It was a weekend get-away to experience the anglophone Canada, the Canadian Texas and the Rockies. I had spoken with a couple of friends who had recently been to Calgary and Banff and others whoâd lived there for some years, to get the most of the few days in Alberta. I did not read anything about Calgary and relied entirely on what my friends told me and I think that was a good thing. Although, when I think about it nowâŠeven if I went there without any idea what is going on, I think I would've gotten it. Due to the forest fires in BC the sky was hazy and the visibility was quite poor. In combination with rainy forecast and zillions of tourists that my friends reported visit Lake Louise, we decided not to visit Banff. I would like to visit Banff one day, for sure. But perhaps under different circumstances, in order to keep to my âvirtual experienceâ theory.Â
Anyway, we stayed mostly in the city. I wonât brag about what you can see in Calgary. Google it. But I have a few observations.
It is amazing how much they can do with so little history. I mean my home village is older than Calgary! Yet they can talk about it as if it was one of a kind and believe me hardly anyone can beat Calgarian pride! #HeritagePark
One can see that there is (or was) a lot of money. The city is about the same size as Prague and there is so much space everywhere that there really isnât any need to build opulent skyscrapers not many highly populated North American urban areas can beat. (Rumour has it that there is in fact much more office space in Calgary than is actually needed (any more).) Let alone 30+ story residential buildings scattered around the âdown townâ. These are surrounded by so much empty space that one cannot find any reason to buy an apartment in such a monstrous building other than: âBecause I can afford it.â
Calgary became a real town / city when the first train came from the East. And you can easily see how important it was. It literally cuts through the city and cuts it in half. Anyway, from Calgary Tower I saw the longest train ever. I stopped counting the cars at one hundred. (Thinking of my homeland - if such a train was crossing from Slovakia to Hungary I'm sure its tail would still be in Poland.)
Besides the generic nothingness in the city centre I noticed a certain accent to public space. Here and there one can see a nice functional park, walk or leisure area. It gives the city a lovely blush. These things normally come at a later stage, once authorities realise a city is actually for people. There are quite a few cyclo-tracks around the city center. #PrincesIslandPark
Food. All based on tips by the locals, we went to three places only, but they were very lovely. The Guild; The Beltliner (I hear they own Gorilla Whale, too) and Bow Valley Ranche. Really good food, fair prices and nice service. Will go there again.
Our ride to Kananaskis was somewhat amazing. The first fifty miles there is nothing. And by nothing I mean really nothing. Fields, fields, fields. If you want to see a house youâd better look out! Not easy to spot one. And once you enter the mountainsâŠwow. 3,000+ meters tall and super sharp? That is one thing I really want to do again.
For some reason I associate the word veranda with American South, in particular New Orleans (French?) and I am wondering if there is any historical connection. Anyway, since the winter is quite long and bitter it seems people here like to spend their time outside (plus the houses here are in fact wooden sheds, unlike in Europe, and without air conditioning it is quite difficult to bear the heat).Â
What I find quite particularly lovely here are alleys. An alley is a road in between main roads where people have their back yards. Some of these alleys are called rouelle verte, green alley. A rouelle verte is a charming almost private common space. There does not seem to be much regulation on what you can built in your back yard here and sometimes it can be quite a spectacle to see how people arrange their porches and back yards. But a rouelle verte is usually green, with flowers, potagers, sun shades and sitting areas of the most unimaginable sorts.Â
A rouelle verte is accessible by car but anything speed faster than a walking pace would be seriously frowned upon. It's because that's where kids play football (soccer), basketball, hockey (!!!), even baseball and table tennis and where they ride their bicycles (Attention Ă nos enfants! signs are everywhere). The other day I even saw a street party with reggae music! Food and drinks were a sure thing. A rouelle verte is an amazing micro-space that allows you to escape the city without actually going anywhere.
Parc Jarry is in the very heart of the city, in the quartier where I live called Villeray. It's outside the busy downtown area up on the island, it's large (35 ha) and so bright and sunny. It has several parts: the pond, the stadium, park greens and a playground for children.
In one corner of the park area there is a pond with a little island, surrounded by little mounds which are clearly popular for sunbathers and people who just want to chill (now that I think about it there is something to sitting on a slope and looking around - #RiegerovySady). Building the little mounds around the lake was a brilliant idea as it separates this part from the rest of the park, it creates a sort of intimate space and many smaller spaces in between the mounds, under the pine trees etc. One of these little hills is about ten meters above the neighbouring ground and functions as a viewing platform. There are benches and picnic tables and it is hard to find a space to sit if you come on a sunny day.
There are many tennis courts around the Stad IGA, whose Court central can hold up to 12,000 people. I have never been to a proper tennis match and could never afford Wimbledon and I am thinking I should try to watch a game here some day (somewhere from the back I guess).
Parc Jarry is great for children - at least judging by the hundreds I have seen. They are basically everywhere but one corner is designed specially for families with children, with a shallow yet quite big swimming pool just for kids. Well, and there are swings, sand pits and all these things around.
You always go to different restaurants, try new food, look up new recipes and so on. Yet there is staple food that you would regularly get without even realising it, itâs easily accessible, they'd have it in any place and you love it. Itâs simply there. Until it isnât.
If youâve ever been to a real outdoor Polish market you can imagine the atmosphere at the Polish market. Lively, and a lot of goodies. There was a 45 min queue (line) for food and people were standing along the meat and sausages stands (kabanosy, kieĆbasy, kaszanky) and as I was hungry I was literally drooling. Once it was our turn, we got everything: barszczyk czerwony ze ĆmietanÄ a koperkiem, pierogi z miÄsem, pierogi ruskie, kieĆbasa pieczona z kiszonÄ kapustÄ , ciasteczka, naleĆniki z serem.
There were carnations in vases on the table and a lottery to support kids in Poland (you know, a Canadian parish helping out a parish in a Polish village, as the parish priest know best who needs the money (my friend A.S. is banging her fists on the table)). You could hear Polish, English and French all around. Communities are always formed when you live in a different country and Poles are a great example of how lovely it can be. I have always envied their pride of being Polish. They are a big and proud nation!
âNo, don't get me wrong. She was friendly. ... But, you know, Canadian friendly.â
With my Spanish and Italian friends in Prague we talked a lot about what people are like in the public. My friends from the south would find people in Prague unfriendly, weird or even rude. Just because they wouldnât unnecessarily talk to strangers. The Spaniards would strike a conversation with a bus driver, a shop assistant, waiter or just the person sitting next to them on a plane. While we from Central Europe or up north consider it a bit rude to talk private matters on the metro and we keep a conversation with a waiter down to a minimum. And not because we donât like them. Itâs just a matter of standards and expectations.
I think there might be several reasons behind this:
 we keep a distance from people we donât know;
in Central European countries (post-communist countries) there is a different concept of hierarchy, people are not equalitarian, in the relationship between a customer and a waiter/bus driver/shop assistant the lesser is considered inferior and are not expected to be so friendly; and
perhaps also that in post-communist countries people were more sensitive to strangers (secret services etc.); friendly talk was reserved to friends, colleagues and family.
This is of course changing, especially in bigger and more culturally diverse cities and also with the younger generation that was born into democracy, but it is still present. And I believe there are differences also between the southern countries and the northern ones, such as Germany (former West Germany) and the Scandinavian countries, which do not have a communist history.
I have worked for several years for international companies and it was a great experience also in terms of these differences. It is my impression that in B2B relations with the Germans, for instance, they are very polite but also very professional and keep it down to the business at all times, while if you saw a business meeting with Italians or the Spanish you may think it's a birthday party (I am of course exaggerating).
I find it great that people are generally very nice to each other here in North America (although at the same time much more assertive than Europeans are in my view) but I am also wondering how people really know who is nice and who is really nice. Well, I have quite some time to find out, right?
Now, speaking of being friendly and appropriate: When I moved to Liverpool fifteen years ago - and I was a kid then - I was really flattered when in a shop or on a bus they would call me love all the time. You know, these Are you alright, love?, Thanks, love. or Bye bye, love. lines etc. (although in Scouse it would be more of a Y'aw rice, luff?, Tah, luff. or Trah, luff.) all the time. I thought they must have noticed I was a foreigner with poor English. Only later I realised that they actually used love for anyone.
This whole Ave Duluth area has already become my favourite as it reminds me of some neighbourhoods in Berlin or Dresden or Vienna. I think I may have felt homesick for a moment.
Street view here.
Incidentally, do you know which TV series (great, by the way) is âDuluthâ related to?
My typical conversation usually looks like this:
âAvez-vous choisi?
âOui, je prendrai XYZ.
â[Aurgh, vprefaeirgh lpecis ou ĆŸvplfaeirgh angran lraoul dzayn?] ... At which point I tell myself âWhy even botherâ and I ask in English.
Today I needed some adrenaline (meaning sugar), so I ordered a tarte au chocolat et un petit espresso and look what I get. An espresso in a paper cup. What an abomination! Where are all your manners, people?!
I have learned not to use maps. Or at least not to use them all the time. I think that when people follow a certain path and keep focused on their guidebooks and maps they miss a lot of things. When your head is not facing down but facing up you can actually see thousand times more and experience infinite things.
Must be somewhere here...I think.
You still have to get around somehow. Now, what I do is to get familiar with a cityâs landscape and plan beforehand. But just roughly. One needs a mental map of the key places in a city and the rest of it is just âsomewhere in betweenâ or âI think it should be somewhere close...â. It helps when a city is at a lake or on the coast - this is a clear limit, one cannot go much further.
The internet was not working on my telephone one day somewhere in Belgium. And I lost track of where I was walking. And nearly panicked about how I was going to get back. Then a surprise thought crossed my mind:Â âOh, blooming heck, I can ask, right?â
In London you can just go along the Thames and youâll see everything important (and you can choose either bank, I myselfâd go for the South one), in Lisbon when you are anywhere close to the Tejo you know that you have to climb back up to the old town and in Vienna you just look for the Ring and one way or another you will find what you need (or end up running in a circle which - some would disagree - is STILL OK.). So, basically, just leave your books and maps behind (or in your backpack if you are of them careful folks) and just look around. Unless you are in rural China or Hungary (BocsĂĄnat!), you will find your way. And the worst case scenario? Do what people did fifteen years ago. Ask. Yes, the old-fashioned âAsk for help!â still works.
Oh, and why Angry Onion? You know how difficult it is to remember street names, directions etc. once you have moved somewhere new? And how easy it is to take the metro the wrong direction? Right. I take the Ligne Verte to and from the downtown. And the direction âthereâ is to Angrignon. So âAngry Onion to the Downtownâ.
Have you been to Manhattan? Well, I have. And do you know where Park Ave. / Upper East Side is? (Itâs where Holden Caulfield lived, by the way. East 71st unless I am mistaken.) Anyway, Upper East Side on Manhattan is where these huge mansions are and where all the rich people live. For some reason, however, Iâve been having trouble knowing where is east and where west outside of Europe. I guess itâs because from my Slovak perspective the West was where the rich countries were. And I find it weird realising that west in the US is Oregon, not Connecticut. I think in my head West is somewhere close to the centre of the Earth which would be somewhere in mid-Atlantic. But, anyway, orientation on Manhattan is pretty easy, north is north and south is south.
So when you tell someone in the middle of the night in the Village âLetâs go north, honey.â you may well end up at the very end of Notre-Dame East and enjoy a lovely sunrise over the Saint Lawrence River.
Photo credit: Google &Â Mark Jefferson Paraan on Unsplash
There is this old joke that people say in Slovakia or the Czech Republic (usually applies to the capital cities). It says:
'The Snow Removal Services were really WELL prepared for winter this year. They bought new machinery, vehicles, tested everything well in advance, hired new stuff and installed special new weather forecast stations. But then the first snowfall came in mid-January and f*ucked up everything.'
When we landed at YUL the first difference I could see were the technical people maneuvering our plane to the gate. Well...people... More like snow monsters or snowpeople (apparently the gender-neutral and politically correct way of saying snowmen now (or snowwomen???)). They were all wearing very heavy winter clothes, hats and gloves and their faces were all covered, one could only see a little gap for their eyes.
I do not really like winter. Well, I do not like winter in Prague. The temperatures there shift roughly between -5 °C and +5 °C. Very rarely they drop below -15 degrees and there is very little snow. When it snows it's usually quite a nightmare. Everything sort of slows down and gets dirty. I don't think people are happy.Â
Well, it's not really about the snow or the cold. It's more about expectations. We do not need to wear particularly warm clothes, hats and gloves in Prague. Usually you take the metro or the tram, so you are outside hardly ever for more than a few minutes when you commute to work or school. A temperature drop or a light snowfall make a difference then.
Over the two weeks I have been here I have not felt cold. You know what to expect and you wear warm clothes, you take extra time to get somewhere, you do not rush along the streets and do not panic if your shoes or clothes are a bit dirty. This is a real winter. And I like it. Winter as it should be!Â
