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....

Out Watching Movies

Puskin Art Mozi in Budapest (photo lifted from
Facebook because I'm not snapping photos
at the movies).

Some movie theatre memories, in no particular order:

Going to the Pushkin – a classy, small indie theatre in Budapest – for the first time with Kata.

Watching Independence Day with my brother on my fourteenth birthday.

Walking out of Western Film on my old university campus after watching Mystic River and feeling so dejected that our entire group decided against drinks and swiftly parted ways.

Toonie Tuesdays at Galleria, Westmount, and other long gone movie theatres in London... Canada.

Speaking of long dead theatres in London, RIP Capitol Theatre, whose "Opening Soon" sign hung on its front door for so many years, and might have planted the seed of my powerful pessimism.

Going to the Montreal Forum – former home of the Canadiens – during my brief Montreal Days for movies and once to attend an impromptu press conference during the Dawson College shooting.

Standing outside a theatre, smoking and rehashing a movie with friends on a Christmas visit home while the snow fell in the deserted parking lot – save for a red Aerostar and a black-blue Volvo.

It might be a generational thing, or it might be growing up in the suburban wilderness of London, Ontario, but going to the movies was a thing we did often. 

The need didn't change when I moved to a foreign country with an indecipherable language. In fact, the need increased, along with the obstacles in my path to watching a movie in my mother tongue.

I don't mind reading while I'm watching a movie, so subtitles are be fine with me, but both Germany and Hungary dub foreign movies into their own language. Ostensibly it's to protect and strengthen the local language, but I'm certain it's to throw money at the local voice acting industry. I don't mind, voice actors got to eat, but it also eliminates most movie options for me.

So I carefully scan the listings, looking for the correct acronym – OmU or OV. The locations showing movies with these acronyms are few, usually just the super-duper cineplexes, and their surround sound systems, mandatory 3D glasses, with enough screens and seats to accommodate the locals and those pesky foreigners.

This also narrows the options to the guaranteed money-makers in English like the reboots, comic books movies, whatever joy machine Pixar has created, and, for some reason, whatever inconceivably popular cash machine Kevin Hart or that Mall Cop guy has made.

Blockbuster can entertain most of the people most of the time, but it can't entertain all the people all the time. Sometimes you just want to escape the shopping mall sterility of the super-screen-o-plex and watch an actual film in simpler surroundings. 

Thank goodness for small gems like Budapest's Pushkin Art Mozi and the Dorf's Bambi Filmstudio. These are little Art Deco oases in a barren blockbuster landscape for the English-speaker. Even if Bambi, like so many other German cinemas only sell sweet popcorn, not the salty stuff.

These theatres are smaller, more cozy, more comfortable, and play some films in their original language. Granted, they are not places to watch Rogue One, but they are places to watch the latest Woody Allen flick (both Allen and Star Wars are averaging a movie a year now, so one can achieve movie cinema balance).

Am I sounding like a grumpy expat? I don't mean to. Everything has its place. We saw Rogue One in all its 3D glory at the sole gigantor-plex that plays English movies in the Dorf. A movie like that is made for the jumbo screen.

When we can watch a movie that doesn't have a budget bigger than the GDP of Lithuania, it's nice to ditch the 3D glasses and vibration chairs and lean back in less grandiose surroundings and watch to a more intimate movie. Even if there's no salty popcorn.

One more thing!

That multi-screen-o-plex that shows the English movies in the Dorf runs a great program everywhere Wednesday: CineSneak. You pay a lower than usual admission price to watch a recently released English-language movie, the catch is you don't know that you're about to watch. 

We've gone to a few now and we haven't seen a bad movie yet. They're not something you typically see the Dorf, usually somewhere between an indie flick and a blockbuster. Plus, they have salty popcorn!

Starting 2017 in Miskolc

Unless you hate music, the EU, or American elections that make sense, you probably continually felt the need to wash the dirt of 2016 off. Except it didn't come off.

Thank goodness for the Hungarian baths. The places people crowd on the morning of New Years Eve to wash off a year of indecencies with thermal mineral water before committing more indecencies that night.

But I'm not dwelling on 2016 here. I'm letting social media deal with that and moving on. And how couldn't you move in a place like this?

The Cave Baths, just a reminder: that's not us.

We didn't have to go too far for our bath: the cave bath in Miskolctalpolca is only a two-hour train ride from Budapest.

The New Years Eve morning wash-off at the baths before the party is a tradition in Hungary. I experienced it with a few friends on my first New Years Eve at Szechenyi. We had to arrive early to beat the crowds.

At Miskolc, Hungarians in the line-up outside were ordering their year tickets. Inside, the bath was already crowded with locals and tourists at 9:30am.

The bath could handle the overflow – it was big, cavernous even. The caves twist and turn, and bathers waded along, many with cell phones and selfie sticks to document their bath. There was a normal cave bath, then a warmer pool, and a few warmer thermal pools that were not so cave-like – our favourites.

We lasted about three hours in the pools before our fingers and toes went pruney and, let’s be honest, we got bored wading, floating, and soaking. This is likely why all those tourist information photos of the baths show old men playing chess in the water.

The castle of Diosgyor.

On New Years Day, we wound our way through the foggy streets of Misckolc on a tram. It was almost completely deserted. Everything closed. Everyone staying warm at home. Not us. We were sightseeing.

We made our way out into the suburbs of Miskolc to reach our first stop: Diósgyör castle.

This seemed like a strange place for a castle. It’s not on a high hill, so it’s hard to see. We had to walk through a residential neighbourhood until we finally caught a glimpse of it.

Like everything else on New Years Day, it’s closed. So, we walked around its base where the moat used to be. We snapped photos in the mist until our toes get cold enough that we decided to leave.

Back on the tram to the end of the line. Then onto a bus, heading further, deeper into the hills around the city. We were off the Lillafüred.

Walking on water in Lillafured.

As the bus rose into the hills, the fog thickened and the temperature dropped. The town, like Miskolctapolca, where our cave bath is located, is a resort town, but just a little more upscale. A grand old hotel sits on a hill overlooking a waterfall and terraced garden to one side and a man-made lake on the other side. There was forest all around us.

We were cold and tired, so went into the hotel for a hot coffee (Irish coffee for me) among the hotel bar fanciness.

Classy coffees in the fancy Grand Lillafured Hotel.

We ate a hearty Hungarian meal at a less grander, more affordable establishment next door and washed it down with strong Transylvanian craft beer (Csiki, I recommend it!). Then we ventured onto the lake for a walk on water. 

People like to travel to see new things and experience new things. Some of us, even me, convince ourselves that you have to go far off to the edges of the map to see something fresh and new. 

This trip, though it was meant as a side trip during the Christmas break in Hungary, proves that you don’t have to go far off the beaten path to see something new and incredible. There are great things nearby, no matter where you happen to be. Maybe just a two hour train ride away, you just have to train your eyes a little closer to your own surroundings.

If you go:

We managed to get a room at Amaretto Szallas at the last minute after checking in and immediately out of the disaster zone that was our first hotel. It's run by a nice couple and is close to the baths and public transit.

We had a great, simple lunch at Corso Pizzeria. Highly recommended.

The Cave Baths at Miskolctapolca are a great place to soak up some minerals. Every local we met said we should visit in the spring and summer too. When we saw all the outdoor pools closed for the winter, we realized a trip in the summer would be well worth it.

Just go to Lillafüred. It's pretty.

When it's as cold as it was in Lillafured, you don't have to chase waterfalls.