travel

It was the stagnancy, the lack of urgent work to do in addition to the lack of people around me to distract me from the lack of work to do. I was like an ant plucked from its well-oiled colony, placed in a virtually utopian habitat. And it completely and utterly stressed me out.

When this Gee-Gee travels, only the finest greet him… and by finest I mean the finest cut out. While I may not have been greeted by the actual Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban ki-Moon while visiting Vienna a few weeks back, just a cardboard cut out, my colleagues and I did get the opportunity of a lifetime to visit and tour international institutions based out of Vienna.

The book will be split into two parts, with the first focusing on the travel, culture, and community aspect of Ottawa, and the second offering essays from Ottawa locals that encompass and relate to the city. Ebere and Muse are hoping that this will represent more people’s view of the city, giving a deeper inside perspective of what it means to live in Canada’s capital.

In lieu of International Education Week, the Fulcrum talks about why so many Canadian students are hesitant to study outside of this country.

In an effort to reinforce our patriotism, and temporarily make our way back onto Canadian soil, a friend and I decided to purchase tickets from Paris to Arras, a city just eight kilometres east of the memorial. We arrived at Arras station at around 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 8 and waited for a taxi to arrive to take us to the memorial. Alas, hours later and after many calls, no taxi came.

Considering my ideal night involves an entire bottle of wine and “Netflix and chilling” solo, I’m clearly no expert on the intricacies of wine drinking. As such, I spent my weekend touring the city of Bordeaux—renowned as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the wine capital of the world—in an attempt to learn a bit more about what exactly goes into my glass.

In search of the migrant reality, I decided to visit a nearby Syrian refugee camp in Paris. Located just outside tourist hotspots, the camp was a stark contrast to what I’d grown accustomed to in my first month. In the middle of the road an entire community was set up. About 60 families, from children to the elderly, were centred around a camp lined with tents and laden with garbage.

The people who drive the cars are just about as fancy as the cars themselves. Everyone here is thin and beautiful. It’s almost perplexing how skinny all of inhabitants manage to stay, despite how rich the food is. I say almost because there are stairs about every 100 metres, so it’s not really that perplexing. Come to France if you want to lose weight eating strictly butter.

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