Catching up

Well, as you may have noticed, I tried to upload some pictures on Friday as my first memo from abroad. Unfortunately, the internet at the hostel "Canadiana Backpacker's Inn" was fairly slow and I tried to upload too many pictures...which led us, alas, to no pictures at all! However, I will upload them now.

(Wednesday, July 24th)

So anyways. I arrived safe and sound in Toronto at about 12.30 pm on Wednesday 24 July, albeit the landing was a bit shaky. At the passport control my working permit was issued by a newly trained female (well, the sex actually doesn't matter but anyway) police officer. The whole process hence took a very long time, but she was friendly and welcoming, so this was no problem Our travel agent back in Germany also told me that me full name probably will be too long for the scanning machine to be accepted, and I would have to stand in line for two hours to get a ticket, however this worked out fine as well. 

Our group was picked up by a school bus (nice idea, DKG! ;)) and taken directly downton Toronto! Canadiana Backpacker's Inn, as stated above, was our place to be! Located at Widmer Str 42, it's right in the heart of the city. After checking in and "checking out" our rooms we were given some free time to stroll around in the city.

Right at this moment a familiar feeling started to  come up: hunger. Well, there was food on the plane and the flight wasn't really that long, but...you know. So we asked at the reception where to find "the best" food close to the hostel. We were recommended Hero Burger, so there we headed.
Hero Burger is a Toronto-based food chain operating in Canada, mainly Ontario. Being the "official Burger of Toronto Maple Leafs" and selling only "eco-friendly" heritage Angus Beef from Alberta in 100% recycled packages, we actually had some really good burgers (see the picture). We also tried a variety of drinks. Drinks were sold at self-serve.On an electronic vending machine with touchscreen you could choose between a tremendous amount of pops. The first screen already had a selection of about 10 different brands, ranging from coke to sprite and rootbeer to whatsoever. However, when you clicked on sprite for example you were offered an even broader range of drinks. Ever heard of strawberry sprite or grape sprite? Well, me neither! I tried some grape sprite, which was, except for its fancy colour not very special (and probably not too healthy either). So I went over to rootbeer. You don't know what rootbeer is? It certainly isn't beer as we would know it from Germany, at least to say it is not beer at all. It is rather a normal pop drink: water, sugar and some mysterious flavours and other unknown ingredients. To be quite frank, it tastes a bit disgustful when you're trying it for the first time, however when you're getting used to it, it can become addictive.

Our journey went on. We walked up north on Spadina Av right through Chinatown. We encountered China market, which, according to the map, is some sort of sight in Chinatown. To us it merely seemed to be a haunted hallway with closed stores and nothing to do. I also have to say that Toronto's Chinatown is rather small and unspectacular, if I think of the one in Vancouver. We walked on until College Street, having a peek on the University of Toronto. Later we met up with the rest of the group to go the Panoramabar on the 51st floor. The view certainly was stunning! Just have a look on the pictures I have taken. Toronto seems to be in a continuous transition. New high-rise buildings are popping up all around the city. I wonder were all the space for these new skyscraper comes from. It's simply impressing. However, besides all this constructing, rents have to be fairly expensive as I have seen an ad on one of the newly built towers, offering suites for 400.000$ and up.

We were having a nice evening up there. The cocktails were good, and  rather expensive, however lacking some alcohol (at least I didn't taste a single bit of the rum that was supposed to be in my drink). Around 10 pm we headed back, tiredness already hit us. So we made our walk back to the hostel and pretty much straight to bed. Downtown we walked pass some nice bars and a Jazz club called "The Rex" with live music. Probably worth a visit!

To be continued when there's time!