I don't know

Nai-publish: 21.07.2018

In my originally started post, I asked the somewhat delayed question why I actually decided to come to Canada. Why originally? Because I didn't save it and had to start again...

I wanted to know if I can book a flight for somewhere far away again, despite all the comfort, and then stay there longer than a usual vacation period. Yes, it's exhausting to think every day where I will sleep in the evening and not knowing where I will be in 2 weeks. But the nice thing is, I can decide for myself and I can also decide to stay somewhere longer or to continue traveling if I don't like it. It's exciting not to know where you will be soon and it also makes you more creative, because if you don't have the budget to stay in a hotel every night or even stay in a hotel at all.

Last time I wrote that my next destination is Matane, on the St. Lawrence River, which is actually more like the Atlantic Ocean at that point. I only know 2 things about Matane: here is one of the 2 ports where you can take a ferry to Newfoundland and the drummer of 'Simple Plan' comes from Matane. As shown in the picture above, there are supposed to be shrimp here too. But that's a lie! The shrimp are caught on the other side of the St. Lawrence River, but because there are fishermen from Matane who catch the shrimp, he comes from Matane. If you look at the route on Google Maps, you can see that it takes about 6 1/2 hours by car from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island to Matane, Quebec. Some of you might know that I don't have a car. I mainly rely on public transportation. So I asked public transportation and it laughed at me. There is no bus from Charlottetown to Matane. At least no direct connection. Nobody wants to go from 'No Funswick' to Quebec. Why should they? They all speak French there, and nobody in No Funswick can understand them. Someone also told me that nobody in France can understand them either, because Quebec French is more like a slang. Anyway, I tortured the internet and found out that you can take a bus from Charlottetown to Campbellton, and then you have to take the train from Campbellton to Matapedia, which is 24 km away and already in Quebec, and then you can take the bus from Matapedia to Matane.

The gray dot is Charlottetown, A= Campbellton, B= Matapedia, C= Matane

That also takes only 2 days and one overnight stay in an Airbnb in Campbellton -_-. Since I really wanted to go to Matane, I actually did it. Well, everything except the train part. The bus from Charlottetown to Campbellton took 10 hours. I would like to remind you that the whole drive takes a total of 6 1/2 hours by car. Well, at least I was picked up by my Airbnb host at 6 pm and driven to his farm in the middle of nowhere.

Goat nibbles on my pants -.-

Pekaboo

Since I had been sitting on the bus for so long, I wanted to go for a walk and since I didn't know my way around in the middle of nowhere, I walked along the road to the nearest neighbor. Since he was only 15 minutes away, I was even more happy that he was standing at the door and I could ask him if there was a trail nearby, preferably without asphalt. He said there was an old railway track 4 miles (miles? Oh man, I have no idea about miles and the internet doesn't work in the middle of nowhere) away, which I could walk along. Well, I didn't find the railway track, but I found another path and it was beautiful too.

What do you do when you're stranded? Get help. So I walked/crept with my big backpack to yesterday's neighbor and asked him if he could maybe call a taxi for me. The older man invited me to have breakfast with his family and insisted on driving me to Matapedia. Yes, OK :) Sometimes I don't know if I'm just lucky or if people have pity on me because my backpack is bigger than me. Anyway, I could only have a quick breakfast because I still wanted to catch my bus. The bus stop looked like this, by the way:

It was just a parking lot between a school and a retirement home. I had to wait for the bus in the retirement home and I even got internet. Yuhuu. I didn't miss the bus either, because there is a time zone between No Funswick and Quebec, so I still had an hour and could call Nico with the stolen internet :)
When I arrived in Matane, I was greeted on the farm where I had been woofing for the last 2 weeks by the worst watchdog in the world:

Tao loves everyone who comes to the farm, because he could potentially get cuddled.
Also living on the farm: Denis and Marie-Helen (Denis speaks English pretty well, Marie understands me but can't answer), and Jeanne, Rachel, and Eli (11, 9, and 7 years old). The two younger ones understand nothing of what I say except 'Hello' and Jeannes favorite sentence is 'I don't know'.

Jeanne, India, Tao, Rachel, Denis, and Eli

I also play soccer with the kids from time to time, even if the coordination doesn't always work out so well...

Fortunately, there is still India-Jane. Not only does she have the misfortune of having her name as the feminine form of Indiana Jones, she also has to translate all my tasks for me. At least now she has someone to chat with who doesn't ask her every evening if she wants to play cards. Since none of the kids understand me, I am luckily quite uninteresting to them and can rest after work. Farm life is relatively unspectacular, but exhausting and fun :) The highlight for India and me are the strawberry picking days :)