Monday evening: Now, I’m on the Greyhound bus heading west. I’m sitting behind a girl who just finished a long phone call with what I think was her ex-boyfriend. She had been unfaithful and her family circumstances were quite complicated and in the end she cried a little. She was quite loud.
But what I listened to most was her lovely Canadian accent. When I first arrived in Canada, I couldn’t really make it out, but now that I’ve been here for more than a week I hear it everywhere. It’s subtle. Excepting a few pecuilarities, it is more in the way the words are said than in the way the letters of the words are pronounced. There is a kind of roundness in it. But then it hits me: Maybe this friendly and soft English is the Albertan accent, not the Canadian. That would make me so sad. The rest of my stay in Canada will be spent in British Columbia, and I might never return to Alberta. Ever. Not by choice, but because the need for water conflict experts probably won’t be that high here in the coming, say, forty years.
The sun is completely gone, there is only a thin orange line at the horizon, which I can see, because we’re out on the seemingly endless prairie now. The bus is smaller than I thought it would be, the Greyhound. They’re even known in Sweden. Actually, I’m pretty sure that it was an immigrated Swede who started the bus company somewhere in the States many years ago. I read an article about it in the paper ages ago, and my memory often surprises me with all the useless information it can contain.
It is not very comfortable, the bus, and most prominentely, it is old. I don’t mind, I prefer any kind of bus before flying, any day, but it makes me think of the buses in Bolivia. There, you can find the crapiest, oldest, dustiest buses with drivers that drive like crazy down the narrow roads on the Andean slopes. But you also find the super luxury, ‘bus cama’ buses with crazy wide seats with backs that go back all the way, so that in the end, it feels as if you’re traveling in a bed. And if you are smart enough, you go to the bus terminal at a time when there aren’t that many traveling, and just happen upon a luxury bus that is not full. Then you can make a real bargain, and get the bed bus ticket for almost no money at all.
That’s South America for you. Now, I’m on a Greyhound in the middle of the Canadian prairie, heading for the Pacific coast – and I heard that the spring has come to Vancouver. Fourteen hours left. Then, the real adventure starts. The part without a safety net. The first challange: Managing to get off at Langley, and not continuing all the way to downtown Vancouver. Second: Finding Diane from Timeout Farms who will be at the bus stop to pick me up.
Third: Being confident enough to be the charming, nice person that I know that I can be, and not just disappear into a bubble of skyness and fear. I’m on my own now. I have to feel safe in my own shoes.
Katja Malmborg 