Was Thomas Müller already on Water Street or Robson Street? Probably. Maybe in Gastown or the Chinese Quarter? Why not. Since he recently started playing football in Vancouver for the Whitecaps, he will certainly look around this wonderful city in his free time and he will discover a lot, including a tavern where the local Bavarian beer is served.
Vancouver is – the British have found out – the city with the highest quality of life in the world after Zurich and Geneva. Roughly the size of Stuttgart, it is the third largest city in Canada. Vancouver, where the Winter Olympics took place in 2010, indeed has a unique recreational value.
Not only that. Vancouver is a total work of art. Created on the Pacific coast in just 120 years and completely renovated since the World’s Fair in 1986, Vancouver is a city with a lot on the side. Since there is no actual center, everything is open to all sides. It’s never more than five or six blocks from the ocean. This clears the mind – and invigorates it. The nuances change again and again. But it is precisely through these leaps that Vancouver acquires a silhouette: young and elegant, lively and elegiac, serene and sociable, purist and playful.
Vancouver is a city that cannot be caricatured. It’s beautiful, beautiful to sip. The people there seem to know this, but they don’t tell anyone. Why? It can be touched everywhere. The sea on the left and the mountains on the right. The leisure value is enormous. Thomas Müller won’t have to be told that twice. In summer it has water, in winter it has snow.
But it can also be culture. Built in 1995 by Moshe Safdie, the library is one of the most beautiful in the world. Not entirely unlike the Colosseum in Rome, you sit downstairs for an espresso and then browse through books and magazines. But perhaps Müller likes it better outside at the Anthropological Museum, near the Indian totem poles, to engage in a silent dialogue across times and zones.
Back in the not-so-old old town. It’s called Gastown, not because it smells of gas here, but because a certain Jack Deighton, a former saloon owner, was particularly “gassy”, i.e. talkative. And then you’re sitting in a bar, or you’re sucked in by the shops on Water Street and suddenly you’re in Richard Kidd’s house. This is not a store, but a glass atrium, definitely one of the most extravagant fashion shops on the continent. Two blocks further is the Chinese Quarter. The local Chinatown is the second largest in North America after San Francisco. Crossing Hastings Street isn’t for everyone because of the countless druggies crouching, lying, staggering or just starving on the sidewalk. Most people leave you unmolested, only a few pick on you or insult you.
But just around the corner it becomes Chinese, there are lanterns greeting you, there is an Asian smell. Even if you don’t need medication, you should visit a Chinese pharmacy. The whole wall is lined with pots and jars filled with health: shark fins for the joints and skin, bird nests of all kinds, with lots of protein, against wrinkles and other vices, even if they are not very cheap, or cute, dried seahorses, they help against mumps and prostatitis. They say.
Change of scenery, it’s time for a coffee or a drink. You don’t take it just anywhere, but in the legendary Fairmont Hotel. You pay a sinful price, but you feel incredibly comfortable in the turn-of-the-century plush. And strengthened for Robson Street, the main commercial street.
It’s not just Robson Street where there are countless people strolling. People who enjoy being here. European faces, Chinese faces, indigenous faces, dark-skinned faces. Multiculturalism is not a program in Vancouver, but a reality. Desired reality. The city thrives on the influx of foreign people and fresh ideas. That can only be right for Thomas Müller.
There are detours from Vancouver. One goes to Seattle in the USA, the city of Bill Boeing, Bill Gates and Jimi Hendrix. Or you could take a trip along Howe Sound and up to Squamish with a huge granite massif that is very popular with mountaineers – whether it is also popular with football players remains to be clarified.
The third detour is to Victoria. And it’s really worth it. Victoria is a bit sleepy and old-fashioned, or, as crime writer Raymond Chandler said, “deadly boring, like an English town on Sunday.” But Victoria is the capital of the province of British Columbia (which also includes Vancouver), equipped with a pompous parliament building, and it is beautifully situated on an island, accessible by ferry through a winding fjord.
This crossing alone is an experience. But especially “whale watching”. Thousands of whales – orcas to be precise – “cruise” off the coast while they can be observed from boats. At first it’s just a bunch of seals lounging on a rocky reef, then there are a few sea lions dozing and playing, as well as sea eagles circling majestically. “Back there!” it suddenly screams from one mouth. In fact, not so far away, you can see them, a group of humpbacked, floating islands: the whales.
The back and fin are black, the belly is white when they turn. As if they were having great fun performing their tricks: how they snort, how they dive! Then they shoot out of the water, sometimes straight up into the air. Massive colossi with springy elegance. They plow through the water as if they had invented synchronized swimming. Gurgling. The caudal fin claps.
Thomas Müller definitely won’t want to miss out on all of this. Appropriately, we return to Vancouver by seaplane. It bobs right next to the whale’s territory. A few formalities and the machine glides over the water out of the harbor, starts up, breaks away and floats away. Half an hour later it lands in Vancouver, not outside the airport, but downtown, just six blocks from Robson Street. Where else can you get this? Not in Munich, not in Hamburg, that you can fly right to your front door, so to speak.
