2013/08/05: Winnipeg

What do Neil Young, the Guess Who and Bachman–Turner Overdrive (and Eli Matas) (and Winnie Pooh) have in common? They're comming from Winnipeg.
I spent here another day, mostly walking (about 12 km) through lovely neighbourhoods to the Assiniboine Park (where I had to take to minimum gauge railway) and visiting the Manitoba Museum (partly a bit out of fashion, but you learn and see a lot, e.g. the full-size replica ship Nonsuch, whose voyage in 1668 led to the founding of the Hudson's Bay Company).
I still don't like the empty, run-down downtown, but other parts of the city (first of all the Exchange District, where I found an interesting Canadian fastfood chain, smokes poutinerie, are absolutely worth a visit.
This is my last morning in Winnipeg, in three hours I'm going to board the Canadian, which will bring me through the Prairies to Edmonton and Jasper. Here are some pictures of Winnipeg:

2013/08/02-03: Churchill – Winnipeg

I’m back in Winnipeg. It's warm again (although not as hot as in Germany)! Here are some pictures of the train ride back from Churchill:

2013/08/01: Churchill

It’s somehow weird: Churchill is famous all over for being the world’s polar bear capital. From Rough Guide to Spotlight Magazine, everybody tells you to go there for seeing Canada’s wildlife and especially for seeing polar bears. After a two-day’s train ride you arrive there, somewhere in the middle of the tundra, where only some hundred people and even fewer trees are living a hard life, and what happens? Suddenly polar bears are dangerous. Everybody, from tourist agency to Eli, tells you that a polar bear will kill you if it sees you, that you shouldn’t go there and you shouldn’t visit this, that you shouldn’t walk to Cape Merry Battery without having a gun, that you should always watch a car where you could flee to if a bear appears (cars are never locked, you can’t steel a car here anyway, as there are no roads leading to any point farer away than the twin lakes some 25 kilometers south of Churchill). To sum it up: as any kind of organized tours would have been too expensive, I was locked in a village of 900 people for the whole day, scared of walking anywhere (bears can suddenly appear wherever you are), a little bit pissed off by the weather (9 degrees Celsius, strong wind, light rain), but still happy to be there. I visited everything the tourist agency recommended (the cafeteria of the hospital – yes, it is affordable. But it is still inside a hospital; the library – I’m convinced it is a great place to check your mails. But due to illness of the employee it was closed today; the Eskimo Museum – yes, the artefacts are fascinating. But as it is only one room I didn’t manage to stay longer than one hour). Sounds quite negative, but it’s been a great experience to walk around in this strange village, feeling like I reached the edge of the world (in fact Churchill is still in the southern half of Canada!!!).
I also visited the exhibition in the Parks Canada Visitor Reception Centre. I liked that it was not only a we-have-the-most-beautiful-nature-in-the-world-come-and-see-it-exhibition, but also a birds-don’t-come-from-Southern-America-to-Northern-Canada-in-summer-any-more-if-there-stopover-forest-in-Venezuela-will-be-destroyed-exhibition, a polar-bears-have-pesticides-in-their-brains-exhibition, a there-will-be-no-ice-for-the-polar-bears-be-left-if-we-continue-driving-cars-exhibition and a the-intensive-agriculture-in-their-wintering-ground-in-the-southern-United-States-exploses-the-population-of-snow-geese-which-has-troubling-implications-for-the-ecosystems-in-Northern-Canada-exhibition. Without being too accusing, the exhibition shows, how local actions can have global impacts. That’s what geography is about.
Having left the exhibition, I was back in the rent-a-pick-up-make-a-helicopter-tour-eat-meat-burn-oil-because-it’s-cheap-world big parts of North America and Western Europe (and more and more parts of Asia and Africa) belong to. We should change this world before it is too late. We don’t need to heat our flats up to 23 degrees, we don’t need to cool our trains down to 18 degrees, we don’t need to drive a car or eat meat every day (I’m working on that…), and if we really have to, it should be electric cars respectively organic meat.
I had these thoughts drinking a hot cappuccino at Gypsy’s bakery, the place everybody ends up sooner or later In Churchill. So did Eli. And so did some of his friends, amongst others Alex de Vries, the photographer of the postcards I’ll send to Germany in the next days.
After a walk along Churchill River – hoping in vain that I could see some Beluga whales and scared to death considering the fact that I could see a polar bear – I ended up at the Tundra pub, the place where Eli will have his gig tonight. Here I met almost everybody I met before in Churchill. After a warm tea, a warm soup and a cold beer I went together with Eli and Erin to Eli’s hotel room. Although it was the hotel room of a musician, we didn’t destroy anything. No sex, no rock’n roll, just my favorite drug, alcohol.
Still freezing, I’m sitting now onboard the train back to Winnipeg. Goodbye, sub-arctic climate, goodbye Eli, Eric and Alex, goodbye, you lovely awful polar bears. I’m happier that I didn’t see you than I’m disappointed that I didn’t see you.


We will arrive in Churchill soon:


It's very, very cold!


Much better!


The only polar bear I met (in the Eskimo Museum):


Ok, and I saw this one too:


Ok, this one too:


Ok, this one too:


There’s a beach on a sea which is frozen nine month a year. In the other three months you’re not allowed to go there because it’s too dangerous:


Road to nowhere:


This car is running on a railway track!


This bus shows the opposite of design:


This bus has been turned into a house


Is it a bad sign that there’s no rock?


Next to Churchill River:


A freight train going to the harbor


Hudon Bay Panorama


East Churchill Panorama


Churchill River panorama


Eli’s hotel room with its mini fridge

2013_07_31: Thompson

Thompson, “the hub of the north”, was founded in the 1950s. It had been planned as a model community with six neighborhoods surrounding a central downtown. In the first years Thompson grew at a very fast pace to meet the demands of a new nickel mine. At an information panel at the so called “spirit walk” it says that Thompson is “truly an urban oasis in a wilderness setting”. It’s true; it’s absolutely a wilderness setting.
With a population of about 13,000, Thompson is the fourth largest city in the province of Manitoba. Manitoba is more than twice as big as Germany. I think this says a lot about the Canada's population density… Thompson also remains Canada’s most violent crime city for the third consecutive year, today’s local newspaper “Thompson citizen” proudly reports on page 1.
Our train had a stop of more than six hours in Thompson, so we had more than enough time to visit all sightseeing attractions of the city – which are basically a lake, a quite ugly mall, a visitor center and the above mentioned spirit walk which connects all. We didn’t make it to the visitor center. We also didn’t really make it to the lake. But we absolutely enjoyed food and beers at Boston’s Pizza, where Eli won a lot of money at the gambling machines. Eli is Eli Matas, singer and composer and founder of the label Canadian Grass Records. He is on his way to Churchill to play there two gigs tomorrow and Friday night. We discussed mainly politics (result: Germany and Canada both have terrible governments, but at least Germany has the fairer voting system) and sports (result: it’s hockey that matters. Nothing else. Only hockey). Hockey is for Canada what football is for Germany. When Winnipeg had got a license for the NHL some years ago, the whole city was celebrating and everybody was allowed to drink alcohol in public for this one evening.


Multi-modal Thomson railway station


Thomson railway station building


Downtown Thomson


The first drive-thru-ATM I’ve ever seen


This huge wolf…


…has been painted on a building.



Our day ended in the dining car. Eli und Alex explained me “21”, I explained them “Schafkopf” (literally translated "sheephead", according to leo.org it's "egregious fool"). Denis, our great conductor, supplied us with drinks. A beautiful sunset, pristine lakes, rivers and boreal forest outside of the train; a lot of fun inside the train.

2013_07_29: Winnipeg

Before I’m going to continue my westbound travel in six days, I’ll do a detour to Churchill, Canada’s only Arctic port and its “polar bear capital”, located some 1,700 kilometers north of Winnipeg. There’s a passenger train called “Hudson Bay” running to Churchill twice a week, besides some flights (and following the North-West-Passage on ship) the only possibility to reach this remote village at the 9-month-a-year-frozen Hudson Bay. The train runs (quite slowly) through prairies, forests and tundra. In the northern part it runs on discontinuous permafrost soil, which can thaw in spring times, so that permafrost sink holes can appear along and under the rail track. This section of the railway had been built at great expense over many years and wasn’t completed before 1929.
My train has 2 locomotives (only one is needed, the second one is joining for security reasons, if the first locomotive will break down somewhere in the middle of nowhere) and 5 cars (1 baggage car, two seating cars, 1 dining car, 1 sleeping car). The cars have been built in the 1950s. They look even more “original” and special than the Canadian’s cars, with coat-hook and a framed picture on the toilet and miniature railways in the compartments.

The 2 conductors are absolutely funny and perhaps also a little bit crazy – no wonder after having worked on this line for many years. One of them reminds me of Matthias Matussek, the other one of Mr. Bean.

I booked the train tickets when I was really busy, with no time for reading any guidebooks and the pressure to decide soon, because the ticket prices kept on rising every day. This is the first part of the answer to a question every reader will ask: Why the hell are you doing this? Why are you sitting in a train for two days just to go back the same route one day later? Another part of the answer is: the probably much more beautiful route from Jasper to Prince Rupert, combined with the “Inside Passage” ship tour to Vancouver Island, would have been much more expensive, and I had to decide for the cheaper option (which is still quite expensive anyway). But there’s also this third part of the answer: I’m interested in seeing as much different types of Canadian landscapes as possible. I want to know how Canada looks beyond the 55th longitude. I want to experience different climate zones. Although the chance to see polar bears is not very high in July and August, I want to see Churchill, “the ultimate end of the line” (Trans-Canada Rail Guide, p221). I’ll probably never have the chance again to see the Hudson Bay, to travel through Canadian tundra, to do this crazy trip. Yes, I really wanted to do this trip. And I still want to do it. Although I have to admit that I’ve been a bit shocked when I realized in Winnipeg that this little detour will take almost one week. And of course I would prefer to travel together with a good friend. In the Canadian with its international passenger mix I never felt alone. Here I definitely do. Anyway, I enjoy riding on this “wonderful dinosaur of a journey” (Trans-Canada Rail Guide, p221). And I’ve got enough books with me I can read if the landscape is as monotonous as the guidebook promised.
Yes, this is Canada, not Scotland:

I’ve seen a moose next to this river, but it was faster than the camera:

The clouds were as diversified as the weather:

This field is representative for the southern part of the trip...

The city Canora was named by the Canadian Northern Railway (take the first two letters of each word!)

Imagine the cars were replaced by horses and John Wayne was put in the middle of the picture!

First sunset on the Hudson Bay Train: