After a very entertaining bus ride we arrived in Winnipeg at around 8 in the evening.
Unfortunately it was Sunday and the bus line I should use to the hostel stopped operating at 6 PM. Fortunately, just before we arrived at the Greyhound Station (which was relocated to the airport only end of last year) I met a guy, James, who was actually living in Winnipeg. So he and his brother Micky showed me which bus line I could use instead. And since their apartment was only a few minutes walk from the hostel, they took me directly to the Guesthouse on Marylandstreet.
I was running out of food and to tired to go shopping for some new supplies, so I took advantage of the free food (cereals with some borrowed milk), took a shower and went to bed.
On the next day, I made my way to the Forks, probably the most famous spot in Winnipeg. I visited the place where the Red River and the Assiniboisine River join and walked along the riverside. The weather was brillant and I really liked the relaxed atmosphere there.
Basil, a guy from California, who was staying at the International Guesthouse as well told me that evening that there’s supposed to be special vibrations since Winnipeg is almost the most central point within Canada. I just had a very at-home-ly feeling and had also the impression that the people there were really easy-going and laid-back. In contrast to almost all other cities I’ve been so far.
For lunchtime I grabbed some vegetarian (out of the ordinary meat diet) sandwich and followed the music.
At that time the annual Jazz Festival took place, so I had a nice lunch music by the Blue Fisher Band.
On Tuesday, I started slowly by hanging around the hostel. Finally at around noon I got started and walked again to the Forks to by some new post cards. I went into the Forks market which reminded me a bit of Victoria’s Wharf on Cape Town’s waterfront. I found myself the postcards and got me a nice treat of a freshly home made, organic and still warm cinnamon bun. Absolutely phantastic 🙂
On my way back I stopped at the skatepark to write my post cards and watched the kids on their first day of holiday.
Some impressions of Winnipeg:
Back home I had some dinner and killed the time until it was time to go to the bus station, my bus leaving at 11:30 PM.
Unfortunately this is usually already past my bedtime, so first I forgot my luggage tag on the suitcase. Up to Ottawa, I never needed one and now I keep forgetting to go to the counter and ask for a tag.
Soooooooooooooooooo, I had to go out of the line-up, go to the counter and was the very last passenger for this bus. Fortunately we all had to go through the security check before boarding, so I got a bit further in front of the line-up and got a nice seat – at the aisle but next to a nice girl who told me that she would leave the bus at 3:30 AM and that I would hopefully have the row for myself from then on.
So, the bus was completely booked out, every single seat and nobody seemed exactly to know why. Surprisingly I even slept some minutes or hours before the girl in the seat next to me had to leave. And I got a whole row for myself – for about one hour. When we got some new passengers.
I got one guy who was absolutely completely drunk but nice after all. The only annyoing thing was that he couldn’t stop talking to his friend while everybody else in the bus was hard-working to catch some sleep.
After some time he phoned someone and in the meantime his friend fell asleep and after that he finally shut up.
I think it was in Medicine Hat where we finally got a second bus and the passengers got split up in the ones travelling only to Calgary and the ones who wanted to travel further. Finally, the bus was comfortably empty.
Unfortunately, maybe two hours prior to our destination Calgary there came some native guys on the bus who were going to work and were already completely drunk and whatever more.
Of course one of them had to sit next to me – although the bus was almost empty – and started to talk to me as soon as he was seated.
Luckily, the other guys who were on the bus the whole time watched these guys closely and I guess PG would have hit them if they would have tried anything 😉
Good thing was that I got to talk to PG and Charlie from Namibia who should be later in the same hostel as me.
When we finally arrived in Calgary, PG, Charlie, Jan from Germany and a Canadian guy took a cab to the hostel which was a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery good idea after almost 20 hours on the bus.
Leave a Reply