Marshall in Strange Places

Not Beating the Heat Wave

I think this heat wave is beginning to affect the Germans. The other day, on a crowded, stuffy bus, a man threw up between his legs at his seat and tried to act natural about it. It didn't work. I left the bus to escape its fresh barf smell and witnessed a homeless man jump in front of a hose, which a storeowner was using to water a tree along the sidewalk. The storeowner seemed, surprisingly, nonplussed.

It's the third or fourth week of the heat wave that's scorching northern Europe and it's starting to show. Businessmen in suits melt into their seats on the train, kindergarten teachers chase their young charges in slow motion, and city workers lean a little more heavily on their shovels.

This is a country that is not only completely unused to this heat, but completely unprepared for it. In Southern Ontario, I would've retreated to an air conditioned room with blackout curtains and stayed until September. Here, few have the luxury of air conditioning. Many apartments have wide windows that are great for letting the air flow through it, but not so good for summer heat waves were the temperature doesn't drift below 25 degrees some nights.

The trains, trams, and buses are no better. Most have small windows, designed to let a little air in, but are sealed shut to keep the spring-winter-autumn chill out. In this weather, they've been mobile saunas,

Offices are not spared either. At Ogilvy, we used shutters to keep the sun out and windows to let the breeze in to avoid using the air conditioning, which was used so seldom that it was always set to Arctic and people would run to the thermostat and shut off the vent above their work station. When enough people did this, the air conditioning was pretty much turned off and we'd switch to shutters and windows again.

My office in Aachen also lacks air conditioning, so we're also relying on windows for a cool breeze, or at least a warm breeze, and shutters, which for some reason open suddenly for no reason other than to blind the workers inside with searing, hot sunlight. The heat in the office can be so debilitating that many of my colleagues avoid coming into the office and work from home, where they can at least stay cool and, if they're like me, work in basketball shorts and an undershirt.

When I do work from home, our apartment turns into a cool bunker. The shutters – first floor apartments in Germany have shutters over the windows, in case of burglars, peepers, and zombies – are shut and a fan is strategically set up.

Usually the German summer is a benign thing and the Germans partake in summer activities with typical efficiency. They patiently line up at ice cream shops, many stretching around the corner. On sunnier days, locals dash for the public parks, peeling off layers, while the rest of us are getting our shorts and miniskirts from storage. By the end of May, most of Germany is walking about, bronzed from laying in public parks under the sun, and happily eating their ice cream.

This summer is different. In the heat wave's first week, I'd see people who thought they could handle an afternoon of tanning in the park. They looked like they fell asleep in a brick kiln – bright red, visibly thirsty, stumbling to the shade. They still haven't quite discovered the North American cooling tactic: the movie theatre. We've watched a couple flicks and haven't had to fight a crowd to get good seats.

They have, however, gone running to the local lakes and pools. On Sunday, we went to a pool/strand in the Dorf's north end. Getting there was like crossing a desert. The grass is scorched brown and I was sure I saw a sun-bleached buffalo skull. Waiting on the platform to change trains was like looking through the haze in the Badlands. The train seemed like a mirage.

At the pool/strand, people laid towels on the burnt, brown grass or flocked to the shade under the trees and tents. But the water, with no clouds in the sky, was blue and cool. It was perfect, and you couldn't appreciate how great a swim that like that is unless you're coping with a heat wave in a country that is still learning how to handle heat waves.

The Badlands of the Dorf

Notes from the Commute

Good morning, fellow commuters.

Every morning I wake up to two alarms. One to get me out of bed and another to remind to stumble out the door and go to the train station, where I will await the train to Aachen.

And so the hurrying up and waiting begins. Sprint out of bed, linger over the breakfast, rush to the platform, wait for the train. Then the trip, which is actually a long wait for the train's arrival to Aachen.

In the afternoon, or Feierabend, as they call them here, I leave the office for the train station, sometimes sprinting to a bus stop, to wait, then sprinting into the train station, to wait for a train, any train that will take me back to the Dorf. Once at home in the Dorf there is leisure time before the nightly routine of packing my bag and laying out my clothes to ease the limited decision-making-power of groggy-6am-straggery-sleepy Marshall.

Hurry up and wait. And wait. Those activities eat up a lot of time, which has become a precious commodity.

This blog has always been a passion project living in the margins of my day. Its posts begin as snippets scribbled into notebooks on a lunchtime Discovery Walk, then typed during the work day's final minutes before I leave the office.

But in the flurry of daily sprinting and waiting – with the pressure to catch the bus that will take me to the place where I will catch the train, with my time structured around arrivals, departures, and delays – those margins of my day are pushed back.

I'm not whining. I have a good, challenging job. I work with thoughtful, competent people in a niche, but interesting corner of the tech industry. I even get to work from home, since my new employer treats its employees like responsible adults who can get work done without supervision.

This commuting lifestyle has only taught me the value of time. Sure, I have time to doodle in my notebook or read a book or look out the window and ponder things… like this blog post…

But when you have structure enforced on you it's difficult to find time to waste, like 45 minutes to write a blog post that's not working and then throw it out. (That might be a subtle mea culpa if you don't like this post.)

There's little time for Discovery Walks or quick drinks at the bar with colleagues, because there's a schedule to keep and a train board and things to do before I go to bed, like pack a lunch and search for clean clothes for the next day.

And yet, when I get those moments, to ride a bike during a lunch break on a home office day or just sit on the balcony, I appreciate those moments more because of their rarity.

I'm not complaining, seriously, because there's a lot to be happy with. Let us end it on a brighter note, with a promise to you, dear blog reader, that I will try to keep up with the blog. The daily slog is long, but it isn't so dreary. There's plenty to write about and plenty to show. I just have to stop taking pictures out of train windows and get on with telling you about it all.

A Hangover-Free Trip to Paris

Paris from the Tour Montparnesse - A city that's always holding something back.

We went to Paris last year for a friend's wedding. We spent the afternoon before the wedding walking along the Seine and wandering around Montmartre. For the morning after the wedding, we had big plans: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, and on and on the list went.

Then we stayed late at the party, drinking and dancing until they closed the place for the night. We didn't stop there, but stood outside double-fisting our roadie drinks with the bride, groom, and a few party-hard guests until enough was enough and we all went to bed.

We were too hungover to do anything other than call the lobby for a late checkout. It was a classic, brutal reminder that one of the things you lose in your 30s is the ability to metabolize enough alcohol to able to function the next day. We were functioning just enough to catch our flight that evening and not get kicked off.

Last weekend, we returned to Paris with a chip on our shoulder and a powerful determination to do the things we were too stupidly hungover to do. We might have overcompensated – Kata's pedometer phone app said we walked 22km on the first day.

We walked around Park La Villette, along a canal to the Battle of Stalingrad Square and witnessed a 11am trance dance party We continued down to Notre Dame – avoiding the line-ups and walking around it, then walking around the island itself. Then we just kept walking. Over Pont Neuf, through the Louvre's courtyards, into the sun-scorched Tullieres, all the way to the Obelisk in Place do la Concorde. We had crepes and cold drinks at a square with a Gothic church, then went scarf shopping for Kata, then dinner at a Brassiere in quiet neighbourhood.

The weather was sunny and warm, so we opted to stay outside instead of going into dark, air-conditioned museums, and marched and marched and marched through Paris.

We did venture into one museum the next day. Kata insisted we see the inside of the Grand Palais, so we saw Artists & Robots, which wasn't on our list of things to see but turned out to be an interesting wide-ranging modern art exhibition of sculpture, paintings, and installations that combined people artists with robots, technology, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. As we watched robot arms drawing still life sketches and hexagonal floating things, I leaned over to Kata and mentioned this was an amazingly thought-out exhibition. She, who lived in Paris on a university exchange, smiled knowingly, patted me on the cheek, and said, "They're good at that here."

And on we walked that day, though we took it easier – my phone said we only clocked in 12km. We walked to the Arc de Triumph, then onward to the Eiffel Tower where, because we were seriously sore-footed, we found a shady spot to rest in the shade and look at the tower and watch the drink sellers ply their trade. But once rested, we continued our march through Paris, to some cafe and then to take in the view of the city from Tour Montparnesse, then a hearty brasserie repast.

Despite all the sights, we didn't get to do everything that Kata wished for us to see. Had the weather been less favourable, we would have gone to a few art galleries – Louvre, Palais de Tokyo, Musee d'Orsay – on our mental checklists. Had we gone to the galleries, we would have lingered and savoured it all and not have pounded as much Paris pavement as we did.

But as with so many things in life, you can't do everything, though between restful moments of bliss over cold drinks or fine food, we certainly tried. There always seems to be something to see in Paris, but I also got the sense that it's a city that holds things back, so you're left with wanting to see a little more. I'm okay with that.