Omnibus Blog 1: Winter, Soccer, Xmas Markets

The weather in Rhineland doesn't change gradually or gently – it simply slaps you in the face. All summer and into early September we had warm, sunny days that never dipped blow 20 degrees. Then one day we woke up there was a chill in the air and the mercury never climbed out of the teens since. Summer was over, and autumn had come.

Something similar happened the other day. All of a sudden I could smell winter in the air. I've started wearing my toque again, lip chap is now being liberally applied, and the thick winter scarf is in regular use, likely for the duration of the wet and cloudy season the locals call winter.

The upside is we only had to wait a couple more months for the Christmas markets to open. Now the city squares smell of grilled sausages and spiced, hot wine. If you can deal with the sudden chill in the air, this is a great time of year to be in Central Europe. 


Christmas Markets

It is never too early for Christmas carols. Well, no, unless it's a store, than it's in the service of commerce and not Yuletide cheer. Anyway, the same can be said of Christmas markets. They're arrival is more than welcome as long is Christmas is close enough for me not to get angry about being told to buy shit.

Germany's Christmas markets pick up sometime on or about the first week of advent (it's also still a religious holiday here). This it meant that Kata's mother and brother missed out on the markets when they visited the Dorf and Cologne a couple of weekends ago. There was still plenty to do, we wandered the Dorf and visited a few sites in Cologne as well, including a Cologne-style brewery.

The next weekend, Kata and I dropped into Cologne again to visit its Old Christmas Market. These markets are pursuing the same thing as their corporate brethren in the department stores of North America. There's no shortage of vendors in the selling their schnick schnack, there's a fantastically convivial and festive spirit to Germany's Christmas markets.

Some of the markets have very similar knick-knacks for sale whose labels would inform you that they didn't come from some rustic german village, but a tin-roofed factory in Bangladesh.

The Old Market in Cologne has enough stalls with lovely handmade or uniquely German items that you can come away with nice gifts without feeling like a 10-year-old Bangladeshi girl made any of them.

Shopping was one reason. The other reason was eating and drinking. We sipped on some hot wine and tried some of the snacks. There was Flammkuchen, which is like a German pizza, made with sour cream, onions, bacon and cheese. It's good. 

The second snack seemed like a head-scratcher to us. 

I usually avoid falling back on stereotypes but there are some you can apply to Germans, like their fanatical love for potatoes and apples. The bakeries are rammed with apple cakes and tarts. If the national drink is beer, the national non-alcoholic drink is apple juice mixed with sparkling water: Apfelshorle. And the potatoes come with every dish you order here.

So when we saw dozens of Germans dipping deep-fried potato pancakes into apple sauce, we're not surprised but we didn't think the combination worked. We tried them. Those Germans are right, the reibekuchen, as it's called, is pretty damn good.

And lo, the moon rises above the Allianz Arena.

A Soccer (Football) Match in Munich

I don't usually delve into work to much in this space because, well, advertising in real life is not as exciting as Mad Men would have you believe. 

But I'm making an exception, because the Allianz international team at my agency was rewarded for a year of toil with a trip to a soccer game at the Allianz Arena in Munich. It was a nice treat to see Bayern Munich play and defeat some Greek team whose name I couldn't pronounce. I also can't pronounce Bayern either, but that's neither here nor there.

It was also an interesting experience because – again I'm leaning on stereotypes here – soccer games usually mean soccer hooligans (stereotype number one), yet Germans seem so well behaved (stereotype number two). I didn't know which stereotype I was going to witness.

This was a Champions League game, which meant no alcoholic beer was being sold, just the non-alcoholic swill. I was tempted to have one glass, but they also don't accept cash in the stadium. You pay a man 10€ to fill up a card with more money, then use that card to pay for everything. Then at the end of the match you must return the card to get your 10€ back. So no beer for me.

Every soccer team has its fan songs and the Bayern fans have theirs. I didn't understand them. I didn't even understand their German dialect. What I did understand was the banter between the stadium announcer and the chanting crowd. The announcer would state who scored a goal and crowd would say "Danke!"

So, between the soccer hooligans or the good behaviour, I guess you can figure out which stereotype I witnessed at this soccer match.

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.

To Trier, and Luxembourg, and Back Again

Inside the Porta Nigra.

At 2000 years, Trier is Germany's oldest city. It was the Roman capital of northwestern Europe. An electorate on the Holy Roman Empire. The birthplace of Karl Marx. It sits in one of Germany's wine regions.

And I never would have thought of visiting the city if it wasn't one of the closest stops on the Bane's European farewell tour that was not sold out.


Bye Bye Bane

Seeing this band before they call it quits would be coming full circle for me. I saw them when I was still in high school at one of London's local dives. Fast forward a few years to Budapest, where, for some strange reason, the Hungarians are crazy hardcore kids who become a lively bunch whenever Bane comes to town. The band responds in kind and plays there often, so I managed to catch them again twice while I was living there.

Budapest is also the final stop on the farewell tour, but we couldn't fly down to Budapest that close to our Canadian trip, so I looked at the tour dates and a map. The show in Cologne was sold out, but I found another nearby city with a show on a weekend and started booking.

We checked into our hotel in Trier on Friday evening, then cleaned up and had a drink before walking to the venue.

Everything on a map is farther away then it seems, but this feeling is magnified when you're on foot and in a hurry to get somewhere. We walked through the old town past the Porta Nigra, down a few quiet streets, then down the wrong side of another street before we asked for directions. At this point, it was getting late and we were worried we might miss the show.

The venue was a monastery that was turned into a Napoleonic barracks that was turned into warehouse that is now a youth art centre covered with graffiti and hardcore, punk, and metal concert posters. My kind of place!

We walked through the front doors, into the courtyard and couldn't hear any signs of a band in progress: no loud, angry vocals and no snap from a snare drum. Had we missed it already? Are the Germans that punctual?

We found an entrance, near a group of hip-looking, teenaged smokers and found out the concert space was downstairs, in a bunker.

No better way to see Bane, than in a bunker.

The show itself was fantastic, as you would expect from Bane. Kata, who is no hardcore fan, at least noted she liked the hardcore scene's ethos. The band played an encore and left the stage, then to our surprise, almost everyone left. The place emptied in minutes, leaving a few stragglers chatting with the lead singer by the stage. 

Kata convinced me to go chat with the lead singer, which I nervously did. As someone who sometimes feels too old for this sort of music and these concerts (we were among the oldest people in the crowd), it's a nice feeling to talk hardcore with someone a little older than me (Bane has been playing since 1995).


Touring Trier

If Friday night was the Night of Bane, then Saturday was the Day of Trier. We had a delicious, overpriced breakfast at the hotel, put on some layers of clothes for the autumn chill and went out the see the city we had rushed past on our way to the concert the night before.

Trier was once the capital of Rome's northwestern European provinces, so they naturally built some nice things that are luckily still standing today. Emperor Constantine's old throne room is now an impressive, and beautifully austere, Protestant church: the Constantine Basilica. There is no overly Catholic ostentation here, no tacky gilded wood or gold plating all over the place, just incredible, ancient engineering to say 'Whoa' at.

Inside the Constantine Basilica

Not to be outdone by the Protestants, the Catholics have their own monument nearby: a Cathedral. It's Gothic, ostentatiously Catholic, with a lovely, quiet cloister attached. Its claim to fame is its prized relic: the Tunic of Jesus. You cannot see it of course. It's in a gold box locked behind a door near the altar. But you can look at the door, which is about as exciting as it sounds.

Is it an organ? Or is it a spaceship?

We took this opportunity to walk about the Old Town, eat some frites, and do some clothes shopping for Kata. Trier is a small city, and a touristic one, but its Old Town is thankfully doesn't feel so touristic. There are no unending streets of bars, like the Dorf, and very few so-old-they're-clearly-fake buildings, like Cologne. Trier's centre has discovered a comfortable balance, so you get the sense that locals also do their shopping and other things in the old town.

We visited the Porta Nigra, the Roman city's old main gate. Apparently the limestone from a local quarry turns black from bacteria in the air. It was likely meant to be a nice colour, then became a scary, ominous shade years later. Oh! They made it into a church too, so it was probably a scary place to pray, which might fit with the whole medieval Catholic Church vibe back then.

We also walked along the Moselle River and came upon the old Imperial Baths later in the evening.

The Porta Nigra

Eat like a Trierer... Trierian... like you're from Trier

If you're a tourist in Germany, you're going to be accustomed to roaming pretty old towns and eating traditional German meals, which typically include sausages, potatoes, and pickled cabbage, washed down with beer. This is great stuff, but sometimes you need a break with some lighter fare (not always a long break, because I ate that stuff the next day).

Thankfully, this is a corner of Germany that makes some fine wine. Ignoring the beer halls, we found a wine tavern, and let the local wine flow and devoured a platter of smoked fish, local cured meats, cheeses, and, yes, salad.

This is not a meal that epic nights begin with. It wasn't really instagram-worthy either (and the platter would not have fit the frame) it's just great, local food that doesn't leave you laying in bed trying to sleep feeling like a beached whale. 


To Luxembourg, or not to Luxembourg

The next morning we awoke and thought about what we had seen and what was left to see. There was a Roman museum we had not visited, but the town would be deserted, since in Germany most businesses are closed on Sundays by law. 

Was it is worthwhile sticking around?

We thought about leaving. This is not such a difficult thing for us to do. We had weekend flex passes, which gave us unlimited travel on the local rail lines. We looked at a schedule and decided to go to Luxembourg. We never would have came to Trier if it weren't for a hardcore concert and we're not likely coming back to the area, so why not take an afternoon to discover a country that wouldn't normally be a destination for us?

It was a foggy, chilly walk to the train station and we wondered if it was a good idea to travel. Why not go back to bed? The foggy train ride into L-Bourg didn't reassure us much. 

When we got to Luxembourg we noticed a few things right away. It didn't feel like Germany, which is a nice feeling sometimes. The signs were in French, so I could read them. It was foggy and cloudy, but we were used to that. And the tourist office is closed on Sundays, so no city maps were available.

Undeterred, we followed the signs into the city by guess work and came upon the old town.


What's the deal about Luxembourg?

Today, Luxembourg is known for being a little corporate tax haven, but years before that it was known for being an impregnable fortress.

The now-destroyed walls of the fortress surround the old town, which sits atop of a cliff that overlooks two rivers that cut deep gorges through the city. Down below, there are other city quarters next to the rivers. Tall brick and stone arch bridges span over these river gorges.

If we had visited the city in the middle of the summer, we'd be impressed, but during the autumn, once the sun came out, the city was breathtaking.

Along the wall.

Now on the casemates, just as the sun finally comes out.

The city is not cheap (those corporate tax savings got to be spent somehow). Desperately hungry for lunch, we walked into one restaurant. It was like one of those movie scenes where the hero walks into a biker bar and everyone stops talking and stare at them when they enter, only instead of bikers at this Luxembourg eatery, it was all seniors staring at us. 

So, we left quickly and Kata managed to find a nice cafe – it felt like a tidy ruin pub with a fresh coat of paint – where we had a nice lunch, and I had a couple of frosty, tasty Belgian beers.

Seeing the Luxembourg was one of those pleasant surprises that never would have been possible if I hadn't dragged us down to a remote corner of Germany for a hardcore show. So, I guess we have hardcore music to thank for this awesome trip. 

Thanks, hardcore!

Thanks, hardcore!

If you go:

Eat and drink and be merry at Weinstube Kesselstatt in Trier. It's casual, so you have to order everything at the bar. Think that's not romantic? Well, it is if you're a gentleman and get off your butt to bring your lady some food and drink.

In Luxembourg, you can eat like a German retiree at the fancy schmancy French bistros in the Old Town, or you can go to Konrad Cafe. Good food, Belgian beer on tap, nice ruin pub feel in the basement.