Die Hard Three

When someone talks about a seemingly great deal I believe it’s important to ask the good followup questions – especially if the person is a politician. If the deal being presented is part of a complex system you might need an expert but if it’s an everyday thing that lots of people do, you can try and handle it yourself – but you have to know the right things to ask.

Here for you now is an example:

I’ve gotten a lot of joy talking about my flight to the happiest place on Earth, but was it really $505?

Let’s dive deep.

Best way to analyze something like this is through the lens of the good and bad question.

Right off the top I said I FOUND a flight for $505. But is that what I paid? Nope, the $505 was from some dumb-ass reseller I’d never heard of. It was $45 more to buy direct from the carrier (which is safer) so I paid a little more.

What airport was I flying out of?

Excellent question! 

I had to get my ass down to a city called Hamilton Ontario. This cost me $68.93 (inter-city train to Toronto) and another $11.56 for the commuter train (to Hamilton) and then another $3.80 to get to the airport. Now, the first train was late so I had to run to catch the commuter train and I ended up on the train without paying. There was no ticket checker – so I saved $11.

What about the way back?

This is where things really start to suck. Landing in Hamilton early in the evening makes it impossible to catch a bus or train back to Ottawa that does not get in at 5 am. I found this thing called MegaBus that runs from Hamilton airport to Union Station (Toronto’s giant train station) $5.64 plus an $11 train to the airport and flight to Ottawa for 9,800 pts and $50.24.

$555 flight (Hamilton-Berlin return)
$ 68 train  (Ottawa to Toronto)
$  5 city bus (Hamilton)
$  5 intercity bus (Hamilton to Toronto)
$ 11 train (to Toronto airport)
$ 50 flight (Toronto to Ottawa)
————
$694 CDN

So is this a good deal?

Well the only other flight in the same ballpark I’ve been able to find was $560 from Ottawa to Frankfurt (WestJet/Condor, return, via Toronto) plus another $128 for the ICE train FRA-BER return. So money wise they’re almost identical albeit for different travel dates.

How long did all this take?

This is where things got effed up. It took me 24 hours from wake-up to check in to my apartment. I was flying via Iceland so there was an extra four hours over a direct-to-Germany flight from Toronto.

This other flight has a 10 hours layover in Toronto and leaves Ottawa at 06:00 AM. So it would be a 30 hour travel day to get to the apartment in Berlin.

Long travel days means you’re buying food on-the-road (so to speak – some of the meals are actually in-the-air) 

Was it comfortable?

No. Not at all. All airline travel is terrible all the time but on these flights I wanted to die several times. This cheap-ass airline packed us in there like HERRINGS! No power ports on the seats. Water was $3 – my cousin would have been so upset.

I flew WestJet/Condor in Nov 2023 to FRA from YEG via Calgary and it was way better but the train right after from FRA to BER was a literal nightmare. So with a couple days to visit Frankfurt before going to Berlin, the WestJet/Condor journey is probably more comfortable. I also like to visit FRA so it saves some money getting there from Berlin. 

Anything else?

The only other thing I can think of is defeating jet lag on the way to Europe. WestJet/Condor lands at 7 AM in the MORNING. Good luck not going insane trying to stay awake until 9 pm. The Iceland route has a noon arrival which is lightyears better. 

Note: I don’t consider sleep on an airplane (outside a pod) to be healthy/natural. More like terrible/awful. It does not count.

And with that, I’ve made it to 4 pm – five more hours to get over my jet lag!

Four days ago in Ottawa I was walking down the street by my place (sidewalk, daytime, clear, residential, 40 kph) and I came to a four-way-stop intersection I’m crossing and a motorist was going straight through the intersection and he came pretty close to me. I was about one metre from his driver side door. He totally saw me at the last second, cleared the intersection and immediately stopped, then turned around caught up to me and apologized.

Respect.

Just now in St. Albert AB, I was walking to get my coffee and I had to cross a road (dark, minimal street lights, marked crosswalk, flashing lights, 40 kph on the street, 60 kph on the road). I’m crossing in the green and he’s turning right from a feeder street. It’s 6:45 AM so not a lot of traffic. It’s dark so I’m being very careful.

I was in his target lane and he saw me at the last second and abruptly slammed the brakes. A tiny squeak from the tires of his stupid truck. A classic case of “motorist turning right and only worried about the car traffic in his target lane”. His phone beeps at that moment: I’m fucking dead.

That’s why (after almost killing me) his response to my “Dude, wtf” expression as we passed each other was so odious. He stopped, rolled down his window and said “Seriously, f-off”

No respect.

There’s so much I could write about this situation. The black, urban motorist acknowledging his mistake and apologizing. The (sort of) rural driver prioritizing his feelings over the fact that he almost murdered someone via negligence and NOT apologizing. That I was wearing a black jacket would have kept this a-hole out of prison with his drivers license still valid, burdened with only a small fine and the hassle of having to go to court.

Truck vs. car. Black vs. white. Urban vs. rural. ON vs. AB. Motorist vs. pedestrian. Left vs. right.

In October 2023 the Richmond BC Police released a PSA for this EXACT scenario. It’s so awful it’s *almost* funny. The community notes, my God.

On some level I can understand what’s going on here. I’ve been in many a discussion where I make a bad comparison. The problem here is that the bad comparison

• cost at LEAST $15,000 of public money
• survived multiple levels of review by management
• no one recognized the problem
• or when it was pointed out it was ignored

It wasn’t a poorly thought out tweet, conceived and published in under ten seconds by an unpaid intern at some local police service.

It was a video production with a script and budget and meetings and discussions and approvals. The core idea of the video was based around a fundamental concept of their profession (a profession that yields an enormous amount of power in society) made by trained members of a country’s NATIONAL police service. The problem with the video was so obvious it identified by untrained civilians about six seconds after it was uploaded.

And the video is still up!

This whole thing suggests to me that the people charged managing an important aspect of our society – safety from crime – a) don’t seem to know what a crime is and b) appear to be incapable of admitting (or at least correcting) when they make a mistake. And the stakes here are super low! How do they behave when they make bigger mistakes?

You know the mistakes I’m talking about.

The only good thing I can see about the Richmond BC police keeping this video up is that it’s a place where people can go and see a real-world reminder that the hero-worship our society bestows upon cops might not be warranted. And also as a manifestation of that famous Dril tweet.

Five months ago back on May 18, my new best friend here in Alberta was hit by a truck that was turning right. Tossed ten feet (three meters) off his mobility scooter. Ken was 100% in the right. The motorist was taking the turn way too fast, didn’t stop immediately after the crash, and then claimed to the cops that Ken was crossing against the light. There were fifteen witnesses. What a moron.

This is all to say that it’s experiences like that that convince me that it’s time for us to get rid of ANY kind of rolling righthand turn and to put to bed this reactionary impulse to claim the victim when one is clearly in the wrong.

Which one cost more? Let’s find out!

BERLIN (May 25)
3.50 EUR – S-Bahn to the park
17.00 EUR – first bottle of wine
17.00 EUR – second bottle of wine
2.00 EUR – tip
5:00 EUR – first beer
5:00 EUR – second beer
3.50 EUR – S-Bahn home

53.00 EUR – TOTAL

SWITZERLAND (May 26-May 29)
7.50 EUR – Sandwich
5.00 EUC – Coffee
15.00 EUR – two drinks at a bar
4.00 EUR – two drinks from the gas station
1.50 EUR – metro ticket
6.00 EUR – two snacks on the train
5.50 EUR – [classified]

44.50 EUR – TOTAL

It’s amazing how cheap it is to travel when your food, transportation, entertainment, accommodations and drinks are already paid for and/or covered by someone else!

I mean, I felt attacked. That’s the same thing, right?

Yesterday morning I woke up and decided to go explore the… I want to say.. town? It might be a village but it’s 100% not a city. Cities have things like night clubs and baseball franchises and Ascona has neither.

But what it does have is an abundance of nature and water and mountains. So I looked on the map and saw there was a bridge close by. And it went over water. So I walked in that direction to check it out (the photos I posted yesterday are from there.)

While I was on the bridge enjoying the nature I heard what sounded like a helicopter approaching and sure enough it was a helicopter. I captured this video. 

All joking aside about this being a black-ops spy chopper (it totally was) about 40 minutes later I was walking along the same river and there was a woman (maybe mid-60s) walking her dogs so I (of course) started chatting with her (first about her dogs and then other stuff). 

[I need to make a quick aside about men interacting with women who are walking alone in nature. Way back in April of 2024, someone on twitter asked “Walking alone in the woods would you rather encounter a bear or a man?” And the VAST majority of women were on Team Bear while a lot of LOUD men were on… let’s be charitable and say Team Confused.*

The short version is that bears are predictable and men are not. So if one out of a thousand men is dangerous it makes it perfectly understandable for women to be… let’s say “cautious” around any man in an isolated setting.

With this in mind, yesterday there were other people within earshot and I was dressed like a tourist so I didn’t feel this was a bear-type situation. Also we were approaching on a path so we were going to have to pass each other regardless.]

So we’re chatting about random things and I asked her what the deal with the helicopter was. Figured a local might know if anything was going on. I thought her response of “there’s a global war happening right now” was a generic observation (the Swiss version of “the whole world is going to Hell.”) But no. It was not generic. It was actually very, very specific.

You see, according to this woman there’s a global cabal of elites who are killing our leaders (and replacing them with… actors I guess.) She listed the top three countries involved (two of which I (silently) agreed are kind of awful) but the third one was Switzerland. I wanted to say “This fucking place? The Prince Edward Island of Europe?” But saying this would have extended the amount of time I would have to be near this person. A person whose mind had clearly taken a break from reality.

She then proceeded to give me her phone number (she didn’t have her phone with her – and for this I gave her total respect. So many of these I’m-being-spied-on types willingly carry around their own personal surveillance rectangle – so ditching hers is actually a very sane thing to do.) Her phone number was so I could send her the video of the chopper and she also suggested a YouTube channel for me to check out.

But hands down the best part of this whole interaction was when she was explaining to me how “They’re spying on us” and I was like (in my mind) “Come on lady” and then no joke – 90 seconds later the black ops helicopter returned.

We watched it pass and then she just nodded and said “See.”

So I can’t really discount her completely. Maybe there’s a Hot Fuzz situation happening here (the pretty surface is hiding a dark, action-packed secret) but I think in reality Switzerland is nice and clean and they probably have the same amount of not-in-plain-sight badness as any other western democracy. And that badness is likely just boring old capitalism.

To finish I would like to be clear that I’m not trying to make fun of this woman. I found the whole interaction bizarre, a bit sad, and (when the chopper returned) hilarious. I don’t know her situation but she’s clearly got some pieces missing. Lots of seniors are lonely and social media sites like YouTube make their money off of engaging users with content that is like fast food: delicious, but if it’s all you consume it’s going to make you sick.

Stay safe out there everyone. 

*in reality the loud men were on Teams Angry and Hostile. And probably the funniest part of this whole Bear discourse is that there was this one guy from Team Hostile who was like “Hey! It’s not funny! My mom was attacked by a bear!” and then his mom joined the convo and announced that she was firmly on Team Bear. Sorry dude. Your attempt to reduce the hilarity actually increased it. By a lot.

is what you ask when you arrive at night to a place you’ve never been. This morning I got my answer.

I’m staying for two nights in a 14th century converted monastery located in the Italian sector of Swiss Alps. It even has its own courtyard (just like in the movies).

There are mountains all over the place and it is quite beautiful.

The water in this river was incredibly clear.

I’m a little bit disappointed I didn’t extend this part of my trip. I seem to be able to walk for hours in beautiful nature and then have a great lakeside coffee prepared by a nice Italian-speaking man.

Maybe I’ll have to return one day.

Day One (Sunday) of my holiday-within-a-holiday was quite an adventure. The day before (Saturday) I elected to delay doing the things I needed to do until 630 AM (three hours before my train left Ostbahnhof). 

Packing. Laundry. Cleaning the apartment. Taking out the trash. Putting all my stuff out of the way for the next guests. Dishes. Plants. It was not an insignificant amount of work.

This was probably a mistake. But you know what was NOT a mistake? Going out the night before with my NEW Berlin friends and getting drunk on wine and beer until 2:30 AM. We had a lot of fun. I somehow managed to wake up on time, get most of my list done and make it to the train station early.

The plan was simple. Take a train to Cologne, meet up with Jan. Take another train via Mannheim to Basel. Then one to Ascona, Switzerland. A long day but whatever. These trains are comfortable. Some nice breaks at the stations. Traveling with a buddy. Semi-reliable WiFi.

I should mention that Deutsche Bahn (the German national railway) is VERY good at updating the arrival and departure times of their trains. You can go to their website, they email out notifications, and there are screens all over the trains. 

So the problems started earlier in the week when I couldn’t get a reservation all the way from Berlin to Cologne. I was able to get one to Hamm (2/3 of the way) BUT once I got to Hamm the train was split in two and the front (with me) was going to Dusseldorf. So I had to exit the train and get on the back part which was going to Cologne. 

That train was full so I had to sit on the floor. NBD. It was only supposed to be 75 minutes. 

So I was on the correct train. I messaged Jan and told him I was running late but still within tolerances. He was on the train in front of mine. We shared locations and he decided to ditch his slower (but on time) train and join me on my faster but slightly behind schedule one in Wuppertal.

This was a mistake. You see, Jan had to be at work at 8 am the next day. And we still had to make a couple of connections. And as far as we could tell, his original slow train made it to Cologne main station in time. My fast train, on the other hand… 

Wuppertal to Cologne is normally 29 minutes and we stood there by the doors (full train, remember) for over 90 minutes. They kept delaying our arrival time, BUT (just to give us hope) BOTH our connections also kept getting delayed. This went on until we were maybe 4 minutes from Cologne Main Station when our connection finally left for Mannheim.

So we were in Cologne and our options were:

1. Fly to Milan and then take a train to Ascona (expensive, annoying (air travel is trash))
2. Get on the next train, go as far as we can, get a hotel, continue in the morning and Jan misses his first lesson (he’s a dominatrix, or a school teacher – I can never remember.) This option is also expensive – hotels in Switzerland are like $300 (200 EUR) a night. Close to the same cost of two one-way flights.

We decided to fly so we took a quick train to Messe-Deutz to connect to the airport. Once there he realized that getting fired from his job was preferable to air travel so we went back to Cologne Main Station to look for a train to Mannheim. We found one that was leaving from Messe-Deutz. So we had to go BACK to Messe-Deutz.

There we grabbed a fast train to Mannheim where we had about a 30 minutes wait to catch a connection to Basel Switzerland. We loaded up on food during the break, which was nice – I hadn’t eaten in many hours. And after that we got on the train to Basel where we found ourselves in a very familiar situation.

Our train was VERY close to making our connection in Basel. This was the connection (we thought was out of reach) that would get us ALL THE WAY THERE. The problem was that the Swiss trains (always on time) don’t wait for the German ones (sometimes late). In fact if a German train is more than 15 minutes delayed, they don’t even let it across the border. This is to avoid introducing delays to the Swiss rail network. This connection is usually about 8 minutes. 

Now I’m not sure why, but this time they decided to keep the Swiss train for us. It was right across the arriving platform so we were able to walk right on – no delays from Canadian tourists getting injured running all through the station.

So by 00:22 AM we’d gotten as far as a train could take us. We took a bus for 30 minutes. Then we had to walk for ten minutes to Jan’s car. Then it was another 30 minutes drive and during this drive we saw exactly one person (who was not a motorist – I was getting some serious 28 Days Later vibes.) 

It was a long day but at the end of it I was very happy to fall asleep in what appeared to be the bed of a devout Christian child. The end.

One of the ways I’m trying to save money on this trip is to leverage out of town visits/visitors and medium-term apartment rentals combined with my all-you-can-ride rail pass. 

OUT OF TOWN VISITORS: My cousin is coming to Berlin for a few days and the idea of someone whom I love spending $300 a night on a hotel drives me insane. So I decided to do one of my week-long visits while he’s in town and then meet up with him just before he flys home. 

This means instead of my place being empty for a week, one of my top-ten cousins is going to be in there. Which is a good thing.

MEDIUM TERM APARTMENT RENTALS: When my bro was here in February the going rate for an Air-BnB was $5,000 CDN per month. Almost identical to staying in a hotel. It was the same when I checked for May-June-July. I scored seven weeks for $2,800 CDN with a possible extension for one more week. By going with a service that does not process payments (takes a cut) you can get a much better rate. https://www.wg-gesucht.de/en/ is what I used. 

RAIL PASS: I already mentioned this in my previous post so it’s best to give an update. I’m going to be doing maybe 8 “segments” on this holiday within a holiday. Each of those would typically be around 50 euros. So we’re up around $600 for all the trains I’ll be taking over the next 8 or 9 days.

OUT-OF-TOWN VISITS: So this week I’m going to be visiting some friends that are all over the place. Paris. Marseille. Switzerland (Italian sector), Switzerland (French sector). These kind people have offered their couches and inflatable mattresses for me to sleep on. Out-of-town accommodations can be expensive, so a sofa to crash on can greatly lighten the financial burden. My preference for thank-you gifts is a meal at a nice restaurant. A nice break from the cooking and cleaning and some quality time to catch up.

Every time I travel I learn something new. For this post I’ll share with you what I’ve discovered so far on this trip (Day 6)

1. If you travel to Europe for longer than 90 days you need a visa (called Schengen). For my trip in 2011 I was here for 94 days and they let me right in. For this trip (also 94 days) I needed a visa (the online check-in asked… nay, demanded, I produce one before issuing my boarding pass). 

I was aware of this 90-day rule when I booked back in January and my plan was to (in the middle of my travel) visit a non-Schengen country and then immediately walk back into Shengen and say something clever (still workshopping exactly what) as I defeated their stupid, unenforceable rules.

Then I read the fine print and learned that the 90 day limit is *within* a 180 day period. And by “read the fine print” I mean I changed my ticket so that my trip was exactly 90 days and the system still rejected me. 

I guess my visit to Germany back in Nov/Dec actually counted towards my limit. All this happened literally 24 hours before I had to fly. So I changed my flight a second time so that I’m now here for only 76 days (boo!)

Seeking clarification, on the way in I asked the dude at the border control what the deal was and he was like “just go and do your stupid original plan where you leave and come back” and when I asked about the 180 day thing he told me “no one cares”.

Not true. Me. I care.

So, I’m probably going to change my ticket back to my original return date. Also, visit Serbia.

2. The rail pass is amazing. Europeans can’t get one so you have to tell ’em how awesome it is every chance you get.

I paid $1050 USD (around $1458.28 CDN) for three months and 33 countries of UNLIMITED second-class rail travel. By Day Five I’ve gone from Frankfurt to Siegburg then back to Frankfurt and then on to Berlin. All on the high speed trains. Individual tickets would have run me… maybe… $300 CDN. So this is a very good deal. The best part is that I don’t have to prepare, I can just go!

You can sleep on these trains, eat on these trains, meet people on these trains. So far I’ve met a nice German person, Beautiful Luna, and a nice Dutch person (who, like me, is also learning German and hates Geert Wilders).

For comparison the 19-day first class unlimited “global” pass I purchased back in 2010 was about $1,800 CDN and a Bahn 100 Card (unlimited first class travel within Germany) is around 7,000 EUR for one year.

So there you have it. The two new things I’ve learned. I will keep you updated as my travel continues.

I like to include an image with each post but I haven’t snapped a lot of pictures so far on this trip so here’s an un-shopped photo from this morning of a delivery van in front of my apartment complex.

This morning I left Bad H for Frankfurt main station with a seat reservation on ICE 578 to Berlin with a transfer in Hannover. My train was delayed thirty minutes and as I was waiting, another pulled into the station. I waited some more, staring at this new train for about 15 minutes before realizing that it (like me) was also going to Berlin but (unlike me) the new train was direct (no transfer).

I debated getting on sans-reservation and fighting for a seat – one of the DB workers said that the second half of the trip is fully booked – so I decided to stick with my original plan.

And just then, as I was finished talking with the Train Man, I turned around and there she was… just standing there waiting for her train… and let me tell you, she took my breath away.

Now I know it’s impolite to tell someone they’re beautiful and that you love them within 90 seconds of meeting them, but I’ve never been one to play by the rules. I’ll spare you the details, but fast forward to now, 45 minutes out from Hannover and I have been enjoying the journey with my new favourite person; let me introduce you to Luna!

She’s three years old, super friendly and I love her. Just when you think the ICE trains can’t get any better you learn that you get to travel with the best kind of companion: a canine one (sorry humans!)

I really regret not getting a proper photo of her. Those train floors are absolutely disgusting.

Bad Homburg is a small city north of Frankfurt Germany (25 minutes on S5 from Frankfurt HBF). Before November I’d never even heard of it. Now, it seems like I’m there all the time (three visits and counting).

The city dates back to the late 1980s so there’s a very strong chance that its founder is still alive, which is really weird cause no one seems to know anything about him. I’ve asked around and there’s no consensus at all!

Was he bad like, “No. don’t hire that guy. He’s not very reliable”? Or is it a kind of “he’s dangerous” situation (but not like a terrible forklift operator is dangerous, more like how a gangster might be)? And then there’s the third, (ironic) option where “bad” actually means good. Like how the character of “Little” Bill Daggett in Unforgiven (1992) was played by Gene Hackman who is actually 6’8″ (or 203 cm).

The only thing we can definitively say about him is that he is (or was) English. If he were German, they would called his city Schlechtes Homburg. And that doesn’t sounds like a pleasant place to live and/or work.