The Fallacy of North America

It seems like ages since I left Russia but I'm really only coming to the end of my third week back in Canada. In 3 short weeks I've got a car, a job, a bank account and begun looking for a place to live (34 and staying with my mother may be alright in Russia but is so not cool in Canada).

Despite all this hectic activity, I haven't had time to really adjust to life in the Maritimes. I still feel stuck somewhere between here and there, and the reverse culture shock is unsettling. I've gone through periods of "I love it here!" to "I want to go back to Russia!" I definitely miss some things about Russia, namely, the chaotic freedom, the architectural aesthetics (of Moscow, at least), the beauty of the people (mainly the women) and the feeling of doing something wonderful with my life.

Here in Halifax I feel only the crunch of time and finance. I have a full-time job and it pays better than my English Teacher's salary but it doesn't offer the kind of financial freedom that living rent-free did in Moscow. My schedule is also heavily regulated by work, and I can't be late or negotiate or enjoy long breaks throughout the day.

One thing that really bugs me about life back home is the complete ignorance of the Canadian people to life outside their own little bubble. I can't relate at all with anybody, and when they begin in-depth conversations about what was on TV last night or how much interest they're paying on their mortgage or their car financing, I switch off. How could I ever possibly explain to them the wonders of Moscow, the history of St. Petersburg, the vastness of the steppes, the feeling of standing on Mamaev Kurgan? How could they even care about the wonders of the Moscow Metro or the absolutely mesmerizing femininity of Russian women or the chaos of gypsy taxis? The fact is, they can't.

I found Russians to be much more engaging in conversation, and much more intelligent about the world around them, then Canadians. Russians were always polite and interested in different places, whereas Canadians have that irritating North American smugness. I also find Canadians incredibly dishonest and feel like everyone is out to rip me off. In Russia, I KNEW everyone was out to rip me off but those I counted as friends I could trust 100%.

In many ways Russia is superior to Canada. Canada's infrastructure is stable, the air is clean, the society well-organized, democracy and the rule of law is healthy and the economy is sound, but the culture really sucks. The exact opposite is true for Russia.

This is mainly the effect of reverse culture-shock, and with time and patience I'll become numb to the glaring hypocrasies I see around me, and eventually I'll become another ignorant dumb-ass Canadian. I do love living in Nova Scotia, however, and ultimately this province is superior in many ways to snooty British Columbia (and the beaches here are better). For me, however, there is no difference right now between people from the Maritimes and people from the west coast, or people from Florida or Wisconsin for that matter. That North American attitude is really grinding on me, and I miss the deep cultural wonder and beauty of Russia and Europe.

Nova Scotia

A Breath of Fresh Air

I've been in Halifax for just over 1 week, and in that time have decided to stay here, begun looking for a job, scored 3 interviews, acquired a car (a nice 2000 Volvo) and started looking at apartments (mostly on the Dartmouth side). I've also managed to not spend all my money I brought from Russia!

Not bad for one week! The job market in Halifax is actually very, very healthy. There are literally thousands of jobs and, when coupled with the very affordable housing prices, it makes living here seem like a no-brainer. The area is scenically beautiful; different than British Columbia, with it's soaring mountains and placid Pacific coastlines, but beautiful in it's own rugged, unspoiled north-Atlantic way. It's the people here that put Nova Scotia miles above British Columbia.

Friendliness is everywhere. People stop on the street and say "Hello". They make eye contact here and smile. They do it all with a laid-back, confident style. The people are extremely helpful. Just yesterday I was driving the new car with a temporary license in the window (waiting for new plates to be made) and a cop pulled me over. It was my first pull-over in 2 years! Anyways the cop, a young guy, approached the car behind the driver window (and I kept both hands on the wheel so he could see them) and then said "Sorry."!

He continued. "I didn't see your temp [temporary plate]. If I could have your license and registration and insurance, I'll just run a quick check and then you'll be on your way."

After a few minutes on the computer in his car, he came back and handed me a license, and then apologized profusely for pulling me over! I felt bad and said "Hey no problem."

In comparison, people in British Columbia, especially in Victoria, are stuck-up and snotty. Many don't bother leaving their province ("We live in the best place on earth. Why go anywhere else?"). Compared to Russia, Nova Scotia is absolutely refreshing. After all this time it's surprising that I hadn't put more thought into settling here.

Then there is, of course, the wonderful Maritime culture. I'm not talking about the grating, better-than-thou Celtic culture of Cape Breton, but the deep-routed historic culture of New England and the Maritimes.

In one week I've firmly established a beach -head, as it were, here in Halifax, and from here on out it's all easy sailing.

The Year Was 1778

My dreams aren't really worthy of any Freudian psycho-babble analysis. Usually they involve beer, the occasional fuzzy slipper and a cheeseburger or two. Which is why it was so strange to have a more meaningful, realistic dream like the one I had two days ago.

In this dream I had left Russia, kissing Katya farewell in the doorway of her flat in Schyolkova and climbing into a taxi at 2:30 in the morning. Then I was on a flight to Halifax, Nova Scotia. 12 hours later I was in Canada's maritimes with my mother and we were (typical for my dreams) drinking Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale and eating bacon cheeseburgers.

Then I was sitting on a warm sofa (again, with a beer in my hand) in front of a gas fireplace watching Criminal Minds in HD on a large flat screen television in my mother's living room, while outside the nearby ocean boiled in a sudden windstorm that had blown in from the Atlantic.

After that my dream switched to driving across the impressively-large MacDonald bridge that spans the Halifax harbour between Halifax and Dartmouth. The naval yards were to my left and to my right were the tall glass buildings of Scotiabank and the Halifax Casino, lit up in the night and giving the city a feeling of grandeur. From the bridge we ended up on the highway all the way to the town of Enfield.

When I awoke, it all had seemed so vivid, and so real. The part about leaving Katya behind in Russia while I found employment and prepared for her to arrive in Canada was particularly painful. But when I looked around, I wasn't in Katya's bed with my wife warm and sleeping beside me. I was in my mother's spare room. I was in Halifax!

It wasn't a dream, although it still seems like it isn't real. Unlike the last time I came back for 5 weeks, in September, this time it is a permanent move. I was originally planning on heading to Victoria and starting work as an At-Sea-Observer, a job I didn't particularly want but was a means to an end. Due to family reasons, and the fact that I've always loved Halifax and Nova Scotia in particular, I decided to stay.

So my Mission to Moscow is actually over. It doesn't seem like it. I still expect to wake up back in Russia at any moment, but here I am in Canada. I feel at ease now, knowing I made the right decision in choosing Halifax.

This blog won't be finished yet, however. New adventures await me and it will be interesting to switch the focus from my perspective on living in Russia to Katya's perspective on living in Canada.

Here I am. My new and, hopefully, permanent home. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada!

Nova Scotia, Vodka & Irish Girls

I want to talk about three things in this blog post: Nova Scotia, vodka, and Irish girls.

Okay. So, as you read this pretend that you know that I'm really drunk. It's a Monday night and Mr. Irish and I just polished off two bottles of vodka and chased them with pickles and orange juice. The telephone just rang about ten minutes ago. I answered because Mr. Irish stumbled off to bed a few moments before. "Allyo?" I answered, as is standard in Russia. Some babushka flew a stream of Russian at me. "Ya nye gavaroo pa-Rooski!" I replied ("I don't speak Russian"...in Russian). She kept swearing at me in Russian and, for some reason but probably related to two bottles of vodka, I said to her in French "Mercis Madame, mais maintenant je ne comprends pas la Rus. Bon soir!" and I hung up the phone.

The reason she had called is because Mr. Irish and I had been watching traditional Irish folk songs on YouTube. Last week I bought some speakers for my laptop at a chain called "Ion" and they have some good volume capality. I introduced Mr. Irish to 'Barrett's Privateers', which is one of my favourite Nova Scotia songs and reflects a HUGE part of the difference between Americans and Canadians and Mr. Irish loved it! We were both banging our fists on the the chair and singing away.

"I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears...
I'm a broken man on the Halifax pier
The last of Barret's Privateers"

I love Nova Scotia. I love it so much...anyways.....

Mr. Irish typed up some Irish folk songs and they were all so damn beautiful. The history and sense of cultural/ethnical pride in Irish songs is beyond words. It's beautiful. It really is. And these were YouTube videos of both celebrities and regular folk singing. One thing I noticed, and I've noticed in all my experiences, is that the Irish-Scottish look is so damn beautiful. Some men have an Asian fetish; I have a Celtic fetish. Irish and Scottish women, to me, are the most beautiful creatures on the planet. There is nothing more intoxicating, more soul-wrenching or more feminine than an Irish lass singing an Irish song. She need not be a pencil-thin
Asian or Russian but she can still be so damn beautiful!

Goddamn vodka. I can't escape it here in Russia. Even on a quiet Monday night my flatmate and I polished off two bottles. Fortunately I don't have a class until 17:15. For some strange reason an "hour" in Russian schools counts as 45 minutes. These are "academic hours". A real hour of 60 minutes is considered an "astronomical hour" (because one hour is so damn astronomical). So my Tuesday class is 2 academic hours starting at 17:15. Where else in the world can you get completely pissed on vodka, dream of Irish girls, work for an hour and a half late in the evening the next day, and get paid $2,000 a month? Not in Canada. Not anywhere but Russia!

A woman's voice singing Irish folk songs while you drink Russian vodka and dream of Nova Scotia makes for a fantastic Monday evening!

Slante!

Summer of Beer: Tents

Ah, Owen Sound in the summer. Big sun, cool breezes off the bay, green trees and lots of beer. Lots. I mean A LOT of beer.

Every year in August Owen Sound puts on the Summerfolk festival. It's a mini-woodstock that's in it's 31st year. Folk bands play music while hippie chicks shop at homemade jewellery kiosks and I drink at the beer tent.

If you volunteer for set-up construction a week before the festival you get in free for the weekend, so for a fourth Summerfolk in my lifetime I helped set up the site, including lots of fencing and painting stages and kiosks and drinking beer.

During the festival my old friends (some of whom I haven't seen in years) and I hung out at the volunteer campgrounds or the beer tent and...drank beer. Thankfully, as opposed to a couple of years ago when I last went to Summerfolk, nobody brought their kids! So we drank more beer.

I think I spent about 20 minutes at the main stage and the rest of the weekend drinking beer. One night I smoked a little somethin-somethin that was rolled in tobacco leaves and was the size of a cuban cigar and ended up stumbling home at 3 am. My friend S***e, missing somewhere at Summerfolk, sent me a text that read "Help." I replied "With what?" to which he responded "I don't know where I am." Turns out he had wandered to the marina, puked and then passed out under a dry-docked boat.

The Summerfolk bar tent has its own stage where the livelier bands play. Don't get me wrong; the main stage had a few good bands (or so I heard) but there's no dancing or standing or smiling or looking at the stage with your head on an angle to the left. The bar stage had a few great bands, and one of them was a Celtic band from Nova Scotia that was the hit of the weekend.

There were about 8 guys in this band. In addition to the regular drums, bass and guitars they had a couple of fiddlers, a flute-like-thingy, and even a bag-piper! They were lively! I had wandered in to the beer tent when I heard them playing and stumbled upon some of my friends who were dancing so I joined them but, being able to barely stumble around let alone walk upright, I almost fell over a couple of times.

Man, this band was great! You really can't beat lively Celtic music.

Being too drunk does, on occasion, have its drawbacks. There was this beautiful, beautiful brunette in a light-blue dress and a cowboy hat that I started chatting up. We were hitting it off and she touched my arm a couple of times as we laughed and I was thinking "Sweet!" But then I had that prodigal 'one-beer-too-many', and in the way an accident occurs with no warning, I was suddenly too drunk to pass as a human.

As I was trying to look into those incredibly sexy big brown eyes of hers I found I couldn't focus, and her face looked like an out-of-focus picture, and I was aware of the rotation of the earth (except I wasn't keeping up).

I've made a fool of myself in this situation when I was younger and continued to pursue, but now I know that there's no point in reinforcing a defeat, so I stood up suddenly and said "Wow. I'm too loaded to pick you up. Have a great night!" and walked back to the campgrounds.

I never said I was smooth.

The Summer Before I Went To Korea

The summer before I went to Korea I stayed with my ex at her parent's place in Mabou, Nova Scotia. Man, what a summer that was!

Mabou is a small town of about 500 people on the west side of Cape Breton Island and it is one of my favorite places on this planet. The food is good, the Celtic music is great and the little pub on the highway, The Red Shoe Tavern, is one of the best pubs I've ever been to (and I've been to a lot).

Mabou is home to the Rankin Family and a very lively Celtic scene. But that's not why I loved that summer so much.

The summer was great because I had so much fun! My ex and I went out of our way to be unemployed for two months, which turned out to be hard work as job opportunities kept coming our way and we had to make up excuses as to why we couldn't take them. That was pre-meditated, by the way. We had actually said to each other "Let's not work at all this summer" and laughed.

Instead of work we drank copious amounts of beer, camped on the beach, drove around Cape Breton, mowed her parent's lawn and helped her father paint a barn, went crab fishing on a boat and made many trips to Halifax. Friends came out to Nova Scotia from Ontario to visit us. We would zip around the coast on her father's 4-wheeler and hike over small mountains to pick berries on the other side. It was peaceful there, with no traffic. The trees and bushes and grass were bright green and the gravel roads would kick up little dust devils in the wind. The weather was sunny and breezy with the occasional spectacular Atlantic thunderstorm, which we would watch rolling in off the water from the large patio at the front of her parent's house.

We knew that we were going to Korea; we had signed the contracts and bought the tickets and were just waiting for the ball to get rolling.

It is similar to right now, I suppose, with the exception that I am single and in Ottawa.

But the similarities can't be overlooked. I'm off to Russia in September with the contract signed and I'm...well, okay the similarities end there. Nevertheless, six years ago I was waiting to go overseas and here I am doing it again.

Which is why I was thinking it would be such a shame if I didn't enjoy this summer.

This past weekend I went to Wiarton, on the Bruce Peninsula, to see Sam Roberts and The Tragically Hip play, and I had memories of Mabou. Very similar geography, with small towns, gravel roads, bright green all around, sunny and a cool breeze coming off Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.

Perhaps I'll go camp out in Owen Sound for the summer. I have friends there and life is cheaper and more relaxed. Of course that means ditching the lease on my apartment in Ottawa but what the hell, I'll be ditching it anyways!

Sounds good to me!