Around the world with a Finn

So I was back home for a luxurious 9 days or so and was called off to go to Denmark. This didn’t really surprise me, since the travel was business, not pleasure. People asked me in the US: Did you tour Europe at all? My answer always is that no, I do that for my job. And even now that my trip around the world is over, I plan to keep up the blog. Just to point out – my Finnworld goes on and so do my various travels. I plan to do a little sneak peaks on the places I visit, just to keep records on my travels and hopefully pop up some interesting things to those who keep on reading from a point of view of a Finn.

So today I’m in Aarhus, Denmark. Aarhus is one of the biggest towns in Denmark and it’s on the mainland of it, not in the island like Copenhagen. To get to Aarhus from Jyväskylä where I live, I have to take three very small plane rides, Jyväskylä to Helsinki, Helsinki to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Aarhus. And then a bus for fortyfive minutes. This took the better part of my Sunday to be honest.

I have only been to Copenhagen before in all of Denmark, and even there I was as a kid, visiting Legoland as you can expect. Denmark is slightly like everywhere else in the Nordic countries, we have had a pact even before the European Union, that we can travel between our countries as we please… But just being here now, the whole idea of the Nordic Countries feels slightly like a gang of swedish-speaking friends where Finland has always been a little left out of the club. Certainly we would have never even been invited in unless we would have been a part of Sweden for such a long time and having a swedish speaking minority still attached.

As you know, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are very similar languages. As a Finn, I am made to learn Swedish in Schools. It’s not optional in Finland, you do it or you fail basic education. And no one fails in Finland. This week, I have once again been feeling blessed that I come from a small country with a weird language that doesn’t comply with almost any other – this forced me as well as all Finns, to learn various of languages in School. I have studied Swedish, English, French, Spannish, Estonian, Japanese and small amount of Italian. Even if I wouldn’t be comfortable in more than couple of them, it means I can read signs and get around Europe without much difficulty.

You would think that one survives somewhere like in Denmark with just English, right? Yes, everyone speaks it, but try to get a local bus and bus fare and where to get off… It suddenly becomes more complicated. Swedish is similar yes, but it’s not instant understanding of what is going on, I am telling you.

Aarhus seems like a nice enough University town, with a big campus area spread around the harbor. There is an old town, which means medieval buildings, looking pretty much the same as others in central Europe… Of course all have their own details, but in the end, they have the same European quality attached to them. European night skies also have the same blue going on somehow. I swear the blue of the magic hour in US or in Asia is different. In Japan, everything is kind of purple-pink, in US it’s a strong violet color. In Europe, it’s a dark blue night. All beautiful, but all different to me.

What irritates me of certain countries in Europe like Denmark, is that they have to be so god damn special NOT to switch into using euros, even now that they are EU members. Sweden and UK both belong to this club of stupidity and they have paid dearly in the economical crisis and value of their own currency going down. Not to even mention Iceland. DKK the Danish Kronor is also a very hard currency to convert, now in November 2009, 100DKKs is 13 euros. So take one zero off and add 30% to the price. I have to say that I like dollars (USD, AUD and CAD) much better, since they just need for me to give myself a 40-30% discount. Which I can much better live with. My hotel receptionist told me that my bus to the campus was going to cost 180DKK. Of course he made a small error in his english and meant ‘18′. But this is why I now have 500DKK extra, which I’ll turn back to euros, probably loosing something like 20% of the value in the process. What can I say, life is a bitch today. Perhaps a better way of getting my moneys worth would be to just covert those kronas into Gin.

But overall, I am complaining about nothing in Scandinavia. It’s like travelling back home. My  recommendation for a hotel if you ever need to stay in the Nordic countries is Scandic. It’s slightly less expensive than the Radisson SAS (which of course is posher and more luxurious), and it’s always top class. Even if the receptionist can make small mistakes.

I am flying back home tomorrow, but on my way I’ll pass fields and flat land as well as windmills of old and new kinds. That’s what Denmark is for you. For me of course, it’s the land that Hamlet lived in and somehow taking my bus from Aarhus airport to Aarhus reminded me a lot of the Kenneth Branaugh version of Hamlet. I wonder if I should treat myself with that from Amazon for Christmas… Perhaps so:)

At the last point I would add that who ever designed the lighting sceme of the pedestrial main road… had the same pattern as the ones in my home town. Just see for yourself…

This morning I woke up and I knew that I was going to get ill. It was one of those tingles in the throat when it’s evident. But no worries, it was the very last morning, so I thanked my luck for being ill on zero of the days in my holiday, what a blessing. Swine flu, bring it on.

Our flight to Heathrow wasn’t until six a clock, so we had a good while morning to bounce around New York left. It was sunny as well, what a great set of weathers have we stumbled on. We generally had very little rain on this trip, only a couple of days when it was pissing down, and even then, it was entertaining.

First things first, our mission was to visit the Chinatown post office and get the very last package on its way to Finland. 26 packages total have we sent from this trip, most of them not on the smaller side if you see what I mean. The post office was an experience on its own. In there you really understand all the safety rituals, all the reasons to be alert of all times. This was like going to a prison to talk to an inmate. All the office workers were behind thick, bullet proof glass, with signs on them that said: Attacking a Postal Worker or robbing a post office is a crime punishable by 10-15 years in prison. There was a bullet proof glass cage which you put the package into, which the officer then opens only after you closed it from the other side. Later on the day we walked past another post office downtown. The security in that one was nothing like this. It really gives you a perspective on how dodgy the neighborhood where we were staying was. I didn’t see any guns, but I could feel them all around me, in the bags, under the counters.

After checking out and leaving our luggage to the hotel reception, we took bus number 15 to Battery Park again and went to visit the museum of American Indians. This was a huge, gorgeous Art Deco building which they seemed to have gained recently to the purpose of putting out this exhibit. However, it was one of the poorest experiences that I’ve seen, an excuse for a museum. It didn’t help that we stumbled onto a security guard, who was pretending to be a curator, who knew absolutely nothing about the pieces on show and then decided that he would interpret my husband’s shit which was Haida art moon that we bought from Vancouver: “See this, it’s a Killer Whale”, was the last straw. They had some costumes of the aboriginals on show (some inluded series of Moose teeth sewn on top!), which of course were interesting, but they had been placed out in the huge building by an eight year old… The museum seriously needs to pay a visit to the Asian Art Museum on San Francisco. As the aboriginals let us down, I felt no obligation or need to buy their tat, even though they had Haida art there as well.

We decided to take the metro back to the Chinatown to have lunch around there. We also tried to check out the museum of Chinese in New York, but it was –if possible- even a bigger disappointment than museum number one previously today. This one didn’t even have an entrance to it. There was a corridor, a sign, but no entrance. But not to worry, there was still plenty of post cards to write back home. I estimate that I have written around 200 post cards, at least 12 from each city (30 from some) and we were in around 12 cities on our way…

No more to do except to get a taxi to the airport. JFK terminal 8 was kind of a disappointment as well… Nothing more that I would have wanted to buy, series or burger kings and Kentucky fried chickens lurking. We spent our last hours abroad watching quality American television – the one thing that the Americans do well. I never had a huge urge to go to America, like some… And now as I’ve been there, I can say that yes, there is original culture there, hiding underneath it all… But I have no huge desire to be back soon… Back in San Francisco one day would be nice, maybe we’ll take the Transsiperian to Vladivostok like we always talked about.

Just when leaving, I stumbled onto the evil King Fu Panda Noodles shop… Forget everything I said about it being bland in here… Only in America…

Our last full day on the trip started out with a metro trip up to the 51^st street and Rockerfeller centre. 30 Rock of course is the home of NBC studios, which meant that finally my dreams came through with the perfect gift shop filled with by-products to all the NBC shows. There was a line of Nerf Herd hooties and Buy More mugs, House candy in the shape of brains and of course the fantastic line of t-shirts from Battlestar Galactica. And this was just the shows of my interest. There was course loads of stuff from Heroes, The Office and whatnot, but I was trying to keep it minimal… Somehow I still managed to spend 220dollars in this shop. The cashier man looked at me and said: Looks like you are buying for the whole of Finland…

In front of the Rockerfeller plaza, there is an ice rink – apparently one of at least three that exist in Manhattan. They clearly like the idea of skating. We walked down 5^th avenue, until we got to Grand Central Station, where we had lunch in an American diner type of place in the food hall basement. I then stalked some people at the main level of the impressive station. Behind the central station stands the Chrystler building, which was the tallest building of Manhattan for like two months until Emprire State Building rose above it. Both of them look pretty similar in style, so it’s not difficult to see they were built in the same era. Tall buildings are of course currently very unpopular ever since 9-11. Even in San Francisco, it so happened that no one wanted to work or live in tall buildings any more, so they are just sitting by.

Our 5^th avenue quest took us to the Emprire State building next, outside of which someone tried to sell the tickets with 47dollars instead of 20dollars that they actually cost inside. He said we’d get through the line – which apparently is 30-45minutes. We decided to take our chances inside and found out that this was a total sham, there was almost no one there. We walked through all the empty waiting areas, clearly this been at some point, a very popular stop for tourists… Could the effects of terrorism still be affecting the tourism at this extent? We saw the city from the 86^th floor and took appropriate pictures. The life makes your ears pop of course, but besides this – it wasn’t a particularly exciting journey. Even the tat shop couldn’t allure our money – We are starting to be ready to go home.

Walking downtown took us to Union Square, where we were originally going to search for the Forbidden Planet. Of course with the NBC shopping in our bags, this turned out to be a window tour of the shop which to be fair enough, didn’t exactly offer anything that I would have particularly wanted at this point. However the window display was worth a visit anyways. They had two people in it dressed as a zombie and victim with huge amounts of fake blood and guts. I suppose must beat a job of cleaning somebody’s toilet.

As sun was setting and we were back at Canal Street station, I let my husband go to our hotel to fiddle with the interwebs while I took my chances with Manhattan bridge city view photography. Perhaps it’s needless to say, but this part of downtown in particular is not what you would call ‘okay to walk alone at night’. And specially if you are a) woman and b) carrying a big camera. By this point of our trip, we haven’t experienced any muggings, robbery or pick pocketing. I doubt this has been an accident. There has been series of precautions done to assure the security of us and our stuff. Just to list some:

1. I don’t carry a camera bag. That’s a clear sign of ‘I have something valuable – please mugg me.’ Instead I have a ‘girly flower bag’, which in no way lets on that what’s inside is more than 2000euros of goods.

2. I carry my money, my passport, my tickets and other valuables like room keys or metro tickets – only in a small bag which is most of the time underneath my clothes, impossible to get to without me noticing someone fiddling with me.

3. We’ve used the hotel safes when accessible

4. I’ve got a copy of my passport and travel documents in my gmail account, just in case I’d loose it.

5. I don’t look people into their eyes on the streets of big cities.

6. I try to walk like I know where I am going, trying not to flash out a big map on an area with very little tourists.

7. Use ‘Mr. carrier bags’ (locals walking on the area) to walk after, if walking in the dark. This means that you should always have a native to follow, specially if you don’t know them. Pick one that looks like they know what they are doing.

8. Take pictures of your belongings in the hotel rooms – and hide them to the suitcase when you are out.

9. Do not stop to talk to the homeless. Do not pass money, but more importantly, ignore them so they don’t have a case against you. If they get you talking, you’ve already lost.

10. No victim behavior – if they can see you are afraid, you are an easy target. No reading of books or listening to iPods. Those will make them come after you.

There is just a few examples on how to deal with New York, but also the world in general. Might sound like overly protective antisocial way of looking at it, but I have decided to leave my gullible Finnish me home and expect the worst. Plus – it worked to the extent that no one mugged me, robbed me, pick pocketed me…

In the evening we saw one of our friends for a lovely Chinese in a place where we had gone previously on Sunday. He’s a real New Yorker and reminded me just how much the city was disturbed by the 9-11. It’s a blow that the whole western world felt, but of course it was never for us like it was for those who actually lived in the cloud of ash, saw people falling through the air or tried desperately call out for the loved ones through phone lines that were just completely shut. We didn’t go to Ground Zero, but I saw it from the Empire State Building Observation terrace. A spot on Manhattan which is considerably more low built than any other. For a sparkle of a second, you think: What is that… And then you remember.

We got up at eight and were by the Battery Park by nine thirtyish. You guess right, today was the time to do the boring sightseeing that all the tourists do. We had tickets for the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island cruise and went through the inspection (as tough as any airport customs) to get to the ferry in no time. It surely was not the best weather to see the symbol of freedom, but tomorrow it’s promised to rain, so cloudy Liberty pictures it was.

We decided to skip the statue itself, since there’s not exactly much to do there on the Liberty Island and just went straight to Ellis Island instead. This turned out to be a great move – Ellis Island has loads of history to see and we had very detailed audio guides once again to help us. I have come to appreciate Audio guides on this trip. They are really good for the museums as well as the visitors for several reasons: 1) You don’t need a tour guide who is yelling at a tourist group, 2) you can move along at your own phase and 3) you can skip things that might be boring to you, or 4) you can hear more about things that are actually interesting. 5) You don’t have to read, you can concentrate on the atmosphere and area and 6) If you are a museum, you can fit so much more detail, story and drama into the audio guides than you ever could to some wall texts that people don’t stop by to read anyways. Overall, whoever thought of audio guides was genious.

Ellis Island served as the immigration port for years and years of people immigrating to America. And of course, there was a lot of people. They were inspected in Ellis Island, to be fit to the society with their physical and mental health. If you were suspected to have a mental disease, you’d be marked with an ‘X’ on your jacket. If you had tuberculosis with ‘T’ and so on. The island also was a hospital to those who might get well and be fit to the society.

Looking at the exhibitions, I was surprised to realize how bad the life must have been in Europe, specially for those whose religion was not accepted. America served as the safe haven, the place where you are ‘free’ even if you do work 14 hour days, or even if you need to work as a child. Even now, sitting on the subway, it’s clear that this country is a melting pot of all the races together. No wonder they have issues!

I was touched by the gallery of ‘what did you bring with you’? The audio guide asks you, what would you bring if you only could bring a suitcase filled with things. Now a days it’s a very different matter, I feel. Memories and entertainment doesn’t have to take space. Clothes to me a quite irrelevant, as long as I’m warm or cool enough – it doesn’t matter. I bring my life on three different hard drives. All copies of themselves. All texts, all emails, all the pictures. Or better yet, access to internet gives me much more access to memories than any of these men and women immigrating had. Somehow seems more simple back then. At least they knew where the limits of the world laid.

It’s an interesting thought that America was something so much better than Europe. I’ve had Americans telling me on this trip that they should get out in the next ten years because it’s all going down hill. Who knows if that’s the way of the world. Perhaps our children will visit it with very different eyes. The current depression really shows on the streets with goods been sold in the internet more than anywhere. Unlike some, I don’t believe the postal services have come to their ends – I think shipping is a fair cost in today’s world. The Airlines are really pushing anything that isn’t the flight cost – as extra. Your luggage will cost. It’s still possibly cheaper than shipping, but for how long? I have faith in living in Europe for now. If there is one thing I’ve learned on this trip, it’s that I know where my home is and I’m pleased with it. Give me a couple of decades and I might even develop some patriotism…

We had some time after Ellis Island, so we took number 1 to 50^th street trying to get to the empire state building… Instead we stumbled onto Times Square. It was a slightly sad sight after the Virgin Megastore had closed. There was nothing I desperately wanted to shop – actually I’ve had that kind of feeling for two days now. New York crap is what you can buy anywhere in the world, so it doesn’t seem to attract me at all. Could also be that all that I’ve seen and bought on this trip has been so much more interesting… Or perhaps I’m simply tired of shopping. I certainly wouldn’t want a plastic statue of Liberty to my shelf.

It’s a great feeling to see that perhaps going home isn’t such a bad thing, I certainly have started to feel road-weary for a while now. Only one more day to go and then we are flying to London.

We arrived to the JFK after only 4 hours of flight, which meant that we basically skipped the whole night. I had maybe two times ten minutes sleep, so with jetlag, that was not the nicest day ahead.

The customs were not a Bitch, if you don’t count the continuous CNN and morning shows where the ‘stupid people’ can complain about their loans. It took about 45 minutes and we were through. We didn’t even have to fill the green leaflets again since we had only been to Canada… Not exactly abroad now, is it?

It was 7am still and we got a taxi to our Manhattan hotel, the Hotel 91 in East Broadway, Chinatown. This was one of the two options we had in our price range, which was 100euros tops. New York hotels tend to cost average of 300dollars a night, so that was a bargain. The hotel is clean and nice. We have two double beds, so technically four people could have stayed in our room… The toilet is clean, but in comparison to all the hotels that we’ve stayed at before this: It lacks a kettle. There is a lounge for hot water though, in case we need it. There is a coin laundy inside and a post office as well as a liquor store next door. This makes it a great hotel for us, but of course not for all the people.

As tired as we were, we didn’t really get to our room before 3pm, so we had around seven hours to kill. This involved the trial and error or buying a metcard (7day overall pass to the metro and bus system) and realizing that it does not work if you need to go out and in again. Also the Halloween time had seriously closed down some of the lines, so the closest subway station to us was Canal Street. We took the metro uptown to Central Park, since we figured that it would certainly at least be open.

It was the New York city Marathon day today, which was closing even more streets, not to mention confusing the traffic in the Central Park. We had Vancouver-type breakfast in the memory of our friend KG, I had a vegetable omelet, brown toast, orange juice and coffee. I have to say that it tasted better in Vancouver.

When ever in my head I thought of New York, my first place to visit was always the Angel Bethesda. What can I say: I just love ‘Angels in America’ so much. New York is really a city that you see through the television a lot. It’s on all the TV series, it’s on all the films. We walked past the Mall of Central park in a gorgeous yellow and green blanket of trees. This was the spot on cover of ‘When Harry met Sally’. It takes you all the way to the lovely fountain of Bethesda, which to me symbolizes all the tragedy of the big city – the aids, the religions, The cold world outside. It’s as breathtaking as it is in the series.

After wandering through the ramble of the park, we came to our senses and returned to the road which took us to the Metropolitan museum of art. It’s a huge complex, like the British Museum or Louvre, but we were mainly interested in the exhibition on Samurai art, which had just gone on. It was a fascinating layout, lots of katanas, even some cloth pieces, which we know can only be exposed to daylight for a month in every five years, and of course some helmets and armor. The Helmets were even more obscure than we’ve seen before – not even Masamune Date had a huge ‘U’ shaped golden fork decorating his head. At this point however, it started to feel as we’d have to commit ritual suicide if we didn’t get any sleep, so my memories of the exhibition are specially vague. Sleep deprivation is a fascinating thing. Man can think that can accomplish anything, but if man does not sleep… There is nothing but insanity waiting.

We then walked to a subway and found ourselves back in Canal Street. We had one of the best meals of my life for lunch in a Schetzuan restaurant there, hot but great. After that it was three hour nap and dinner to make our night complete. I saw the angel, that was the main accomplishment of the day.

Our hotel was happy to keep our luggage so we dumped it and headed to see some more museums. The museum of Vancouver this is. It was a nice, sunny day for change and we walked. Of course in the anticipation of this being one of those long two days melting together as one… Well, that was probably not the brightest idea on earth.

Museum of Vancouver turned out to have two exhibitions. The main one and something called the ‘Taxidermy’ which means stuffing animals. They were almost apologizing for it, they said they are not against it or for it, but since they have it, they show it. Fair enough. This of course meant some heads on the wall, snakes in jars and the usual. There was a full size moose and even a cute little platypus, my new favorite animal. Even a rhino head… Apparently now a days taxidermy has fallen off fashion and I can see why. People are more environmentally cautions and don’t want to be looking at stuffed animals. They would much rather see the replicas, I’m sure. I don’t object… Whatever way the world goes with it, I am sure it’s alright.

Museum of Vancouver was rich and ‘interactive’ as the girl behind the desk told us enthusiastically. It certainly wasn’t the best exhibition that I’ve seen on this trip, but fair enough, there was interesting videos. One was a real piece filmed from a tram going around the centre with people hopping away from in front of it. Another one was an advert for ‘re-doing’ your house. It was targeting the bored house wives whose biggest problem was that their fridge doors opened to the wrong direction. I had no idea that the 60’s homes had started to have dish washers… Somehow I am very interested in the totally electrical homes, it’s just that now a days you think more like ‘how to make it all wireless’ or how to have the iPod stereo go around the apartment.

We then walked our way to town via the rainbow village of the city which was preparing for Halloween by costumes and decorations. I’ve got news for Finns: We have no idea how to do it! Now in North America… Well, they take the pumpkins really seriously and it’s an adult carnival that vappu(1^st of May) has no comparison to. It’s the time to dress up to the sexy nurse costumes, or the short skirt maid as I discovered in the sky train. My favorite was still the Drag-Marge with tits serving tables.

Unfortunately the only Halloween party I was going for was a flight to New York. The airport was pretty deserted as no one wants to travel on Halloween. My husband and I decided to have martinis in the empty bar, where we were accompanied by one of those ‘I-know-him-from-television-stars-but-cant-quite-remember-who-it-is’. It took me all flight to realize that he was Scott Wolfe, flying on economy with his wife… He as well as us, was surprised of the flight being postponed for an hour because of the time turning back for an hour here… It turned out that this was good for us because the JFK opens its customs at 6 sharp and we would have had to have wait 1,5 hours instead of half in the plane at the other end…

Last city to go, trip almost over. Let’s go to the place where the boys are pretty, New York City!

This place sounded like a katiland-mustdo, a suspension bridge in the middle of nowhere, in a rain forest, with a treetop walk. We got the sea bus from the Waterfront and the 238 bus in North Vancouver to get to Capilano. It’s a 30dollar admission, way well worth it to me. The scene is fabulously beautiful – and it is Halloween time, so they had hundreds of carved pumpkins around the area. Very beautiful indeed. Makes me think that Finland is loosing out on the pumpkin fun, but I suppose that’s due to it always being too cold outside at this time of the year.

I took some photographs from the observation deck and we then passed the bridge to the other side to do the forest walks. I’ve never been to a rain forest before, let alone a Northern rain forest. It feels like the trees are weeping and there is huge amount of moisture in the air. It wasn’t raining while we were there, but it was pretty wet anyways. I am sure it’s like that all the time there. The Autumn colors are perhaps at their best currently, going on red, yellow and brown. I have seriously taken so many pictures of leaves on this trip that I might need to do a leaf show when I get home.

The trees in the Capilano rain forest are seriously old, but the oldest is Grandmother Capilano, — years old. They had had an accident of one of the huge trees falling on the bridge in a storm… Somehow the cables held its weight though, the bridge was unharmed. We walked on top of that tree, which seriously had been one of the big ones. It made you really trust the bridge not to fall down though. I am not scared of heights anyways, but I think my husband was having jitters.

It was also the day to help the breast cancer victims, which meant that they had decided to decorate the bridge with ropes of bras all over it. This told to us by the cash register woman: “Don’t be intimidated by the bras all over the bridge. ”

In the forest, there is a pedestal walk among the treetops, just like the villages you see in ‘Return of the Jedi’. And as I am a serious Star Wars fan, what better way to spend your day than to visit the Ewok way of living? It went very well with my theme visit of the film world, even if it wasn’t filmed here. However, it was filmed in Northern Vancouver, so there you go.

Last but not least we shopped with the incredibly tempting Haida art again, getting some more Christmas presents to the family. There was a soup and sandwich stand to enjoy before getting the bus, sea bus and sky train back to the Broadway. I was also determined to visit the local branch to do some Shorinji Kempo and learn about it in Northern Europe.

I made a call to the branch master Hajimoto sensei, who concurred that it was okay to visit. This branch had their spirits high and we trained together for almost two hours and then went for a pint and a pizza. It was Friday night, after all. I can recommend training in Vancouver: Excellent teaching and many high level sempais to practice with. Most of them were Japanese – But that can be expected as Vancouver is very popular destination for Japanese and Chinese immigrants. Of course to me, this seems like home. I wonder if I am going to feel weird about not being around Asians all the time…

This was the last full day in Vancouver, well spent again if I may say so myself.

Day 53

Welcome to Cylon-occupied Caprica city!

I am a slave of television. I am not shamed to admit it. If you currently ask me, what’s the best thing on television, ever – the answer is simple and bears three letters, two words: BSG – Battlestar Galactica. And of course I am talking about the new series, not the seventees flop. Battlestar was filmed in Vancouver and many of its shots are shot in downtown or the two university campus areas around here. It’s perfectly fair to say: This is Caprica city. Of course as a good fan, I did some of my own BSG tourism and visited some of the locations of my favorite show. There is a whole society of the BSG fans here in Vancouver, who have spotted many locations making this a very easy trip for me. Thanks a lot, the 13^th tribe. Also I found great help from the comparative location shots here. There was also an article in the Wire.com about Battlestar Galactica Tourism, which was my purpose of life today.

It was a very rainy day, but since the locations are mainly from Cylon-occupied Caprica after the holocaust – the rain was exactly the right weather. I wanted to make it relatively easy for me, so I mainly poked around downtown. The Opera house where Caprica Six and Balthar kidnap Hera is the interior of the Orpheum theatre. I was not expecting to get anything out of the Orpheum, mainly because there was nothing on and there is tours only on summertime. Never the less I walked past it and realized that there was couple of men cleaning it, so I could sneak the lobby picture. However, I didn’t get to the place where the actual shots were filmed – but close enough. The interior of the hall would have been the temple of the five cylons, but I didn’t want to push my luck, these men were kind enough to let me in for a minute.

The next stop is the Vancouver city library, which serves one of the locations that Sharon and Helo pass while they are running away from the cylons. There is two different views of that one. The building itself is very impressive, built like a Roman colosseum.

My Battlestar tourism continued by checking out the alleyway next to Pub 340, which Helo passes through. This happens when Helo is on his own in Litmus, being watched from above by Sharon, Six and Doral and he goes down a fire escape into a graffiti covered alleyway. There was so many homeless people on this area that I didn’t feel myself safe at all. Horrible place.

The roof that you see behind the cylons following Helo is one of the downtown buildings as well and I passed that one.

Near the harbor, there is The ramp where Six and Doral talk in ‘Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down.’ This ramp is unfortunately closed for walkers so I didn’t risk my life and only took the shot from above.

Quite by accident, we visited the rose garden of the University of British Columbia, because it’s close to the museum of Anthropology. I took a shot of it completely unaware that it was the same garden where the press is talking about the Vice President issue in ‘Colonial Day’.

Finally the Final scene of Galactica has been filmed in the corner of Hornby and Hastings – the one where Angels, Six and Balthar discuss the faith of the mankind. That was a good place to conclude the tour as it was.

We must have done something right when it was sunny two days in a row in Vancouver. Our quest of the day was to see the museum of Anthropology in the campus of the University of British Columbia. Luckily we got a straight bus there, which only left us with a short walk to the museum. This meant that we saw the rose garden and its beautiful view over the mountains. Little did I know that it was used as ‘Cloud Nine’ ship outdoors area in the first season of my favourite show Battlestar Galactica. Luckily, I take a lot of pictures so we didn’t need to do another trip.

The museum of Anthropology is still on its way and not completed, but it had a very impressive collection to show as it was. We saw a start of an exhibition thousands of hand-made baskets and cloths, which had been sent from all over the country to be kept in the museum. However, some of them had some ritual meaning to some tribes, so they had also come up with a room where you can go and perform your ritual with your item from time to time. This is the modern days of respect, British museum be ware!

We admired the totem poles and the canoes and of course the great, gigantic Bill Reid piece, Raven and the first men, which is just an astonishing piece of art. Unfortunately there was no small replicas of it on sale, I am guessing because of copyright issues… I would have bought this one for sure… It was made by Bill Reid to this museum particularly, so that they could keep the room that used to be an fortress.

After lunching at the cafeteria and shopping our credit cards to debt, we decided to catch a taxi and therefore buy more time in Stanley Park, as the afternoon was still looking gorgeously sunny. The taxi took us to the totem poles and we had a nice two hours until sunset which we spent rambling in the park. There is a ‘woman in a wetsuit’ statue, which looks remarkably like a replica of the little mermaid… There was also a seagull sitting on her head who would seriously not move whatever kind of noise I made.

Stanley Park is one of the most gorgeous ones that I have been to.  There was a sunset avenue of maples and of course tons and tons of leaves which had already fallen. I suppose you can imagine that as far as camera day goes, this one was a pretty good success.

We ended up to the harbor and ferry terminal by our walk and got the skytrain home. Our hotel’s street the West Broadway really has a good selection of restaurants, but as it was KG’s last night with us, we had a special treat of Malaysian cuisine of ‘Banana Leaf’. If you are ever in Vancouver, I recommend that it’s a great place to eat.

Once again, an excellent day in Vancouver. It’s truly a miraculously beautiful city. I see what the fuzz over it is all about. Very Finn-friendly:)

Day

After a full day of Piss down rain, we weren’t expecting much from Tuesday. It so happens that the Vancouver weather doesn’t exactly follow the forecasts, so we ended up having a sunny bright day of wonders. There is nothing like a miserable day to make you appreciate the joys of a great sunny day, that’s for sure.

We headed to the waterfront with the skytrain to sneak some pictures of the harbor. Since Vancouver is going to be the olympic city fairly soon, also the harbor was showing its very best side. The old area next to the harbor is called ‘Gas Town’, because it was the first to get gas on the area, to be lightened up by series of lightpoles. There is also the famous gastown clock, which is breathing smoke… It’s a great old piece, but hardly keeping the time now a days. Gastown is where you can find Vancouver’s most efficient (and cheap) tat shops.

We did our fair share of shopping and staring at art pieces out of our price range. The aboriginal art of this area seems to us perhaps even more appealing than the Asian art, and that’s saying a lot. So if we weren’t in debt yet, we sure are now… Canadian stuff is really cool. That’s the truth.

After wandering around the shops we stopped for an indian for lunch and then doodled towards the Chinatown. It too, had loads of shops. And if I hadn’t yet been to China and around three other Chinatowns, I would have probably been tempted by their cheap gowns and jackets. (None of which were as classy as the one I got from San Francisco Chinatown though…) We also observed that Chinatown is just around that area which has the least appeal in Vancouver. Lots of homeless people with their shopping trolleys.

We found a full on Chinese Garden on its Autumn blossom, accompanied by a lesbian wedding. We sneaked some pictures and I visited the 10dollars-visitor section, while my J and KG waited outside. No point in wasting money on what we already saw on the other side of the fence. The museum was of course closed – it was Monday.

On our walk back to the city central, we run into a road of white trucks. This means something was being filmed right there. The TV/Film fan of me decided to find out if I can telephoto some pictures and find out what the series was. Luckily my husband has the best memory in the world so he recognised it as the TV-series ‘Fringe’… We didn’t really last long after the pilot on that, so I had no clue who the Blond lead was. Vancouver being the major film city though, this is very normal.

We treated ourselves to a Chinese meal at the end of a good day of picture hunting and shopping. Sun makes all the difference when you are judging whether you like a city or not… Vancouver is looking pretty good to me.