Day 35: Ottawa

📍 Location: Ottawa, Ontario, CA

So I forgot my jacket in Montreal. I walked straight past it when I walked with all of my stuff out the door. I found out just before I got on the train towards Ottawa. I know I know, how stupid can you be. But yeah, I didn’t want to miss the train and to change all of my plans just for a jacket. Max could just send the coat to Toronto and then we would be reunited within five days. So I set foot in the vessel and went on yet another spectacular adventure.

It turned out that the coat was a bigger need than I initially thought. Because when I arrived, it was five degrees with a lot of rain and strong winds. A jacket comes in handy then. So here’s the plan: in stead of traveling further to Toronto today, I’m going back to Montreal for the weekend. Party and chill with my friends for a few days more. And then Monday my jacket and I will finally leave Montreal for good and go to Toronto. So I recommend forgetting your jacket because it can bring you a lot of happiness and joy.

With Couchsurfing I’d also found a place in Ottawa where I could stay for free for two nights. I stayed with Gregory, a super nice Canadian who takes the whole Couchsurfing thing to the next level. For my arrival he had put a little Dutch flag on the table to make me feel at home (later he said that he actually went to a flag store to get that), bought some Heineken beers and practiced a little Dutch the days before I came. He actually told me that he had been hosting different couchsurfers for already two months non-stop, just because he likes to meet people from different countries. And it’s not that he just offers a place to sleep besides that does his own thing. He actually spends a lot of time with his couchsurfers. For example, he took me and another girl that stayed at his place to his work at the radio station, to a bar to watch a baseball game, he cooked his special Hungarian dish for me in the evening and he took us to a Couchsurfing meetup.

The last thing was kind of interesting, because I found out that there’s a whole community behind Couchsurfing with lots of people who are super passionate about the whole thing. They weekly hang out with each other, exchange cultures and share travel stories. A little bit too much for me to be honest - I’m literally a couch surfer - but I can appreciate their enthusiasm.

So in a few hours I’m going back to Montreal. By car this time, because I’ve booked a ride online at some kind of carpooling site. Kangaride it’s called. Everyone here uses it. I think this is going to be my main mode of transportation, because it’s super cheap and it comes the closes to my original plan, which was driving a car myself during the whole road trip. Long story, but that was not a possibility anymore unfortunately. So now I’m going to let the driver - called Justine I saw - drive for me. Hopefully Justine can drive a little bit.