Borkum Bound

With the Pfingsten holiday here, we are headed off to the lovely North Sea island of Borkum for a week.  I do not plan to make any blog updates while there, but if we get some poor weather…. who knows.

 

Anyway, here is a nice image of Borkum to give a taste of what I will be seeing for the next days.

 

 

Hopefully I will come home with some nice photos of the family enjoying all sunny warm beach weather, spaced out with visits to see seals and nice bicycle treks around the island.

Candy cigarettes

I saw these in a shop on Yonge st and thought they were funny.  I know they are intended to be ironic, but I still like the joke.

 

Road Hockey

Liam is quite a hockey fan… I can honestly say I put no pressure on him at all to play or watch hockey, I just made it available to him if he was interested and let him decide on his own.  Of course, I think its also the case that  he could not help but be influenced by my own enjoyment of hockey.  Getting up at 5am to watch Olympic games is something he still talks about (and he was not even 5 yet….) I think the coolness of the equipment and seeing papa on skates were also things that helped to fuel the love.

 

The fact that he is a Toronto Maple Leafs fan is further evidence that I let him choose his own path.  If I was that big an influence, he would be wearing a Habs sweater.  At any rate, I am happy he at least chose a Canadian team as his favorite.

 

One of the recent handy projects I undertook was building a little goal for him to play road hockey.  I just used some wood that was knocking around the basement (im not that handy.)  I have to come up with a longer term net solution, right now it is just some thick plastic sheeting on there.  I am likely going to use chicken wire since I have a massive amount of it in the basement.   Anyway, the goal works fine and we have been getting quite a bit of use out of it this spring. 

 

Liam is also brainwashing the local kids to be his fellow hockey supporters, his pal Emil already has two sticks of his own and plays out on the road regularly with us.  I was more surprised to recently see that he had not only convinced Annika to play road hockey, but he had her dressed up in a Leafs sweater as well.  As I recall, Annika enjoys any game involving costumes, so I think she was more into it for that than the hockey, but they seemed to be having a good time out there.

 

Here are some sweet action shots of the ball hockey fun in front of our house. 

 

 

 

My Visit to the Burger’s Priest

When I was in Toronto, I wanted to spend some time eating food that was special and unavailable in Germany.  One of the things that I think North Americans do better than anyone else in the world is the hamburger.  I had been scanning restaurant lists and I came across a certain burger place again and again, “The Burger’s Priest.”  This is a place that in a Zagat poll was rated the third best restaurant in Toronto and the best hamburger in the city.   This was more than enough praise for me to seek it out.  The original location is way out in the beaches, which is a bit of a pain to get to, so I opted to go for the slightly newer location up around the Yonge and Lawrence area.

Here is how they describe themselves;

“Who is The Burger's Priest?

We are a classic American cheeseburger joint.
We grind a custom blend of ultra premium beef multiple times daily on the premises.
Our beef is always fresh.
We cook our cheeseburgers on a flat top griddle not on a charcoal broiler.
We believe in purity, simplicity and over a hundred years of grilling and grinding techniques.”

It seemed simple enough to me and a bit reminiscent of my favorite US burger place In-n-out burger.  I hopped on the subway and took a quick walk up to the place on Teddington Park.  They have certainly gone for a certain style and strong branding.  If this place was just plain looking and called “Bob’s” I seriously doubt it would have generated the hype I had been reading.  The whole religious burger thing is pretty gimmicky, but I thought it was all in good fun.



The place is very tiny, more of a hallway than a restaurant and clearly most food is ordered to go.  The décor is all black and white with one wall covered in scripture in English and Hebrew.  I have to say, it was a little bit too hipster and smacked of pretentious to me, I was sure that I was not “cool” enough to be eating here and I am sure at least half of the other patrons were looking down at me through their black rimmed glasses over the top of macbook screens and iphone conversation.  As good as the food looked, I developed a strong urge to punch people.

Anyway, I stood in the queue and made up my mind on my lunch order.  There are many fun theme named variations on the basic burger here.  Things like the high priest, the vatican, the heretic, etc.  I opted for the simple cheeseburger and fries.  If they are the best burger in Toronto, I wanted to try it in its purest form.   With this in mind I gave my order to the hip girl wearing a wool hat indoors while standing next to an enormous grill in a display of how cool she was for working there.  Sorry, but many aspects of style just annoy me, I am a grumpy man.



I then parked myself on a stool and waited for my burger to cook.  It was fairly busy and a bunch of us customers were waiting for our food.  After not too long, my name was called out and my food was handed over this little wall to me in a brown paper bag.  I had already grabbed my root beer from the cooler on my side of the wall.



Here is the meal as I sat back on my little cool-guy perch.  Pretty standard looking combo meal, price was good, I think it was about $8 Canadian for this, which is pretty much the same as German fast food prices.  I think a combo at McDonalds here goes for about 6 Euro these days.  Anyway, I took a good look and smell of the food and then tucked in.



Was it worth the effort?  Was this the best burger in the city and deserving of all the praise?  It was good.  It was very very good.  It was a burger I would recommend to anyone without hesitation.  The fries were also great, fatty, crispy and thick.  It all went together great and I was very very satisfied with my lunch experience.

I don’t think I would say it was the best burger I have ever had, but I don’t think I could tell you a better one off hand.  I would say it was better than an In-n-Out burger, which is pretty high praise from me.



So in the end, I would say the Burger’s Priest is a pretty great Hamburger place with a fun theme and very good value.  I would go again anytime I am in town, but it does have a little bit too much of an air of “hip” about it.  I don’t think I can fault the restaurant for that so much as the patrons though.

New Swing

Someone got a new swing…. I am pretty sure that we can call it a success.

 

 

I am pretty sure we could have left him in the swing for the entire weekend.  He had this expression on his face for about a half hour while swinging around.  Henrik is such a happy kid most of the time I was a bit worried that the swing was going to tip him over the edge of some sort of happiness explosion.  I should have made a video to share the crazy noises he was making as well.  He was laughing and yelling so loud that our neighbour came over to see what was going on.

 

 

Here he is mid yell.  On its own I think this photo could be interpreted as panic or a some sort of freak out, but I would say with the other pictures supporting it, he is clearly in the middle of some sort of victory yell.  He is shouting “I HAVE CONQUERED GRAVITY WITH THIS MIGHTY SWING!”

 

 

Of course there was also lots of big laughs. 

 

 

Maybe a bit of overkill with the volume of swinging pictures I have taken, but hey, I am delighted to see a laughing Henrik in as many ways as possible.  Party Baby.

Happy Friday

Busy day at work today.  Yesterday’s public holiday has put me rather behind in terms of getting all the stuff done that I wanted to…

 

So I am off to work on some deadlines, here are some photos of Henrik enjoying sitting on the grass on one of the nicer days we have had this year so far.  He was just having a good time pulling up grass, blowing on it and generally enjoying our back garden.

 

New car–Volkswagen up!

Well, the big news of the week is that our new car arrived on Monday.  I have been excitedly waiting for the new fun-mobile to arrive and finally I can say goodbye to train commuting.  Of course, with new car, there must be photos.  Here is the first one of the car in front of the house (our other VW Caddy is visible behind)

 

 

The up! (VW includes lower case and punctuation whenever referring to it, but it somehow feels silly to me) is a new car introduced by VW this past December.  It is their latest attempt to enter the “city car” market that currently has competitors like the Smart, Peugeot 106, Honda Jazz (Fit in North America) or any other number of tiny economical cars.

 

We bought this as a second car to compliment the primary family-mover that is the Caddy.   It is tiny easy to drive and park and excellent on gas.  4.5 l/100km combined consumption (I think that’s about 58mpg for the imperials) 

 

 

Certainly not a luxurious car, but that is not really the point… it is comfortable and functional.  The cockpit is very roomy for such a small car, it is actually 15cm wider than that of the VW Polo, the next car up in the VW hierarchy.  Not much styling in the interior, lots of hard, simple plastic controls.  This actually appeals to my bland sensibilities.  I like nice robust and simple without any chrome.

 

 

We did get the very fancy “maps and more” on board computer thingy, but I think I will go into detail on another post on that.  It deserves a lot of attention on its own.

 

 

It has only been two days, but I am already reveling in the fact that I have the flexibility of a second car and I can leave my public transit commuting behind me.  I did quite enjoy riding the train, but I will not miss the experience of missed connections and 30 min waits on a rainy platform.

 

Some people asked if I will give the car a name.  Our past cars have just been referred to as “big auto”, “mini auto” and “the caddy.”  I am open to any suggestions of a good name for this new guy.

Chubby Pop

Today is a very busy day so only time for a quick post.

 

In the world of cheap weird soft drinks in Canada, I give the crown to “Chubby”  it comes in tiny chubby bottles and is present in most of the grocery stores that I visited.

 

in addition to the standard flavours, like cola, grape, etc… Chubby has a few rather unique treats waiting for you.

 

First up there is “Cotton Candy”  I tried this and it is pretty good.  I thought it tasted quite a bit like cream soda.  I guess its not a hard taste to copy, essentially it is sugar+carbonated water+sugar+sugar+pink+sugar.  The result is a very very sweet drink that feels more like eating candy than drinking something.  This is one of those pops that I can enjoy, but have to have water immediately afterwards to wash all the sticky sweetness off my teeth.

 

 

The other exotic flavour I saw on offer was “Kola Champagne.”  This tastes like neither cola nor champagne.

 

My only regret is that I can’t un-drink it.

 

First Visit in to Toronto – Distillery District

Again, in no particular order, I decided to put my first venture into Toronto today.

I had made plans to see a pretty large group of people in the evening at a pub on the Thursday evening before Easter, however this was not the best solution for everyone… Some of my friends have kids, family, trips, and other evening obligations that make an evening bar visit less than ideal.  One of these friends is Helga, she is currently enjoying her maternity leave and had made some family plans for the evening.  She suggested we have lunch in the recently redeveloped distillery district.  I had heard a bit about this area from people recently, so it seemed like a good opportunity to check it out.

From their website, the district is described as;
“The Distillery District is a national Historic Site with an incredibly rich history. The site was once The Gooderham and Worts Distillery, and represents the largest and best preserved collection of Victorian Industrial Architecture in North America”

In keeping with the olde tyme spirit, I put my photos of the area through the lomography filter so they would look nice and dated.

Everything is red brick in the district and it looks very nice.  It reminded me quite a lot of NC State university (where I had a visit back in 1993 or so) or even the towns on the North Sea Islands in Germany (like Borkum, Liam’s favorite)  Lots and lots of red bricks.  It was a nice place to walk around and there were many cafes and restaurants around.


This building had a nice looking clock out in front which kind of reminded me of the one in Gastown, Vancouver.   I am sure they are completely different and have really no similar qualities, but in my memory they are near identical.



I met Helga in a café called Balzac’s, which was cozy and full of fancy coffee drinkers.  I myself am a non-coffee drinker, so we vacated the place and looked around for somewhere nice to eat lunch.

Gord have given a recommendation of the Mill St. Brewpub, which Helga also knew of, so we tried that place first.  The menu looked good and it was not too busy, so we headed inside to check out the lunch offers.  I forgot to take any photos of the place itself, so I stole these ones off their website.  There were no umbrellas and flowers out the day that I was there, but I can see that there is some potential for a good patio spot in the nicer weather.



Typical pub décor inside, although no festive balloons were waiting for us.  It was not a particularly busy time, being a little early on a Thursday afternoon.  There was strangely enough a cricket match playing on all the big TVs, something I am not too used to seeing in pubs, but it was not that much of a distraction.

I was happy that we were able to get a booth.  I don't really know why, but I always prefer sitting in booths when they are available in restaurants, pubs, etc.  There is something nice and cozy about having your own little wooden building within a building where people bring you food and drink.



Lunch was good although I thought the beer was nothing too special.  Either I made a bad choice (Original Organic Lager) or I am spoiled by the excellent quality of German beer.  Either way I was not particularly impressed with the taste of the selection I had made.  I did have a very nice hamburger though, that was better than anything on offer in Germany.   North Americans seem to do anything beef related better than Germans in my opinion, the burgers and steaks are just a class above anything I have had around here.  Pork and sausages are another story, but a giant beef burger was what I was looking for that day.

Here is a photo of Helga and Kurt.  Kurt was pretty much trying to eat her phone the entire time we were there and I think it shows from his expression that he was just about ready to go for another bite.  Kurt was a charming young man who drifted off to sleep at just about the right moment so we could enjoy our lunch.



After lunch, we parted ways and I headed off to the streetcar stop so I could do a little more city roaming before the evening meetup.  Just outside the gates into the district, there was a big rent-a-bike stand.  I thought this was pretty cool.  It looked quite new and I wondered if they were catching on in the city.  It would be nice to see more people biking.



One last photo before I got on the streetcar.  Not the most flattering view of the city, but it was my first moment to get a good look at the tower and downtown on this trip.  I had not been to Toronto in about 3 years, so it felt odd to be standing there.  Lots of the details are quite different now, but when you get in a “big picture” spot, Toronto is still Toronto.

Airport Whisky

This is out of sequence, but I am only in the mood for a quick post today…

On my way back to Canada, I had a five hour stopover in Amsterdam.  I spent this time wandering shop to shop, reading books, watching some video on my computer, the usual airport time killers.

At one point, I went in to the duty free to have a look around at the alcoholic beverages.  There was the usual selection there of wine, beer, and spirits.  I noticed that the section containing the whisky had a glass case with a couple of posh looking bottles and went in for a closer look.  Here is one in particular that they had on offer

 

 

Perhaps the resolution is not clear enough to read the price… so here is a close up:

 

 

Now I enjoy a drink as much as the next person, I quite like some whisky (Laphroaig is my choice in case you were wondering)  I even realize that some whisky is way way out of my price range hitting these sort of 3000+ Euro per bottle prices.  The one pictured above is the equivalent of 4,409 Canadian or 4,402 USD in case you were wondering.

 

The thing that made me wonder was who buys this sort of bottle at the airport.  It is not exactly an impulse buy, even if I was a Russian oligarch (who we know are all billionaires) it seems unlikely to me that I would be strolling through Schipol  on my way to the first class line and suddenly stop and buy a four thousand dollar bottle of whisky.  If I was inclined to purchase this, surely it is the sort of thing I would be doing from a specialty shop, or dealer.  What kind of person has the kind of disposable income where they have a few grand sitting in there pocket in case they get thirsty?

 

I was also wondering who at the duty free is shopping for cases of beer.  When going on a transatlantic flight, 24 beers don’t seem like the kind of carry on I really want to have with me.

Off to see the DEL (German Hockey league)

Last Christmas, I received a nice gift of hockey tickets. The game was in March and was between Augsburg and Dusseldorf.  The original intention was to go with Ryan, however professional schedule conflicts ended up taking him out of the country on game day and I invited Liam the superfan to join me.  Liam of course was pretty excited to go and see a real live game.  His only other exposure to live hockey had been watching me play in Stuttgart once and his comment there was that I “fall down a lot.”  Hopefully seeing professionals play would give him a bit better experience.

We left the car at Claudia’s parent place and took the subway over to the arena.  I have learned my lesson when it comes to sporting events and will never ever drive to one again when there is any public transit option…  On the train Liam was grinning ear to ear the whole way there.  He asked every other passenger if they were also going to see hockey.  He had lost his first tooth a couple of days before the game and I thought it gave him a nice hockey look.



Liam was all hockeyed up, with a Peter Puck hat and Toronto Maple leafs sweater.   As you can see, there is a pretty good sized crowd, the game was sold out and I think the capacity was around 12,000 seats.



Those of you who know me know that I have never been much of a Leafs fan.  My team growing up was the Montreal Canadiens thanks to my hockey-worship of Patrick Roy.  Liam’s fandom comes from the STIGA hockey game that he received last Christmas.  A fantastic game we play pretty often which features Toronto versus Detroit.  Liam latched on to Toronto in this game and has been a Toronto fan ever since.  At the game I bought him a Panther’s scarf to add to his hockey fan-suit.



Before the game started, the Augsburg players were all announced and skated out through a giant inflatable black panther head (Augsburg Panthers.) This bit of theatre was already pretty exciting for Liam and the incredibly loud crowd was also getting him worked up.  It is quite a different feel to an NHL crowd, and I thought it was really a lot more like a soccer crowd.  Singning, chanting, banging drums all at top volume and I think about 80% of the crowd were wearing team jerseys.  A lot of spirit for sure.



We enjoyed quite good seats, just off the red line and 2/3 of the way up the bleachers, giving a good view of the ice.  The arena was pretty good, but under renovation with some construction making the entrance a little chaotic.  Another strange feature of the arena is that there are only three walls.  If you look past Liam the superfan here, you can see that trees and neighbouring buildings are clearly visible.  It was a chilly breezy day, so there was a bit of wind coming in from that side keeping us rather cool.





Another major difference to a North American sporting event was the concession stands.  For the entire venue, there were two small windows selling food and drink.  One of them was the beer and warm food window, with things like sausages (of course) fries, schnitzel in bread and such.  The other window served sweet things and the ubiquitous German coffee and cake.  This was one of the parts of the arena under construction and it was a big booth of particle board containing one granny with a cash box.  You can see the selection of cake on paper plates to choose from.  This was one of the most bizarre things at the game for me, I never associated cake with hockey, but Germans love coffee and cake no matter what the event.  I can not picture this set up at the Air Canada centre for the Leafs though…



Here are the hockey men enjoying the game…


It was a pretty exciting game, Augsburg trailed for the 2nd and 3rd periods but managed to tie it in the closing seconds.  The brief overtime solved nothing and the game went to penalty shots.  Sadly Augsburg was not able to do much in this department and Dusseldorf went on to win 4-3 on penaltys.  Here is a video I shot of the game winning penalty….

An Ode to Brio

Here is a bottle of a beverage that has a special place in my heart.  Brio is a carbonated soft drink that is widely available in Canada. 

It is about the same colour as Coke, but that is where any similarity ends.   Brio is a bitter drink apparently coming from the juice of the fruit of the myrtle leaved orange tree, or chinotto in Italian.  According to the internets, chinotto is a drink enjoyed in Italy and Malta as well.  I find this a little surprising, since on the whole I would say I like most Italian foods, but Brio is an abomination that should be thrown into the deepest pit of hell

Brio is foul evil stuff.  Wikipedia says that it tastes “bittersweet” whereas I would describe it with more of the taste of a rancid animal corpse, left to ripen in the sun for just the correct amount of time, and then wrapped in garbage and distilled and filtered through fungus ridden sweat socks. 

I hate it.  I hate the taste of Brio more than almost any other food/drink product that I can think of.  When I saw Brio on the shelf of no frills in Bradford, waves of pure hate rolled over me and mixed with an intense revulsion.  I was almost overcome to the point where I wanted to smash the entire display to the floor, then dance on it screaming at the shards of the bottles.  This was the reaction evoked after seeing no Brio for at least 12 years…

In some ways, Brio does however hold a very special place in my heart.  They used to sell it pretty much everywhere in southern Ontario, so it was always around.  When my friends and I would go out and grab some food and drinks, you would always ask  what each person wants.  If anyone ever made the mistake of saying “I don’t care” or “anything is fine” you could guarantee that person would be getting Brio.  You could play punishing games like Brio roulette where one can of Brio was mixed in with nice beverages that everyone had to pull blindly.  You could lay Brio traps for people based on its colour being almost the same as Coke’s.  Upon reaching the age for alcoholic beverage consumption, we could try to come up with any cocktail at all that incorporated Brio and did not taste like a bucket of ass. 

Brio was a running joke that lasted at least 15 years of my life.

Brio is the taste of failure.