Specifically, the city of Waterloo, about an hour’s drive from Toronto. Any Dopers from around there? I’m very much interested in attending UWaterloo as a physics grad student, so pending my actual admission I figure I should find out what life is like there, as I’ll be there for about 6-7 years if I get in. Any advice, guides, stories? Any info at all. 
Well, well! I just happen to live in Waterloo! As far as life is here, it’s pleasant for the most part - people are generally kind and polite, hold doors for you, say thanks, etc. Very little crime. A female can go for a walk alone at night and not have to fear for her life. Waterloo park is very pretty (and has a petting zoo!) There’s some interesting little shops, some student-run, and lots of coffee bars and great places to eat. Uptown Waterloo is great for shopping.
The only downside I can say I’ve seen here is that there needs to be some more places open 24 hours (eateries, coffee shops, convenience stores) and some drivers are assholes. That aside, I really like it here.
Another Waterloo person… Somehow when I saw the title, I knew it’d be here.
I grew up here, and nobody likes the city they grew up in… But everyone who comes here seems to enjoy it and I don’t hear much complaining about it from the out-of-town students (I’m a student, so I tend to talk to them a lot)
Amazon’s about right. It’s pretty much like that, especially around the universities. Once you get out in to the suburbia that is the rest of the town, it’s not the best. Not to contradict Amazon too much, but every city has it’s ‘problem areas’… There are some places I don’t go, but that’s because they’re ‘controlled’ by ‘gangs’(low-income suburban kids, who think they have something to prove), and being of similar age, they like to hassle me… Of course, I went to school in those areas, and if I don’t know the person themselves, I know their siblings or parents, so I really don’t worry all that much. But don’t let that scare you out of coming here… The worst that Waterloo can get is about 1/10th as bad as a ‘better’ part of T.O.
Being a grad student, you probably can afford a car, so go for the (somewhat) cheaper housing outside of the student areas (immediately around the universities). All the housing tends to be more expensive than other cities, simply because of demand (though that has dropped off this year, from what I understand), and if you have an SO, or friends to live with, you can usually get a full house for a decent amount. My favourite part of the city to live is in the area north of University and Weber (by the way, apparently, “everywhere” else Weber is pronounced “Webber”… Here, it’s “WEEber,” people will have no idea where “webber street” is…)
Just out of curiosity , where are you coming from ? I am personally no where near the KW area ,but if you get here soon enough ,there should be a bodacious beer drinking frenzy going on , with octoberfest.
Declan
There are lots of mennonites around, and that means: great sausages. My one regret about becoming vegetarian is the mennonite sausage. mmm … sausage …
Isn’t there a great farmer’s market in Kitchener, where such delights can be procured? (I think they also have garlic olives, if I’m thinking of the right farmer’s market …)
Overall, Southern Ontario is great. The weather is pretty good, Toronto’s not too far in case you have a hankering for international groceries or a professional sports game, and it’s pretty safe from natural disasters.
The only other thing I know about Waterloo is that it is adjacent to Kitchener; they are often referred to as one city - Kitchener-Waterloo.
And Oktoberfest. That’s key.
The only problem I know about Waterloo is that Og-forsaken ABBA song which is currently in my head and probably will be all day. Thanks a lot.
I went to Wilfrid Laurier, so I spent 4 years there, m’self. I loved it. Big enough to have the culture, the bars, the social scene. Small enough so that you don’t feel crowded in. UW campus is pretty nice as well, although it’s a tad large for my taste.
Always a bit of a kick waking up on weekends listening to the Mennonites driving by in their carriages. Makes you feel…historic somehow.
I wasn’t much of a social butterfly, so I can’t say much about the bar scene, but I spent a lot of time at the Princess Cinema and Morty’s (right across the street from WLU campus).
All in all, I loved my time there, and I’d heartily recommend it.
Couldn’t tell you about Waterloo, but I can tell you that Ontario is big, rocky, icy, cold, wet, a real pain in the arse to drive through, and beautiful.
Cold??? Silly Ontarians. 
Shaddup, ya hoserhead.
As a side note, Spookey Ruben liked Waterloo so much that he wrote a song about it. It’s on his new album, Alone at the Zoo.
If you don’t know who Spookey Ruben is, then nevermind. 
Thanks for the info everyone. Just to further clarify, my hometown area is Wyckoff, NJ, which is Northern NJ, just across the Hudson from NYC. I’m starting my third and final year at RPI, in the NY Capital Region. Assuming I get in, I’ll be starting at UWaterloo next fall.
That Oktoberfest sounds awesome. And the fact that there are other Dopers in the city itself is always a plus. Good to know there’s some level-headed people around.
I went to the University of Waterloo. Waterloo was my first choice to live in when I was looking for my first job, though I ended up working in Oshawa. (And moving back in with Mom. That dodn’t work out…)
I was in Waterloo in the early eighties, so undoubtedly it’s changed. I understand the transit system has gotten better, and what with the Toyota plant in neighbouring Cambridge, the area is bigger than it was.
Waterloo was great. Far enough from Toronto to be its own place, but only an hour or so away when you wanted to go to the Big City. There was Oktoberfest, of course. Even as a non-alcohol-drinker I couldn’t avoid it.
The German heritage shows up all through town. There are street names; the neighbouring city of Kitchener was known as Berlin until a particularly xenophobic phase during the First Wiorld War; there are other German names all over the region, like Breslau and Hanover.
King Street is the main drag of both Waterloo and Kitchener, but the street directions and naming are not intuitive. Kitchener and Waterloo are two towns that have grown together (the dividing line is near the Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital on King Street).
But the two towns brought together two street grids that totally didn’t match. When I was there, King street in Waterloo started out as King Street North, heading southwest, then became King Street South. It then made a fairly sugnificant curve to the southeast, and became King Street West at the K/W border. Further on, it became King Street East (and as you headed for Cambridge, became Highway 8 and a freeway, but that’s another story.) The upshot of all this was that streets did all kinds of weird topolgical things where the grids met.
And don’t try to orient yourself by the Conestoga Parkway, either; it curves around so much that it’s useless as a large-scale grid reference.
When I was there, the architecture school was on the main campus of UW, though I understand that it’s now moved to an old mill building in downtown Cambridge. Waterloo University’s main campus was on the extreme north side of town at the time (I think there are suburbs further north now).
The administration building was Ira Needles Hall; of course we called it Needless Hall. We got the old urban legend about books being to heeavy for the library building as well.
When I was there, first-year students at Waterloo had to live in residence (not ‘dormitory’; see An American’s Guide to Canada for differences in vocabulary).
Waterloo had two main residences, Village One (V1) and Village Two (V2). V1 was mostly first-year students and had the reputation of being a bit of a zoo. Somehow I was assigned to V2, but it was still a zoo. At Christmas when I went home for the holidays, my erstwhile roommate, upon moving out, papered my walls solidly with nudie pix. A new roommate moved in… what an impression he got. As well as my father, when he gave me a lift back and came into the residence with me, and I opened the door to reveal walls of naked flesh…
Only in second year could we move off campus and into an apartment. At that time, the only apartment building near campus was a single building on University Avenue that was all students and that everyone called Cockroach Towers. So that’s where two friends and I lived. The rent was at least 20% higher than market rate, but there were few other choices so close.
Later, I dropped out and went to college (not university; the two are different in Ontario–see previous reference) in Brampton to study electronics (another story); my friend shacked up with his girlfriend and moved into a co-op on Phillip Street on the east side of campus.
There were also residences for grad students on campus, and the mysterious Married Students’ Apartments across University Avenue.
Ya know , that almost sounds pornographic
Declan
Ontario?!?
Ugh, it’s full of… <gasp> Canadians.
Last time I went to Ontario* those hosers flew me out to a private lake with good walleye fishing and sold me beer.
… and that was a good thing… 
I know. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Be not afraid, after all, Canadians are just unarmed Amerikans with health care.
Relax, eh?
Keeping in mind that Univ. of Waterloo has a large math & engineering contingent.
Like nerds as far as the eye can see. Also a very high male to coed ratio. High on the male side that is.
Yup. The Math & Computer building has a cafeteria with really really good food, but I don’t go very often because the mathies scare me a little (me & math get along about as well as cobras and mongeese).
For a nerd experience in the extreme, be sure to read the Math News, published by the department. It doesn’t get more exciting than this.
I did an M.A. at Waterloo in the 80s. I quite liked the school, the city, and the surrounding region. The computing resources were remarkable when compared to other schools, and there were excellent liasons between the school and businesses.
For lifestyle, I prefered U of Toronto for the culture of a major international city, Laurentian U (Sudbury) for the wilderness, and Western U (London) for its riverside bike paths and its proximity to Lake Erie and Lake Huron beaches. That being said, however, I had no complaints at all about Waterloo.
Ooh, baby, you better believe we’re the province with the mostest.