The Eye of Patrick

I realize I left Europe on January 15^th I think and I am still blogging about it all the way in March. So I will try to get off both my Berlin and London posts today in the hope to returning to blog about Japan soon.

After Geneva I said good bye to my family and boarded an Easy Jet flight to Berlin. The reason I had selected Berlin was not for any real reason except it was a place I had not been and up to the moment I bought my ticket I wondered if it was a good decision. I why Berlin? As it didn’t seem to have many historical sites that came to mind on the level of Rome or Venice. But then I thought to myself that I did not really care for the sites, but the experience of going. A vacation is what you make of it, so I decided to head to Germany and Berlin.

I arrived in Berlin SFX airport and made my way to my hotel and checked in. Usually after saying good bye to either friends or family I am blue and being in a new place made me feel even bluer. But I am lucky in the sense that I know when I am in a mood and can rationalized that once I sleep I will be better. So I headed to bed.

The next day I woke up and got on the train to head towards the main areas of Berlin. I decided to make my way to The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church which was one of the few surviving churches in Germany after the bombing of the city during WWII. It is an interesting building to see as it is kind merging of both old Germany a modern Germany.

Some of the other highlights of my trip were attending the opera. For some reason or another I have gained a love for the opera and thought of two places that would be great to see it in, either Italy or Germany and so I was in Germany, I decided to see La traviata.

If you asked me to explain what the opera was about, I would have to tell you it was a love story about a girl and older and younger man and the fight for love. The reason I can’t say much about it is because it was in Italian. While on the top of the screen they had subtitles. But not understanding the words did not make it any less interesting, as the atmosphere was great. It was a real opera house and everyone was dressed in suits and such. I think it was the highlight of my trip to Berlin.

The singing was amazing, I don’t know why I like opera as I find the music to be at first so harsh. But it has slowly grown on me and now I just love opera.

Also in Berlin it was fun one night when I went for the subway to catch the train back to my hotel. The train was having problems or construction so for one part of the line only one train was running in both directions. So while I was waiting many German people would come up to me and speak to me in German. It was at this moment I think understood how Asian people feel when they are confused for other Asia people. I enjoyed it though, because in Japan I never have that problem. Everyone thinks I can’t speak Japanese because I am white.

I went to the Jewish Museum and learnt of the horrors of World War II. I thought Germany in some ways can be a model for the world in how to deal with the failures of the past. The accepted their guilt, genuinely sorry for it and built museums and such to never forget it. This is in stark contrast to Japan where the currently leader of Japan has decided to deny the use of comfort women during world war two (link)

To get into the museum was difficult as you had to go through metal detectors and such. This shows that there are still unresolved feelings in the country.

The Berlin Wall and Check point Charlie were not that interesting. They have for the most part been turned into over commercialized tourist traps selling GDR Chinese manufactured souvenirs at inflated prices. Though the Berlin wall museum was interesting in that it showed how many people tried to escape East Berlin to West and I enjoyed learning about the Berlin Airlift.

But the topography of terror exposition was the most moving place I went to. It is an outdoor museum dedicated to remembering the horrors of World War II. The reason it is still outdoor is that they have had difficulty getting the funding to build a proper building. But in some ways it being outside created a darker mood as the sky was grey and it was slightly cold.

Part of the reason I found it interesting was it dealt with World War II and the post war Nuremberg trails of the former Nazi government officials. It showed how the world can become a horrible place if good people do not stand up to fight for it. (On the right you can see some photos of it.)

The food in Germany was good; it was not fancy like the stuff in Italy. But in some ways I found German food to be more practical, it was more meat and potatoes you could say. I had lots of German sausage and pretzels and other little snacks.

If you asked me would I return to Germany and Berlin, I would have to say yes. I just felt a connection to Germany. For me Germany or Berlin is that rugged city that is not as polished as the other cities. But it had a charm to it. Though talking to a friend we both worry that Germany’s dark history and dark feeling could some how swallow our souls. But time will have to tell.

So yes I enjoyed Germany.

Welcome back

After we finished with Venice, we hopped on a boat taxi and went to the airport. The flight from Venice to Geneva was one of the nicest short-haul flights I have been on in a while. The plane was a small bombardier prop plane and had only one flight attendant. The snacks they brought for the flight were little bit size sandwiches and Evian water, and they were a delight to eat.

Geneva is an interesting city to visit as it is such an international city. On one of the tours we went on, we learnt that about 40% of the population of Geneva is made up of foreigners. This is the result of all the Non-Government Organizations that reside in Geneva (The red cross, United Nations and so on) so as a result the variety of food was amazing. During our stay there we had food from Switzerland, Brazil, Lebanon, China, America, France, and Mexican. It reminded me of Canada where you can get a wide variety of food all within a 5 minute walk. The people of Switzerland are very multilingual, as there are 4 official languages, French, German, Italy, Romaich and everyone seems to speak English as well. This made me wonder why Canadian bilingual polices have failed so miserably.

I think Geneva is a city I would truly want to live in because it seems so involved in world affairs with all the NGOs and such. Also when we went to lunch we overheard a conversation of two young women who were working in international investment banking and it sounded like such a fun job. They were talking about deals they had worked on and that is the kind of job I want to have.

While in Geneva we wanted to check out the skiing as we heard the hills are amazing in Europe. But sadly due to global warming the hills were not filled with snow. But we thought we could make a trip to France and check out the hills for ourselves. So we rented a car and got on the autobahn called White Mountain or something, where we were able to go 200 Km legally. This was a wonderful feeling and I wish next time I am able to drive.

Though when we got to France we realized it was true and there was no snow, but that was ok as I was still able to mail off some postcards to say I was in France.

Also Geneva was a sad place for the fact that I had to say good bye to my family. My father and one brother would return to Brazil and the other one was returning to England. But I was not going home yet, next on my trip was Berlin, Germany and I did not know what to expect to experience in Germany. So look forward to my next post from my time in Germany.

The next stop after Florence was to Venice. Venice has long been a city that I have wanted to visit as a child. It is a city that defies any normal logic to exist. How can a city live in the water? But Venice is a city that has been doing that for a long time.

The train starts to make its approach into Venice and when you look out the window you notice that there is water on both sides. Which was a fun experience as you knew this train was going to Venice.

When we arrived in Venice it was a surreal experience, as it is Venice a city of its own. I had watched Casino Royale and saw Venice, plus other movies about the fabled city. But when we got out of the train station and made our way to the “taxi” area it hit me and I finally realized I was in Venice. There was a bridge and people were going over it to get to the other side where there were buildings and buildings. Then in the “roads” or actually canal area the life of the city was taking place. You had everything that a normal city would have, but on a boat, taxi, police and garbage were all by boats. This was amusing to see.

We made our way to our hotel. We were very lucky to get the hotel we did as it was a 5 star hotel that is normally really expensive. But we visited it during the one week that for it is considered a non-busy period, so we could get discount price. The hotel is an island of its own. You must take their shuttle boat to get to the hotel. It was a nice little wooden speed boat, I felt very elegant and Europe for some reason at that moment. The location of the hotel was on some island that was at one time or another it was a factory and a mental hospital. But they had invested a lot of money into it to make it a 5 star hotel.

Our time in Venice was mostly walking around, or taking boats to walk around. The city itself is very small and so you don’t need to walk very far to get anywhere. But it is one of the narrowest cities I have been to. I included some photos of the streets and it shows how easy it is to get lost in them. On one of our evenings hunting for a restaurant we got lost and every time one of the members of my family thought we had found our way out we discovered we had not. But then we realized that on the walls there were directions some what to the major points of the town. Once we discovered that we were able to return to our hotel.

By the time we had finished Venice I had started to get restless of Italian style architecture and was happy to find we were going to Switzerland.

The next stop on my trip through Europe was Florence in the Tuscany region of Italy. It is an area known for its wines and great food and I made sure to enjoy both to the fullest while I was there.

We got to Florence on the Euro Star from Rome. The rail system in Italy is similar to Japan in that there is a fairly extensive network of trains you can take and in some cases it is quicker to take train then to fly.

Our stay in Florence was mostly an enjoyable one. We spent much time walking around the town. As the town is fairly small it is easy to get to most things on foot. Before going to Florence I did not really have any idea of what to expect, so I was not sure on what to see.

I started to experiment more with camera and learn about the settings. It is my first DSLR so I am still learning. So while in Florence I learnt about manipulating my exposure time and so I spent the night time playing with the lights and colours. Trying to get the timing right to capture the photo without exposing it for too long. I think I really enjoy night time photography as if you can keep your camera still for the length of the exposure you can get some truly amazing photos.

The next day was New Years Eve and so we wanted to see what Florence did for the New Year. We spent the time near midnight walking around and trying to see where the fireworks would be. While walking around I saw many people setup temporary stalls selling champagne and other alcoholic products to ring in the New Year. It was interesting to think whether they were able to sell it all.

The area near the water was packed and it made for difficult navigating. But we made it to the canal and looked to the stars to see the fireworks. But when it struck midnight, the sky did not awake to a scene of colour. But over the course of 20 minutes individual citizens of Florence let them off. Some of them where crazy and you would see the firework go up and then come down to the place in which it was launched, one being an apartment. It was lucky there was not a fire or anything. After that my family and I made our way back to our hotel and we saw the fireworks from around the world. I hope next year I can make it to one of those places that are covered in fireworks.

When we woke up the next day, we went on a tour, as I wanted to make sure I saw the sights of Florence and I thought a tour guide would be the best way to see it. So we got on the tour bus and then we were off. It was when the tour guide said this I knew this tour was not going to end well;

“60% of all the worlds’ art is located in Italy and 40% of that 60% is in Florence”

When he said that, little alarm bells went off in my head and I thought how that is possible. I mean maybe he meant renaissance art and then it could be possible. But the entire art world only being located in Italy. That is hard to believe.

So it was from that point that the tour got continuously worse. People would slowly peel off from the tour group and quit it because our tour guide mumbled what he said and really did not bring the place alive, but spent time talking about the trivial things. Like the locations of the offices, rather then the meaning of the art when we went to the major art gallery.

So about half way through my family also quit the tour and we went on our own. It is interesting to find out whether he is actually a good tour guide, because I don’t understand how he could be employable for such a long time if he loses his tour group so easily.

I really liked Florence and liked the small feel of it. There were many narrow streets with little shops and restaurants. While there we went to a Mexican restaurant and a bunch of Italian restaurants. I think I had the best food in Italy there.

I really hope to return to Florence one day.

The next post will be about our time in Venice.

Till then,

Patrick

Hello Everyone,

After my time in Tokyo I flew to Europe to meet my family. Europe? Why Europe, when you are Canadian? Well that is an interesting question. My family is from Canada originally, but we moved to Brazil and now my brother studies in England. So when it came to organizing a family vacation that would be easy for all of us to get to we selected Europe as it is kind of in the middle for all of us. Then we decided to start our trip of in Italy, and that is where my journal post will continue.

We landed in Rome airport and try to make our way to our hotel. I failing to write down the hotel and the cabs not really caring where they dropped us off meant that we were slightly stranded in the train terminal area of Rome. This would not have been a bad thing had any of us spoken Italian, but we hadn’t. So we went searching for our hotel, simply on the name that we had in our heads. We went from hotel to hotel asking if they knew our hotel, some would say they did and point us in one direction and we would walk there to find out it wasn’t our hotel. But after about 30 minutes to an hour we located our hotel and started our European vacation.

Over the course of 3 nights and 4 days we explored the touristy areas of Rome, from the coliseum to the forum and back. Our hotel was fairly well located so we were able to walk to all the major tourist sites in Rome.

I didn’t really like Rome, as I felt it was dirty and unfriendly town and everyone seemed to want to rip us off or did not care to help us. This could have been because I had just came from Japan where people are polite even if they don’t want to be. But when we left Rome to catch our train to Florence I was happy to leave.

But do not worry, though my trip started off on the wrong foot, everything after Rome I enjoyed greatly and look forward to sharing in further posts.

It was after my return to Halifax that I was able to make my way to Montreal. Montreal has been a city I wanted to visit for a long time. Just for the longest time it was too far for me to think of visiting (when I lived in Calgary) and then during my university days I never seemed to have the time or people to visit it. But when i went looking for tickets to return to Toronto I noticed many of them had a stopover in Montreal. It was that stop-over that got me thinking of maybe making a trip to Montreal as the time to get to Toronto then get downtown and then to Peterborough was almost the same amount of time needed to go from Montreal to Peterborough.Plus this was going to be one of my last opportunities to see the city. Montreal is a city that for many Canadians is like a trip to a different country. The reason is that while most of Canada was controlled and influenced by England, Quebec and the city of Montreal had French influences. This has resulted in my opinion of a city that is more European then other cities in Canada.

When I arrived in Montreal I made my way to my hostel “Sunset” I checked in and made my way to the dorm room and settled in. This was not my first experience at dorm living as I had spent 3 months backpacking through SE Asia. At first I had taken the bottom bunk but realized that the noise below was going to wake me up so then i moved to the top.

After settling in I went exploring, the location of my hostel was near St. Laurent Street, which is a unique street in Montréal as it is filled with edgy cafes and unique restaurants and bars. Considering I had not eaten all day I had decided to settle down and get something to eat. Seeing as this was the time of the world cup I made sure to select a place that contained a TV showing the Swiss vs. Ukraine play off game. When I had thought I found the perfect place I had settled down and ordered and watched the game. But as the meal progressed and the game looked more and more as if it was going to a shoot out, the TV started to blur and fuzz out. So in the end I was not able to see the shoot out. But it being Montreal I could hear the noises of other people watching the game and heard the result that way.

I realized when traveling, sometimes it is good to leave the guidebook out, so that the waiter has something to say. I thought at first that my waiter was French, but as the meal progressed and she saw my guide book about Montreal, she asked if I was visiting. I had told her yes and we had a small discussion about what to see and visit in Montreal. Which was nice, as you never know when you are going to meet new people. And never knowing who you are going to meet is what leads me into my next story.

I was walking around downtown Montreal and feeling a little blue as I was lonely and felt disorganized in the city. So I was walking around trying to locate one of the builds in my guidebook when I noticed or thought I noticed someone I knew. We looked at each other, hesitated then looked again and realized that we indeed knew each other. It turned out that out of the million or so people that live in Montreal that I had ran into another Kansai Gaidai former exchange student. At first we were just stunned to imagine that we would run into each other.

But it was like a gift from God that I had ran into him, as he mentioned that he was not suppose to be here on that day and was actually suppose to be back in his hometown planning his trip to Japan or China. But by chance he was still in the process of moving his stuff back from University and he mentioned that he was free to hang out. So I asked him what are some of the things that I just must do to say I went to Montreal and saw Montreal. The things that he listed ranged from culture to history to food, and seeing I had not eaten yet that day we decided to go for some Montreal smoked meat. I had heard of this wondrous food, and I wanted to try it out. We went to an eatery called Dunn’s and ordered a Montreal smoked meat sandwich. It was interesting as I was asked to select the fatness of my meat, so seeing that I had no idea of what was a good portion of fat I decided to go with medium. Medium is the perfect answer to anything I realized, it is the moderate answer.

It was during this meal that we had time to catch up and discuss what had happen since we both left Gaidai. It seems we have similar ideas about the future, as both of us wanted to return to Asia and possibly pursue a career in law. It was nice to be able to click so well with a person that you had not talken to in a long while. I think because we clicked so well we decided to continue or tour of the city and after the meal he took my on a tour of this city.

In my next post I will go into what I saw and how it was. But in the mean time I will share some photos.

So after I went to Wolfville I decided to go to Cape Breton. It is a island located to the northern part of Nova Scotia, it is like Hokkaido is to Japan. It was once a growing mining and fostery economy, but with the advent of globalisation and the ability to buy such products from cheaper producing sources the economy has gone into decline.This has meant that they have had to expand into other areas and one that has taken on a greater importance is Tourism. There are many Victorian B&B there, nature sites and a interesting highway experience called “The Cabot Trail” It is a highway that runs along the coast of the island, which is fairly rugged due to the fact that much of it is exposed to the harsh north Atlantic ocean. But it has contains some of most breath taking scenery and natural sites.

On this trip I went to visit a old friend from when I used to visit Cape Breton on a more regular bases. We had not seen each other in over 5 years and so it was a good time to catch up because I was unsure of when I would ever get the chance to come again.

The weather was raining the day that I went and we thought it would be best to stay inside. So we went to the Alexander Grand Bell Museum in Baddeck. If you do not know who he is, he is the Scottish inventor of the Telephone who moved to Canada and made his residence there. It is an interesting museum to visit as he was a prolific inventor. Initially he started working with the deaf to teach them the ability to communicate, and then he got interested in the telephone and other modes of communication. Later in his life he had a interest in flying things, hyrdofoils and planes. The museum is all about him and his inventions. I think this is my 4th time going there and I still enjoy it.

And after that we drove home to Halifax and I caught my flight to Montreal.

I have a question for those who read, what do you think of my layout, can you see any area for improvement? please leave a comment to suggest.

Thank you,

Patrick

Hello everyone,After visiting Peggys Cove and having a wonderful time, we decided to try and make another trip to the surrounding areas of Halifax.

Our intended target was Lunenburg. It is a historical town on the eastern part of Nova Scotia and is known for its schooner Bluenoose, which was one of the fastest ships made in the 1920s.

The town is also known for its New England like buildings. This is preserved by strong local by-laws that control what you can do to your house.But that is not where we ended, as we (me) was driving and we had thought we had made the proper turn off, but it turns out we had not and were driving somewhere else and you know on a highway there is not much room for turning around so we decided to go with the flow and we ended up in Wolfville.

Wolfville a very beautiful and small town located in the Annapolis valley. It is a town that has a lot of victorian buildings that have been converted into B&B and has a very nice old university. So we drove around there and I took some photos of the old building. We did not stay long as there was not much to do, but it was nice to take photos again.

I hope you enjoy them,

Patrick