Chinatown or the zombie apocalypse

And again, at 7:30 a.m. the alarm clock was supposed to go off. However, I was awake a little earlier and was able to go to the bathroom without any panic while the men were still snoring away. Later, when everyone was fit and ready, we set off to look for a breakfast location. Not far from the hotel we discovered the White Spot. Good American breakfast. After breakfast we headed to Rogers Arena. Our tour guides had arranged for us to watch the Vancouver Canucks practice. The gentlemen found it very interesting, I did😅 It was okay. I was hoping for a little more action. After training, we strolled through the fan shop before setting off to explore the city. Our first stop was China Town. What should I say or where should I start? It was 💩. The main street through the district is nothing special. Really boring. I was a little disappointed with Toronto back then, but here... boring. So we decided to turn around. Since going back the same way is boring, we walked around the block to go back along the parallel street.
Little did we know, we were on Hastings Street. Also called the Horror of Hastings by the locals. The first few meters okay, but then 🙈 I can't even put it into words. LA was topped. Crack zombies were lying, standing and hanging everywhere. They gave themselves the syringes on the street, passed you with their syringe equipment in their hand and looked crazy, the whole pile on the sidewalk that we had to avoid, they weren't from dogs🤮 Mountains of garbage and people on top of them, really crazy. I read up a bit later (I should have done it in advance😅). 10,000 drug addicts live here in a very small space. Every third person has HIV. There's a whole group of researchers investigating what's going on here. Unless I translated it completely wrong, nowhere in the world is there such an increase in the virus as here. Really bad. As already mentioned, what we saw can't really be put into words. And what was so crazy was that there was an intersection, still Hastings Street, but suddenly you were in a different world. There are shops and bars again. “Normal” people, clean streets... Unbelievable. PS: the 2 pictures are stolen. I didn't really want to take my phone out there or record what we saw.

Our next destination was Granville Sports Corner. The store is not big, but there is a small selection of different jerseys and hats. However, there was nothing for us. Or what you liked wasn't the right size.
Since it was starting to rain really badly, we settled down in the Ox Pub. We had walked past there beforehand and it looked nice, as an Irish pub should look like. 2 or 3 drinks then we walked through the Pacific Center towards the hotel. Okay, I had a stopover at bath & body works while the gentlemen preferred to wait outside😅 Then a detour to the drug store, got a few throat drops (my throat has been hurting since yesterday) and we were back at the hotel. We quickly packed our ice hockey gear and went on tour again. This time we went to the Moose Vancouver. A small but nice rock pub. Here too, one or two drinks, something to eat and then on to Rogers Arena for the Vancouver Canucks game against the Chicago Blackhawks. We quickly picked up the souvenir jersey for Micha that we ordered this morning from the fan shop and we were in the stadium. Unfortunately, my neck was getting worse and worse. Swallowing hurt so much and a little later I couldn't even speak anymore. Andi and Jörg looked after me with hot tea, but I think they also found the peace and quiet quite nice. Our tour guide Andres said I should disinfect with schnapps. Now get some schnapps in the stadium without shelling out millions for it. Then a flash of inspiration, I have salt schnapps at home in case of tonsillitis. Salt definitely helps☝🏼 Dr Google asked and yes, salt helps. As luck would have it, less than 5 minutes later we received vouchers for one bag of popcorn per person. And how do North Americans love their popcorn? -Salty, exactly. It sounds really stupid and unbelievable, but after 3 handfuls of the disgusting stuff I slowly started to feel better. The drops from the drug store, painkillers, nothing helped. And now salty popcorn is becoming a miracle cure🙄🤷🏼‍♀️
Well, the peace and quiet was over🤣
After the game, which by the way was once again really boring (Chicago is damn bad and lost 2-0), we went back to the Ox with a new zest for life and energy. 😀 Another tea for my throat and after the last call straight to the hotel. Here I made a gargle solution with the salt I stole from the arena's food court. Again, very disgusting, but since I'm writing the blog a day late, I know it helped 😉