Die Hard Three

So this weekend is our annual ski trip. The boys and I have been going to Mont Tremblant every year for the last half decade for a little R&R (if you know what I mean ;-). There’s DR, OZ, and CS (I’m going to use code monikers to protect the innocent). Normally we have a cone of silence with respect to what happens on Ski Weekend (everyone knows what the fist rule of Ski Weekend is) but this year I was able to get a special dispensation to blog all our shenanigans.

We got a suite with one bedroom (two queens), kitchen, fireplace, everything. The hotel is right in the village – if you’ve been to Tremblant you know that’s a good thing. I have to say I think this year is going to be the best ever. Don’t believe me? Check out this itinerary.

Right now OZ and I are driving up early to get the place set up. CS and DR will be joining us around 20:00 – they’ve got some things to take care of.

Tonight for supper we’re having a cheese fondue *and* a meat fondue. It is going to be delicious! DA is bringing two bottles of his favorite red wine – Chateau Monteambleu 1989. We have to get up early tomorrow to hit the hills so it’s going to be a quiet evening. We’ll probably play a few games of Pictionary or charades or maybe some Scrabble (I bought my travel edition). Last year the hotel had a DVD player so this year we decided to bring a few movies with us – Bridesmaids, Mamma Mia (I love Abba almost as much as I love Meryl Streep), Chicago, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, – you know, just in case.

Saturday, will of course, involve skiing during the day but the evening is when the real fun begins. We’ve got the whole thing figured out – we’ve been planning it for weeks.

For supper it’s a simple three-course. The salad is an arugula lettuce base, cherry tomatoes, with raspberry vinaigrette dressing, pine nuts and black currents covered in warm goat cheese. The main is penne pasta in a creme sauce with sun-dried tomatoes and spicy Italian sausage. CS is responsible for the dessert and it’s going to be to-die-for. You know how I know? Because everything he cooks is amazing! Anyway, he won’t tell us what it is. All I know is that he played hooky today to work on it. I talked to him at noon and he said he’d been awake since five AM. Come Sunday they’re going to be wheeling me out of here feet first. I can’t wait!

So after supper we’re going to chill for a bit, sipping a nice digestif – Grand Marnier – by the fire. Musical selection for the evening, Petshop Boys, ABBA, CBC Radio 2, the soundtrack to For Your Eyes Only, Celine Dion (we are in Quebec you know), Henry Rollins, Elton John.

But this is all the calm before the storm. Every year on the second Saturday in February the village of Mont Tremblant is home to the world’s second-largest costume party – La Masquarade. All the bars in the resort are hosting events and parties where the patrons with the best costumes win all sorts of prizes and cool stuff. This year we’re going to try and win one of the group prizes – passes for four to Le Nordique Spa. Normally I would not say in advance what our costumes are going to be, and today is no different.

I imagine we’ll be up pretty late on Saturday night. Sunday will be an optional ski day.

Anyway, we’re almost at the resort. I’ll try to post periodic updates.

I can see the music

I’ve been tying to collect some statistics on my fourteen-week trip to Europa. Everyone loves numbers, not just the Count. So here are the quantities along with a timeline because time is also numbers – just hard-to-visualize ones.

• Friday June 3 – Last day at work
• Monday June 6 – First day of French training (in Ottawa)
• Tuesday August 9 – Obtained my B-level French language written comprehension (that’s a pass)
• Wednesday September 14 – Had my oral comprehension evaluation
• Thursday September 15 – Left Ottawa for Europe
• Friday September 16 – Flew to Rome Italy via Siegburg Germany, Obtained my B-level French language oral comprehension (that’s a pass) – French language training is complete
• Tuesday September 20 – Took the train from Rome to Milan
• Saturday September 24 – Took the train from Milan to Munich and then to Berlin
• November 4 to 6 – Visited with friends in Lyon, Grenoble, and Bonn (train)
• November 12 to 20 – Flight to Helsinki with the gf and the rents, one day in Estonia
• Sunday November 27 – Day trip to Bremen (train)
• December 2 to 6 – Visit to Mainz, Mannheim, Neustadt, Siegburg, Eindhoven, Munster (train)
• Thursday December 15 – Day trip to Leipzig (train)
• Tuesday December 20 – Flight home to Ottawa
• Friday December 23 – Return to work

And the non-time numbers:

• Number of days away from Canada – 96
• People visited – 57 (SG, NS, BL, HW, AH, DH, JL, JL, JB, AP, TM, FG, EB, PA, NM, CM, LL, SH, DD, AS, GC, JR, AM, MM, NN, NS, DS, JP, JH, RH, BH, AH, FW, AG, FW, MA, SM, SM, TM, KP, SJ, KH, MH, KJ, EL, HL, LL, GG, LA, GS, BE, EH, AS, NO, KO, NT, JI)
• Pregnant friends – 2 (that I could tell)
• Classical music concerts – 3
• Four and a half hour operas – 1 (thank God)
• Days of train travel – 12
• Taxi rides – 4
• Number of flights – 6 (on 4 different days)
• Nights in hotels – 6
• Night on sofas – 46
• People that stayed at my apartment – 6 (14 nights)
• Countries visited – 8 (NL, DE, IT, BE, FR, EE, FL, AS)
• Jigsaw puzzles completed – 2 (1000 and 1500 pieces)
• Days where it rained – about 8
• Sick days – 3

Costs – $6 438 CAD

• Inter-city train travel – $850
• Metro passes – $350
• Flights – $700 (plus 60 000 Aeroplan points)
• Rent – $1863
• Taxi rides – $100
• Hotels – $500
• Museums, concerts, ancient Roman ruins – $500 (Roman Forum, Coliseum, The Last Supper, Paragon Museum, Checkpoint Charlie, TV Tower, opera, classical concerts, soccer)
• Laundry $25
• Gifts for $150 for the kind people who let me stay on their sofas
• German lessons $1400

Refunds / Shared Costs – $3 120 CAD

• Rent from Ottawa $2 000
• Hotel savings $1 120 (14 nights at $80 CAD per night)

Total Costs Minus  Refunds / Shared Costs

$3 318 CAD

Note: I did not include costs for entertainment, drinks, restaurant, food, mobile phone because these would have evened out anyway. I had a prepaid phone in Berlin but I canceled my Ottawa plan. Going out for drinks is two to three times more expensive in Ottawa than it is in Berlin. Case in point: at my local the day I got home I ordered ten chicken wings, a beer and a twelve inch pizza.

Wings – $8.40
Pizza – $12.25
Beer – $6.15
——————–
Sub-total – $26.80
HST1 – $1.65
HSTL  – $0.49
HST – $1.34
——————-
Sub-sub-total – $30.28
Tip $3.94 (13%)
Total $34.22

So this comes down to a per day cost of about $35.00 CAD. I think this is pretty awesome. I mean, how much does it cost to live in ones home city?

So I guess that’s it for the travel part of this blog. I will finish up by clarifying one thing, If I’ve written anything during my travel blogging that offended you, I want you to know that it’s just a reference from a Simpsons episode you have not seen.

Also, the viola is the big violin.

End transmission.

The Voyage Home

So my buddy Steve invites me to go see the Sens play the Flyers on Sunday afternoon. After I accepted he informed me that he won the tickets and we will be sitting in a one hundred-level box. Sweet: booze, beer, babes, butlers, Bryzgalov.

I, of course, am cheering for Philadelphia. I arrived at the stadium and, upon seeing the many Flyers fans and their orange jerseys, realize that my Dutch Olympic hoodie will safely remove any doubt surrounding which team I support.

No doubt.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to the Palladium – I mean Corel Centre – I mean Scotiabank Place – to see a hockey game. My how things have changed. The first thing I notice is that they’ve removed all the Nortel advertisements. I wonder what they did with all the old signs. If there’s anyone out there who wants to start a company you could call it No-tel and with a little detective work and some blue paint you could save millions in promotion-related expenses.

Some kid is singing the anthems. His rendition of the Star-spangled Banner is copied directly from Bleeding Gums Murphy – or so it feels like. For some reason they post all the lyrics for both anthems on the giant screen. I never realized O Canada had so many exclamation points and that the French parts were written before the Quiet Revolution.

So the Sens score the first goal and they blow that Goddamn train horn of terror. My involuntary reaction is limited to a flashback to when I was eight and, thank God, nothing else.

During the first intermission I join the masses in the concourse to try and secure me a slice of Pizza Pizza pizza. The patrons’ inability to form something even remotely resembling a line is causing me an unusual amount of anxiety. I retreat to the box to wait for the second period to start – I’ll venture back out when the game is on.

We only have fifteen minutes people...

The first intermission is my favorite intermission – they usually invite two teams of five-year-olds to play a game against each other. The kids can barely skate let alone hold a hockey stick. I’m enjoying the spectacle for the wrong reasons.

The Flyers’ number seventeen is African-Canadian. I wonder if hockey every had a colour barrier like baseball did. For many years Russians were not allowed to play in the NHL but I think that was more a problem with the management of the USSR than any specific policy of the National Hockey League.

The Flyers just scored again. I like it when the Sens are playing some of the older teams – they get lots of fans at the games. I have to agree with soccer on this one – the game would be much more interesting if all these Flyers supporters were jammed into a single walled-off section of the Scotiabank Place and then taunted and booed until my throat hurt.

We’re about to start the third period. The running total for food and drink is approaching the face value of the ticket. Three beers (seventy-two ounces total), one Coke Zero, a slice of pizza, and a cheese burger with fries = $54.25 CAD.

Absurd.

Spartacat is in our section for a photo op. I try and get him to join us in our box for a beer. I read once that cats are allergic to alcohol. The whole game Steve and I have been debating what the specific reaction is. He says they vomit everywhere. I maintain that they vomit everywhere all the time regardless if they’ve had anything to drink or not.

And there's only one way to find out.

The game is tied at four goals apiece. Each team is playing like the outcome actually means something. It’s really exciting. Ottawa scores with 1:11 left on the clock. They finish with an empty-net goal to shore up the victory. No Sens No!

We make our way to the parking lot to fight our way through traffic. They built the stadium twenty kilometres outside of the city centre. Does anyone have any idea what they were on when they decided on the location? I’m all for decriminalization but whatever these guys were smoking should be classified a dangerous substance (excessive use can result in stupidity).

You’ll never guess which movie I started watching yesterday before bedtime!

So I’ve decided to reduce the frequency of my blog posts from daily to weekly. You can think of it like I’m going from being the Sun Newspaper to the Atlantic Monthly (but hopefully with less nudity and more toilets). I’m unsure what the theme of the posts will be but I’m almost positive they will include infrastructure (residential, commercial, municipal, national, trans-national, spatial).

Being back in Ottawa has been like all Matrix and stuff. After living somewhere else (i.e. in a city / country with an apparently cohesive ideology for urban planning) I am now annoyed by the most basic things. Take walking for instance.

Back in Berlin I was never able to quite figure out why the sidewalks were so much enjoyable than in Ottawa. Sure I posted at length about their composition and maintainability but there was something I missed and I think I found out what it is: in Canada the Goddamned sidewalks are barely wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side.

They are perfectly designed if your city is populated by human-sized robots that always motolocate single file, but sadly, this is not the case.

Even this shortest journey that requires three people walking together is super annoying. Note: I mean post-Berlin it’s super annoying – if you’ve never known anything else (or never even thought about it) you’re not going to care. It’s annoying because one person of the three has to walk on the road (dangerous), on the grass (good thing it never rains in Ottawa), in front (this is not Saudi Arabia), or behind (this is not Saudi Arabia).  And invariably what happens during one of these sidewalks commutes, is one encounters another pod of human foot-travelers. Each group has to break up so the other can pass.

I’m not even going to go into the social aspects of isolating one person from the group of three – it’s too horrifying to think about.

And even if there are just two people walking there are problems. When humans walk they don’t move in a perfectly straight line – there’s always a small bit of meandering that takes place. These stupid Canadian sidewalks have forced us to walk in an unnatural manner. It’s subtle, sub-conscious even, but it is there, in the background, slightly increasing your stress level and you don’t even know it.

Because that's what what we need most right now: stress resulting from the most basic human function.

And if you don’t believe me, next time you see someone walking alone down the sidewalk, you will notice that they are almost always walking in the middle. If it was really easy and stress-free to walk on one side of the sidewalk, people would do it when they walk solo. They don’t.

It’s really depressing to me that Canada has managed to screw up the thing that first made humans human – walking. That takes skill.

So all my gear arrived safe and sound. The window was soaking wet for some reason but otherwise fine. When I getting my luggage tags at the airport in Berlin the guy asked me how much the items weighed. All this obsession about staying under weight and the airlines never even verified it.

I’m back at work today. It’s been 203 days since I’ve been to work “proper” (from June 6 to Sept 15 I was on French language training). I’m looking forward to seeing everyone – it’s been a long time.

I have to catch the bus in a few minutes. This morning I managed to wake up without an alarm clock. With the Christmas holidays I’m going to get to extend this for another four days.

Wish me luck.

So my crazy rush to get everything done before I leave Berlin is now over. Everything is out of my hands and into theirs.

Sorry, throwers? Baggage handlers.

The pilot said it’s going to be eight and a quarter hours gate-to-gate. I’d set my timer – 5:24 now remains in my vacation.

I like flying east to west. The departure was delayed by an hour and a half so this means we’re going to get a few hours of sunset. I’m on the south side of the plane and the view is nothing short of spectacular. Since we took off I’ve taken about eight hundred photos and watched one episode of Cheers.

Does anyone know if the whole series took place in this one bar? I'm impressed if it did.

But seriously this might be the nicest sunset I’ve ever seen. Check it.

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Originally I was supposed to come home on Thursday but I changed my ticket about three weeks ago. I’m dying to get home so I can be with a certain Swedish-speaking someone.

Oh Stieg Larsson, how I missed you.

There’s been a number of things that have piled up that I have not had time to write about. I still got a few hours left so what the hell, the wine is free, I have not slept in thirty-six hours, I managed to score a window seat with no one next to me – so let’s go.

Last week I saw a movie in the theatre and there were over thirty minutes of commercials and previews beforehand. Thirty minutes. When I asked the ticket-seller, “What the?” she simply replied, “Welcome to Germany”.

At first glance the Germans appear to have messed up their street addressing scheme. Last night were were looking for Stephen and Sandra’s hotel and one side of the street had buildings going twelve, thirteen, fourteen, etc, and the other side was all two hundred and thirty-five. This is crazy you say. But no, at every intersection each street sign with the street name has a direction indicator and a range of numbers for that block. This is waaaay better than doing the even numbers one side odd numbers the other.

And the coolest street name on the planet.

Grosse Pointe Blank is the best movie ever made. I have no idea why I did not like it this much the first time I watched it.

Johnny Mnemonic is the worst movie ever made. It’s even worse than when I saw it in 1995. They start by saying “in the second decade of the twenty-first century” and then they show the date: 2021. Now maybe it’s just me, but isn’t 2021 the *third* decade of the twenty-first century?

They put me on the early flight because there’s a snow storm in Frankfurt and everything is backed up. I managed to check in the toilet and the window through to Ottawa but I was not able to get the customs stamp to collect the VAT. Didn’t have enough time.

We end up sitting on the tarmac for about two hours and we end up leaving about thirty minutes before my original flight.

Here’s the weather in Berlin during take off.

Nice.

And landing at FRA.

Just like Die Hard 2

See you in Ottawa.

There was no sleeping for me – with all that crap I have to do at the airport before my flight. The subway starts running at 05:00 and I plan to be on it shortly thereafter. Flight’s at 10:10.

I manage to get everything packed but I’m still worried that my two boxes are going to go over weight.

When I was in the Netherlands I picked up a bunch of hinges like the ones they had in Finland except Dutch. So I’ve got twelve of these hinges to bring back and they’re pretty heavy. I decide to pack them in with the pieces from the two jigsaw puzzles I purchased – Lemon, these are for you. This is the package I shipped separately yesterday – thirty-six Euros. Blah.

With the cistern box I can remove stuff but the other has only three elements – two parts wood, one part window. You take any one of those away and this whole endeavour is pointless.

I was chatting with a friend on the Gmail trying to figure out a way to determine the weigh of the window and the wood when it hits me: what’s the density of plywood? I went online and chose the most dense plywood I could find – better safe than sorry. Three minutes later I had my answer

w = 2 x (volume for one piece of wood) x (density in kilograms per metre cubed)
w = 2 x (0.820 x 0.620 x 0.008) x (700)
w = 2 x (2.847)
w = 5.69 kg – well within tolerances

Much better. I should chat with G more often – he makes me step up my game.

My last night in Berlin was a perfect ending to my time in the city. I got to hang out with Sandra and Stephen and we visited Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Tor, the Holocaust Memorial, Friedrichstrasse Weihnachtsmarkt, Alexanderplatz Fernsehturm, and we drank a ton of Glühwein. We then went to my favorite cafe / restaurant / bar (Cafe Fabisch) and enjoyed a pint of good German beer.

At 22:00 I gave them my monthly pass (there’s two days left) and send them on the U8 back to their hotel.

I dropped by the Doner shop to say goodbye to those guys who gave me food. I tell them “I’ll be back”

Berlin

As you are all aware I have a very ambitious schedule planned for today. It’s supposed to go something like this

• 09:30 – take tram to Baumarkt
• 10:00 – pick up window, purchase some wood to protect it during travel, wrap everything up
• 10:30 – get to the airport
• 11:45 – drop of the window at the left luggage counter
• 12:00 – get to Pottsdammer Platz
• 12:30 – have lunch with Eva
• 13:30 – get back to my apartment, pay my rent, hand back the second set of keys, pack up a parcel to ship to Canada, ship said parcel
• 15:11 – collect my buddy Stephen and his sister Sandra from the main train station

I should mention that the airport and the Baumarkt are at almost opposite ends of the city. This truly is going to be a stress test for the Berlin Public transportation system.

I manage to make it to the Baumarkt just after 10:00 – when I get there I notice that they open at 08:00 and not 10:00. Oh well, next time. I grab a cart and go pick up the window. I ask the dude if he can cut me two pieces of wood 82 x 62 cm. The lesson from this exchange is to check the local cost of the merchandise. I’d been planning all along to use some plywood to protect the window. At the Home Despot in Canada I would have simply gone to where they have the saw and grabbed a couple of scrap pieces for about four dollars. But this is Germany so dude sells me two pieces of 8 mm plywood that cost – get this – twenty-one Euros. Unbelievable. This window purchase is quickly climbing into the non-profitable zone.

But I forgive him because his last name is Sandmann.

So I get through the cash, and of course they have a workbench set up for customers to wrap all their gear. I use the last of the duct tape and then finish with the packing tape. It looks terrible but it should do the job.

Pack station!

I head out across the parking lot catch the tram. The package feels really heavy. I start to wonder if I’ve broken the twenty three kilogram limit. Lesson: next time bring a scale.

When the tram arrives it’s 10:48 – almost twenty minutes behind schedule. I get to the S-Bahn and I have to wait another ten minutes for the S43 to show up. It’s 11:30 by the time I make it to Brüsseler Strasse where I have to catch the bus to the airport. Just when all hope seems to be lost, the bus shows up just as I get to the stop. Five minutes later I’m at the airport. It takes about three minutes to drop off the window at the left luggage counter and three minutes after that I’m on a bus heading to Hauptbanhoff where I have to wait another three minutes for the next bus to take me to Pottsdammer Platz. I start out thirty minutes behind schedule and I arrive fifteen minutes early.

The rest of the afternoon goes by without a hitch (too soon?). Stress test passed.

There was an added bonus – the last bus I took was a double-decker and I got to sit up top at the front and I took some great pictures of the Reichstag and the Bundes-something-or-other.

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I have not been fully honest with you about the German toilets. They are wonderful and amazing and all that, but it was not always so.

You see, there are many different types of toilets over here. Most of the ones you will encounter in any recently renovated buildings will be of the modern kind. They are similar to what we have back in Canada – a bowl of water with a flushing disposal mechanism. Now the older ones, they’re not like this. They’re not like this at all.

I’m reluctant to write about this (well, no, not really) but if you have issues reading about what every single human who has ever lived, does almost every single day of their lives, then you can just skip this right now and go watch my all-time favorite YouTube video.

The rest of you, let’s go.

You see, hundreds of years ago, humans used to get sick and die. Today this happens, but much less frequently. One of the ways the ancient peoples checked for heath was to inspect (I’m borrowing from Marge Simpson here) their leavings. I guess that, often times, written in the leaves, would be things that had not yet come to pass (pun *not* intended – I’m ripping off Lord of the Rings here). What I’m saying is, they could tell if they were beginning to get sick.

So the Germans looked at this and came up with a way that made the whole inspection phase of the process as efficient as possible. Problem is, that when medical science started ramping up, these inspection-efficient toilets were already installed all over the place and probably many of the factories were tooled only to make these types of toilets. I visited a Baumarkt in Dusseldorf in 2004 and they had the old toilets but none of the stores I visited on this trip did. Believe me, I looked.

Now to be fair to the Germans (and unfair to the Dutch) I was only able to find one of these old-style toilets in the Netherlands. I mean I know where I can find them in Germany, but I did not go to these places on this trip.

So with our further adieu, here for your viewing pleasure is one of the old style toilets (from Holland).

Notice anything “wrong” with this?

If you can’t see it, here’s a “proper” one to assist with your analysis (also from Holland).

See it yet?

The best thing about the old design is when people use them for the first time. A Canadian or American or Australian who first visits Germany finds everything about the country to be really advanced. It’s like being transported into the future. Everyone is driving BMW and Mercedes, the trains go super-fast, the highways are spectacular, all that stuff.

And then they encounter one of these toilets.

The first thing that goes through his mind is “when are we going to be getting these back home?” but not in the I-cannot-wait sort of way. The procedure of going to the toilet is identical so the person knows what to do, but the intermediate state of the system is quite different from what he’s expecting.

This was all much more interesting in the pre-Internet days because afterwards all you want to do is find out what the hell just happened. But if you’re a visitor to a country, this is probably not the sort of thing you want to bring up with your hosts. Most people try to be as discrete as possible in the first place – discussing what just happened in the WC is usually not considered polite dinner conversation.

I’ve often thought about installing one of these old-school toilets at my place just for shits and giggles (pun intended this time). Make the washroom ultra-modern with super-high-tech everything: heated floors, a mirror with embedded lights, fancy marble tile, gold-trimmed fixtures, but with an in-wall cistern that supports a nineteen-forties-era German inspection toilet. As the guests return to the party, the bewildered looks on their faces would make the whole effort worthwhile.