To Canada and beyond

I made it to Munich for the second wedding in Germany and back. I was only there for less than 5 days again, so the jetlag is really impeding my focus right now. However, I felt like I should keep the blog going nevertheless. So here we are, I'm back in Toronto. The weather is a lot nicer than it was in Germany. Everything is coming together quite nicely. A new bookshelf for the office should be arriving end of next week and the couch hopefully arrives mid August. It'll be nice to get organized and have a place to chill properly. The couch delivery was a long time in the making; 2.5 months to be precise. Which even in hindsight sounds like a crazy long time. But even after extensive search for alternative furniture the decision was easy since there was no equal when it came to quality or style. Okay, I'll keep this entry short since despite all the coffeine I consumed throughout the day I'm about to fall asleep resting my head on the laptop.

Summertime in Toronto is great. Even though it's pretty hot (sometimes even nearly too hot) there is so much to do. From BBQ s at friends last weekend, a kayak course on Monday, some patio visits through out the week to a Thai food festival today. The city of Toronto organizes a lot of festivals during summer, so that todays Thailand festival happened at the same time as one of the Indian festivals (I think there was even a parade). It was pretty good. However, today's highlight was the unexpected discovery of a very nice café . They had excellent homemade lemonade. Tasty! You probably noticed that there are a few more links on this post. I have decided to use the associations to shorten my explainations (I'm lazy afterall) and for personal reference. Alright I'll keep this entry short. Hopefully I'll be back with more shortly after next weeks visit to Germany (the second wedding).

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 possibi...

I've made it to Germany for Christmas despite the snow chaos (more than 15cm is actually a lot for Germany). There was a little delay in Munich airport. But all in all it went pretty smooth. So after good night's sleep we decided to collect my granny from Lippstadt via train for Christmas eve. Driving a car for 1.5h through icy road just seemed too risky. Getting to Lippstasdt was no real issue. We had an hour delay, but apart from that it went well. The return however was a bit of an Odyssee. We got about half the way before the train could not go any further. To make a really long story short, we were stuck at this stage for hours with my over 90 year old granny. In the end we managed to finally get a taxi driver on the phone that was willing to give us a ride home. Luckily we got on that taxi - super expensive though; but we didn't care at this stage. And with that we were on our way home. Bottomline: after leaving at 9am, we arrived at 8pm on Christmas eve. So a ride ...

Not entirely true though. It snowed before, but this time it actually stuck for more than a day. I went North for the weekend and was glad that my rental car had winter tires. It snowed a bit and many of the road were a mix of ice and slush. In Europe this amount of snow would have been a little bit of a concern. Over here however everyone is just so accustomed to snow that it didn't even seem to bother anyone at all. For me it was a bit of a wake up call. I will need some winter boots, because the best is yet to come. Apparently, the winter really breaks through in January/February. Anyway, due to the change in scenery my camera saw some use. I took the photo attached without a polarizing filter, so I had to equalize the colors a little on the computer. It came out quite nice. And I think it conveys the mood perfectly.

Busy times. Last week's Friday, I went on my first pub crawl here in Toronto. It was probably not the best timing, considering that I had to get up very early next day to help a friend move. But I made it nevertheless. The move then was alright. Even though we had to over come a couple of obstacles. Besides me being tired beyond belief and the rented truck not being there on collection, the superintendent was on holidays so that we could not reserve the service lift. Did I mention that my friends lived on the 12th floor? When we finished up at around 9pm, it was time for us to costume suit up. All of us were invited on a Halloween party, which started at 7pm. But arriving at 10:30pm made us feel all the more special. And in all fairness it was great despite us being quite late. Last week my bicycle finally arrived. I yet have to shoot a picture to share. Anyway, I'm already very happy with the buy. The bike has given me a lot of freedom. I'm cycling to work now, which me...

Summer is throwing it's last fight for this year before Winter finally takes over. The days are nice and warm and even the evenings are warm enough. What's more, the trees are super colorful. After this weekend's trip north, Toronto has finally caught up with all the red and yellow and orange and brown that I associated with the North American autumn. Anyway, so this weekend's (Canadian) Thanks Giving coincided with my godfather's 70s birthday (Congrats again!). And in between the preparations and celebrations (oh, tasty tasty turkey and cranberries and gravy and stuffing and ...) I managed to sneak in a few hours of picture taking. I think I shot some good pictures, but it's definitely a different thing when you drive through alleys of colorful trees in person. I can highly recommend this season for drive through Canada.