Did you read Irving's “The Hotel New Hampshire”? Well, either you do this or you simply travel to British Colombia and Dawson Creek. There and right where the famous Alaska Highway starts you will find the Alaska-Hotel (www.alaskahotel.com). Maybe you meet Charles and Heidi, the owners. And maybe Charles will tell you some fantastic stories about his family. He might show you his vintage Rolls-Royce. You might see Heidi taking place in the city parade in the first row of the musicians. Perhaps she will cook some awesome dish for you with ingredients right from her garden (well, therefore you probably have to be friends of Niki, one of their daughters).

And if you manage to get a room in the Alaskahotel, you will meet some people who find themselves at the bar right from noon (opening time) to 4 am. Well, everyone should choose his own living room.

The beer-price is client-friendly, the music is live and well played and one of the Indian girls will ask you for a dance soon enough. It’s simply authentic. If you stay in the city people will start to wave hands when you drive by. Or invite you for a beer. Or do some welding and glass work for free. Ladies and gentleman: life is good in Dawson Creek.

My stay got longer and longer – one the one hand because I simply loved the Kux-Kardos family. On the other hand because I mounted an alarm system. Since this was done, the ABS is not working anymore. Funny, isn’t it?

However, fate provided me with the chance to see the big Dawson Creek Parade. Now, parades are not exactly a Swiss thing and the Russians among you will think of a military parade. So I gonna explain: Dawson Creek is not a big town. Maybe some 12’000 people are living there. So one would expect a parade with some 15 horse- carriages and one group of musicians. In Switzerland they would wear costumes and people would throw confetti and sweets. Well, the sweets are thrown here, too. But then it becomes somewhat different.


Standing next to the street, it took me 45 minutes to see all the cars, trucks, horses, bull-dozers, etc. passing by. I somehow got the impression that everybody who owns something with wheels on it was taking part in the parade.
Different from Switzerland, it is not groups of militant carnival-people taking part in the parade. Neither do they wear weapons as it probably would be the case in Moscow (or Texas, as a matter of fact). Here it’s the local business owners running the show. And Walmart. All sorts of Kiwanis, Lions, and Rotary Club people. The chamber of commerce. The stock-car racing team. The plumber, the local truck company, all car-dealers in the town. The Fire brigade. And all of them have the very same message painted on their colorful vehicules: "preserve the past, celebrate the future". Com'on guys, let's be a bit more inventive for 2007!

Now, in order to win the title of the best decorated truck/car/horse/donkey you have to be clever. So most of the teams have some team-member dispatched for a somewhat difficult task: when nobody is watching (that’s of course often the case in a parade with lots of spectators) they run to the judges’ tribune and provide them with tons of sweets. Well, small presents ensure long-lasting friendships.

I could go on talking about the rodeo (which I missed), the wild-west horse carriage race (they are astonishingly fast), the huge body-lifted trucks with twin back wheels one has to drive in order to be a real Canadian or the sweet grandchildren of the Kux-Kardos family. But as life goes, another visit at the Toyota dealer is scheduled – with me luck in my battle against the forces of evil in order to win back my ABS-system!