Arriving in Toronto

Ariving in a strange city alone at night, I felt lonely and bewildered. Now there was no need to be afraid of wild animals, but anyway, this was just a change from a jungle in wilderness to a modern one, maybe even meaner. It was 7pm and I found myself at the bus station, without knowing where to go next. It took me a while to put together my thoughts and then I finally realized that the best place to go is the train station. With a generous help of a nice local girl, I managed to locate it on the map and set up for a walk. I did not feel very comfortable to walk in an unkown city at night cause was a little concerned about my safety. I found the station after a 30-minutes walk. Great - it was situated in the very center of downtown. The station itself was huge - it was used for trains, street busses and subway. Although I had plenty of sleep on bus, I felt rather tired, so I found a nice chair where I carefully entangled my luggage and made myself into sleep. At midnight, two security guys came up to me and politely asked me to leave. I do not kow how I could be so naive and expect the same generous threatment as in Seattle, where I spent the whole night at a bus station and nobody has anything against that.

Nobody cared that I had no place to go, I was just dispelled from the station and ended up on the street. Great, that is exactly what I did NOT want to - to be on streets at midnigh. I was trying to find a place to stay when a weird guy approached to me. He said that he was proud of not being a homeless anymore, because he found a job and he wanted to have a small donation for a hostel. I started laughing because I would have gone to a hostel if I had not begrudged spending my money. That night I was literally a homeless, too - where some end, others just start :)

I found Tim Horton‘s and on the way I met several other beggars. It was a sigh of relief when I burst in. It did not look very cossy, but still much better as to stay on the street in cold. I found a nice table, put down my belongings and looked around. The customers were mostly security guards on break, who higgledy-piggledy run in, bought a coffee and went out. There was an old man sitting at the next table, drinking something by Tim Horton‘s and reading a whole bunch of newspaper. The word is that you can read peoples features on their face when they are older. I was never good at recognizzing anything like that, but that guy made an impression of a university professor, who does not have time to read newspaper during the day, so he does it at night. However funny it sounds, that was the first thing coming to my mind by looking at him. There was a cold breeze sneaking through the door and I had to change my place to avoid it. I pullled out a book and started reading, however I was too tired to stay wide-awake. Sleep took over me and I nodded off on the table. An employee woke me up and said reproachingly that this is not a place to sleep and I have to leave. I opposed that I had no place to go and in the end he agreed that I can stay but I must not sleep. OK then, so I tried not to fall asleep until 5:30am when the Union station was supposed to be opened again. "The Professor" gave me some newspaper in case I want to read. In fact, I wanted to finish a chapter in my book, but later I decided to have a look at news. Although there were mostly business articles, I found there something interesting. In the morning I went back to the Union Station and had a few hours nap on a very uncofortable chair - I had no idea how I could fall asleep on that.