Home

Coming home from Canada has left me with a very strange mix of emotions. One the one hand I’m excited to see all the people and places I missed so much when I was away that made me homesick and on the other I’m homesick for all the people and places I left behind. Coming home also made me realise how much it isn’t the big obvious things that even make you homesick. I missed all the familiar things that make up the city of Edinburgh, the cobbled streets, the familiar shops, my favourite café, the castle and a million other landmarks even if those landmarks like they so often are only landmarks in my mind. I missed ‘landmarks’ like my favourite place to sit in the gardens, the building sight wall with my favourite graffiti, that rut in the pavement I always trip over! It is not really these things that made me realise I was home it was much simpler things, and the strange little dirt path that leads nowhere behind my flat. However the excitement and relief of finally being home really rushed back to me when I ate a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch, which are impossible to find in Canada along with a huge list of other foods like Marmite, polo mints and Tesco brand tortilla chips. This in turn made me realise that there are similar things I will miss about Canada like Silk brand Soy Milk and Mike ’n’ Ike’s jelly beans. Now I’ll miss other things about Canada not only the food like Zaphod’s Bar- the best place for music and Tila Tequila- the worst! I’ll miss having the canal to run along (or ice-skate along depending on the season), I’ll miss that it actually snows in the winter and that there seams to be a protest outside the parliament every single day of the year. Most of all I’ll miss all the people I met and friends I made but I suppose as a trade off I get to see everyone I left behind last September. Coming home is also strange because everything is not quite how it looked a year ago. It’s like someone had taken Edinburgh and shifted it ever so slightly, road-works have moved and buildings have popped up, shops have closed and new ones have opened. All this means that I find myself walking along, suddenly noticing something new and then finding myself a little confused because it’s as if everyone else in Edinburgh just jumped forwards a year and left me behind.

Coming home had also brought with it a bit of a reality check. In allot of ways being on exchange in Canada is like living in a dream or just being on holiday. Your requirements for the year are to pass your courses, you can’t get a job on your VISA so you have no work commitments, and you meet a million new people from all over the world and travel around as much as you possibly can. It is fantastic exciting and exhilarating. Now that I’m home I realise the need for a job is much greater than before, I have a dissertation topic to pick and then write and a degree to finish but in a way its just the next stage of the crazy adventure that is life and it will bring its own exciting challenges and I can’t wait.

In the Middle of it

When you start a big trip like this one it is incredibly difficult to know if all your plans have been enough and if its all going to work out, if you did enough planning, read enough books and saved enough money but at the same time didn’t over plan and spoil the trip. Before I left Ottawa I began to worry that I was cramming far too many stops into this tiny short month and that instead of seeing everything I would see nothing. I can safely say I think we did pretty well.

Travelling buy train is a perfect way to see and understand the vastness and diversity of this country. We started on the damp and cloudy east coast where we smelt the salty tang of the fresh Atlantic air. Then before we knew it we were in French speaking Quebec surrounded buy good food and winding streets. Then onto the big city of super-urban Toronto with its baseball and skyscrapers. Except these places weren’t reached in the blink of and eye and the roar of a jet engine but by the slow craw of a train snaking across the landscape. The feeling of travel that a train gives you and the way you can watch the landscape develop is where the magic of train travel lies for me.

After Toronto came the slow crawl across the never ending flat expanse that is the Prairie Provinces. We passed mile after mile of nothing, nothing that stretched out so far you can see the curve of the earth’s surface on the horizon. This incredible monotony only broken by the odd deserted road winding gently beside the train tracks and the odd blip on the horizon that grain elevators allow. Of course we have stopped in many of the prairie cities and one thing is for sure they are strange places, like islands in this vast sea of emptiness. Each of these had there one special charm, Saskatoon with is beautiful river and slightly insane shop assistants, Edmonton with the worlds largest mall and Calgary with its surprisingly good shopping and tantalising glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. Only Winnipeg was a disappointment to me because although the deserted and derelict industrial areas had a certain sad charm to them, it was essentially a dirty, run down and poor city which I ultimately found depressing.

So when we finally boarded the train to the city of Jasper deep in the Rocky Mountains I couldn’t wait for the change of scenery. It is a spectacular sight to see the huge snow covered mountains rise over the horizon until they seam impossibly vast. They also bring a huge sense of relief as you leave the intense flatness and are suddenly bombarded with everything, trees and lakes and elk and eagles and even a couple of black bears! The Rockies are beautiful a snowy wonderland of awe inspiring views, lush forest and crisp fresh air. I love the Rockies because of the beauty and freedom of them but I also can’t wait to board that train again and move on because that’s the draw of the railway, that need to board that train again to watch more of this amazing country slip by the window unstill we can stumble out into our next dazzling location. Next stop Vancouver and the Pacific Ocean!

A new Journey Begins

Unfortunately to start my exciting new adventure I had to end my last one and leave the wonderful city of Ottawa that has been my home since September. Stripping my room of all my photos and posters to leave just a bare empty shell and hugging goodbye to all new friends I had made unsure of when I would see them again was hard. So it was with mixed emotions that I got onto a plane and we left Ottawa, flying east to the start point of our epic journey that will take a month to complete. I am (hopefully) going to complete coast to coast crossing of Canada on the Pan Canadian Railway with my equally crazy flatmate, Julia. This journey will take us from the city of Halifax in Nova Scotia over 3000 miles west to the city of Vancouver on the pacific coastline.

So we flew form Ottawa to this historic starting point, Halifax. The city of Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia and the province of new Scotland really lives up to its name. It feels Scottish not in the medieval castles and kings way but in a far more rough and modern way. The streets are often narrow and winding climbing over hills and crisscrossing in every direction in a way unexpected of North America. The buildings have a grimy industrial early 1990s architecture that reminded me so much of many of the streets in my own home town of Glasgow. This along with the grey overcast skies and the constant threat of rain Halifax felt almost like going home. Now don’t get me wrong Halifax is a great city with some beautiful and interesting sights. The harbour has a twisting boardwalk crammed with hundreds ranging from modern motor boats to grand old sail boats and of course the famous Theodore. Theodore is the tug boat- the actual working and frequently used tug boat- that just so happens to have a giant smiling face painted on it and stars in its own kinds TV show! Halifax also boasts something else that few other Canadian cities can, a (relatively) long and definitely interesting history it has a hilltop fort buried into the side of mound that the town has grown around. This fort of course built to protect the city from the threat of first French and then later American armies. Now of course the fort is best at offering spectacular panoramic views of the city all the way out to the Atlantic Ocean. It has a haunted church where the shadow of an ill fated monk can be seen praying at the window and however many times they replace the glass or clean the window the figure can still be seen.

As I write this I only now feel like the journey is truly beginning. I am sitting on our first train as we zip across three provinces on our way to Quebec City. It feels exciting to be starting this epic and historic journey however for the moment there is nothing to do but wave goodbye to Halifax and watch eighteen hours of Canadian countryside fly by my window.