Caffeine

I travel a lot. Not much more to be said about that other than I'm constantly on the road in one part of the country or another. This past trip took me back to Nova Scotia and my favourite city in Canada Halifax.

Seriously if you've never been there you really have to go check it out. What they say about Maritimers being laid back and extremely friendly is very true. This wasn't my first time there so I played tour guide for Tab and Mike; dragging them up and down the hilly streets until their feet just about fell off.

I walked them around the downtown core, past all the historic buildings, along the harbourfront which in the summer is the busiest place I know of; and then straight on into my favourite pub.

Alexander Keiths brewery has been there since 1820 and is still bottling and churning out some of the best beer. The pub inside makes some of the tastiest food around and of course the beer is as fresh as you can get.

Down the street is the Garrison Brewery and a little past that is Pier 21.

Most people don't know that almost every imigrant to Canada passed through Pier 21. It was the first piece of Canada that most saw. For the past 10 years it has been an immigration museum and today still teaches an important part of history.

Halifax is a city with a lot of tradition and history and a lot of devastation. The Halifax explosion of 1917 is still remembered as the absolute worst disaster ever. The stories of the people, survivors or not are told and remembered in the Maritime Museum and during remembrance services every year in December.

What more can I say about a city that is always a surprise and a delight to visit. I can't wait to go back.

Nut jobs abound!

Apparently the Japanese aren't the only ones silly enough to jump into the bear enclosures at a zoo; "lonely Germans" do it as well.

A self-described 'lonely' man jumped into the enclosure of the Berlin's zoo's famed polar bear Knut.

German police say zoo workers were able to keep the 200-kilogram bear away from the intruder by distracting him with a leg of beef. The 37-year-old man, whose name has not been released, jumped over a fence into a water-filled ditch at the edge of the bear's enclosure Monday morning.

Okay so you're probably asking yourself WTF was this guy thinking?

Police said the man initially ignored instructions to leave the enclosure, but was eventually led away unharmed.

Before being let go, the man told them that he felt lonely and the bear appeared lonely, too.

More like he was hungry and waiting for dinner. From my own experiances, I know Polars may look slow and dumb but they sure aren't. I had a memory from years ago "pop" back into my head after reading this.

In the 80's, I lived up in Canada's far north. The furthest south I saw in 6 years was Churchill, Manitoba. For those of you who don't know - Churchill is the "Polar Bear Capital of the Wortld"

I am sure it was in 1982 when a German tourist lost his arm after bopping a bear on the nose. One of the locals used to take tourists out to photograph the bears in a specially built vehicle. If I remember this correctly - the tourist in mind was hanging out the window and wanted the bear to look upwards at him so - he bopped the bear on the nose.

The rest is history and so is his arm.

I spent more than 8 years in the artic and not once did I ever think a polar was lonely. Maybe that comes from watching them bat sea lions out of the water with a single swipe of a paw.