It is at moments like this that I love living in Vancouver...
Recently, my sister, her friend Makiko and I went to the Vancity Theatre to see the independent film ‘Modra’, set in a small Slovak town outside of Bratislava. The lady introducing the film was dressed in a kroj – a traditional Slovak folk costume, which was one of the ones featured in the film, and her friendly attitude prevented it from being kitsch. Her openness, enthusiasm for the film and for multicultural exchange with the audience inspired me to write this reflection.
The film talks about a 17-year old girl whose parents immigrated to Canada from Slovakia in 1968 and who hasn’t seen her family back home since she was five years old. She goes on a one-week trip to rediscover her roots in her hometown of Modra, while sharing the whole experience with her Canadian classmate (we were excited about this part, given that Makiko, who was born in Canada, had traveled with us in Slovakia last summer). What Lina, the protagonist, experiences in Slovakia is what I like to call “new nostalgia”. New nostalgia is when someone reconnects with people and places that they remember mostly from photographs or age-old memories that are still floating around in that 5-year-old-child part of their brain. I have felt this surreal sensation myself a few times now and was surprised by how well the film was able to capture it. It was able to express how so very strange it is to know that you have a family that you don’t actually really know. When one sees these family members after so many years they feel this immense joy to be in their presence, yet at the same time a profound sadness knowing that they didn’t grow up with these people, these aunts and uncles and cousins; that they have shared so few moments together over the years, that these people are almost like strangers that one is related to, who have lived their lives in a another reality. Afterward, the movie really got me thinking about how interesting it is to have dialogue about such experiences here in Vancouver and made me think about some of the fascinating multicultural aspects of our city.
This morning, I read Hans Christian Andersen’s “the Princess and the Pea” to a multi-ethnic group of preschoolers as part of the children’s theatre group that my mom co-founded in 2004 – the North Shore Theater for Children – which uses aspects taken from traditional Czech theater and incorporates them into renditions of traditional children’s folk and fairy tales. These are sometimes preformed in the form of dramatized readings (which was the case today) in which one person reads the story while other people animate puppets and props to bring the story to life. After the performance, we went for coffee to Brazza, an Italian gelateria and café owned by two Italian brothers - an ex-accountant and an ex-Enron executive – who “abandoned the corporate rat race” (as stated by a 2003 article in the Vancouver Sun) in order to get in touch with their cultural roots, as well as with their taste buds. As a side note, prepare to gain a few pounds if you ever go in there.
Brazza is located in the Iranian neighbourhood in Upper Lonsdale, home to many enticing bakeries and markets, so after coffee we went to the Yaas Bazaar to stock up on tahini, tea and other goodies. Wandering around, I noticed that my mom and I were the only non-Persian people in the market I couldn’t help but feel a little bit out of place. I was also having some trouble locating the tahini so I walked up to one of the employees who was engaged in a conversation in Farsi with another customer and the out-of-place feeling faded immediately when he turned to me with a friendly expression and explained in accent-free English where I could find what I was looking for.
Especially enticing were the sweet things behind the bakery counter and I was very tempted to get something, but then I remembered to restrain myself since we were planning to visit the Polish bakery down the street next. As we walked into the bakery, I was a little surprised to see a slightly sheepish-looking Persian man stocking up on Polish jam rolls that he wanted to share with his girlfriend for Valentines Day. “Please cut everything in half so that we can share it”, he hesitantly asked the sales assistant as we entered. It was almost as if he felt the same kind of discomfort we had felt in the Persian market (he was the only non-Eastern European in the bakery at the moment) and maybe he also felt just the tiniest bit guilty for choosing Polish over Persian pastries. Who knows? All I know is that I found the whole thing quite amusing and felt a sense of warmth thinking about the quirkiness with which multi-cultural/ethnic exchanges can take place.
In the bakery, the lovely, and very tattooed, sales assistant sold me rum balls, blueberry buns and cherry doughnuts (just to add to the pounds I gained at Brazza), as well as smoked mackerel (didn’t you know they sell those at Polish bakeries??). I was deciding whether or not to go for the “mulled-wine tea” (just to try it), but... maybe next time. =)
Yes, it’s true that I often complain about Vancouver being too rainy, the people too cold and the distances too long, and while I feel that all of the aforementioned are valid complaints at times, over the past two days I have really felt a renewed appreciation for this city and its odd multi-ethnic-ness. All in all, I think that it is really through these little moments that one can perceive, and become a part of, a city’s character and heartbeat.
Check out: http://www.brazza.ca, http://www.nickelsbakery.ca, and http://modrathemovie.com/
This article was published in the Spring edition of Vancouver's Slovak cultural magazine "Slovo z B.C."/"The Word from B.C" last year.
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