Sleeping Around (15 page)

I found Bob sitting on the back of his truck nursing a bleeding finger. ‘The fucker tried to chew it off,' he sniffed as he showed me the large gash on his finger.

The party fizzled out rather abruptly after that brief interlude of pandemonium. I didn't mind, though. After I'd thrown Mr Dubai off the couch, I was in bed by 2.30.

‘Thanks for organising the gang violence last night,' I said to Bob as we drove to the airport.

‘You did tell me that you wanted to get to know the locals,' Bob said with a wry smile.

‘Do you normally have trouble with the gangs?' I asked.

‘Nothing like this has ever happened to us before,' Bob said. ‘The gangs don't usually hassle us, they just fight other gangs.' The police told Bob that the gang was part of the Young Latino Cobras (which is not to be confused with the Spanish Insane Cobras).

‘They have all sorts of weird-ass names,' Bob said. Other weird-ass Chicago gang names include the Looney Toon Crew, the Krazy Getdown Boys and The Insane Popes.

When I spoke to Bob a few months later, he'd just been talking to a friend who he hadn't seen since the fateful night. His friend said, ‘The last time I saw you, you were running out the door with a frying pan in your hand screaming bloody fucking murder!' Until then, Bob had forgotten all about his choice of weapon, which had mysteriously vanished.

‘My brother and I have been speculating ever since that night,' Bob told me, ‘wondering what kind of asshole steals a frying pan from a party.'

CANADA

9

‘On the weekends I let my beard grow, fix cars, cut down trees, drink beer and get out of control with my buddies.'

Jeremy Ribbinck, 27, Kitchener, Canada

CouchSurfing.com

You may very well wonder why I chose Kitchener as my Canadian couch-surfing destination. I could have elected to surf in vibrant Toronto, the centre of Canadian culture and media; or rugged Calgary, nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains; or European-flavoured Québec City, bristling with historic buildings; or even charming Montreal with its old-world atmosphere. The couch-surfing hosts of Kitchener weren't exactly glowing with praise:

Kitchener really isn't all that great I must admit but hey, for all you odd birds who want to come here—my place is open. :)

Natasha, 27

I would love for you to come, as I love meeting travellers, but I'm warning you that there is absolutely NOTHING to do in this poor excuse for a town.

Caroline, 23

But despite the locals' lack of enthusiasm, there were two things that drew me to this somewhat nondescript provisional city in the middle of nowhere: sausages and beer. Kitchener is home to the second largest Oktoberfest in the world after Munich and my visit just happened to coincide with the week-long celebrations. Caroline might have said that there was absolutely nothing to do in Kitchener, but she obviously wasn't a fan of doing the chicken dance and eating Kartofelpuffers.

And anyway, Kitchener couldn't possibly be that bad. After all, it's by no means the only city that gets a bad rap from its own residents. Even my own beloved country has its mud-slinging critics:

I live in Canberra, which is the capital of Australia, but unfortunately it's a really really boring city and there's stuff all to do.

Lynn, 22

Peter from Telford in Shropshire, UK, was a bit more blunt:

This town is a shithole, but maybe you like visiting shitholes.

I can't imagine many couch requests pouring in for Hutchinson, Kansas, either:

I have lived here my entire life and it sucks. Hutch is a trash hole infested with lazy non-working money sucking users.

Ben, 24

Then again, some aspersions are probably close to the truth:

Welcome to Hell
Firas, 38
Baghdad, Iraq

Although most of the couch-surfers in Kitchener were a bit more complimentary about their town, there really didn't seem to be much to do if some of the hosts' interests were anything to go by. I didn't even understand what Susan's list meant:

Interests: transpersonal and intrapersonal psychological phenomena

At least 32-year-old Ryan liked to mix it up a bit:

Interests: dancing in grocery stores late at night (when they play the really good music), television and food (especially baked goods)

No one listed their interests as sausages and beer, but 27-year-old Jeremy's weekend pursuits of beard-growing, car-fixing, tree-cutting and beer-drinking sounded good to me.

When I emailed Jeremy to request his couch he wrote back with a detailed itinerary mapped out for me. He also wrote:

I am a bit of a con man, so my personality may be less interesting than it appears. I also don't know if I am fit to represent Canada on the world stage. I am currently half-drunk and reek of strippers so if this makes no sense say so and I will try again later :)

Jeremy had kindly offered to pick me up from Toronto airport, two hours east of Kitchener, and when I finally found him in the crowded arrivals hall I said: ‘Sorry, I didn't recognise you with a shirt on.' In his couch surfing profile picture Jeremy is striking a bronzed Adonis-on-the-beach pose.

We trudged to the furthest point in the car park past hundreds of vacant car spaces till we stopped at a lone red beaten-up Volkswagen hatch. ‘I took out the starter motor,' Jeremy said. ‘I had to drive around till I found a car space on an incline, so I can roll-start it.'

Jeremy seemed quiet and a bit shy, particularly after being with boisterous Bob and his friends. I've met a lot of Canadians in my travels and, although they are often incredibly friendly, they are mostly a subdued lot. I guess that when you live next door to a brash and loud neighbour all your life you are always vulnerable to looking and acting a bit boring in comparison. After only five minutes in the car Jeremy told me that Canadians don't like Americans. ‘American culture rules our lives,' he said. ‘We're more interested in them than our own country sometimes. There is more on the news about US politics than there is on Canadian politics.'

‘That's because American politicians like to start big important wars and give big important speeches about saving the world from terrorists,' I said.

‘We know everything about the States, but they know absolutely nothing about us,' he continued. ‘On a TV show last week a Canadian comedian walked through the streets of a US city collecting donations. He told them that because of global warming the Canadian parliamentary igloos were melting, so they needed money to rebuild them. Almost every person he asked said that it was very sad and gave him some money.'

Not long after leaving the airport we were driving through rolling green farmland and cornfields. It looked just like America. Jeremy was brought up on a cattle farm an hour out of Kitchener and his parents, who still lived there, were now retired and leased the land to another farmer. The only livestock they had left was their pet horse.

We stopped at the farm because Jeremy wanted to ‘find' a starter motor. His parents' two-storey red brick farmhouse was on top of the biggest hill in the county and was surrounded by giant oaks and elms (Jeremy told me that in winter up to 50 cars park on the side of road and use the hill to go sledding). We drove past the house and straight into the barn. Inside, amongst a collection of rusted farming equipment and a couple of bales of hay, were five old Volkswagens in various stages of disrepair. ‘I keep all my old cars,' Jeremy said. ‘I've had seven Volkswagens and I've kept them all for spare parts.'

After pulling out a considerably corroded starter motor from one of the considerably corroded cars, Jeremy crawled underneath his current car and started bashing things. I stood back as sparks flew out from the top and bottom of the engine. ‘Don't worry!' Jeremy barked over the loud cracking noise. ‘I'm always fixing things.' I stood back a little further when he told me that the week before, while trying to install a dimmer light in his lounge room, he zapped himself and almost set the flat on fire.

After almost two hours during which Jeremy had tried three different starter motors from three different cars, we drove off again without one. Twenty minutes later there was an incredibly loud clicking noise from the engine and we pulled over into the car park of The Beer Store (they have a huge sign with a photo of a glass of beer on it just in case you're a little confused about what they sell).

‘Can you buy rum or vodka at The Beer Store?' I asked while we waited for Jeremy's friend Jeff to pick us up.

‘No, you have to get that at The Liquor Store,' Jeremy explained.

He wasn't making it up. The government runs both ‘stores' and they are the only place that you can buy beer or liquor (and never the twain shall meet).

Jeff arrived in a new sleek black Pontiac. ‘For God's sake buy a decent car,' Jeff said, shaking his head. ‘Jeremy's cars break down at last twice a week,' Jeff remarked smugly as he loaded my bags into the boot (or trunk as the Americans— sorry I mean Canadians—say).

Jeff looked even more clean-cut than Jeremy and it only took him two minutes to mention Americans. ‘Do Australians hate Americans as much as we do?' he asked as we drove through the outskirts of Kitchener.

It also took Jeremy only two minutes to sum up everything there was to say about Kitchener. Set between Lake Eyrie and Lake Ontario, the city has a population just over 200 000 and is the home of Schneider Foods, which is famous all across Canada for its sausages.

Kitchener looked just like an American city, but neater. We drove past neat conservative houses, neat conservative shops, neat conservative people and the neatest lawns I've ever seen. Every blade of grass was mowed to perfection. Most houses also had Halloween decorations strung up on their porches and pumpkin heads in the garden. ‘Isn't Halloween American?' I asked.

‘That's why we love it,' said Jeremy sardonically.

Jeremy lived close to the city centre and he worked in a building that was, at all of eight storeys, the city's tallest. He told me what he did for a job and I nodded and said, ‘Oh, yeah'. I knew what he'd said, but I still had no idea what he did. He worked in the IT department of MCAP— the largest independent mortgage lender in Canada—where he ‘upgraded the underwriter's software compatibility'. He also did casual lumberjacking on Saturdays.

Jeremy lived in a neat (I'm sorry, I have to stop saying neat, but I just can't help myself) one-bedroom apartment with his cat Bentley and a very impressive couch. The couch folded out to a queen-size futon bed. Not long after Jeremy had showered and cleaned off the grease a crowd of people, including Jeremy's girlfriend Danika, arrived in a convoy of taxis en route to the Oktoberfest festival.

Kitchener does have a legitimate claim to hold ‘Canada's Great Bavarian Festival' because up until 1916 Kitchener was called Berlin (they didn't want to be associated with those nasty Germans after the war) and more than 25 per cent of the population have German heritage. The festival began in 1969 and now attracts more than 700 000 visitors to such very German venues as the Heidelberg Haus, Altes Muenchen Haus, Hubertushaus, Oberkrainer Haus, Ruedesheimer Garten and the Schwaben Club. We were heading to the very un-German sounding Queensmount Ice Skating Arena for a Rocktoberfest event. There were also events called Hip-Hoptoberfest featuring Canadian hip-hop acts, Pridetoberfest celebrating the Gay Pride of Kitchener, and Dogtoberfest with games and competitions for families with dogs.

‘There are lots of ice-hockey rinks in Canada,' Jeremy told me as we marched towards the entrance. ‘They outnumber hospitals three to one.'

I had no doubt the Canadians took their ice-hockey rinks seriously. Two stern-faced security guards performed a methodical and ponderous examination of my bag and its contents before I even stepped inside. When I did get inside, however, I have to say I was suitably impressed. The ice-skating rink, minus the ice, had been totally transformed into an authentic German beer hall, complete with long trestle tables lined with fellows wearing lederhosen and Bavarian felt hats and frauleins in dirndls and plaits. Up on the stage Walter Ostanek, the 70-year-old Polka King (and winner of five Canadian Grammys for Best Polka Player, Jeremy told me), was bouncing around doing the chicken dance. This really was just like a Bavarian beer festival and I couldn't wait to get to the bar and grab myself a large frosty stein of German beer.