2013/09/01: The first three days: Campus, Public Transport, Walmart

Toronto is a huge city. Travelling from the inner city, located in the south, at Lake Ontario, to the northern edge of the city takes a lot of time. I’m living at the northern edge of the city, at York University’s Keele Campus. You have to take the subway all the way to the northern terminus, from there you have to take a bus. Which bus? It’s not easy to figure this out on the very complicated system map. Digital departures board? Ha, ha, funny! This is not Germany, darling, this is public transport in North America. As Canadians are much smarter than Germans, they manage it to use a public transport system without schedules or even maps at the stations. Ok, the thumb people who don’t understand this weird, out of fashion system drive their car. These people are in the majority, in the greater Toronto area more than 70% of the residents with a job drive to work. That’s why no-one – no kidding, also at the student housing services – can answer a question that starts with “how do I get by public transport to…”. How can one of the most progressive cities of the world maintain such a noncompetitive public transport system? Nothing has changed since I’ve been here five years ago. The day passes (still only available at subway stations) look like a lottery scratch ticket where you have to scratch the date on which the ticket should be valid; the subway network in a metropolitan area of nearly 6 million inhabitants offers basically two lines; the tramway network is run by old, squeaky streetcars which mostly get stuck in congested traffic; at York University three different operators are offering bus services, but every operator has another ticket system. I absolutely love the streetcars, on my third day I already got some basics of the bus system, and the subway is running fast and frequently. But there’s a lot to be done to turn Toronto’s public transport into an alternative to car dependency…

The flat was empty. Like a hotel room with kitchen. A lot of storage space, a refridgerator and a stove, but no mattress cover, sheets or blankets, no dishes, pans or knifes, no clothes hangers or waste bin. Do they expect exchange students to bring all these things by plane within their 23 kilogram limitation? Do they expect us to eat junk food three times a day? Or is it just a clever way to push the Canadian economy, earning hundreds of dollars on the first day exchange students spend in their country? Anyway, I need pan and pot for cooking, I need knife and fork for eating, I need sheet and pillow for sleeping. I searched a wonderful webpage for free or cheap, used or for rent stuff, but finally I gave up and did what everybody else does: I went to Walmart. First of all, I tried to find a grocery story on campus. There is none, only a little shop which is closed on Saturdays. After walking around the campus for more than one and a half hours (no joke! But it always looked as there could be something like a grocery store at the next corner, and again it was only a huge parking lot, a tennis stadium, a hockey stadium, a UPS storage or the subway construction site). Finally I walked to the next available Wifi-hotspot and googled the addresses of the grocery stores and shopping malls given in the “Handbook for Tenants”. Should have done this before: none of the grocery stores is in walkable distance! Crazy, a campus for thousands of people, and no grocery store (but Tim Hortons, Wendy’s, Subway, KFC, Taco Bell, Jimmy the Greek, another Tim Hortons and another Tim Hortons).
As I had to take a bus anyway (thanks to Google Transit I knew when and where the bus leaves, the Transit Operator’s homepage was not able to find a connection…), I went directly to Walmart, hoping that I find there everything I need. I’ve been the only one to arrive there by bus and not by car. And I’ve been probably the only person to spend two hours and almost two hundred dollars in this holy hall of capitalism. You can buy everything in here! Everything! Unbelievable. Forget about Metro, Selgros and Kaufland (no, don’t forget about them, they offer fresh, healthy food, you don’t find this in a Walmart…). Some things are extremely cheap (1$ for a glass respectively four knives), some things are extremely expensive (15,83$ for a fucking ethernet cable). But I had to buy this cable, as I want to have an Internet connection in my flat sooner or later (obviously later, Monday is a holiday in Canada…). As if the flat wouldn’t be expensive enough, the Internet cost another 27$ per month (it would be more than 70$ including telephone and television). Back to Walmart: this is not a joke, these are the prices for organic milk and toilet paper. Until I find a cheaper solution, I’ll drink non-organic milk and do my shit on public toilets…

There’s now a lot of stuff in my apartment, the refridgerator isn’t empty any more, the matrass is covered. But as my apartment is full, the campus is still empty. Where are the thousands of students expected to start their studying next week? Where are the lines to wait in for getting a YU Card, the apartment key or o coffee? Everything is empty, you don’t have to wait for anything. I hope this will change next week. Tomorrow, when my “Post-Secondary Metropass” (another 108$ per month…) is valid, I’ll go downtown and have a look if there are still people.