And anyway, Kitchener couldn’t possibly be that bad. After all, it’s by no means the only city that gets a bad rap from its own residents. Even my own beloved country has its mud-slinging critics:
I live in Canberra, which is the capital of Australia, but unfortunately it’s a really really boring city and there’s stuff all to do.
Lynn, 22
Peter from Telford in Shropshire, UK, was a bit more blunt:
This town is a shithole, but maybe you like visiting shitholes.
I can’t imagine many couch requests pouring in for Hutchinson, Kansas, either:
I have lived here my entire life and it sucks. Hutch is a trash hole infested with lazy non-working money sucking users.
Ben, 24
Then again, some aspersions are probably close to the truth:
Welcome to Hell
Firas, 38
Baghdad, Iraq
Although most of the couch-surfers in Kitchener were a bit more complimentary about their town, there really didn’t seem to be much to do if some of the hosts’ interests were anything to go by. I didn’t even understand what Susan’s list meant:
Interests: transpersonal and intrapersonal psychological phenomena
At least 32-year-old Ryan liked to mix it up a bit:
Interests: dancing in grocery stores late at night (when they play the really good music), television and food (especially baked goods)
No one listed their interests as sausages and beer, but 27-year-old Jeremy’s weekend pursuits of beard-growing, car-fixing, tree-cutting and beer-drinking sounded good to me.
When I emailed Jeremy to request his couch he wrote back with a detailed itinerary mapped out for me. He also wrote:
I am a bit of a con man, so my personality may be less interesting than it appears. I also don’t know if I am fit to represent Canada on the world stage. I am currently half-drunk and reek of strippers so if this makes no sense say so and I will try again later :)
Jeremy had kindly offered to pick me up from Toronto airport, two hours east of Kitchener, and when I finally found him in the crowded arrivals hall I said: ‘Sorry, I didn’t recognise you with a shirt on.’ In his couch surfing profile picture Jeremy is striking a bronzed Adonis-on-the-beach pose.
We trudged to the furthest point in the car park past hundreds of vacant car spaces till we stopped at a lone red beaten-up Volkswagen hatch. ‘I took out the starter motor,’ Jeremy said. ‘I had to drive around till I found a car space on an incline, so I can roll-start it.’
Jeremy seemed quiet and a bit shy, particularly after being with boisterous Bob and his friends. I’ve met a lot of Canadians in my travels and, although they are often incredibly friendly, they are mostly a subdued lot. I guess that when you live next door to a brash and loud neighbour all your life you are always vulnerable to looking and acting a bit boring in comparison. After only five minutes in the car Jeremy told me that Canadians don’t like Americans. ‘American culture rules our lives,’ he said. ‘We’re more interested in them than our own country sometimes. There is more on the news about US politics than there is on Canadian politics.’
‘That’s because American politicians like to start big important wars and give big important speeches about saving the world from terrorists,’ I said.
‘We know everything about the States, but they know absolutely nothing about us,’ he continued. ‘On a TV show last week a Canadian comedian walked through the streets of a US city collecting donations. He told them that because of global warming the Canadian parliamentary igloos were melting, so they needed money to rebuild them. Almost every person he asked said that it was very sad and gave him some money.’
Not long after leaving the airport we were driving through rolling green farmland and cornfields. It looked just like America. Jeremy was brought up on a cattle farm an hour out of Kitchener and his parents, who still lived there, were now retired and leased the land to another farmer. The only livestock they had left was their pet horse.
We stopped at the farm because Jeremy wanted to ‘find’ a starter motor. His parents’ two-storey red brick farmhouse was on top of the biggest hill in the county and was surrounded by giant oaks and elms (Jeremy told me that in winter up to 50 cars park on the side of road and use the hill to go sledding). We drove past the house and straight into the barn. Inside, amongst a collection of rusted farming equipment and a couple of bales of hay, were five old Volkswagens in various stages of disrepair. ‘I keep all my old cars,’ Jeremy said. ‘I’ve had seven Volkswagens and I’ve kept them all for spare parts.’
After pulling out a considerably corroded starter motor from one of the considerably corroded cars, Jeremy crawled underneath his current car and started bashing things. I stood back as sparks flew out from the top and bottom of the engine. ‘Don’t worry!’ Jeremy barked over the loud cracking noise. ‘I’m always fixing things.’ I stood back a little further when he told me that the week before, while trying to install a dimmer light in his lounge room, he zapped himself and almost set the flat on fire.
After almost two hours during which Jeremy had tried three different starter motors from three different cars, we drove off again without one. Twenty minutes later there was an incredibly loud clicking noise from the engine and we pulled over into the car park of The Beer Store (they have a huge sign with a photo of a glass of beer on it just in case you’re a little confused about what they sell).
‘Can you buy rum or vodka at The Beer Store?’ I asked while we waited for Jeremy’s friend Jeff to pick us up.
‘No, you have to get that at The Liquor Store,’ Jeremy explained.
He wasn’t making it up. The government runs both ‘stores’ and they are the only place that you can buy beer or liquor (and never the twain shall meet).
Jeff arrived in a new sleek black Pontiac. ‘For God’s sake buy a decent car,’ Jeff said, shaking his head. ‘Jeremy’s cars break down at last twice a week,’ Jeff remarked smugly as he loaded my bags into the boot (or trunk as the Americans— sorry I mean Canadians—say).
Jeff looked even more clean-cut than Jeremy and it only took him two minutes to mention Americans. ‘Do Australians hate Americans as much as we do?’ he asked as we drove through the outskirts of Kitchener.
It also took Jeremy only two minutes to sum up everything there was to say about Kitchener. Set between Lake Eyrie and Lake Ontario, the city has a population just over 200 000 and is the home of Schneider Foods, which is famous all across Canada for its sausages.
Kitchener looked just like an American city, but neater. We drove past neat conservative houses, neat conservative shops, neat conservative people and the neatest lawns I’ve ever seen. Every blade of grass was mowed to perfection. Most houses also had Halloween decorations strung up on their porches and pumpkin heads in the garden. ‘Isn’t Halloween American?’ I asked.
‘That’s why we love it,’ said Jeremy sardonically.
Jeremy lived close to the city centre and he worked in a building that was, at all of eight storeys, the city’s tallest. He told me what he did for a job and I nodded and said, ‘Oh, yeah’. I knew what he’d said, but I still had no idea what he did. He worked in the IT department of MCAP— the largest independent mortgage lender in Canada—where he ‘upgraded the underwriter’s software compatibility’. He also did casual lumberjacking on Saturdays.
Jeremy lived in a neat (I’m sorry, I have to stop saying neat, but I just can’t help myself) one-bedroom apartment with his cat Bentley and a very impressive couch. The couch folded out to a queen-size futon bed. Not long after Jeremy had showered and cleaned off the grease a crowd of people, including Jeremy’s girlfriend Danika, arrived in a convoy of taxis en route to the Oktoberfest festival.
Kitchener does have a legitimate claim to hold ‘Canada’s Great Bavarian Festival’ because up until 1916 Kitchener was called Berlin (they didn’t want to be associated with those nasty Germans after the war) and more than 25 per cent of the population have German
heritage. The festival began in 1969 and now attracts more than 700 000 visitors to such very German venues as the Heidelberg Haus, Altes Muenchen Haus, Hubertushaus, Oberkrainer Haus, Ruedesheimer Garten and the Schwaben Club. We were heading to the very un-German sounding Queensmount Ice Skating Arena for a Rocktoberfest event. There were also events called Hip-Hoptoberfest featuring Canadian hip-hop acts, Pridetoberfest celebrating the Gay Pride of Kitchener, and Dogtoberfest with games and competitions for families with dogs.
‘There are lots of ice-hockey rinks in Canada,’ Jeremy told me as we marched towards the entrance. ‘They outnumber hospitals three to one.’
I had no doubt the Canadians took their ice-hockey rinks seriously. Two stern-faced security guards performed a methodical and ponderous examination of my bag and its contents before I even stepped inside. When I did get inside, however, I have to say I was suitably impressed. The ice-skating rink, minus the ice, had been totally transformed into an authentic German beer hall, complete with long trestle tables lined with fellows wearing lederhosen and Bavarian felt hats and frauleins in dirndls and plaits. Up on the stage Walter Ostanek, the 70-year-old Polka King (and winner of five Canadian Grammys for Best Polka Player, Jeremy told me), was bouncing around doing the chicken dance. This really was just like a Bavarian beer festival and I couldn’t wait to get to the bar and grab myself a large frosty stein of German beer.
Except that I did have to wait and they didn’t have any German beer. There was a queue just to get to the very orderly queue at the bar, which was being closely guarded by two security gorillas in bright yellow shirts. That’s when I realised that the security men outnumbered the drinkers two to one.
When I did get to the bar, they seemed to be only serving Molsen in pathetically small white plastic cups. ‘Do you have any German beer?’ I asked.
‘Yes, we have Heineken,’ the barmaid said cheerfully.
‘Um, Heineken is Dutch.’
‘Same thing,’ she chirped.
I grabbed my great Bavarian plastic cup of Canadian Molsen and joined the rest of the group who had procured a table near the queue for the bar. I looked around and spotted lots of large signs being closely guarded by the army of yellow-clad security buffoons.
NO LEANING OR STANDING ON
TABLES AND CHAIRS
DRESS CODE IN
EFFECT—CLEAN LOOKING APPAREL ONLY
NO ALCOHOL BEYOND THIS POINT
NO SMOKING
NO RUNNING
They could have had a ‘NO HAVING FUN’ sign and it wouldn’t have surprised me. I went up on to the dance floor for a bit of polka-ing with Danika’s cousin Karen and as we passed a group of lads one dropped down onto the dance floor to do the worm. Twenty seconds later three security guards surrounded him, ordering him to ‘calm down’.
‘Canadians are a bit paranoid,’ Karen told me.
Back at our table the conversation turned to couch surfing. I asked Jeremy if he’d had any other couch-surfing experiences.
‘I’ve had two German girls stay, but that’s it,’ Jeremy said. ‘Kitchener isn’t really a tourist hotspot.’
‘They were probably lost,’ said Jeff.
Jeremy had also couch-surfed his way down to Florida. ‘I stayed with two girls in Florida and there was a guy from New York already couch surfing there,’ Jeremy said. ‘He was only supposed to stay for five days, but he’d been surfing their couch for three months. The girls were too nice to ask him to leave.’
By late in the evening most people were drunk and rowdy. Jeff was certainly drunk enough. He was standing by the dance floor with his arm around a cute girl when a huge bloke walked up. Jeff introduced himself, then said ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m her boyfriend,’ the huge bloke grunted.
Jeff was probably only using the girl for support because we had to almost carry him out when we left. Six of us all piled into Karen’s tiny car and, after dropping off a very tall girl who had been lying across our legs in the back seat, we stopped at a neat (stop it!) house in somewhere called Hagersville. Karen had three small children, but they were at their father’s house for the weekend. That was a good thing because, boy, did we make a ruckus. As we drank bottles of overtly sweet vodka/pop mix I played Karen’s guitar and belted out some tunes while Jeff belted out the contents of his stomach into the toilet.
Once Jeff had finished his yodelling, Jeremy carried him upstairs to bed. Well, when I say ‘bed’, it was actually more of a cot than a bed. Jeff ’s feet were hanging over the edge of Karen’s baby daughter’s bed, which came complete with a Princess Jasmine quilt and Snow White pillow. Jeff was just like a little baby, too: He was gurgling, he had vomit in his hair, he couldn’t talk and he couldn’t walk.
When I finally crawled into bed (I got the matching Cinderella quilt and pillow set), Karen tucked me in and said, ‘I’ll leave the Princess Belle light on in case you get scared’.
Late the next morning we had a oh-my-head-hurts big greasy fry-up breakfast at Fireside Family Restaurant & Grill. As I hoed into my mountain of food I asked, ‘Is there any “Canadian” cuisine?’
There was an awkward pause.
‘Hamburgers?’ Jeff suggested.
‘Um, I’m pretty sure they’re not Canadian,’ Danika said.
‘I know,’ Jeff beamed. ‘Bacon and eggs!’
After much deliberation everyone decided that there was probably only one thing that could be classed as Canadian cuisine.
‘Maple syrup,’ Jeremy said. ‘I think that’s it.’
After picking up Jeremy’s car from The House of Beer (and after Jeremy bashed a few things around in the engine), we drove out to see some Indians on the warpath. Not far from Jeremy’s parents’ farm was the Six Nations of the Grand River Indian reserve. All of the six nations—Mohawk, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora—were in the middle of a major uprising over a land claim dispute. The Indians helped fight the British in 1784, so the government gave them all the land for six miles on either side of the Grand River. There were only a few hundred Indians, so they said it was too big and gave it back to the government. Two hundred years later, and now with a population of more than 20 000, they decided they wanted their prime real estate back. In the past few months they’d gone to all the big houses on the riverfront and handed them eviction notices. They had also taken over a sub-division for a new residential development, blocked major roads and were throwing bottles at cars and people.
‘It doesn’t matter if they throw bottles at this car,’ Jeremy shrugged as we drove into the residential development. There wasn’t much sign of the uprising, though. The restless natives had hoisted their protest flags up next to the ‘Display Suites Now Open’ flags and a group of non-bottle-throwing Indians in jeans and T-shirts were milling about the entrance, but that was about it.
I could tell when we’d entered the reservation. We drove past the ‘Red Indian Mini Mart’ and a billboard for ‘Mohawk Flooring—Check out our lamination’. The most obvious indication that we were in the reservation, however, was the large blinking neon signs advertising discount cigarettes. Because the Indians don’t have to pay tax, selling cheap cigarettes is their biggest source of income. We drove through the reservation’s main ‘town’, which had two totem poles, one tipi and a large drive-thru cigarette shop called Red Indian Cigarette Heaven. The rest of the town was made up of modern houses with large American ‘trucks’ parked in the driveways.
‘They also make money from stealing cars,’ Jeremy said when I commented that the locals seemed to be doing all right from selling cigarettes. ‘People find their cars a week later burned out in a field and stripped of parts,’ he explained.
As we drove out of the reservation we passed a truck abandoned on the edge of the road. Painted on the side of the truck in big red letters was: ‘YOU STEAL OUR LAND SO WE STEAL YOUR TRUCK’.
Imagine inviting a stranger you’d only met the day before to your family’s Christmas dinner. That’s essentially what
Jeremy had done when he invited me to join his immediate family for Thanksgiving dinner. As with Juan’s family barbecue, I was amazed that these kind couch-surfing folk didn’t think anything of inviting a virtual stranger to such an intimate family occasion.
Even though Jeremy’s family were incredibly welcoming when I arrived at the farmhouse, I did still feel a little awkward about intruding into their Thanksgiving celebrations. Well, everyone made me feel welcome except for Jeremy’s older brother Rob. When I said hello to him, he just grunted at me. Everyone was in the living room, including Jeremy’s mum and dad Janey and Albert, brother Steve and his wife and three kids (to three different fathers, Jeremy told me when I commented how different they all looked) and Rob the grunter.
We had only sat down for a few minutes when we were ushered into the dining room, which had large windows affording spectacular views of the surrounding hills. The table was already laden with huge bowls of mashed turnip, green beans, red cabbage, mashed potato, sweet potatoes, stewed apple, cranberry sauce and a giant jug of gravy. There was a round of applause as Janey brought out a massive roast turkey, which Albert dutifully carved up, and by the time my plate had completed its tour of the table I had a mountain of food.
I was sitting next to Albert, who was quick to tell me that the first Canadian Thanksgiving preceded the American Thanksgiving by 40 years (Canada’s first Thanksgiving was in 1578). ‘It’s a celebration of being thankful for what one has and the bounty of the previous year,’ Albert said. Rob wasn’t being very thankful, though. He didn’t even look up from his food when Albert raised his glass to propose a toast.
After our somewhat gluttonous feast, the family kept chattering away while I struggled to stay awake. I was not just tired. I’d picked up a dose of CSFS (Couch Surfing Fatigue Syndrome). I was trying really hard to stay awake, but my eyes kept drooping and my head kept dropping, then snapping back up again. Finally, after a considerable struggle with the weight of my eyelids, I dozed off.
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