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Reports

During my travels, I received free accommodation for a night in exchange for writing a daily travel diary. This diary documented how I reached my next destination, the hosts who welcomed me, the food I was offered, and other experiences along the way. Below, you will find the archives of these extensive reports. Please note that English is not my native language, and most entries were written quickly, often around midnight. Enjoy!
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Monday, 5 May 2003
--> Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada

My hosts in Truro, Audrey and Blaze Bailey, kindly offered to let me stay another day at their place. The reason wasn't really to explore the fascinating highways and rail tracks that surround the town, but actually to do some very necessary work.

Since my departure from Quebec, I had not updated my list of the latest places to stay at in Canada. And since then I got many more invitations, basically since some attention in the media.

The Toronto Star published a story about me last week and two days ago, this same story was also reprinted in The Calgary Herald newspaper and the Halifax Herald newspaper. The journalist Anne Dimon was doing pretty good with her story.

This meant that lots of people got to know my website and lots of people, especially in Toronto, Calgary and Halifax started to invite me over. Where I once had only four people helping me out, the amount of places to stay in Halifax can not be counted on two hands anymore!

I spend most of the day updating my database, putting dots on my carpet-sized map of Canada (every invitation in a dot) and planning out my places to stay for the coming week. I might actually make it from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. A lady from St. John's, Newfoundland, has even offered to pay the ferry to get to this enormous island, the most eastern province of Canada!

With my hosts' internet cable connected to my laptop I enjoyed live music from a Dutch radio station, as in The Netherlands everybody celebrated our annual Liberation Day. It was today, 58 years ago, that the allies liberated my home country from the Nazis in 1945 (many Dutch people are still very thankful to the Canadian soldiers, who did most of the work there).

In The Netherlands Liberation Day is celebrated with festivals in almost every town with stages of bands playing live music everywhere and big-time artists are flown around the country in helicopters to perform wherever possible. It's one of the local things I kind of miss when travelling, but at least I could enjoy and experience along it all through the Internet. Right here in Truro, Nova Scotia.

Of course I did not stay all day inside the house. This Monday was also Audrey's free day and she relaxed with a good book on the patio outside. The weather still looked like it was summer.

Dwayne had offered to take me on a drive. "Not that there is much to show you, but you will be able to say you have been here and seen it." Dwayne isn't really that proud of Truro, he calls it 'the armpit of Nova Scotia'. He rather is somewhere abroad or living in the northwest territories of Canada, where he did some explorations for minerals too. "It's the culture, those people that make life there so much different. Look at Truro here, where strips of shopping malls outside the town have destroyed the small commercial town centre with its unique little stores." And indeed, it was like recession had hit once-posh Prince Street, where windows were empty and buildings for sale.

Dwayne drove me around, also taking me to the 'black part' of town. This is where the coloured community settled itself. "Why is there segregation here?" I asked him. It could not be explained. "They just decided to live on this side." Oh.

Back home I finished up my big backstage update. Again Audrey was so nice to remember me of food and drinks all the time. I just had a drink or she was already making coffee for me. "Are you sure you don't want any juice?" No, I am fine, Audrey.

After a healthy dinner with vegetables, beef and mashed potatoes, Dwayne and I watched the DVD of Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore, a seious documentary about gun- and fear control in the United States of America. I wonder if there were Americans that left the cinema when they went to see this movie, because it might have been very much 'in their face', I think.

Good night Truro!

Ramon

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