Gettin' Political

For the past couple of weeks in Ottawa, I've been having way too much fun playing with friends, MPs, and fantastic people in the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. Some highlights include:

Making a giant invoice for the government of Canada for the cost of inaction on climate change, since it wasn't addressed in the new federal budget. (Sir Nicholas Stern estimates that this cost will be around $71,900,000 per year for Canadians - yep, that's almost 72 billions bucks.)

Look - even Stephen Harper showed up to present us with a cheque.


Attending Clean Air Committee hearings in Parliament all last week to see how this special committee would re-work the government's proposed environmental legislation. Even though they mostly spent time saying things like "I think section 1(a)4 should be replaced with subject 1(b) 5.2" , the politicians also got some real zingers in at each other. They also got a ton of work done - all the opposition parties joined together to force some strong amendments on meeting Kyoto Protocol targets, penalties for businesses that emit too much carbon, and the creation of climate change "hot spots" which will be targeted for protection.

We were also on hand to share tasty fortune cookies with MPs, minions and other assorted politicos attending the Committee hearings.

I mean, who doesn't need a little encouragement cleverly disguised inside baked goods?

This past weekend, I went to a great teach-in held by the Council of Canadians on the proposed US-Canada Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) called Integrate This! It was really educational and also, to be honest, a little bit frightening. I'd encourage you all to educate yourself on this issue because it could have a huge impact on our sovereignty over natural resources (including oil and water), health care, military, transportation regulation, environmental policy and lots of other really key areas.

My friends Rosa & Ben were invited to speak about climate change & the SPP - and they were totally amazing. They reminded me of how articulate, heartfelt & plain old damn smart young people often are, even in front of 600 people, about 5 TV cameras, Avi Lewis and a few heckling members of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition (we only heckle out of love).


Lastly, we made sure to let our leaders know that young people in Canada are proud of the work they've been doing, and that we hope they can keeping on working together to make the (newly re-named) Clean Air & Climate Change Act happen! Sadly, the conservative government is threatening to block the bill by refusing to put it to a vote in the House of Commons, but hopefully they'll come around. Maybe they just need more fortune cookies?

On a non-political note, it's finally getting to be spring in Ottawa. Here's a picture of a partially-melted Rideau Canal and a blue blue spring sky:


I hope it's warm where you're at too!

Canadiana

Here are some pictures from my internship debriefing in Winnipeg. We got to spend a night at a very cosy cabin in the middle of a nature reserve just outside Winnipeg. We weathered a snowstorm, went showshoeing & drank copious amounts of Hungarian liqueur. The perfect cultural re-integration, really.

Our cabin - on the edge of a frozen lake and very close to a herd of buffalo (or is it bison? I never figured that out...)

I think I was having a bit of Swiss chocolate withdrawal.

And here we are showshoeing. I, of course, fell not once, but twice. Brilliant.

And here are some pix from my recent visit to Toronto to re-connect with my nearest & dearest friends from McGill.

Stef, Corinda and I out at dinner.

St. Paddy's day - at the beginning of the night...

Kicking it old school with a good game of quarters

Me & Corinda slightly later in the evening....


And me & Kat at the end of the night. The glazed eyes mean that it was a good St. Paddy's day all around.

I'm still in Ottawa, working part-time with the Sierra Youth Coalition, tying up some loose ends, getting my UK work permit sorted out & enjoying spending time with friends.

My favourite new Ottawa sport is going to Parliament to watch question period. I went the day after the new federal budget came out and, let me tell you, it's so much fun! They heckle, catcall, deal low blows to each other and it's all okay. I feel like they should have spitballs and paper airplanes too. The security guys let me sit in the press box, so I had one of the best seats in the house. Next time, I'm totally bringing popcorn.

And....I booked my flight home to Vancouver! I'm officially coming back to the lovin' arms of my home province on April 11, and I'll be around until the end of the month. So for all my lovelies in BC - your presence is officially requested for some quality time in April.

Love,
Liz

Wien ist fantastisch, ya?

In the end of February, I found myself with only a few weeks left of work and about 7 vacation days to burn. (Side note: I loooove the 6 weeks per year UN vacation system.) So, with my last remaining days as a European, I decided to take myself to Vienna and for one last adventure. Here are some pictures from my trip:

Vienna was completely and unequivocally built to be an imperial power. I've never come across a city with so many castles, palaces, grandiose churches, war monuments and other imposing buildings before. It also has a huge number of museums. In fact, there is a whole museums quarter downtown.

Here is the museum of modern art (MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien), which has a full-sized upside down house balanced precariously on the top. The permanent collection of the museum itself is......interesting. It's definitely important to keep in mind the distinction between "modern" and "contemporary" art. I enjoyed some of what I saw, but other exhibits were definitely more disturbing than I was prepared for.

Here is a big Ferris wheel which sits in the huge Prater park near the Danube river. Apparently it's over 100 years old, and is one of the modern landmarks of Vienna. It was interesting making the trek to the Prater, since the Danube is actually nowhere near the centre of the city. It's actually quite incidental to the downtown core.

Another highlight of my adventuring included getting up really early on Sunday morning to go see the Vienna Boys' Choir at the Hofburg chapel. They've been singing mass there every Sunday since 1498 and, even though I accidentally went to the wrong mass first and didn't notice for about half an hour (so much Latin!), once I finally found the right church it was completely worthwhile.

I also got to spend some time with really wonderful people who happened to be in town at the same time.

My friend Sandi, who's studying in a small town about an hour outside of Vienna, was in town with friends to celebrate her birthday. Here's Sandi's Argentinian friend Lola, me, and the birthday girl herself partying it up at a club called the Volksgarten.

My friend Angeline, another IISD intern who spent her six months in Hungary, had the brilliant idea to buy tickets to go see the Decemberists', who performed on our last day in Vienna.

Angeline brought along her Hungarian friends, Avi and Roly, who gave me a firsthand taste of why Hungarian is one of the world's most difficult languages to learn. In 3 days together, I think I managed to learn about 2 words. Thank god they spoke English!

And then we went to see the Decemberists, which was a really great (if super short) show, followed by an excellent dub show which lasted until the wee hours. Since I, of course, am someone who is somewhat lacking in restraint and temperance when there's fun to be had, I elected to stay out dancing with Angeline until oh, about 4am, and then drag my tired, pounding-head self onto a bus back to Geneva at 5:30am. It was, all in all, a very appropriate end to the weekend.

Vivia Italia, part III
I just can't seem to stay away!

I had plans to go to Florence for New Year's, where J.O. was spending Christmas with his family. After my passport got stolen, I didn't think I would be able to go; however, it all worked out in the end. I was so happy to get to Florence, and I arrived Dec 31 bright and early after a 9 hour train ride. (Side note: night trains are totally the way to travel. They're cheap and you get a little couchette to sleep in, which is suprisingly comfortable. The conductors let you sleep through customs at any border crossings, and they wake you up in the morning with coffee and croissants. I am such a fan of the night trains.)

Here's a happy-sleepy Liz and a happy J.O., a little while after I arrived at the ungodly hour of 6:45am. Our my first day we walked around Florence, did some window-shopping and ate some gelato (yay!)










And then it was New Year's eve. Man oh man, the Italians love their fire-crackers, fireworks, and general merry-making. We had such a good time walking around the streets with thousands of other people, drinking wine, singing with drunk Italians (who suprisinly have a huge affinity for the White Stripes), and getting totally drenched with champagne at midnight. It was a great start to 2007!

On Tuesday, we decided that we wanted to visit the ocean, so we took the train to a small town in Tuscany called Viareggio. I love travelling in the winter - we were the only people on the beach! It was windy, but sunny and warm. In fact, while strolling around town I started fantasizing about buying a little house on the Italian Riviera and becoming a writer or something equally romantic. I could wear white linen, drink mojitos and start smoking cigars. I mean, how much fun would it be to live here:






The only drawback is that Italy tends to smell like sewer from time to time, at least in all the towns I've visited. And I've heard that it's much worse in places like Venice, where there's sewery water everywhere, and it seeps into the foundations of buildings. I guess the locals must just get used to it...they probably don't even smell it anymore. Meh - I'd still live there. What's a little sewer smell compared to a lifetime of ocean sounds, good food, great wine, and people saying "bambini" and "ciao ciao"?

After Viareggio, we went to Pisa to see the leaning tower. We made it just as the sun was setting and gave ourselves a whirlwind tour of the town. It's true - the tower really does lean, even more than it shows in this picture! As we expected, Pisa was totally touristy. I think I counted about a million of tiny marble replicas of the tower of Pisa for sale, and this isn't even tourist season.

On our last day, J.O., his parents and I all went to the Uffizi, Florence's most famous museum, to see Renaissance art. It was pretty spectacular, although I have confess that I can only look at so many paintings of the Madonna before my eyes glaze over. However, they also had a really great Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, focusing on his various inventions, his anatomy sketches and his work depicting one particular battle in Florence. I could have spent all day there, except for the hordes of elbowing people trying to make their way through the narrow exhibition space.

On another side note, during this trip, I learned one very important lesson. It's now been confirmed that I am totally addicted to Italian coffee. As much as I love strong Swiss espresso and the even stronger Turkish coffee they served in Tunisia, the cappuccino in Italy wins my heart, hands down. Italian coffee even beats Italian gelato, and sometimes I dream about the gelato here, because it's just that good. So you can see how important their cappuccino is to me. Sigh. I think I'm in love.

All in all, I had a really lovely New Year's. I'm so happy that I was able to travel and spend time with J.O. and his family in Italy. (So take that, guys who stole my passport - I win!) I hope you all had a fantastic start to 2007 and I wish you the best in the coming year!

Eid Mubarak - Christmas in Tunisia!

So my mom and I decided to head south for Christmas, to spend a week in Tunisia. Although the trip definitely ended on a decidedly more drama-filled note than I would have liked, overall we had a really great time. My mom was kind enough to share her pictures with me, since my camera was stolen, so that I, in turn, can share them with you all. Without further ado, I bring you Liz and Leslie's Christmas adventure:

La Marsa

This is where my mom and I stayed for our first two nights in Tunis. La Marsa is a pretty wealthy suburb of just north of Tunis, right along the Mediterranean. There are a lot of diplomats and expats living here, and some embassies pretty close by. We were lucky enough to stay in the empty summer apartment of some friends of my mom's, who live in Vancouver but are originally from Tunisia.

Although a little chilly in the winter (no heating or hot water!) its amazing location more than compensated - right on the edge of the Mediterranean. This was the view from about 10 metres from the apartment:

There were a lot of stray cats everywhere we went, but they seemed to especially love populating La Marsa. My mom wanted to feed them all. I made friends with a scraggly cat with a limp that lived right outside our apartment.

Sidi Bou Said

Sidi Bou Said is a town just north of Tunis, known for its spectacular view of the Mediterranean. Everyone we met told us that we absolutely had to go see it, so on our second day, we set off. In the course of our travels, we met a fantastic and hilarious ceramics-seller named Ramsay. After we'd concluded our ceramics-buying business, he gave us a tour of his bosses' private museum and then took the afternoon off to show us all around town. He also offered my mom 6 Ferraris for my hand in marriage, but I'm not holding my breath. (Apparently it's a really old Tunisian joke to offer to trade women for camels. Of course, there are some tourists who actually believe these stories - I think the locals really get a kick out of exploiting gullible foreigners.)

It started raining halfway through our tour, but we still were able to see magnificent views of the ocean, along with all of Tunis. Sadly my mom's camera ran out of batteries and mine has disappeared into the void, so I have no fun visual aids from the top of the town. I can, however, share my mom's pictures from the bottom of Sidi Bou Said:

Sousse

After two cold and rainy days with no hot water, we decided to head a few hours' further south, to the popular beach-side resort city of Sousse. We were hoping for sunshine. Sadly, we only found more rain. So we decided to make lemons into lemonade, and holed up in a fancy-schmancy 5 start hotel (with ridiculously discounted mid-winter rates), to pass the time with spa treatments, hot showers, Tunisian wine and buffet meals. Not a bad way to spend Christmas day which, incidentally, is also my mom's birthday.


We also ventured into Sousse's old walled city, or Medina, to shop in its legendary market. Although as a Canadian, I find it hard to get used to the popular Tunisian sales tactics of arm-grabbing, hand-waving, yelling, begging, and sometimes outright lying, I think my mom and I came out on top. It turns out, we're fabulous hagglers, especially as a mother-daughter team. And I even started to get used to the incessant shouts of 'la gazelle! la gazelle!', which is what Tunisian men call young eligible women.


El Jem

About an hour south of Sousse, El Jem is a tiny little town built right beside the ruins of an ancient Roman Colosseum. You step out of the train station, hang a right on the one main street, and there it is, right in front of you, looking completely incongruous.

But of course, it only looks out of place to my mom and I because we're new around here. Locals walk past like it's no big deal, not even bothering to glance up. Two thousand year old ruins don't phase them at all, maybe because there are so many scattered around the country.

Tunisia was part of the original Roman Byzantine empire, which is why you find Roman ruins all over the place. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the ruins at the historic city of Carthage since our trip got a bit disrupted at the end, but the amphitheatre at El Jem more than made up for this.

It's unbelievably huge, and since it was low tourist season my mom and I practically had the place to ourselves, aside from a handful of other tourists. The whole place is a bit eerie - you can walk around the underground tunnels where they used to keep prisoners, Christians, and the lions to feed them to.

To make our way back north to Tunis my mom and I took a louage, a shared taxi, a private taxi, and then a train. I think the louage was my favourite. They're really common in Tunisia (and many parts of the world, I think) and are, in my opinion, a totally ingenious idea. A louage is essentially a shared long distance taxi, where you pay your money, get in the van, and when it's full, it takes off. We paid about 2.50 dinars each for an hour long ride and waited for about half an hour till fill the louage with the required 8 people, much less than the several hours we would have had to wait for a train. Our driver was an amazing multitasker - he drove like a madman, answered his cell phone every 5 min, bent over to find money in the change tray, swore as other drivers, and didn't even get us killed once!

The last two days

Once back in Tunis, our plan was to stay in a downtown hotel for our last 2 nights. We wanted to see the ruins at Carthage, eat couscous, and be close to the city center. However, our plans were thrown totally off kilter when I got mugged in a train, both our passports are wallets got stolen, and we had to spend our last couple of days going back and forth between the Canadian Embassy and various police stations, trying to get emergency visas to go home. All I can say is, thank god for two wonderful people we met in Tunisia, Sonia and Joe, who helped us out, took us in and yelled at the necessary people in Arabic for us. As the daughter and son-in-law of the friends whose apartment we stayed in, they had already been fantastic hosts; however, this went completely above and beyond.

I seriously heart these people:


And thus concludes this exciting episode of Liz and Leslie's Christmas adventure! Stay tuned for Liz's Italian New Year's adventure - coming soon to a blog site near you.

Much love,
Liz

Yee haw - I get to leave the country after all! The EU customs people are letting me to go Italy for New Year's sans passport, so I'm no longer on house arrest in Geneva.

I hope you all have a great New Year's, and I'll write again in 2007!!!

Much love,
Liz

A little older, a little wiser

Hello all,

I'm back from Tunisia and safely ensconsed in my apartment in Geneva. Or maybe trapped might be a more appropriate word, since I'm passport-less and unable to leave.

Let me backtrack a bit. My mom and I left for Tunisia last Friday. We had a great first few days, travelled around, saw some heartbreakingly beautiful ocean views, drank strong Turkish coffee, made friends with a camel and visited awe-inspiring Roman ruins. Unfortunately, the trip ended on a pretty sour note, since I was mugged on a train and got my entire bag stolen, passport, wallet, camera and all. So sadly I have no pictures to share, since they're all gone.

My mom, who unluckily decided to put her stuff in my bag that night, also got her wallet and passport stolen. As a result, our last two days in Tunis were very frantic - we ran around visiting different police stations in tiny Tunisian towns, made friends with the lovely staff at the Canadian Embassy and convinced the border control police at the airport to let us out of the country. Luckily, my mom has friends of friends in Tunis - wonderful people who drove us all over the city to get our paperwork filled out, argued with drunken police officers in Arabic and just generally took good care of our penniless selves. But we made it out, and now we're back home. (Well, home for me - my mom still has to get back to Vancouver tomorrow.)

I have to say, that this certainly hasn't been my best birthday ever so far - I've spent the morning on the phone with embassies, consulates and police stations, trying to figure out how to replace the things I've lost. And my planned trip to Florence tomorrow is now officially cancelled, since I can't leave the country. But, in true undying optimist fashion, I'm still hoping that things will look up before the day is over. I figure, the universe owes me now, right? : )

So from Geneva to all of you, I really hope you're having a better holiday than I am! I wish you long afternoons with your loved ones, late lazy mornings, and delicious things to eat.

Much love.

Dead horses and Japanese baths....welcome to Switzerland!

Hello hello!

This is just a quick update, sadly sans photos since I've been chronically forgetting my camera lately. I promise to get better, really I do. Especially since I now have my mom here to remind me - something that mothers are very good at : )

My mom got here yesterday - she's staying with my for the next week, and then we're going to Tunis for Christmas. I'm very excited!

Day 1 of her first visit to Europe was a complete success. We took a little day trip to a nearby town, Yverdon-les-Bains, which has a fantastic thermal spa - just the thing to cure a weary jet-lagged traveller. We were accompanied by my friend Hélène, who was the mastermind behind the whole brilliant idea.

The only hitch in the trip was right at the beginning - our train hit a horse on the tracks and we ended up stuck in the middle of nowhere for awhile. Luckily the train didn't derail and everyone on board was fine, although the same can't be said for the poor horse or for the dented train. Poor poor horse.

Otherwise, our day was very nice. We spent the afternoon hopping (or rather, lazily sauntering) between outdoor hotsprings, a sauna, a steamroom and an outdoor jacuzzi. Ça à été vraiment tranquille....I could feel every muscle in my body relaxing. Those Europeans definitely got it right when they created spas like this. After the thermal baths, we wandered around a little Christmas market and introduced my mom to raclette, chocolate crêpes and hot wine. All in all, it was a very Swiss day.

Viva Italia part II: Cinque Terre

Where do I even begin? Cinque Terre is really and truly my happy place. It was hard to leave. Really hard. I very seriously considered quitting my job and trading in my international activist life for something more humble, perhaps as a fisherman's wife or a restauranteur.

So what exactly is this magical place, you ask? Well, Cinque Terre means "5 lands", and that's exactly what it is - 5 small fishing villages along the northern coast of Italy, not far from Pisa.

The villages are fairly touristy, but they still maintain a lot of their authenticity, and I was lucky enough to visit during off-season when things weren't too crowded. There are no cars allowed in the narrow and steep village streets, so most people travel between towns by foot, boat or train.

We stayed in Riomaggiore, the most southern of the 5 villages and probably my favourite.

The streets are amazingly narrow, cobblestoned and twisty - more often than not, you have to climb stairs to make it from one block to the next. The village really is built on the side of a cliff, with a marina at the bottom and vineyards at the top. The other towns - Vernazza, Monterosso, Corniglia and Monterola - are variously built at the bottom or halfway up other steep stretches of the coastline.

There are lots of amazing small markets and shops with really fresh food & delicious local wine. In Riomaggiore you will also find what I'm convinced is the most delicious pesto ever created.



I'm going back someday for that pesto. And the wine. I also hear that the steaks are also great in Tuscany, but of course I couldn't vouch for that.

Another great feature is the beautiful and unique public art everywhere. A lot of the residents are artists (those not in the tourism business) and it shows. We kept coming across frescoed walls and big painted murals. Even train stations and tunnels were muraled!

However, the most amazing thing to see was the Mediterranean itself. Even in late October, it wasn't too cold to go swimming. The water alternates between deep blue & this gorgeous shade of turquoise.

The towns we visited were all built on the edge of pretty steep cliffs plunging right into the sea. Since the land is so steep, the towns' residents developed a terraced system of agriculture, almost like Indonesian rice fields.


Today, the whole area is a UNESCO world heritage site, and agriculturalists from all over volunteer come to help restore some of the abandoned terraced vineyards and farms.

Since the whole area is a national park, there are great hiking trails which connect all five towns. Unfourtunately we weren't able to explore the most well-known stretch, the Via dell'Amore, because of an unfourtunatelt timed mudslide, but we did get in lots of other great hiking. The paths climb along the side of cliffs and meander through olive groves - I saw my first olive trees!


J.O. was disappointed that he couldn't eat the olives right off the trees, but not being such a big olive fan myself, I didn't much mind. There were also huge, prehistoric looking cacti and aloe plants scattered here and there among the pine trees.


The day we went hiking was a bit cloudy and grey so the picture here doesn't even begin to do the view justice, but here's the idea of what we saw while we were tramping along. It was pretty much hills and sky and oceans the whole way.

And here are the tired but happy hikers at the end of the day, on the top of a hill overlooking Vernazza, another town in Cinque Terre.

Which brings us to Liz's zen lesson of the week: there is nothing quite like enjoying a nice glass of wine on a terrace high above the mediterranean while watching the sun set. I hope that you, too, can find your happy place, since I certainly discovered mine this weekend.