Hi everybody!
Alright – so, as promised – here we go with my ‘First day’ Canada blog.
Today, it’s gonna’ be flight day. Our flight was supposed to be ready to depart at 3:20 PM. Everything went smoothly so far – though we had some troubles finding a proper parking lot. But this is usual business at Frankfurt Airport. But the first shock hit us when we recognized were we would be sitting during our 10 hour flight. The seat distance between each row was round about 50 centimeters. I am not the shortest one, but even with my 185 centimeters, it turned out to be a real struggle, for the back and the joints, to survive this flight. Please remember me next time not to look over the word ‘Premium economy’ while saying: “Ah who cares? The damn difference can’t be that significant – let’s take the cheaper one”.
The flight itself was, as expected, quite a pain. The only real ray of hope was our flight over Greenland, which was quite AWESOME. You know that there are nice places out there. You might have already seen pictures of them somewhere in a book. But when you see such a place with your own eyes, it’s just indescribable.
The coastline, the ice covered hills and that beautiful, wide range of plain wilderness. No farmland which divides the land into different colored grids, no roads, no civilization as far as you can look. It is this kind of absence of civilization which gets more and more people from ‘civilized’ countries in Europe to move to places were human beings didn’t touched or influenced the nature so far.
Unfortunately, cause’ I didn’t have a seating at the window, I couldn’t take a proper picture. So, I attached an image which I found on the Internet which pretty much reflects the outlook I have had.
The landing was quite terrible as the winds were quite strong and the plane was swinging like hell. My first qualm was that the pilot wouldn’t hit the runway properly, get off the path and then crashing the plane – with the result of all passengers to be dying in the flames. Did I mention before that I do not fly when not really necessary? You know, it’s not that I’m scared of flying – I know that everything will turn out be alright. It’s just the similar feeling when being the co-passenger in my wife’s car. There is always the hand of death grabbing for you 
So finally, after such a long flight, we arrived at Calgary airport. It’s the original airport where also the filming for “Cool Running’s”, with John Candy in the main role, was done. Anyway, the greeting at the airport was very warm because a voluntary welcome committee met us there in a very proper Canadian style with white hats.
Then we met our friends who were already waiting to pick us up. They were so kind to arrange everything and offered the opportunity to stay at their house during our stay in Canada. I like to use this opportunity here to say thank you a thousand times – otherwise, this trip would not have been possible in this way.
So after the handshaking and all the stuff, the first thing to do was actually to find a way to get familiar with the new environment. And what could be better to dive into a new culture then to be going out to eat and to having some very typical local specialties. A man a word. We directly headed for “The Montana’s -Steakhouse”.
A locality to have some famous Calgarian RibEye Steaks. And, by the way, this was the very first opportunity to experience the widely praised canadian kindness. And yeah, it’s exactly what the rumors were like which I heard before. The nice equipped waitress (of course, the blog writer is a man 
) was very kind, very obliging. But this understanding of service mentality in Canada is quite common for you even to say thank you to the Bus driver after arrival. And this is indeed not the same ‘Thank You’ like the one after a grueling flight expressed by flight passengers to the pilot in terms of gratefulness for a successful landing. No, it’s really meant as is.
So far from the first day.
Bye
Cos Memoric
P.S.
If you like the Blog and wish it to be continued, feel free to leave a comment…
P.P.S.
I dedicate the following dessert, which I really enjoyed, to my training ally in Germany – SirSense.
- 1x Double Chocolate Cake with Bourbon Vanilla Ice Cream (approx. 1200 kCal)
Preview
In the next episode, I gonna have a trip to Calgary downtown to find the proper clothes for the Calgary Stampede which is taking place next week. So shopping for a hat and some boots is on my Task list. You can also expect some nice skyscraper impressions, my first wild hotdog experience and a thrilling hangover at Calgary tower in 200 m height. I will also have a look at the basic level of human works at the very end of the service chain – the Bottle Sorters!
