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.

Leaving Dublin, Seeing Ireland

Deeper and deeper we drove through the Burren...

We had a First World Problem: My employer discourages carrying over holidays into the new year, so I had a week of vacation time that had to used. This sparked a search for a reasonably-priced tropical vacation, which didn’t seem to exist for us. We moved our search north, then farther north, then more north and found a deal to Dublin.

Dublin was on our bucket lists of cities to visit, but we had always thought of it was a weekender. With a week, we could go further afield to the Cliffs of Moher, which meant leaving Dublin and spending a few days in Galway.

When we arrived in Dublin, we did some sightseeing – Books of Kells, pubs, the Temple Bar, more pubs. After a day, we felt ready to leave Dublin for a day trip into the countryside. We spread out a handful of brochures from the tourist office and started reading.

There was a long trip to Belfast and the Giant’s Steps and the spot where they film the King’s Road in Game of Thrones – this thing about places where famous shows or movies are filmed would come up often on the tours. There were trips to Howth, which seemed much greener than Hoth, and to Cork. We chose a trip into the Wild Wicklow Mountains.

It wasn’t a bad choice. We drove along the old Military Road– built by the British to catch Irish rebels hiding in the mountains and now bringing tourists like us to locations where they film Vikings and the ruins of the Glendalough monastery.

We had the monastery to ourselves, since other tourists avoid the soggy Irish cold for warmer places that we couldn’t afford to fly to. It was also, to use some Irish slang, a ‘Soft Day’ – it was drizzly and mild, not rainy and cold. It was the perfect day to walk about the Medieval monastery. The park was surrounded by the tree-covered walls of the valley and the monastery's stone ruins were often shrouded in rolling mist.

Glendalough's ruined stone cathedral.

A "Soft Day" is a good day for a Discovery Walk around Glendalough.

We drove higher into the mountains. Away from modern civilization, deeper into the peat bogs and heath. The clouds got heavier and the fog thickened, so the landscape seemed almost primordial. 

Out of the bus' windows, we see shallow trenches through the mist where the turf cutters once did their work. From here, they dug up the preserved bodies of kings sacrificed to the gods when crops had failed.

Then the sun cleared as we came to some stone bridge from some movie you didn’t see, P.S. I Love You, which was a big deal for most people on our tour bus. Seriously, it was selfie city.

Very happy people on some bridge some from P.S. I Love You movie.

After a return to Dublin, for more pubs and pints and potatoes, we took a train to Galway with a long list of tips for more pubs, live music, culture, and Discovery Walks from an Irish friend we know in Budapest.

Our mission in Galway was the Cliffs of Moher, so we stopped by the tourist office to book a tour the next day. The lady widened her eyes in surprise. “No,” she said. “The weather will be awful. They have flood warnings all over the country.” She gave us a look as if we should've known that – the Irish pay close attention to their weather. That day was the only day we could go so, hoping for some of the Irish luck, we booked the tour for what might be a flood day.

The rain lightened overnight, but it was by no means a "Soft Day." It was cloudy and it was raining off and on. But all the fog and clouds just added to the ancient, neolithic feel of the landscape we were driving through.

The Poulnabrone dolmen, a portal tomb older than the pyramids.

The name of this place was the Burren, and it was barren. The hills were covered with grey limestone with the occasional granite boulder left by retreating glaciers eons ago. It felt older than old. Overgrown stone ruins dotted the landscape. There were some farms, but we saw no one out and about.

Somehow, people have been eking out a living here for thousands of years. We visited an tomb that was older than the pyramids. When we arrived, our bus driver warned us that to avoid curses, we should not walk around it counter-clockwise or take any rocks with us.


It was windy and cold and rainy. So, while half the tourists stayed in the bus, a small group of us ventured out to the Poulnabrone dolmen. Once again, with the time of year, we had the site to ourselves... aside from the cows that chewed their grass and watched us as we walked around the haunting stack of rocks clockwise and snapped photos.

Walking on the Karst 

As we approached the Cliffs of Moher, the tour guide kept looking towards the ocean as he drove, pointing out the mist rolling in. He said we might not even see the cliffs. Sometimes, he said, the fog was so thick, you couldn't even see in front of you.

We got to the cliffs and, to our relief, we could see them. They might be majestic and awe-inspiring and completely Instagram-friendly on one of those rare sunny days in Ireland. But in the horizontal rain and the howling wind, with patches of fog rolling in, the Cliffs of Moher were one of the most beautiful things you could lay your eyes on.

They tower hundreds of feet over the ocean below, stretching on in either direction, like stone waves laid down vertically, one cliff rolling out after another in the distance,

In the rain, the ocean takes on a grey colour, which makes the green clifftops and black-ish brown of the cliff faces stand out even more. As you take it all in you see the layers of limestone on the cliff-face, the green mossy patches, and the little blips that are people standing at their edges.

Of course, I feel lucky. We would not have seen all of these wonderful things if we only went to Dublin for a weekend. If we hadn't had that week of vacation to burn, we'd have stayed in Dublin for a weekend and miss out on the rest of the country. I'll take a First World Problem if it means an incredible trip like that.

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