Jenni Ajderian

CHAT          IMPROV          WOMEN          UNEXPECTED      It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Fringe show must be in want of an audience. Since the best form of advertising seems to be word of mouth, it makes sense to promoters to give out a small number of free tickets in the initial stages of a show's run, so that seats are filled, laughs shared, and memories made. In these early stages it is therefore worthwhile for an audience member to not have a plan, to go out of an evening and see what you may stumble upon, even if it ends up being just a cheeky pint in the shadow of a huge up-turned cow.      On just such a night, a friend and I stumbled into Monkey Toast: the Improvised Chat Show, imported from Canada by David Shore. The format of such a show seemed alien at first (whi...

     A late bus brought me not to the home of my next WWOOFing host, but to his uncle Clément, the sixty-year-old who responded to my explanation that I was on une année sabbatique (a gap year) with the explanation that he was on  une vie sabbatique.      Sitting in the midday sun at Marché Jean-Talon sipping face-twitchingly strong coffee, you could easily be convinced you were in Europe. Here in the depths of the francophone part of Montréal there is barely a shred of english in sight, and now in the absence of a travel companion (apart from the ever-loyal Boogie Bear, of course), I find myself feeling a little more intimidated by the city. Grand in every sense of the world, it teems with a life hidden in some respects by this language barrier and simultaneously improved by it.      Following a day of working in 36-degree heat, my new hosts came to pick me up. The trip back to the farm lasted an hour and drove us...

Three and a half days wasn't really enough for Montréal.      It's not exactly that there are thousands of things to do- not for a European, anyway- but just to soak up enough of the rich atmosphere would probably take another week.      As far from Vancouver as from Europe, Montréal is a truly bilingual city. Though all signs are written only secondarily, if at all, in English, most people speak both this and French, and maybe a couple more languages as well. One of my favourite things has been starting a conversation in English, et puis qu'on continue en Francais. The city is even roughly split in two by its two half-heritages, the business district ruled by the literal-minded anglophones and the cool centreville by les francophones who remain so proud of their language.      We managed to spend the weekend here going to only one museum- any longer touristy stay would merit visiting a couple more, considering their a...

Boogie Bear and I thoroughly enjoyed our two days in Vancouver.      The parents of Fiona, my last WWOOFing host, live in North Vancouver and are absolutely wonderful. They've opened their doors to me for my little sejour in Vancouver- not only that, but after picking me up from the Seabus station I was hailed as elegant and offered a glass of wine. Following a six-hour Greyhound bus ride and the customary short hike with the 80-litre backpack, this was more than welcome.      This morning was spent walking through the Capilano Canyon with the dogs, before I jumped back on the Seabus and into the big city of Vancouver. From thousand-year-old trees to skyscrapers, I wandered a little bemusedly through city streets and the glittering Downtown all spruced up for the Olympics. This is all only a short walk from Gastown, the infamous Amsterdam Café, Chinatown and finally the eastern edges and the highway. Staying on a single road there is a ta...

Well, it seems the wind changed and blew the whole Icelandic ashcloud out of the way!      Winds have been changing here, too- I'm supposed to be in a place called Rossland right now, 283km east of where I actually am.      But rolling with the punches is an important part of travelling. I made two mistakes in this part of the journey- number one was trying to organise so much so far in advance- I first emailed my WWOOFing place in Rossland about three months ago, but due to one thing and another I now felt less and less inclined to go there. Nonetheless, Zan and I jumped in the van (named Morgan Freeman, of course), and started on Highway 3 heading south to Rossland My second mistake came when Zan  handed me the map. When we hit Grand Forks, about 100km west of Rossland, I realised what I'd done, and we came up with another plan. And so here I am in Penticton. After a seven-hour drive in a van that goes at exactly the speed ...

The news of the Icelandic Volcano filtered through the other-worldly media of Nelson and reminded us that reality exists outside of the town.      The last week has been incredible. Staying in the centre of Nelson means being a block away from the best coffee and two from one of the most eventful streets you could find in a teeny tiny city. As well as JusDance me and the incredible Zan have been to yoga, open mic nights, a hike up Pulpit Rock (giving a view of all of Nelson- very pretty) and numerous wanders down to the lake for tarot readings and meet-ups with whoever happened to be there.      Out of town we hitch-hiked out to Ainsworth Hot Springs, which was an experience in itself. After a measly half-hour wait we got two lifts which hopped us up there, stopping in Balfour, where a guy from Open Mic recognized us and waved hello from the queue for the ferry, and a guy in a Bakery recognised us as the two girls painting the ho...

Zan and I were kind of uncertain whether to go out, having spent the day shovelling gravel, re-laying a path and climbing a mountain. The usual life of a WWOOFer in British Columbia.      I showed up to JusDance completely over-dressed. I thought it would be something more akin to a silent disco, but then, waiiit, this is Nelson. Whatever you're expecting, it will turn out to be completely different.      And so I stood in my skinny jeans, nice top, even wearing mascara, watching people in tank tops and yoga trousers swaying and dancing to music completely unfamiliar to me.      There are a few important rules to JusDance- No shoes, No speaking, No alcohol. You're encouraged to move around the space a lot and to interact when the 'vibe' is right (very important Nelsonian word there), and, crucially, to dance exactly how you want to, because "ain't no one's lookin".      In focusing completely on your own...

There are numerous advantages to WWOOFing or CouchSurfing instead of just crashing in a hotel.      There's the free food, free roof over your head, the skills you learn- but most importantly, there's your host. Without this person letting you take up some of their personal space for a while, you'd never get so much of an insight into someone else's life, and never get to muscle in on certain experiences orchestrated by a friend-of-a-friend.      I sure as hell never would have been to a Sweat Lodge if I was just in the Best Western down the street.      The people at Buie's place were up on the hill at 9am building the fire and preparing the grandfathers- the heated rocks -for the lodge, so that by the time we got there a couple of hours later, the two fire demons were well practised in levering another log onto the great tipi of heat. Behind it our Elder stood whittling what looked like a longbow. What followed was an...

Banff National Park, Alberta "In Canada, I will make a video that will make me cry. In unbearable frost and thin air I shall hold my shivvering dried-up heart in my hand..."      If the Walter Philips Gallery had more than one exhibition going, I didn't see the rest. I was pretty contented with Ragnar Kjartansson's The End- a video installment in 5 parts projected simultaneously onto the walls of a pitch-black, blacked-out room. The words Video Installment usually make me cringe too, to be honest I was expecting something more akin to the Miss Chief video in Calgary.      But in February of last year Kjartansson and musician David Por Jonsson went out to the Rockies, donned Davie Crocket caps and played guitars, banjos, drums, bass, piano and electric guitar in temperatures as low as -20 degrees C. The result is 'a five-channel video installation synched together as a single disfigured country music arrangement in the chord of G', a...

Yesterday I ran around the city a bit, trying to see as much as possible for as little as possible...      It was hard.      The walk from Sean's place in Renfrew was long but scenic. Cold and crisp, Calgary did turn out to be mostly suburb, with a pretty concentrated centre with all your usual tourist hangouts just south of the Bow river where a lot of money can be spent very easily. Like $14 for going up Calgary Tower, $9 for a student ticket to the Glenbow Museum, and all those malls! They're all interconnected, so you could probably walk from shop to shop most of the way across the city without having to see sunlight. This is probably the idea behind the Plus Fifteen, too- a heated walkway above the streets so the Calgarians don't have to freeze in winter.      The Glenbow offered your normal mix of traditional art, weird modern stuff, rooms full of the extensive and glorious history of Alberta, all 150 years of it,...

Just a quick update, and the results of a quick Google search which lead me to a few quotes from Robert Louis Stevenson-- " I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. ” " To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. ” Musing on these as I rush my things together before driving to the airport. Four Canadians so far who basically helped me to stay alive-      Plane lady- saw I didn't order a veggie meal so convinced an air hostess to bring me a plate of cheeses from first class      Bus lady- saw I was looking fatigued & confused so asked where I was headed, if I had a place to stay, if I knew where I was going...      Bus driver- told me which way to walk to find Sean's house (very important stuff)      & last but by no means least, Sean- the guy letting me camp out in his house for 2 nights, hop on his Wifi, and who made me ...