No Chicken For Me Please

 

After all that excitement with elks standing around in all the wrong places, I went to town. For those of you who have never been in Banff, here is what Banff has to deal with. First there is the fact that the city is surrounded by Parks Canada. That severely limits future developments making Banff a place which has to deal with everything within existing boundaries. As much as Parks Canada limits physical growth it has also created a city which can easily be compared with the tourism metropolis of St.Moritz in Switzerland. Whoever comes to Banff thinks he or she is the center of the world. Watching the curbside can be quite entertaining…. But that kind of clientele is bringing millions of easy earned Dollars into town. Consequently the entire city centre is dedicated to get more Dollars out of every visitor. Fancy shops and eateries are what you gonna see along the famous Banff Avenue. It’s like being on Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin, 5th Avenue in NYC or the Champs Elysee, Paris France. “Normal” people rather stick to the back roads – like me. Traffic is simply huge. Finding a spot where to park your wheels is a challenge. I was in search for the Public Library which I found right down at the Bow River on a corner at Bear Street. They have nice and lightning fast internet. Right across is the Post office, where I dropped a letter. Then I had to go shopping. I didn’t need much, but being there I wandered around to check pricing on things. I was in for a surprise when looking at chicken meat. The package with chicken strips (left-overs at the butcher shop) had a kilo price of over $17.00. That makes for over $7.70/lb. We always bought chicken breasts for under $2.00 a pound in the U.S. So needless to say chicken is off the menu this summer. All other meat is almost the same as we have seen in the U.S. Done with my shopping, I proceeded to find a coin laundry.  I didn’t take my stuff in there as there was no parking around. By-the-way it’s located in the basement of a shopping mall – downtown Banff. Go figure. But I did go down there to check it out. You remember the little slots where you put in 6 X 25cts in U.S. Laundromats? Here you’ll want tp put in Dollars instead. Six of them. Dryers are the same and big machines are $20.00.  I fail to see that Canadians are making so much more money to make up for all these inflated prices. And I haven’t even mentioned gas prices which right here are currently peeking at $4.73/gal. Just so you know, in case you come to the big white north and you need to make adjustments to your travel budget. But then again the U.S. Dollar is currently 10-12% above the Canadian. A good portion of that, however, is eaten up by the bank’s exchange rate. So will I be living of porridge with water only? I don’t think so. My latest kitchen job ended in meat balls and I still have plenty of it. Thanks for keeping me company here!