I try my hardest to admire the city, the skyscrapers and, in the distance, the snow-topped mountains, but I fail; instead I spend the whole train journey fighting my nausea and my hallucination-like jet lag.
When I get off at the last station and take the escalator down I see him. And I immediately come to life. A childish delight spreads through my body and I have to stop myself from giggling. I want to grab the businesswoman passing me and point out that there’s A REAL INDIAN standing there. An Indian! They exist! Of course I knew there were Native Americans in North America, but actually seeing one – a real live one! – almost has me laughing. The man notices me staring at him and comes over. It’s only now that I see how shabby his clothes are and that there are three empty plastic bottles hanging from his belt for some reason. When he opens his mouth, both his front teeth are missing.
‘Ya got a smoke?’ he slurs.
I shake my head. Disappointed, he shuffles over to the nearest rubbish bin and my joy evaporates.
Before I’ve even left the train station another Native American asks me for a cigarette.
I make my way to the Buchanan Hotel, where I’ve booked a room for seventy-nine Canadian dollars a night. There’s a bed with a chintz quilt, a table, a cupboard, a TV and a tiny little hand basin. Matching chintz curtains hang at the windows. The bathroom and toilet are shared with two other rooms on the same floor. It’s surprisingly quiet around me.
I mustn’t sleep. All the travel guides recommend adjusting to the local time immediately. Since it’s not yet two o’clock in the afternoon I have to make sure I have no chance of being horizontal, and I don’t want to go to 1348 Commercial Drive before I’ve had a good night’s sleep, so I decide to go and explore Vancouver.
‘Would you like a map of the city?’ the Asian man in reception asks as I go by.
I shake my head.
‘Thanks, I have this,’ I say, holding up the Lonely Planet book.
I wander for hours around the city. In Stanley Park I admire an enormous totem pole, and in the West End the skyscrapers. Everything seems strangely familiar. At first I think it must be my jet lag playing tricks on me, before I realise I actually have seen all these places before, because every single American B-movie ever made was obviously shot in Vancouver. Despite my preconception that all North Americans are overweight, the people I see are normal, even suspiciously sporty.
The sky stays grey, and for half an hour it drizzles. I buy a cupcake and a little thimbleful of wheatgrass in an effort to blend in with the Vancouverites. My feet are aching but I keep walking, because I know I’ll immediately fall asleep if I go back to the hotel. I walk all the way to picturesque Gastown and look in a few galleries showing masks made by the indigenous population.
Then I turn a corner and walk right into hell.
The street before me is full of zombies. Skeletal figures shuffling along aimlessly. Everyone is grey and most of them are staring at the ground. Some have shopping trolleys full of bulging plastic bags. A sickly-looking fat man of Native American descent, the first overweight person I’ve seen so far, comes towards me in his motorised wheelchair, and if I hadn’t jumped aside he would have driven over my feet. Stupidly, I carry on down the street rather than turning around. Half a dozen people in rags are gathered on every corner. Some sit on boxes, talking to each other and exchanging cigarettes. A man in a long dirty coat asks me something I don’t understand. I pass another man with a tattoo on his forehead who’s injecting a needle into the neck of a woman lying on the ground. The woman’s eyes are closed.
‘Oh my God, is she all right?’ I cry.
The man ignores me. ‘Are you OK?’
I almost jump when someone touches my arm. It’s a sturdy woman with a face like a moon. On her light-blue windcheater it says ‘Vancouver Volunteer Corps’.
‘I’m lost,’ I say.
‘Where’s your hotel?’ the woman asks.
‘In the West End,’ I say.
The woman takes me by the arm and starts leading me in the opposite direction.
‘Come on, we’ll find a taxi for you,’ she says briskly. ‘Do you have enough money for a taxi?’
I nod.
‘What is this place?’ I ask.
‘Downtown East Side,’ the woman replies. ‘Also known as Junk Town, Skid Row, Crack Town.’
‘So many junkies,’ I exclaim.
‘They’re harmless,’ the woman says as we head down the street. ‘At least in the daytime. It’s the drug dealers you need to watch out for. Skid Row’s not even the worst of it. You should see Surrey.’
‘But why don’t the police do anything?’
A man with a bare chest and a beer belly is pushing a stuffed shopping trolley. He greets the woman.
‘Hey Al,’ she says to him. ‘What can they do? There are too many of them. That’s why we help.’
I think about the tattooed man and the woman lying on the ground.
Junkies aren’t the smartest people in the world. If they were they wouldn’t have become junkies in the first place.’
The woman sticks her arm out and a taxi pulls up alongside us. Dusk has started to fall.
‘West End,’ the woman says to the taxi driver when he winds down the window.
‘Thanks so much for your help,’ I say.
‘Have a lovely stay in Vancouver,’ the woman replies with a smile.
Then she turns around and goes back the way we came. She looks relieved to have got rid of me.
The taxi driver asks where I’m from.
‘Vienna,’ I reply.
‘Oh, those canals,’ he says and sighs longingly.