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 feel like I’ve gotten to know the Southern region of Germany pretty well since I got here, and for the most part it’s a very beautiful and busy place. I think the weekend that we decided to drive around down there had about 5 random holidays lines up in a row that we didn’t know about, which might account for the busyness, but it was fun, so there.
We pretty much just hopped in a car and drove aimlessly around the region (although there was an overall destination in mind). We drove through Ulm, Ravensburg, Weingarten, Lake Constance, a bunch of random tiny towns that I can’t remember the names of, and ended up in Füssen for Neuschwanstein for the second time— except this time it was spring and not winter, so it was incredibly more colourful (and warm). We passed by many cows, dandelions, and the Alps were almost always in the picture dead ahead. Here are two of the highlights which I found the most interesting. View full article »
Wow, I’ve really been slacking! Things have been a bit crazy here, so I haven’t really had a chance to sit down and write this stuff. Here’s a picture of the gorgeous spring dandelion infiltration to make up for it. Anyway, 1 May is a date for Germany which has three (maybe more) holidays smashed into one, and it makes for a rather interesting post. Conveniently, I was also being carted around southern Germany for the holiday weekend, which allowed me to get a somewhat varied experience (apparently not much happens in Stuttgart)!
The first part was originally a religious themed holiday called Maibaumstag (May-tree-day), where each town puts up a little decorated tree on top of a pole in the center of the town. Each town’s tree is different based on the individual town’s personality, and I thought it was interesting that it’s basically just a christmas tree at the wrong time of year. That said, apparently it used to be very common for people to try and take town the tree in the middle of the town so that they could fulfill the other tradition of the day, which made it so that many towns had to protect their tree! View full article »
