Random Blogs of 2018

I wrote fewer blog post this year then in previous years, but I had plenty of notes and rough drafts of ideas that didn't grow into full blogs. So, here are the best ideas that never became blogs in 2018.

Getting my Permanent Residence in Germany

It was certainly a year of turning points. A new era in the career. A new marital status. A new dependent. In this flurry of life-changing status changes, I never got around to writing about how I became a permanent resident in Germany.

And no, this won't turn into a rant about Germany's Kafkeaucracy. There was actually nothing absurd about it. I got an email asking me to prepare my documents. I went in prepared for an EU Blue Card (a work permit) and was told that with my German language level and contributions to the national pension scheme – the stuff that really matters here – I qualified for permanent residency.

It was simple and not the slog I intended it to be. An American colleague can't believe I got mine so quickly. An old roommate took the German language proficiency test that I never took several times and didn't get his permanent residence. Another Canadian acquaintance is scrambling to get hers before her Blue Card expires.

What makes me so different? I'd like to think it's because I'm special. In reality it's probably because I was over prepared. I had all my required documents and then some, and I was punctual. That matters if you want results from the German bureaucracy.

That Hungarian Election

Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party cruised to another super-majority over a right-wing Jobbik party struggling to be less like its traditional far right self and a divided opposition that couldn't agree on whose local candidates should step down to unite behind one anti-Fidesz candidate.

Bringing Up a Baby in Germany

Four years ago, I was my way to the Dusseldorf airport from a job interview and started chatting with my cab driver. He had three kids and, in response to my impressed look, he laughed and said, "It's up to us, the Arabs and the Canadians to make the babies here, because the Germans aren't making them!"

So, my son was born earlier this month in a German hospital to a Hungarian mother and a Canadian father, and I did my small part to fulfill Germany's economic goal of replacing the ranks of its aging population with a beautiful hybrid baby boy. And what an international love child! He'll get his mother's command of the Hungarian language and his father's Canadian English, along with a German education, starting out in a Kindergarten.

The country he will grow up in is as international as he is, though it's still different from my own settler state of a homeland. My mother, born in Canada to Dutch immigrants, still remembers attending the ceremony where her parents, brother, and sister were made Canadian citizens.

Those ceremonies are still celebrated by soon-to-be citizens and Canadians like me, who grew accustomed to seeing short clips of these ceremonies on the local evening news – back when people used to get their news from the TV.

You won't find that in Germany, or elsewhere in Europe. There's no Ministry of Multiculturalism and Germany doesn't bill itself as a Promised Land. It's the World's Workshop and it needs skilled workers. This is a transactional relationship, which is why there are so many foreigners in Germany and why so many of them come and go. It's not that they can't hack it – although many will give you an earful about the food, weather, language, or bureaucracy – it's just the way it goes in the European Union. People move where the opportunities are and their host countries accept them, with little pomp or ceremony. My Syrian cab driver wasn't far off, Germany is still a country that relies on its guest workers, even for their babies.

But those Syrian cab drivers, Hungarian designers, and Canadian copywriters who stay have found something beyond the pragmatic benefits for living and working in Germany. Sure, we contribute to, and enjoy the benefits of, a functioning social welfare system. And that system may care little about whether we stick around, but there are times where we have met informal multicultural ministers in Germany. Like the patient government workers who hear our faltering German and reply slowly, clearly, and respectfully for our German-novice ears. Or the helpful colleagues and friends who've offered advice or included us in some local custom, which often involves beer and/or raw meat.

When you stick with it, good things come to you here. It often takes the barest of minimums, like using your lousy German or keeping an open mind. Then, gradually, you lay down some roots. You feel less like a guest worker and the whole thing doesn't feel like a transactional relationship.

As the years go by, as the character of Germany evolves with those of us who stay and make a life here, I'm excited to see what my son will encounter. He will never have experienced this awkward guest worker phase that we endure. He'll be a local kid born in Germany with foreigner parents, like many other kids he'll meet at school. What will his generation bring to their Germany?

Into the Harz of Germany

Glad to be standing at the top of Brocken after a crowded steam train-ride. 

Ever hear of Goslar? It's fine. You likely haven't. But you should drop by this town if you're in the neighbourhood, which also isn't likely because the only thing in Goslar's neighbourhood are rocks, trees, and the Harz Mountains.

The places that usually draw people to Germany are on the country's fringes. From Hamburg to the north, down to the southwest to the Dorf, Cologne – then further down the Rhine, you can reach Frankfurt, Heidelberg, the Black Forest, never straying to far from the border. Then turning east into Bavaria, you'd reach Munich with the Alps on your right. which are shared between Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria. To the northeast, you reach Nuremburg, Dresden, and Berlin – every city close to Germany's borders.

The Harz Mountains are in the middle of that fringe. It's rugged country, where Germanic myths of witches and dwarves and bridge trolls come from. Kings ruled from castles here to guard the silver mines, the Nazis built V-1 and V-2 missiles in bunkers beneath the mountains, and the Iron Curtain ran through it. Most people flock to the fringes without really seeing the heart, or Harz, of Germany.

Express trains run around the Harz, so it took two train changes to reach Goslar. Then we got lost in the town. This is no cookie-cutter rebuilt town with a shiny old centre. Goslar wasn't carpet-bombed during the war, so most of the old town is as it was, with all its twisty, not-so-modern-German streets and its old timber houses. 

Sure, Goslar is a touristic draw. There's a Kaiserpfalz – an Imperial palace/castle from the medieval days – and old mills and German-style breweries. But the untouched old-timey centre is big enough to absorb them, so you get wonderfully quiet moments to yourself on these old, twisted cobblestone streets and alleys, hemmed in by ancient wood houses.

Having Goslar to yourself is a common feeling.

Down the rail line is Wernigerode, the starting point for tourists who take a crowded steam-powered train to Brocken, the Harz's highest peak, and back down again into town, where they crowd souvenir shops and Eis cafes. The buildings are also old, but the town is completely given over to tourist kitsch, which was disheartening and uninviting. We were ready to write off Wernigerode completely until we walked down a residential street, past a plague for Paul Renner, the typographer behind Futura. So not all bad, after all.

On our last night in Goslar, we we sat in our apartment deciding on our next destination as Empire Strikes Back dubbed in German played in the background. We had planned to go to Dessau to see the Bauhaus sights. But a Bauhaus Design and Architecture Museum was still a few years from completion and there were no architecture tours in English. It's astounding that Dessau hasn't embraced its Bauhaus heritage. We had to change trains in Berlin, so instead of changing trains, we stayed in Berlin.

One day in Berlin

What do you do when you have one night in Berlin? We had no time for anything, so we planned as much as possible for the rest of the afternoon. Kata suggested we visit the Boros Bunker to see some contemporary art. We got turned away because it's appointment-only. Berlin amateur move. Kata used to live in Neukoeln, so we went there for dinner, but choked and couldn't agree on a restaurant. We rushed hungrily into a joint that, to put it lightly, sucked. Another amateur Berlin move. We should have known better.

The next day, we walked along the Spree in the sun, had a cool drink by the river, and ate amazing burgers in the Mitte. We had no plans. We didn't make it to another museum and that didn't matter, strolling through the Tiergarten was enough. We threw away our plans and the expectations that come with them. And we were reminded that Berlin has nothing but rewards for the relaxed visitor.

Berlin views.

Baby Naming Struggles

When we started our baby name list we agreed to a Hungarian name, because he'd have an awesome Anglo last name. There was just one condition: I had to be able to pronounce his name in my maple syrup-y Canadian accented English. 

That eliminated Abel, because a Hungarian would pronounce it like A-Bell, while a Canadian would say it like Able. We decided this would confuse the poor kid.

Kata really wanted Samuel, because the cutesy pet name for it would be Samu, pronounced Shamu. I decided naming our kid after a famous whale wasn't a good idea. I vetoed it, but Kata never understood the North American reference.

Hungarians pronounce their S like Sh, so that pronunciation issue eliminated Simon (Shimon, phonetically). A Canadian Jacob, would sound like Yak-ub. Benjamin made its way onto a few government documents, like our daycare sign-up (yes, you have to sign up early for day-care here). But that J issue popped up again. Plus, it isn't a Hungarian name.

Kata had a girl name figured out, but thinking of a boy's name hadn't occurred to her and she didn't want her son's life to be like a JohnnyCash song. I approached it with my usual shrug and let's-not-think-too-hard-and-something-will-pop-into-our-head attitude. So, the process went on for a while. A Hungarian woman and a Canadian man living in Germany can have a tough time thinking of a name.

Armin was a favourite for a while, but then it wasn't. We both pronounced Felix the same way, but we didn't like it because it's far too common in Germany and it was not a Hungarian name. As an expat family, Felix was raus! as the Germans say.

For a while Kata was fiercely advocating for Csongor, pronounced Chong-Gore. I should have liked it, it's a great Hungarian name, but it always rubbed me the wrong way. Csongor. Chong-Gore. Little baby Chong-Gore. Nope.

Another great Hungarian name we both liked was Attila. Hungarians have been naming their boys Attila since the days of Attila the Hun, the great barbarian... pillager... plunderer... oh... right...

There was Áron, which was our choice for a week or so, but then I would write Aron all the time because my Canadian computer keyboard doesn't have an A with an accent on it, so that was out. Another name starting with an A was Antal, for Antal Szerb, my favourite Hungarian writer and one of Kata's favourites too. That was cut after a while. I can't remember why.

There was Gellért, for the hill in Budapest I wind-sprinted up a lot. Then Bence, the Hungarian version of Vincent. Both considered, liked for a day or two and cut. Imre? Out.

There was one name that kept popping onto the list and was never eliminated. We've been using it for the last few months now. "How is ____ doing?" or "Oh, ____ kicked!" And neither of us has vetoed it. The name has stuck. So, with six weeks remaining until his arrival date, we have a name for him.

Familiar Territory with Family

Discovery Walks in familiar places.

The only condition my brother-in-law had to drive his wife, a five-and-a-half-year-old daughter, a four-year-old son, and a one-year-old toddler 1,185km from Budapest to Dusseldorf was to see the North Sea. That was it. His wife, also wanting to dip her toes into the sea, happily conceded.

The actual drive went alright, from what I was told. Two days of driving with a night's rest in Bavaria. No crappy weather. No drama on the autobahn. The kids went into their car seats without kicking, squirming, screaming, or any other drama – they're far more well behaved than I remember me and my brother being on the family road trips.

Although, there was little room for squirming or kicking because the car was rammed full with a playpen, a stroller with three different seat attachments, baby clothes in heavy vacuum-sealed bags for the expected arrival of our own little road-tripper.

They arrived on a Thursday night – Kata's birthday. I worked in Aachen all day Friday, arriving in the evening to a raucous apartment filled with three happy kids who spent the day at the Dusseldorf Aquarium, walking along the Rhine, and being young tourists in the Dorf. They were running from room to room, playing with their umbrellas, and rolling around atop their air mattress. Their long march across the Dorf hasn't seemed to tire them out.

We were back on the road on the weekend, heading to Ghent. The kids, all settled into their car seats had one tablet to share. The baby wasn't going to use it (she has little hands and fell asleep before we left the Dorf), so the other two had to share it. The older sister took it, telling her younger brother she was going to use this tablet, but she had an invisible tablet he can use. She handed him the invisible tablet, which he accepted. I don't now how long that move will last, but I hope she gets a lot of mileage out of it.

The details in Leuven's city hall.

The road were taking was one Kata and I took two years before. We were driving towards Ghent, with a stop in Leuven for a snack. Leuven is a fun place to stop. It's at a point on the highway through Belgium where you think it might be wise to stop before you hit Brussels ring road with its wild combination of reckless drivers, merging lanes, and diplomatic license plates. Leuven's city hall is the real treat. You don't see it until you turn a corner and then you walk right into a gothic building covered with gilded stone and statues.

And Ghent? 

Instagram-able Ghent!

Ghent is great. We had visited in the spring, so there weren't the August crowds in the streets of the old town like there was this time around. The canals, which were still when we visited, were choked with boats. The weather was far more warmer and sunnier. The Flemish summer can be amazing. And yet, the press of people and shoppers and cafe drinkers didn't push in on us. The town was beautiful when we visited in spring of 2016, but it felt livelier now and, in a way, better. I kind of envied the road warriors for seeing it the first time that way.

The umbrellas were the ultimate toy on this trip.

Each place they visited, the kids brought along their colourful kid umbrellas (I think Kata told dreary rainy horror stories to her family in fairer-weathered Hungary). When we arrived at our airbnb in a Belgian hamlet, they took their umbrellas onto the big deck in the back, swung them around and played with them until the sun set behind the neighbouring deer farm.

We awoke the next morning, packed up quickly and began the next leg of our super-quick road trip: Bruges.

Bruge-ing on a Bruges boat in Bruges.

Everything you heard about Bruges from that movie is true, but August is no time to visit. Unlike Ghent, where the streets accommodate the visiting hordes and is made more vibrant by them, Bruges felt like a stone and human vice. The streets were choked with tourists. You could stop and appreciate a medieval building or snap a photo of some pretty facade, but you'd risk being shoved by a ill-tempered tourist trying to eat his waffle and walk and take a selfie at the same time. Not a great place for several small child. But they have boats in Bruges! So everyone piled in and saw Bruges properly.

And what about the North Sea?

That was our first stop in the morning. It was wild and windy at Ostend, so you had to wear a windbreaker instead of a bikini, but we had the beach almost to ourselves. The tide was out too, so we walked a desert-length of beach to reach the sea. Shoes and socks were taken off and the adventurous travelers waded in as the tide rolled in.

Reaching the North Sea.

Of course, this whole odyssey was never just about the seeing the North Sea. It was also about family time. It was about the first of hopefully many family visits to Dusseldorf from the Hungarian side. It was about sharing the familiar and the new on the road together. And it was also about wiggling some toes in the Sea.

Our DIY Wedding in Denmark

The beige waiting room was like something out of a modern fairy tale.

It's the morning of our wedding and I'm picking wild flowers in a field an island in the Baltic Sea. The flowers are for Kata's floral hair arrangement and my lapel. In less than an hour, we will walk to Aersokobing's town hall and stand before the registrar to be married.

It wasn't an easy journey to this field on Aero island. We took a plane to Amsterdam, another plane to Bilund (of Lego Land fame), then a bus to Vejle, a train to Odense, a local train to Svendborg, and finally a ferry to Aeroskobing.

But the journey began months earlier when we walked into Düsseldorf's city marriage office and saw the couples lined up out of the waiting room, into the hallway, down a flight of stairs and into the lobby. As if that wasn't enough, a newly married couple and their wedding guests were navigating through this snarl of waiting not-so-nearly weds.

We'd later learn that couple, if they were both foreigners like us, would have spent hours talking to bureaucrats in their embassies and the German government, gathering important documents from their homeland, getting them translated and certified, and then waited a year for the honour of pushing their way through a crowded government building to be allowed to the privilege of being married.

We wanted none of that.

One alternative was Denmark, the Las Vegas of Europe, because of the ease of getting married. Especially for a couple of foreigners living in Germany who had neither the time, patience, nor inclination to gather their required papers and wait months for an appointment to find out more papers would be needed before they could get on an eternal waiting list. There's a baby on the way, after all.

We found one of several businesses whose sole purpose is applying for a marriage on your behalf in either Copenhagen or Aero Island. In a matter of weeks, we had an appointment to get married.

We weren't the only couple running to Denmark for a quick and easy town hall wedding. After our comically long journey to Aeroskobing, we saw couples everywhere. Some were mixed race couples – an obvious sign of two people from different countries dodging huge document requirements and embassy visits, like us. We'd see others strolling the old town, the women with noticeable baby bumps, also like us. There was also a young-ish, extremely grumpy couple staying at our hotel, who we'd see later at the town hall just after their wedding, still looking miserable, unlike us.

So, ours was not a unique decision. The staff at the town hall knew the drill. When we arrived to confirm our marriage and get a time for the next day, the elderly lady behind the desk made copies of everything and gave us our appointment quickly and efficiently. A rarity for city government.

The old town of Aeroskobing.

So, the next morning, after picking our flowers, I return to our little cottage in the compound we share with mostly Danish retirees. It starts to rain as we finish getting ready – a few attempts with my tie for me and Kata fixing her hair – and return to the town hall, a little wet, but punctual.

We wait in the little grey, government-issue waiting area and watch one young couple come out, with their parents and a few others, and watch another young couple pace impatiently around the town hall office. Kata gets up to the bathroom, maybe because she's nervous and maybe because she's pregnant, and while she's away they call our name. I wait at the door of the office for Kata to finish up and she rounds the corner directly down the hall from the office. So, I whistle "Here comes the bride..." and Kata walks down the aisle... well the hallway.

There are three elderly ladies in the room. One is the registrar, who will marry us, and the other two are our witnesses, who will, you guessed it, witness the ceremony and snap photos with Kata's phone. The whole thing will last fifteen minutes. After a bit of small talk, the registrar reads a prepared statement, asks us do we, which we do. We put on the rings and we're married. There's a kiss, papers to sign, and a quick toast. Then we're outside in the rain, which we've been told is good luck in Denmark – these marriage office people know their stuff.

When the rain clears up, we spend the afternoon with Kata's nice camera and a tripod, DIY-style, snapping photos around the island's famous beach houses. We eat a steak dinner at a local restaurant. We spend the next two days exploring the island. We mentioned our plan to the registrar, who was surprised because people don't spend any more time here than is necessary to get married. They get in and get out. That is a shame.

Aero island is beautiful!

The old town is lovely, with its 200-year-old houses and post offices and stores and restaurants, but a walk away reveals so much more. The Danish islanders grow lovely gardens filled with neat rows of blooming flowers and apple trees. The entire island is covered with long, golden grass that swishes around in a sea breeze that rarely stops.

The place is clean, and not the German-style of clean where it gets dirty and workers clean up the mess at dawn, but clean in a way that it doesn't get dirty because people take care of it. We saw very little litter. Most people rode their bikes. And they smiled and waved as we took our wedding photos on the beach, totally at ease with marriage tourists wandering their shores.

Like any island, the pace is relaxed. We found ourselves getting into that groove. Our only tasks was breakfast and then one errand (registering at the town hall one day, getting married the next, mailing documents another day). The rest of the day was spent visiting the beaches, another town at one end of the island, eating freshly smoked salmon, or cooking in our cottage and watching TV where the English isn't dubbed, but subtitled so we can enjoy it without straining.

Yes, it would have been fine to get in, get married, and get out, but lingering here turned it into a mini-honeymoon with a wedding in the middle of it. We missed our family and friends. We wished our loved ones could have been here for it. But in the end, it was just the two of us, and that's all we needed to make it perfect.

Newly weds.

Not Beating the Heat Wave

I think this heat wave is beginning to affect the Germans. The other day, on a crowded, stuffy bus, a man threw up between his legs at his seat and tried to act natural about it. It didn't work. I left the bus to escape its fresh barf smell and witnessed a homeless man jump in front of a hose, which a storeowner was using to water a tree along the sidewalk. The storeowner seemed, surprisingly, nonplussed.

It's the third or fourth week of the heat wave that's scorching northern Europe and it's starting to show. Businessmen in suits melt into their seats on the train, kindergarten teachers chase their young charges in slow motion, and city workers lean a little more heavily on their shovels.

This is a country that is not only completely unused to this heat, but completely unprepared for it. In Southern Ontario, I would've retreated to an air conditioned room with blackout curtains and stayed until September. Here, few have the luxury of air conditioning. Many apartments have wide windows that are great for letting the air flow through it, but not so good for summer heat waves were the temperature doesn't drift below 25 degrees some nights.

The trains, trams, and buses are no better. Most have small windows, designed to let a little air in, but are sealed shut to keep the spring-winter-autumn chill out. In this weather, they've been mobile saunas, 

Offices are not spared either. At Ogilvy, we used shutters to keep the sun out and windows to let the breeze in to avoid using the air conditioning, which was used so seldom that it was always set to Arctic and people would run to the thermostat and shut off the vent above their work station. When enough people did this, the air conditioning was pretty much turned off and we'd switch to shutters and windows again.

My office in Aachen also lacks air conditioning, so we're also relying on windows for a cool breeze, or at least a warm breeze, and shutters, which for some reason open suddenly for no reason other than to blind the workers inside with searing, hot sunlight. The heat in the office can be so debilitating that many of my colleagues avoid coming into the office and work from home, where they can at least stay cool and, if they're like me, work in basketball shorts and an undershirt.

When I do work from home, our apartment turns into a cool bunker. The shutters – first floor apartments in Germany have shutters over the windows, in case of burglars, peepers, and zombies – are shut and a fan is strategically set up.

Usually the German summer is a benign thing and the Germans partake in summer activities with typical efficiency. They patiently line up at ice cream shops, many stretching around the corner. On sunnier days, locals dash for the public parks, peeling off layers, while the rest of us are getting our shorts and miniskirts from storage. By the end of May, most of Germany is walking about, bronzed from laying in public parks under the sun, and happily eating their ice cream.

This summer is different. In the heat wave's first week, I'd see people who thought they could handle an afternoon of tanning in the park. They looked like they fell asleep in a brick kiln – bright red, visibly thirsty, stumbling to the shade. They still haven't quite discovered the North American cooling tactic: the movie theatre. We've watched a couple flicks and haven't had to fight a crowd to get good seats.

They have, however, gone running to the local lakes and pools. On Sunday, we went to a pool/strand in the Dorf's north end. Getting there was like crossing a desert. The grass is scorched brown and I was sure I saw a sun-bleached buffalo skull. Waiting on the platform to change trains was like looking through the haze in the Badlands. The train seemed like a mirage.

At the pool/strand, people laid towels on the burnt, brown grass or flocked to the shade under the trees and tents. But the water, with no clouds in the sky, was blue and cool. It was perfect, and you couldn't appreciate how great a swim that like that is unless you're coping with a heat wave in a country that is still learning how to handle heat waves.

The Badlands of the Dorf

Notes from the Commute

Good morning, fellow commuters.

Every morning I wake up to two alarms. One to get me out of bed and another to remind to stumble out the door and go to the train station, where I will await the train to Aachen.

And so the hurrying up and waiting begins. Sprint out of bed, linger over the breakfast, rush to the platform, wait for the train. Then the trip, which is actually a long wait for the train's arrival to Aachen.

In the afternoon, or Feierabend, as they call them here, I leave the office for the train station,  sometimes sprinting to a bus stop, to wait, then sprinting into the train station, to wait for a train, any train that will take me back to the Dorf. Once at home in the Dorf there is leisure time before the nightly routine of packing my bag and laying out my clothes to ease the limited decision-making-power of groggy-6am-straggery-sleepy Marshall.

Hurry up and wait. And wait. Those activities eat up a lot of time, which has become a precious commodity.

This blog has always been a passion project living in the margins of my day. Its posts begin as snippets scribbled into notebooks on a lunchtime Discovery Walk, then typed during the work day's final minutes before I leave the office.

But in the flurry of daily sprinting and waiting – with the pressure to catch the bus that will take me to the place where I will catch the train, with my time structured around arrivals, departures, and delays – those margins of my day are pushed back.

I'm not whining. I have a good, challenging job. I work with thoughtful, competent  people in a niche, but interesting corner of the tech industry. I even get to work from home, since my new employer treats its employees like responsible adults who can get work done without supervision.

This commuting lifestyle has only taught me the value of time. Sure, I have time to doodle in my notebook or read a book or look out the window and ponder things… like this blog post…

But when you have structure enforced on you it's difficult to find time to waste, like 45 minutes to write a blog post that's not working and then throw it out. (That might be a subtle mea culpa if you don't like this post.)

There's little time for Discovery Walks or quick drinks at the bar with colleagues, because there's a schedule to keep and a train board and things to do before I go to bed, like pack a lunch and search for clean clothes for the next day.

And yet, when I get those moments, to ride a bike during a lunch break on a home office day or just sit on the balcony, I appreciate those moments more because of their rarity.

I'm not complaining, seriously, because there's a lot to be happy with. Let us end it on a brighter note, with a promise to you, dear blog reader, that I will try to keep up with the blog. The daily slog is long, but it isn't so dreary. There's plenty to write about and plenty to show. I just have to stop taking pictures out of train windows and get on with telling you about it all.

A Hangover-Free Trip to Paris

Paris from the Tour Montparnesse - A city that's always holding something back.

We went to Paris last year for a friend's wedding. We spent the afternoon before the wedding walking along the Seine and wandering around Montmartre. For the morning after the wedding, we had big plans: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, and on and on the list went.

Then we stayed late at the party, drinking and dancing until they closed the place for the night. We didn't stop there, but stood outside double-fisting our roadie drinks with the bride, groom, and a few party-hard guests until enough was enough and we all went to bed.

We were too hungover to do anything other than call the lobby for a late checkout. It was a classic, brutal reminder that one of the things you lose in your 30s is the ability to metabolize enough alcohol to able to function the next day. We were functioning just enough to catch our flight that evening and not get kicked off.

Last weekend, we returned to Paris with a chip on our shoulder and a powerful determination to do the things we were too stupidly hungover to do. We might have overcompensated – Kata's pedometer phone app said we walked 22km on the first day.

We walked around Park La Villette, along a canal to the Battle of Stalingrad Square and witnessed a 11am trance dance party We continued down to Notre Dame – avoiding the line-ups and walking around it, then walking around the island itself. Then we just kept walking. Over Pont Neuf, through the Louvre's courtyards, into the sun-scorched Tullieres, all the way to the Obelisk in Place do la Concorde. We had crepes and cold drinks at a square with a Gothic church, then went scarf shopping for Kata, then dinner at a Brassiere in quiet neighbourhood.

The weather was sunny and warm, so we opted to stay outside instead of going into dark, air-conditioned museums, and marched and marched and marched through Paris. 

We did venture into one museum the next day. Kata insisted we see the inside of the Grand Palais, so we saw Artists & Robots, which wasn't on our list of things to see but turned out to be an interesting wide-ranging modern art exhibition of sculpture, paintings, and installations that combined people artists with robots, technology, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. As we watched robot arms drawing still life sketches and hexagonal floating things, I leaned over to Kata and mentioned this was an amazingly thought-out exhibition. She, who lived in Paris on a university exchange, smiled knowingly, patted me on the cheek, and said, "They're good at that here."

And on we walked that day, though we took it easier – my phone said we only clocked in 12km. We walked to the Arc de Triumph, then onward to the Eiffel Tower where, because we were seriously sore-footed, we found a shady spot to rest in the shade and look at the tower and watch the drink sellers ply their trade. But once rested, we continued our march through Paris, to some cafe and then to take in the view of the city from Tour Montparnesse, then a hearty brasserie repast.

Despite all the sights, we didn't get to do everything that Kata wished for us to see. Had the weather been less favourable, we would have gone to a few art galleries – Louvre, Palais de Tokyo, Musee d'Orsay – on our mental checklists. Had we gone to the galleries, we would have lingered and savoured it all and not have pounded as much Paris pavement as we did.  

But as with so many things in life, you can't do everything, though between restful moments of bliss over cold drinks or fine food, we certainly tried. There always seems to be something to see in Paris, but I also got the sense that it's a city that holds things back, so you're left with wanting to see a little more. I'm okay with that.

SUPER INTENSE TRANCE PARTY AT 11AM
AT BATTLE OF STALINGRAD SQUARE!!!!

Some church.

Photographing the mind of an artist that is a computer.

The Arc within the Arc de Triumph

Tourists in Budapest

Taking in the Danube from atop Gellert.

We had less than a day in Budapest, so we left our hotel and went for a walk, heading south towards Gellert Hill.

We went along the Danube on the Buda side, strolling beside the river, avoiding bicyclists, dodging rollerbladers, weaving past tourists stopping to snap photos of the Hungarian Parliament Building across the river – and pausing to snap our own. Then under the Chain Bridge, through a side street, browsing in a small design shop, until finally reaching the foot of Gellert Hill.

We climbed the switch-backing paths, catching glimpses of the city below, and savouring the spring flowers. We were hungry when we reached the top, but we still lingered to appreciate the view.

Then we walked down the hill, through the park on the backside of Gellert and, without really meaning to, we went to a touristic, Hungarian restaurant.

The restaurant looked traditional. There was a big, old ceramic furnace in the corner and red,table clothes with traditional Great Plains-ish patterns draped atop the tables. Even the waiters seemed authentic –  grumpy, old men in white shirts idly walking around and waiting on the three occupied tables, but mostly trying unsuccessfully to look as busy as they could in a not so busy restaurant.

We sat down, ordered our food. My novice food-ordering Hungarian language skills seemed to brighten the grumpy waiter's mood. We even earned a further nod of approval when we ordered a bottle of Kadarka.

When our food arrived – which was delicious, by the way – a traditional Hungarian band was tuning up. Why would a band get ready to play so early? we wondered.

At 6:03pm, they started playing a Hungarian folk tune that sounded familiar from my years spent living above touristy Hungarian restaurants with outdoor bands on Vaci utca. At 6:04pm, a table beside the band abruptly stood up and left while the band played, eliciting an angry, hurt, surprised reaction from the first violinist.

At 6:05pm, a busload of Chinese tourists filed into the restaurant, occupying every spare table. The grumpy old waiters lept into action, taking orders and bringing drinks. As the band played, most of the tourists stared longingly into their phones. Some did talked among themselves. One old lady put her head in their hands and dozed off.

The band started playing the Blue Danube – the 2001 song... the spaceship one, not the bone smashing song, which is not a dinner-eating tune –  as the grumpy old waiters hustled from table to table, bringing food to tables filled with filled to delighted tourists. Even the dozing old lady took her head out of her hands.

The familiar tune was treated with indifference. The tourists remained glued to their phones  as they ate or poked suspiciously at their nokedli, while the violinist strolled up and down the aisles, playing his violin solo.

The dessert was served and the the band took a break. They smoked outside and sipped water at the bar. While the grumpy old waiters to carried away the plates, we drained our wine, settled our bill – which brightened our grumpy waiter's mood – and walked into Budapest's gathering dusk.

One of the prettiest parts of BP is the other side of Gellert Hill.

Britain's Blizzard... or Brizzard?

Western Europe's and Britain's recent snowpocalypse and the total chaos it caused over the weekend reminded me of an experience similar to that country's recent wintry woes.

While I was working in the dark world of tobacco advertising, I was sent on a business trip to Bristol with a few colleagues to make a few presentations. We managed to line up the trip for a Thursday, so we could spend the weekend in London.

We arrived at Luton Airport on Thursday morning to chilly, soggy weather – nothing unseasonable. This weather held up through the two-hour drive to Bristol and an entire day of meetings, a client dinner, and an evening of refinements on the presentation.

The next morning, I groggily awoke and parted the curtains.

Bristol gets a real taste of winter.  

The city was blanketed with a few inches of snow, which was still coming down. As I sipped my third coffee in the hotel restaurant, I watched people slip and slide through the snow as they stared at the winter wonderland around them. Cars fishtailed as they turned, slid as they hit the brakes, and spun their wheels with their feeble all-weather tires.

For Bristol, it was a snow day. The city's authorities told everyone to stay home. The trams stopped running. The client's office was closed. We held the client presentation huddled on couches around my lap top on a coffee table in the hotel bar for the two clients who braved the snow.

As we drove back to London in a hired car, we saw the first evidence of the existence of snow plows in Britain – the highway was clear, though there were few other cars enjoying the salted and cleared the road.

All weekend in London, the snow continued to fall. I went spent an afternoon in the Tate Modern, so my shoes could warm up and dry out. I went from pub to cozy pub with a Londoner friend, where other Londoners had escaped to drink liquid warmth by the pint. I walked down semi-empty sidewalks and slushy, snowy, unplowed roads. The only places that were reliably open all weekend were the Indian restaurants, the pubs, and curiously, the White Chapel Market.

By Sunday, we arrived to the airport hoping the Brits had learned to handle the snow, we were somewhat disappointed. The snowplows were struggling to keep the snow off the runways, delaying flights. The airport personnel let us and our fellow passengers outside onto the tarmac, unaware the flight crew was still de-icing the plane. We shivered outside in the wind and snow, waiting to be admitted onto the airplane. When the airplane took to the air, I clapped and a few other passengers joined in. We had escaped.

Spending a weekend in Britain during a snowfall, or "snowstorm" as they call it, is like living through the first day of snow in Canada – drivers forget how to drive, snowplows take a while to get to the streets, people discover they haven't put on their snow tires.

In some countries over here, a serious snowfall comes once every few years, so they're institutionally unprepared for it and most people aren't sure how the handle the snow. It's like our first snow of the winter on a near-collapse-of-society level.

Canadians – and some hearty American states – have the advantage of having a few more snowfalls to deal with throughout the year, by which time we've forgotten how to deal with snow again and we're all clueless about how to drive, walk, breath, et cetera. 

That being said, there are few better places to spend a snowstorm than in a cozy pub in England.

A Day Over in Hanover

Whenever we got lost in Hanover,
we looked for the "Witch Church' to orient ourselves.

Cities in Northern Germany are studies in contradictions.

Bremen is a blue-collared, working class city, where beer brewers and factory workers rub shoulders with students and artists. That strange mixture gives you a city that's grounded and unpretentious, yet still artistic and surprising. My kind of city.

Hamburg is a sprawl of sailors, refugees, drifters, musicians, bankers, ship owners, and old money at the mouth of the Elbe River. It's a city of work ethic and debauchery, with a worldliness that accepts everything and anything, because there are better things to do than judge someone for who they are or what they do – like make money or party.

To the south of these fine towns is Hanover, a mid-sized city that's a little tougher to pin down.

Every region in Germany speaks German a little different, from the rocks-in-your-mouth dialect in Cologne to the Bavarians' take on the language, which the rest of Germany unjustifiably snickers at. I've been told the German that Hanoverians speak is as close as you can get to the original High German. I'm no expert, but the German I heard in Hanover was definitely clearer and easier to understand for the slow-learning, novice German-speaker.

Hanover is a city that wears its white collar stiffly, but unlike other German cities, Hanover is not a city of bankers or chemists or engineers. It's a city of culture. There are theatres everywhere, an opera house with a packed schedule, and enough museums and art galleries to please every artistic inclination.

And yet, our only full day in the city was a Monday, so every museum in the city was closed. The Sprengel and its collection of 20th centuries masterpieces was off limits. The Kestnergesellschaft was a no go. The edgy, ultra-modern KUBUS was not edgy enough to be not closed for the day.

And since this is February, the Botanical Gardens and the gardens around the Schloss Herrenhaus would have been a dreary, cold walks. The giant forest in the middle of the city would have been nice, but barren. 

But this is turning into a blog post about what we didn't do, let's get down to what we did do.

We wandered around Hanover's lovely old town. We ate pizza at an amazing Italian place – by the way, the best Italian food I've eaten has been at Italian-owned restaurants in Germany, not tourist traps in Italy. We froze walking around the old city hall and the local man-made lake. We warmed up over kaffee and kuchen. We even did a little window shopping.

Clearly visiting on a Museum Monday in February meant what we didn't get a complete sense of the city's culture or its big cityforest. So a return trip with better weather on any day other than a Monday might in order. Even with 36 hours in the city, Hanover showed it's depth, we just need to time it better.