I spent the first 3 nights at Samuel. I found him on Couchsurfing. His house is open for his guests, and there are all the time, even he has a very small apartment. He bakes every day a meat or vegetable cake, very good. When Emilie came to Vancouver, we let some luggage at his place. In the last planned night we visit him. He cooked Mamaliga with chicken liver and heart!

All our discussions with him were insightful, after I thought about some things from a different perspective: in Judaism there are no saints, not in Islam, so I could infer that Christianism is somehow a polytheistic religion; volunteering is bad, because it takes jobs from people; Europe has an issue that accepted only low education immigrants. Samuel told me about his experience of emigration, that the Canadians stick in the close circle of family, and that they do a lot of sport.

Mark was my second Couchsurfing host. He lives in Richmond, the Chinese area. He comes from Fujian, his daughter and ex-wife live there. I left him 1 day before his journey there. This is the Fujian tea ritual.

I met 2 Romanians in Vancouver, both of them bakers, and both of them are the only persons who don’t like living in Vancouver. Nicu is a Jew born and grown up in Colentina, my neighborhood. He consider that the quality of the food is very, so he eats only organic from the farmers, and his own traditional bread. He told me that in the milk they put a lot of steroids and chemicals, and he goes to ‘steal’ milk from a small farm. In Canada, by law, all the milk must be pasteurized. This law was lobbied by big farms, in order to put out of business the small ones. And now you can find non pasteurized milk only of the few remaining farms, but either you buy it as skin cream, or soap, and you still it and put in a box the money. It’s like drug dealing.

The story of the milk was confirmed by Jeannette. She is native and manager at the post office. We met her at a private artist concert, while dancing. She saved us from putting the hammock in the rain. She is an amazing person. She makes art crafts and sends to unknown people in the world. She is real Communist and she does a lot of volunteer work.

Next to Emilie is Russell, our guide in the musical life of Vancouver. He plays double-bass, and once at Montreal festival. Emilie played once with him and he took us to 3 other concerts. He shared how is the life for a jazzman here.