Review Nov/Dec 2007

Thanks for keeping an eye on the blog, although nothing happened for a long time. Finally I'm publishing the review for November and December 2007, but the descriptions are much shorter due to lack of time ;-)

Toronto
We visited a lot of sights including CN-Tower, China Town, Kensington Market, City Hall, Eaton Center (Shopping), and the Royal Ontario Museum. We also checked out all kind of food, for example the Korean barbecue during a visit of my brother Klaus.

Trips
Before the exams started in December, there was some time to visit Canada's Wonderland for the Halloween weekend. This trip was very nice, as we were able to both ride some rollercoasters and enter haunted houses with frightening clowns! Another trip we joined lead us to Niagara on the Lake, which is quite nice this time of the year. We continued to see the colored falls and to have a look at the entertainment district of Niagara.

Campus Life
During the first term, a couple of exchange students met quite often on Wednesday to play pool and foosball at the Phoenix, which is the on-campus bar of McMaster. This photo album also contains pictures of some Halloween parties, the Christmas dinner of the International Office and a "German Food" party. We prepared traditional "Wurstnudeln" for this event, which were called "Nudelsalat" by the Germans...!

That's it for now, I'll be back with more news from Canada soon!

Scholars Education Centre

On the 22nd of October I started with my work at the Scholars Education Centre. It is a private highschool and in the afternoon a tutoring centre. I have nice co-workers with whom I have lots of fun, sometimes we eat together our lunch- by the way most of the time sandwich or pizza.

The first week was a little bit chaotic, because the last Education Coordinator quit the job and so the new one started the same time as I.

But in my third week I developed an even rhythm. In the morning I update the binder of the tutoring students, check the teachers’ comments and make a plan what the student should work on next. When I'm finished with this, I help the education coordinator with her work, make the timetable, talk to parents, and copy some sheets especially for SSAT preparation, a special test for the students who would like to attend a private high school instead of the public one.

I also have to answer the phone, which I first thought would be quit difficult to understand the people, but after some talk, I have now no problems any longer to understand them.
At 4 pm the tutoring students come and I mostly tutor some of them, most of the time for one hour, but sometimes two hours. I mostly tutor them in English, which is sometime quit challenging for me, because they are native speaker. At first I was a little bit afraid, but now I really enjoy it and I learn a lot in English, but also for my later job as a teacher. I also help them with there problems in Mathematic and Science and I also do some SSAT preparation.

Montreal/Quebec

The McMaster Outdoor Club offered a Montreal Trip over the Thanksgiving Weekend. We always wanted to go there and so we joined them. On Friday afternoon our journey began, again in our beloved yellow school buses. It took us almost 9 hours to arrive in Montreal, because there were lots of traffic jams due to the long weekend.

After the long bus tour we all went for a Cider and afterwards into our room, which was by the way very big and nice, except the bed. You can see the reason in our photo album. But we had luck, because Andi and I we got a room just for ourselves whereas most of the others slept in a 6 or even 10 beds room.

The next day we visited most of the famous placed in Montreal. In the morning we went up to the hill, where we had an excellent view over the city and in the afternoon we went to see Vieux Montreal. We also wanted to take a short look into the basilica of Notre Dame, but there where 5 weddings on that day. I forgot my dress and Andi his suit and so we weren’t allowed to have a look inside. In the evening we went to see a movie and the famous Underground City. However, we were a little disappointed, because it just consists of some connected shopping centers.

We also behaved like Chinese people, but somehow the Chinese guys looked astonished about us - you can also see that in our photo album.

On the next day we decided to rent a car and then travel to Quebec. One of our group members, Soeren from Denmark, joined us. When we arrived we were fascinated by this city, it’s such a lovely city with narrow streets and little houses. It was also a beautiful day and so we had lots of fun, discovering Quebec. Again, we visited a Fairmont Hotel and even sneaked into the magnificent washrooms, which are usually reserved for hotel guests. At the end of the day we ate crepes in a restaurant and afterwards drove back to Montreal. The next day the yellow school bus brought us back to Hamilton, which took us the whole day and caused a lot of pain for our bodies.

Niagara Falls

On Sunday it was a beautiful day and so we decided to visit Niagara Falls. We took the bus to the village Niagara on the Falls, went out of the bus and looked for the falls, but there was nothing! See the last picture in our photo album for the nice view ;-) We had to take another bus, which took us the falls.

They were really spectacular, but to be honest we both thought that they were bigger. We took a lot of pictures from both parts, the American and the Canadian.

It was a sunny day and so we saw a beautiful rainbow over the falls. We also decided to visit the journey behind the falls, where we went down to a lower level (by the way, that’s where Superman rescued Louise). We saw the Canadian falls from close up and experienced the mist, but we first got very stylish yellow raincoats, so we were safe and stayed pretty dry. There was also a small trail and from there you could really see the waterfalls from the back, but actually we just saw a white wall out of water.

After visiting the nature spectacle we went to the entertainment district of Niagara on the Falls, which is 5 min on foot away from the falls and a real tourist city. Please add some comments, we’re always glad to read them!

Weekend Trips – Safari and NHL

This weekend we rented a car (Toyota by the way) and travelled to the African Lion Safari Park. There we went on a Safari, meaning that we could see all the animals in wildlife from our car. We always opened the window to take pictures, but a friendly park ranger told us to close it. After several times (we never listened to her) she started to shout at us, “Close your window!” But during the safari, we heard this sentence quite a lot and every time it was determined for us. There were lots of animal to observe, but what I liked most were the monkeys. They were so cute, especially the little ones. They also jumped on the car and took a short ride, knowing exactly when to get off again.

In the afternoon we travelled on to Buffalo, to watch an ice hockey game of the Buffalo Sabres. By the way, that’s the NHL team where the Austrian Thomas Vanek plays. We thought that we would need maximum 3 hours, including crossing the border and searching for a parking lot. But everything was different from what we expected. When we crossed the border there were not a lot of cars, so we thought that we are lucky. But then they took all our passports, because our friends didn’t have a visa. We went into the office together, there were several people waiting. After talking to them we started to say good-bye to the hockey game- most of them were already waiting for 3 hours! In fact, we had to wait so long that the game had already started and so we missed the initial 30 minutes. However, the game was really amazing and we are now dedicated Sabres fans - Andi bought a t-shirt and I am the proud owner of a Sabres finger/hand. As always, please visit the photo album.

Algonquin Park - Canoe Trip

This weekend we decided to join the McMaster Outdoor Club on his Canoeing Trip to the Algonquin Park, which is in the North of Ontario. We started on Friday afternoon and experienced the luxurious quality of the yellow school busses for 4 hours (our legs still hurt), until we finally arrived at the first campground. After brushing our teeth in the middle of the forest, we went to bed in our beloved tent.

The next day we travelled to the Portage Store at the famous Canoe Lake and after a short introduction to canoeing we started paddling around the various lakes. We really enjoyed it, but sometimes it was quite tough. We also had to do a portage, which means that we had to lift our canoe off the water and carry it on our back to the other lake, including the other equipment like tent and sleeping bags. Andi was the first who tried it, me carrying the backpacks.

In the afternoon we arrived at our wild camp place, not even self-registration - can you imagine? We decided to build up our tent on a small hill, where we had a spectacular view over the lake. You can see it on the picture beside. In the evening we cooked some pasta over the fireplace and later that night we came into contact with roasted marshmallows on the fire and warm apples for the first time. We also experienced the delicious taste of marshmallow sandwiches (marshmallow + chocolate + cookie), which is typical for America!

After sitting a long time beside the fire, we went to bed, but not so our other group members. They stayed awake for a long time and so the next morning they didn’t wake up until 11am. We are late-riser, but this was even too long for us, but we enjoyed the morning and discovered the area around our camp place. In the morning we brushed our teeth while sitting on the rocks and looking over the lake.

The only bad thing was that at the time the other group members woke up, it was too late to carry on with the original route - so we had to take the route, which we did the day before. Back at the portage it was my time to carry the canoe, but to my astonishment it was not as heavy as I expected it. We also went swimming in the lake and rock jumping which was very cold, but the weather was very warm and sunny. You can see more pictures in our Algonquinpark photoalbum.

It was a very amazing journey, because Algonquin Park is a very unique landscape, especially when there is Indian summer.

Toronto

On this day, I met my host-family. We decided to take an earlier bus to travel to Toronto to have a short look around in the city. But you know us, things always turned out differently from what we expect. At first there were no busses going from Andi’s house to Hamilton downtown. According to Andi’s roommate it wasn’t a long walk to the GoBus station, so we decided to go. But after half an hour we were still walking and finally after one hour we found the bus station. Then the bus was too crowded and so we took the other bus, which should only take 15 minutes more than the other one, the bus driver told us. To conclude, we were in Toronto exactly at that time, when I told the Homestay department of the ILSC to pick me up.

They drove us to my new home, where I’m staying for the next 3 months. My homestay family is very nice and I have my own room and even my own bathroom on the third floor. You can see my windows at the picture beside (the three windows on the top). My first evening ended like a typically American dinner, a pizza ordered from a restaurant while watching TV. My hostfamily also has two boys, at the age of 6 and 7, which are very cute. One day they taught me how to play American football and I now know what’s a spin shot and how to catch the ball the right way :-)

I go to school everyday from 9 am to 4 pm and I like it. Sometimes I feel like I am back to school in Austria. I found many friends from all over the world, Switzerland, Brasil, Mexico, Venezuela, Korea, Japan, etc. After school we often spend our time together, discovering Toronto, searching for Outlet Malls, which we by the way never found.

One bad thing is that it takes me 45 minutes or longer to get to school every day. That’s what I am missing of Austria and especially of Graz, standing up only half an hour before the course starts and riding the bike to University for only 5 to 10 minutes. But compared to others I’m glad to live very near to the school, others need over one hour each day- yes Toronto is a big city. See some pictures in my photo album.

Toronto itself is a very multicultural city, there are lots of people from different parts of the world and it is hard to find real Canadians. But everybody is very friendly and helpful.
I’m really enjoying my time here in Canada, everyday is full with new experiences and I learn a lot, not only English but also things that are important for my future life.

Start and End

Wednesday was sad and interesting as well. Sad because our journey ended at Edmonton airport. Interesting because a new life in Hamilton at McMaster University and in Toronto at the ILSC was going to start. We didn’t have any problems giving back our car - no wonder, we even repaired it ;-) – and went on to check in for our very cheap Westjet flight. On the one hand we didn’t pay any fees for our bags, which were all marked as "too heavy". On the other hand we also got the information that we are free to bring our own food on board, because there was no food provided. But this was no problem for us, we are already extreme campers and brought a lunch bag with us.

Three hours later the stewardess said: “Welcome to Steel City, Hamilton!” Our first impression was that of a chaotic city, no bus at the airport, a taxi driver who nearly crashed because of typing our address into the GPS and Julia screaming because she already saw us crashing into a tree. However, when we arrived at 21 Glenmount Avenue, Andis roommates were very nice and helped us to carry our luggage.

Later that evening, Andi met the landlord and the room and all facilities turned out to be very nice. Although Andi is living together with six other people, it’s not a problem to share two bedrooms and one living room. Still not tired, we decided to join one of Andi’s roommates, Ernest, going to the McMaster Comedy and Outdoor Night and getting a first impression of the campus. See some pictures of the campus and Andi's room in the Hamilton Photo Album.

World's Biggest Shopping Mall

Nearly at the end of our journey, we decided to have a look at the city of Edmonton, which is the capital of Alberta and one of the fastest growing cities of America (of course because of oil). Although it was pretty nice, there were no special sights.

So we traveled on to the most famous attraction the West Edmonton Mall. This is the largest shopping center in the world, containing a Rollercoaster and a big Waterpark. Of course we had lunch there and looked at the shops, but the purpose of our visit was to check out the great slides at the Waterpark. However, when we wanted to enter, the sign said that nearly all slides are closed and that was pretty annoying. We also met two Swiss people who decided not to enter the park, but as this was the main attraction we decided to go into it and we were really lucky: after 4 o’clock nearly all slides opened up and there was almost nobody standing in line. We even dared to ride the steepest slide (the red one), which you can see in our Edmonton Photo Album.

Of course this experience left its mark on our skin (Andi’s eye and my back). Starving, we had to go to the foot court after the Waterpark again - we've already adopted the American way of life :-)

In the morning we had found a cheap Motel near the airport, where we traveled then. We wouldn’t have guessed what we saw there: the Motel turned out to be a cowboy saloon with some rooms upstairs. Still we felt very safe, because there were three security doors, four cameras and we weren’t even able to open our own door. But finally we found out the code to open our door: just stick in the key only one third, turn it one quarter, stick it in completely and turn it one time around – isn’t that easy?

After that we started to carry our bags up to our rooms. This was actually a lot of work, because we had everything lying around in our car. The reason for taking a motel room was packing our stuff and not making our tent wet again. After clearing out our car, we hardly find a place in our room. It took us some hours in the night, packing a whole room of stuff into only four (!) suitcases - wow, what a compression factor!

The eternal ice

After a rainy Sunday afternoon, we didn’t expect a lot of Jasper Nationalpark. However, the weather turned sunny again and we were able to value the impressive nature again. We started the day with a hike to the Athabasca Glacier, where we walked on the secured part of the ice and laughed at the people who were freezing. As we are Austrians, we prepared for that event wearing ten layers :-)

We again met two Germans who were traveling with an RV. After telling them our story of the bear in Yellowstone Park, the man became very envious, because his girlfriend was not courageous enough to sleep in a tent.

We carried on visiting more sites along the Icefields Parkway such as Bubbling Springs, Athabasca Falls, Maligne Canyon etc. We also traveled on the old Highway A93, which has been suggested by the travel guide - but we can’t suggest it. The street was covered with tears and road holes. Of course, we were looking for bears all the time, but we weren’t able to see any :-(

We finally left Jasper Nationalpark (again, see our photo album) in the afternoon and traveled on to our last destination, which was Edmonton. We also experienced Navigation Optimization when our Nüvi led us trough a housing estates in order to avoid a U-turn. Please notice our shortcut besides :-) Finally we found the campground we were searching for and got a nice place for our tent. There we also met an Oilfield Engineer from Calgary who was really nice and told me lots of important details about the ILSC home stay program. Being more North than ever before in our lives we fell asleep under the stars.

The day of the beautiful lakes

After one night in the lonely forest of Banff, we packed our suitcases again and started traveling to Lake Louise. I nearly got lost with my suitcase, but finally Andi decided to take me with him. Lake Louise turned out to be very nice, having a beautiful water color and a nice castle, the Fairmont Chateau. To escape the huge mass of tourists we decided to rent a canoe and paddle to the other side of the Lake. As the boathouse belongs to the Fairmont Chateau, we had to pay 50 bucks for our fun. Please visit our Banff Photo Album to see more of this beautiful place.

However, after that we felt like real guests of the hotel, so we also took a look inside. Not just impressing from the outside, it turned out to be elegant inside as well.

Around lunch time, we traveled to the Icefields Parkway, which is the only road from Banff to Jasper. Passing by some more impressive lakes, we decided to stay a little at Bow Lake and have lunch near the water. When we were just sitting there in the silence, a bus of Chinese guys entered the area. Suddenly the place was crowded and everyone was taking pictures. See the picture beside and please note the Chinese woman/girl posing as a swan, which is very typical for them. As you can guess, we left immediately, heading forward to the famous Peyto Lake. It’s got a wonderful color that changes with the season and is influenced by minerals and bacteria.

The road took us on to Sunwapta Crossing and the glacier region, when the weather suddenly turned bad. However, being tough, we decided to hike to Panther Falls using a very narrow trail. As this is a bear area, we started to sing and whistle to attract attention and had so much fun, that we didn’t realized at first, that we were already standing in front of the falls.

The next stop was the famous Athabasca Glacier, which just looked ugly in the rain and so we moved on to the Campground. Funny enough, this Mountain Campground had a self-registration and we had to throw the money into a box. That also means that we had to look for a free spot driving off-road with our car. But we found a nice guy (I called him Jumanji) travelling on his bike, non-smelling dump toilets and even German speaking people.

Our day ended with a very romantic self-prepared dinner with a spotlight in the car. We love bears :-) !

Approaching the mountains

We started the day with a short trip to Calgary downtown. Finding a parking lot isn’t as easy as we thought, but we finally made it. However, the parking lots are strange as well here: there was a railway going through it! Calgary’s downtown doesn’t have a lot of sights, so we just took a quick tour through it and visited the Devonian Gardens. That’s a park on the fourth floor of a shopping mall, hosting turtles, huge fish and even weddings. See our pictures in the Calgary photo album.

Another nice place to go is the Stampede, kind of a city where a big cowboy show takes place every year in July. Next to it we saw the Saddle Dome, home of the Calgary Flames hockey team. The sports show went on as we visited the Olympic Park with ski-jumping facilities, ski slopes and an ice channel. However, Calgary was not the most interesting place to be and so we went on to Banff Nationalpark.

Our plan was to have a quick look at the town of Banff and then camp near Lake Louise. But when we entered Banff it was love on the first sight. We parked near a river where people where hiking and canoeing. You can see this romantic spot in our Banff photo album. After entering downtown, we decided to stay in Banff overnight because of the nice wooden shops, houses and bars with the mountains in the background. We built up our tent in a campground near the town by daylight (we’ve got the last few places again) – however, the spot was in the middle of nowhere again, surrounded just by trees and wildlife.

Later that day, we went to a typical steak restaurant (Sirloin steak with fries and vegetables) and spent the night in the city. As you can see in our pictures, I found a job as souvenir doll. ;-) Finally, we used the visitor’s center WiFi to write a new entry for this blog!

Back to Canada

Bozeman – Great Falls – Lethbridge – Calgary: 804km to go on this day. This time we had to start really early and we were successful! Additionally, we immediately went to a gas station in the morning. Our first stop was in Dutton, where we had lunch. It was a nice little Diner in the middle of – actually nowhere. Please see our Calgary photo album to have the same impression.

Crossing the border was pretty easy this time, they just told us to go on. But I was prepared: what’s about the green U.S. visa card, that you have to return when departing!? After asking some border officer we found out, that we can keep the U.S. visa – but we have to return the card to a border official before it expires. Good to know, nobody would have told us.

Back in Canada, we suddenly got into a traffic jam. You wouldn’t believe it, but there was a railway crossing on the highway! Finally arriving in Calgary, we looked for a nice, cheap motel to stay for one night. However, we only found one for about CAD $140 and therefore decided to use our tent once more. We spent the night in a campground east of Calgary, where we found out the difference to the KOA campgrounds. No WiFi, quite unfriendly people and a lot of additional fees. However, we were busy fighting the mosquitos and laughing about the permanent campers with their garden gnomes. We are proud to tell you, that this was the first day when we built up our tent during daylight.

Pure nature

Our second day in Yellowstone Nationalpark is easy to summarize: wildlife, waterfalls, canyons and – of course – a lot of fun. Our trip started early, we passed the park entrance at 10:30am (wow!) and followed the road to the north loop. Our first stop was Norris Geyser Basin, where I started to smoke (as you can see on the picture). However, we were not as impressed of the geysers over here as we were the day before and so we went on to Canyon Village.

Using the little one-way sight roads we were able to see a lot of wildlife, including deers, does, a moose, and a wolve. It was amazing how fearless the people around approached the animals. Although we were further away than all the others, one woman came to Julia and told her to stay away from the moose because she was wearing a red shirt. We also “saw” a bear near the road – actually we just saw something moving for a second, but people kept telling us that they can see a bear (about 500m away behind the trees). However, they also said it was running and then it felt asleep all of a sudden… ;-)

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was a really nice sight. We went to all the lookouts and even hiked to the brink of the lower falls and upper falls. See our Yellowstone photo album for more pictures. Travelling on, we saw Tower Roosevelt with lots of Hoodoos, more wildlife (even blocking the road) and a petrified tree. Our last station was Mammoth Hot Springs, where we saw Liberty Cap and Palette Spring – looking like the small brother of Pamukkale in Turkey. Mammoth was a nice city as well, especially because the deers were walking through the streets and in the gardens as if they were humans.

During that day, we saw so many cars with different nice-looking license plates that we decided to start a picture collection. So far, our picture list counts about the half of all U.S. states and half of the Canadian provinces. But – we’ve just started!

Finally leaving wonderful Yellowstone Nationalpark, we left through the north entrance to the city of Gardiner. There we called the Bozeman KOA for reservation and were told, that it’s only a 40min drive to get there. 90min later (as our nüvi told us as well) we arrived at the campground and asked what we did wrong. The guy there just laughed: “Oh, you’ve talked to Ashley – you know, she’s a blond. What else do I have to say…”

Steam and water fountains

Early in the morning as usual (you know that the truth is different) we started to Yellowstone Nationalpark. We were lucky to go to the Visitors Office first (although Andi though that it’s not important to go there *g*), were a Ranger told us everything about the sights and the eruption times of the geysers. As soon as we entered the park, we started to take a lot of pictures – the landscape was simply fascinating. When we looked at those pictures afterwards, we didn’t find it so fascinating anymore – there were much more interesting things at that day. That started with a deer and a bunch of does, which we saw because of a good hint of my friend Nina. She told us to stop immediately when there are a lot of cars standing besides the road – and so did we.

Our Yellowstone tour started with a trip to Geyser Country, where we saw the famous Old Faithful Geyser erupting. It isn’t so famous because of its size, but because the highly periodic eruptions in an interval of 92 minutes. See our Yellowstone photo album for some pictures. Of course, we visited all the other sights like Morning Glory Pool which is very colourful (orange, blue, red, yellow, green) because of its many bacteria cultures.

At this day, we continued to drive as south as Grant Village, where we met a real American spy. He told us about the capital of the spies, which is or was in his eyes Vienna. However, he gave us a lot of interesting hints and we had fun. We also met a guy who was born in Schärding in Upper Austria (next to my grandma, where the cheese is produced) – yeah, the world is obviously very little. By the way, we got in touch with him because of Andis “trau di” and my “inigüxla” T-Shirt (Walchlible).

Following a hint of the ranger, we returned to the Geyser area again to watch the largest predictable geyser called Grand Geyser erupting at 7:30pm. We were already near, when a buffalo blocked our way and we couldn’t pass. So we had to wait until the huge animal decided to stop eating, but we still made it in time. This special geyser has a time frame of 4 hours around the predicted time; however we didn’t have to wait a long time for the show to start. We are proud to tell you that we’re some of the only people on earth that saw Grand Geyser erupting, shooting water in about four different fountains of about 50m height. It lasted 15 minutes, then it stopped so suddenly as it had started.

On our way back to the campground, we took a shortcut (ok, it was little longer than the regular way) to see Firehole Lake during sunset. Just a reminder, you can see that in our pictures. Without any more bear contacts we fell asleep – because we already knew, that it was our neighbour again who snored all the time. An incredible day was over and another one to come.

On the road again *sing*

Day 6 started very early, because it’s been planned to be a travelling day. Our journey took us from Spokane in Washington State to West Yellowstone in Wyoming, crossing three U.S. states. But if you know us better, you’ll guess that we found lots of things to do before really starting the trip… ;-) That day was the same: we packed our tent, loaded our laptop batteries and repaired the car.

Repaired the car, what’s that about?? In Rainers package (where we’ve got the nüvi) was a power supply for the car, which converts the 12V cigarette lighter power to regular 110V power for all other devices. That’s pretty cool to load up the camera battery etc. while driving – so we wanted to use it. But as we wrote before, the cigarette lighter wasn’t working. So Andi called the car rental company to ask which fuse to change, because there was no manual inside. And the answer was: we can’t fix that, but you can come to our Spokane office and you’ll get a new car. That’s not what we actually wanted to do, packing our stuff again, losing more time…so Andi decided to simply check the internet for a manual. We found several versions, all telling us different things – so it seemed easier to check all fuses and see if they are blown. When Andi finally found the one, we went to Wal-Mart and bought a new one – and we were lucky, we changed the right fuse! But now we had to hurry as usual, because we were already 3 hours late.

By that time, we already used our nüvi a lot – and it told us that we’ll be in West Yellowstone by 7:30 pm. We were both happy and satisfied that we would be so early at our destination. When we stopped at McDonalds we saw the time in the restaurant, and it was one our later than ours! So guess what? We forgot to calculate the time lag of one hour, so our stop at McDonalds took us one hour and 20 minutes instead of only 20 minutes ;-)

When we left the highway, we wanted to fill up our car with fuel. So we were driving on and on, but there wasn’t one gas station on our way. Slowly running out of fuel, we found one – but it was closed! When we just wanted to go on, a woman came to that station and we asked her for the best way to get some gas. Luckily, she was the owner of that gas station and opened up again just for us. Puh, that was close to being stuck in the middle of nowhere…!

Finally, we arrived after 9 pm at the KOA West Yellowstone Campground. That’s when we had our first contact to a bear. On our receipt there was a note: “This is a bear area, do not leave any food, anything to drink and even shampoo or toothpaste in your tent.” We didn’t think that we would really hear or see a bear, but we were careful with the things we took into our tent. When we were lying in our sleeping bags, we suddenly heard something near by our tent. We were both a little bit afraid and Andi turned off the light quickly. Quietly we lay down but then we recognized that this wasn’t a bear, but our neighbour who snored. ;-) Happy again and laughing about our mistake we wanted to fall asleep, but then we heard a real bear roaring. Though it was quite far away, it was very impressive. Our trip to Yellowstone Nationalpark had started! See the pictures of the trip in our Yellowstone photo album.

To be continued...

We were actually in a hurry during the last days...holidays, you know ;-) We'll try to catch up during the next days - so far you can have a look at our pictures from the following places:

• Vancouver (see added posts below!)
• Seattle
• Yellowstone (travelling there so far)

We are in West Yellowstone at the moment and we've got to go in our tent now...the bears are coming! See you soon.

How to visit Seattle in a hurry

Our first and only night in Seattle was nice, because the room was pretty big and we were sleeping in a real bed. We started with a delicious breakfast at Top Pot, the home of the best donuts in town. Afterwards, we started to visit the sights of Seattle, because we weren’t able to see them the evening before due to our late arrival. A quick view at Pike Place Market (a famous and really big marketplace on multiple floors), the harbor with the characteristic green ferries (for Grey’s Anatomy Fans: you can see them in the intro) and Pioneer Square – and it was already time to hurry. On our way back we visited the famous Elliot Bay Bookstore (which Julia was obviously interested in) and the Seattle Seahawks Football Stadium.

Time to go: we booked a tour at the Boeing Company in the afternoon, which we didn’t want to miss. It was short, but really nice – we saw the huge Boeing 747 being assembled in various stages, from wing parts to the whole plane. It’s amazing that they produce eight 747 a month and one 737 a day! We wanted to order a 787 Dreamliner that day (we’re going to be rich one day, you know), but it would have been delivered by 2014…so we decided not to buy it ;-) It’s a pity that we were not allowed to take pictures, but you’ll find some anyway in our Seattle Photo Album.

Again, we had to move on…Yellowstone National Park was waiting for us and it’s a long trip. That’s why we headed for Spokane and passed by Redmond, where the Microsoft Corporation is located. Of course, Andi had to get a closer view and so he left his footprints in the lawn of the company ;-) Moving on, we had a problem with Mr. President. He decided to visit Seattle (actually we think he was looking for us) and so the Interstates and surrounding roads were closed – it took us two more hours to avoid getting stuck.

Finally on the road again (by the way, our favorite song these days) we experienced some funny things…like following a truck in the dark and therefore stopping in the middle of the road work or seeing people on foot or by bike on a highway…America is great! Arriving after midnight, we fell asleep without blogging again…but we’re catching up now.

Searching for the Whales and Bimbos Bitchin' Burrito Kitchen

Yeah, here it is - the star of our last blog entry: our brand new cheap tent (Julia always calls it our first shared house). Behind our home, you can see our second home...the car! We're spending most of our day in it at the moment. But on that day (Sunday, by the way) we spent our day on a ship, as you can see below.

It's been the day of Whale Watching (one could also call it Whale Searching). We started the trip at 9 a.m. at Anacortes with a huge boat (as far as we can tell) and went on to San Juan Islands. It didn't take long until we saw the first oil tanker and some birds, but after some time there were even seals. But - no whales so far. So the trip continued as we had a guarantee to see some whales and 5 hours later, when the trip was actually about to end, we were miles away from our harbor and saw the dorsal fins of two whales. Ok, nice - but not as fascinating as we thought. Additionally, we had a problem now - being two hours late for our trip to Seattle.

One would think that we searched enough for that day. But that's a mistake, because we continued the same way in Seattle. After a two hour trip from Anacortes to Seattle we found the Moore hotel pretty quickly thanks to our navigation system. However, we noticed that the power plug of our car does not work and we can't load the battery using our car. Of course, the battery was empty exactly 5 mins before we found the hotel ;-) Anyway, we finally found a secure parking lot (which is not as easy as it sounds) and checked in to our pretty nice room. As we were hungry, we looked for a restaurant from Julias travelling guide and asked the receptionist for it. He told us the way..."you can't miss it, it's just a 20 mins walk!". 2 hours later...we were finally standing in front of the restaurant called Bimbos Bitchin' Burrito Kitchen. As this was our lucky day, the sign at the door said: No Minors allowed in here. You know who's a Minor (below 21 years), don't you? ;-) After talking to the security and getting a place next to him, we were allowed to eat something...thank god. We enjoyed two of the best Burritos in town and went to bed afterwards. It seems obvious, why we're late with blogging! See all pictures of the day in our Seattle Photo Album. Don't forget your comments, we love them!

Buy a tent quickly

The title of this entry tells everything, actually... ;-) The mission of this day was to get some souvenirs, a rental car and - last but definitly not least - a tent. After picking up the car, which is a dark-red Ford Focus (without working power plug, i.e. cigarette lighter), we went to the shopping district for buying a tent. In our timetable we spared one (!) hour for doing that a named it "buy a tent quickly". In reality, it took us 4 hours for visiting 3 stores and finally getting a tent for 189 CAN$ + Tax + Lifetime Membership at MEC Inc.! By the way...our goal was to get one for less than 50 Euros, but the tent we bought was actually the cheapest one. Please also see the rest of our Vancouver pictures.

Starting way too late, we crossed the border to the U.S. and left our finger prints there. When we asked the people of the border patrol if we should lock the car, they just said: "There are 10 security cameras and 2 armed guards, what do you need the lock for?" ;-) We finally arrived at Burlington KOA (Kampgrounds of America, you'll see that more often now...) just in time to check-in. Of course, it started to rain heavily upon our arrival and we had to set up our brand new cheap tent for the first time. However, we have to add that the tent is really easy to handle and we did not experience a wet night at all! The nice things in KOA are the clean restrooms and the free WiFi (WLAN for Europeans) all around - see the picture beside for Internet in a tent! Please also note the introduction of our brand new navigation system Garmin nüvi, which has been sponsored by Rainer! Thanks again for all the cool stuff you sent to Burlington for us. Please see more pictures of the trip through Washington State in our Seattle Photo Album.

Exploring Vancouver

Our first day in Vancouver started typically American...with Iced Coffee from Blenz (the Canadian Starbucks). After visiting the tourist office we moved on to China Town, where we visited the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden. Please see our updated Vancouver photo album for more pictures. Having a lot of Chine restaurants around us, we decided to have lunch in one of them. But this wasn't so easy, because it was really hard to read the menu with Chinese vegetables in English language! ;-)
In the afternoon, we rented two bikes for traveling through Stanley Park (which is located on a half-island connected to Vancouver downtown). From there, you can get a fantastic view of Vancouvers skyline, as you can again see in our gallery. In the middle of the park is Vancouver Aquarium, a nice spot with Orcas, Sharks and other very interesting animals. We proceeded by bike to the Third Beach, where we went for a quick swimming trip in the Pacific Ocean and watched the beautiful sunset. After a really nice day, we watched Vancouver at night from the top of Harbour Center.

Vancouver - First Impressions

Thursday, 2:00am. Excited mothers, calm children and two cars travelling to Munich Airport. Although we were at the airport 2 hours early, we were pretty late for boarding because of the farewell conversations & pictures ;-)

Starting from Munich, we travelled via London to Vancouver. It was a funny flight, because we had a video on demand system with a monitor in the back of every seat. The service and food was great - we can only recommend British Airways. During our time at London Heathrow Airport we checked out the way from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1, because we have to be very quick on our way back in December...but therefore we had to pass security three times!

Finally in Vancouver, we went through Customs without problems and I've got my study permit. We travelled by free bus (because of the friendly driver) to our hotel, which is pretty old & cheap - but clean. We've got free Internet here and the staff is very friendly.

In the evening, we discovered Vancouvers downtown, including the Harbor Center and the Canada Place. See more pictures in our Vancouver Photo Album. After having the best burger and chips so far, we were happy to go to bed! All the best from Vancouver.

Our trip starts...

So that's it: my first entry to the brand new blog and the start of our trip to Canada! I packed some warm pullovers and other clothing, a guide to Canada, some maps, and - of course - my webcam to keep in touch with all of you! As always, I'm doing things last minute - so I've got to get some sleep now before leaving to the airport. Did you know that it's possible to check-in online nowadays? That's pretty cool, we already reserved the best seats! We hope to get a lot of comments for our blogging work, so stay tuned!