Marshall in Strange Places: 16 Days of Christmas in Canada

Sixteen days works out to 384 hours or 23,040 minutes. It seems like a lot on paper or a computer screen, but the time ticks by quickly – especially when it's the time you have for a homecoming Christmas vacation.

A New Years Eve wedding, the family time, the friend time, the jet lag recovery, the eight hours of daily sleep (not including the extra hours of recovery time after any debaucherous friend time) would all take their chunks from those 23,040 precious minutes.

This trip was also completely different than previous homecomings because Kata was joining me for her first visit to the Great White North. Along with the introductions during the family and friend time, we were fitting in plenty of sightseeing for my Hungarian tourist.

So it would be a crunch. There would be a lot to see, a lot to do, and a lot of people to meet, but I was convinced we had the fortitude to get it all done.

Jet Lagged in London

After our arrival in Pearson, we met my parents and continued to London, where we slept and recovered for a few days.

Other than a few hellos over Skype, this was Kata's first time meeting my parents. For most of us, meeting a significant other's parents is a brief affair. Maybe dinner and then a brisk goodbye. Enough time to make a decent first impression before any Ben Stiller-esque awkwardness happens.

Kata's 'Meet the Parents' Test would last a little longer. We had the car ride from the airport, then dinner, then breakfast the next morning... And on it would go. And it went smoothly. No 'Meet the Parents' awkwardness.

This being London, there are some places to escape to. As we recovered from the time change,we took a walk through downtown Byron one day and discovered downtown London the next day.

We experienced the mighty Forks of the Thames, passed a few pubs I used to frequent, and ate Shawarma. Then it was time to move on.

Playing Tourist in Toronto

I had a few ideas about the Toronto program but I didn't want to be the Dictator of Toronto Sightseeing, so I gave Kata a Toronto guide book before we left for Canada in the hopes that she would flip through it and think about what she wanted to see and do.

You can see the Toronto essentials in a few days, but I was going to be dragging her around to meet friends as well. Efficient planning – something I might have picked up living in Germany – would be crucial to getting her Toronto experience just right.

We caught an early train into Toronto and hit the Ridley's Aquarium right off the bat (something on the top of Kata's list) then went off to a friend's place to drop our bags and visit before the epic Christmas party known as Ludacristmas.

And on it went. There were discovery walks in Cabbagetown and Kensington. Porkbone Soup. Lunch atop the CN Tower. Then we moved to the Cousin Condo downtown, which made a brunch, a visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario, an excursion to Mississauga, and a walk down Queen West all easy to achieve.

Our last night came around and we were preparing to meet friends for drinks in the Distillery District with a genuine sense of accomplishment at what we have seen and done.

Of course, as the night ended – and it ended early since it was a work night and we're all old people with jobs now – I had the nagging sense that a bit more time would have allowed us really enjoy and savour the time with friends and family.

But we had no time for that! The next day we were on a train back to London, where three glorious days of family Christmas-ing awaited.

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day and the gatherings and dinners came and went. Once again, I wished there was just a little more time to spend with everyone. And once again, there was no time for any of that, because we were on the road again to the Niagara Falls.

In much the same way that people who live in Cologne walk past the Dom without looking up, I take growing up close to Niagara Falls for granted. It's different for Kata, and some of her first-time-seeing-the-Falls enthusiasm rubbed off on me.

We had dinner above the Falls, saw them lit up at night (my first time seeing them lit up) and the next day stopped in Niagara-on-the-Lake to look at pretty old houses, the lake, and the crowds of Americans taking advantage of the low Canadian dollar.

Foiled by the Flu

We returned to London and the next day I awoke with an upset stomach. No big deal, I thought, I'll just have a normal breakfast. Which I saw again as the upset stomach turned into something far more violent and foul. I had caught the flu.

And now a real dilemma. Our date of departure was Jan. 1 and our New Years Eve was to be spent attending a friend's wedding in Hamilton. I only had two days to recover enough to attend the wedding, sleep in a strange hotel, and then endure an eight-hour flight – without barfing or spreading my virus.

So we stayed in London instead, and I tried to recover enough for the possibly arduous flight back to Germany. I was left feeling certain that 16 days was not enough time to see everyone and do everything properly after all.

And yet, writing this a few days after the fact, I feel that we did and saw a lot of cool things. We had a great time with friends and family, which felt short at the time but now feels, in that nostalgic glow of hindsight, like time truly well spent. It turns out 16 days might have been enough time after all.