Calgary, Canada
01-09-07: Calgary, Land of Gallon Hats, Scary Taxi Men & Emo Kids
So. We survived a 9-hour flight with no in-flight entertainment to arrive in…Perth. This wasn’t immediately apparent, although we did feel somewhat suspicious as we flew into Calgary over a flat wasteland of brown industrialism. Where were the trees? The mountains? The moose??
Our concern about the desolation of the land surrounding Calgary was quickly forgotten at the sight of our first rosy-cheeked, ivory-toothed Calgarian, wearing a string tie, checked shirt, white pants and a gallon hat. Yeehaw. Next distinctly Canadian sight was a stuffed bear in the foyer, wearing a Mountie uniform. We could barely contain our kitsch-loving glee.
My only understanding of Calgary was through my friend Jessso, who recently toured Canada and attached Calgary’s famous stampeded. Sadly, we just missed this auspicious event, which is surely the only exciting thing to happen in Calgary all year (it’s so exciting to the townfolk that the city centre is filled with stores dedicated to the ‘urban cowperson’ [which is the PC version of cowboy/cowgirl, as made up by me]).
Enter bad taxi driver number one. I must be terribly naïve, because Calgary doesn’t strike me as an overly attractive place to immigrant taxi-drivers. I was wrong. Our taxi from the airport was not driven by a quaint, parochial Calgarian, but rather by a man who would fit in perfectly driving a mini-cab in Putney. And he didn’t know where our hotel was. So we got a lift into the city centre, which we tried ever so hard to make exciting. I even bounced excitedly into one of the aforementioned urban cowperson shop. However, we quickly realised that it was exactly like Hay St/Murray St mall – paved pedestrian malls with no one walking down then and about five decent shops open (at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon).
We went to our hotel. This involved the craziest and scariest taxi diver we’ve ever had. He was Ethiopian, but had the most intense hatred of Britain I’ve ever heard. His first question was whether Pakistan had taken over Britain yet, and was disappointed when I said ‘um…no.’ He asked ‘why not?’, and then proceeded to tell how he was detained passing through Heathrow (according to him it was because he was black, and not because he was clearly insane), and ended up punching the immigration officer, which landed him in jail for a short spell. He is now banned from Heathrow (and possibly from Britain). Needless to say, we were very relieved to get out of that taxi!
Our hotel was 10 minutes our of the city, so we happily agreed to avoid Calgary city, go shopping at the local mall, and then have an early night.
We caught the train to Chinook Centre, Calgary’s largest mall (I think), where I got to buy my birthday presents (DS games and a Sony Cybershot camera). That night, I played with my new possessions and then we both had an ‘early’ night (9pm Canadian time, 4am London time).