{"id":188091,"date":"2015-10-14T22:44:40","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T20:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/loudavymkrokem.cz\/?p=188091"},"modified":"2026-06-05T21:07:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T19:07:16","slug":"st-johns-newfoundland-happy-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loudavymkrokem.cz\/en\/st-johns-newfoundland-happy-living\/","title":{"rendered":"In a Land Where People Still Love to Live"},"content":{"rendered":"I can’t stop smiling. We caught this disease the moment we landed. The corners of our mouths shot up and settled there as if it were their natural position. Everyone smiles here. I found myself in a land of the friendliest people on the planet \u2014 a place where happy living isn’t just a phrase, it’s a way of life. The question of “to be or not to be” doesn’t even exist here. Welcome to St. John’s, Canada, in the province of Newfoundland. \n\n\"St.\n\nWe stumbled out of the airport building in our winter jackets, and I was fiddling with my proper Nordic hat. Mum and I were expecting the cold. Serious cold.\n\nBut it was actually hot.\n\nA grey sky floated somewhere above us, hardly promising pleasant weather, and the drizzle gave us an uncomfortable feeling of dampness \u2014 but cold? Not a chance.\n\nI thought I knew Canada perfectly. That nothing could surprise me in these quiet, sparsely populated Atlantic provinces. How wrong I was! If I’d thought Canadians were friendly before, I had no idea what friendliness truly meant.<\/i>\n\n\"Moving\n\nKleptomania simply doesn’t exist here<\/b>\n\nWe took a taxi to the B&B The Narrows (there’s no city bus service). Nobody was around, the doors were unlocked, and an envelope with a key and a welcome letter was waiting for us. In case you didn’t know \u2014 nobody here worries about being robbed. Some people even leave their car windows open, along with their front doors.\n\nWe eagerly peeled off our winter clothes and headed out for a first sleepy exploration of the even sleepier grey city of colourful houses.\n\nI was desperate for sleep. The early morning start, the long journey, and the time difference had loaded my eyelids with a hefty dose of exhaustion.\n\nWe made our way to Water Street.\n\nWater Street, by the way, seems to exist in every town across the Atlantic provinces. Water Street and Main Street. They’re not exactly brimming with originality when it comes to naming things.\n\nWater Street lived up to its name rather quickly \u2014 a small river began flowing down the road and pavements. If I’d been complaining about sleepiness before, an icy shower from the clouds sorted that right out.\n\n
\"Church
The locals are quite religious. They’re used to going to church, and the churches often host performances and concerts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n100 ships, 5,000 Irish immigrants a year \u2014 that was the 1770s<\/b>\n\nThe second day was no better. Wind joined the rain, and the temperature dropped by ten degrees. Out came my woolly hat and winter jacket. Our goal in St. John’s had been to see puffins, but they weren’t around at this time of year. We’d also wanted to spot an iceberg, but those only appear in summer.\n\nSo we figured we’d at least go on a breathtaking boat trip. But the sky was grey, the clouds were hurling water at us, and the wind was doing its best to blow us into another universe.\n\n“No, no, this isn’t typical weather at all. It’s usually about 22 degrees this time of year, and it was genuinely beautiful and sunny right up until today,” our host said with an apologetic smile as she made us pancakes with blueberries and “Newfoundland berries,” which I’m fairly sure were redcurrants. Then she began listing activities we could do in this kind of weather.\n\nSo we ended up at The Rooms, the local museum. A visit to a museum that was only a few years old and had barely anything in it was truly our last resort. The modern building resembled an enormous greenhouse, and the exhibitions we were interested in had either just ended or were still being installed. So we wandered through the permanent exhibition about the ancestors of St. John’s Canadians.\n\n
\"The
The Rooms \u2014 the local museum, built just a few years ago. The views of the city from inside are stunning… provided it’s not raining and you can actually see something.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\nMost of Newfoundland’s population descends from Ireland, with the biggest wave of immigrants arriving in the 1770s. Every spring, over 5,000 Irish people disembarked at the port of St. John’s. The exhibition also covered the Inuit and Indigenous peoples. The whole thing demonstrated how proud Canadians are of their history, their roots, and the mix of cultures that define them.\n\n“They really do make the most of what little they have,” Mum observed with genuine admiration. And it’s true \u2014 you’ll rarely find anything here older than the 18th century. But they’re proud of every bit of it.\n\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yQUemRgR8Ic<\/a>\n\nA little box called Hurricane<\/b>\n\n“You’re a long way from home! How are you finding it here?” A young man grins at us \u2014 he’d struck up a conversation on the street. Totally normal around here, as we’d already learned.\n\nPeople are genuinely curious, but in this wonderfully unobtrusive way. We’d only been here two days, but we could already tell tourists from locals on the street. Canadians greet you, ask how you’re doing and where you’re from. Then they wish you a lovely day. Tourists walk past without a glance. And above all \u2014 Canadians are constantly saying thank you. Gratitude comes more naturally to them than breathing. And that perpetual smile. As if the cold didn’t exist, as if the miserable weather didn’t matter. It’s like their ancestors carved that smile into their faces, and nothing could ever threaten it.<\/i>\n\n“Hang on, something’s beeping.” During our evening Skype call, a piercing noise started up. It was coming from the kitchen.\n\n“It’s in this drawer.” Mum points at a white gadget making an awful racket.\n\n“What do you think it’s for?”\n\n“No idea. But we’re not listening to this all evening!”\n\nWe stared at it for a moment, then Mum triumphantly yanked it out of the socket.\n\n“So what was it?” Luk\u00e1\u0161 asks me over Skype.\n\n“All sorted \u2014 Mum unplugged it.”\n\nWe later found out it was a hurricane warning device. Fortunately, the beeping only meant a strong wind warning this time. The wind, however, very much arrived.\n\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=i45icCkV0x8<\/a>\n\nA symbol of death and life<\/b>\n\nOn the third day, the weather calmed down a bit. The wind actually picked up, but at least it stopped raining. We’d heard it all through the night, crashing into buildings and producing high-pitched, eerie whistling sounds.\n\nStill, we headed up the hill to the wind-battered Signal Hill National Historic Site. This was where I first felt the raw wildness and power of nature \u2014 fierce gusts slamming into Cabot Tower perched on the hilltop, while we watched the mighty ocean rage against the cliffs below.\n\n
\"Ocean
The view from Signal Hill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n