UPDATE: New pics on Flickr:)

Millhouse in Vancouver

Where shall I begin? Well, the almost ten hour plane ride from Amsterdam to Vancouver was a breeze thanks to a fabulous entertainment system for each seat. When we arrived in Vancouver it was around five pm local time and two am Danish time so as you can imagine we were feeling pretty strange. We decided that we would try to keep ourselves awake so at around 6 am Danish time Torhild, Peter and I were eating wonderful sushi at one of the million sushi places in the city. After dinner we felt sea sick so we basically had to go to our hotel room and rest. And yes, the hotel room, that's another story. It's very small, and has multi-colored floral bedspreads and drapes. We have realised that this is way too small for us for three months so we are now apartment hunting. Wish us luck!

This is my new cell number (feel free to call me all the time;)): +1 778 318 5830

Vancouver is a lovely city and the people here are super friendly. Everyone wants to chat. I love it! Like most North-American cities the arcitechture is very young, the oldest houses are only around 100 years old so it's a lot different from the old cities in Europe. Our homebase (our working space, not the hotel) is on the lower Eastside, which is the city's low-income neighbourhood. Garbage, needles and homeless people. It's scary but in the long run I think it'll be good for us to work in this place. Here are a few sad facts about the lower Eastside:
-The Downtown Eastside is home to poor and transitional populations including runaways, prostitutes, petty criminals and drug addicts. A disproportionate amount of the vagrant population are of First Nations descent.

-The Downtown Eastside's (and Vancouver's) drug problem has grown steadily worse over the last decade with the most common drugs being heroin, crack cocaine, and - increasingly - crystal methamphetamine. Although numbers have declined, Downtown Eastside has also been pegged with the unfortunate distinction of having the highest rate of HIV infection in the Western world.

-However, the opening of North America's first safe injection site, Insite, in this neighbourhood has lowered the spread of HIV (and the number of overdose deaths) considerably, according to a recent article by the Canadian Press.

-There are 6,000-10,000 intravenous (i.v.) drug users living in the Vancouver Lower Eastside (VLE).

-Among these, about 1,500 were already infected with HIV, and more were acquiring the infection.

-An injected- cocaine addict gets a "fix" 15-20 times per day.

-40 per cent of the i. v. drug users share their needles.

-Poverty leads to significantly increased mortality from complications of AIDS, the disease associated with HIV.

-In V L E out of 1000 uninfected individuals, it was estimated that 186 would acquire the disease as a result of contact with the infected population.

So you can imagine that it takes a bit of getting used to walking through this part of town.

Here are a few pics I've taken so far. I'll post some more later.