The Tired Traveller

Yesterday Mama and I came back from our trip to Kingston. I'm glad to be back at home! At the beginning and some of the end of the trip I was tired, uncommunicative, and disorientated -- the worst part of travelling -- and I felt guilty because I was not at all agreeable company. But the three days in between I was in a better mood; Mama and I roamed the Internet and had a splendid time doing so.

On the whole I'm really glad that we didn't move to Kingston. There are many old buildings but they are often not well-kept, and awkwardly intermingled with (consistently ugly) modern additions. The streets and sidewalks are in bad repair; there is litter all over the place; and the tiny gardens are usually not tended. If everyone picked up the litter on their property, took care of their lawn with fresh topsoil and some extra grass seed, planted a tree, restored their houses instead of just embellishing them in poor taste, and tore down any modern outbuilding, Kingston would be a charming city. But people seem neither to have the money nor the will to do so. That said, the surrounding countryside is beautiful.

This countryside was what made the train rides from the VIA Rail station in Ottawa to the one in Kingston really pleasant. The rails rest on wooden crossties, unlike the concrete ones in Europe; the banks are often composed of brownish layers of sedimentary rock that reminded me of the rock in Renaissance paintings of Biblical scenes. Once one has left the city one can really imagine how Ontario looked in the time of the voyageurs. The lush green fields are rimmed with slender rows of tall green trees, much like in England. Old, dark wooden fences run around them; with one type of fence there is an arrangement of logs much like the poles of a tipi at the post, while with another type of fence logs are just stacked on top of each other, crudely woven between fence posts. There were also often wetlands, with water in various states of inkiness spreading among the faded light-brown cattails of last year; freshly green, small-leaved trees whose twisty shape reminded me of the Hawaiian ohi'a; "sombre pines"; silvery-green bushes; a bright green haze of new grass stalks; low, flattened, stiff brush at intervals in dry open areas; and light gray trunks of dead trees. There were fields of cattails with the odd small, black bird sitting precariously on a stalk, clasping it sideways; they reminded me of the "swaying bobolinks" in the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Occasionally we passed over the high, turbulent, dark brown and foamy white waters of a river.

Yesterday evening we arrived back home at about 10:30. I read two short stories (one was "Ariadne") by Anton Chekhov before I went to sleep, but their depressingness (even though "Ariadne" was also funny) didn't interfere with my well-earned sleep. Trying to sleep on an airplane and not being able to do so is the pits. That said, I had enjoyed looking at the landscape -- the prairies and deserty areas in Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Rockies, and the lights of greater Vancouver. It was just dark as we passed over the interior of BC; Tsawassen ferry terminal and the coal harbour glowed under us as we passed over Georgia Strait, and if I had known better where UBC is located I might have spotted it too.

In five weeks we'll be flying to Berlin and leaving our home in Canada behind us forever. I'm trying to dissect my reactions to Kingston and draw lessons from them in order to make sure that I can be relied on to make the best of things.
1. I must firmly avoid having any mental images of our apartment or of the neighbourhood, to avoid the possibility of disappointment.
2. I must bring along a blanket and a small book in order to make the flight more comfortable.
3. I am never again using the stupid black bag that has made my shoulder dreadfully sore because it maximises the weight of my luggage, and that bumps against my legs all the time.
4. I must expect to find the way to our apartment unexpectedly long.
5. I should take along chocolate to replenish my spirits and perhaps have a drop of alcohol along the way; the chocolate ice wine truffles that I bought in Ottawa raised my spirits phenomenally.
6. Do the things on the Internet (like reading online books) that I usually do so that I don't feel entirely uprooted from my previous existence, and so that I feel that I have a reliable source of relaxation and entertainment.