I just came back home from a month long trip to Canada. I was working on some scientific project at University of British Columbia, visiting in all the remaining time. As Canadians don’t work as hard as Americans, I was left with not only weekends off, but also substantial parts of the afternoon (with longest days during a year in June). The city is beautifully located, with ocean and beaches on the East, and mountains North.

However, after about a week, I started to get more and more frustrated. I was living in Point Grey Guest House, very nice and reasonably close to University. To save time, I decided to take a bus to University and back. The buses run rather often, about every 10 min during rush hour, and they connect all the important parts of town. So what, if you never know when the bus comes? There is no schedule whatsoever, at least not the one the bus drivers are sticking to. Locals claim that it is safe in town, but every second house is protected by private security company, almost all cars have steering-wheel locks, and there are those notes on all parkings not to leave anything inside the car. Not only valuables, nothing. Talking about the houses. They live there in 1 to few million dollars worth huge houses, beautiful, with views and colorful gardens, but hardly any of them has a garage. It results in cars parking on both sides of the regular width streets. You can hardly drive between them in the evening. Canadians claim they want to attract tourists to Vancouver and the region. I think they are doing well to scare them off. The parking prices are outrages, not only in town. You have to pay to park also in every single provincial park. Then, you go to museum or such, and ticket prices can be as high as 30 CAD. Also attractions like Capilano Suspension Bridge cost like 30 CAD, although just a little bit West there is Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge, FREE and equally beautiful. You are still not convinced it is expensive? Well, wait till they charge you for attraction brochure or map- 2 CAD. I am leaving alone the fact, that it may be hard to schedule any outside sightseeing, because it is raining there all the time. If you are lucky, and it is not raining 24 h, don’t worry. It will, anytime now.