Searching for Tao, 7573 Kilometres from Home

September 13, 2007 16:15 +0000 | Netherlands 'Round-the-World Travel 5

Check out my view:

From the 5th floor of the Fantasia Hotel

I'm staying at the Fantasia Hotel, a cow-themed (you read that right) converted house on the south end of the city. My room is tiny, but it has everything I need: a bed, a shower, a toilet and a really nice view. My window looks down onto a series of backyards and courtyards and all I hear is birds, running water and the occasional car going by in the distance. Also, there is the sound of an older man on a cellphone below and what appears to be a kitchen since I'm getting the sound of clamouring dishes as well.

But why, you might ask am I fiddling with the internet and not out enjoying the city? The short answer, is that I'm freakin' tired. I took the train in from Frankfurt this morning (awesome, I'll talk about it later) and then tried to find my way through Amsterdam... I found the hotel after nearly 3 hours of walking with my giganimous pack on my back.

Three things I've learned from this experience:

Travel books (and their little maps) are no substitute for a good mapbook. Blow the extra cash and know where you're going before you get lost in a foreign city with 150lbs on your back.
Locals are not always the best source of information. The 10yearold kid I met early in my walk was more helpful than the old woman who didn't understand where I was trying to go. Ask lots of people just to be sure.
Amsterdam locals don't seem to know how to navigate their own city (at least through the eyes of a non-local). Every set of directions I received was akin to: "go down x, turn left on y, then ask someone". I do not know why this is the case.

Amsterdam is a city of alleys and laneways. In the downtown core, bikes far outweigh cars by at least 7:1. It's amazing. The stop lights have separate lights for cyclists, pedestrians, streetcars, and cars, and everything feels very small town... despite the fact that you know that there's roughly 1million people living here. It's very quiet, there's lots of patios, and as I walked from street to street, I found myself strolling through schoolyards and riverbanks without running into any barriers. I could spend a lot more time here than just a few days... I might still. My hotel can only keep me for 3 days but I'll look around to see if there's anywhere else I might be able to stay.

I'm going to get some food in a bit, but I wanted to post now as it's unlikely I'll be posting any time later tonight. I wanna fiddle with Bluetooth to get my headset working so I can call some of you before I leave here.

September 12, 2007 16:16 +0000 | Germany 'Round-the-World Travel 4

I won't be blogging in the usual common, short bursts while I'm gallivanting through Europe so the format for my blog will have to change a little. I'll be posting one big post whenever I gain access to some wifi. That may be every day, but more likely it will be around once or twice a week. To make the reading easier though, I'm going to separate everything out with handy headers. Hope it works out.

I'm not sure if you can really call this "Day 1" as I've been up since 9amEST and it's now 11am here in Frankfurt (5am in Toronto), but I think I'll just go by sleeps for this and since I haven't had a wink of it yet, we have "Day 1".

The trip out here was hard, and by hard, I in no way mean the flight, that was easy. No, "hard" was leaving Melanie at the airport. I had no idea it would have that kind of effect on me. I don't really want to talk about it as it's rather personal, but I can't really post about my day without singling out what a big deal this was for both of us. I could really use a hug.

The plane was delayed 15min (no biggie) and the flight was 15min early so it evened out. I met a nice man named Klaus on the plane who walked me through the airport and helped me find my way through the mob at customs (I swear, I've never seen so many people herding into lines like that). Klaus was super-awesome, talking to staff etc in German when our bags hadn't shown up (we got tied up in customs with the mob), but everything worked out alright and he sent me down the path to the trains for my next steps.

The Trains

The train system here is pretty damn cool, but unlike the rest of the signs all over the airport, the instructions for buying tickets is entirely in German. You might be surprised at how similar everything looks when you don't understand any of it. Thankfully the multi-lingual (though irritable) information desk person was able to explain that while the name of the station I wanted to go to was "Hauptbanhof", it was commonly referred to as "Frankfurt Am Main Hpf". The total cost would be €3.55... but I only have a $20CAD bill in my wallet :-)

The closest bank machine was out of order, so under the direction of another helpful staffer, I trotted down the hall to the grocer and found a second machine. While I was there though, I figured it best to stop in on and get something to drink. The store had a LOT of alcohol not to mention Coke (no Pepsi) for €0.75. I was just looking for water, so I grabbed what called itself Table Water and headed to the till to make change for the ticket machine... only later would I realise that Table Water is carbonated, flavourless water. ie. that nasty stuff that Pavel and my Grandfather are always drinking... I'd forgotten that it was really popular out here (ew).

Trying to Stay Awake

The train shuttled me out to downtown in about 15min taking me through the (very green) suburbs and right into the heart of downtown. The Hauptbanhof is really quite beautiful. I'll try to take some pictures and get them up for this post. I followed the map in my Lonely Planet book to my overpriced hotel and dropped my bag off at the front desk so I could wander more freely around town. Frankfurt is very pretty, but feels quite small. Maybe that's a European thing. I guess I'll find out as I go.

There's some neat differences here though that I thought I'd share. For starters, there are trees everywhere. The Germans have really gone out of their way to make this city less stone and more leafy. Also, there are cyclists everywhere and not one of them rides on the road. This is because the sidewalks are two to three times wider than a traditional North American sidewalk, but with ⅓ reserved for bicycles. The paths are elevated from the road (level with the sidewalk), marked off and about 2m wide. The streetcars here are also much quieter than Toronto's and they're level with the ground (no steps up). I hope that the new T.O. streetcars are like these ones.

Quest for the Fridge Magnet

My Father collects fridge magnets from all the cities he's visited in the past. However, he missed a few on his journey and he asked if I could pick some up for him since I was in the neighbourhood.

I had no idea how difficult it would be to buy a friggin' fridge magnet.

I swear, the people hear have no idea what I was talking about. One woman sent me to a book store, another to a kitchen supply store. After *hours* of walking (and getting seriously turned around), I found one and walked my sore feet back to the Train station to get a reservation for tomorrow.

More About the Trains

That's the weird thing about the train system here. I paid €400something for 8days of train travel, but I still have to pay for a booking to get a seat. The booking is only €3.50 but still, it's kinda weird. Also important to remember is that you should always read the fine print on your tickets. Apparently, my Eurail pass is only good if (a) it's been dated and stamped for the first day of use by train station staff, and (b) the right months have been written in the right boxes. If I'd not bothered to read the tiny font in my jetlagged-stupor, I might have ended up having to pay full fare and a €100 fine!

What's Next

I've booked a train from Frankfurt to Amsterdam for tomorrow morning at 11:30. The hotel does a free breakfast from 7:30 to 10:00 so I'll probably get that and walk down to the station to read some Harry Potter (yes, Melanie finally got me started on it. I'm on book 3) until the train's ready to go. I think my next post will be some form of comparison between air and train travel. Seeing as this run will be on one of Germany's high-speed (ICE) trains, this should be fun :-)

One Last Bit: The Technical

It would appear that my initially ignored oversight has come 'round to bite me in the ass. This blog was written in Ottawa and hosted in Toronto. I've never really needed to consider the concept of "time zones" until now (bad sysadmin! No cookie!). I'm working on a fix though and will have it in place sometime in the next week (I'm writing it on trains and planes). In the mean time, all the dates remain in EST/EDT so you'll have to do the math.

September 09, 2007 07:51 +0000 | Blogger 'Round-the-World 2

You may have noticed that my site went away today (some of you did and even txt-messaged me about it -- thank you!). This will probably be a common thing for the next couple months due in part to the fact that my site is hosted at Melanie's house on a pseudo-static IP and a flakey router.

Under the circumstances, it's really the best setup I can get and I'm really appreciative of Melanie for tolerating the presence of my server stuff in her place for the next few months so I can blog from Europe and post pictures etc. Just remember that since I'm not around to watch to see if Rogers changes my IP (as it did today), I can't fix things right away. There may be some downtime and delays if stuff blows up and I'm offline for a few days. Don't worry. I'm not dead, just offline :-)

When I get back home, I'll have to look into good ISPs in Vancouver. Any suggestions would be welcome.

September 05, 2007 19:16 +0000 | 'Round-the-World Travel 5

I'm starting to think strategy for my trip over the pond and I'm looking for some advice regarding how to deal with jet lag etc. I don't deal well with time changes. Even a few hours has been known to knock me on my ass for a few days and here I'm looking at leaving Toronto around 5pm and arriving in Frankfurt at 7am the following day... I have no idea how to work with this.

The idea at the moment, is to land in Frankfurt, look for my hotel and stay awake 'till at least 5pm and then crash 'till the next day. But (a) do I find a hotel near the airport that's easier to get to but costs a lot more? Or do I (b) get a hotel closer to downtown so there's something to do and I'm closer to the train station when I need to depart in the morning?

In terms of cost, a hotel near the airport is about €150 ($200CAD), wheras, places closer to downtown are about ¼ that. Any suggestions would be appreciated :-)

August 24, 2007 19:11 +0000 | 'Round-the-World Travel 0

View Larger Map

Note that Google appears to have a problem figuring out the whole "round the world" bit. For some reason it will sometimes draw a line between Vancouver and Toronto, or two lines between Rome and Seoul. I can't get it to draw a line between Seoul and Vancouver... o well.

August 09, 2007 15:30 +0000 | 'Round-the-World Travel 3

I got my first passport ever yesterday and have to comment on how very awesome the passport office is in this city. After all the fear-mongering by friends and family: "You haven't got a passport yet? You better get one quick, the lineups are crazy!" etc etc. I'd like to share my experience:

On the week of July 22 (don't remember which day), I got to the passport office at 8am.
I received a line number (37) and waiting for about 30min while writing code on my laptop.
Upon talking to the kiosk guy, he informed me that they needed a couple extra bits of info. He gave me a "skip the line" card and I left.
The next day I went back to the passport office at 8:30am and waited about 15min in the short line.
The kiosk lady was friendly and helpful and let me add some stuff to my forms while I stood there.
I was out of there by 9:30am
I picked up my passport at the office with zero waiting yesterday.

End of story. Nothing to fear ladies and gentlemen. Acquiring a Canadian Passport is not the chaotic hassle you might have expected.

August 07, 2007 16:14 +0000 | Money 'Round-the-World Travel 4

My parents (most vocally my mother) worked very hard to drill one way of thinking into my brain: "Find out what you want to do and do it. Worry about the money last". It's an ideology that many might consider irresponsible, but my grandfather's words: "Money is for spending!" still echo in my head. It is after all only money, and this is a life experience.

So true to family tradition, I have left the costs of my round the world trip to the last minute. It's not that I've been financially irresponsible or anything, in fact, I have roughly $12K in the bank for this gig... I just haven't burdened myself with the numbers until now. And now I know that I don't have enough.

Ballpark costs at this point look like roughly $3700 for plane tickets and $2000 for moving. That's just the trip. If I want somewhere to live in Vancouver, I'll need an additional $1500 or so for rent & damage deposit. That leaves $4800 for room & board for 1.5 months in Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Chech Republic, Switzerland and Italy, then whatever I end up spending cash on in Korea (big thanks to Shawna for putting me up while I'm in town).

I figured that that kind of cash would be fine. I do, after all, get by on $1K/month quite comfortably in Toronto. However, I pay rent and make my own food here, while I'll have to endure the costs of hostel fees and restaurants on the other side of the pond. With hostels in Germany running $60 - $90 CAD /night, that $4800 is going to run out fast.

I'm not going to change anything though. I just have to manage my expenses so the majority goes on my low-interest credit card rather than paying in cash (can you get travellers cheques with a credit card? Should I bother?) I'll pay off what I can when I get to Vancouver, saving just enough for a first month's rent payment and worry about the rest later.

When I moved to Toronto, I racked up a debt of roughly $5700 and paid it off within a year. It looks like I'll be doing something similar for this move as well, so those of you who are reading this from Vancouver, please remember that I'll be as poor as a church mouse for some time after I arrive. This is, a life experience, and what's a few thousand dollars of debt when compared to that?

July 24, 2007 23:37 +0000 | 'Round-the-World Travel 0

I've booked my tickets, and the travel time looks insane, but they're booked, so I'm going. Some of this might change, if it turns out that I want to change something along the way, but for now, this is the most accurate stuff I can give you all:

If you want more detail (like flight numbers etc.) log in, 'cause I have a private post for friends & family with that kind of info.

Leave		Arrive		Travel Time	Kilometres
Toronto	2007-09-11	Frankfurt	2007-09-12	7:40	6346
Rome	2007-10-28	Singapore	2007-10-29	11:45	10005
Singapore	2007-10-29	Seoul	2007-10-29	6:15	4667
Seoul	2007-11-14	Vancouver	2007-11-14	10:10	5092

An interesting bit to note here is that I chose to take the shorter route home (Seoul » Vancouver vs. Seoul » Singapore » Frankfurt » Vancouver) not because of the time, but because of the cost of carbon credits for the return journey. The cost of the credits for the whole longer trip was in the range of $500 -- given that I was only going to save $600 by going the long route (44026km), the shorter option (26110km) seemed only logical.

July 22, 2007 16:14 +0000 | Blogger Geek Stuff Imager Melanie Money Moving Riptown 'Round-the-World The Toronto Public Space Committee Travel 2

I've not been posting a lot lately, mostly because I'm just stupid-busy. I'd forgotten what an incredible hassle it was to move my life 4349.9 kilometres away in the first place and doing it again is generally un-fun.

For starters, the cost of moving is ridiculous. Most moving companies will only accept a minimum of 1000lbs (they charge by weight, not time), and since I live in a bachelor, that's typically an aweful lot of extra space. On top of that, I have to pay for storage (since I'll be in Europe for a couple months before getting to Vancouver) and insurance, and movers. My latest quote was $2429.54!

Clearly, I have to keep looking, but time is running short.

Once I have a mover, I need a moving day, and since I'm not likely to leave Toronto 'till September 11th (yes, you read right, it is the cheapest day to fly), I could be living at Melanie's out of a suitcase for nearly a month.

Then there's the flight itself, I've been working with a travel agent and the routing is insane. I want to visit these places:

Stockholm
Berlin
Amsterdam
Geneva
Prague
Rome/Vatican City
Seoul

So one would imagine that the cheapest (and most efficient) option would be:

Toronto » Stockholm
Rome » Seoul
Seoul » Vancouver

But sadly, because of the way the airlines work, not only do I have to use Frankfurt as my entrance & exit for Europe, and route my Seoul trip through Singapore, but in order to get home, I have to fly back through Europe!

Toronto » Frankfurt
Frankfurt » Singapore
Singapore » Seoul
Seoul » Singapore
Singapore » Frankfurt
Frankfurt » Vancouver

This trip is about $3500. I can't be the only one that thinks this is insane. Obviously, I can get a direct Seoul » Vancouver flight, but that costs roughly $600 more and a RoundTheWorld pass is nearly $5000.

I may still take the more direct route, if only because it means I'm not in transit for 26hours on my last leg, not to mention the environmental implications of adding so many more kilometres to my trip. I'll also be buying carbon credits, but somehow, that doesn't make me feel any better about it all.

I'm also leaving my life in Toronto, of which Melanie is a big part. She's going through a rough spot in her life lately, and sometimes I feel like I'm not helping enough because of all of these other complications, not to mention the fact that I'm likely to make it worse when I leave. Even though we both knew this was coming the day we met, it doesn't make things any easier.

I have responsibilities as coordinator for the Camaras in Public Spaces campaign of the TPSC. I have yet to find a suitable replacement. We have a big event coming up for August, but someone will have to be here in October to field questions from the press when the pilot project is over and the one I had in mind to replace me doesn't appear interested. Stephen has expressed interest, but he's always got so much on his plate, I wanted to bring in some fresh blood to run the show, but I'm not sure who that would be at the moment.

Then there's my job. I don't have one lined up in Vancouver just yet, though my current boss has been kind enough to look into available positions with Riptown's Vancouver office. Whether there's a spot for me there or not, I'm not too worried about finding work in what I understand to be a competitive market, but that spectre of joblessness is still pretty scary.

Lastly, I've started re-coding my site using the new techniques I've been learning at my current job. The new site (still in development) will use a true MVC system and include nifty stuff like Ajax and JQuery as well as a Modified Preorder Tree Traversal algorithm for storing the hierarchical sorting structures in my Imager. This is mostly in preparation for when I'm in Europe and want to remote-blog and upload images -- I want the site to be better equipped.

So that's all for now. Wish me luck I suppose. If my heart & brain don't implode from the pressure, those of you reading this from Vancouver should see me in a few months.

July 03, 2007 17:54 +0000 | Friends Melanie 'Round-the-World 2

This past Saturday I experienced the joys of having my wisdom teeth removed. The NO2 freaked me out, so the process was predominantly gas-free, which didn't really bother me since the local anaesthetic was more than enough to get me through the process.

Melanie has since been taking care of me at her place and I've been floating between fever, jaw pain, and cold sweats since then. As I was just telling Suzan, I'm pretty much ok so long as I don't move or talk.. which is why I'm not at work yet.

I've been using this time to do some of the stuff I've been putting off, like re-coding this site and finding the various professionals I need in town to get my trip ready. Starting with an accountant and another photographer for my passport photos. I'll probably see if I can get that stuff out of the way on my way to work on Thursday or Wednesday.

That is all for now. Big thanks goes to Melanie for her usual super-awesomeness in taking care of me (I can be a really bitchy sick person) and to all of my friends who have been sending me "get well" messages here and there. Here's hoping I recover quickly.