Meeting your spiritual kneeds since 1917

_{Image from www.portugalvirtual.pt. Because I forgot my friggin' camera.}

We started our most recent trip to the Iberian Peninsula in Lisbon, partially because none of our party (Amynah and I, her mother and brother) had been before. Also, Amynah’s Mom wanted to visit the town of Fatima*, site of a miraculous apparition by the Virgin Mary in 1917.

Fatima’s a few hours north of Lisbon, so we rented a car and headed for the hills. It was clear day, if a little chilly in the highlands. On arriving at the basilica, I was surprised to discover that there was no parking to be had anywhere – all of the many capacious parking lots were packed, with cars spilling over onto sidewalks and grassy medians.

It wasn’t until after we parked and started making our way to the church that I realized that my parking-related curses, even if under my breath, were particularly blasphemous: it was a Sunday, and all of the other cars blocking my way were actually bearing the faithful.

Anyway, this is how I ended up attending my first mass** – barring weddings and funerals – in approximately twenty years. As luck would have it, we arrived at the giant outdoor mass just as they were passing around the host (we all declined a bite).

After the show ended, we wandered around the space, checking out the statue of Mary that bears a crown in the centre of which is the bullet removed from Pope John Paul II in 1980. I didn’t get a look at that, but I did see a number of pilgrims doing the rounds of the enormous facility on their knees.

Now, call me a purist, but I’d always thought the whole point of such stunts was to suffer, thus proving your devotion. So it’s stuck me as a bit of a cheat when I noticed that all of the self-abuse was ameliorated by… kneepads.

What’s next? Velcro crucifixions?

<sub>*At the risk of some understatement, as most of my readers know, Amynah’s Mom is not Catholic. However, a holy place is a holy place in her book and, as she put it, whether you’re using Canada Post or FedEx the message will get there in the end.

** Though far from my first pilgrimage, as I’ve noted before.</sub>

Spring has sprung...

... and dumped a freezing load of karma on my head. We haven't seen a hint of snow all winter here, and now that it's officially spring it's all they're forecasting for the entire week. This is what I get for bragging, in every postcard, about the twenty plus degree weather we had while in Spain.

I'm sure my Canadian readers are choking with sympathy right now.

¡Hola!

_{We'd done this same trip just nine months ago, and driving in Spain's narrow old streets, tires scraping the curbs on both sides, is never fun. However, seeing Amynah's Mom wander around this place - the oldest building in Spain and formerly the largest mosque in the world - fulfilling a lifelong dream in the process, made it well worth it.}

Back from Spain and Lisbon. I might get around to posting details, but as we're still hosting Amynah's Mom and Brother, time is tight. Plus, I forgot to bring my camera, like an idiot - the picture above is of 2007 vintage.

Coming up for air.

_{This is a cake Amynah made several weeks ago. It was delicious. This is precisely the kind of thing I should write about more often}

You know, after my last post, Amynah complained that I was making our lives here seem too exciting, giving people the impression that our lives in France were nothing a series of glamorous Euro-travels and hiking.

I therefore resolved to write a post about our quotidian existence here is Strasbourg – the illicit thrill of watching old Bollywood movies and pirated TV, compulsively surfing the Internet, tasting some new fangled cake Amynah’s taken it into her head to bake, grocery shopping….

Ironically enough, I was never able to write about how boring our lives actually are because during that time I have not been drowning in a flash flood of social obligations, I have been working like a madman, trying to complete several hefty magazine assignments on particle physics, astrophysics, and catalysis chemistry, as well as scrambling to complete some work for my former employers in Canada.

This means I’ve been on the phone almost constantly, with people from Philadelphia to Berlin to Tokyo, attempting to sift serviceable quotes from a series of heavily accented, jargon-strewn verbosity that might as well be Elvish incantations to summon Sauron as any human language.*

The deadlines for all of this have coincided with a visit from my mother- and brother-in-law. Tomorrow, we go to Portugal, to visit Our Lady Of Fatima (with whom Amynah’s mom has business) and then the old Moorish sites my belle mere missed last year because of illness. If any of my editors are reading this, I intend to be working the whole time.

So yeah. Life’s dull, but the blog silence will have to continue for a while yet.

* That does not include my interview with this guy, who was, as usual, both clear and wickedly funny.

The Devil's Rock, non-Elvis edition

_{Yes, I'm wearing a t-shirt.}

Went hiking yesterday with our friend Sami the Finn. As usually, we let him set the itinerary, and thus ended up hitting a 10 km trail that would loop past both La Roche du diable and the grotto of St Leon.

Now I hardly want to upset my Canadian readers, but I feel it worth mentioning that not only did we start our hike under a clear blue sky, but the temperatures were twenty degrees. Above zero. In February. Compared to say, Halifax (minus 5 as I write this), or Montreal (minus 7).


_{His Satanic Majesty obviously has a good eye for a view}

As with every pebble, puddle and plant in Alsace, the Devil’s Rock has a legend attached to it. A giant sandstone pillar jutting out from the side of a Vosges hill, the rock is separated from the mountain by an extremely deep crevasse. Within that gap live three virgins, according to the story, who occasionally throw themselves off the rock into the Sarre valley below, which echoes with their cries of joy. At night, they return to the rocky home, to weep over a treasure secreted therein,

It was somewhat discomfiting then, when we reached the rock, to see puffs of smoke emanating from the unseen depths below, as if the girls were taking a break from their skydiving to cook up some lunch over some Mesostophelian campfire.


_{Near Nonnenberg, population circa 50}

As is our wont when hiking with Sami the Finn, we ended up compounding our late start with a dilatory pace, (not helped by Sami the Finn's propensity for photographing tree stumps) and thus had to race the sunset in order to escape the hills before darkness descended.

We hiked through two hilltop hamlets, and managed to accidently find the what Sami the Finn's guidebook described as a Chapelle detruit which, when he said this, I initially thought was a church for fish.** Turns out it was a memorial for Pope St Leon IX, who hailed from these parts.


_{What? More walls? Whaddya want next? A roof?}

Afterwards, we found the Grotto of St Leon, the largest such formation in the Vosges. The waters of the springs there, Sami the Finn informed us, were reputed to be beneficial for couples seeking to have children. Despite having brought my binoculars for just such an occasion, I am disappointed to report that we saw no randy French couples in the area seeking to benefit from these fertilizing properties.

* _{"Détruit" meaning destroyed, "Des truites" meaning "the trout." Given what we'd had for lunch, the latter might not have been very welcoming.}

She moves in mysterious ways

Back when my parents came to visit, I took them up to the Convent of St Odile, patroness of the Alsace region. Among her many attributes, Odile is reputed to be the go-to gal for those suffering eye maladies.

In fact, there is a spring just below the convent, flowing from the mountainside at a spot that Odile struck with her staff. The faithful come here to wash their eyes with this miraculous water, in the hopes of staving astigmatisms, glaucoma and floaters.*

My Mom has been extremely nearsighted since birth, and has worn Coke-bottle lenses all her life. When we were there, I jokingly suggested she give the spring a try. She refused, but my Dad, never passing up an opportunity to annoy her, got his fingers wet and flicked some at her.

Three months later, and my Mom will soon, for the first time in her life, have nearly 20/20 vision, thanks to laser-eye surgery and fortuitous openings in the surgical waiting list. Coincidence? Mom thinks so, but my Dad seemed somewhat disturbed when I informed him that he was obviously an agent of God’s Will.

_{* First time I visited, I filled my water bottle with it. My stomach has never looked better.}

This what every day is like here

Ah, Flight of the Conchords: it's like they can read the contents of my soul.

Hard Day's Night, Part Two: Night

_{(...we join our heroes, back home in Strasbourg after a long Sunday of cycling through rural Germany).}

After a not-nearly-restful-enough two hour nap, we were roused just before midnight by the electronic yelping of our alarm clock.

“Do we have to go?” asked Amynah, drowsily.

“Well, we should,” I replied, unenthusiastically.

“We could just call and cancel,” she suggested.

“Maybe we could have a bite to eat, then see how we feel,” I replied.

Tearing ourselves from the soft, warm embrace of our bed, we wolfed down some food. At 12:15 AM we looked at each other: were we really going to do this, even as every fibre of our being begged for rest? Not believing what I was seeing, I watched my hand – oh, treacherous hand! – grab my coat. We were on our way.

Twenty minutes later, we were at the Gare central where we met the rest of the dazed dozen assembled by my French teacher Danielle. Our destination: Basel, which was celebrating its famous Fasnacht.

Like Venice’s Carnivale or New Orleans’ Mardi Gras, Fasnacht is a giant masquerade, with parades, music and street food. Unlike those cities, Basel’s Fasnacht starts at 4 AM, and roughly a week late, neither of which is very Swiss. There are a few different stories as to why this is; theories include a hangover from not changing to the Gregorian calendar, or a meeting that ran long.


_{Do I look fat in this?}

We picked a spot near Basel’s cathedral, eating some of the flour soup and onion tart from a vendor that is traditional for the event.

Just before four o’clock, every light in the city went out, and the massive crowds were thrown into near total blackness. Within a few minutes, the city night was pierced by the sound of hundreds, then thousands. of fifes and drums. Elaborately costumed musicians began marching in tight formation through the narrow medieval streets, illuminated only by handmade lamps mounted on their heads.

It's hard to fully capture how eerie this is - you could feel the whole city burst into life, with the faint rattle of distant drums mingling with fusillades erupting from closer quarters.

To better appreciate the event, Danielle told us to dive in; once a group of marchers passed us, we fell in behind them. There was no set route, so one masked platoon would cross paths with another, or two would need to squeeze past each other in a narrow alley, while onlookers pressed themselves against the walls.

It sounds chaotic, and it was. But, surprisingly, it did not feel quite as joyful as one would expect. More than once, as my ears were battered by three different percussion ensembles keeping their respective flocks of tin-voiced harpies in check, demonic faces menacing from every corner, I felt a sense of unease, even dread. It was rather like we were following the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and wherever he was taking us was not going to be pleasant.



As the sky began to lighten, the cacophony lessened somewhat, as marchers dropped out and headed to the impromptu restaurants in people’s cellars serving sweet, crispy pastries and, presumably, coffee (though we were at that hour where a beer might have been appropriate). Amynah and I ducked out early, along with a couple of PhD students from her lab that were actually intending to get an early start on the day. Sunrise found us in Strasbourg, insensate, ears ringing even in our dreams.

A hard day's night, Part One: Day

_{Any story that starts with me looking this cocky is not going to end well}

I realize that for you, my loyal reader(s), this humble blog is but an occasional stopping point in the course of your day – to skim by, smile at my foibles, perhaps leaving a comment, and then moving on to Gawker or the New York Times or something, or more likely wonder if I've forgotten it exists, given that I've not updated in two weeks.


But I haven't forgotten. For this blog dominates my every waking moment.* My days are consumed by conceiving new, and increasingly outrageous ways of humiliating myself for your amusement. Apparently I have the soul of a clown. As opposed to, say, a French chicken, whose thighs are probably much more tender than the molten bars of iron currently occupying my trousers my own (God, that was a terrible metaphor. What was I thinking?).

So the blog-silence of the last ten days is, I hope, well worth it. For this past Sunday, I threw myself into not one, but two over-the-top Euro adventures.

Extensive focus-group testing indicates that “Mark performing pointless feats of endurance” is a popular theme for Viewers of the Marching Fish™. With this in mind, Amynah and I awoke Sunday morning at 7:30 and fuelled up on pancakes. Then, donning clothing appropriate to the sub-zero temperatures outside, we mounted our bicycles. Our destination? The thermal spas of Baden-Baden, located an unknown number of kilometers away in Germany.**


_{Where the Cubists go to pray}

While it was colder than our previous long-haul bike trip, the sun was out and the skies were blue. I’d lost my map of the Bas-Rhine bike trails, and we had none for the Schwartzwald, and so we simply followed the rural roads. Fortunately, traffic was light.


_{We began to notice, at this point that all the other cyclists on the road were going the other way}

Trouble reared it’s head fairly early, however. My rear tire was, we quickly discovered, semi-deflated, and, it being Europe, nothing was open, so that I was unable to acquire some air.

Worse, Mother Nature, seeing my plight, endeavoured to help by supplying some air of her own. Baden Baden is northeast of Strasbourg. The wind, on the other hand, was in a great hurry to get to Nice, far to the southwest. I’m sure experienced bikers will scoff, but there were points when, despite the audible screaming from my thighs, I was going barely faster than a brisk walk, even as the gale ripped the little remaining moisture from my body from my eye sockets.


_{I think the giddiness had well and truly taken over by the time we reached... oh wait, it actually is called Moos.}

The one map we did have had indicated that there was a route between Varnhalt and Baden Baden that would take us safely through the edges of the Black Forest without having to face any of its miniature mountains. This, of course, was a lie.


_{What's the German word for escalator?}

The nascent cycling enthusiast in me is ashamed to admit it, but we ended up walking our bikes some two kilometers, straight up hill (the following downhill two kilometer section at 40 km/h downhill almost made the torture worth it).



When Amynah and I walked into the Caracalla Spa, she in a workout coat and I in my twenty year old, second-hand prison guard jacket, we were ripe enough that all the beautiful people parted before us like the Red Sea. However, once we were in the healing waters of the pool, all our troubles – and muscle cramps – melted away.

After two hours of bliss, we caught a train back to Strasbourg, collapsing into bed at 9 PM. But we were not to rest long…

(To be continued)

• _{It apparently dominates certain readers’ sleeping moments as well. I won’t name names.}

** 65 km, it turned out.

Treasure of Oak Island, my arse.

So much for my plan to live off my residuals.

It won't help anyone now, but if you're looking to buy someone an early Christmas gift, might I suggest some light reading?

Notarize this!

Our passports expire at the end of April, a fact that has been hanging over our heads for a few months. The passport process in Canada requires that you have two guarantors, in your country of residence, that have known you for at least two years. As we’ve only lived here for a year and a half (581 days, according to the tally marks I’m scratching into the wall) we have no one in France that qualifies.


_{This has nothing to do with my story, but it's very funny, and full of Montreal landmarks. Parental Advisory: Strong Language}

It then fell upon us to find an third party guarantor to whom we could swear our identity, which could be, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs, a judge, lawyer, mayor, police officer or notary. Believing that a lawyer or notary would be too expensive, we attempted to take advantage of what we hoped would be the “free” options – the city hall or the police.

I therefore popped into the mairie (city hall): They didn't understand the concept, said they couldn't do it, and moreover, I would have to get a lawyer or notary. That the marie, the place where one must go to legalize one’s wedding vows, didn’t understand the concept of a sworn oath, is somewhat disturbing to me.

I figured I’d at least try to get a price on a notary, and set off in search of an office. While doing so, I stumbled across a bunch of notaries-in-training on a smoke break from class; they were unable to direct me to an actual qualified notary – not even their instructors. One despairs for the future.

I then spotted a bunch of municipal cops loitering about on their smoke break (leading me to ponder if any business is conducted indoors in this country). They directed me to a large building near the canal, and told me to ask for the Commissariat.

The desk officer there, looking at our English language forms, insisted that there was no one present that could validate our identity. I tried to point that it stated right on our form that any police officer could, to which he said, growing red faced: “Non. We are done,” and turned his back. Given that “police officer” in French is” officier du police” I can see why he was confused.


Finally, we gave in and made an appointment with a notary. I should point out that the French take their notaries very seriously: when Lasalle discovered the head of the Mississpi and claimed the land for France, he had a notary on hand, in the wilds of interior North America, to certify his claim.

And here is where Canadian bureaucratic perversity meets French tradition. It was necessary, for reasons obscure to me, for the notary to signs our forms within a tiny little square, which was marked with a warning to not stray outside the lines. However, our notary had, over the course of his illustrious career, developed a signature worthy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I suspect, as a youth, he had practiced the bold, swooping strokes, dreaming of one day affixing it to a revolutionary manifesto, or a death warrant for the King.

Being a generous man, he was not about to disdain such a humble canvas as our application. He began his masterwork, starting outside the signature box, to an audible gasp of dismay from Amynah. We were not sure, given the vagaries of the post, that we’d be able to get new forms before we were forcibly ejected from the country. Our photos received the same treatment, being further vandalized by the loving application of an official seal.

We posted it all anyway, and I'm told that despite our notary's Baroque flourishes, the Embassy has contacted at least one of my Canadian referees. Perhaps they believe I normally have a gold circle on my face?

Holy crap!

Whoever lives in the apartment above mine just dropped their freaking laptop out the window. It landed on the store veranda below our apartment, so no one was hurt, but I can't imagine the computer's in good shape. How do you drop a laptop out the window?*

Non sequitur update: A selection of photos from the trip about which I've been yammering on about for the last two weeks are over yonder. Many were published here, but some are new.

*Amynah and I have so far managed to drop a placemat, a paring knife, and the lid to a teapot out our window, all inadvertently tossed in the process of shaking crumbs off of our tablecloth. I don't think that's what happened here.

Leiping Leipzig

_{And why wouldn't they?}

We stopped in Leipzig to visit our friend Stefan, who kindly showed us around town. The place had not suffered much in the war, but forty years of communist neglect had done a lot of damage to the former capital of Saxony’s historic buildings. Construction cranes and heaps of slag are all over the city, as they try to restore the place to its former glory, and centrally-planned brutalist slabs share space with idiosyncratic Beaux Arts wonders.

For the most part, the autocrats of the GDR had left the edifices of the Saxon bourgeoisie alone, to crumble of their own accord. One exception, Stefan explained with typical understatement, was the old university chapel: “They blew that up in the 1980s. This did not go unnoticed.”


_{The Stasi emblem - they weren't aiming for warm and cuddly.}

There were protests, which was remarkable, given the state of fear people must have been living in. We got a taste of that in the Stasi museum, which memorializes the East German republic’s secret police methods. These ranged from the tragic, like mothers interrogated for the ideologically impure school essays of their children – to the absurd, like a camera hidden in a pillow strapped around the abdomen of a female agent to fake a pregnancy (“Ooo! I can feel it clicking!”) Another disguise kit included a hard helmet, prompting me to wonder if the agent was to infiltrate the Village People.


_{They were efficient, at least: these are confiscated "Western" musical cassettes, repurposed to record phone taps.}

All joking aside, it was a chilling place, and the events it memorializes are not purely historical, by any means – more than one exhibit had photographs ripped from the walls by people that had recognized themselves or loved ones.

That said, we know how the story ends, and it ended here in Leipzig.



The St Nicholas church was the scene, starting in the 1980s, of a series of protests against the regime. Initially, these were demands for a better quality of life but over time bloomed into the mass movement that eventually overthrew the regime, disproving Stefan’s observation (quoting Goethe) that given a choice between injustice and disorder, Germans will always choose the former.

Prague rock

_{Frank Gehry's "Dancing Couple" building}

We were pretty time-limited in Prague, given our last minute decision to go to Leipzig. While I quite liked Prague, in retrospect, reading over my notes, almost all of the sites we visited were quite grim.

We started with the Cathedral of St Vitus, which has a number of interesting sights – the tomb of St Wenceslas being one. In addition to his predilection for hiking in the snow, Good King Wenceslas was murdered by his brother, who then bolstered his political position by declared his sibling a martyr, which is not unlike murdering ones’ parents in order to garner the sympathy that comes from being an orphan.

Further down the aisle from King W was the tomb of St John Nepomuk, who was tortured, killed, and then thrown off the Charles Bridge into the Vltana River. When he was exhumed, years later, his tongue was found intact in his skull, which was taken as proof that he had not broken the seal of confession under torture. Later analysis proved the bit of meat to be his brain, thus lending historical credence to the admonishment to mind your tongue.

His tomb in the cathedral was constructed using two tonnes of silver, while his statue on the Charles Bridge is supposed to assure safe crossing to all who touch it. “Tortured to death and then thrown off a bridge” is not a life story I personally would associate with good luck, but I am perhaps too literal. Enough people do believe the story that the two bas-reliefs of John on his statue are polished from the grabby attentions of the faithful.


_{Ooooh! Shiny!}

The castle itself had the usual assortment of grand halls (in which indoor jousting tournaments were held, for which I’m sure the Royal Janitor was grateful) and council rooms, out of which several Catholic advisors were thrown during a Protestant revolt, all three of whom survived a 15 meter fall and subsequent volley of musket fire. This too, was interpreted as divine intervention, leading me to ask, wouldn’t it have been easier for God have caused the windows to jam?

The castle also housed a torture chamber. Here, legend had it, a knight who had sided with a peasant uprising had been imprisoned. Supposedly, his boredom in incarceration drove him to learn the fiddle, from which he coaxed such beautiful music that the people of Prague would gather every night outside his window for an informal concert. This, our audio guide assured us, gave rise to the Czech expression “Necessity taught whatsisface to fiddle” (an equivalent to her having been the mother of invention).


_{Momma never told me there were going to be days like this}

However, whoever made the audio guide did not consult with whomever have made the explanatory plaque, which stated that “necessity” was a euphemism for “torture” and “fiddle” a euphemism for “confessing,” just as a 30’s era gangster might “sing.”

On to the bridge – the Charles Bridge is supposed to be Prague’s distinguishing landmark, and it is quite a sight. It is lined on both sides by towering gothic saints placed there as part of a Jesuitical Counter Reformation propaganda effort, and who keep an eye on the throngs of tourists, musicians and souvenir hawkers.

One of the more elaborate statues shows a saint holding an open pair of manacles, on a pediment against which leans an affable looking Turk in a turban, who looms over a miniature prison in which two men plead for release as a snarling dog menaces them from outside.


_{This statue is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to current events is purely coincidental.}

“I know this one,” I said, keen to prove my know-it-all credentials, based on my recollections of a hastily read passage from our guidebook. “This guy founded an order to ransom prisoners from the Turkish army, and he converted a lot of Turks and Jews in the process. The Turk there represents a convert.”

“Oh,” said Amynah, “Don’t you think he’s a jailer?”

“No, no” I said confidently, “Look how friendly he looks.”

“But he’s holding a whip behind his back,” she pointed out.


_{"In my other hand? What do you mean, what's in my other hand?"}

“Oh,” I said, “Well, that one wasn't very sincere, was he?”

Soaking it in Hungary

_{Detail of Budapest's "Heroes Square" taken just before my camera died. I can't speak for the valour of the men memorialized there, but I can tell you that the "square" looked remarkably circular to me.}

You know, it’s a good thing that pretty much nothing but a leaky toilet has occurred since I’ve come back, or I’d be seriously backed up on my blogging, with all this Eastern Europe stuff.

In any case, still in Hungary – Amynah and I have become, if not connaisseurs, at least enthusiasts of European baths (especially those don’t require nudity). Budapest is famous for theirs, and so, on New Years Eve, we made our way to the Szechenyi baths. These were due to close at 1 PM, late enough that we were able to make it in under the wire. We’d have had more time on New Year’s Day, but the idea of sharing a giant hot tub with a herd of terminally hung over Australian backpackers did not appeal.

It was packed – the line up to get in was enormous. Evidently Australian back packer phobia is a more widespread affliction than I had believed. We got in line together, but I was let into the changing area first. While waiting her turn, Amynah was asked by the change room attendant where she was from. “Canada,” she replied.

“Ah, Canada,” he replied, “You are very beautiful.”

Unaware of my wife’s budding romance, I had changed into my appropriately Euro Speedo* and was entering the pools. After the spas of Baden-Baden, Budapest’s showcase baths seemed a little shabby. The ceilings had been painted over, covering up what had doubtless been lovely artwork. Mildew lurked in the further corners of the ceiling, and even the floor tiles were a little worse for wear; when I went to take the compulsory pre-bath shower, the knob came off in my hand.

The general impression of insalubrity was reinforced by the first of the mineral baths. Emanating from a natural spring, the water was greenish with a slight odour of sulfur.


_{The outdoor baths. A sign told us to not stay in here longer than twenty minutes. Right.}

However, all was forgiven when we got to the outdoor pools. I should mention that it was cold outside, with a light but persistent snow falling throughout the day. Steam was rising from the pool in thick clouds. Being outside in a swimsuit in such conditions is not pleasant, and so Amynah made a mad dash for the pool, getting into the water while I tried to navigate down the stairs. It took me five minutes after I got in to locate her through the fog.

Once ensconced in the pool, we were able to people watch. There was no shortage of tourists like us – mainly from Italy, as far as we could tell – but it seemed to us that most of the patrons were locals, many of whom were senior citizens, and of which a large proportion were men whose abdomens could comfortably accommodate a small car, the upholstery of which could be harvested from their backs. I felt like a minnow amongst some very hirsute whales. Many of these leviathans were occupying themselves along the sides of the pool by playing chess on special waterproof boards. No word if the little guys were called “prawns” in that version.

* _{One day soon, I promise I will explain this.}

A Buda-post

_{Széchenyi bridge, over the Danube}

An end of week gift for you, my loyal reader(s). After Vienna, Amynah and I boarded a train for Budapest. We arrived just after lunch, and made a beeline for our hotel, which was located just on the outer edge of the Buda side of downtown.

Now, as friendly as the Hungarians had so far been, their language is a barbed wire fence encircling a concrete bunker shielding a cast iron safe in which is hid comprehensibility. There are no words we recognized, no Germanic nouns or Romance verbs that might provide an entry point into their sentences: hell, there are barely any vowels. Even a simple word like “service” gets four extra consonants in Hungarian, some of which look like they were put there for storage, in case some other word might need them.

Our ineptitude proved costly. After dropping our bags, we hopped on the subway to go back to the larger Pest side of town (the subway stop nearest our hotel was Moscow Station. How redolent of history is that?) On our arrival in the downtown station we were stopped by a large man with a nametag and an officious manner. He demanded our tickets. We produced them.


_{Yes, this could be any subway on Earth, but trust me, it's a Budapest subway, and key to the sad tale that follows}

“Szk szk szk,” he said.

“?” replied Amynah and I, apologetically.

“You did not stamp this,” he said.

“We did,” we said, pointing out where we had validated the ticket on the tram.

“You rode subway. Where is ticket?”

We said we used the same ticket, at which point he said we couldn’t do that.

“Oh, ok,” I said.

“No. Is not ok,” he said.

“No, I mean I understand,” I said, to which he just grunted.

“You need one ticket for the tram, one ticket for subway,” he said.

“Ok,” I said, comprehending.

“NO! Is NOT ok!” he said, frustrated by my dimness. He flipped my ticket over to show me, cowering beneath the thorns and brambles of his own language, a few lines in English explaining exactly what he had just told us.

“I didn’t read that,” I said, (after all, why would I expect English on a Hungarian metro ticket?)

“Is no good,” he said; to which Amynah and I could only agree. We may well have stood there on the subway platform forever, paralyzed my the not-ok-ness of it all, had Amynah not roused him, asking “So now what?”

“Ah! Now you pay,” he said, energized, and pulling out a ticket book.

“Fine,” said Amynah agreeably, having learned that Ok was not a customary signal of compliance in these parts.

“Yes! A fine!” he said, with great relish, delighted to have finally been understood.

I managed to avoid collapsing in laughter at this point, thus saving the Canadian Embassy staff from ruining their holidays bailing me out of a Hungarian jail. The fine amounted to 40 Euros; our grouchy enforcer did mutter “sorry” to Amynah, a regret that pointedly did not include me.


_{Freedom monument overlooking the Danube. I'm not sure if this is commemorating the capitalist or communist varieties of freedom}

How to fix a French toilet, in twelve easy steps

1) Note toilet is leaking. Ignore for two months.

2) Decide to replace stopper, go to grocery store (for where else would one go for one’s plumbing needs?)

3) Catch tram.

4) Realize you’ve caught the wrong tram.

5) Disembark, run 1 km to catch correct tram.

6) Discover the store does not sell the proper mechanism.

7) Purchase the wrong one anyway, in the hopes of being able to adapt it.

8) Return home, discover it can’t be adapted.

9) Remove rubber stopper from new mechanism, replace old one.

10) Discover that with the new stopper, the drip is now a torrent.

11) Return old stopper to old mechanism, reassemble toilet, vow to call a plumber.

12) Discover that toilet, possibly out of irritation, has stopped dripping of its own accord.

Who are you calling a Weiner?

_{For some reason, we so no plaque commemorating the Hitler announced the Anschluss from the balcony of the palace in 1938. I wonder why that is?}

Ladies and gentlemen, may I finally present you with part one of my long promised account of our Eastern voyages. I’m going to post them more or less in order, and will, once I’ve boring you all with the text, throw up a page or two of photos. I may or may not duplicate those on Facebook later.

On to Vienna, where our wandering and underslept heroes are, having located an overpriced hotel, orienting themselves in the capital of the once-mighty Hapsburg Emipre.

We were located in the middle of the shopping district, from where we took a quick peak at the cathedral, lunch at Burger King (we were hungry!) and then down to the Imperial Palace quarter. There, we were accosted by one of the many be-robed classical music touts that prowl the tourist zone, hawking a concert of Vienna’s greatest hits by various ensembles catering to, well, people like us. Figuring we’d never get tickets to the real deal, we acquiesced to the overtures of a girl selling tickets for “The Imperial Orchestra” for the following night. When she gave us directions, she said “it’s just down this street here – you know, where the Burger King is.” Amynah and I looked at each other guiltily – did she know our secret shame?

We, and 500 other tourists showed up at the stroke of 8:11 or thereabouts the following night and settled ourselves into what we had been assured were the best seats in the section with the worst view. No matter – the hall was lovely, decorated with elaborate wood carvings apparently for Vienna’s well-to-do to dance under in the late 19th century, and almost well-insulated enough to block out the sounds of the parking garage Muzak blaring from across the street.

If half a successful music career is an imaginative band name, then I predict a bright future for the Imperial Orchestra. They’re not short on chutzpah, I can assure you; I wouldn’t have the brass to call a ten-piece ensemble an “orchestra,” nor would any entertainment featuring a ballet sequence performed in fuzzy bunny costumes strike me as deserving the name “Imperial.” It was good fun though.


_{The Imerperial Orchestra, performing with the Elmer Fudd Ballet. Note the bunny ears on the right.}

During the days, with an embarrassment of Viennese riches on offer, ranging from Hapsburg palaces to the Museum of Modern Art, we elected to visit the Esperanto Museum. Our logic – and we were proven correct in this - was that we were highly unlikely to run into crowds of other tourists there.


_{Screw you buddy, I don't need a translator - I know Esperanto!}

The “Museum” consisted of a single room in the Austrian national library dedicated to this and other made-up languages (including Klingon); the displays consisted largely of posters from the annual Esperanto conferences over the century. The most disturbing exhibit, by far, featured a recording of a woman’s breathy reading of Esperanto erotic poetry. I didn’t understand it, but I will admit I did get a funny feeling, what with all the words like “penetrato” and “ecstsasa.”


_{Following a mention of erotic poetry with a picture of giant globes is just asking for a bad joke, I know. I regret nothing!}

In a similar spirit of universalism, and much more complete, was the museum of globes – featuring some giant numbers that mapped out the heavens, pocket globes, and one smaller number for children that included a handy pamphlet describing “The Peoples of the World” including both their Austrian and Tyrolean varieties, both of whom are apparently inclined by nature of their race to grow facial hair and smoke pipes. To this, based on my observations of Viennese women, I can only agree.

(I lie. Viennese women were all very attractive, and rarely smoked pipes).

Post-haste

_{I should have asked where this guy was going - it might have been a more effective way to send my mail}

On almost every trip Amynah and have taken in Europe so far, we've made a point of sending postcards to our families. On this trip, we decided to broaden our epistilatory ambitions, and so brought along a list of about twenty addresses of friends and family to whom we intended to send New Year's Greetings.

We only sent a couple from Vienna, and so in Budapest we decided to send about a dozen. Unfortunately, after carefully addressing and composing each one and affixing sufficient postage, we were unable to locate a working postbox (how a box could be out of order is a riddle I will leave to any Magyars in my readership to answer). We were forced to board our train to Prague with a pocketful of posties.

I am a bit of a postal fundamentalist - I firmly believe that postcards lose a little bit of their magic when not sent from, and bearing the stamps of, their country of origin. And so, rather than re-stamp the postcards we already had from the Czech Republic or France, I took them back here. I have since entrusted them to a Hungarian in my French class, with instructions to mail them (I even supplied a pre-paid envelope) to his family so that they might post them for me. If this strikes you as crazy, you're not alone - Gabor wouldn't even make eye contact with me in class after I explained my plan.

On the postcard front: if you - whether you be a friend, acquaintance or random passerby of this corner of the 'net - want one from Strasbourg or our next trip, wherever it may be, let me know and I'll add you to our address list.

_{Note:Actual travel stories and photos will come soon. My Mom gave me a nice journal for Christmas, in which I kept a travel diary. Unfortunately, I also promised her I would send her the results, and am now having to transcribe 60 pages of my handwriting, the illegible nature of which was done no favours by being battered by the rough charms of Eastern European trains).}

I'm Bach, baby!

_{Bach's statue in Leipzig, outside the church at which he spent the last 20 years of his career as cantor. He's buried on the altar: I would imagine this would be no small cause of performance anxiety for his successors.}

Just returned from a three city tour that included, quite unexpectedly, four cities. Oh, what adventures we had! From enjoying Vienna's famous Elmer Fudd Ballet, to getting busted by the subway cops of Budapest, catching* the World Hockey Juniors in the Czech Republic, to admiring post-Communist piles of concrete in Leipzig, and freezing, freezing, freezing throughout.

Longer reports will follow after I catch up on my work, such as it is. Until then, I leave those of you in Canada who knew him with the assurance that Stefan is doing well, living in Leipzig and hopefully chastened enough by our scolding to be a bit better about responding to his email. Drop him a line!

* _{by "catching," I mean "missing entirely." Sorry!}