After three weeks on farms I was finally back to civilization. And went immediately to prison without withdrawing any money 😉

And that was for a good reason: I was staying at the HI prison hostel in Ottawa. The first surprise was that I got upgraded to a Family room since a group was staying and all the dorm beds had already been taken. The bad side of it was that the room was on level 9 and due to the fact the the building was prison before there was obviously no elevator. So I had to drag my now probably 20 k suitcase up the stairs to move in.

But the room was NICE, big, air-conditioned and we actually had a couch in there which I used extensively that afternoon, being on skype and the internet for hours and bringing everybody up to date.

I also took a quick – rather uneventful – trip to Rideau Center in the search of lunch and did a quick tour for some basic groceries and that was about it. Of course I enjoyed the bliss of actually having nothing to do 🙂

On the next day, I stayed in bed until 9 in the morning, had a quick chat with the German and the Swiss girl in my room before I had to leave and change to a regular dorm room.

After checking out I went for a walk to the bus station to buy an Explorer pass for the Greyhound bus which seemed to be the cheapest and simplest solution for my plans for crossing Canada. On the way back, I stopped at a Shawarma place for a fantastic beef sandwich with even better garlic potatoes and a nice cool tin of Canadian Dry (ginger ale) while watching the begin of the soccer game between Argentina and Greece.

Full as can be, I headed back to the hostel, right through the Rideau Center where I finally got my hair cut for 40 Dollars (just a dry cut and a quick waxing for my eyebrows).

When I entered my new room one bed was already taken and I was supposed to take the top bunk. But since there was a heating pipe or something similar running along, there was hardly any space, even for a small person like me. Almost immediately I was chatted up by the girl from the lower bunk who was staying just one night because of a band I never heard of: „Cute is was we aim for“ (yeah, this whole thing is the band name) and she persuaded me to come along to the concert of Cute the same night.

So we headed out at around 6:30 since the concert was suppose to start at 7 (????). Fortunately, the club was only 2 blocks away from the hostel since it was just starting to rain when we left the hostel.

In front of the club there was already a line-up but on the right side of the sidewalk there were some guys standing which Kristina knew from the other concerts. She talked to Zach, the merchandise guy, and he instantly told her that the concert was sold out. Hmmm….

Nevertheless we lined up at the end of the cue, standing in the rain…. after about 20 minutes the line-up started to move forward  – slowly though…..

And just when we arrived at the corner, Zach approached us and told Kristina  that we were on the guest list – just like that. Terrific!

But I didn’t believed it until we finally made it to the door and the guy at the entrance actually let us in – for FREE!!!!! :-)) Perfect!

During the wait, we met another girl from Ottawa and she joined us for the evening.

Of course the concert didn’t start before 7:45 with the first band of the evening: Tonight Tonight.

When they started we were standing at the side of the stage and talked to the front man, obviously not knowing that he was the front man. But he was nice enough and gave Kristina styling tips for her hair *g *

I instantly liked him and the style of his band (some rock alternative pop cross-over) but still couldn’t find anything of them on the internet – unbelievable…..

After they had finished, another band called „Ford something“ entered the stage.

Luckily, we were at the bar by then because they were more like a sleeping pill  than anything else. In the meantime Shaant ,the singer of „Cute is what we aim for“, arrived at the club and when Kristina greeted him and the other band members, the Canadian girl was more than over the top.

And she was just so happy when she even got a picture of Shaant and herself 🙂

Suddenly I felt a bit out of place because I didn’t even know the band and had to chuckle from time to time about all that hype about these four boys which seemed to me to be quite normal. Except for the fact that Shaant proudly told the crowd later that evening that he’d been sober for 10 months on that day.

Wow, and how old is he?? I’d put him somewhere in his mid-twenties if anything.

When „Cute is what we aim for“ entered the stage the noise was almost like Robbie Williams himself had entered the room….luckily I’d put some paper tissue in my ears 🙂

The atmosphere was quite good but I didn’t get much of the melodies, so have to look them up on myspace sometime to get to know if I even like them 😉

What surprised me was that they let the lights on the whole evening which is a very unusual thing on concerts back home in Germany. It somewhat kills the atmosphere but maybe that’s here like out of safety reasons – I don’t have a clue….

After the concert Kristina and the other girl (I think I really don’t know her name) talked to the members of the different bands, hang around a bit at the merchandising shop and talked to Zach . The singer of „Tonight, Tonight“ told me that his grandmother is German and that she told him some German saying which I didn’t seem to know. But maybe I just didn’t get it because of all the noise surrounding us.
I left at about 11:30 and let Kristina and the Canadian stay a bit longer with the crowd.

On the next day I was up at 7:30 to pack everything up for my long trip headed west. My bus left at 10 at the Central bus station.

The first part of the trip was rather uneventful. Except for one guy I think I’d recognized from the concert the night before but I wasn’t sure and wasn’t sure if he was one of the guys of the second band so I kept my mouth shut and he also already left the bus at North Bay.