Wow it’s hard to believe that this is the last blog. The term really flew by, although at the moment, with all the assignments due and everything, it feels like it can’t be over fast enough.
I really enjoyed today’s class and I think the panel with the authors was a really great way to end the course (I know we have one more class, but I doubt that we’ll do anything big) and all of our guests were very articulate and thoughtful and said some really interesting things about Edmonton. I wish the penal could have gone on longer.

I’m really glad that I took this course and I now know a lot more about Edmonton than I would have if I hadn’t taken this class. That’s a good thing, because now I can say more than “Edmonton is nice”, when I get asked what it was like abroad. Also due to our discussion about cities and Canada, I got to reflect on my own home and the city and the other cities I have lived in and compare them to a North American city. I found both similarities and differences, not only in the city itself, but also how people think about the city they live in and consider this a valuable lesson.

I think I will really miss Edmonton when I get back to Germany (especially the snow, since all it does in Germany is rain) and I’m certain that I will be back.

Too much detail?

Today’s discussion on ‘the effect of too much detail’ was very interesting. It’s true that the details help determine the characters in the book (and all books for that matter), for example we know what a character likes, if we read about the details he notices in his daily life. If he notices litter lying around or complains about messiness, we pretty much can deduct that he is a very neat and orderly person.

However, when a book contains a lot of detail about a certain place the effect is different depending on who reads it. As we saw in our class today, since The Garneau Block has a lot of details about places in Edmonton (not always correct as was pointed out in-class), Edmontonians (or others like me, who have been to Edmonton and know some of the places) will establish a much closer emotional connection to the book. Everyone likes to reads books that are situated in the place you feel at home in. I know that I am always delighted when my hometown is mentioned in a book.

That however doesn’t mean that people who don’t know the city cannot enjoy this. Some people have some really great imagination (sadly not me, at least when it comes to places) and they would get a really good sense of what Edmonton is like from the book. Others might think it’s too much information on one place that you didn’t know, but the level of detail you like, is pretty much a matter of what you like personally. If one likes long descriptions of landscapes in books, than one likes details. If you don’t like those, than you probably won’t like all those details in The Garneau Block.

It might also be a matter of frequency. There are not that many books taking place in Edmonton, so it is ‘more’ special if you read one. On the other hands there are tons of books that take place in London, New York…etc. and if you live in those places you might be fed up with reading about your own city. You would prefer to read about another (perhaps more exotic?) place.

All in all, the question of too much detail and how that works for you, is matter of you own personal perspective and preference.

Ok , this blog is going to be very short. Maybe it’s the stress of the upcoming papers/exams, but this is the very first week that I don’t know what to write about in my blog. Or maybe I just really don’t like poetry.

I mean I get that the poems we’ve read and discussed in-class are another way “in” to the city, or rather another way of portraying the city, but why can’t the author simply write an article or essay expressing her ideas, instead of hiding what she wants to say about the city behind big mythical metaphors that anyone without lots of time for research simply doesn’t get?

I’m not saying that the poems we’ve read weren’t good. In fact, I’d say they pretty brilliant, especially in the way the poems work together as a collection and how the poems refer back to one another. I know they’re literary and aesthetic and all that, but that really isn’t for me. I don’t get poetry. Even if had had the time to look up all the words and images in the poems that I didn’t know, I still wouldn’t have gotten half the things we’ve discussed in-class. Now I see all the metaphors and references we have unraveled in our discussions, but only because they were explained to me.

All I can say is that I’m glad we’re done with the poetry and and can move on to a “real” story.

A Tourist's Guide to Strathcona

For any visitor to Edmonton, Canada’s northernmost metropolis, Strathcona on the Southside is a lovely neighborhood to start for any exploration of the city. Situated between Edmonton’s “famous” Whyte Avenue, where one goes to have some fun, and Southgate, one of Edmonton’s many, many shopping malls, it is an area that has schools and playgrounds, small cafés and grocery shops along 104th street and is inhabited by many friendly, but ordinary Canadians. Let’s have a look around.

Our tour begins at the home of the six, lovely students in their early 20s that share one side of a duplex on 67th Avenue. Their house is right next to the Roadrunner Motel, which makes for a not so pleasant view, and is across the street from Staples and The Home Depot. The back alley behind the house is dominated by the rusting carcass of an old pick-up truck, which means that it is not a nice alley for children to play in.

Proceeding north from the student’s front door we cross a small parking lot till we reach the Calgary Trail, which is one of Edmonton’s busiest streets, especially between 4 and 6pm, when all Edmontonian’s leave their jobs to return to the suburbs. Continuing north along the Calgary Trail, we soon pass the Southside Athletic Grounds followed by the Rollie Mills Athletic Fields, which make for a nice contrast to the small business and train tracks along the other side of the street.

As we continue towards Whyte Avenue, we pass the University Avenue, which as the name suggest leads us, after a 30-minute walk, to University of Alberta’s North Campus. The university is home to over 36000 students, offers a large variety of different programs and just last year turned 100 years old.

Further north we come across the Old Strathcona Shopping Center, which lies across the street from Strathcona Chinatown Mall, and which next to a post office and the Dollarama, houses a fabulous place called the Dream Tea House, where one can get some delicious bubble tea.
From there it is only a short walk to Whyte Avenue, which is lined at both sides by small shops and bars. Turning east we come across the Elephant & Castle, which is a nice, quiet pub where every two weeks, young Edmontonians meet for beer and knitting.

Once you have enough from exploring Whyte Avenue (don’t forget to check out the K&K, where you can get all kinds of German food and Saturday’s Farmer’s market), you can easily catch a bus to Downtown Edmonton, West Edmonton Mall or pretty much any other part the city.

We could go on, but the exploration of Edmonton could fill an entire book! Why not visit Edmonton on your next holiday? The land is flat, the weather is not that cold most of the time and Edmontonians are always welcoming visitors.

Edmonton in our own words

I like this book. I really do. I think it’s the best book we have read so far in the course. I like its structure and the fact that includes so many different voices. How much of the stories are true or not we don’t know, but the author at least gives a pretty decent impression of giving voice to a variety of people and presenting us with various points of views. We also get different accounts of how historic events were preserved: the author offer his reader diary entries, letters, accounts of eye-witnesses, recorded oral history, stories of descendants...etc.

I like how the book his chronologically organized and how each chapter ends with the personal stories. The author tries to include as many different voices as possible: telling us stories of everyday life, many immigrant experiences and trouble of the women during the wars. And those stories that can’t be told, because they were not recorded, are also acknowledged by the author.

It gives the most all-around picture of Edmonton that I have seen (not that I have read much about Edmonton outside this course, of course) and in my opinion it’s fitting an Edmonton centennial.

Nature

The first part of the article „Dead Cities“, where the author discusses all the novelists, who have imagined the destruction of cities, reminded me of a documentary that I saw a couple of years ago. This documentary dealt exactly with what is described in these books: what happens to our cities in 50, in 100, in 500, in 1000 …etc. years, after humans have suddenly become extinct? It showed how nature slowly returned to the cities and took over. After 50 years there wasn’t too much damage to the building (humans had died of some kind of disease, so all the buildings and infrastructure were intact), but when time went on the wildlife took over and slowly the buildings turned into ruins. What surprised me back then, was that they showed that skyscrapers would be the first buildings to go (cause they’re largely made out of glass) and that the brick buildings would stand the longest. In the last sequence one could hardly see that there had been a city at all, all that was left were a few brick ruins.
So whether we humans survive or not, life continues even without us. To quote a famous movie scientist: “Life finds a way.”

Free Education

I’m now going back to the previous Solnit text here, but there is one point, that was mentioned in-class when we discussed the text, which I think is fundamentally true:
I think that, like someone said in class, that we only really protest or participate in demonstrations, when the cause for the demonstration affects us directly. If it affects our lives, we’re more likely to go out onto the streets and do something about it.

I have a relatively recent (meaning last year) experience with demonstrations myself, when the government introduces tuitions fees (we don’t have these in Germany) of about 500€ at my home university in Germany. Thousands of students of my home university (me included) came to together to demonstrate for a FREE EDUCATION. We blocked the streets of the city center by walking and sitting on them for hours, we took over one of the university buildings and even walked onto the Autobahn to disrupt the traffic there (which was quite dangerous and some students were arrested for that, so we stopped doing that). All the students signed a petition and consequently sued the government and when the term came along, where you actually had pay for the first time, many simply DID NOT pay (which could have gotten you expelled).
And this happened not just in my own university, but all over the state (and the other states, where they introduced tuition fees, which not all German states did). There were big demonstration in all major cities and the students from various universities all got together at one point to demonstrate in front of the parliament building in the state capital. And the students were not alone, but joined by professors, teachers, parents of future students…etc. This went on for months and months.

Now you may ask, was the demonstration successful? Well, we got a lot of national media attention and caused a lot of disruptions, which made sure that we were being taken seriously. However, the real reason why I would say, it was a successful demonstration, is that we actually achieved what we set out to do. After two terms the tuition fees were abolished and our universities are once again free. Unfortunately, it looks like the government will try to introduce the tuition fees again next year, so it may only have been a temporary success. However, if they do, the whole process is likely to start all over again, so I don’t know what is going to happen. As the saying goes: We’ll cross that bridge when we get there (or something like that).

The sentence that I remember most of all, from Rebecca Sonit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking, is on page 216, where she writes: “The past becomes the foundation on which the future will be built, and those who honor no past may never make a future.”
I was struck by how much truth is behind this statement. How everything we do, all the places we visit and all the events that happen have a past, whether one know about it or not. The past matters, which is obviously when one considers how much time and effort people put into discovering the past. Not just historians or archeologists, but even ordinary people that want to find out about the family tree. People care so much about the past, because it helps us understand the present. The question of where we come from (meaning evolution and family history) helps us figure out, who we are and perhaps also what we want. And only when we have found a satisfactory answer (satisfactory for oneself), can we make plans for the future.
Also, a very important aspect is that people should, or at least try to, learn from their mistakes. If we know the reasons behind a dreadful event, we can try to avoid it. Basically, don’t do the same mistake twice, which is only possible, if we remember that a mistake has been made.

Walking here and there

After reading “The Solitary Stroller and the City” I would like to comment on two aspects of the article:
1.) I really liked the author’s description of what it feels like to come home to your hometown after being away for some time. I moved out of my hometown almost 5 years ago and lived abroad for a while and it really is a strange feeling to be returning home after that. You do “begin to see it as a stranger might”, because to some extend you have been made into stranger by all the new experiences and the changes in the city that have naturally occurred in the meantime. However, much has changed, it is still the same city and it remains your home. It will be the same when I go home after my time here in Canada.

2.) Walking around a city really has only two purposes. Either it is to get somewhere (in case of a business) or it about the walking itself (walking for pleasure). The author concentrated on the second kind of walking, so I will do the same. Walking in Edmonton has, at least for me, a different feel to it than walking in city in Germany. I admit that I’m not a big walker and don’t go on strolls unless forced to (which unfortunately for me happens quite often back home :-)) and I haven’t spent much time in the River Valley, but I still feel that Edmonton isn’t the friendliest town for walkers. Due to the grid system, you always have to walk next to a street (excluding the River Valley here, but that seems to be one of the only place) and the walker is constantly disturbed by the traffic (Edmonton really needs more crossovers of people on foot). In my home town you can walk at great length away from the traffic, because we have parks all over the place that are not just squares and actually connect the different parts of the city. There are also a larger number of back alleys that you can walk through undisturbed and where you can cut across and shorten the walk to a certain destination. There are underground walk ways so people can avoid the major streets or railways and or the can walk along the river. Here in Edmonton everything is laid out for being reachable by car (not a bad thing when you’re a driver) and as lot of space is taken up by smaller parking lots. At home, we tend to have one less but bigger parking lots and most of them are underground, so that they don’t take up any space. And we have more areas where there are no cars at all. In my hometown the city center (our downtown) is completely off limits for cars (well ok there are delivery cars, but they are only allowed into the center from 6am to 9am in the morning). It’s a wide open road where people walk, sit outside in front of cafes or go window-shopping without being disturbed by any car. You can enjoy walking there in the summer, especially if you do not walk in order to just to appreciate nature, which you can do enough in the parks. Last, but not least, walking here is different, because you see a lot less people walking in the streets. Walking is a lot more solitary here.
Now this is not at all meant as a critique, I’m only describing the differences I observes concerning walking in this city. As I said I’m not a big walker and thus couldn’t care less, about some of these aspects, but I know people who wouldn’t like walking in Edmonton at all.

Darrin Hagen, the writer

Although I do not like the Edmonton Queen: the Final Voyage anymore than I did before, I really enjoyed the visit of Darrin Hagen to our class last Tuesday. Darrin Hagen was exactly like I had imagined him (well, except he wasn’t in drag, of course): funny, eloquent and with a bright personality. He is an entertainer as well as a writer. He attracts people’s attention and it is hard not to notice him. I can just imagine him on stage carrying on his one-am show and have no doubt that it is entertaining to watch him on stage.

But apart from the entertainment factor I found it very fascinating to learn more about an Edmonton writer and converse with him about his texts. It is always interesting to learn more about a writer and his techniques as well as the reasons why he writes at all and Darrin Hagen did not disappoint. In fact, I was especially glad he talked about the 10th anniversary edition, because I had already asked myself what’s the point behind an anniversary edition.

If you’re interested in literature and writing as I am, you can learn a lot from a published author. Sadly we usually do not get the opportunity to meet the author of a book we read and ask him questions, so I am very glad that we grasped the opportunity with both hands in this case. I wish that were possible more often.

Edmonton vs. the rest of the world

I thought about what I would write about for quite a while today. At first I thought, I would write about “The Edmonton Queen”, because I finished reading that book today, but once I put it down, I wasn’t really sure what to say about that book at all except that I don’t like it and have a very hard time relating to it. So I’m taking the safe route and instead turn to our discussion from last class and about the traffic in Edmonton.

Back in Germany I’m a very good driver and although driving in Edmonton for the first time will/would be a slightly intimidating experience (I haven’t yet driven a car on this continent, but will do so this summer), I think I would get used to driving here really fast. When I listened to my class-mates during our last discussion and read some of the blogs that have been already posted complaining about the traffic and the one-way streets, I had to smile inwardly, because those complains are not different from what you would here in Germany (and Italy and France and Ireland and and and) These traffic problems can be found all over the world: Germans complains about traffic and the one-ways (believe we do it A LOT) and in that way Edmonton is no different than any other city in the world.

I also read one person complaining about the layout of a city (I think it was Calgary) and that made me laugh. The layout in North American cities is so easy (Although when you come into a city with streets organized in a grid for the first and no one explains it to you, it can be confusing. I spent hours wandering around Washington DC, because I couldn’t find my hotel.), because the cities have been planned that way from the beginning and all the streets have numbers and are parallel. We don’t have that in Germany. Our streets have names, not numbers. They are crooked, round and anything but parallel. If you’re new to a place counting will get you nowhere and you either rely on a map or ask people (though you usually can’t rely on directions given to you either), because usually there isn’t much of a plan behind our streets. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining abut this. I grew up in cities like that and am used to it. Like everyone here is used to the grid.

Still Streets in a grid, one-way or not, are easy once you get the hang of it, although at times I’m still amazed at all the streets and avenues. I remember when I first landed at the Edmonton International Airport: Just before landing I looked out of the window and saw the country laid out in a grid before and I was amazed/shocked that a landscape could be arranged so parallel, so planned. And even now I sometimes still find myself amazed how far I can look down a street or avenue and still can’t see the end of it. But hey, everyone is more comfortable with what he is used to.