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.

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.