October 19, 2009

American Rural Life

Village Nursery

As part of the international student body here at Berkeley, I decided to sign up for a day trip offered by the International House (in collaboration with the Rotary Club) that was intended to take exchange students on visits to a handful of different farms and homes of traditional American, rural family life.

We started by going to Village Nursery, a plant farm that sold beautiful flowers and trees, and also seeds and gardening supplies. It was about an hour drive east from San Fransisco, over in the dry, hilly area called Contra Costa county, but they somehow managed to sprinkle enough water to keep acres upon acres of green houses as humid as a rainforest, with uncountable sprinklers keeping the vegetation alive.

Our next stop was at Smith Family Farm, where we stayed for one hour wondering what to do after walking through a corn maze that had only one path out and poking our heads into a recreated Indigenous Indian village comprised of one straw & mud teepee-like hut.

Then was Roddy Ranch, a working cattle farm where Jack Roddy, a retired rodeo champion, rode around in wranglers, a plaid shirt, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat on his stocky quarter horse saddled up in western, all the while chewing tobacco and spitting between sentences.

Then we visited a family run winery, with bottles of wine priced so cheap I had to wonder if they weren’t secretly franchised by Walmart. I bought a bottle of port for $7 and didn’t ask any questions.

Finally we went to an old-time family ranch that had been bought by the city and turned into a public park, preserving all the turn-of-the-century buildings on the lot and making them into a museum-like exhibit. A man dressed in ranger uniform (star badge and all) called Ranger Joe showed us around, with hints of a southern drawl in his stereotypical American accent, and we ended the day with a delicious BBQ dinner hosted by members of the Walnut Creek Rotary Club.

All in all it was a wonderful day tour, getting an intimate view on rural life in California, but still getting the satisfaction and curiosity of wondering “is this really how some families live, fulfilling these little quirky stereotypes you thought you only saw in movies? they must have known we were coming and staged this…”

October 5, 2009

Sonoma & Napa Valley Wine Tasting

the oldest wooden structure situated at Green Strings farm, with a healthy field of grape vines growing behind

Many know the Northern California region is quite famous for its wineries, so going wine tasting in the Sonoma and Napa Valley regions seemed like a necessary trip to take while living in California. It’s only about an hour’s drive north from San Fransisco, and I’ve been told there are about 400 wineries in the entire region, ranging from small, 10 acre family run farms, to hundred-acre, major distributing wineries like Sebastiani.

A friend visiting from out of town and myself spent a couple days in the area, starting at Green Strings Farm, an all-organic, sustainable, grape and produce growing farm near Petaluma. It was the most beautiful, idyllic, relaxing country landscape, nestled near the Sonoma hills, with some of the best tasting food I have had in a long time.

The following day we weaved our way through a few Sonoma Valley vineyards, visiting some of the oldest wineries in the USA including Bartholomew Park Winery, Gundlach Bundschu, and Buena Vista winery. They all cost between $5 – $10 for a tasting flight, specializing mostly in red wines except for a few chardonnays, gewurztraminers and white rosés.

We carried over to the Napa Valley, driving north along the Silverado trail, famous for its back to back wineries. We visited some modest wineries, like Judd’s Hill that specilizes in private sales, and built up to the more extravegant, $15 – $25 per tasting flight wineries like Darioush, Black Stallion and Signorello.

In addition to the amazing wines, wonderful weather, and scenic roadtrip, wine tasting Sonoma and Napa Valley served as the perfect getaway from the hustle and bustle of the Bay area, so I would suggest to anyone planning a visit to San Fransisco, you should include a little wine tasting time in your itinerary.

September 22, 2009

California Dreaming is California Living

Our first dinner party at Maya's (2nd to left) house

Despite all my ranting about UC Berkeley in my previous blog, I am (otherwise) getting the most welcome arrival otherwise possible. I have a handful of really good friends that I have known for a long time living in the east bay area, and all of them have contributed to taking care of me and helping me out in ways I could never ask for.

After I first got out here with my family, I was very unprepared. I didn’t have housing or transportation lined up (UC students get free bus passes, but not UC exchange students – go figure), but my friend Misha happens to always have 1 to 4 extra cars lying around not being used, so I scored the jackpot with a little 1986 BMW 325. She’s not that pretty, but complete with leather seats, automatic windows and a sunroof, so the fact that she has no second gear isn’t a big deal. Misha also let me stay at his beautiful Danville home, complete with a pool in the backyard, until I found housing closer to Berkeley campus.

My quasi-roommate from first year university, Maya, who lives in a quaint neighbourhood called Montclair in the Oakland Hills, was my second saving grace. Her parents had moved to Tahoe for the season and she welcomed company in her family’s big, empty house that she was now living in alone. So, we are back to being roommates, with a much more upgraded living situation than Totem Park dorm rooms from UBC. We have a beautiful patio, a big, hilly backyard, and of course a hammock to do some productive reading on.

There are countless others who have facilitated my adjustment to a new city and a new campus; also mentionable is Michael, a friend who enjoys pianos almost as much as me, so when i discovered a free piano that I unfortunately found out would never make it up Maya’s 44 stairs, he took it to his house instead and swapped me loaning privileges to his electronic keyboard so I can still play music.

I should also mention my two supervisors at UC Berkeley; one from the tourism department, and the other from the Environmental Policy & Management dept, who are going to pretty much write my thesis for me, with all their knowledge, weekly meetings and directing me through the graduate academia world I feel so hopelessly lost in. Otherwise, I feel I’m finally fitting into place in my new sunny home of California. I’ve had my first few visitors come stay with me, and acted as the ‘local’ tour guide, so hopefully I’ll get to know this place as intimately as others from around here by the time I leave.

September 17, 2009

Black Rock City and Burning Man

the Man

Many people have heard of the art festival Burning Man, but those who haven’t gone often have a wrong impression of it. Most people that knew I went asked “isn’t everything free there, like alcohol?” and “aren’t you going to do so many drugs there?!” Others comment on the fairies, hippies, glowing night life and raves that go on, while others try to understand where it is (in the middle of a desert, a former lake bed) and how a temporary city of 60,000 survives there for 8 days. What I went to Burning Man for was first and foremost for the art and artistic expression (it is, after all, an art festival), and also to explore a new environment, both natural and cultural.

The set up of burning man camp is circular: a clock where 12 noon has a temple, the centre of the clock is the Man, 6 o’clock is central camp, and around the circumference from 2 to 10 are camps. The art is all around you; the big circle of the clock has the major, large, installation art works, and camps all around are decorated to a theme. The only automobiles that are allowed to drive around camp are ‘art cars,’ and people themselves are walking art pieces covered in dust, fur, glowy stuff and costume.

The mentality of Black Rock City is unlike any other ‘real’ city in the world; people love, trust, respect and share almost unconditionally (with everyone), with the underlying philosophies of burning man being about self-expression, inclusion, communal effort, civil responsibility, participation, gifting, and leave-no-trace (garbage is affectionately called MOOP, an acronym for matter-out-of-place).

Self reliance and decommodification are other major themes of burning man; you are meant to bring enough food, water, shelter and first aid to survive one week in a harsh desert environment, and the selling of ANYTHING is prohibited (a barter/exchange economy exists through the notion of gifting).

My personal experience of Burning Man was a surreal journey through self exploration, literally and figuratively speaking, where the art, camps and people I met at Burning Man all contributed an invaluable piece to an overall wonderful, unforgettable experience. There is definitely nowhere else on earth you can go and have a similar experience, and explaining it to people is almost a waste of time because its one of those things you cannot truly imagine or have expectations of until you go there and experience it yourself.

Word of advice: Go to Burning Man 2010.

September 4, 2009

UC Berkeley, my disenchanted dream

Me, mom and older sister Kristjana at the UC Berkeley entrance gates

I have always wanted to go to UC Berkeley, and my third time around, I got in. I applied both to an undergrad program, and last year to an LLB program, and finally, as an exchange student from my current master’s program at the University of Iceland. This time, to my relief , I finally got in without having to pay their horrendous tuition since I’m just there on exchange. However, this “free” exchange has cost a lot of time, money and energy.

It began back in April, when I first got my acceptance letter. It was 12 pages long, outlining all the paperwork, procedures and fees I would have to complete before my arrival. First, I needed to get my student visa. The Berkeley office had to prepare some fancy form called DS-2019 for my to even be eligible to apply for the visa, and to get them to process that I first had to prove financial security of $1600/month (since Im forbidden to work under my student visa) for the 5 months I would be in California (what grad student has $8000 in their savings account halfway through a masters program?). Then I needed 2×2 inch passport photos scanned into digital format at an exact resolution; also, reference letters from employers or professors, tax slips, and/or proof of family ties outside of the USA so they believed I wasn’t trying to seek refuge in California. Finally, I needed health care that met the US department of State’s standards (now we all know what an issue health care is in the US) and since my coverage for repatriation of remains is $5000 instead of their minimum $7500 with my health insurance in Canada, I’ll probably need to buy the ridiculously overpriced healthcare the campus offers now that I’ve arrived.

Once I got that special DS-2019, I had to pay a SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) fee for $180 US, then direct deposit $131 US visa fee into a Scotiabank (which, doesnt actually exist outside of North America, a slight problem when you are an International Exhange student), pay $8 cdn to schedule a visa appointment at the embassy to apply for the visa, spend 6 hrs in their dark, silent, surveilled office without any guarantee it would be processed, and then come back 3 days later and wait in an hour line to pick up my passport (at which point I found out I did get the VISA).

Upon my safe arrival to Berkeley, my first orientation consisted of a small welcome, alot of forms (one legal document which waives my rights to any ideas or inventions I may have during this semester to be the full property of UC Berkeley), and $410US (payable in cash only) for that one page, good old DS-2019. I now owe $200 for my “registration fee”, even though they informed us at the orientation meeting that exchange students are NOT registered Cal students, nor do we have any recognised status as UC students for campus benefits like bus passes or gym admission. That also means I cant register for classes online, and will have to run around all week to actual class rooms, begging professors to let me audit their already full classes. I won’t get a transcript at the end of all this either, so let’s hope I actually get credit at all for the work I’ve put into realising my Berkeley dream. Moral of the story: It’s a lot easier to travel to California as a tourist than a student. Try to avoid “researching scholar’ student visas to the US unless you’ve got plenty of time and money to waste!

August 25, 2009

Roadtripping with the Hen House

The San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge peeping out from the fog typical of the bay area

I am moving to the east bay area in California to complete some courses at UC Berkeley, and my family decided to make a family vacation out of it by renting a Chrysler Impala, and shoving me, my 2 sisters, mother and ancient grandmother into it. Of course we came with all our luggage, my life in boxes, a cooler full of home cooked food, a rice cooker, and uncountable bottles of water. Yes, it was a tight fit.

The newest addition to our family is our GPS system, affectionately named Disa, and she told us where to go, how long it would take, and to “Drive Carefully” once in a random while. Sometimes she was wrong, and I’d have to override her instructions, and my mom would get totally distressed trying to figure out what direction she should take. My grandma was a skeptic, because during every long stretch of I-5 highway we drove and Disa had no turns to warn us about, she would ask something to the effect of “why isn’t this thing talking to us? She’s supposed to tell us where to go. Must be no good.” We did do things other than drive, but out of the whole weekend, we were stuffed like sardines in that car for the majority of the time, fighting over butt space in the backseat and reluctantly taking turns to sit in the middle. At one point, my sister spilled half a water bottle AT my face, like, almost bore out an eye socket with the spout of the open bottle, and that created quite an uproar since there was nowhere for me to turn to fix myself, nor for my sister to run.

We made it to California with a stop in some random highway side Motel 8, and stuffed all 5 of us in one room (poor Ruth got the floor), and mom decided to cook corned beef and rice for us at 11 pm with all the windows shut (so we couldnt get in trouble for cooking in the rooms) and thus we all ended up smelling like fried onions by the time we fell asleep. Once we got to the bay, we dropped off my grandma at family friend in Stockton, and took a couple days to explore Cal campus, San Francisco, Santa Cruz and the highway 1 along the west coast of norcal. We survived off the curry and rice from our cooler and In-n-Out burger, and made alot of stops to Target and WalMart to bargain hunt for miscellaneous, unneeded cheap stuff, what we Adals do best together. There was never a silent moment, and all-in-all a wonderful trip, but its nice to finally be settled in one place and able to hear myself think again 🙂

As alway, dohop.com is at your service offering cheap flights to California.

August 19, 2009

Getaway to Vancouver Island

bc ferries

I have been semi-stranded in Vancouver for almost 2 weeks now, which is both unfortunate and awesome because I only got to spend this much time at home since I ran out of money, but enjoyed every moment back with friends and family. However, being in one place for two weeks in the height of summer and travel time, I still ended up restless and had to come up with some sort of getaway.

Me and Steph, a friend from wayyy back in high school, discussed trying to do a roadtrip to the Okanagan, Montana & Idaho, Whistler, or Vancouver Island. The first two involved too much driving time for the only 2 day weekend Steph could take off from work, and Whistler is almost too close to Vancouver to be its own holiday…and besides, Whistler is at its best during mid snowboard season.

So, we went to Vancouver Island. We took BC Ferries to Victoria where we met a friend of mine I had made in Montreal earlier this summer. He was the perfect host and a kind chauffeur, driving to and from ferry terminals, all around Victoria, and up to Nanaimo with a beautiful lake stop on the way. We stayed with his parents, two wonderful people who we joked and drank with more comfortably than I have with my own parents! The ferry ride back was a highlight, since we sat out on the top deck suntanning and taking in the scenery of untouched forests and far away blue mountains. The ferry ride to the island was a little less fortunate; we were befriended by two Persian brothers who came off really nice at first, but after buying us lunch we realized they just wanted to buy our company for the weekend in Victoria, and Steph’s silent retaliation was “No, I will not prostitute myself to you!”

It was such a great vacation because the cost of traveling with the ferries and benefiting from such generous hospitality made the entire trip cost about $50! We lucked out with great weather and enjoyed the nature saturated island beauty to its fullest. Life is beautiful in Vancouver city too, but people are too stressed and moving at a hundred miles an hour. But on the island, life just seems to slow down and city life becomes secondary to nature.

Find cheap flights to Vancouver on Dohop.com

August 4, 2009

All-inclusive Mexico, Excluding the swine flu

Me and my older sister wanted to go somewhere for a week, but we were booking it with short notice and small budgets. So of course, all-inclusive Mexico was the perfect choice, since all that swine flu hype has certainly helped drop vacation prices. I don’t get the flu craze anyway: poor Mexico is suffering, so is the tourism industry in general, and even the pork meat industry is reporting declines in sales because of the politically incorrect name. I heard a statistic somewhere that you are more likely to get hit by a car in Mexico than get the swine flu, and though I cant provide a reference, trying to cross streets in Puerto Vallarta gives me faith its true.

Kristjana and I eating dinner by the pool

After our family members repeatedly warned us not to touch or eat anything mexican (obviously impossible) and avoid all sick people, we left for the Hacienda Resort & Spa, and ate and drank our moneys worth for 7 days straight. While my sister never drinks alcohol, she decided to “sample” all of my fancy cocktails (which all tasted the same: sugary, limey and alcoholic), and once one of the bartenders, Alfonzo, found out about her sobriety, he wooed her with a specialty coffee (coffee, Kahlua and rum) that he made for her almost every night. Kristjana, my most conservative family member, also shocked me one day when we were walking home from the beach; she decided to do the walk in her bikini, justified by the fact that the construction workers enroute “have been working all day and deserved a show. Besides, they whistle, so I know I look good!”

We did nothing all day but laze around, only deciding between poolside or oceanside, and both were so warm that they were more comparable to a cool hottub than a hot pool. We didnt even have to move to shop, since the sellers walked from beach chair to beach chair selling everything imaginable, the most impressive being a live, 3 foot iguana. Two other Canadian girls were entertaining to watch since they baught something from every single one of them, with 2 or 3 surrounding them at once at any given time. It was so warm every day that I managed to sweat off everything I drank (plus some), but somehow I still managed to break 3 of the chairs built for extremeley overweight north american tourists?!

While I always criticize packaged vacations and much prefer the thrill of backpacking and hostelling, once in a while its nice to be that spoiled tourist living out of an airconditioned hotel room and not worrying about enjoying anything but the great weather.

July 25, 2009

The Big Apple for the perfect NY holiday

I often travel through New York since the city has 3 major airports within a few kilometers of each other, offering an endless supply of travel opportunities. It also happens to be one of the cheapest cities to travel from, only a 4.5 hr direct flight away from Iceland (closer than west coast North America), and way cheaper and funner than London, the only other city i consider a major travel hub. I have been stalking flights to Cape Town, and often find flights with South African or British Airways that fly from New York, through London, and down to Cape Town, for cheaper than the exact same flight that just does the London to cape town segment. This time around, I made an actual visit to New York just to see New York, and spent 8 days in the city instead of 12 or 36 hrs like I usually do between flights enroute somewhere else.

tourists in the Big Apple

I´m glad to have done that since New York City is an amazing vacation place. I arrived 10 days ago, last Thursday, via an overnight bus from Montreal that was scheduled to arrive at 6:15 am and rolled in at a cool 7:45 after my cousin had waited in downtown rushour for an hour and half. By absolute coincidence, my mother and uncle from Vancouver were flying to Iceland via JFK and had that Thursday morning from 7 am til 11am in New York to meet up with me and my 3 cousins (and their wife/baby/husband) and we had the most glorious goat curry breakfast complete with rice, roti and merlot at some ridiculous time like 9 am. Then, dropping my mom and uncle at JFK at noon also coincided perfectly with Jon Smari, my partner in crime from Iceland, arriving in JFK from Iceland. New York is such a big city but only in New York would all our paths be able to collide like that!

Me and Jon Smari spent the week in my cousins basement apartment (were talking absolutely underground, no way to see sunlight or predict the weather/temperature… a strange feeling) and were joined by Clio from Montreal the next morning. We walked the entire island of manhattan, all of downtown, midtown, and the 51 city blocks of Central Park starting at 110th in Harlem where Jon Smari was a strikingly white minority. We literally shopped til we dropped, our feet covered in blisters and dirt after 10 hrs of city walking in poor foot attire. It also rained a few days, keeping us sore, dirty and wet, but with enough $7 pitchers of beer (Rudy’s Bar and Grill on 44th… an amazing find), we hardly noticed and just did the exact same exhausting marathon the following days. One cloudy day the entire top half of the empire state building disappeared in the clouds, and it so happened to be the only day we planned to go up to the top… but of course there was no use, so at least there’s still one reason to go back.

Some of the highlights included seeing the typical sights: the world trade center site, the empire state, the flat iron building, rockafeller center, DUMBO and walking over the Brooklyn bridge. Other strange highlights included meeting the Naked Cowboy (NYC mayor hopeful) and running into a 60kg 3m long snake at battery park… a little out of place, but still a beautiful creature. We also got to see a free concert by the salsa singer Frankie Negron in battery park, a free orchestra performance in prospect park by the NY Philharmonic, 2 broadway shows and a carriage ride through central park in the same carriage that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Angelina Jolie had once graced (or so the Irish driver told us).

My personal highlight was getting to spend time with some of my closest friends, all those mentioned already plus Ursula, my old roommate from one of the most amazing times in my life, Semester at Sea. We got a blissful 3 hour reunion together after almost a year without contact, which surely wasn´t long enough, but since she’s in NYC for good now, then its just another great reason to make it back to New York a.s.a.p!

July 14, 2009

The Maritimes

After five weeks in Montreal studying French, it was definitely time for a less academic, more “fun-in-the-sun” vacation, so last week me and my best friend Clio set off for an 8 day road trip through the Maritimes. We started in Montreal on a 14 hour car journey through Quebec and New Brunswick all the way to Halifax, Nova Scotia, right on the Atlantic coast. We got there with a random stranger who posted on craigslist rideshare for only $100 each, a bargain compared to the $200+ bus or $250 flight. Unfortunately for us, he liked to talk, and talk a lot, and mostly about himself. He was a mid-twenties, Italian high school teacher (also hairy and chubby with greasy curly hair) who boasted about the grade 11 girls who had crushes on him and boys who aspired to be him. Once in a while he would bring up his ex girlfriends and how he only dated or had interest in gorgeous women. Oh ignorance, but entertaining at the very least.

the boats in Alma resting on the sea bottom in low tide

After taking turns fighting for the backseat (where we could pretend we were sleeping and not engage in conversation), we made it safely to Halifax where a peer student that I met from the French program lived. Our host was Tim, one of the most friendly, positive, and energetic people I’ve ever met. He lives in a residence called Trinity House, run by members from the adjacent church, complete with a guest bedroom for two where we stayed. The times that Tim walked with us, he knew every person that was in anyway involved with King’s College, the oldest university in Canada where he studied. We spent most of our days doing the touristic clichés, and even though we were there from Monday to Thursday, we hit the town every night for some drinking and dancing festivities. East coast Canadians were super nice, and the food was great since we managed to feast on a $10 lobster meal each, sucker our way into some free street sausages, and indulge in the local brews. On our last night there, we saw a cover band called Mellotones play at the Seahorse, and they rocked out to some of the best songs with a 9 piece soul/funk band whose blonde curly-haired lead singer who could mimic Michael Jackson pretty convincingly inbetween playing his saxophone.

After Halifax, we took this door to door shuttle service to get to Prince Edward Island; it was about a 5 hour drive in an 11 passenger packed like a sardine can that started at 6:45 am, so, not very comfortable. Once we arrived in Charlottetown, PEI’s capital, we had the first, true summer day with 26 degree heat and no clouds in the sky. We grabbed fried scallop lunch at Peake’s, a restaurant right on the wharf, and made friends with a lonely guy at the table beside us. We chatted with him a bit, and when he realized we were out of towners looking for a nice beach to camp, he offered us a ride to Tea Hill. We spent most of the afternoon there sunbathing and relaxing, and then our rideshare that we had organized for the following morning from PEI to New Brunswick called to make arrangements for another early morning pick up.

He sounded really nice on the phone, but again, another random stranger from craigslist. He offered to pick us up then and take us to a beach closer to where he was staying so that the following morning it would be easier to accept, so we accepted. We moved to Bedford, to some secluded beach with more sand and calmer water. Chris, the rideshare guy, ended up being super strange and talking all sorts of contradictory information on the short ride over, so when he asked to come hang out with us on the beach, we quickly denied with some lame excuse. Then, being 2 paranoid female backpackers on a lonely beach, we decided to be stealth about our camping location by walking a few hundred meters over to this deserted mansion, which ended up being inhabited by an elderly couple with 13 Porches and 1 Mercedes. We camped on their lawn and told them about our safety concerns, so they made us feel nice and cozy on their perfectly groomed lawn and woke us up with bottled water and an offer to use their porcelain toilet. Since we had almost no other choice, we still met Chris in the morning to catch our ride to New Brunswick, and we were a lot calmer to share the car with his 60 year old aunty for the three hour drive.

In Fredericton, the capital of NB, we stayed with my roommate from Montreal. Matthew, or, more affectionately, Turbo, is a burly faced, lumberjack shirt wearing teddybear who is always singing or strumming his guitar. As you can imagine, he was also great company and a wonderful host, and we took a day trip down to Alma in the Bay of Fundy where they have the highest tides in the world. They say that their 10 meter tide differences make their harbor only accessible during high tide, and all other times, the boats rest on the ocean floor. Alma is a tiny village with a huge lobster industry, so for lunch, we feasted on more fresh lobster (and some snow crab) for about $6 – $9 each, and further indulged with the most amazing sticky buns I’ve ever had, complete with hot chocolate to drink. It was a chilly, misty day, so hot chocolate could not have been more appropriate as we walked along the incoming tide. On the way home we somehow got lost in Fundy national park, but since its only 20km around, it didn’t cost us much time, just a lot of confusion since there’s only one road through it and getting lost on the way out is quite an accomplishment. From Fredericton, we came back to montreal late last night, and tonight I’ll regretfully be parting Montreal and Clio. Tomorrow morning I’ll be waking up in New York after an overnight bus. Hopefully there will be no more Italians or Chris to share the long drive with…