The Adventure Begins

Sweating profusely in my Canucks jersey which I brought along deliberately so I could wear it off the plane I was grateful to see that my backpack was (for once) among the first pieces of luggage to gently make its turn around the baggage carousel. But lo! Some bearded computer programmer snatches my backpack and it starts to disappear into the crowd. There can only be ONE Mountain Equipment Co-op backpack with a Lululemon yoga mat strapped to it and it certainly belongs to me, the chick wearing the ‘Nucks jersey.

I firmly alerted this bearded man that he was mistaken and the bag was mine. Something in my tone must have frightened him because he returned my property immediately and with a dose of enthusiasm.

Thank God again that I have fabulous relatives who whisked me off to cottage country early the next morning. A wonderful place where it’s always “beer-o’clock” and there are plenty of power tools to play with. Every night we sat out next to the water and watched the fire at first gently lick then furiously consume the planks of scrap wood we had cut. The warm lake water doesn’t buoy me up the same way the salty Pacific does so my morning swims left me panting on the shore and ever so grateful to slip into the hot tub and watch the baby ducks be schooled around by their mother.

Alas, it was not to last. It was back to the humid brick-built city simmering in the ripeness of summer. The streetcar rails trip up my feet and the subway tokens are so small I’m always afraid that I’m going to lose them. Sitting on the balcony at the family house up on Bathurst Street as a thunder storm gathers I watch the Orthodox Jews stream in and out of Tolvi Deli. The women wear long shapeless skirts and thick black stockings despite the sticky weather and the men are never seen without their skullcap in place and the strings of their prayer shawl floating behind them.

I try jogging. It feels unnatural. Cars zip past in an endless procession, smokers behold me with bemusement and the dusty garbage-laden breeze brings me no air. I give up and head for home. Merely an hour later the heavens open and Noah’s flood returns to be sucked up by the parched earth.

I get lucky and after only two days of pavement pumping and cold calling real estate agents I snag a beautiful apartment which is steps away from the school and the epicenter of downtown Toronto insanity – the Eaton’s Centre. Downstairs and next door is a deluxe ‘Poutinery’ shop which I already know will be the scene of many late night “drunchie” (drunk munchies) attacks where I try to consume the maximum number of calories in the minimum number of bites. Kitty corner to this Mecca for all things deep fried and lardy is the historic Filmore Hotel, the oldest strip club in Toronto.

According to a source back in the day the girls would give you a personal dance for only $5. And since at this time the ‘back room’ concept hadn’t been developed the girls carried around their own little dance platform and place it in front of you when you decided to be a customer. Of course the public nature of this practice meant that if any of the five guys to your right or left engaged a dancer you got to enjoy it too! My source tells me though that the standards have gone steeply down hill in the last decade and that the current ‘talent’ have more rolls than a Thanksgiving dinner. Posted underneath the hours for 'Afternoon Delight' (4-7) and the drink specials (starting at just $4) is a clever enough witticism for a strip club sign: "Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder." It make me chuckle.

“This area I got to tell you, it’s grimy, it’s rough,” warns my Greyhound delivery man. I nod sagely and thank him for the advice. Perhaps living in Vancouver has jaded me to the presence of the meth/crack-head element because I never thought the area was that bad, I’m only blocks away from Yonge Street for fudge’s sake. But as I walk into Metro to do my first grocery shop I’m given reason to pause. Next to the automatic doors leading out, only a pane of glass away from me and my produce and young man is lying on a stretcher being worked on by three EMTs. I watch as they put an IV into his limp forearm. Blood gushes from around the injection site and the blue gloved hands quickly mop it up, tossing soaked gauze onto the man’s chest as they go. A friend of the patient is sitting on a nearby bench being watched over by a heavily muscled undercover. The friend looks scrawny and has a moderate case of meth-face, the cheeks are pinched, a maple leaf tattoo graces the side of his neck and malnourishment makes his nose seem to protrude from his face giving him a weasel-like appearance. By the time I take my laden basket to the checkout they’re gone.

Toronto clearly has surprises in store for me but as I sip champagne on my fire escape and the evening light dapples the leafy canopy above me I don’t feel like worrying about it.

Welcome to my new office.

Vancouver: A Glutton's Paradise

As the days 'til my flight ticked down I found my mind returning again and again to one of my most enduring obsessions - FOOD! Anyone's who's tried to track down a recent roll or well sauteed noodle anywhere else in North America knows that as far as Asian food goes Vancouver is where it's at. This is my tribute to all that is awesome about pan-Asian nosh.

I have always wanted to try Kintaro Ramen down on Denman but the immense lines which snake out of it's front door always dissuaded me. Clearly the time for excuses was at an end. My friend A. and I made a lunch date for Monday and eagerly rushed down to the unassuming storefront only to find that it is closed only one day a week and that day happens to be Monday. We ogled the cook prepping the different kinds of miso paste and sighed with regret. But thank god Kintaro has a sister restaurant just a couple of shops down where I was treated to this bowl of steaming goodness. My usual complaint with Asian soups is that they tend to be extremely salty but this broth was light without loosing any complexity. The noodles were firm and chewy bearing absolutely no resemblance to that package crap we all ate in university.

Thanks to the generosity of the parental exchequer I was also able to squeeze in one last meal at Italian Kitchen one of many establishments riding the wave of nuevo-Italiano cuisine. The place was packed and unfortunately a table of rowdy drunk Americans, the men all sporting golf shirts and khakis, the women untouched up roots and litres of perfume, made it a bit hard to hold a conversation. Our server, a fatter version of a young Matthew Broderick bordered on what I would call "over enthusiastic." But nothing could take away from such a gorgeous plate as this. Organic heirloom tomatoes, with basil oil and the best buffalo mozzarella I've ever eaten. Unlike most fresh mozza this stuff hadn't been firmed up and shaped into a ball but was pillowy like a cumulous cloud and practically dissolved in my mouth. Certainly a moment when I was grateful for Vancouver's granola crunching organic crusaders.

With 48 hours on the Toronto countdown clock I was frantic to find and try another Vancouver original which has escaped my jaws for way too long - JAPADOG!!! I was running around downtown hitting the bank, Staples, you know, FUN STUFF and swung by Japadog's storefront location to finally satisfy my urge to find them closed. No matter I told myself, I'll just go by the cart at 5oo Burrard but lo and behold the cart was NOT THERE! I cursed my fate and did my best to reconcile a destiny without fake tube meat and Japanese mayonnaise. But as luck would have it on another frantic errand run earlier today I had a vision, there it was at Burrard and Pender, the ever-so-holy Japadog cart. It was like eating a sushi hot dog and it was everything I hoped it would be. I saw the light and it was beautiful.

As a true glutton I have my certain special things that I simply cannot do without. These take the form of shameful addictions to one particular place and one particular dish that drives my senses into an MSG-fueled frenzy. It's time for me to confess that I would cross mountain ranges, brave raging torrents of white water and the most infernal of Toronto winters to have once again the fresh Shanghai style noodles from Legendary Noodle on Denman. It's the kind of place you could walk by a thousand times and never look twice, never know that inside greatness is resident. If you eat in you get the free floor show of watching the non-English speaking cooks stretch and slap the dough into submission. I usually get take out because I love to drown my noodles in sriracha hot sauce (yet another shameful addiction). The noodles are shaved off a large ball of prepared dough straight into the boiling pot of water and the result is a noodle like nothing else. Ugly and misshapen, varying accordance with the hands that shaped them they are the proverbial ugly duckling of noodles but once they're in your mouth you realize that's a swan baby, without a doubt.

There you have it, a tiny glimpse into the culinary wonderland that is Vancouver. I've eaten sushi in Tokyo that didn't hold a candle to what we have here (though I admit Narita Airport probably wasn't the best place to try 'real' Japanese sushi). The point is we are friggin' lucky, we eat well, we eat healthy, we eat fresh, we eat local, we eat organic. Though it's hard to imagine when you live here I can tell you the rest of the world (especially North America) does not eat this way. We've got it good.

Saying Goodbye

As my move to Toronto draws closer my apartment descends deeper and deeper into chaos. I sleep on the floor surrounded by books, unpaid bills and the crumbs of last night's drunken snacking and feel like I'm already gone. My giant bag of packing peanuts is now the largest piece of furniture I own (it sort of looks like a bean bag chair) and if it wouldn't make such a horrible mess I'd be rolling in those little nuggets of styrofoam joy and laughing like a maniac.

I realize that I'm not leaving the country or anything drastic like that but when I think of the distance involved, a whopping 3354.71 km, whether it's the same country or not, I'm moving to a whole other planet. No more cheap and tasty sushi, no more pristine unpolluted air, no more mountains. No more Stanley Park (or whatever it's called) and its abundance of wildlife like these two baby otters I spotted on Sunday. No more intravenous drug users selling their skinny bodies by the drive through Starbucks on Powell. No Ed Hardy wearing yahoos fighting over who is more "street" while Granville's weekend circus caterwauls around them. No more 'Symphony of Fire', no more Grouse Grind, no more (short lived) Canucks playoff fever where for a week or two we hope against hope that this year we have a goalie who won't choke when it's 'go' time.

No more dried prawns and funky herbal medicines wrecking havoc on my hangover tummy as I stumble through Chinatown, no more marveling at the library's high atrium, no more pot rallies at the art gallery, no more laughter on sea side patios, no more frolicking at Wreck Beach applauding the sun set, no more sun dipping into the sea as she makes her glorious exit, no more Lyons standing regal in the sky.

The distance between London, England and Moscow, Russia is only 2498.32 km. I am going far away and things are going to be different there. If I said I was cool with all this I'd be lying.

In my heart I know everything is going to be fine and very soon the excitement which comes with the promise of a fresh adventure will make the separation easier. But right now before all the hurry and the newness overwhelms me I'm going to let myself be a little bit sad for what I'm leaving behind.

So it's goodbye to my trusty and heavily stained loveseat and goodbye to Vancouver, my love.