Or: sometimes things turn out differently than one thought.
Alright Digby. Digby is a small fishing village at the head of Digby Neck and there are some 2300 lucky residents who live there at one of the most beautiful spots in Canada (at least in my humble opinion). Amongst them are Saskia and Claude, the owners of the Digby Backpackers Inn which should be my home for not only two nights as originally planned but for more than a whole month.
How that happened?? I don’t know, one thing just led to another 😉
If you curious where I spend these happy 5 weeks, you can check out Tori’s home tour video she made and posted on YouTube: Digby Backpackers Inn – tour
And here are some pictures of Digby
The first days I stayed in Digby I did all the tourist stuff: walk around town and the waterfront, eat the best chips on earth, rented ad bike and cycled to the lighthouse at Point Prim, spending the afternoon in the sun, watching the seals.
Then I went to Sandy Cove with Frithjof and found out that the water there is really as cold as you would assume but at least I went into the water up to my hip….yeah!! 🙂
The day after Frithjof took me and Tina out to Annapolis Royal, one of the oldest towns in Canada. The sad thing about Annapolis was that a lot of properties were closed and are on sale. I don’t know if this is only because the season was almost over or if there is another reason for that. But there are so many nice houses, like Leo’s café that I hope that soon people will buy and take care of the historical buildings.
All the time Saskia, Claude and Tori, the Australian volunteer who was working at the hostel for….three??..months, were talking about the famous Wharf Rat Rally and that I would miss the greatest fun of the year if I would leave before the weekend. Well, I had no other plans – and stayed. There was also Hurricane Earl in the wait, so I was curious about that as well.
The Wharf Rat Rally
The Wharf Rat Rally was a blast, the hostel was as full as can be although some people cancelled because of the predicted hurricane but except for some wind and rain there didn’t happen much in this matter. The Wharf Rat Rally in contrast rocked the whole place: on late Saturday afternoon motorbikes were rolling in from everywhere. There were vendors, stunt shows, bands and music – and of course motorcycles everywhere. WOW!!!
I watched the motorbike stunt show three times and in the end I even got used to all the smoke and rubber on the asphalt 🙂
Whereas my two attempts to watch the jet ski stunt show were not quite as successful: the first show was cancelled because the jet ski guy was still somewhere in the US (don’t ask me, why), the second show was postponed because of the tides. By chance I came back just in time when the show should start. Unfortunately, it didn’t because something at the jet ski didn’t work right. So we mostly watched the guy reparing his jet ski. Wow! Finally, on the third and last try, we went all four of us, Saskia, Claude, Tori and me, had a nice place to sit and everything else worked out as well. Well…..the show was nice but not as much as I would have expected after all that hassle.
Another “highlight” was the story one of the biker guys staying at the hostel: one evening they were standing with their bikes at the wharf talking and somehow he managed to drive his brand-new bike (a Harley Davidson, of course) over the wharf into the dock. Luckily, he hadn’t been injured seriously and they could get his bike out of the water, too. And they were quite positive that it could be repaired.
Working at the hostel
After the Wharf Rat Rally was over it was suddenly very quiet in the whole town and also at the hostel. So that Saskia and Claude decided to take a 14 day break and asked me if I could imagine staying for some days longer and helping out Tori.
Well, I still had no other plans, so I stayed and started “working” on the same day.
After almost four months traveling, beach and sun my day finally got a routine again: Getting up close to eight, in time to have breakfast with the guests, after that cleaning the bathrooms and making the beds of people who left. Then some general cleaning and half of the day was gone already. As long as it was quiet I still had the time to cycle to Bear River, the Red Cliffs or Point Prim in the afternoon.
In the evening we had a fixed appointment at 9 PM when Tori introduced me to Dr.Who but this only went on as long as the guests cooperated and didn’t watch some weird stuff like hockey (which is of course ICE hockey in Canada) 😉
During that time I also had two telephone job interviews back home in Germany and an online test. For the latter Tori shut off the whole kitchen, so that I could concentrate on the exercises. Unfortunately I didn’t get the job but the gesture was just great, thanks Tori! 🙂
There were also five sea urchin divers staying as long-term guests at the time, so we had five great guys in our ‘home’ and it almost felt like a little family. I also learnt a bit about sea urchin diving which probably almost nobody knows about in the Western world. But it seems that Asians like that stuff in their Sushi and pay good money for the tubes of sea animals…uargh….(I can say that because I tried it!!! 😉 ).
The days went by and after some hours (at least it felt like that) Saskia and Claude were already back, fresh, relaxed and bringing back a whole years income worth of cheese, fresh tea, chocolate and alcohol. For their welcome and her goodbye Tori made a huge dinner including a fantastic, wonderful, delicious, uncomparably yummie Pavlova for desert which consists of a meringue bottom and whipped cream and all sorts of fruit on top. Also a thing I didn’t know before but I will never forget…..hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……..
After some more days, I finally had to leave Digby to make it back in time to Toronto. But Digby and especially the Backpackers Inn was definetely my Hotel California and I would love to come back (as soon as possible :-)) ).
Thanks so much Saskia, Claude, Tori, Bryce, Curtis, Bernard, Mickey and Jonathan and of course thanks to all the wonderful guests who had stayed at the Backpackers Inn.
Except for some very, very few exceptions they had all been wonderful.
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