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Chris had a class to teach from 9-11am so we packed up our things. Philipp and I went to the bakery and had some good chats about life; a lot about his transition from being married, being separated and meeting a new woman. A sad and happy time.

When we dropped off Chris’s food, he was in the middle of teaching his class and I proceeded to moon him! He had a good laugh!

This is where Philipp’s father lives

We then walked to his neighborhood in Hannover. When he was looking for an apartment with Erica, his friend found an advertisement at his local daycare. Phil phoned the number and the landlord said « That was fast, I posted that twenty minutes ago! ».

I forget what they told me this was…some kind of wheat?  The hills are bright yellow throughout Germany because of it

His apartment is in an old sausage making factory, in the old industrial section of town.  The bike locker in the basement was where they would lead the pigs through.

His currently lives in his fathers apartment in the same building.

I met Philipp’s father in 2005 when I was invited to stay at their home in Holzminden. It was nice to see him again.

I tried a conversation mode from Google Translate with him and it was an incredible experience. It was a bit slow going, but I truly felt I was seeing the beginning of Star trek’s universal translator.

Some points about his life:
He studied theology and was a priest for forty years. His wife studied the same and that’s where they met.
He grew up in a village twenty kilometers away from Hannover. When the city was bomber during the war, the night sky was bright as day from the fire.
He moved to different towns throughout his life. His first child born in 1970 and Philipp, the last child, born in 1979.
He plays guitar, mandolin and jazz drums with some friends in a group called the Good Old Boys.

Considering I didn’t even know how to say much past Hello and Thank You in the German language, it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

After we left his place, we took Erica’s company car to pick up Chris.

Leaving Hannover, I saw sweeping green fields for the majority of the trip to Heidelberg. It’s a beautiful country.

We stopped at a truck stop for a pretzel sandwich which was good.

Some ongoing jokes from the trip:

• When Chris’s mom found out he lost a job, she sent a text saying maybe he should consider a job as a stone mason
• Chris really wants to go visit Lichtenstein because we are so close. « When else will we ever say « Boy, I really want to go out of my way to see Lichtenstein! »
• Philipp found the last photo he has of me…it was after getting off the train to ULM. I was not feeling better after the Train from Oktoberfest and I was pictured standing against a trash bin, waiting to vomit. We realized I was wearing the exact jacket I packed for the trip! Now we’ve spent some time recreating the photo. Philipp wants fifty photos.

The city was cold and rainy so we just did what we could to have some fun.

First stop, a bakery! I love the sandwich selection. I had an egg sandwich and Chris had a salami sandwich that I was drooling over. Philipp said he missed bakeries when in Brazil.

We went to an electronics shop in search of an adapter to connect my headphones to my phone. It was 15 euros and Chris told me we can order some for cheaper online. Not sure if I can get them shipped anywhere so I will be on the lookout for the rest of the trip. Chris said I could have his in a pinch.  (fast forward: We did not find a cheaper adapter on the trip, and Chris did give me his!).

Look at the size of this tree!

We went to a local market for some lunch. It was a vegetable rice dish. Lunch is the biggest meal in Germany (generally) and for supper they might have a small sandwich. It makes more sense to get the most calories in the day instead of the night, I suppose.

After the market, the rain had stopped but it was still windy and cold. We walked around town, went to town hall where they had replicas of the city at various times (1600, before war, after war, current). It’s incredible to think of an entire city wiped out from bombing. Philipps father speaks of living twenty kilometer’s away and the night sky was bright as day from the fires burning in Hannover.

Hannover is a very nice city, with plenty of trees, waterfront (rivers and lakes), and cobblestone sidewalks which I’m not used to, but find interesting.

Philipp wanted a nap after our walk so we headed back. Chris and I chatted for awhile after our nap while Philipp had a meeting for work on his laptop. Around 6pm we got to chat with Philipp’s new girlfriend Iris who was currently in Cardiff visiting her parents. She seemed funny and nice. Very pleasant to talk with.

We then went to an Argentinian steak house and ended the night at a wine bar. Surprisingly, they had a non alcoholic wine on hand which was ok. A bit sweet for my tastes.

The Frankfurt airport is quite large. I knew that I would need to get my fingerprints taken as it was my first time in Europe since they require fingerprints.

It took a long time to get from the plane to the terminal by bus. I wasn’t sure I would make it to my flight with an hour to go.

Luckily, all signs are in German and English. It was easy to find the machine which scans my passport and fingerprints. Luckily the fingerprints worked on the first try!

I then turned a corner and my worst fears were realized. There was a very long lineup through immigration. I guess scanning your fingerprints isn’t enough.

I did see an express line for flights that leave in 45 minutes or less. My boarding time was definitely within 45 minutes but I wasn’t sure if they meant flight time.

I am happy I took that line because a) I would t have made it on time waiting in “over 45 minutes” line and b) the immigration officer didn’t even look at my boarding pass to confirm the time! Although, perhaps that’s already with my passport that he scanned.

A minute passed, and I was let through with no questions asked. First stop after that was the washroom which I desperately needed.

However, I’m not sure I would have gone to it if I knew I had to pass through another security checkpoint. My air Canada app said I wouldn’t have to. I threw everything into my bag and at the last minute I realized that my water bottle was full so I found a garbage bag and dumped most of it out. I feel bad for the guy taking that garbage bag out!

I made my way to the gate and had ten minutes to spare. I went in search of a water fountain but couldn’t find any. Maybe it’s not common in Frankfurt? I need to remember to fill up my bottle in a washroom after security.

I am happy I made all my connecting flights. The stress has lowered. Now, onto find Chris who will meet me at my gate.

—

Found Chris at the exit of the airport and we went to the train station to get into the city center where Philipp rented us a place downtown for a few days.  I did a little dance for Chris but there was no reaction.  Then I thought “Maybe that’s not Chris?” so I stopped dancing.  On his end, he didn’t have his glasses on so he thought “Is that guy dancing over there, Ryan?  I’m not sure.”

Philipp had to get back to work until the evening so Chris and I walked around a Hannover a bit before heading back and taking a nap.

It is cold and windy in Hannover. I should have packed a toque!

After a quick nap, Chris and caught up about life…sore body parts, what our kids are up to.

Philipp met us around 7:30pm at the apartment and we walked down to restaurant that’s theme is focussed on German political history.

Philipp’s father lived 20 kms away from Hannover as a boy.  He remembers the night sky bright as day when Hannover was burning to the ground during World War II.  This church is one of two buildings that are left from the original Hannover.

The « go-to » meal was the German ex-chancellor meal which consisted of sausage and fries and currywurst. Yum!

Philipp talked about his love life in the past year which had us happy and sad at the same time.

There are quite a few non alcoholic beer options here in Germany and I had a very tasty wheat beer.

After the restaurant, we went in search for another pint and ended up on an Irish pub which was packed for a Monday night. It was karaoke night and it offered what everyone loves about karaoke…sub par singing!!

I was getting quite tired by this point so we went searching for some beer to bring home. It took us forever and we finally found a spot 20 feet from our apartment! While Chris and Philipp chatted, I took the opportunity to sleep. My Fitbit said I had three hours sleep on the flight over!

I woke up around 7:30am and its a quiet, rainy, cold morning around here. As I type this, it’s 9am and the guys are still asleep. I don’t expect much movement happening today!

Off to Germany and Italy to see my friends Chris and Philipp.

I didn’t realize that I had to put my phone into the xray machine and I also had to remove my belt.

An older woman ordered an entire pizza for herself and asked if I wanted to share it with her. I just bought a sandwich!

I forgot how long travelling is. Wait in a lineup to board. Make sure you wait to lineup when they call your “zone”. Forgot about that. Everyone is in a rush and with just reason!

I took a few videos for Vero and the kids to show them how it is when the flight takes off.

I arrived in Toronto and there was no issue getting to the next gate. The flight is already delayed by twenty minutes for boarding, but it seem we will arrive in Frankfurt at the same time.

I still have a fear of what will happen when arriving in Frankfurt. Will I miss my connecting flight because of the fingerprints I need to give to enter Europe?

There are already complications forming. Philipp doesn’t have a car (just found out from Chris) so Chris will meet me at my gate and we will head into Hannover on the train. Hopefully I meet up with him at a decent time and the flight isn’t delayed!

I boarded the plane and there are two empty seats next to me and the plane is almost full. Do I have an entire row to myself??

Turns out the answer is no, there was a mom and her daughter that were late due to a connecting flight and they just made it in time!

 

 

It’s official. I don’t think I can ever get a good sleep on a plane. When I got onto the plane, I tried to sleep right away at 10pm. At home, I was used to getting to bed at 8:30 with trying to get ahead of the jet lag!

But it was hard to try and sleep that early. The cabin was still lit. The eye mask that came with my neck pillow worked well. The neck pillow worked well. Earplugs were ok. At one point I tried my noise cancelling headphones but I realized I didn’t have a usb to headphone adapter, I only had a lightning to headphone adapter! Nooooo. I couldn’t try some music to get me to sleep.

It’s 4am Canada time and they are serving yogurt and some sweet bread. I’m not sure why they were serving chicken and pasta around midnight, but they did!

Here’s to hoping I make my connection. The plane I’m on was delayed a bit because some connections didn’t make it and they had to remove their luggage.
In the night I heard something drop. Hours later, I was looking for my AirPods in my pocket and they were gone! I asked the woman behind me if she had seen any headphones. She was nice enough to get some her purse. I don’t think she understood what I was asking her to look for on the floor. She was nice.

In the end, I was smart enough to put my AirPods in my bag in a semi-sleep and I had forgotten about it.

When landing in Frankfurt, I was surprised by the amount of greenery in the city.

 

A few weeks ago I read something about how the brain is constantly connected to something.  Even when taking walks, we listen to podcasts.

I’ve always listened to music while walking.  I have done that since I was 15 years old.  It was a way of escaping the world for a bit.

But I thought this thing I read was intriguing so for the past week, I have not been listening to my podcasts or music while I took a walk.

This past week I have been waking up earlier and earlier, preparing my body for the jet lag I will experience when going to Europe.  At the moment of typing this, I am getting up at 4:30am.

Taking a walk these past few days, I really notice the birds chirping, the crows ca-cawing.

I noticed a small family of crows on top of someone’s house.  Hopping around, making noise.  There were a dozen of them.  Was that a mother crow teaching the baby crows how to terrorize the neighbourhood?

I noticed the hum from the highway.  The constant hum of traffic going by.  I don’t even really notice it unless I sit and listen for it.  It’s constantly there.  Imagine if I lived further away from the highway, how quiet life would be?

I noticed these small little worm type things crawling around the roads.  They were everywhere.  They looked black and no longer than an inch.

I had time to think about things.  I wasn’t listening to a podcast and learning about How I Met Your Mother or Star Wars.  I was alone in my own thoughts.

The creative mind requires a spark.  Maybe there’s something to this thing I read.

In an effort to track my comic book sales, over time, here’s something I sold.

I bought Spider-Man Noir 1-4 when they came out.  $4USD each.

I sold them for $350 (Issue #1 is basically the one that is worth that, the others are just bonus.)

Things I learned from the sale:

• I listed it for $350.  First person from Montreal offered $220, maybe $250.  They didn’t go through with the sale after seeing photos.
• The next person offered $300 and backed out at the last minute.
• Someone contacted me and said “No problem for the $350”.  That was after a month of being posted online.
• The person who bought it said that while asking for cash isn’t usual, it’s not the end of the world.  But e-transfer should be safe enough if I have auto deposit set up and if I meet in a public place like a police station.

Chocolate salami

Let’s start with the funniest thing of the day.

As a parent, I sometimes wonder if I’m doing the right thing…”Should I let my kids watch YouTube Kids all Saturday morning?”.  I equate it to my experience with Saturday morning cartoons.

This morning I walked into the kitchen and all I hear from Ezra is “CHOCOLATE SALAMI?  WOW!”

And that’s when I thought “Chocolate salami DOES sound cool.”.  All my fears about what they watch on a Saturday morning evaporated in that moment!

Larose Forest

On a typical weekend, the kids tend to watch YouTube Kids and Vero sleeps in.  At 47 years old, I feel that I have a hard time sleeping in and for the past few weekends I’ve been sitting there thinking “Why am I waiting for my family to be ready in the morning to go and do something?”.  That’s how I ended up taking a walk in Larose Forest on a crisp sunny morning.  No one was in the forest with me, I was all alone.  Visions of bears attacking me came, but I did not encounter anything out of the ordinary.

Scanning Nanny’s Photos

This past winter I managed to scan all of Lynn and Sue’s slides which was a fun project.  I also managed to tag a bunch of dates to Mom and Dad’s film negatives.  I had one photo album of theirs to use as a cross reference guide which was a Godsend.

But once I finished the one photo album, I realized that I should just wait for more and so I embarked back into the quest to scan all of Nanny Sybil’s photo albums.  I encountered an interesting scenario where I’m scanning an album taken from 1981 and it has photos that are from my parents film negative collection.  I’ve seen them before.  But then I stumble upon a random photo that looks like it’s from the same time period, but I can’t find it in my parents film negatives.  Did the negatives go missing?  Possible.

I then realized that the random photos must have actually been from Nanny’s camera!  The prints are a slightly different size than the ones from my parents.  It’s neat to find a few extra photos from an already documented moment in time.

Audio of Sierra’s speech

Audio of the hilarious moment where the mic stand wouldn’t adjust and two teachers were having trouble adjusting it.

I don’t remember having to do speeches in school until Grade 7 but it seems like they start things young in the year 2026.  Sierra had to write and deliver a speech to her class.  The theme was ‘petits gestes qui change la monde’.  Speeches that were REALLY GOOD would be selected to go ahead to a competition in front of the school hosted by the Vars Optimist Club.

She never usually has any homework to do at home (other than studying multiplication tables which she has been great at!), so when the speech arrived in the house, we had to motivate her to get working on it.  I asked her what her plan was.  “I have six days left…I will write section 1, 2 and 3 over three days and that will leave me three days to memorize the speech.”

She found it was hard work and after she was done memorizing the speech I asked her if she would have changed her plan a bit.  “I probably could have used 2-3 days more to work on it.”

I guess she learned through experience!

Leading up to her presentation on a Wednesday, she said the speeches from the rest of the class were SUPER GOOD.  When I heard that, I prepared myself to not get too excited about the prospect of her doing a speech in front of the school.

But Wednesday afternoon we received an email from her teacher saying that she was selected to do her speech again in front of the school the next day!

Vero and I went to the school at 1PM and sat in the front row hoping we could film it.  Turns out no recording/photos were allowed but I did manage to record the audio.  We enjoyed all the speeches that the other kids from the school presented.

She did a great job and we were super proud of her.

Highlights:

• After each speech, someone was helping adjust the microphone stand but it was stuck which led to a comical moment that could have made it onto America’s Funniest Videos.  I still remember the image of the poor kid stuck in front of the microphone, nervous to do his speech and there are two people trying to fix a microphone stand!
• After the speech, I saw a gang of girls rush to Sierra and hug her and tell her how amazing her speech was.  It was heartwarming.  They also made her a #1 medal in the class afterwards even though she did not win #1.

Kids: “Dad, you are wearing a tie today!”

Me: “Yes, I have a presentation today.  I wanted to dress up.”

Sierra: “Is your presentation with the mayor?”