Dude, where's my bike?

If there is one lesson I have learned during my time in Japan it's that a stress-free existence here requires a blind adherence to the rules and that you should always budget at least an hour for all matters bureaucratic. Okay, technically, that's two lessons. But rules and bureaucracy go hand-in-hand here. Japan isn't the Land of the Rising Sun so much as it is the Land of the Red Tape.

Take bicycles, for example. Bicycles are treated no differently than any other vehicle in Japan. The upside is that cycling is a very mainstream form of transportation. The downside is that there are just as many laws for cyclists as there are for drivers. A partial list of things that are illegal to do while riding a bike include holding an umbrella, ringing your bell repeatedly, listening to music, talking on a cell phone, being drunk, riding through a red light, riding without a light at night, riding on the sidewalk, and parking in a no-parking zone.

Yes, you read that last one right. It's illegal to park a bicycle in a no-parking zone. Break this law and your bike will be towed to the pound. It seems kind of funny and absurd (there are no-parking zones for bikes? They actually tow bikes? There is a bike pound?) until it happens to you.

I will come clean and admit that I knew I was parking illegally. Mea culpa. There were signs explicitly stating it was a no-parking zone. But I had no other option. There is almost nowhere to park in downtown Kyoto. Of course, you can pay to park at one of those fancy bicycle garages but, to me, paid parking goes against the spirit of cycling. The beauty of riding a bike is that you never have to pay for gas or parking.

I wasn't the only one parked illegally. There were about two dozen other bikes in the same (very wide and very open) spot. It was a quadruple-wide sidewalk, with more than enough room for wheelchairs and baby strollers. I figured it was a safe enough spot to park. Besides, I was only going to be gone for 10 minutes. I just had to run into the bank and I'd be right back.

This was my tragic mistake. I should have known there is no such thing as "just running into the bank" in Japan. This country has an uncanny ability to turn even the most mundane errand into a bureaucratic nightmare. Forty-five minutes after I entered the bank, I was still sitting with a teller going over a pile of paperwork. She wanted me to sign a piece of paper that, despite her patient explanation, I simply didn't understand.

She tried switching to English but the only word I understood was "mafia." I was pretty sure her English was mixed up so I asked her to explain in Japanese. This time the only word I understood was "yakuza." A light went on above my head. She wanted me to sign a form declaring that I wasn't a member of the yakuza (because, apparently, the fact that I have two pinkies and zero tattoos isn't evidence enough). She nodded enthusiastically while apologizing that she clearly knew I wasn't a member of the yakuza but she needed me to put it in writing anyway.

With the question about my ties to organized crime finally answered, I was free to leave the bank. And so I half-jogged, half-walked back to where I parked my bike because I was late for a meeting with the Japanese Mark Zuckerberg (a shy undergrad rumoured to be a computer genius, complete with standard-issue hoodie and baggy jeans) who was making a special trip to my lab to fix my computer.

But my bike was gone. All of the bikes were gone. It was as if someone had taken a giant broom and simply swept them off the face of the earth. There was nothing but a big empty space where the bikes had been. I cursed and swore. I cursed the stupidity of no-parking zones. I cursed myself for parking in a no-parking zone. I cursed the stupidity of the bank for making me spend an hour testifying that I was not a member of the yakuza. I cursed the fact that I was now going to be late for my meeting with the Japanese Mark Zuckerberg. I cursed having to waste half a day getting my bike back from the pound.

But I didn't have time to deal with any of that now. I took the train back to school and spent the next few days bike-free. It's funny how much of an effort walking becomes when you get used to cycling everywhere. Wheels are so much faster than feet. The other day, I walked to Mister Donut (which is the closest thing to Tim Hortons in Japan) and all I could think was, "Oh my god! This is taking forever!" Everyone always talks up the benefits of cycling -- it's good for the environment! It's good for your health! But no one ever mentions the sinister side of cycling -- it makes you lazy and impatient.

It was good to take a break from the bike but by yesterday, I'd had enough of walking. It was time to go to the pound. I was kind of excited about going to the pound. I have never been to a real pound before, especially not a bicycle pound. But first, I had to return to the scene of the crime to figure out where the pound was exactly. Luckily, the no-parking sign contained a helpful map of where the bikes had been towed to.



I should probably explain that a bicycle isn't towed the same way a car is. There's no tow truck with a steel cable hooked up to the bike's front wheel, dragging it through the streets. What happens is a pick-up truck with an extra-long, extra-wide bed comes to a stop in front of a bunch of illegally parked bikes. A group of guys jumps out and hauls the bikes, one by one, over to the truck before lifting them up to another group of guys standing on the truck bed, whose job it is to pull the bikes up and arrange them in neat lines. They do this very quickly and very efficiently. It's like watching a well-oiled assembly line.


Getting my bike back required two train trips. One trip to where I had parked the bike (to take a look at the map) and another trip to the pound (or, as it turns out, the middle of nowhere).

The train took me south of the city. To the part of Kyoto you won't find in any guidebook. Unless it's to warn you to avoid going there. If Kyoto has a "bad" neighbourhood, then this is probably it. It was industrial, ugly and bleak. Nothing but empty lots, run-down houses, and tall fences. Exactly the kind of place where you would imagine a pound would be located.



I spotted the pound right away. It was cordoned off from the street with metal sheeting and barbed wire. But this is where the similarities between the cinematic pound and the real pound ended. Instead of being lunged at by snarling rottweilers, I was greeted by a group of friendly old guys. They directed me to a shed near the entrance-way where another friendly old guy asked me to fill out a form. I had to write down my name, my address, a description of my bike (I wrote down "black"), where I had parked it, and when it was towed. After I forked over 2,300 yen (about $20) and showed some ID, another friendly old guy escorted me to a long line of bikes that had been towed on January 28 (they were all neatly arranged by date. After four weeks in the pound, all of the unclaimed bikes are hauled out and crushed).

My bike was in the middle of the pack. The guy waited for me to unlock it and then I was free to go. Lesson learned. From now on, I will blindly follow the rules and always budget at least an hour for all matters bureaucratic.

A very Japanese New Year

Because this was the first -- and probably the last -- time I would spend New Year's Eve in Japan, I wanted to ring it in right.

To me, ringing it in right meant celebrating the same way Japanese people do. The only problem was I didn't know what Japanese people do on New Year's Eve exactly. A quick Google search turned up a few answers. I learned that New Year's is one of the most important holidays on the Japanese calendar but that it is typically spent at home with family. It's more about quiet, quality time than it is about consuming copious amounts of alcohol and kissing a random pair of lips at the stroke of midnight.

I also learned that Japanese people clean their homes from top to bottom to start the New Year off on a clean slate. They spend New Year's preparing and eating traditional food, including rice cakes or "mochi." But because mochi is extremely sticky and chewy (the texture is best described as a thick ball of glue) a few elderly people suffocate and die every year while trying to eat it. The annual mochi death toll makes headlines every January.

Scrubbing the floors, slaving over a hot stove and choking to death are not my idea of a good time so I decided to westernize my Japanese New Year's Eve and look for a ball drop.

It turns out the closest thing to a public countdown and exploding fireworks is the traditional ringing of the temple bells. Before midnight on New Year's Eve, temple bells across Japan begin to ring 108 times. Apparently, the tolling of the bells purifies us of our 108 worldly desires (nothing like starting off the new year with a little self-loathing and flagellation).

In case you're wondering what all of these 108 sins are, many of them are your garden-variety sins. Greed, lust, envy, gluttony, gambling. That sort of thing. But the Buddhists aren't content to just cover the basics. They've included all kinds of bad behaviour in their long list of sins, including inattentiveness, stubbornness, stinginess, voluptuousness, capriciousness, a desire for fame, indifference, dissatisfaction, lack of comprehension (what does that mean?), and sarcasm (no, I'm not being sarcastic).

I managed to find a temple in Osaka that had both the traditional ringing of the bells and a public countdown. It seemed to be the Japanese equivalent of watching the ball drop in Times Square. So I had pinpointed where I wanted to be when the clock struck twelve. Now I just needed to figure out what to do in the last hours of 2010 and the first hours of 2011.

A little bit more digging -- clicking deep into the third and fourth pages of the search results -- revealed another Japanese tradition I could get behind. Part of celebrating the new year in Japan includes paying special attention to the first time something is done in the new year. For example, hatsuhinode is the first sunrise of the year and many people will often climb a mountain or drive to the coast to see it. Going to a temple to ring the bells and then heading somewhere to watch the sun rise seemed liked a good way to ring in the new year to me.

Sergey gave me free reign to plan the entire night. He claims this is because I am such an excellent planner. And while this is indisputably true, I suspect laziness may have had a small role to play in his willingness to let me be in the driver's seat. Although to be fair, he came up with the idea of going out to eat and he introduced me to the concept of coffee-shop loitering.

The New Year's plan in a nutshell was to head to Osaka for dinner, loiter in a coffee shop for a couple of hours, head to a temple for the countdown, stay up all night (more coffee-shop loitering) and then watch the first sunrise of the year from the top of a skyscraper.



The first part of our very long night in Osaka was spent inside an arcade trying to get our picture taken in one of those little photo booths where you can digitally customize the photos with a mind-numbing array of cute things like stars and sparkles and hearts. But we simply couldn't fight our way through the hordes of teenage girls who were monopolizing the machines.

So we gave up and headed to the first decent restaurant we could find, which turned out to be a Korean-style BBQ place where you pay to cook your own food. It was loud and the air inside was a fragrant mixture of two kinds of smoke -- one part cigarette smoke and two parts tabletop-grill smoke. But it was delicious and warm and we ate until we couldn't eat anymore.



After dinner, we enjoyed an hour of coffee-shop loitering before heading to the temple for our first traditional Japanese New Year's Eve countdown. At the temple we were given a numbered ticket and a sheet of paper with a detailed explanation about how the night would go down. We were ushered into a huge room with a few hundred other people and told to wait for further instructions. There was no room for spontaneity. Everything was highly organized, with lots of rules and procedures. It was fun because it was the opposite of fun.

Eventually, a guy with a bullhorn came into the room and told us to write a New Year's message on the little piece of paper we had been provided with at the door. My message was vague and general, something about wishing good health and happiness upon pretty much every person on the planet (like that's ever going to happen). Sergey's message was indecipherable (because it was written in Cyrillic).

The bullhorn guy then shouted at us to form a single line out the door in order to receive a balloon. We were told to tie our handwritten message to the balloon. The balloons and their accompanying messages were not to be released until midnight. Although some slippery-fingered folks let their balloons go early. We were then marched outside and up the temple steps where we waited for the clock to strike twelve. We joined the crowd in counting down from 10 to one (in Japanese, of course) and threw our balloons up into the air at midnight. Happy New Year, indeed!



And then the real fun began. Everyone who wanted to was allowed to ring the temple bell once. The only problem was that everyone wanted to ring the bell. Because there were so many of us, we were divided into groups based on the letters of the alphabet. There were about 100 people per letter, starting with A and ending with Z. We were grouped under letter M. By this point we had been outside so long that we were cold. Really cold. But we kept ourselves warm with the thought of the free soup after ringing the bell.



Next on the agenda was some more coffee-shop loitering until the first sunrise of 2011. The ability to spend hours in a coffee shop without buying a refill is one of my favourite things about Japan. I've said it before but it's worth repeating. When you buy a cup of coffee in Japan, you are not just buying a cup of coffee; you are buying a piece of real estate. That one coffee gives you the right to monopolize a table for as long as you like. One hour, two hours, eight hours. You can stay as long as the place is open. You don't have to buy anything else and no one will ask you to leave.

It seemed like everyone else in the coffee shop that night was also using it as free accommodation. Two Japanese girls sitting beside us were hunched over the table fast asleep with their heads cradled in their arms. One of the employees kept waking them up and telling them they weren't allowed to sleep. Eventually, the poor guy had to give up since practically everyone in the place was asleep at their tables.

The sun was scheduled to rise at 7:05 a.m., which meant we still had four and a half hours to kill when I took this picture. So we enjoyed some valuable times with our beverages.



By 4:30 a.m. we were tired of sitting in the coffee shop so we decided to make our way to the sunrise party -- a short 10-minute walk away. The elevator took us up to the 40th floor of the Umeda Sky Building, where we had a panoramic view to watch the sun come up. Except it was still dark at 5 a.m. and very, very, very cold. So we waited inside until the sky started to lighten. At the first hint of daylight, we joined the crowds of people on the outdoor observatory waiting for the sun to rise.

I can only remember a handful of times when I have experienced this kind of cold. Standing on top of the Osaka skyscraper waiting for the sun to rise ranks right up there with standing on an Ottawa street waiting for the bus to come in minus 30 degree weather. It was the kind of cold that seeps under your skin and into your bones, making you shiver uncontrollably while stamping feet you can barely feel.

It was also the kind of cold that makes you realize that life on earth owes its random existence to its random distance from the sun. If the earth was any further away from the sun, we would freeze. The universe kind of blows my mind sometimes.

All of this made the sunrise so much more awe-inspiring when it finally did arrive. To see the sky go from pitch black to navy blue to purpley pink to light blue as the earth rotated on its axis was an amazing thing.

When the sun finally broke above the clouds, everyone started cheering. I couldn't tell if they were happy because of the sunrise or because they could now get out of the cold.






It was a great way to mark the end of one decade and the start of another. We managed to combine a couple of Japanese traditions and create a few of our own. I think we rang in 2011 right. Happy New Year, everyone!

Unintentionally in Istanbul

I am in Istanbul. I am not here on vacation. I am here by accident. I was supposed to be back in Japan three days ago. But, as lousy luck would have it, I was stranded by snow in Germany for more than 50 hours.

My original flight from Cologne to Amsterdam (and then onward to Osaka) was cancelled Saturday because of "snow chaos" that has made travelling in Europe a nightmare since Friday. I was rebooked on a flight to Istanbul the following day but that too was cancelled because of a snowstorm that pretty much crippled every airport in Germany. Although, let's be honest -- a Canadian snowstorm and a German snowstorm are two very different things. I doubt there was more than 10 cm of snow in Bonn. The mercury had barely dipped below zero. Wind speed was about 5 km an hour. But, unlike Canada, I guess they're not used to these kinds of conditions. Pretty much every major airport in Europe has been closed since Friday. Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, London, you name it, they are all closed. No one is flying in and no one is flying out. Not fun!

After my flight was cancelled on Saturday, I lined up for four hours to be told by KLM that I was on my own. No hotel. No food. Weather is not our responsibility, they said. They rebooked me on a flight the next day to Istanbul and then washed their hands of me. It's a good thing my insurance covers this sort of thing (or at least I hope my insurance covers this sort of thing) so I treated myself to a night in a nice hotel in Bonn.

I returned to the airport on Sunday to attempt to fly to Turkey but an hour before takeoff, the snow started coming down. Harder and faster until you could see nothing but a wall of white outside the window. We sat on the tarmac for three hours, going nowhere fast. It wasn't a surprise to anyone when the pilot announced the flight had been cancelled and we'd have to try again tomorrow.

After cancelling our flight, Turkish Airlines agreed to put us up in a hotel for the night. However, this only came about after much complaining and yelling by my fellow Turkish passengers. They were great! I made a Turkish friend and she told me that Turkish people love to complain about everything. Complaining is their national sport and they are very good at it, she said. So even though the cancellation was an "act of God" and the airline had no legal responsibility to do anything for us, the Turkish passengers were not having it.

They yelled and complained and yelled some more, until police with machine guns strapped around their chests were called in to diffuse the situation. The sight of the machine guns seemed to have a calming effect on the mob. But they still swarmed around the ticket counter and continued to complain. The poor airline worker finally gave in and rented us all rooms in a nice hotel in downtown Cologne despite the fact that all of the other stranded passengers on all of the other flights were forced to sleep on the airport floor. They even chartered a fancy bus to take us to and from the hotel.

Of course, once we got to the hotel, the complaining didn't stop! Nope. Now the Turks were upset that there was no free food. My new Turkish friend said that even if they had provided us with free food, they would have still found something to complain about. I said maybe they'll get angry that there's no pool. No, she said, even if there was a pool, they would complain that the airline didn't provide us with free swimsuits. It was quite entertaining!

After arriving at the hotel at about 9:30 p.m., we were basically on standby until there was a break in the weather. Fortunately, it stopped snowing. Unfortunately, it stopped snowing at four in the morning. So we all got a wake-up call at 4:15 a.m. and were told to be in the lobby and on the bus no later than 5 a.m. We were driven back to the airport and checked back in and boarded the plane -- the very same plane we had been sitting on for three hours yesterday before they decided to cancel it. By 8 a.m. we were in the air and flying far away from the disaster that is Europe.

We arrived in Istanbul at about 1 p.m. with not a snowflake in sight. I was so happy I almost kissed the bare ground. Of course, there is chaos here too but only because of the people who are trying to get to London or Paris or Berlin for Christmas. Sorry folks, ain't going to happen. So glad I'm now far away from that mess.

I have about 12 hours to kill until my connecting flight to Osaka, so I decided to do some errands. First on my list was to see if I could sweet-talk my way on to a free upgrade to business class. It was a classic Pierre Marchildon situation and I think I performed well. Maybe not as good as my Dad but he has a lot more experience making friends with everyone he meets than I do. However, having watched the master at work my entire life, I think it's fair to say I am an apt and able charmer.

I sidled up to the ticket counter, smiled and make some Dad jokes and small talk about the weather. Asked if I could be upgraded to business class for the flight back to Osaka. The ticket agent made a phone call and then quietly and discretely printed off a new boarding pass -- in business class! For free! (Dad, how proud of me are you right now?!)

However, before I could enjoy the comforts of the Turkish Airline executive lounge, I had to replace the contents of my makeup bag. I lost it in Germany somewhere. I don't know if I left it at the hotel or at the airport or what had happened. But it was gone. I had stocked up on cosmetics in Germany because I can't find my beloved brands in Kyoto. I was pretty bummed because we're talking about losing about one hundred dollars worth of stuff. My mascara, eyeshadow, lipstick, eyelash curler, tweezers, MAC face powder, "virgin oil" lip-gloss (yes, that's really what it's called. I think they forgot the word "olive" in between "virgin" and "oil") and on and on. All gone. So I made a stop at duty free and bought the cheapest stuff I could find, which is not easy to do when the aisles are filled with the likes of Chanel and Givenchy. So I settled for Clinique. Also, I talked the saleslady into throwing in one of those free bags with all kinds of products that you're only supposed to get when you buy skin creams. Clinique Bonus indeed!

And that brings me to the present moment. I am typing this in the comfort of the Turkish Airways executive lounge. I am in a room with wood panelling and gold accents. There are crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. There are European-style paintings on the wall (I suspect the theme the decorator was going for was "money"). The lounge is the size of about five departure gates put together. There are showers (so going to take advantage of that!) and free food (already took advantage of that!) and free drinks (going to hold off on that. I want to actually make it on the plane). I swear, I don't think I can ever fly economy again...and I haven't even set foot on the plane.

I am scheduled to depart at midnight and arrive in Osaka around 6 p.m. on Tuesday evening. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I went for a long walk around the terminal and bumped into another new friend of mine from the Bonn to Istanbul fiasco. He's an Iraqi journalist who writes about the benefits of Christianity. He's not too fond of Muslims and he decided to give me a long and loud lecture about the downsides of the Arab world in the middle of the terminal. In a Muslim country, mind you. Interesting? Yes. Smart? No.

He also told me he went to Japan in 1987, adding "but you probably weren't even born back then." (This is why I love chatting up senior citizens. In their eyes, I look young!) Then he gave me his business card and told me to keep in touch.

I got tired of walking around so now I'm back in the womb-like comfort of the executive lounge. Going to have Dinner Part III and then a long, hot shower. That should take up a good half hour leaving me with another large chunk of time to kill, which I will spend luxuriating in the classy atmosphere of the executive lounge. I wonder what my fellow elites would think if they knew I lived in a one-room apartment in Kyoto with a squat toilet and a coin-operated shower?

Art for voyeurs

One of my favourite hobbies is spying on people. Not in a creepy restraining-order kind of way but in a harmless curious-about-how-other-people-live kind of way.

I like to walk along residential streets at night and look into people's windows. I don't jump the fence and press my face up against the glass (the last time I tried that I tripped and fell into a bed of stinging nettles). I just see what I can see from the street as I walk past. If the lights are on and the curtains are open, well, that's pretty much an invitation to peek inside.

I'm not looking to catch anyone in a compromising position. I'm more interested in the mundane details. The colour of the walls, the way the furniture is arranged, what's on TV, what's on the walls, the harshness or the softness of the lighting. This is the stuff that fascinates me. A room is a living canvas that we fill with things that reflect our personalities and preferences. We create nests that are pleasing to us because they are an extension of us.

My strong attachment to my own home probably explains why I'm so obsessed with seeing how other people live. I look inside their windows and ask myself a million little questions. Who are they? What do they do for a living? Are they happy? And what kind of person would hang a German flag on the wall and put a collection of empty whiskey bottles on top of a bookshelf and call it decorating?

When I see a really beautiful apartment -- one with high ceilings, big windows, and minimal, but tasteful, furniture -- I fantasize about what it would be like to live there. I imagine myself walking up the steps, pushing open the door, stepping into the living room and sinking into the down-filled couch. It's not late-night lurking. It's window shopping for an alternate reality.

Bonn is a voyeur's paradise. The houses butt right up against the sidewalk and the curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows are rarely closed. My neighbourhood is full of elegant old houses and as much as I enjoy the occasional peek into the front room through parted curtains, it always leaves me wanting more.

So when my landlady Christine told me some local artists were opening up their homes to the public on the weekend, I was more excited about seeing the inside of their apartments than I was about seeing their art. Christine (pictured below) was the only participating artist whose work captured my full attention since I see the inside of her house on a daily basis.


The Offfene Ateliers in der Sudstadt has become something of a Bonn tradition. Once a year, a group of artists open their studios (which are usually located inside their apartments) to the public. The only way to find their homes is to follow a specially made map pinpointing their location. You walk up to the artist's apartment, ring the buzzer and are quietly let in. The event is open to the public but it feels secretive. Without the map, you wouldn't know where to go.

My friend Emily was my date for the afternoon. Together, we walked along the wealthy residential streets of Sudstadt, going from one apartment to the next. It felt a little bit like trick-or-treating but without the costumes or the candy (although I did notice a bowl filled with mini Snickers at one of the apartments we visited).

There were 18 participating artists and in a five-hour period we only managed to visit eight of them. The artists walked around their homes answering questions or chatting up potential buyers. I walked around the rooms drinking in the mundane details.

I checked out the colour of the walls (I was especially fond of the kitchen painted pink and the living room painted orange), I looked at the furniture (most of it was well-made, sturdy and practical), I glanced at the books on bookshelves (the titles were almost always in German), and paid attention to what was hanging on the walls (lots and lots of art).






I liked the event, I liked the art and I liked poking around people's homes. Especially because these were the very same homes I had walked past dozens of times before. These were the same windows I had peeked in and the same occupants I had wondered about.

I now know that inside one of these houses lives a guy who has never been to Canada and inside another lives a handsome architect with ashtrays in every room and a cat sleeping upstairs. I still walk past these houses at night but now I see a little bit more.

Roman holiday

I live in Bonn. Elena lives in Bucharest. For the first time in more than six months, we were both on the same continent. A reunion was in order. We decided to meet each other halfway between Bonn and Bucharest. A map of Europe and some unscientific head tilting, eye squinting and finger measuring determined our destination. It turns out all roads really do lead to Rome.

The last time I saw Elena was in March. She had finished her research program in Japan and was heading home to Romania. I first met Elena a year earlier at Kyoto University, where we found ourselves in the same five-day-a-week Japanese class. There were only nine of us in the class and we quickly became a tight-knit group both inside and outside of the classroom.

We were a veritable United Nations. Seema from India, Oneika from Jamaica, Nadia from Bosnia, Lani from the Philippines, Ricardo from Mexico, Fay from China, Luciana from Argentina, me from Canada. And, of course, Elena from Romania.

Elena was my constant traveling companion. We went to Hong Kong for spring break, rang in the New Year in the Philippines, and somehow managed to hike to the top of Mt. Fuji in freezing rain and driving wind.

When it comes to traveling, Elena and I are so similar you'd think we were separated at birth. We both agree the best way to see a new place is to walk 12 hours a day, several days in a row. We like to walk fast, weaving around the slow walkers clogging up the sidewalk. It's not that we're impatient or in a rush. We just like to walk fast. We also like to wake up early. We can be showered, dressed and ready to go in five minutes flat. We both hate shopping and refuse to spend time and money buying anything other than food and drinks while on vacation.

We are efficient and careful users of time, knowing we only have a limited amount of it. But we also like to stop for frequent snack breaks (okay, maybe that last one is just me).


Traveling on a tight budget is the biggest downside to being a student. Staying at a place with four stars, fluffy towels and free bathrobes was not an option. So we booked two beds in a hostel near the train station. My expectations were not high. When I think of hostels I think of a high school field trip gone haywire.

In my mind, hostels cater to the kind of clientele that likes to storm in and out of the room at all hours of the night, throw back vodka shots, chug beer through funnels, yell in the hallway, pee in the shower, vomit waterfalls from the top bunk, steal anything not nailed down, smoke in bed, throw garbage out the window, unleash bed bugs from dirty backpacks, and start violent fights that end with broken glass and smashed teeth.

This is what I steeled myself for en route to the hostel. Upon arrival, I took a deep breath, got ready to face my worst fears and pushed open the door to our shared room. But instead of being greeted by mayhem, I was greeted by silence. Elena, who arrived long before I did, was reading quietly on one of the beds. Two of our roommates were already fast asleep (it was just after 10 p.m. on Friday night). The third was wearing a long flannel nightgown buttoned up to her neck. She was sprawled out on one of the bottom bunks, scribbling furiously in her diary.

It was a pattern that would repeat itself every day for the next three days. Elena and I would leave the hostel before any of our roommates woke up and they were always asleep by the time we returned. Except for the woman in the flannel nightgown. All she did was write in her diary. Ironically, it turned out the person most likely to vomit waterfalls from the top bunk was me.


Elena was not only my travel companion but she was also my tour guide. Everywhere we went, she would read from a travel book on Rome written in Romanian. The book's accuracy was somewhat questionable. The book informed us that the Coliseum was built in the 1700s and it contained elevators that brought animals and gladiators up to the main stage. The book was also fond of stating the obvious. For example, there are a lot of Italian restaurants in Rome. Who knew?

We also learned that the locals don't drink cappuccinos after 10 a.m. If we tried to order one after lunch or dinner, we would expose ourselves as tourists. According to the Italians, a cappuccino is a morning drink and an espresso is an afternoon drink. According to me, a cappuccino is an any-time-of-day drink. The Italians and I will have to agree to disagree on this one.



We stood in line a lot. We lined up for three hours in the rain just to get inside the Vatican Museum. This was after spending one hour in the lineup we thought was for the museum but turned out to be for St. Peter's Basilica. It wasn't until we made it all the way to the front of the line that we realized our mistake.

We took a quick peek inside the basilica (if you've seen one Catholic church, you've seen them all. Although, admittedly, this one was a lot glitzier than the rest) and then headed back to the back of the line we should have been in in the first place. But by this time, the lineup for the Vatican Museum was two kilometers long. It stretched down the street, around the corner, down another street, around another corner, down yet another street and around yet another corner.


We also lined up for an hour to get inside the Coliseum. It was shorter than the Vatican lineup but it was much more annoying. Just as we were about to reach the ticket window, an older American couple appeared out of nowhere and cut in line ahead of us. A group of loud, obnoxious Spaniards started hurling insults and obscenities at the Americans trying to cut in line. I thought it was hypocritical of the Spaniards to harangue the Americans when they had spent the past hour chain smoking in line without giving a second thought to the people around them.

Elena and I decided let the Americans in line ahead of us. Partly because they were in their seventies. But mostly because letting the Americans jump the cue was a sneaky way to annoy the Spaniards who had been annoying us with their loud voices and cigarette smoke for the past hour.

Besides, I was happy enough to go along with the cultural stereotypes. If they were content to play the role of the arrogant Americans cheating their way to the front of the line then I was content to play the role of the passive Canadian letting them cut in line. Anything to avoid confrontation. Don't want to get into a fight, don't want to cause a scene, don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, don't want to take sides. You can take the girl out of Canada but you can't take the Canadian out of the girl.


Elena and I met a lot of Americans in Rome. Aside from the couple who cut in line, they were a very likable bunch. They were friendly, talkative and open. On the train back to the airport, I sat with three Americans from Kentucky -- a middle-aged mother, her teenage son and his 40-year-old uncle, Steve. Steve sat directly in from of me and introduced himself with a firm handshake and a hearty, "How ya doin'. Name's Steve. Where y'all from?"

I learned that they were a military family. Steve served in Desert Storm and his 19-year-old nephew -- a baby-faced boy with a buzz cut and a fuzzy blond mustache -- was shipping out to Afghanistan next week. A family trip across Europe was the boy's mom's idea. Their happiness made me sad. I couldn't stop thinking that this very alive, very young boy sitting right in front of me could be coming home in a coffin. For what?

It was the only sad note on a trip filled with so much laughter and fun. But this is the way it goes. People come and go. Friends move halfway around the world. Only the lucky ones get to see each other again.

So many beautiful things (excluding public toilets)

Every weekend, I make a point of taking in at least one tourist attraction. So far, I've spent an afternoon in Cologne, visited Bonn's botanical garden, hiked to a hilltop castle, seen a modern dance performance, spent a day in Dusseldorf, strolled along the Rhine River, checked out the Beethoven Museum, and walked through Konigswinter's wine region.

It's good to do these things in small doses. Setting aside a few hours on a Saturday to see the sights is better than spending the entire weekend rushing from museum to castle. But this has nothing to do with a preference for quality over quantity. This is all about a lack of public toilets in Germany.

I would love to spend more than three hours wandering around Bonn on a Saturday afternoon but my bladder won't let me. There are no free public toilets anywhere.

There are public washrooms in the train stations but these usually come with a one-Euro cover charge. Unless you limit your sightseeing to a one-kilometre radius around the train station, you'll be nowhere near a public toilet when the urge strikes. And don't make the mistake of thinking McDonald's is a toilet safe haven -- the one place where you don't have to buy anything to use the bathroom.

I made that rookie mistake in Dusseldorf. I had been walking up and down the same street five times desperately looking for the "WC" marked on the map (this was before I realized the "WC" symbol dotted all over the map didn't refer to the location of a "water closet" but to "wheelchair" access).

So I ducked into a McDonald's, where I was surprised to see a toilet attendant stationed outside the stalls. She sat on a chair beside a table with a small pile of coins on it. There were no signs but the message was clear -- pay up if you want to use the toilet.

I mean, I probably didn't have to pay but this woman was a professional and she knew how to play the guilt card. I was washing my hands in the sink when she jumped up and handed me a paper towel. It was a strategic move. I couldn't get a paper towel with my hands still occupied under the running faucet. She had anticipated my needs and provided a service (albeit a service I didn't want or need). My conscience wouldn't let me walk out of there without adding a couple of coins to the pile.

This wasn't a five-star hotel. This was a McDonald's. A place where homeless people and non-paying customers should be able to use the bathroom for free. I'm not opposed to paying to using the bathroom in general. Just not at McDonald's. Multi-billion dollar corporations should give something back to the community. Free public toilets is the least they can do.

So I limit my sightseeing to a few hours on the weekend. But no matter where I go or what I do, there is always one common theme -- a desperate need to use a bathroom and an inability to find one.

Toilet troubles aside, I have seen so many beautiful things on these little sightseeing trips. Trees wrapped in misty morning fog along the Rhine River. Frank Gehry buildings sparkling and shining in the afternoon sun in Dusseldorf. Trees blazing in the throes of autumn beauty in Bonn's botanical garden. Grapes growing under rocky mountains in Konigswinter.

I only stayed a few hours in each of these places. I would have stayed longer but I had to use the bathroom and there were no toilets in sight. This is the story the photos don't tell.

Ausfahrts and dinkelpops

I am ashamed to admit that after more than one month in Germany, I still can't speak a single word of German. Unless you count the words that are already embedded in the English language. Kindergarten, hamburger, doppelganger, lederhosen, schadenfreude, sauerkraut and strudel. That's about the extent of my not-so-wunderbar vocabulary.

It's not something I'm proud of. I feel anxious and exposed when someone tries to strike up a conversation with me. I feel like I'm being rude if I reply to them in English when they ask me a question in German. I get self-conscious if I place an order at a restaurant without attempting to do it in German. It's like I'm saying, "Yeah. I'm living in your country but I can't be bothered to learn your language. So I'm going to force you to speak my language."

It's not that I don't want to learn German. It's just easy to survive without it. Pretty much everyone here can speak English. And no one seems to mind making the switch when they realize I have no clue what they're saying. There's not a lot of motivation to break out of the English-speaking bubble.

Except every time I leave my apartment, I get all stressed out when someone tries to talk to me in German. So I figured it was time to master a few uber-essential phrases to ease my angst. I came up with a list of expressions I wanted to learn:

1. "Sorry" (because I always seem to be bumping into people);

2. "Excuse me" (because I always seem to be trying to squeeze past people);

3. "I can't speak German" (because there's no excuse to keep saying it in English);

4. "Three buns, please" (because I'm tired of the mime routine. I always order three buns at the bakery and I feel like an idiot when the woman behind the counter asks what I want and I silently hold up three fingers and point at the buns instead of just asking for them like a normal person).

Learning how to say "sorry" was easy enough. It turns out the German word for "sorry" is "sorry." Learning how to say "excuse me" involved too many tongue-tripping consonants. So I decided to use "sorry" for "excuse me" like the way we do in Canada. Two birds, one stone.

As for the more meaty phrases, Google Translate taught me how to say, "Ich kann nicht Deutsch sprechen" (I can't speak German). But no matter how many times I nail it in practice, I can never remember how to say it in real life.

Like when I was in line at the grocery store and the guy ahead of me turned around and blurted out a few sentences in German. I smiled, thinking maybe he was just making a comment about how long it was taking to reach the cash register. But he repeated it again. And again. I stood there desperately trying to pull out the German words from the deepest recesses of my brain. But my neurons were taking a nap. I wasn't going to be able to fake my way through this one by smiling and nodding. He tried one more time before I broke down and told him I couldn't speak German (in English, of course).

And, so, in perfect English he told me he was waiting for a friend to add a few more things to his cart and I was free to jump ahead of him. I thanked him in German because, well, I've got to start somewhere.

My first real victory was learning how order three rolls at the bakery ("Drei spitz Brotchen bitte"). This was easy because it was strictly mechanical. I just had to memorize the phrase, repeat it in my head 100 times on the way to the bakery, stand in front of the counter and spit it out like a robot. It worked perfectly.

Although the second time I tried this, I asked for three buns and only got two. I felt defeated. Until I returned home and found out the numbers two (zwei) and three (drei) sound very similar, especially if your pronunciation is as embarrassingly bad as mine is. (I'm too self-conscious to attempt the back-of-the-throat gargling sounds.)

I'm slowly picking up other words here and there. Every time I see an interesting word, I make a note of it and look it up later. Like this one.


There are ausfahrt signs everywhere. And, yes, it's pronounced exactly the way you think it's pronounced. But it doesn't mean what you think it does (it means "exit"). I'm sure Germans are tired of their ausfahrts being the butt of juvenile jokes so I'm going to leave it at that.

Another one of my new favourite words is "dinkelpops."


How adorable is that? Puffed wheat is such an uninspired description of the world's most delicious cereal (after Grape-Nuts, that is). Dinkelpops is exactly what they are. Cute with a little touch of naughtiness.

Ausfahrts and dinkelpops. I'm making progress one word at a time. At this rate, I'll probably be able to string an entire sentence together before I leave Germany.

My German may be terrible but bad German is a whole lot better than no German.