On Thursday I left Robbin’s flat (after two days “out of town” 😉 ) and returned to Toronto downtown.
Once again I could experience the disadvantages of not writing down the complete address of a new hostel. All I remembered was the street name: Gerrard Street but not even if it was East or West. So I walked more or less the complete street in search of my new hostel, the Neill-Wycik-Summer-House (the exact name was also not part of my otherwise so excellent memory). After approximately two hours of unsuccessful search I went into a tax office since I also wanted to apply for my social insurance number (SIN) which you need if you want to work legally in Canada. The woman there was very nice: after telling me that she couldn’t help me with the SIN, she insisted to help me with the hostel.
So she tried to look up the hostel in the Yellow Pages – in paper – of course, although she had an internet connection which I could see on her monitor. My subtle question if we could look it up on the internet (which would have taken about 2 minutes) were completely ignored.
Obviously she didn’t exactly know what she was looking for because she got results like: “shelter for abused women” and “Salvation Armee”. By pure chance she got the hostel’s name after about felt two hours and called it immediately.
She told the girl on the phone that I was standing in her shop and couldn’t find the way then she handed the receiver over to me and insisted that I asked (again) for the exact address which was – surprise, surprise – the same as noted in the Yellow Pages. After replacing the phone she immediately dialed again and called for a taxi and as highlight of the whole story she tried to pay the taxi as well. I felt like a 5-year-old who has lost their family in the shopping center….
After a 5-minute-drive (including some red lights and heavy traffic) I arrived safely at the hostel which cost me only 7 Dollar….aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh….. the hostel itsself is primarly a student hostel which had only opened up as a “regular” backpacker. It’s a huge building with 23 stories. And I got a room in the 19th which is good in terms of the view and overview but which is bad when the key for the room doesn’t work.
Soooooooo, I took the elevator down again back to the reception and got another key which “should work” – but it didn’t. So, once more back to the reception and up again with the girl in charge and the two keys – which both didn’t work. Sooooooooooooo, back to the reception where I got another room on the same floor. And finally I got into “my” room. Which was quite spacious compared with other hostels. The showers were clean and the kitchen huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge and empty – completely empty except for a set of dishes which seemed to belong to someone else. But then again, maybe not….
In the meantime it was way after my regular lunch time and I went to find something to eat and got to Eaton Center into the food court. I took several rounds around but couldn’t decide which was the less worse thing to eat and settled for an expensive pizza (in total: everything in Canada seems to be immensly expensive when you include tax and services) and was still hungry afterward. But who cares….
Since the day was already not one of my best ones I decided to at least try to get some positive result and went to look for the office where I could apply for my SIN.
At first I was – of course – in the wrong place at the Service Center of Ontario. The guy at the information sent me immediately over to the Service Center of Canada which is on St.Clair Street – halfway out of town. But I had nothing better to do, so I went there and got my SIN as one of the last customers of the day.
So, I had my positive result at last.
Back at the hostel I tried to take a nighttime picture from the roof but it had started to rain, so I postponed that for the next day and went to bed early.
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