Twenty

Our banks slogan is.. wait for it..





"You're Ritcher Than You Think.."





oh dear..

so far, freezing rain is not fun, especially not when out walking in the park with your back facing the wind/rain. Only to realise first you turn around that the wind/rain is now facing you, and its like somone takes tiny tiny knives to it, (maybe akin to the indian in the cupboad kinda size) except of course they are ice. But! ice does incredible things! you no longer walk along paths, you glide! snow that looks like snow has a hard crunchy layer. Trees take on a second skin with each individual branch getting a cocoon 5 mm thick of clear, clean ice! And when the light shines on it, its truely stunning. Its like the light is disfused in complete different directions and then bounces of the next branch until the whole tree is glimmering! and they sound different too, when the wind blows the branches they crack!

Eighteen

Christmas ey? a time long ago when Jesus was born so we now celebrate santa. love it.
Nither of us are religious and santa seems somewhat of a kitch substitue to hold a Holiday for. It seems christmas is more a time when we spend far to much on presents and liquor and eat our body weight in food. but most of all its about sitting down with the people you genuinly love and care for and celebrating the bounty of friendship, family and lovers.
So for Tora and i we had to be all of this rolled up into one for each other (oh the joy of being on the other side of the world) which might i add went amazingly well- we didnt end up making out or bringing up embaressing childhood stories, instead we got ate and drank until the wee hours of the morning talking about all things dear and nothings in our basement.
expectations are a huge thing and i find that christmas and new year in general are held at standards pretty redicolusly high for one day of the year. This year we have completely lowered the bar on all expectations and are taking things as they come- something that i think we should do more often. And for that Christmas now went more smoothingly amazing than either of us could possibly imagine. We are looking forward to New Years.. i think.

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After a day of doing pretty much nada, we took our tired hot asses out of our little dungeon downstairs and walked the 10 metres outside the house to the bus stop, prepared for a random night. We jumped on the first bus and after 25 minutes of random turns, we got off and accidentally met Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law (no complains there). We all spend the night hanging out, laughed, talked and enjoyd the cool breeze of the winter weather. Thanks for the english accent and pleasant company. Both Ellen and I did really like the turn-out of the night.

Sixteen

So we have reached our destination of apartment one, 222 First Street, Glebe, its a pretty cozy little crib with exposed brick in our basement living room, dimmers in our bedrooms with low ceilings, photos now on the walls, kitchen with an amazingly creaky wooden floor, a tiny bathroom and two housemates who seem to keep on giving (we got an xbox two minutes ago). It seems like Christmas is well and truely here with the snow, Van playing in the lounge, trackies, baking trays at the ready for tomorrow which shall well and truely be an incredible day of domestisity followd by some imense eating ahh it shall be great to cook again. After so long of tinned soup and yogurt it shall be nice to have a sweeding smorgasboard infused with.. australian christmas food?? im not sure. but im certain it shall be delightful.

I was asked today what Canada was like-- so i thought that perhaps it was time to give a low down on the sights and smells that makes up this fine country.
Flying in over Vancouver was incredible, the receeding horizon made up entirely of meyandering rivers Islands that peak into mountains that go on forever convered in every shade of white you can imagine.
In Ottawa the paths range from being covered entirely in snow, that turns to slush, which turns to giant puddles subsequently redicolusly large shoes are needed to keep your toes from quite litteraly falling off. the parks are always covered in snow and look incredibly romantic (even without a man by your side).
This place isnt only snow and -20 degrees, the people here are pretty lovely. more than once we have been offered free meals, drinks, christmas dinners by complete strangers or near enough. i dont know if its our accents, which always is immediatly assosiated with being from the UK or whether the people here are just generally trusting and kind. i think we'll go with the latter.
It seems like Canada is fairly similar to Australia though, a British Colony that is now stuggling to keep there own micilanoius migrant identity with the ever influencing US of A.
Otherwise a few things- its customary, rather not unusual, for people to have bedrooms in the basement or attic (we live in a basement. and we love it).

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anyhow there is far more to write on this matter of Canada but for now we shall say goodnight.

Thirteen

..Not all sides of Toronto are pretty, yesterday we ended up in a pretty dodgy area trying to find this place that sells old recods since T has found some amazing records for under a dollar each we now have to find a player. Both of us have been in some pretty sketchy places around the world, dodgy avenues, but this neighbourhood proved to stir some uncertianty. Many odd looking charaters, windows with alot of bars across them, some pretty racid vomit left on the side of the road (that by the cold had nicely freezed). But hey we survived, found the store, didn't buy anything and promptly took a cab (with yet another wierd cab driver) back to the brighter side.

The night started with drinks (what else?). Way too sweet ones by the way, but we managed. For a while. Karaoke (x2, we kind of got forced..) was the theme for the night. Smoke machines. Two big "pitchers" of beer, which resulted in an intimate encounter with the cold stone floor of the lovely "washrooms". A free shot at the bar (sneaky sneaky). 2 free moosehead t-shirts (thank you S). And for last a very short walk home, though E wanted to hail a cab. We think random is a good word to summon the night.

E met up with some old friends i travelled with in Madagascar this morning which was lovely. After two years we all connected like old times (i guess thats what you get when you live with people in a third world country for three months, you bond rather well). Meeting up with them was amazingly refreshing. Seeing old faces who hadn't changed, but yet have acheived so much and who are still headed in such inspiring directions, was just lovely.
It's something to love about travelling, reconnecting with people and meeting new ones. People who are doing things completely different from you. You know, people who have their own lives, own interests and own stories. It's great connecting with people who have different avenues in life you learn so much, about them, the world, people, places, but also yourself. How you can talk about things that don't usually probe your concious train of thought question, find conclucions, or for the most part more questions.

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Oh, and by the way - Niagara Falls (and the town) was thumbs up x2. We gotta love the vintage stores.

Ten

Wandering- how else when exploring a new city. seriously nothing beats following your own nose and getting lost along the way. You end up talking to people filming gatorade ads, others who have odd stories about when they were taught by Peter Einsman, or men who are just cuddly and Russian looking and know where giant giant Christmas trees reside. You get lost and go beyond the Tourist attractions of Sky towers and Ghery Galleries and see Houses that have no disguises, that have seen the time long before us and conveys it in their facades. Streets with character that ooses from the peeling paint and the slightly creepy man who is picking up the rubbish along the side of the road. For what reason in a neighbourhood no one seems to go? (besides lost tourists from Australia..)

I think this is where a citys true colours shine, places that are not there to be seen, that exist for living and whithout pronouncing there precence with a sign that depicts its purpose and meaning.

Another amazing thing about new cities is exploring coffee stores (even if the coffee here is absolute non-drinkable) nothing quite beats finding a cozy cafe that smells of beans once you have been battling wind and snow for 20 minutes. Lost.

We have definitely utilized this service, sat in cafes for hours drinking, reading, drawing, picture taking, talking about everything and nothing. Nothing. Just listening to the sounds surrounding.

So far it has been fun.

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Tomorrow to the tourist mecca of Niagra Falls (that is also a city.. yet to be explored).

Nine

Then - Many days of drinking. M A N Y. No hungovers what so ever.

Now - One night of crazy tequilla (?) and a very slow day after. Still drunk? We are not sure.

Turns out there is not only two Australian here (Yes, we do count Tors for an Aussie sometimes. Easier that way) in Toronto. But actually far more than Canadians, almost.. (we like to exagerate) In one night we managed to gather one from Tazmania, Perth, Melbourne, Cairns and Adelaide. And also a crazy duuude named Roy, from Hawaii. But we like Toronto so far. Big city. The biggest one L has ever been to. Except the fact that Sydney is like double the size, but hey, who count Sydney as a city? (Apparently not L..).

To make a long day short. Did not get much done. Wandering the streets of amazingly hot and interesting stores. Considering the fact that neither of us have any money to spend, we did not allow ourselfs to go inside any of them, with the chance of temptation getting too strong and we would have ended up buying whole stores. Anyhow, finding a huge bookstore worth spending at least a couple of hours browsing in. Tors had time for a power nap in the store window and L had time to loose both her beenie and one week old gloves (are we surprised?). Purchase of one book (which is good, considering the list of potentially buyable books could have been made long looong). Getting luggage from locked store room and spending the night eating take out, 14 different home made cookies, drinking beers, laughing, talking crazy travelling possibilities and more laughing was quite a successfull second night in Toronto. We are happy, and will now pass out easily on our huge air madress, next to the tiny Christmas tree.

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Happy was the word.

Seven

One week (minus a few hours..). Already. Yes, time flies. But we are still here, at the same place, the same room, the same clothes but minus a heck load of luggage. We thank the corner of Bank and First for that! The weight is of our shoulders physically, but it also feels like the mental load on our shoulders just got reduced to half. Yet again we met our men and we're just feeling happier and happier (if that is possible). Surely the bubble has to burst soon. Like.. we don't know.. maybe tomorrow we miss our bus to Toronto.. drive off the road because of the rediculous amount of snow.. not find a hostel to stay at.. Well the list could be made long. All we know is there has to come a stop to this insane happiness we felt the last couple of days. No doubt. It is just way too good.

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Six

Okay, so we don't need a grown up to tell us that every day is different. We are not that naive. After these last days we're pretty sure we got the idea. M A N. But even though we already knew for a fact that, like written before things change from day to day, we were not prepared for these quite extreme opposites... going from the dark dark dungeons of hell (okay, that is exageration) to the white clouds above the snowfall - is just amazing. Two nights ago we were sitting in the sofa, staring. Into what? Just nothing probably.. just hoping the time would pass and someone cute looking from the street would yell out our names and tell us everything will be just fine (which oddly enough did not happen. we still wonder why). But last night it changed. After meeting two new men we are pretty happy. And no, this is not our men as in our men. just our men. Does that make sense? Probably not, but hey. Anyhow, so now we are walking the streets of Glebe with silly happy smiles on our lips and feel like singing out loud most of the time. In fact, last night we were walking in the dark (very safe streets here in Glebe, don't you worry) singing (or shall we write screaming?) to the ringing bells I (Tors) stole from the local bottle store.

So we have learned that there is no point in getting your hopes up because it will only jinx it (trust us, we've tested this theory). Better expect the least and recieve the best.

Also we can mention there is lots and lots of pretty amazing corner stores, cute cafeés and cozy restaurants around. We like that. A L O T. A great evening that ended up with live tunes from the Titanic and crazy running around in the deep snow is pretty unbeatable.. don't you agree? (we know you want to)

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ps. We can secretly tell you IKEA in Ottawa does not match the perfection of the one in dear Adelaide... not even close. A bit of a dissapointment actually.

Three

So how to begin a blog?

How you begin a journey? time away? conversations? journeys, pathes, life, meals?

How do you begin anything?
After so much time establishing new begninnings somwhere else, to now start again, completely differently.

So far we have attempted this by buying bright green gumboots, jackets that are the equivilant to wearing a doona and boots that look like we should be hiking up Mt Everest- sexy we assure you. boys back home you would have a field day paying us out.

But back to establishing more than just a wardrobe to survive the 30cm of snow that is falling from the sky (as we speak).

Canada from what we can tell, most are interested in where we are from (of course), which gets confusing considering it is a crazy combination of Australia, Sweeden, Adeialde and Cairns. Until we find a better, less confusing way of saying it we just mix it all.

In a way this a trip isn't only about finding out about other people and where they are from, what their stories are, but also about finding who we are, what our stories are and where we have been, and how this defines us. One thing about travelling and being removed from what you know is the realisation of your own thoughts, free of the external influences of family, friends, "peers" influence. You have the ability to truely draw your own conclusions without the imput of others. It's almost like a meditation in its own right- a clensing.

So what we're basicly saying is- now we've left we don't need any of you anymore! hahahaha-- not even close.

But even with new environments, situations, they pose questions that you wouldnt think of in your normal situations at home- like for instance yesterday at the grocery store (note Canadian terms) we found ourselfs asking "why are these watermelons so tiny??" importat things that you would never be confronted with back home.

Where is home?
A question for next time..

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So yeah, how to begin? A question not comletely answered, but a few things to great help -
- Right clothes so we can venture out of the house is a very good start, a trusty friend is nice, a kettle full of warming tea. and some guts.