Yesterday I realised the plan (actually both plans), I mentioned more than a month ago: Cycling up and down 96 Street (which - for obvious reasons - used to be named Church Street) and taking photos of all the churches. Just to give you an idea about the area: The following 12 buildings are all right and left of the red marked line, which is a distance of only about 1.3km, and as you can see on the map almost all of them actually cluster in the northern half of it. There for example you have Queen of Martyrs Vietnamese Catholic Church on the left side, just opposite the street is Sacred Heart Catholic Church of the First Peoples and again opposite the crossing avenue is Ansgar Danish Lutheran Church. (Actually now that I try to find it I'm not entirely convinced that this map is completely correct, but anyway.) The area as such is very poor (many homeless people) but generally interesting: 96 Street is located just in between Little Italy (95 Street) and Chinatown (97 Street). And here are the churches. (Note that the order is not according to the churches' location on 96 Street but according to their colour and the format of the photo.)

left: Mustard Seed Church (Baptist I suppose)
middle: St Peter Lutheran Church (formerly German, that's the one I've been to for the lecture)
right: Sacred Heart Catholic Church of the First Peoples (the church most to tell about because we - the Hungarian colleague Kinga and I - not only visited it but attended a service, which was incredibly interesting. But that's a separate entry which will hopefully follow soon. - I wonder how often I have already announced reports which I then never managed to finish..)


left: Edmonton Family Worship Centre
right: St John's Evangelical Lutheran Church


left: Queen of Martyrs Vietnamese Catholic Church
middle: St. Stephen the Martyr Anglican Church of Canada
right: Holy Trinity. Canadian Orthodox Church


left: Ansgar Danish Lutheran Church,
right: First Christian Reformed Church


The last two are a little bit outsiders.
left: St Barbara Russo-Greek Catholic Orthodox Church because of it's location. Being the starting point of the red line in the south it is separated from the main Church Street through Jasper Avenue.
right: Mui Kwok Buddhist Temple obviously because it's the only non Christian place of worship in Church Street, located at the northern end of the red line.

This week was crazy! You know, I've been here all summer and I got used to the fact that the campus was pretty much deserted. But this week the term started, and suddenly it was just crazy. People everywhere! (Which makes it much more difficult to cycle on campus.)

Looking around was a little bit depressing - I've just finished my studies and am already 10 years older then those kids who're just starting now. Kids. Gosh, they look sooo young, well they are, and I felt really, really old.

It was a bit like this already the week before, when Transition Week, the welcome programme for the international students took place. Most of them are undergraduate exchange students on their big adventure, like I was four years ago - (is it already such a long ago???) - which may not a big difference in age but still, I felt very different. The most telling situation occurred when we (Kinga, Premek and I) took part in a downtown walking tour: I started chatting with a Chinese guy, asked him what he is doing (starting undergraduate degree in engineering) and he asked me what I was doing. "I've just finished my master in history and am working here as a research fellow." He: "I see. Yes, I've already noticed that nearly our whole group is adults." I laughed and asked him whether he doesn't consider himself an adult, but of course I knew perfectly what he wanted to express. The same feeling I experienced the other way round..

Yet, I plan to keep myself informed about the International Centre's activities because I think it's a good way for seeing more of Edmonton and Alberta as well as for reasons of socialising. (Also, I suppose that in these circles it would be easier to obey Grossis command that my wife to be has to accompany me to Austria, or at least to Europe. :-)

Aditionally I intend to attend the Faculty Club regularly, which is a bar on Campus where professors and PhD students meet on Friday afternoon, have some drinks, and socialise from joking and chatting to serious discussions. The first time I went there (about two weeks after my arrival) I felt quite inhibited, a young and unknowing boy among all those old, intellectual men and women. I still listen more than I talk, which I think is a probably the best thing to do anyway, because these people know so much and it's interesting just to listen. The last two times I had a really good time and although I saw those people three times at most, there are some whose company I quite enjoy.

So I guess my life here will be continuing between the two worlds. One day I'm having drinks with Eric and his friends, students, and another day I'm having drinks with their professors. Which sometimes can create quite funny situations. On the occasion of our farewell drinks with Lucka I had invited Eric and Mariko as well, and at first it was just the two of them and David and me. Then Darek, Luckas boyfriend was approaching and as David and I were waving at him Eric asked in a mixture of surprise and panic: "You know HIM!?! He is one of my teachers.." (And it was very obvious that he didn't feel well about that.)

Und ich bleibe bei den, aehm, Naturschoenheiten Edmontons.. (Was die Kanadierinnen betrifft sollte ich uebrigens nachtragen, dass mir allgemein das Woertchen "natur" nur bedingt zutreffend scheint, weil viele beim Fortgehen so dick Makeup auftragen, dass ich mich oft frage, wie sie wohl "wirklich" aussehen..)

Am Sonntag gab es (anlaesslich des gestern gefeierten Labour Day)zum letzten Mal in diesem Jahr - und damit wohl zum letzten Mal fuer mich - den Great Divide Waterfall (hier die beiden Eintraege vom letzten Mal: Text, Bilder) Ein Arbeiter hat uns uebrigens erklaert, dass das Wasser zwar aus dem Fluss gepumpt wird, dann jedoch zuerst in die Wasseraufbereitungsanlage um schliesslich als Trinkwasserfall in den Fluss zurueck zu fliessen.. Dieses Mal hatte ich genug Batterie um Nachtfotos zu machen - vor allem war es dieses Mal bereits zu zu Beginn, um neun Uhr, merklich dunkler als noch vor ein paar Wochen. Zwar musste ich wohl mehr als die Haelfte der Bilder im Nachhinein loeschen weil sie sich als unscharf erwiesen, aber diese zwei find ich genial.

Damit will ich natuerlich keineswegs die angeregte Diskussion stoeren, wo ich doch nach dem ersten Beitrag mit einer zweistelligen Anzahl an Kommentaren lechze. Damit es sich wenigstens ausgezahlt hat, dass ich jetzt nie wieder ins O'Byrne's kann.. :-)