Specialties

Life is funny. Do you believe in fate? Things happening for a reason? Coincidences? I’m sure you’re all saying, geez…is she going to go on another one of her pseudo philosophical rants about purpose and whatever it is that she tends to rant about. If you had one question to be answered, what would it be? I may be questioning why exactly I’m sitting in my hotel room on a Saturday night watching Cuban salsa dancing competitions with German commentators…they have legs of steel honestly. So much for that pseudo philosophical rant…sorry about that. I do seem to be constantly overcome with coincidence and opportunity though. Does it happen to everyone, or do I just notice? I’m not one to say I’m particularly special, but it makes one wonder if they’re alone in their experiences. Which is silly of course, due to how many billions of tiny humans are living on this earth, there is no doubt it’s been done before, happened to someone else before and no, you’re not alone therefore making you special. Nice illusion though. I’ve been pondering a bit though about what I really want out of this whole life thing. I know what I’m striving for, I just don’t know why or what I want out of it. My goodness sorry for my funny little incident stories have now turned deep and thoughtful. And no I haven’t been drinking. Alright…so story for the day I guess, I’m in Essen and there’s a big runway show at the end of this weekend convention thing and like the little sneaker I am, I get myself into the model reception etc etc and get myself into a party last night convincing them I’m modeling for the show blah blah. So today I’m going to get myself a backstage pass because well…we all need one of those. I was heading down the stairs to find the guy in charge to fit me with a designer and give him some delightful story as to why I don’t have one already. On my way down the stairs a designer comes running up to me, and mistaking me for the shows stage director, Kumi ([namedrop] she’s an internationally acclaimed model who also happens to be bald but wears wigs all the time) Tells me that one of her models dropped out and needed me to find her a new one. Well I told her I wasn’t Kumi, but I was an available model, and well we all lived happily ever after, and I was able to bop along and get myself a backstage pass. The end- time for bed! Okay…and a few pictures…

More looming building...

More things on other looming building

Just a Hamburgian straße mit Haburgers

U Bahn is my friend!

Amung the Düsseldorfinarians

Düsseldorfian? Düsseldorfite? Düsseldorfinarian. Yes that must be it. However I now find myself in Essen. With the Essenarians…Essenites. Well this I admit was a bit of a whim. I do believe it’s Easter or something of the sort this weekend…or as I was told yesterday by someone “Happy nailing!!”. Easter is actually a pretty big deal in Germany…and I find myself in Essen. Essen is quite small and an industrial sort of town. I stayed the night in Düsseldorf last night at a particularly sweet hostel after quite an entertaining day of discovering methods of transport. Apparently stand by doesn’t exist here by the way. It gets into quite the story of odd fate when I get into it because the only reason I didn’t have to pay an arm, leg and my firstborn was because of my roommate which was only because I had left my keys in my door when I left in the morning. So I had been at the airport discovering frightening prices and was on my way to the train station when I realized my keys were definitely missing in action. So here we go. Of course it’s raining (it’s always raining, and when it isn’t, it’s hailing) and I head home full of curse words and hope that they actually are in the door of my room. Saving you my story as to how I got in the building, they were in the door. My roommate was also there (Tite) But I found out it’s actually Coyte? Pronounced cthiyte? Who knows. Anyways there he is in his skivvies because no one else is home, and he just woke up (at 1pm by now) and so I told him my little story of the morning and he takes it on to find me a ride. There’s a website here which organizes carpools to other cities because not everyone drives here or owns a vehicle, and it’s mildly profitable for the drivers as well. So Tite decides to escort me there and buy me breakfast on the way (I’m really spoiled here) and help me find my ride. Driving was quite an average middle aged guy, and along for the ride there was a very vogue Asian girl in high heels to Milan and back, another middle aged white woman with an interesting face and a Turkish younger guy as well, and another guy who sat up front so I can’t give tantalizing details on him. The little problem here was there were only 4 seats for passengers, and five of us. The middle aged German woman was the last to come in, and well…she was the least likely candidate to sit on the floor. So being the nice whatever Canadian, I sit on the floor ( I think I would have been the only one to offer anyways…) So four hours later on the floor of a sort of mini van camping vehicle thing, I was in Düsseldorf. Beautiful actually. Their transit is absurdly complex though, and of course the first person I ask for help is deaf…but well, I make it where I’m going eventually: to a sweet little hostel which turned out to be very enjoyable. The hostel was beautiful actually, and it looked as though it was attacked by art students, with big painted walls, murals and posters complete with big wooden spiral staircase. I’d recommend it…if you’re in the area. So it was raining. Though Düsseldorf has a reputation for an absurdly bopping nightlife I decided to stay in and watch The Core? with a few others who were staying there…terrible movie by the way (it’s the one where they decide they need to drill into the center of the earth to save the world or something). Anyways there’s about fifteen of us bumming around and we get to talking, and it turns out that 4 of the other people there (all females actually) were Canadian. I swear these Canadians are everywhere…like a fungus…a pretty nice, peacekeeping fungus luckily. There were Italian guys, one Brazilian, three Americans, a guy from Hong Kong but living in England (I admit I don’t think I’ve met an Asian with an English accent before), and there was a smattering of a few others as well. I ended up hanging out with the Canadians/Americans the next day and we all went to a castle together which was quite delightful, and I got to hear all about their sex lives…lovely.

It seems to be ‘escort Robekkah’ weekend. No, not Escort Robekkah…but I’ve had a strangely large group of people taking me places (especially train stations). So I head to the main station in Düsseldorf and ask these little old ladies where it is. My German is good enough to ask and understand their directions, but one of them didn’t speak a word of English and decided to take me there, find my ticket for me and be a little strange about it all. She was quite sweet and round, and had these eyebrows…they were completely scratched on in black pencil in a ^ shape but still with floating eyebrow hairs surrounding the artistic forehead endeavor. So she took me around and actually wouldn’t leave me alone until she asked a man if he spoke English, it turns out he was south African and took quite the liking to me. She departed after apparently passing me off to this other fellow who I admit I wasn’t entirely sure about (part of that could have been the lacking of the bottom half of his two front teeth). Regardless though he decided to follow me around the train station and wait half an hour with me for my train to Essen, all the while being very excited to speak broken English to me. My train finally comes thank whatever! I make it to Essen and while asking a teller guy where to go, he informs me he can’t help me, but the man behind me says he can. So he escorts me to my next train and sits and talks with me for a while. Swedish I believe and at the same conference thing here this weekend. Well I haven’t even indulged as to why I’m actually even here. I found out last week there was this big event thing and conference for alternative models and photographers, clothing designers what have you happening here which I was asked to model for. A business trip of sorts… It turns out the most famous models etc are here in all their dressed up glory and even made friends with me. So here I am. Internet here is disgustingly expensive, so I’m going to wait before posting this and there may be another insurgence of story time on the end of this. But for now...I have a wild clothing exhibition to attend to….

The Mechanical Joy

I know, it’s been a while. I’m terrible and have been awfully antsy this week and well I’m sure I could make up millions of delightfully believable excuses as to why I haven’t written more….because it’s one of my favorite things to do. Sometimes when walking somewhere, or especially when late for something I sit and ponder excuses, which later usually get used. Though recently (in the last day or so) I’ve been pondering as to what to write about (that’s really what took me so long) and I know I mentioned a whole bunch of things I was going to write on later, and thought I would describe the characters I’m living with, but instead I had one of my disturbingly comical experiences resulting in enough pain to give me some sympathy, but still make it an entertaining story.

So it all starts with this fuzzy little something, I’m going to reserve details in case the special someone to whom I sent the special thing to ends up reading this before actually receiving it….you’ll get the dirt in a later post, don’t you worry. I’m not hiding secrets from you, I promise. I wouldn’t do that to you. Hehe. Anways, I was going to head down to the post office. There’s one relatively close so I thought I would ask about a bike, because we have ones the building owns which you can rent for about a euro a week.

One of my roommates…Tite? Tight? Teit..? It’s pronounced Tight…so for sake of humorous text, we’ll keep it that way, so Tight knows about the bike situation, so I go to him to see what the low down is with the whatnot and stuff you know? It turns out a whole bunch of the bikes need air in their tires etc, and I’ll be able to get one next week, so in the meantime he gives me the key to his bike. Sounds good right? He’s certainly not a tall guy, and well, it makes sense that his bike wouldn’t be too absurdly large for me. Wow. Wrong. The seat comes up to my ribs about. So after a few very painful hobbling attempts around the garage I decide it’s either now or never, the sun has come out (it was raining all morning) and I have to make this work one way or another.

Alright, so my feet can’t touch the pedals. Before hitting the end of the block (about 20 feet) I had lost my shoe but of course couldn’t get off the bike because my leg bairly reaches over the bar, so in a sideways one legged hobble thing, I kick it in reverse…(my one useful shoe-d leg that is) back up, get the shoe on somehow and sort of continue my wobbling venture sort of down the street. I make it to the first light and I seem to have to stand on my tip toes in front of the seat and even still, this is not a comfortable venture.

None of this is a comfortable venture. And now I have a pillow on my desk chair.

So I make it to the first light and there’s a mother and two small people (children that is) on the other side waiting to cross. So to put it short, my ship capsizes in the middle of the street trying to get back up on the pedals and I end up with them all laughing at me. Everybody rides bikes here. I’ve seen the tiniest infant children things riding bikes without training wheels, and well…here I am, some sort of half grown person unable to work this contraption. It only gets better from here.

So I get some sort of control with this machine thing and decide to go down a back street rather than ride in traffic quite yet. You’ll never guess what I found next.

Cobblestones.

Now to keep this as little detailed as possible due to the mental imagery of those persons close to me to not wish to know about the unfortunate state of some of my anatomy during this experience, I’ll just leave it to…well I was very, very uncomfortable. Cobblestones, sort of crouching on a metal bar and well, okay, you get the drift. So I have all sorts of fun with this, and actually have some sort of system worked out by the time I get to the post office, though getting off of it is a whole other story making me very thankful I’m as flexible as I am.

The people at the post office were very sweet and thinking I was a little bit of a joke, still played along with me and didn’t charge me an arm and a leg either! Just 12 something euros! I was thrilled~

When heading out this morning, before I actually got on this two wheeled torturing apparatus from hell, I was having these lovely thoughts of biking through the massive city park which is just a few blocks away from where I am, and maybe biking downtown and I even got carried away with the idea of biking somewhere in Europe (you know you always hear your parent’s adventurous friends who just came back from Tibet going off and doing a bike tour around Europe).

Okay, well I hear about it. I’m not sure about your parents. Or who is actually reading this for that matter. Alright, diverging here. I was having these lovely thoughts of having tree-trunk like thighs and seeing countryside blahhh blah blah. So instead I find myself wanting to quit this experience as quickly as possible and begin to head home. So I decide to take a different route and get lost in the biggest park in Hamburg. And then, ohh you’ll never guess! You know that point in a movie where a whole bunch of hilariously unfortunate things happen and one character says to another “Well at least it couldn’t get any worse” and it begins the torrential downpour...

I got a torrential downpour. Did I ever. I was wearing about 3 layers including a big down jacket and all of me was completely soaked, and a few cars did me the courtesy of driving into a puddle for me and completing my dampness by filling my shoes with muddy street water.

Another delightful addition to my venture was the fact that we’ve had a few big storms lately and there were branches all over the bike path, so it was sort of a maze of death and water and rain and more water and me in the middle of it trying to touch these miserable little pedals with my miserable little wet toes and a chronically uncomfortable seating situation.

I made it home (obviously) to tell the tale, and well, maybe I’ll leave the European adventures and thunder thighs for another bike…and another day. Speaking of buffness, I’ve also begun doing yoga and crunches to counter my addiction to these German pretzel things…but they’re so amazing, I can’t help it. So I eat them. Lots of them. Yumm. They’re like 30cents each too. Yumm. Okay I don’t eat THAT many…but well, we really need a new topic here. Like all my lovely photos for you! These were taken with the others, but enjoyable nonetheless….hopefully?

And you know, it never hurts to keep those comments coming….if anyone actually reads this that is, and well if you don’t…I suppose I should stop referring to you then shouldn’t I? Imaginary friends aren’t as harmful as one would think…enjoy the photos…

The street I walk down on the way to the U-Bahn with cute little European shops etc.


A doorway I enjoy in the same block as me


Artsy boat shot anyone?


Artsy train/bridge shot? I actually quite like this one...


Well...you'll never guess who this is...and yes, I've resorted to holding camera self portraitures...
(I've also begun growing trees out of my head)


One of my favorite pictures so far of famous German bobble trees and some sort of clock which has some sort of significance I'm sure, heh.

Vegan Hamburger

Here we are.
In my attempt to keep you all in suspense without over saturating and becoming a little too zealous with this blog, it’s begun to turn into more slacking than suspense really…so well here we are once again. So as I sit here between the buffering of ‘Dead Like Me’, and gnawing on a mango pit (you know mangos are actually amazingly inexpensive here) I’m doing my best to forge from my brain all the delightful little lines I had thought up for you over the past few days.

One drawback from writing is that it somewhat takes over my thought pattern. Somewhat similar to when I read a book, everything I think about gets translated into the authors voice, and me, into third person. I really should have written more thorough notes, but well, shouldn’t we all? Something about a boat full of mud and the fire trucks being Mercedes. Another that comes to mind was something about the rain getting on my glasses after a comical day of wind, rain, and my bright green umbrella which apparently has an affinity for turning itself inside out, having what looked like hundreds of watery specks make the little green walking figure on the crosswalks somewhat kaleidoscope into hundreds of little green walking persons.

So since my past blog I’ve encountered far too much to indulge upon in my tiny window. I keep telling myself I’ll break them down into categories such as transit, graffiti, comical German oddities, roommates, food and well whatever else I can convince you to find mildly entertaining.

We’ll see how far we get with that though, I often wonder how long I can write about whatever it is that I’m doing here before everyone gets dreadfully bored of hearing what kind of amusing situation I’ve caught myself in. It could be me telling myself that because I’m not sure how long I can be frequent with these before one again, slacking off terribly.

Well, my stomach is telling me that I’m done this, despite how dreadfully tiny it is. I promise to make up with it’s stubbiness with some of my photos of recent ventures. If you also have the tiniest inkling to comment, feel more than free…you know…it may be appreciated, because though apparently my mother has informed everyone in her sphere of influence and beyond to the outer regions of her telepathic reach, I have no idea if anyone actually bothers reading my self proclaimed babble.

That’s all for me at the moment….enjoy….

Some sort of back alley I found


Not really sure...but it must have seemed worth documenting at the time...



Yes....we have flowers...daffodils etc are also in bloom



The U-Bahn station a 6 min walk from my house



Big looming building anyone?

Water and stuff!




Boats and stuff!

Soooo…..instead of going to Germany, I actually came home.

To a point where it’s starting to weird me out, I feel far too comfortable here. It doesn’t really feel like I’ve ever not been here. I’m sure my mother would come up with a brilliant past life time karmic response something something. Love you mom. Despite her tenancy to get a little carried away with her theories (love you mom) you know…she may be on to something here…or there is something funny in the water. So I’m home. Good luck with the whole “Robekkah’s coming back to Kanada thing”. I’ve even started thinking in German…and I went the entire day without speaking English! I was actually pretty proud of myself there, after two days and being overly anal with trying to teach myself something…I think there is potential here (or else I’m so completely ensconced I’m starting to actually believe whatever it is that I’m thinking in German).

Anyways….

The inevitable has happened. My plane landed. What goes up must come down yes? I know I kept EVERYONE in such a terrible suspense, would she make it to Germany? Would she have her plane sucked into the ocean by one of those large…ocean…creatures….? Would she ever leave that dammed Heathrow Airport! I didn’t know the answer to that last one for a while, but yes, I did escape the now dreaded befuddled expanse that they apparently have some sort of backwards working order for. Anyways, yes, the plane, it was lovely.

Alright…I have a terrible confession…yes, we all knew I was unfortunately lax on the whole “I’m a vegan thing” but…the other option besides “chicken” or “ham” sandwich on the airplane was cheese. One half was the easy cheese that I could just take out and leave the sad molested version of what they were calling lettuce and tomatoes in the soggy plane bread along with the unidentifiable orangy goo smothered on the inside as well. The other half of the “sandwich” as we’re now going to refer to it as was soft cheese, luckily it was airplane food and so there is very little of anything, regardless though, I ate the second soggy breaded “sandwich” with the supposed soft goaty cheesy substance because well, the only other sustenance I scrounged up was a Subway muffin from Vancouver at the bottom of my bag. So yes. I ate it. I’m terrible I know. And it made me ill. There’s my tiny confession to all those who really well…could care less.

I also met a delightful lady on the plane who offered to feed me, cloth me, house me, take me in as her own, you know, the usual. She was lovely and so it’s nice to have another contact here.

So Hamburg. Dang. So here’s the fast of the lo down. My place is huge. Wow. Dorms in Canada….a third of the size. I’m living with six other people, we share three bathrooms, three fridges, a kitchen, eating room/common area thing. My dwelling has come equipped with a stupidly large desk w/ drawers (now we get in to the really exciting menial details) office chairs, big wardroby thing, one of those bench/box/storage things, a very large shelving thing, and you’ll never guess- a bed! Comes included with, for your comfort and enjoyment, one set of scarily clean, crisp and starched sheets, pillow, duvet thing, duvet cover…all very very white. Good ol’ Germans. I umm…borrowed one of British Airlines cute little blue and red striped blankets from the airplane though so it’s not quite so retina burningly white as well. I also found myself a plant. Yes. Found it. By the river. Yes, did I mention I live about 20 paces from a canal thing? Foot bridges…water… seagulls…one of those silly love swan boat things, you know, the usual. Anyways, yes. My plant. It’s lovely. I can see why no one wanted it. It’s the most painful plant I’ve ever met. I think I’m going to name it something badass like ‘Pain’ or something. It’s like a little palmy tree of death. It’s lovely I promise. And also rather umm…brown. The point is, I have some greenery now…or brownery. Plant life! Well….Plant! I like it alright! Well once again, my fingers got away on me a little bit…but well, that’s the way it goes.

Another highlight of my day…I was served beer in a bank. Thought I would mention that. (It was free too).

Anyways. I’ll give you some character umm…observations of my flat mates next time too, I’ve met three, and have two more to go.

I’m going to get my freezing self to bed now…I draped my radiator thing in wet clothes, even though it doesn’t know what turned on all the way actually means…I sort of get a tiny slow leak from it but not enough to counter my Massive bloody windows! Ooo Did I mention, I have massive bloody windows?! Well…not bloody bloody, but big! I have a corner room, so I have a skinny floor length window on one side and a really big tall wide one on the right side of the corner. Yeah…you’re going to get some Hamburg views at the end of this here. Enjoy~

(ps: mom, you’d be happy to know I found a “yoga mat”!)


The watery goodness looking to the left!


On the other side of the river canal thing from me



Near the walkway by above





View from my window



View from the window II




View from window III




Below my window- see the grass is greener!




My building!
The other side of the watery canally thing

Watery Expanse Surpassed

Well so it happens that I find myself at the other side of a rather vast expanse of water...

After a severely enjoyable stay in Vancouver and Victoria, I seem to have ended up in a rather backwards and frustrating place, better known as the Heathrow Airport.

A little more on Vancouver and Victoria, because well I suppose that’s where I existed for the past few weeks. A morbidly obese thank you to both Joann, Adam and the girl for caring for me to the point of spoiling me to bits, and I enjoyed every moment. My time in Vancouver included all sorts of delights, and my rediscovering mild obsession with repetitive motions, and thus knitting and crocheting. My lack of knitting needles however on the plane made for thumb-twiddling in its place. Overall I had an extremely enjoyable time, but to keep this as keyboard clutchingly entertaining as possible I’ll delve into a few of the more colourful events of the past few weeks.

The first to come hurtling to mind is that of my trip to Victoria. I had decided during my stay in Vancouver that there was no possible way I would be able to be so close and yet not be in the awe-inspiring presence of the nothing short of brilliant Opposite Octave… if you don’t know him already, well, you probably should and he and I have made some of my hands down favorite pictures. Ones you’ve come to know and love such as our rendition of ‘bloody wedding dress in an alley’ and the exhaustingly spectacular pictures of me in unitards, and mustangs. Now that you’re completely familiar with his work, I’ll also add in that he’s also quite the sweet guy…in that sarcastic bitter kind of way, but we all love him to bits regardless. His other half is also magnificent, known as ‘the girl’ or Kirsten Hofbauer and we made beauty which is also on the way to your eyes. Before my mildly ego massaging session of ‘the girl’ and Adam, there is also a bit of a story as to how I got there.

The Sunday before heading out to the island, I did a photoshoot with another friend of mine by the name of Ron Skei up in Sechelt …and so fine, dandy, I find my way to the ferry and make it to and from Sechelt without hitch. However when on my way to Victoria, well I assumed I would just head back to the ferry terminal, because, well…how many ferry terminals can there be really? Coming from Vernon, there’s only one of something, especially in terms of ferry terminals, which are a bit of a bigger deal. So…we plan to meet up on the other side around 10:30 after taking the 9am ferry, meaning I had to leave the house at some ungodly hour around 6am. So fine, mucus filled eyes and all, I head down to the bus stop (I actually met an interesting young guy waiting for the bus that morning, though he didn’t strike me as being the brightest crayon in the bucket conversationally, he was kind enough to offer up some gum which I gratefully accepted due to my atrocious morning breath…however…though I’ve been heeding the warning from the dentist man to not chew gum with an ‘appliance’ in…well, I gave in and then discovered that the ‘appliance’ and the gum actually adheres disturbingly well…and had to deal with that for the next few hours…)

Alright, so fine.

I arrive at the ferry terminal 20 min early and with some sort of gummy plastic concoction habitating in my mouth. I go to the counter and ask for a ticket to Victoria…and the lovely but also less than florescent coloured crayon woman behind the glass informs me that well…there is a ferry to Nanaimo…so that’s the ferry I obviously wanted. Heading up to the thing with the stuff at the place (ferry waiting holding tank place) I met yet another interesting, this time moustached character who upon talking to let my situation be spelled out quite clearly to me, which I was thankful for, despite him finding me enjoyable to follow. So fine. I was now in an unfortunate mood and in no mood to listen to the next little old woman who came up to me and decided to tell me about her life story and pine over her husband. So after some senior counseling, I end up on the other side and manage to sneak my way onto a greyhound bus going to the station in Nanaimo.

My luck was with me when upon arrival there was a bus just about to leave to Victoria and I managed to pounce upon that opportunity with success…with the added bonus of some somewhat drug induced bus-mates… So when it was all said and done, it took me something around 8 hours to make it to Victoria.

Now as said previously, I’m not entirely meaning your brain to leak out of your ears with complete boredom….so to add some spice to it?...I’ll let you know my current situation. I seem to not be able to escape screaming infants from the beginning of my flight in Vancouver….so that made for a particularly enjoyable plane ride. And so did free alcohol. Honestly. I was appalled…free…nothing is free, especially not booze! I can’t say I didn’t really take advantage of it…and with some gravol, plane food, beer and mini vodka and cranberry juice I knocked myself out enough to sleep through nearly the entire flight and woke up an hour before landing where I currently am…stuck.

London.

Damn you.

The security was so absurdly long that I missed my flight. That’s right. Not happy. Really not happy. Next flight? Ohhh yeah…..it’s in five hours…. That sucks.

So here I am blabbering away to whoever has gotten this far down to actually read it. In theory I’d like to update with these silly bloggy things every so often and include pictures and well insights as to my currently scandalous activities. As for the moment though...due to the strange outlets here and my lack of my converter, my laptop is threatening death on me….and I have two and a half hours left. JOY! So in the meantime, I think I’m going to go find someone with a delightful accent and learn some London slang, and if I’m lucky, some really humorous curse words.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy my latest collaboration ~ Until that next time zone, *insert lame Rick Steves line*