The Canadian -- segment 2 & Calgary

Fri, Aug 11 --We continued to wander around Winnipeg for a little while, not really finding that much to our liking. I think we came into the city thinking about it sterotypically as a boring city, and left with somewhat the same impression. Had we more time there, we might have visited the Man and Nature museum, or the Art museum and left with a different impresssion. Perhaps next time. We headed back to Union station to get the train, which ended up departing an hour behind due to locomotive troubles. Then we were off through the prairies once more. Whence we reached Saskatchewan that evening the skies turned dark and it started to rain, and then the sky lit up with sheet lightning. Sometimes we'd see a large bolt off in the distance, but most of the time the sky would just turn white. We slept off and on in our seats, ahead of some people who Matt, as an anthropologist, determined to be Menonnite. This was there first time riding a train, and they were filming everything, and throughout the night proceded to talk pretty loudly in english/dutch?/german?. I guess it was interesting to listen too, but hard to fall asleep to.

Sat, Aug 12-- We woke up in Alberta, and found out we made up some time, and arrived into Edmonton around 8:30am. We made our way over to the car rental place, and got our car without extra underage driver fees or extra driver fees. Yay! Then we headed out to Calgary, down Wayne Gretzky Dr, past Rexall Place, and onto Hwy 2. We stopped in Nisku for some breakfast at McDonalds, then continued on to Red Deer, where Ron McClean of CBC's Hockey night in Canada is from. Finally in the early afternoon we made it into Calgary. We found Shamil's house and ended up going into the city, down 17 Ave, or "the Red Mile" to meet up with him and his brother Nash. We checked out the Fringe Festival with street performers. We saw the supposed Canadian National Juggling Champion, but he seemed to drop things a lot... He did balance a ladder on his chin, which was impressive, but then when he was supposed to juggle in said position, he failed miserably. We left before the grand finale, so don't know if it got any better. Then we headed down 17th Ave to Ming, where we sampled Calgarian beer. Then it was over to the Eau Claire market for the Taste of Calgary. We got to sample chicken potstickers, bison ribs, bison burger, spolumbo's sausage, misir wot (ethiopian chick peas and lentils), fried raspberry gelato, and green tea ice cream. Wow! I wish there were Taste of's in every city we were going to. Then we headed over to the Drum & Monkey and eventually ended up at Bob the Fish and met up with some of Shamil and Nash's friends, which was fun.

Sun, Aug 13-- We have now broken fast at Shamil's house, eating french bread and fresh fruit. The weather has changed dramatically, it's nice and hot, where as last night was frigid! It was literally like late fall. It is bright and sunny and we are thinking of going towards the rockies, to Johnson's Canyon. Then it will be back to Edmonton for us tonight and catching the train tomorrow morning.

By the way! We went to this second hand store on 17 Ave, where supposedly they got all the costumery for Brokeback Mountain. Though I didn't get any cowboy shirts, I did pick up a conductor's hat, perfect for the rest of our trip. And Shamil got a neoprene jacket.