The End of my Elternzeit

My parental leave is ending and my morning rituals won't be the same.

It was at 6am when I paused and took stock of the situation – newborn son strapped to my chest to prevent him from crying while I baked a batch of healthy oatmeal cookies for my wife as she got a precious couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep – and thought: this is paternal leave, this is perfect.

I couldn't tell you what day it was, because I'd lost track of them. The newborn mother's life revolves around feedings, while a newborn father's life revolves anything he steps up to: diaper changes, healthy dinner prep, walks in the park, tea-for-wifey-making, and other tasks that gobble up the day and makes you focus on what must. Get. Done. Now.

And it's during that hustle and bustle that I've found time to stop and take it all in. That's when everything else – work, chores, lack of sleep, the rest of the world – recedes from view and I focus in on this little man and his mother and enjoy the moment.

It's like a tunnel vision of love.

And I wouldn't have been able to appreciate those moments, let alone live in those moments, if I wasn't on parental leave. And that's not just my own selfish reasoning. Helping around the house, taking care of my wife, bonding with my son, and adjusting to the enormity of fatherhood are all important benefits of a man’s parental leave.

How does parental leave in Germany work?

New parents in Germany get little over a year of paid leave that they can share between the two of them. But it gets confusing from there, since the time is as flexible as putty. I had a colleague who became a father and took most of the parental leave, while the mother returned to work shortly after their son’s birth.

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.

The Strange Places of 2017

The first week in January is a week of looking. Looking at the work inbox in amazement that so many people were sending emails over the holidays. Looking at the window at 4pm to see the sun has set long ago. Looking at the year that went by before looking at the year ahead.

Here are some (not all, that would be a long blog) highlights from the year that was 2017. 

Soaking in the Cave Bath at Miskolc-Tapolca. 

We started the New Year in Miskolc-Tapolca, where we visited the famed Cave Baths. What stuck with me on our trip was our Lillefüred visit. It was a foggy, cold day – cold enough for the lake to freeze, so we could walk out onto it. 

Again and again, when we came for family visits to Hungary, we returned to the country's beautiful east side for hikes, wine drinking, and heritaging. 

The view from Füzer Castle.

Kata's Christmas gift for me were tickets to a Düsseldorf hockey game. I'm a Canadian cliche, but I'm okay with that.

Great seats, too.

We ventured into the Netherlands twice this year, to Rotterdam and a great road trip to The Hague, Haarlem, and Kinderdijk. It might have to do with my Dutch heritage or that every bar and cafe offers cutting boards with meat, cheese, and deep-fried nibbles to snack on as you drink your beer, but I feel like I can't visit that country enough.

When the sun comes out in Rotterdam, you get out.

Our time in Canada always feels brief, so I pack the schedule with friend and family time, and the getaway so Kata can discover my homeland. This year, we made it to Ottawa, where we were easily able to combine Discover Walks with some family time with the locals.

Family time = Photo Time 

I had a month without work and a freelancer friend in Hamburg had some time on his hands. We met halfway between our cities in Bremen for a mid-week getaway. Bremen is an old Hanseatic city, with a lovely Gothic old town. But it's also a student town with a energetic artsy vibe. We discovered this because the only good bars open on a Tuesday were the student drinking holes, which we frequented.

The entrance to Art Deco Street.

The oldest guys at the student bar always take the most selfies.

Kata and I discovered the Eiffel National Park. I wanted to write a longer, stand-alone post, but I couldn't find a story, theme, or thread for 200 words. I'll get to it later, but it's a wild, big, beautiful corner of North-Rhine-Westphalia. 

Walking around old lava.

Watching a friend get married, twice, in Toronto and Paris.

Well look at that, holding up the bar well past last call again.

My parents came to visit Europe. This was a big deal, and a lot of fun.

Walking through Aachen with the Euro-Trippers.

And this happened.

The First Five Years

It was a foggy day when I arrived to Budapest, five years ago today.

Five years ago, the Toronto Blue Jays seemed like a lost team, years away from a playoff appearance. Stephen Harper was Canada's prime minister. Rob Ford was Toronto's mayor, and we only knew about his penchant for racial slurs, drunk driving, and public intoxication, not the crack smoking – we were so innocent then. It was also the year the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize, and the year I moved to the EU 

And it was on this day, five years ago, that I boarded a plane for Budapest, a city I only knew through history books and google images. 

A job at an ad agency working for a tobacco company. An opportunity for some international job experience. A rare chance live and travel in Europe. Those were the reasons I made the move. Just a year, I figured, and I'd be back to the grind in Toronto. 

But I stayed.  

This blog has been a chronicle of my Euro-adventures and my misadventures integrating. That's been the larger story. At some point during my time here – when I got  serious about a lovely Hungarian girl – I stopped being a temporary guest worker and became a resident.  

In some ways, I started integrating not long after I arrived: taking language lessons, trying and loving the food, making friends with some locals. That city, that I only knew through google and books, gradually became home.  

I worked hard for that commitment a little later. Kata had gone to Berlin to work and wait while I searched for a job in Germany. That time was tough. Monthly overnight trains to Berlin. Dozens of job applications, emails, check-ups, follow-ups. All while the ad agency that offered me this opportunity sank. Colleagues were laid off in waves. Goodbye parties became weekly events. 

It was the end of an era for some people, especially the expats, who packed their two allowable checked bags and returned home. It was the end of a chapter for many Hungarian friends, who moved on to new jobs or started their own businesses.  

For me, it was the beginning of something else. I found work in Düsseldorf. Kata followed. I had committed to the idea of staying in Europe months ago, and the concept became very real. We moved in together, bought furniture, and made plans. It's still an adventure, but it's become bigger than myself. A relationship does that: makes you think beyond yourself.  

As I lived the evolving adventure here, life moved on for everyone else. After my first year, I came back for a best friend's wedding. I met their son during my next visit. I streamed another best friend's Vegas wedding over the internet. Other friends bought houses or bright yellow cars. Jobs became careers. Girlfriends became wives. Wives became mothers. We all moved along, maybe not in the same stream, but certainly parallel to each other.   

Putting it all in perspective, I've been lucky. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for a few chance meetings. If I didn't join an ad industry boxing event, I wouldn't have met Joe. If I didn't take a job at an agency some years later, I wouldn't have met a former employee of that agency (Joe), who offered to tell me about any job openings, which led to a job offer, which led to moving to Budapest, which lead to meeting Kata, which led to moving to Germany together, which leads to... And on it goes.

Taking one opportunity leads to another – that's the way life goes.  

It's easy to get nostalgic during a big milestone. I think about the nervous lead-up to that flight to Budapest and the strange, exciting feeling I had driving through the city in the fog to my hotel in the Buda hills. It was something I had never felt before, not even when I was traveling in Asia. It wasn't just about being in a new, strange place, but it was an excitement about where it will lead. And so today I find myself thinking about the next five years, and what opportunities lay ahead for me, and for us.

Berlin

How to Make Easter Epic

Hiking down the hills.

If you're not careful, Easter can become April's blah long weekend.

For some lucky folks, we see the family and eat a decent meal. In Canada, there’s the Friday off, and a Monday too if you work a cushy government job. 

For many, it doesn’t always feel like a big deal. The weather in my corner of Canada can still be downright Arctic-esque. A lot of people just aren't religious. And still others don't know how to make the most of a long weekend.

The only folks who might appreciate it are the young ones, who crave the Easter chocolate, and the university students with late April exams who crave the studying… or partying.

Maybe there’s the lesson to be learned here: Gather the family for a good meal. Hide eggs all over the place for the kids (and remember where they are, unless you want to find a melted chocolate egg between the couch cushions in July). Hit a patio on Good Friday and pour one out for JC. 

After all, it’s up to you to make Easter epic.

In Europe, we get both the Friday and the Monday off, so if you don't get off the couch on Friday, you can rise and redeem yourself on Monday. It's also easier to catch a flight to wherever. 

And people take advantage of these two precious extra days. They go home. They go somewhere warm. They hike. They get day drunk. They make Easter epic.

This year, we escaped to Hungary – the land of smoked ham and boiled eggs this time of year. Along with many fine family dinners and many deep conversations with toddlers in my broken Hungarian, we also made off to the hills for a 25km hike (my calves are still recovering from this glorious ordeal).

The route, planned by Kata’s dad, took us up and through the hills in the north of the country where we wandered through Hollókő. This small town is like walking into a time machine. It’s been preserved as it was hundreds of years ago with its traditional wooden houses and its residents decked out in their traditional costumes.

There’s an Easter tradition where the boys say a poem and splash the girls with cheap perfume or a bit of water. Because boys are involved, this tradition easily goes off the rails and men spray entire crowds with buckets of water, or soak one girl in particular. We arrived just in time for a man on stilts in traditional costume to do the former.

We walked through the crowds of tourists, up a hill to the castle that overlooks the valley, and back into the forest and hills.

By the end of such a long hike, your feet are tired, your calves feel like they're on fire, and your pace has slowed enough that you can drink in the sights, sounds, and smells of the forest. It's a natural high on nature.

The next day, with my calves still burning from the Hollókő Hike, we ventured down from the hills into the Great Plain of Hungary – by car, not by foot – to visit more family. 

The day after that, we rode on Budapest for a haircut, sausage-shopping, and lunch and still crammed in a visit to Lake Velence to see Kata's brother's new house before catching our flight back to Dusseldorf.

Easters doesn't need chocolate eggs or spring weather or Jesus to be great. Take a note from the kids, the university students, and the Europeans: make your Easter epic.

The folklore girls look on as the man with the stilts and bucket of water recites his poem to them.

The leader of the hike and the castle... and a sword fight in the background.

The traditional time machine to olden times Hungary.

Hockey Night in the Dorf

Good seats for the face-off

You experience a strange feeling of familiarity when you go to a hockey game in Europe. On one hand, you know this place, the hockey arena, with its smells, sounds, and light chill in the air is comforting for a Canadian.

On the other hand, you’re in Europe. Everything is in German. Fans sing soccer-esque chants you don't know. And there is mulled wine and several varieties of sausage served at the concession.

These two sensations competed with each other when we watched the Dusseldorf EG host the Iserlohn Roosters. 

The old school hockey fans in Canada might cry foul about the Europeans game and its lack of fights and blood and missing teeth. Do not be deterred, the game here is great to watch. 

While Canadians like to think that hockey is their game, and that they play it the best, there is good hockey elsewhere too. In Germany, it’s fast and exciting: The final score was 5-4 for the Dorf. 

The league’s players are career players – some have played in the NHL or one of the other minor leagues, so they bring just enough skill to make the game look good but are able to make the odd error that can turn around a play and make your pulse race. 

It’s also not as nearly as physical as the North American game – even if both teams have a healthy contingent of Canadian players on their rosters. The game is fast, focusing on skating and passing, with few stoppages and plenty of back and forth hockey.

Germany might be a soccer country, but a country of 80 million people also has its niche sports, like hockey, whose fans will not sit silently in its niche. 

And this is the beauty of going to niche sporting event: the fans. There are not a lot of German hockey fans, but the ones that show up are serious. They’re wrapped in their team scarves, wearing jerseys and toques, and bejewelled with countless pins. 

We had seats just a row over from the Roosters’ booster section, which was full of blue-and-white-clad fans who made the drive to the Dorf from Iserlohn. They were on their feet most of the game, singing, chanting, and cheering. 

Those rowdy Rooster fans.

The hockey fandom in Germany seems to be at the grassroots. Most of the boxes in the arena were empty. Hockey here is truly relies on the fans, and not big money or cTV contract dollars or corporate sponsorships. Soccer teams in Dortmund or Cologne attract the big money here, but of course with that comes the casual fans. 

In this way a German hockey game feels more like a minor league game. 

The NHL hockey game is great, awe-inspiring, featuring the best players in the world. It's also remote, distant, and, in cities like Toronto, dispassionate. The cost is also high, so most fans like me watch it from the couch at home.

The minor league hockey game is different. Sure, it doesn't have the monumentality of a pro game, but it's intimate and accessible. This was the hockey I grew up watching live  like my hometown's London Knights and later my university's team, and later, in Toronto, the Marlies. 

These smaller arenas were full of families, students, fans, and people who don’t leave at the second intermission to beat traffic. And while the passion that draws Canadians to watch every level of competitive hockey seems unique to us, it's not – that hockey passion is in other places as well (for example, I worked with a Hungarian hockey fan in Budapest).

In Germany, you go to a Dusseldorf EG because you love the team or the sport, so the enthusiasm is electric in a place like this. That passion is also likely more powerful because you're a hockey fan in a soccer country, so you might as be passionate and a little eccentric.

There’s not a lot of things I miss from home, mostly stuff that can't be bought: Family, friends, the comfort of familiar surroundings. But there are some small comforts that help assuage the homesickness for a little while. Hockey, as niche as it might be in Germany or Hungary or anywhere, is one of those things.

Mulled wine and hockey. Mmmmmmm....