T and I decided to make the big move back to the west coast, where we both definitely belong. Toronto is a great city for what it is, and I’ve made some really awesome friends there, but… I can’t handle another 8 month long stint below zero. That’s just too cold. I remember when I first announced that I wanted to go to Toronto to my dad:
“I’ve decided that Toronto would be a good place to finish my studies.”
“That’s great! But… you do know, it gets cold there.”
” …right. Snow, cold, yada yada.”
He paused and looked me straight in the eye as I passed him the salad bowl. “No.. It gets cold there.”
“I know! I know! I’ll have to buy a better coat.”
He stopped everything, took a long pause and burned a hole through my head with the seriousness in his stare and said, “You don’t know. It gets COLD.”
“…um.”
Well, he was right. A San Franciscan has no business living in Toronto. View full article »
I realise that I’ve been a bad girl and have not updated since I got back from Germany. But, I still have a lot to say and I’ll try to remember as much as possible! Then I will try to get back onto updating on a regular basis.
Köln— the Furthest North I Got
I was told by many people that I needed to get up to Berlin and Hamburg, and as much as I wanted to, I just didn’t have the funds this time around. But, I did manage to get up to Köln (or Cologne, as most Americans know it) for a week where I got to experience the magic of Lindt chocolate, a BIG church, and behind the scenes primetime television.
Above all, it was a beautiful little city. It definitely felt small, though I have a feeling it’s bigger than Stuttgart.
It is the birthplace of scent for men— and you can even go visit the boutique that first made the stuff. That would’ve been a useless trip for me seeing that I have no sense of smell, but it’s an interesting piece of history… I would’ve thought that cologne was invented by the French! But no, it was the Germans that decided that men should be allowed to smell “pretty” too, so… surprise! View full article »
Thursday: Getting the Pyramids Out of the Way
On Thursday we decided we’d go to the pyramids in Giza. On the way there we passed by a lot of agricultural lands which had been illegally built upon. The illegal buildings were basically made out of brick and were just big red cubes stacked on top of one another. All of them were unfinished and most of them intend to keep it that way because only finished buildings are taxed. That said, the housing is illegal and not supposed to be there anyway, so it’s all just a weird situation. There are hundreds of them (maybe thousands?) and it’s all because there’s just no other place for these people to go. If they can afford a bunch of bricks then they can just build a place on one of these unfinished buildings and they’re all set. Unfinished or not, they are densely inhabited. View full article »
The Olympic stadium in Munich is probably most well known for housing the Summer Olympics back when Hitler was in power and Leni Riefenstahl was filming everything. Today it’s better known for housing some of the last World Cup. Based on what I remember seeing in the old propaganda films, it used to look like a pretty standard, almost Roman (or Greek?) stadium. Since then, I think they’ve tried to reduce the old stigma as well as update it for the obvious reasons like keeping up with the Olympic Committee standards… and now it’s just huge and ridiculous. I love it!
And that’s only a small part of it!
Today it looks like it’s the equivalent of a massive metal tent complex ready to house some 
space age nomads. It’s totally weird architecture, but it’s totally cool. The colours, the material.. everything. And it’s MASSIVE! View full article »
