Having been settled in Vancouver for three weeks now I thought it would be worth recording a few initial impressions of the place which is my new home for the year. Without wishing to dissect or reduce it, here are four categories which give just a taste of a few aspects of the place: scenery, people, food and transport.

Scenery

Even before we came we had many people refer to the “mountain skiing in the morning, ocean swimming in the afternoon” possibilities of living in Vancouver. It may be a stereotype, but as is often the case, there’s a grain of truth in it, or at lot more in this case. The combination of natural and human creations with mountains, ocean and skyscrapers is a stunning one. It’s a real treat to glance out of the bus window and see the mountains. Even the simplest matter of finding your way around is made easier and more pleasant by having the peaks as references: “If you want to go north just look for the mountains” may sound like the advice to a newcomer in some wild frontier but it’s basic advice to a Vancouver newbie like me. Couple that with beautiful beaches only a bus ride away and you have a very attractive destination.

People

Just as the scenery is varied so is the range of people that you meet here. Like any large city there’s a mix of people and this is reflected in the cuisine on offer as you’ll see from the next section. What’s different from UK cities though is the demeanour of these people – strangers in the street say hello, people talk to you at the checkout. Maybe it’s just that I judge cities by my experience of London and if Sheffield were my benchmark I wouldn’t be so surprised! There seems to be a degree of community which is one notch up from the UK. For instance, people will offer advice on where to get off the bus, pull the cord for you to stop it (you’re supposed to; to me it still feels like pulling the emergency stop on a train!) and many shout a hearty “thank you” to the driver as they exit the rear doors. On only about my second day here I had a long conversation with an older gentleman on the bus about the size of the deficit and the standard of driving in Vancouver – it would seem that both are a long way off what they should be!

Food

Any city will offer a breadth of restaurants and dishes but Vancouver seems to be positively bristling with them. Within just a mile or so on the bus into town you see Chinese, Japanese (sushi abounds), Vietnamese, Korean, Greek, Malay, Indian, Italian, Polish and the list goes on. There are still plenty of big brand fast food places but so much more besides. Seafood is here in abundance which you’d expect and we’ve sampled the local sushi house just up the road which was very reasonable and excellent quality (not that I’m an authority on sushi, but it seemed OK to me!). In addition to the fast food outlets and some of the other chains in the food courts at the malls, it’s nice to see lots of small independent places. And yet there is tradition too. One of the dishes that seems to be uniquely Canadian is poutine – chips with cheese curds and gravy. It sounds incredibly unhealthy …. and it is. But it’s soooo good. It’s such a simple dish and maybe it’s just the novelty thing with the cheese curds, but it’s seems a bit classy, like chips with a bow tie on. You can get endless varieties – out by the Rockies I had it with pulled pork in BBQ sauce.

Transport

Before we arrived we wondered if we could make do without a car, hoping that in a city that had a reputation for being full of tree huggers we could do our bit for the environment and refrain from adding another car to the roads. It seems our hopes will be realised. Vancouver has an excellent public transport system which combines buses and a kind of mini version of the Tube in London called the SkyTrain. With the city laid out on a grid system it makes it easy to plan trips as you’re either heading north, south, east or west. We’re just five minutes walk from a major crossroads and a stop on the SkyTrain which will deliver you to the heart of downtown or the waterfront at Canada Place in under ten minutes. It may only be two carriages long but it won’t fill your nostrils with black goo as is the Northern line is wont to do in London and is as clean, bright and sparkly as the newest tube lines in London. It even goes right out to the airport. Buses come every six or seven minutes, some that stop at nearly every street (100/200  metres or so in the city), others that are express and only stop every half or one mile at the major block intersections. A ticket lasts for an hour and a half so connections are no problem and you can even nip into town and back if you just need to pop into one or two shops. They’re trialling a system much like Oyster with a card reader as you enter and exit. Otherwise there are no barriers like in London, just spot checks to make sure that you have a valid ticket. Now that I’m a registered student I get a pass and can go anywhere in the city for £20 a month! If we really do need a car, like late at night, then Elly has joined Car2Go where for 25p/minute you can hop into a cute little Smart car (located via an iPhone app), zip to where you want to go, park up and leave it.

So, have I arrived in Utopia? Not quite – the gap between the haves and the have nots comes in several forms: there’s a large homeless population in Vancouver and the younger generation are struggling to buy houses in the areas where they grew up because of rising house prices. People still hurt themselves and need patching up, which keeps Elly in a job (and therefore a route to afford my studies) and people face the challenges of workplace, family and everyday life which means that my quest to study theology and learn how to live well in relationship with God and one another remains relevant too. But if you’re going to do that somewhere, then Vancouver seems a pretty good place to do it!