I had always wanted to live in Canada, especially to escape the political turmoil of my own country, but I am beginning to think that maybe I was wrong. I'll start at the beginning.
We drove in to the country yesterday afternoon to stay for a few days. Apart from Ssack's nervousness and stress at the border checkpoint (the string of questions was accompanied by menacing stares that seemed to suggest that we were doing something wrong by coming here), the crossing went well. Immediately we were thrown into the metric system, which I would certainly not complain aboot, because come on, it just makes more sense. After getting over the initial excitement that gas was just over a dollar (a litre it turns out), we headed up to Vancouver. Before we even made it across the bridge into the city traffic came to a dead stop. In their infinate wisdom, the planners of the city neglected to have any freeway access into downtown. So we found ourselves crawling through miles of suburban sprawl to get to the city. To make matters worse, in Canada you can park in the right lane of traffic on weekends. That's right, there is an entire lane that you pretty much can't use on Saturday/Sunday because there are cars parked there (in addition to the increased volume of traffic due to weekend tourism). The nightmare continues through town as the main streets are stopped due to a totally inefficient light system. Instead of synchronizing, the lights turn red as soon as you get to them, after you just waited at the last intersection.
I don't know if this goes for all major cities in Canada, but here in Vancouver it is nearly impossible to get into a bar. We walk down Granville (the main street) and just to get a drink you must either (a) wait for a table as if it was a restaurant, (b) pay an outrageous $15 cover (even at 2, before last call, they were trying to get at least $10 out of us), or (c) wait in line for up to half an our for a bar that doesn't even appear to be at full capacity (by which time your buzz has worn off because of the lack of drinks in your hand). A little frustrating, and we even had a guide who had been to the city a few times before.
So we finally do find a suitable venue for drinking in one of the cheaper parts of town. Let me preface this by saying that Canadian people are really nice, maybe a little too nice. We walk up to the bar and instead of a crowd of people all vying for drinks, there is a single file line to get drinks. There are barstools lining the bar, but in order to get served you have to wait in the line. After the initial confusion of deciphering what $5 double highballs were (Canadian for double wells), we got our drinks and I serenaded the crowd with a thrilling version of Psycho Killer, while totally butchering the French verse.
Every bar we went to we were required to provide two ID's. I hadn't even expected to get carded, being that I am well over the legal age and haven't been carded at a bar in a big city on this whole trip. This brings me to my next observation. It seems to me that when you can drink in a bar at age 19, by age 23 it seems like everyone is pretty much over it. I swear I was by far the oldest patron of the places we went. Maybe the older cats hang out somewhere that you can't see from the street.
Finally, this place is ungodly expensive. I spent my entire budget for this trip to Canada in one night on drinks (about $70 after paying for the hostel). Drinks are all over $4 and domestic cigarettes cost about $10. At least I have a free place to stay for the next two nights. To say the least I wouldn't really recommend Vancouver as a vacation spot. Maybe next time I'll try Montreal...
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