'started' when the railway got here from the east 120 years ago, so that even the old churches here look new. And the skyscrapers, which are in various states of construction everywhere (further evidence of 'the boom').

So, I finally found a large supermarket downtown. They do exist here afterall. I found it at the end of Davies Street whilst scouting out internet cafes and stocking up on plastic crockery at the dollar shops. It might be worth mentioning that Davies Street is also lined with nice-looking restaurants and rainbow flags and is extremely cheerful even at 8.30pm on a Monday evening. At Safeway I made it my mission to hunt down North American groceries unavailable in the UK yet weirdly familliar to me through overexposure to American TV. Unfortunately the most exotic product I could find was Twinkies. These came in an industrial sized slab of 28 or so individually wrapped packets. I was fairly sure I didn't particularly want this many Twinkies, but as I'd been unsuccessful in finding any other items of any novelty, I bought them, along with some other necessities.

By the time I'd manhandled everything back to Gastown it was fairly late, but not late enough to avoid another rambling, inescapable conversation with the hostel supervisor. This time he inexplicably (and somewhat tactlessly I thought, considering the Twinkies) opened with "So, you're fairly big, aren't you?" The discussion went on to include something about his girlfriend of twenty four years ago, the burgeoning Vancouver vampire film industry and the superior specifications of his new false leg which he apparently ordered in the mail a few days ago. I got away when some more backpackers arrived.

The Twinkie monolith sits unopened beside my bed. According to the 'best before' date, I have until sometime next October to consume them. Judging by how appetising they look, it may take this long. My current theory is that the individual plastic wrappers are to keep the formaldehyde in.

Food?

Why are there no supermarkets in downtown Vancouver? The only place within half an hour's walk of the hostel is a tiny corner store in Chinatown, where I can get bread, chocolate and, if I'm feeling exceptionally wealthy, cup noodles. It is impossible to get from the hostel to the store (a journey of maybe three minutes) without being politely asked for change by at least four different homeless people.

I am fairly certain I am developing scurvy.

Cheapness in Gastown

In the interests of being cheap, I am staying at the dodgiest hostel in Vancouver. It's located in Gastown, which is Vancouver's joint upscale tourist/homeless district. Exactly how and why it can fulfil both these roles is still a bit of a mystery, but it's impossible to avoid either being asked for change or seeing man-sized bipedal mooses dressed as mounties in the entrances to tourist shops at any time of the day or night you should venture out.

Despite the cobbles, Gastown is within easy wheeley-suitcase dragging distance of Waterfront Station where the SkyTrains terminate.

My room was the cheapest I could find on hostelbookers.com back in Bromley. It's at the top of the stairs in an old building next to the Hotel Europe, and has no external windows, just a big hole into the building's main staircase which is partially covered from the other side by a tasteful wall hanging. The staircase somehow channels all the sound from everything that is happening in the building into my room.

I suspect this room was a broom closet in a not-too distant life.

Also, I can only get wi-fi on my laptop if I sit either in the laundry or halfway out a window at the end of the corridor. Whenever I do either of these things, the man who is in charge of the hostel likes to come and talk at me about his 'forks', which seem to be some sort of internet investment scheme. This conversation is both incomprehensible and impossible to escape, as whenever I try to leave he sees it as a cue to start on a new and entirely unrelated topic. So far these have involved the government's secret conspiracy to grow algae in Lake Ontario in order to reduce global warming.

I am scared.

SkyTraining

The Vancouver Greyhound station is housed in the grand old central Vancouver railway station. Unfortunately the grand old central Vancouver railway station is not particularly centrally located. So I found the SkyTrain.

I love the Skytrain. It's fast and whizzy and driverless, and, having no ticket gates, seems to run on the honesty of Vancouver citizens.

Taking the Skytrain into town at 8am on a Monday with three large items of luggage, however, is not such a great idea. All was going well until I moved a few steps to make room for some people who had just got on and the closing doors tried to eat a part of my backpack. In London, a similar thing recently happened on the Tube, but to my head. There was no obvious response from anyone in the packed carriage, despite my screams of mild panic. Today, three of my fellow passengers immediately helped to get my bag out of the way, whilst making cheerful and sympathetic comments.

This is a very different place from London.

Trans-Canada Greyhounding

The 3-day Greyhound trip from Toronto, where my plane came in, to Vancouver, where I want to stay for a few months, was surprisingly bearable. This was mainly because the bus was less than a third full most of the way, thus allowing me to stretch out (sort of) and watch the pretty autumn scenery speeding past. I also picked up a couple of new and useful pieces of Greyhound vocabulary from a fellow passenger:

Chatty Cathys: Middle aged women who sit at the front of the bus and ambush nearby passengers into hearing about their boring families for hours on end.
Noisy Nancys: see above.

One other benefit was that I found myself gaining a deep and meaningful understanding of Canadian snack food, a lot of which appears to be very similar to English snack food but more frequently involving peanut butter.

Canada is... large. Our bus left Toronto late in the evening, and when I woke up on the on the first day of travelling, I found myself staring into the sun rising over a beautiful autumnal forest, spotted with innumerable misty lakes. This lasted until the end of the first day. In between forests I spotted the giant Canada goose at Wawa which I'd seen the previous week in the film 'Snow Cake', which I'd watched at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton in preparation for the trip.

The next day involved mostly praries, then mountains. It appeals to me hugely how the country can be so neatly broken up into geographical regions over the course of a three day journey. Early in the morning of day three we arrived in Vancouver.

Canada

I'd been living in the UK for two years, but by September the legality of my staying there was getting seriously strained. I hadn't been sufficiently organised to get the sort of work permit that would allow me to stay there any longer, and didn't really want to go home to New Zealand.

Did you know can fly from London to Toronto for less than GBP100 on Air Zoom?