Tuesday, August 11, 2009

10 feet to the left, and I've got Wi-fi...

Day three of our adventure, and we’re sitting in Victoria right now, visiting with Dode while I try to get onto the neighbour’s wi-fi. We visited the German Consulate today, and while we didn’t get as far as we thought we would in the process of getting the German passport, we didn’t really walk away empty handed. We got some good information, I think. The documents that mom brought with her don’t really get us anywhere, but we know exactly which ones we need now, and we’re also going to get mailed with a bunch more information with exactly what we’ll need from who. We also found out that Aunty Ariane (Opa’s sister in Germany) CAN make copies of the documents that she has, as long as she gets them made at the town hall and are officially notarized and all sorts of other big words. Right now I think the task for mom is to be able to prove German citizenship, then we can move on to the passport. They’re also going to check into things and make sure that it can be given to me and Collin in the first place, if it’s not then we won’t even bother. Hopefully it is though, I don’t know when I’d go to the EU to do anything, but it’s nice to have an easy option when it comes to hopping around. That and it’s cool. I also thought the German consulate was pretty neat too; it was like going into a little embassy. Which I guess it kind of is. Only one party is aloud to come in at a time, empty your pockets, a quick metal scan, no cell phones are to be turned on, all that sort of stuff. Tedious, but cool.

We took the Vancouver SkyTrain to and from the World Trade Centre where the consulate is located, which mom had never done before and thought was super awesome and cool. I’ve done it a couple times before when I was visiting Riley, so it wasn’t quite as new and amazing to me, but I think that it’s pretty cool too. There’s just something about railed transit that excites me. I guess that’s one thing I would really love about being in Europe. I wish we had some sort of railed transit in Saskatoon, but we’re just too small and poorly planned out for any such system to work. But I digress. We went to a French restaurant in a shopping centre just across the way from the World Trade Centre when we were done at the consulate, and that was probably one of the best lunches I’ve had in a really long time. I had some sort of savory crepe with black forest ham, roasted tomatoes, and a fresh greens and herb salad. If I could say something in French to describe it I certainly would. SO good. Mom had a crescent sandwich with fresh fried mushrooms, mozzarella, and a fried egg. Or something like that. She loved that. It also came with fresh made French vegetable soup, which was absolutely fantastic. I think it’s almost as good as the butternut squash soup I had at earls a couple years ago. People know what I’m talking about :P Hers also came with the same salad, which she liked as well.

I didn’t take as many pictures during that part of the day as I had been the day before, but there wasn’t a whole lot to take pictures of, honestly. I got a few shots of one of the gardens we were waiting near as Brian came to pick us up. When we were all finished we were picked up by Brian from the SkyTrain station near their place, packed up our things, and bid them farewell. We made our way to the ferry boarding, we forgot we were still set an hour ahead on all our clocks and couldn’t figure out why no one was driving on the ferry to board for 3 o’clock. Then we realized it was only 2. We felt silly. A quick tour of the tourist trap they’ve got at the docks, and we waited out the rest of the hour by watching YouTube videos on my phone. When we finally boarded the ferry and got moving, we headed outside and I took a whole bunch of photos of everything around us. There wasn’t any wildlife except for a seagull, but there was a good amount of scenery and sailboats for me to snap up. There are a few nice shots, nothing amazing. My lens got pretty wet pretty quick; it was raining pretty good almost the entire time. There was a crappy arcade on the ferry, the only things worth playing were Pac-Man and Metal Slug 6, both of which were full each time I walked by, I was more interested in taking pictures anyway.

When we finally got to Vancouver Island it was a pretty uneventful drive to Dode’s in Victoria. Once again, we were greeted with wide open arms and huge hugs. Dode told me to walk down to the liquour store down the street when she didn’t have any beer, and I wanted to see if I could find some Dude Beer while I’m in BC anyway. No such luck at this store, so I just got some Kilkenny. Chris says she knows exactly where I can get some though, and I’m planning on getting a bunch of it to bring back for everyone. Dode made us some really good supper, and we’ve basically been sitting and visiting since we got here. Well, I’ve been trying to break into the neighbour’s wi-fi, but mostly the visiting. I’m about to give up on the whole Internet thing. Dode doesn’t have a computer so she cancelled her Internet, so I might be up the creek tonight. It happens I guess. Tomorrow we’re going to bum around downtown, see sites, and check out a bunch of things. I think we’re going to the museum, looking for a teashop, looking for some sort of bug thing, and some other stuff I can’t think of right now. I’ll be sure to write all about it tomorrow. We’re leaving Victoria on Wednesday, and getting into Calgary on Thursday. I need to talk to Mike before then so we can work something out to try and meet up, and on Friday Tabi and I are going to try and check out the zoo if the weather is nice. If it isn’t we’re going to go to Tyrell. I <3 both of those places so I’ll be happy no matter what. We’ll be on out way home Saturday, probably getting into town that evening, concluding the trip. I’ve had a really good time so far, haven’t really done much that was super noteworthy, but it’s been really nice to get away from things. Hopefully when I get back I’ll have some fresh prospective on everything, and I’ll be ready to start getting all my school stuff together.

But this has gone on long enough, I wish I could just sit down and write my school papers like this. I’m signing off for now, hopefully I’ll be able to publish this tonight, but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to just sit in MSWord for a couple days instead.


P.S.; I find myself able to publish this tonight, over 4 hours after having written it. I've been trying to get into Dode's neighbour's wi-fi during this entire time. I actually started writing to distract myself from the task. I finally gave up, and right before going to bed, suggested to mom that I use the spare room and she use the couch since the couch seems more comfrotable than the pullout, and I'll sleep longer and no one will wake me in here. Well, I lay down, turn off my phone tethering, and wouldn't you know it, one of the networks I couldn't pick up from the dining room (But was able to spot a total of 2 times during my searches) comes up with 80% signal in this room, and is an open network. Yeah... Goodnight everyone.

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