'All's well that ends well'

My first lesson learned here: Canada is not for hitchhikers!

My second lesson learned: Never judge a day till it's over!

I went to see the Niagara Falls, and travelling on a budget, of course I chose to go by public transport instead of booking a carefree but rather expensive tourist excursion. Due to the jetlag I started off early, however, it wasn't early enough because when I arrived at the local coach station, all return tickets were already sold out except for the late bus at 5:45 pm (online booking didn't work for whatever reason). This late bus would give me roughly 6 hours at the Falls, which was a rather long time to fill. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day so I chose to go, being optimistic that I would find some options at that place.

The Falls were quite impressive, at least if you consider the amount of water going down there every minute (Wikipedia says it's more than 168,000 m3). The place was packed with tourists and I was 'done' taking some pictures and enjoying the view in the crowd after approx. 45 min. At the tourist information center I learned that there was a nice place further up north called Niagara-on-the-Lake, a historic place with a lot of 19th-century buildings and Fort George, a restored British military fort dating back to 1812. That was it! I knew where I was going to spend the day. The visitor transportation system, however, was to cost me another 22,- CAD which I didn't want to pay. It was supposed to be no more than 30 km, and having had such good experience with hitchhiking in Iceland, I considered trying that, very well aware of the fact that it is not as popular in North America.

I was quite lucky because already after 15 min I was picked up by two eldery American men (presumably former hippies) who didn't mind the trouble of making a detour and dropping me off at the place I wanted to go to. Unfortunately, the spot they did drop me off, was at the boundary of the district of Niagara-on-the-lake with the actual historic old town being still 6 km away. Anyway, I was really greatful for the ride and set out to explore the area by foot.

The town was pretty (very touristy though) but in my critical view of an educated German historian, not at all historical anymore. All the buildings, and especially Fort George were in parts newly built and completely restored looking more like a film set than a historical site.

I soon chose to make my way back to the coach station at Niagara Falls and I positioned myself at the town's exiting road in order to hitchhike back. Well, I was standing there for almost 2 hours with only one single car stopping for me during this whole time (and he was not going in my direction!). To make matters worse, when I finally decided to take the visitor shuttle back (because I was running late for the bus to Toronto), they charged me a 24-hour visitor pass (for a single ride of 30 min!!) saying that this was the only ticket option I could get. I didn't have a choice, did I?

Next, the greyhound bus I had booked to go back to Toronto was delayed by 30 min, so by the time I finally boarded this bus, I was really pissed off with the whole adventure of exploring Niagara Falls. And you know me, I must have looked like that! There was an elderly lady sitting next to me who was eager to make small talk with me (not my best skill and favorite anyways) and even though you could consider my behavior as being rude (at least on the grounds of North American standards), she didn't keep from trying. In the end, we actually had a really interesting conversation (it turned out that she was Austrian but had immigrated to Canada as a young girl in the 1950s), and apparently because I 'moved [her] motherly heart looking so sad', she invited me for dinner at her daughter's house that night. I don't know why I often have this effect on elderly women that they develop these kinds of feelings towards me. (To those of you who might feel spoken to: this is a serious question, but please don't respond to it here in this blog! :o)

So, in the end, it was quite an unexpected, but splendid turn in yesterday's series of events.