Summertime and a second Canada Day

Okay, I think this is so far the longest break between posts on my blog. Over the last half a year a lot has happened. To describe everything that happened in detail in the scope of this blog would be a rather hopeless endeavor. So I will stick to (or is it stick with?) the essentials.

Since Christmas in Germany the snow has come and gone a few times over in Toronto. Yesterday's Canada Day celebrations brought patio weather and so loads of people were out on the streets again. Many friends took the long weekend as a chance to travel. However, being still a little exhausted from the previous weekend that entailed a wedding in Germany I rather cherished to stay local.
So, after some research on Canada Day events it turned out that almost everything was family oriented, which is not that much fun if you don't have kids.

However, due to the recent move to a just as nice apartment as before (or a so called condo in North America) in better location there are now so many possibilities close by. One of them comes with the proximity to the Rogers Center (less than a 5 min foot walk).
For those who have never been to Toronto, the Rogers Center is a huge sports arena that hosts (among other events) baseball games.
I never had the chance to witness a baseball game previously. Opinions about this sport ranged from utterly boring to impressively strategic and skillful among all the people I talked to about it. Being as curious as I am, I was bound to check it out eventually. Anyway, having seen a match now on Friday I could see both the skill and strategy as well as the boredom.
The excitement in my own experience came from the actual and impressive sports arena, the show before and during the match and the fact that an hour before the match I had not yet considered going at all. Unfortunately, the Blue Jays (the Toronto team) lost in the very last inning after being in the lead the entire time.
Nevertheless, that event, the patio visit in great company, the visit of Mill St. in the Distillery District and renting out city bikes, so called Bixi bikes, made this an excellent day.

Okay, with that I'll sign off for today. Hopefully, it won't take me another 6 months to return with another post.

Comments

Black Friday

I've tried so far to keep tech out of my blog. Despite all of my previous effort, I decided to break with tradition for this entry. Recently, I bought a MacBook Air which is slick, stylish, lightweight, surprisingly fast and definitely on the pricey side. Actually since it matters for this entry, I have to be a little more precise. I bought the laptop mid November. My old one is almost utterly useless since it gets hot as hell when you 'sleep' deprive it for more than 10 min. As I tend to do, I payed up at once and forgot about the expense almost just as quick. Now, for the next part I have to explain something that not everyone may be aware of. Thanksgiving is a much bigger holiday here in North America than it was in Europe. There is turkey dinner and pumpkin carving and costumes and other traditions that Europeans just don't do, even though at least Germany has the holiday ("Erntedankfest") as well. The date when this happens is a different one for the...

French Canada

After the first night sleep, the first day was mainly retracing steps of my previous visits in Montreal. As it so happened, there was actually a parade on for the winter Olympia teams this very day. BTW, for all those who didn't watch any of the last games, Canada is crazy about winter sports... and excels in it too. So there were a lot of heroes to be cheered for and the streets were packed. Having had a wonderful day in Montreal, my trip brought me to Trois-Rivieres on Saturday. In this the (very small) city I did my internship in 2005. So it had been a while since I was there last. And I was quite happy to see that so many things were pretty much as I remembered. The main reason to come to this 150,000 francophone citizen strong town was to meet with two of my colleagues/friends from my already mentioned internship. We enjoyed Moroccan food and caught up on ... well, just sooooo many things. Now I'm already looking forward to meeting you guys again. And I promise we can ma...

The IKEA experience

The dust has settled a little by now and I have a little more time on my hands. So, I thought it's only fair to write a quick entry in my blog. Moving into the new apartment went quite well... Well, apart from the IKEA guys forgetting one of the components of my bed. That led to two rather unfortunate things. A night on the mattress, which honestly is not that bad, but it's not great either. And also a trip to IKEA in Vaughan, which takes approx. 2.5 h by public transport. Maybe I should give a little background on that. I went to my godfather over the weekend, for which I had to rent a car. That meant I had a car for my Ikea shopping. So quite logically, I chose the IKEA that was closest to me on my route from my godfather to my new apartment. All went perfectly well - or so it seemed. I didn't hit too much traffic and arrived in IKEA early. I went shopping for smaller items first and tossed them into the trunk of my rental car. Then I went in for a second rount and got t...

To Canada and beyond

Search This Blog