Omnibus Blog 4: That Canadian Visit

German bars getting into the spirit of the Tour de France.

I’ve fallen into that old trap of posting once a month. A bad habit, even if things have been busy on my end. But I’m making up for it with the Lazy Writer’s Round-Up Edition of the Omnibus Blog, a brief collection of short blurby blurbs.

The Tour de France comes to the Dorf

Düsseldorf has French fever. A touch of French has entered Düsseldorf's bakeries and bars recently – German institutions.

The bakeries are displaying fresh baguettes more prominently in the windows. The bars are decked out in the French tricolour (although I haven't seen French beer on tap). Oh, and those speed-bike-ring, short-short-wearing folks are racing down sidewalks a little more proudly. 

On my bike ride to the office, workers are busily erected barriers and beer tents. The Dorf's own Kraftwerk is playing a concert. They actually have a song called Tour de France and it's... well.. techno.

The start of the event are time trials, so 13km of race way is being cordoned off, most of it along the Rhine River. The next day, the Tour leaves Dusseldorf, riding through some pretty country in the Rhineland to Liege. Coincidentally, neither the beginning or the end of this stage is in France. 

We're planning on wandering around and checking it all out, but we've heard rumours the events are prohibitively expensive. If true, the extent of my instagram photos might be tiny blurs in the distance with a moody filter. 

Kraftwerk's concert stage goes up.

That French Election

Emmanuel Macron, the centrist, beat out the nationalists to win the French presidency and won a majority in the legislature. He'll cruise along with his agenda, which includes investing in skills and training, reforming the labour market (like that 35-hour work week), bringing free market reforms to the economy, among other things.

Smooth sailing, right? I don’t know... 

He's a youthful, refreshing politician, but voter turnout for the presidential and parliament elections hovered around 50 percent. There is something deeply wrong with civil society in Europe.

Some of this disengagement from politics might be total apathy of the elitist, and often corrupt, nature of French national politics. But some is likely because European government have been incapable of dealing with today's seismic shifts – a years-long recession, high unemployment, fear of free trade, the migrant crisis.

Macron's pragmatist agenda, which takes the best from the left and right wings of the political spectrum might be the shock France needs. Or it might not. Serious reform needs to come from Brussels too. 

We'll see how engaged people are when the next elections roll around.

Canada Trip

Oh, yeah. That happened. It had been a year and a half since our last visit to my homeland, so we were overdue for a visit.

The short version: we went to a wedding in Toronto, went to a baseball game, Kata got sick, we cancelled a trip to Montreal, went back to London, recuperated, then went to Ottawa, and back to London with a one-hour pitstop in Toronto, then back to Toronto to fly back.

I packed the schedule a little too much, yet no what matter it’s impossible to see everyone. That seems sad, but we ended up spending some quality time with the friends and family we were able to see.

It's a living-away-from-home compromise. You don't see people as often as you'd like, but you do have a good time with them when you do. It isn't a perfect arrangement, but the solid, strong, lifelong friendships are the ones that weather the distance and time apart.

So even as we all move forward and grow up and be more responsible, it's good to know that friends will still make the time for me that I will make for them.

Ottawa Paparazzi.

Omnibus Blog 2: Canada Stories

The Omnibus Blog is back! Filled with words you want and words you might not want. In this post, I share a few stories that I couldn't fit into my last post.

Calling it a night when it's still night

During one of my Canadian visits a couple of years ago, a few of us found ourselves in a Toronto bar at last call. Only it wasn't last call. It was the end of Daylight Savings Time, which meant the clocks would be set back an hour for more drinking time.

We found one such bar and ordered a round of pints. Then I remembered I had a bottle of Palinka in my knapsack. Why did I have a bottle of Palinka in my knapsack? I must have a vendetta against my liver.

So, I pulled the bottle out. I went to the bar and asked for half dozen empty shot glasses, which, inexplicably, the bartender handed to me without question. I returned to the table are begun pouring shots at 2:30am (our body's time).

No one felt well the next day. Except a Polish friend. He was fine and made it to a client meeting. They're made of different stuff in the East.

This year, a few of us, including a few survivors from the Palinka-After-Last-Call Incident gathered at a Toronto brewery. Shortly after midnight we paid our bills and lingered out front. Someone shrugged and halfheartedly suggested a nightcap. 

Everyone grumbled: "It's a work night." "It's the holidays." "I'm tired." So we said our heartfelt goodbyes and called it a night. 


Best Party Favour Ever

During my first Christmas away from home, my friends James and Robyn started a Christmas tradition, LudaCristmas.

This is the third year of a tried and true premise: Gather a small, tight group of friends together to drink, eat, drink, and hang out. 

As we left in the early morning at this Christmas's edition, we were given a Christmas gift box. Inside we found a jar of Advil, a bottle of Gatorade, an instant coffee packet, and an organic energy bar.

There are hosts who look after you during their party, and there are those rare hosts who look after you the morning after.


The Quest for Mexican Food

Toronto has so many great Mexican restaurants that discussions about which one is the best, or the most authentic, can seem like the 30-year-old Torontonian's equivalent of the Israel-Palestine debate from our university days.

There are a lot of opinion. Everyone is certain their's is right. Then someone mentions an more obscure taqueria that's truly authentic. Someone else says those tacos are SoCal knock offs. Then it gets ugly.

Having never been to Mexico, I am blessed with a blissful ignorance over my tacos. I'm happy as long as they're good. 

In passing, I told Kata of Toronto's great Mexican food. She was interested. This marked the beginning of a long quest for Mexican Food in Toronto. 

On one of our Discovery Walks I managed to steer us to Kensington Market, thinking that we'd eat some tacos at one of the neighbourhood's little cantinas. It was Sunday night and everything was closed because, well, it's the Lord's day, I guess.

The Quest for Mexican Food was put on hold for a couple of days until my cousin, Yolanda, and Mike took us to their neighbourhood taco joint, Wilbur's. I didn't see Mexicans labouring over my fish tacos, so I'm certain purists will doubt its authenticity. But damn they were good.

My mom also caught wind of Kata's Quest for Mexican and, upon our return from Toronto, cooked up one of our childhood favourites: Make-Your-Own Tacos. Again, they're not authentically Mexican, but they are delicious, and authentically Bellamy.

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.

The other Black Friars Bridge
in the other London.

Anemone of my anemone is my...

Ripley's Aquarium.

Always angry at the aquarium.

Time traveling in Cabbagetown.

Kensington Market.

Kata and a bit of my glove at Niagara Falls.

The Niagara Falls never sleeps.

Toronto doesn't need bike lanes, it needs respect

Cyclists ignoring red lights and running them, screaming angrily as they pass the cyclists obeying the red light. Drivers too excited about their parallel parking job to look before opening doors in front of passing cyclists. Drivers taking rolling right turns without checking their blind spots, risking this.

These are just a few dangers I encountered while cycling the streets of Toronto. You quickly learn that cycling in Toronto isn't an exercise in road safety as much as it is playing the odds: the more time you spent on the roads, the more likely you will get into an accident.

And I did get into an accident when an idiot opened a door right in front of me, sending me sideways and forwards over my handle bar onto the street.

The easy argument is demanding more bike lanes, not just the painted lines that drivers tend to ignore, but the fancy lanes with the curb that separates the cars' lane from bike lanes.

"European cities," the Fancy Bike Lane People chant like a mantra, "is the perfect place for bicyclists. We should be more like them."

They're wrong. And that isn't my usual "Europe Does Things Better Than North America" contrarian rant. It's because they are actually wrong. Toronto's streets doesn't need more bike lanes, they need more respect. 

On paper, Europe is not the Bicycle Utopia people say it is. Some streets are made of cobblestone, making them unpleasant to ride on. The bike lanes are often no more than painted lines on a busy street. Even in cities like Amsterdam – where paying rent and owning a car would be like putting all your money into a blender and setting the blender on fire – the streets are jammed with cars. (I know there are really nice cycling cities in Denmark and elsewhere in the Netherlands, but bear with me).

Simply put, building city infrastructure for bikes does not make that city bicycle-friendly, people's attitudes do. In most European cities, drivers check blind spots for bicycles because that's what you do if you don't want to hurt someone. They definitely do not go into psycho mode at the site of a cyclist on the street and drive as close as possible to them without making car-to-person contact.

Conversely, European bicyclists obey red lights with alarming frequency. This allows traffic going the other way can pass through the intersection unimpeded, without having to stop abruptly or do this.

Cyclists also don't scream obscenities at you if you happen to obey red lights or scream obscenities cars that pass them too closely (driver here often give cyclists a wide berth, even veering into the opposing lane).

And! On busier streets, bike lanes have been laid down with different coloured bricks on the sidewalks. If a pedestrian ahead of you is in the bike lane, you ring your bell and they get out of the bike lane and return to the walking lane. 

In essence, drivers understand that cyclists belong on the road and cede some territory to them. Cyclists respect the fact that cars are four-wheeled death machines that kill people everyday, so understand they are not entitled to ignore the laws of the road.

Fancy bike lanes are never going to solve the Toronto's car and bike woes. Infrastructure simply does not change minds. People – drivers and cyclists – need to change their minds about who belongs on the road and show each other a little respect. That's how you build a bike friendly city.

Ontario Discovery Walks

The Long Journey Home

Not only was my flight home delayed, but I also had to wait in line to discuss meat importation laws with a customs officer after I declared the Hungarian salami I brought in my carry-on. He waved me through, but told that meat, no matter how delicious it might be, cannot be brought into Canada in such ways.

Family Time

When the prodigal son returned in Jesus’ famous parable (that's a Catholic education for ya), the family welcomed him and slaughtered the fatted calf. When I returned to Little London, the family was gathered and, in lieu of a fatted calf, devoured six pounds of pulled pork. This does not count the smuggled salami, the cheese (hey, we’re Dutch, after all) and the bevy of desserts. My family: We all love each other, and we all love to eat well.

Witnessing the explosion of Rob Ford

If you could lock Joseph Heller and Franz Kafka in a room with a pen and a notebook and they could not have conceived of the surreal political spectacle that erupted when I arrived. It’s like the political version of those photos of the tree barks skin disease – it’s as frighteningly disgusting as it is fascinating – and it's still going on.

One of the better ways to watch the press conference of a lying, drunken mayor?
With a whiskey in a fine pub.

Celebrating the end of Daylight Savings Time with an extra hour of debauchery

We got an extra hour, and then we killed as many brain cells as we could in that hour by while introducing my friends to the perils of Palinka.

Hangover

The Koreans have an amazing hangover cure, it’s Porkbone Soup. It provides much-needed fluids for the over-partied body and brain. Also, for uncultured Westerners like me, there is no easy way to eat it, so poke away at slowly, looking awkwardly at the Koreans at other tables expertly eating theirs. This also means you don’t eat too fast, which is important if you’re like me and have a tender tummy after boozing.

A marshall artist's interpretartion of breakfast/dinner.
(Not to scale)

What I like most in Toronto is that you can get Porkbone Soup one day, then gorge upon great burritos the next. Toronto has no single personality, it’s a schizophrenic mix of ethnicities, neighbourhoods, and personalities. It’s what makes it great.

Final Days of London

My time in Toronto was making the rounds (and often having rounds). So, my time in little London was the real rest. I spent quality time with my parents and siblings. Meet the odd friend for coffee or drinks. Rest up. Recover from Toronto, and prepare for what’s going to come.

The Wedding

Way back when, before I left Canada for the Hungary, I promised two friends that I would make it back for their wedding in a year. So, here is the main reason for my visit (also, trans-Atlantic flights during Christmas are a messy business I want no part of). In addition to being a great party, it was also great to see two friends married in such a lovely ceremony.

The fist kiss

Epic party time (that's why I forgot to take photos)

The Long Trip Home

The next morning I awoke hungover, or possibly still drunk. It was a rough. The hotel everyone was staying at had a Golden Griddle, where everyone gathered to nurse their hangovers over coffee and bacon.

I was a little slow to rise and required a stern phone call from front desk to get me moving. I know I mentioned earlier that Porkbone Soup is a great hangover cure, but friends and a breakfast buffet are great cures too.

After breakfast, I got a ride to the airport and continued what felt like the longest day ever: Flying forward across six time zones into the next day, where I had a four-hour wait in Frankfurt for my flight to Budapest - all with a fuzzy booze-addled brain.

I love Budapest, yet I still hesitate to call it home, but collapsing into bed at the end of that day felt pretty good.

Oh, hi, Budapest