Bringing a toddler to Florence

So, you want to go to Florence with a toddler. 

Are you sure? Yes? It will be tough. But, tough doesn't mean it's bad. It's actually pretty great.  So, here's a few things we learned while we were in Florence.

Early mornings.

We woke up early every morning to the sounds of street cleaners and garbage trucks. An adult usually mumbles something, rolls over, and falls back asleep. Not a curious toddler. They're compelled to investigate these things and when they're awake, they're awake. 

So, to let his mom get some sleep, I'd take him out for a walk around the piazza to watch Florence's city workers do their street cleaning thing. The grumpy part of me wanted to say it was difficult, but it's hard not to admit how refreshing it is to walk the tourist-free streets of Florence at 6am.

A 6am stroll at the Duomo. 

A hotel with a history.

Once upon a time, our hotel was a palazzo. Built in the 1700s, it was owned by dukes and princesses until it has turned into a hotel.

We had breakfast beneath a 17th-century fresco. We climbed grand old staircases. We explored  all sorts of hallways, stairwells, long corridors, dead ends, and mysterious little corners. I'm certain there are some secret passages and the website confirmed that a ghost haunts the premises. 

It was a playground for a toddler. Levi raced up and down the corridors, explored the stairwells, and tried every closet to see if it was unlocked.

Our hotel's grand old breakfast room. 

Early, early evenings. 

A spring evening in Florence is close to perfection. The setting sun casts long shadows across the piazzas. The city truly comes alive as the sun sets. Locals gather in the squares. The tourists sip their Spritz's on cocktail bar terraces. 

Of course, you won't see any of this with a toddler. It's bed time. 

You'll need to shower the toddler, wrestle on the pyjamas, and read a few stories. When he finally falls asleep, that's it.

You're sitting in a dark hotel room. No cocktails. No setting sun that evokes some Longfellow verses. Maybe a movie on the iPad, but more likely you crash before 9pm... because you were up watching street cleaners in front of the Duomo at 6am. 

Your stroller might not make it.

I don't think the medieval Florentines had strollers in mind when they paved their streets with cobblestones. You'll develop strong forearms from bumping along the street. Then blow out a knee as you try to pivot the stroller off the street onto a narrow, uneven sidewalk to avoid a car. Then back onto the street because the sidewalk is impassable with all the parked Vespas. 

But! The stroller is a valuable tool. He fell asleep while we toured through the Uffizi. Whenever his feet got tired, we coaxed back into the stroller. 

When to say enough

The problem with old Italian cities is also what makes them so lovely: the walking. You can spend all day walking around the city, discovering new things, poking around ancient churches, walking up stairs to the top of some church tower, romantic strolls along rivers, walking and gazing at masterpieces in some huge palatial art gallery. Then more walking. 

A toddler is tough, resilient, and has the endurance of an ultramarathon runner. But, at some point enough is enough. You must know when to call it a day. So, plan what you want to do, but don't plan too much on the day. He'll need breaks, gelato, and a visit to a playground.  

Our structure was a playground in the morning, then some tourist-y activity after an early lunch. Nap (hopefully). Then supper between 4-5pm. Then back to the hotel room for the night routine.

Yes, it Is worth it.

There was a point where the toddler walked into the Medici chapel, looked around at the sculptures made by Michelangelo himself, and asked, "Where's the ice cream?"

It's hard to know if he will remember much of this. He slept through the Uffizi, but he enjoyed the playgrounds and waving to the pigeons. He developed a love for Spaghetti Carbonara, which the waiters, who are accustomed to requests for Spaghetti Pomodoro for the kids, instantly respected. You could see him taking it all in, and processing it.

This experience might be imprinted on him, without the memories. It might develop into an inexplicable appreciation for Michelangelo. A love for Carbonara. Some Italian language skills that stick with him. Grazie! Prego! Ciao bambino! Or something deeper, like a willingness to try new things. If it's just one of those things, then the struggle was worth it.

Come prepared to the restaurant.

Our little circles of influence

The professional day drinkers who usually gather in front of Sudkreuz train station were pleasantly surprised about a month ago. Someone had pitched a tent, laid out some food, and put out foldable tables and chairs.

It's exhausting work to stand outside all day drinking and panhandling, so Sudkreuz's hard-working professional drinkers made themselves at home. They stretched out, drank their beer and cheap wine, and enjoyed the sun.

The next day, the tables and chairs were roped off and guarded by volunteers wearing yellow vests emblazoned with the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag. What the hard-living party folks of Sudkreuz mistook for their beer garden was a meeting point for refugees arriving by train from the war. Mostly women and children.

Sudkreuz is the last stop before Berlin's central station, where thousands are streaming into the city. A colleague arriving at Berlin, schlepping luggage with two kids trailing behind her, was graciously greeted by eager volunteers, mistaking her for one of the many mothers coming from Ukraine with small children.

------

You would know Under den Linden in Berlin if you've visited Brandenburger Gate. It's a popular street in the Mitte for strolling shoppers, tourists, and locals. You'll also find the Russian embassy dominating an entire block on the street.

The embassy, which also sued to be the Soviet embassy for East Germany, is now walled off from pedestrians by barriers and patrolled by cops. 

The big headlines-grabbing protests usually take place on Sundays. 

But every day I've passed, there's always this quiet crowd of protesters on the tree-lined boulevard, holding Ukrainian flags that hang limply in the wind.

They don't do much. They don't chant or march. They stare at the embassy, its curtained windows, and its imposing stone facade.

------

It might be easy to lose hope. There's an overwhelming feeling of despair about this war, its utter pointlessness and cold brutality. We all wish we could bend the arc of history in a better direction.

Most of us don't have the influence to start or end wars. But we all have our own circles of influence. We can do what we feel is the right thing to do within this circle. We can donate to a cause we believe in. We can let strangers from a war-torn land into our homes. We can march on the streets. 

The point isn't if we can change the world. The point is to make decisions and act closer to what we believe is right, and be able to live with ourselves. If we can live that way, then we might change our little circle of influence for the better in the process.

Things I loved in 2021

 

We're almost there! I know the 2020s have been tough, but there was a lot to love about this year. So, here are 10 things that made my year.

1) For a reason I can't fathom, I read a bunch of books about the Eastern Front in World War II during the cold, dark month of January 2021. 

City of Thieves by David Benioff is an adventure story of a young man who avoids execution in exchange for an impossible mission in 1940s besieged Leningrad and behind German lines. It's like reading a movie. Good stuff. 

We, Germans by Alexander Starritt is told from the other side. This story is told by a German artillery officer as the Wehrmacht retreats and everyone realises they've lost the war, but most can't admit it. Sobering stuff.

Just when I thought I couldn't go darker, I read Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Synder. This is a sweeping non-fictional account of how much it sucked to live in the (blood)lands between two totalitarian states in the 1930s and 40s, and a reminder that we're living in good times. Sad stuff. 

2) Every few months, I get a vicious migraine that knocks me out. I'm usually too discombobulated for screens or reading, so I treat myself to an audiobook that I don't mind falling asleep too. Jason Isaac's reading of Thunderball is marvellous. The accents. The pacing. The almost satiric humour of the opening chapters. The hilariously cheerful American submarine captain. It's great stuff to listen when your brain feels like it's being stabbed with hot nails.

3) There is high-definition "technicolour history," which is the recorded history of Ancient Greece and onward. Then there's the "black & white history" that relies on stone reliefs, monoliths, and ruins. Technicolour history isn't so kind to the Persian Empire, but black & white History is revealing the Persians profound influence at that time. King of Kings, a set of Hardcore History episodes, is an accessible, thoughtful primer on the Persian Empire. It provides a rich context of the history of the region, into the Greek-Persian Wars, and ends with the devastating arrival of Alexander. 

Coincidentally, as restrictions eased over the summer, my wife surprised me with a birthday visit to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin to see some remnants of that Black & White History.

The Sumerian god Nisroch.

4) Like many kids growing up in Ontario without cable, I spent Saturday evenings watching either hockey or the classic movies on TVO, the province's public broadcaster. One of the joys of watching The Mandolorian is catching the references, retellings, or remixes from The Searchers, The Magnificent Seven, The Good, Bad, and the Ugly, Shane, The Wild Bunch and others. I watched it dubbed in German to keep my Bad German from getting worse.

4) Dune Part I. This was a date afternoon, since the toddler is impossible to get asleep and stay asleep during normal people's prime movie-watching time. What a movie! I could've done with less slow motion brood-y scenes, but it's a stunning movie to watch that doesn't dumb down too many of the book's many layers. More than any of the other adaptations, this one captures the book's cosmic immensity of things.

5) Rise and Kill First: A Secret History of Targeted Assassination by Ronen Bergman. For fifty years, Mossad has been waged a secret war and this book reads like an epic spy novel about that secret war —  the missions, near misses, and the cast of characters that move it along. In a way, Israel's targeted assassination program's success feels tragic, since Israel's leaders often saw it as an end, rather than a means to an end. The author is legit on this topic too, and recently published this story about an AI-assisted assassination in Iran that could be a follow-up to the book.

6) I read a chapter now and then from Plutarch's Lives. The biographies of Caesar, Pompey, and Alexander the Great get a lot of love. But the sketches on Alcibiates, Sertorius, Sylla, and Lysander are also great. It takes a while to get into the language's verbosity, but if you put some mental effort into it, you get to know some interesting people and gain sense of the times they lived.

7) I've have a soft spot in my heart (and stomach) for Korean food. It might be from my time working at a Korean restaurant in my London days. Maybe its some subliminal influence from the work of Park Chan-wook. It might be Korean cuisine's focus on cabbage-y goodness (Kimchi) and meat mastery (Bibimbop, Bulgogi, pork bone soup). Or all of the above. 

Since leaving Baldwin Village in Toronto, where I had a Korean restaurant across the street from me, I've been eating Korean and searching for my favourite dish: Daeji Bulgogi, Korean grilled pork. It's also difficult to find, like a Holy Grail of grilled meat, so I haven't quenched my thirst for it... Until I found Seoul-Kwan in Berlin and I've been reunited with my pork.

 

8) Watching my wife create 12 pieces of original art for her annual calendar was probably one of the most inspiring things to witness this year. Work, family and the minor emergencies that inevitably pop up tend to suck in our time. So, it's amazing to see someone carve out time to make something. I know artists are suppose to focus on the process, not the result, but as an admittedly biased observer, I think the result is lovely.

Focus.

9) Remember seven or eight years ago when everyone in advertising describing themselves as storytellers? In a book-ish attempt to be a legit storyteller, I tried to read Hero with a Thousand Faces and couldn't get through it. The wrong book at the wrong time for me. But, this year I read the Power of Myth, which was a series of conversations between Campbell and Bill Moyers. It's an accessible shortcut into Campbell's research, theories, and his incredible compassion for the struggle that is being human. Once you read it, you'll notice all those themes, tropes, and patterns pop up everywhere.

10) Reading Ursula Le Guin's translation/adaptation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching was one of the most strangely calming experiences of 2021. It's poetry. It's wisdom. It's like ancient Chinese Twitter for the soul. Here's a good one:

Wanting less  

 

When the world’s on the Way,  

they use horses to haul manure.  

When the world gets off the Way, 

they breed warhorses on the common.  

 

The greatest evil: wanting more.  

The worst luck: discontent.  

Greed’s the curse of life.  

 

To know enough’s enough  

is enough to know.