Before I first came to Vancouver, I knew about the city only two things - the first: it is surrounded by the fantastic beauty - mountains with snow caps, forests with Indian totems and the ocean with the whales; Second, it is one of the five cities with the highest standard of living in the world, recently won first place. But it was necessary to call in the city and go through it, so that ruined for all its advantages. No, of course, the nature of British Columbia - this is not a red-hot frying pan southern Ontario with a lightning rod - CN Tower - on the beach. Vsyat, though, Lake Capilano Lake, which can be reached by bus.
This lake may seem familiar if you watched the TV series The X-Files or 4400.
In addition, 40% of drinking and industrial water in Vancouver - because of him. Environment in British Columbia is in the first place and drinking water from the tap is better than bottled.
Here you can find and a suspension bridge across the river and a glass bridge along the rocks and smaller bridges in the trees.
Or take a mountain that's Grouse Mountain - tall with Ai-Petri in Crimea, but with a view of Vancouver instead of Yalta and the Pacific Ocean instead of the Black Sea.
The city lies at the bottom like a toy.
And the mountain Baker Mountain in the United States, which is erroneously considered the mountain of savers Paramount Pictures - that, in fact, invented, based on a mountain in Utah, which has even less resemblance to it than this.
Here you can walk in May t-shirt among the three-meter snowdrifts and sweat from the heat.
After all, beauty is - right on the bus can drive or take a lift and for $ 40 or overpower foot lift and back to move out already for $ 10.
But no, I had to come here through Banff National Park - where the Rocky Mountains, nature reserves, avalanches ... just not the same effect. How to fall in love with the best place on earth (as stated in the motto of British Columbia - «The best place on Earth») when next in Alberta - better. Of course, it's all right here in the city and still have the ocean with colorful sunsets on a dirty beach, bathed in the warm sunshine and the smell of the grass - but not beveled smoked.
English Bay - perhaps one of the main promenades.
But again, there is the sea, but still it is not Cuba or the Dominican Republic - cold. Somehow with nature - cool, but never the best place in the world for each individual item. So maybe all is not as well in the amount of? View on downtown opens on the opposite side of the bay - from Jericho Beach.
There the city aquarium, which is not just a place where tormented sea creatures, but one of the foremost marine research organizations in the world - are saving the salmon and seals, whale watching and other behemoths.
If Vancouver - an example of a city with one of the highest living standards in the world (5 th place after Vienna, Zurich, Auckland and Munich, according to Mercer), I'm disappointed in this world, finally convinced inferiority of the human race and give newcomers command fire porazhanie on this stupid planet neutron bomb. The planet itself nothing wrong, and here we are with you - stupid ass. We have built a city among such beauty, one of the best cities in the world and zasrali it because we are so easier and more convenient to live. The main trouble in Vancouver - the homeless. There warmest winter in Canada, so all evil flock to the west coast. And as in Canada itself is incomparably less medical care than in the US, so the evil still flock to the north.
In North America, all homeless people wander because they themselves make such a choice - the government is ready to provide and provides them with subsidized housing, facilities for training and job search, but they like more - Why strain yourself? A democratic society behaved on compassion and sensitivity, trained to help - it gives the fish but do not need a fishing rod, and when they need spits in his face, instead of giving a fish rod. For God's sake, they make a choice, thinking about yourself, but do not think about how they spoil the city, arranging their holes, stretching the garbage and just Gadya around him - say, "I'm homeless, I'm serious and I was not up to the higher matters such as ecology ". Fortunately, in Vancouver, unlike Toronto it is illegal to sleep on the sidewalks and build makeshift shelters improvised.
As if one little stray, Vancouver smokes like a chimney. By comparison, Toronto not smoke at all. Here at every step someone smokes, the streets littered with cigarette butts just that so many are beginning to stink in themselves.
Unique local air - mountain and ocean at the same time - making Vancouverites Statistics healthiest and most long-lived in Canada. But the crowd of idiots is too much - you need to dirty the atmosphere in the city until the middle of the entire North American level.
Now I think you've seen all of Vancouver beau monde - hrenushki, fasten your seatbelts, start trash. Come on West Hastings Street (West Hastings St.) in downtown: the homeless are increasing, merge into a solid mass and acquire sunken eyes, thin hair and holes in the veins.
Some wise guy stuck in downtown methadone clinic - who does not know this clinic where prescription heroin instead kolyat less dangerous drug - and around it, of course, formed a hellish inferno.
Where junkie - where things lose their value for money because the price increases have powders and liquids. The problem zasiraniya city these people, of course, do not care at all - even their own crap circulatory and nervous system a little worried because life in Vancouver - kicks. On Hastings are formed natural pawn shops and flea markets rotten.
It is 2 minutes walk from the fact that it would be in Toronto CN Tower - the heart of the city.
It is not surprising that the park - even that just two trees and a monument on the corner - here in the district are closed at sunset. It is nonsense to Canada.
One of the typical Vancouver gateways, or as they are called beautiful, «back alley».
2015 promises to all those who need to provide houses, but knowing their desire for the will as they see it, by 2016 everything will be as before. Therefore, at the next election measure in 2014, I already know for whom to give their vote - for anyone who promises to cover street with napalm. Although what I mean, it's a free country - here, we respect the choice of other people, so let them choose, in the place of the Pacific Ocean drag this shameful part of Canadian land and its inhabitants.
Literally the next street after W.Hastings - Chinese district. It is logical to assume that in the near Asian city in Canada, where more than a third of the population - Asians and the relationship continues to grow, it will be a colorful Chinatown. But no, compared with the Chinese district of Toronto with real Chinese people out there who do not speak in English, is exposed on the street with their trays of dried cockroaches and cheap Chinese fakes, here - just civilization. For beautiful gate - just a few sanitized shops where the Chinese seem to come every day from areas such as Richmond, to work.
Chinese Garden of Sun Yat-sen name (Dr. Sun Yat-Sen) - the first real classical garden built outside of China (1985-1986). There's me, too, I drove a toothless homeless and in fictitious language is something I croaked. I still think that he thought that he spoke in English.
One of the symbols of the city - a 25-meter replica of the Eiffel Tower is not the building Vudvords Redivelopment.
The rest of the city unusual and strange, but you can get used to. You can get used to a low tower - Harbour Centre Tower - which is not at all like the tower in Toronto or Calgary as well, a pancake on the roof of the house 3 times lower than the CN Tower.
Downtown is not commercial and is almost entirely residential, therefore, it is lit at night, and then - go out because people go to bed. In Toronto, it burns all night.
But a ticket to the tower and besides that is two times cheaper than in the CN Tower - $ 15, so still and is valid all day: you can climb in the afternoon, and then again in the evening at sunset. Correct pricing in a word.
Here, bustling around the port rather than skyscrapers. Although what I mean - it does not boil - just it is. The quiet kind of life, in general.
The atmosphere of the resort like Sevastopol.
Or even Yalta. City quite to your relaxation.
Something like Amsterdam and the cool maritime climate and legalaysu.
A tree-lined streets in the center like the old districts of Kharkiv.
In the city well-developed cycling infrastructure. On signs with street names drawn if there is a bike path.
Intersection with a road bicycle paths are marked bright green.
It's nice that the center of Vancouver is covered not just bike lanes in Toronto, and separated from the road border - both in Montreal and Amsterdam. Even bridges bikeways separated ugly concrete blocks of the road. The metro has a special place in the carriages for bicycles. But not a normal kind of Bixi rental in Toronto and Montreal - bicycles can be taken in rent in shops, but then they must return to the same. More about veloinfrastukture tell when buying lead. And here it is the world's largest water airport - you can spend hours watching seaplanes take off and sitting down.
How and TTC in Toronto, subway, skaytren (light rail), buses and trolley buses (yes, I'm here for the first time since Ukraine met trolley!) Constitute a single system with a common payment system. In the subway - payment by credit card machines. It is convenient if there is pandemonium in the rush hour. But the buses need to pour exactly Zhmenya stuff - paper notes they take. Even zhetonchiki system in Toronto is a hundred thousand times more convenient - you can buy for a week not to wear stacks of stuff, though, if you do not trifle, and so you start up. Or then asked to pay for the transplant on the subway, for example. Although here too there Fare Saver - loose pages booklet, which will eliminate the little things. Monthly ticket is cheaper than Toronto - $ 90 for one and $ 110 for the two zones, compared to $ 120 in Toronto. Entrance to the subway and Skaytren, by the way, absolutely free as in Calgary and Amsterdam. You are on your own risk can not pay for travel, but there is little chance of running into a controller.
But it is unusual for Canada, where the influence of Asia - it's the management of the trains. All subway and Skytrain - automated drive without driver and, lo and behold, even without the aid of three conductors in Toronto.
Trains in the subway - much wider Skytrain (as should be the case with a light metro) and represent a mix of new compositions shortened in Toronto with handrails from Paris and Montreal.
It is believed that in Vancouver to find a job is more difficult than Toronto - the labor market is much smaller salaries percent HB 10-20% lower. I look at it this way - in Toronto I could find on one site 400 jobs in their specialty, in Vancouver - only 30. But I need something only one! As always the most difficult to engage in a dialogue with the company, it is much easier to do through friends. There is already hitting on interviews all depends on you. So two interviews which I went for a week in Vancouver turned two job offers, one of which I gladly accepted. Taxes (income tax) in British Columbia, a little higher than in Ontario - 12.29% to 11.16% against me in Toronto, but less than the sales tax (sales tax): 12% vs. 13%. Not to say (and say everything is expensive here), the cost of living is not much different from Toronto. But there is something that can not be bought in Toronto for any life - beautiful nature, and plenty of opportunities for cruising tourism.
So, I went to Vancouver in order to find a new home, and was a bit disappointed by what I saw, just happen to a small Parisian syndrome in a city with one of the world's highest standard of living. Not enough to say "my legs will not be here," but enough to think "is it worth it the effort?". One of my friends who can not tolerate smoke was anxious to British Columbia, and so, Kostya, at the expense of Vancouver think thrice. Although the photographer is of course a paradise - from the social sphere to landscapes, from the industrial to the reporting of wildlife, but smoking is right at home in Odessa.
Accommodation had to look harder than in Toronto - the prices here are either the same or slightly higher, but here at home older and differently less pleasant.
Today, we rented an apartment in Burnaby on the 20th floor with views of the mountains - with such foggy mornings like this lodge higher is required:
