A visit to the UK, and a wedding in Armenia

So my second summer in Vancouver is almost over. The sun is still out, but the heat is gradually receding. The trees outside my work are slowly losing their leaves, and it's less than three weeks until I set foot on UK shores again for the first time in 15 months. It's going to be a flying visit, but one that promises to be packed with intrigue. I'll spend two days in the UK, catching up with as many people as possible, before heading to Yerevan, Armenia for my brother's impending wedding to Tenny, before flying back to Vancouver, via London, a week later.



Armenia is somewhere that before Tom's engagement I knew precious little about. As far as I knew it was a country near Turkey and Iran, and that was about it. Since then I've learned a lot about the place, the people, and the region.

Armenia is a tiny country located in Caucasus mountain realm of Eurasia between Western Asia and South Eastern Europe. It borders Georgia to the north, Turkey to the west, Iran to the south, and Azerbaijan to the east. The Soviet-influenced capital of Yerevan, with it's skyline dominated by the commanding Mount Ararat in neighbouring Turkey, is a large city with a population of over a million people, and the place that Tom has spent a large chunk of his time over the past 18 months.



Armenia is a place that has experienced tragedy on an epic scale less than a century ago. As Europe was dealing with the plight of World War I, large scale genocide was occurring further south in Armenia - at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, now known as Turkey. Although not as well-known as the Nazi-inspired genocide that occurred during the Second World War, it is thought that up to 1.5 million Armenians died between between 1915 and 1917.

Relations between Armenia and Turkey have remained strained ever since, with Turkish authorities often not recognising the past events, and presently the Armenian-Turkish border is permanently closed. The Armenian Genocide Museum has since been opened in Yerevan to help educate people about the events that happened almost 100 years ago, and this will be somewhere I look forward to visiting.

Although the wedding of Tom and Tenny is happening in Yerevan Tenny herself was actually born and raised in Tehran, Iran's capital. Tenny's family are ethnically Armenian, but have lived in Iran for many years, with Tenny spending the first 24 years of her life in the country before moving to Yerevan, where she met Tom in early 2008.



Their relationship has been blossoming ever since their chance visit that fateful January evening, and to finally meet my new in-laws, and have the Allen family back together again for the first time since mid-2007 is going to be worth a journey that spans three continents alone. The Armenian-Iranian-English wedding should also be an interesting blend of cultures too. I don't really know what to expect.

I've also met someone recently who has also added an extemely Iranian tint to my life. Working at Mink has allowed me to meet hundreds of new people on a daily basis, and with Vancouver being such a diverse place, the people I meet are from all over the globe. One day which turned out to be quite pivotal was when I asked one first-time customer at Mink where she was from. As it turns out, Tissa was born in Vienna, but settled in Vancouver five years ago. Her family though, is Persian, having moved to Austria from Iran back in the 1980s.

Our chance meeting at Mink turned out to be the first of many, and after getting on extremely well, and realising we had a lot in common, things have progressed. My relationship with Tissa has allowed me to meet even more new people - new people who I can call friends in their own right, rather than just friends by association, and it has made my second summer in Vancouver extremely enjoyable.



Since then we've spent many a day and night at friends houses relaxing, talking, playing drinking games, singing along to Frank Sinatra, listening to Pink Floyd, or whatever else. We've swam in rivers, slid down waterfalls, been to the beach in the day or at night, eaten meals out, driven to Whistler, and ridden Vancouver's new Skytrain line.



Something else I've been introduced to recently is Persian cuisine. Tissa's family is extremely close-knit - a lot more so than what I've been used to back in England. Huge family dinners, or what you could call banquets even, have been a regular occurrance recently with Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Grandmothers, Grandfathers, and close family friends all in attendance, as well as the direct family members. I've met many many new people in Tissa's family at these dinners, had a lot of fun, drunk my fair share of alcohol, and gorged myself on plentiful and delicious Persian food. This type of cuisine, with many different types of rice, meat, sauces, herbs, and fruits has proven to be a real hit with me. Unfortunately I can't pronounce the names of most of what I'm eating, but I'm working on it.

Ultimately, this summer has been a huge success, and the next major event I have to look forward to is my trip in a matter of days. There is going to be a lot of flying involved, and with that comes a lot of jetlag, but I can't wait. Bon voyage.

Life in Technicolour

It’s 9am on another sunny Vancouver day, and I’ve just finished my bowl of Cheerios. I’ve got a few minutes until I leave for work, so I check my emails, do some washing up, and chat to Thomas, who has also just risen. Suddenly an unexpected knock comes at the door. We don’t know who it is. “Hide the cat”, whispers Thomas. We aren’t supposed to have pets in our apartment - it might be our landlords. I make a beeline for Handsome, who decides he has probably done something bad, and makes a break for it. After a few seconds of manic chasing around the living room, jumping over chairs and sofas I eventually have a rather bemused Handsome in my arms. Thomas tentatively answers the door.



“Letter for Allen Benjamin”, I hear a voice say, and so I join Thomas to collect a brown envelope with the unmistakeable markings of the Canadian government printed on the front. Suddenly apprehension hits. This could be my visa decision. I feel the packaging. My passport. Postman leaves as I hastily rip open the envelope to find a short, one page letter enclosed along with my Passport. “Your visa application has been approved, and your new document will be sent to you shortly”, it reads. Relief.



It had been six months since I made the decision to stay in Canada, so ever since then the prospect of being either unable to find sponsorship, or finding sponsorship but being refused a visa due to the current economic climate, loomed large. I’ve been very content with life out here, but always had the niggling doubt in the back of my mind that one day in the not-so-distant future that I’d have to hurriedly pack my bags and get a flight back to England. Now, a huge weight had been lifted.

Fast forward a few days and I had just cycled home from work. Thomas and our other friend Dave are sitting around in the living room. Sophie is at work, and so the other two are about to go bowling. Me? Well I was tired, and was planning on having a relaxing evening in. They leave, I stick the television on, but a few moments later the phone rings. It’s Thomas. “Come on down”, he says. There’s another letter waiting in our mailbox. A few minutes later I’m downstairs. We live on the eight floor, so the mailbox is a trek. I’d been checking the mailbox every day since getting my approval letter. Finally, it seems, my visa has arrived.
I am greeted with another brown, Government Issue envelope. Once again I tear it open. It is indeed my new visa. All I need to do now is staple it to my passport, and I’m set. But wait - the expiry date. It says July 2011. I was expecting only a year, but Canadian Immigration & Customs have given me two. I knew I had a two year Expedited Labour Market Opinion certificate stating that I was needed in this particular job, but I was expecting to have a one year visa, and have to reapply for a second on next year. Apparently not. I guess being English makes you entrusted.


The feeling I’ve had since that moment has been amazing. I’ve always had my doubts I’d be able to stay in the country, but now I have the piece of paper that allows me to live and work in the place that I love. Over the past weeks and months since I applied for the new visa I’ve been unable to make any plans more than a few weeks in advance, as I would never know if I was going to be around then. Now, this has all changed. Now I can get everything I’ve wanted to get in life arranged. And I know I can do this long into the future. Yes, I’ve been in Canada for just over 13 months now, and that has flown by, but another two years is a long time. Time to do so many things, and time to plan, plot and arrange life. Time to live.

It may seem like a small thing, but not being able to arrange to take a trip with friends, or save up for a new snowboard for the next season has been frustrating. Now I have a total feeling of release. I have no weight on my shoulders – something that I haven’t felt for quite a while. I have been extremely settled in Canada, but there had always been some feeling of uncertainty, or something holding me back. Now, that feeling has gone. I can now look forward to my future in Canada, the prospect of permanent emigration, building up my life here. I am completely at ease.


Next on the list of things to do is to head back to England. My parents had been waiting for my visa situation to be resolved before very kindly booking flights back to the UK, but now everything is arranged. My brother Tom’s wedding (see www.ride-earth.org.uk) is happening in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital in September, and so I will be making the epic voyage from Vancouver to Armenia via a couple of days in England. I can’t afford to take more than around 10 days off work, so I only have a short time in the UK, before I head over to see Tom for the first time in over two years, and meet Tenny my new sister-in-law, and her family. We have spoken on the phone, and over the internet, but have never had the chance to meet. Now, I am relishing it. The chance to visit a new country – one that I knew very little about until Tom’s chance meeting with Tenny in Yerevan one cold evening in early 2008, is going to hold a lot of intrigue for me. It will also be the first time my parents, my brother, and I have all been together since July 2007, when we sat in a square a few short metres from Mozart’s house in Salzburg, Austria, and ate lunch together. At that time, Tom had just begun his voyage on bicycle, and had no idea what his future held. Me? I was driving around Central Europe for a few weeks with my University friend Luke, and had no other plans formulated, having finished my degree a few short weeks earlier. Now, I’m living in Canada, and Tom is getting married in Armenia. Who’d have thought it? Life is Technicolor. I love it.

A Year On

So a year has passed since I came to Canada. In theory I should be back home, looking back on my 12 months abroad in Vancouver, and telling my friends back in my hometown about my experiences. My visa expired a week ago - printed on it are the words "Must Leave Canada by June 9".


Well I'm still in Canada, and still working at Mink Chocolates. Fortunately this is legal, because I can still be in the country and continue to work whilst my work permit application is processed. After a number of phonecalls to check the status of my papers, I was informed that my situation should be resolved by the end of June. The whole process has been extremely arduous; I first started looking into the sponsorship progress back in January - almost six months ago, and only now is there some light at the end of the tunnel.

It is amazing that a year has already passed. Last week I said goodbye to Helen, my flightbuddy from Heathrow last year. Her 12 months is also over, and she was about to head back across the Atlantic to England, to save up for her next big adventure. All of my friends from Jericho Hostel have now gone. Lynda & Andrew, my Aussie buddies, have both gone off to pastures new, with Lynda heading back home via the UK, and Andrew driving across Canada in a GMC Yukon. All that's left now is me.

I made a trip back to the Hostel recently, where I spent my first weeks in Canada, the surroundings of Jericho Park, and the local beaches. The Hostel itself has changed dramatically since I was there. It has had a generous amount of restoration carried out. New coats of paint adorn the walls and fittings, the kitchen and TV room have been refurbished, and everywhere generally looks clean and fresh.

Visiting there brought memories of last summer flooding back. A whole new country, new people, a new city, daily trips to the beach, playing soccer with the locals, Hide & Seek, sitting forlornly in the kitchen at the end of June still wondering where I was going to live, trying to communicate with a guy from Chile through pictures, the huge Canada Day party - just endless fun times. All that seems distant now, but the photos we all took, and the memories we have remain.


It seems strange now to think of how lost I felt when I first started wandering around Vancouver. Anybody would be when arriving in a new place, an it is now great to see the pre-Olympic development gathering pace, and is nice to be able to get around the whole city without even having to think about where I'm heading. Vancouver seems very much like home now.


So by the end of the month my future will be resolved. One place I do know for sure I'll be going to is Armenia. On 15 September I'll be flying there with my parents from Heathrow for my brothers wedding - now I just need to know if it'll be following a flight from Vancouver. If so it will mean 32 hours flying in 10 days - pretty tiring, but it will be worth it. My brother Tom, my parents and myself have not been together now for two years, so being reunited, at Tom's wedding no less, will be very special. Tom is currently in Dubai, awaiting news of his Iranian visa application. He travelled to the Arabian peninsular from Djibouti on the East coast of Africa in a wooden boat with 600 cows. Since then he has negotiated Yemen, Oman, and finally the United Arab Emirates. He is now very close to being able to take a ferry to the southern coast of Iran, before taking a sleeper train to the capital, Tehran. There he will be reunited with Tenny, his fiancee. I am very excited to finally be able to meet her, and to have a new sister-in-law.

With Tom's global cycle ride in my consciousness so much in the past couple of years, I have taken it upon myself to embrace this eco-friendly form of transport. To think when we were both younger Tom and I hated the bike rides our parents took us on. Now one of us is cycling the globe. It is an extreme change, but a very good one. I've also become very much into cycling over the past year. That will probably come as a surprise to people who know me in the UK as the guy who always bought and sold cars, but I've tired of that.


Now, I cycle to work and back every day on an old 10-speed racing bike. It's very enjoyable, Vancouver caters for cyclists very well, and it has the additional bonus if providing me with great exercise. It's also cheap. Life is good.

Here's to waiting

In two weeks time it will have been a year since I landed in Vancouver and started my Canadian experience. My year, from apprehensively meeting with my flight buddy Helen at Heathrow on June 10 2008, to staying at the Jericho Hostel, to beginning my sponsorship quest at the start of this year, to sitting in the living room of my apartment typing this with our cat asleep on the sofa, has gone by far too fast.

The past year has been the best of my life so far. I've got so many memories from my time out here with the friends I've made along the way, and it all started one afternoon in March 2008 when I wondered what I should do next with life. That fateful day was when I typed 'Vancouver' into Google image search, marvelled at the skyscrapers, trees, parks, water, beaches, mountains - all in one photo. I applied to join BUNAC's Work Canada program on the spot, and I haven't looked back.


With my visa almost being up, I would have originally been running around the city, seeing all my friends, buying presents and souviners, and saying my goodbyes. However, I am not ready to do that.

Back in March I sent my passport and sponsorship paperwork to Canadian Immigration services to apply for a new work permit, tying me to my current job at Mink Chocolates. Yes, I would be spending the next months of my life making Lattes, Mochas and selling expensive, but extremely high-quality chocolates to Canadian business people and tourists, but I'd still be able to stay in Canada, and live life in this paradise of Western cities.

Well, I'm still waiting for my paperwork to come back, but this kind of thing normally takes a lot of patience. I'm not convinced that my new visa will be back before my old one expires, but I can only wait. All I know now is that I have no flight home (it came and went in April), and Immigration has my means of getting out of the country (Passport) so whatever happens I'm stuck here for a while. I also know that I have everything necessary in order to be issued with a new work permit, so there is an extremely small chance that I will be refused one. So here's to waiting.


Over the weeks since I last wrote I have also had a number of visitors from back home. Katherine, one of my oldest and best friends, and my travel buddy from our Ghana adventure last year joined me in Vancouver for a few weeks. She had been having her own Canadian adventure - working at Panorama Ski Resort in Eastern B.C. With her season having finished, she made the 10 hour coach journey across the Province to stay in our Vancouver abode.

It was great to be reunited with someone I'd not seen in almost a year, and brilliant to hear all about her experience of working a ski season, and to meet her resort friends. Unfortunately for me, she returned to England yesterday to live there a bit before her next big adventure, but we at least had the opportunity to go snowboarding together - our first trip since 2005, and generally hang out.


Also, my long lost parents are currently out in Vancouver. Being my parents, they don't do things by halves, having flown to Los Angeles a few weeks ago, boarded a cruiseship bound for Alaska, and docked in Vancouver two weeks later having stopped in many ports up the coast of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. I met them outside my work a few days ago and we enjoyed a drink together - the first in eight months.

This is my folks second visit to Vancouver, and so they have done a lot of the tourist sites already, seeming happy to relax at home, and around the city. We've sampled more delightful Vancouver cuisine. Yesterday's dinner was Vietnamese, and today's lunch Ukrainian, so we've had a wide variety. Tomorrow I will be reunited with my mother's spectacular culinary skills, as she prepares Roast Lamb and Apple Crumble - I can't wait.


So, with it now being the end of May, the sun is coming out. Every morning my room is bathed in sumptuous golden light, and our south-facing living room, with it's patio doors almost filling the entire wall making for a great setting for some breakfast on the eighth floor balcony. It truly is a grand setting we live in.

I also recently took a flying visit to the British Columbia capital of Victoria, on Vancouver Island. I say flying in the literal sense, as I flew there on a float plane. My flight buddy Helen is fortunate enough to be working at West Coast Air, who fly all around the Vancouver area in float (or sea) planes. Fortunately for me, she can get 'buddy' passes so for a very reasonable $30, we flew return to the old city on the Island. The flight was the most beautiful, if extremely short, flight I've been on, with the city, and the Gulf Islands between Vancouver and Victoria, only a thousand or so feet below us. British Columbia truly is a stunning place. I love being here.


So my plan, should my work permit processing all go smoothly, is simple. I love being in Vancouver, and with another year at least in the city, I will be making the most of life here. I am, though, planning an extremely short trip home in September, due to the not-so-small news that my globetrotting brother is getting married. His wedding, however, is not taking place in England, but Armenia (see the Ride Earth website), and as a result I will be flying to the capital Yerevan, with a few days sandwiched in England in-between to catch up with friends and family. I hope to be there for two or three days, but we'll see. Watch this space.

Is that for here or to go?

It's been almost ten months since I made the trip to London Heathrow, and boarded a plane for Vancouver. Now decision time has arrived. After an initial day or two of apprehension when I first landed here I realised I'd stumbled upon a truly exceptional place.


My few weeks at the youth hostel on Jericho Beach have given me many fond memories, and the months after that which I spent living in a shared house on Granville Street provided me with many more. The people I met in those first few months were the ones who accompanied me everywhere I went. We wandered around Downtown, climbed mountains, went to the beach, cycled, and generally absorbed life as a newly landed Vancouverite.

Back in November I moved into an apartment with my close friends Thomas and Sophie. Thomas is from Glasgow, and Sophie from Lutterworth - only 30 minutes from my home village in England. We all met during the summer, when I was working at Business Objects, a Yaletown-based software company. We had since become extremely close and decided that it would be silly not to move in together, considering how well we got on.


We took on 'Bar Handsome' - as it has become known, as a totally bare shell of an apartment, aside from the basic kitchen and laundry facilities, but have since filled the place with all manner of furniture and equipment, both expensive, inexpensive, and things acquired through recycling purposes. Basically we've turned Bar Handsome into a home, and we even have a Russian Blue (meaning he's Grey) kitten - Handsome - to add to the mix. Our place is on Floor Eight of an eight story (plus penthouse) apartment complex. We're fortunate enough to have no less than three balconies, and with the building being the tallest in the neighbourhood, we have a commanding view of the surrounding area.

So, now living in a place I can finally call home, with me now being a single man, and with my work visa due to expire in June, I started to think about what's next. Do I go back to England and get a job? Do I move somewhere else? Do I travel down to South America? Do I join my brother in his cycle ride through Sudan?


There were many options on the table, but in the past few months, I've decided that Vancouver seems the right place for me at this point in time, and moving away from a place I feel at home in does not seem like the right thing to do for now. As I've previously mentioned, Vancouver attracts me in so many ways. The multiculturalism, the geography, the activities on offer, the people. It all adds up, and makes me smile every time I think about the place I currently live.

I have made some amazing friends during my time here, met people from places which before I got here seemed so far away. Where else could I go in the world where my workmates were from Kazakhstan, Canada, Belarus, Dallas, and England? It's a pretty eclectic mix, and isn't something I think I'd find back in my home town. My flatmates have become my family out here. We have fun whatever we do, wherever we are. It doesn't have to cost us anything - and it's great.


So, with this in mind I began to look into the ways of staying in Canada. My current visa is not renewable, so I would need to look into alternatives. Getting married to a Canadian isn't really an option, so my only realistic way of staying is to gain sponsorship through my employer.

As luck would have it, Marc - my boss at Mink, provides sponsorship for Alesia, who is Belarussian, and Ben, who is from the United States. An inquiry to Marc as to whether he'd considering doing the same for me came back positive, and so the wheels were set in motion for me too.

As a result, my British Passport, and associated immigration paperwork is currently at a Canadian Immigration office being processed, and it should, in theory at least, come back to me with a nice, fresh work permit inside, attaching me to Mink Chocolates. I have another roughly six weeks before everything has been funneled through the work permit system, so here's to waiting.

Aside from working on extending my stay in Vancouver, there have been a few other things I've been up to. Firstly, my good friend from England, Jordan, has been out to visit me for a couple of weeks. It had been roughly nine months since I'd seen my friends from home, so it was a great feeling to have one of them out in Canada with me.


Jordan has an interest in snowboarding, but had never been before, so it was a great excuse to take a trip or three up a mountain, strap on a board, and fly back down again. We visited the local mountains; Grouse, and also Cypress. The latter is where Jordan did his first piece of riding on a real mountain, aside from a hill near his house when it spent a week snowing back in England. Fortunately he picked snowboarding up quickly, and so we made the extremely necessary trip up the Sea-to-Sky Highway to the legendary Whistler-Blackcomb.

The day involved leaving the house at 5:30am to catch the Snowbus, but this was a small price to pay for an excellent days riding. Whistler is a two hour bus journey from the city, but is head and shoulders above anything available in the local area. The view from Whistler peak, punctuated by the native Canadian Inukshuk, was awe-inspiring. It was like being on top of the world.


As well as spending time with friends, I've been trying yet more new cuisine. I often sample the delights of the Middle East, with Shawarma and Falafel being a mainstay of my diet. I enjoy many Sushi-based meals, but one evening recently I embarked on a Russian expedition. I have a number of Russian-speaking friends out in Vancouver, and so with many of them being fellow immigrants they enjoy good old fashioned home cooking. In the same way I crave a proper greasy fry-up once in a while, these guys enjoy Borsch, Vodka and Crepes. So that's exactly what we had the other night.


Borsch is an Eastern European soup with the primary ingredient being beetroot, giving it a red sheen. Ours had a whole range of different vegetables included and was frankly delicious. Naturally, being surrounded by Russians, there was a fair amount of Vodka consumption also, and Russian style crepes were there in abundance.

With time ticking away, spring has finally arrived in Vancouver. The clocks have been moved one hour forward, the air temperature is gradually heating up, and cherry blossom is forming on the trees. I for one cannot wait for summer to arrive. I love making the most of the surrounding mountains, but being able to cycle everywhere in the sunshine, wear shorts without drawing looks of amazement, and go to the beach are things I now crave.

Vancouver is a place of endless possibility, particularly in the summer, and with the prospect of a second summer in the city looming, I'm feeling positive about the future. My parents are set to make a second trip to the city to visit me towards the end of May, and I will also be joined by another old friend in the city in a month or two. I think summer 2009 could be fun.