Helga's Back

 Hello!  It is I, Helga.  I have not for a long time added to the blog of my father, so I would like to do this.  I am, of course, fluent in French and German (I also have a smattering of Italian), but my English is a little, how you say it, “rusty,” so I will use this opportunity to practice my English.

What is new in my family?  Well, the most vexing question of today is this: Does my dad look like a famous professor at Harvard, where students go to become incredibly wealthy internet entrepreneurs (this means in English “people who start their own business and then buy up everyone else’s business”), or does he look like a graduate of the University of Guelph, where students go to become knowledgeable about fertilizers and husbandry?  Many of our relatives have “weighed in” (metaphysically speaking) to this debate.  I don’t really care because in my future career as dancer/supermodel/Jeopardy contestant, it will only be important for my dad to look like me.  You be the judge: 

Looks like my dad?  I don’t think so.

My dad looks as good as me?  For sure!

 

Heinrich, stop biting!  It is not seemly for future dancers/supermodels/Jeopardy contestants to have bite marks on their otherwise flawless skin.  And get a haircut!  I have had my hair cut several times and it just keeps growing back.  You will not lose your hair like our father did because he did not get the right genes, which were mistakenly given to our Uncle Tom.

What else is new?  Well, I used to want to be a princess but since my grandmère Lisa has been reading to me about the Princess in Black, I have decided that being a princess is way too much work.  Always with the monsters that eat the goats!  Why does she not move to a safer neighborhood, like my cousin Zoe and my cousin Maya, who are moving to Oakridge?  There are very few monsters in Oakridge, outside of the ones who attend Oakridge Secondary School.  And the Princess in Black has to ride on a horse.  In Germany we have Audis and Mercedes and BMWs (not Volkswagens—those are for the serfs); we do not ride on horses.

In my class at school, I am often mistaken for American.  This is more horrible than being on a horse.  Everyone knows that Americans are crazy and virus-ridden.  (This does not mean that they ride on the viruses like on the horses.  English is a weird language.)  Every night I am made to promise my parents not to move to America when I am a famous dancer/supermodel/Jeopardy contestant.  There are monsters in America.  Who would ever move there?  Better that Heinrich bites me than that I move to America.  Perhaps I will move to Oakridge, where my cousin Zoe and my cousin Maya are going.  I would have a lot to teach them about being a dancer or supermodel, but not a Jeopardy contestant because I don’t need that kind of competition.

Grandpère Mike says that I should not be a “smart aleck” because then people will not like me so much.  However, being a smart aleck will be useful when I am bantering with Ken Jennings after he replaces Alex.  Also, it will make me a very good host of Der Schwächste fliegt!  I can use my smart aleck look and say, “Da wollen wir doch mal sehen, wer unsere kostbare Studioluft lang genug weggeatmet hat!”  I will wear the Princess in Black outfit and instead of chasing monsters I will chase the Schwächste off the stage.  What fun, is it not so?  (Excuse my French.)

 

Der Schwächste fliegt! 

What a year

It's Sunday, October 18th, 2020. Pemulis lives in Munich with his wife Joelle and two small children Helga and Heinrich. Twenty one years ago to the day (or so) Pemulis was eighteen years old and wheels up on Air Canada XYZ non-stop to Paris. Bill Clinton had more than a year remaining in his second term. The world was on edge awaiting the Y2K crisis. And who could have imagined two decades ahead and the arc of history that would transpire. Not this dude.

In the intervening years Pemulis returned to Paris a half dozen times or so, one time "hitchhiking" from Leeds "for charity", another with Joelle taking advantage of the early 2000's hedonism of 10₤ EasyJet flights, and another with Joelle and her family on a summertime train trip to the Big City from deep in the provinces (aka Grenoble). It's funny this awe that a city can possess; Joelle doesn't seem to feel that same attraction to the City of Lights but Pemulis sure does. If she felt a little softer on the subject we very well might be living there now (well, the Gilets Jaunes and the burned out cars and the crime and all that are kind of a drag and a stirring in the heart doesn't necessarily make for the number one reason to live in a place but whatever). But I digress.

Tying together the above-mentioned arc, another propitious event took place on this date just two years ago today. For on October 18th, 2018, Pemulis embarked on a new career as a soldier on the front lines in the ongoing holy war against cars. Or at least the war on human beings driving them. There have been highs and lows in the time between then and now, but as the wise Swedes Axwell, Steve Angello, and Sebastian Ingrosso (aka Swedish House Mafia) reassured me, besides to not worry not worry child, Heaven has a plan for me.

And so it was that last week (or so) Faceless Multinational Transportation Company X masquerading -- or "branding itself" -- as Friendly Progressive Transportation Company Y made the unsurprising decision to close the Munich office. This does not mean that Pemulis is out of work; rather, it means that he will continue, for now, pushing digital paper from the Ikea patio furniture (the Askholmen to be precise) not from a modern office in Munich's downtown core, but from his daughter Helga's bedroom for the foreseeable future.

So status quo, more or less. But symbolically? Perhaps something more, and perhaps just the push that Pemulis and family need to take the next step.

What might that step be? Well, theoretically one could live anywhere when one's office is your own home.

Boy are there options. Now options are, generally speaking, an objectively good thing. An Instagram Post once told me something along the lines of "wealth is not being rich, it's being free, and being free is having options". But then if the option of not having to choose is available then one might justly choose said option and that would be just as free as having more options, if you get my drift.

It would be great if little Helga and little Heinrich could keep up their language skills. Moving to the mountains in BC would be all English all the time; moving to the mountains in the Allgäu in the Bavarian Alps would be all German (and perhaps some Bayerisch) all the time; moving to Paris (remember the first two paragraphs?) would be good for some French. Munich has German and a great French school. What about a return to the Capital of the Alps? Shouldn't I at least learn German before I move away? To be fair, we've only lived here seven years so far...

The Covid-19 Biergarten Experience, redux

About 16 weeks ago (or so), the lockdowns were lifted and we experienced our first Covid-19 Biergarten Experience. A lot has changed since then, but a lot has also stayed the same: masks upon entering, fill out the form indicating the details of your next of kin, drink 5 more beers than usual to forget for just one evening the world that we somehow currently live in, the usual...

It was your typical Corona Sunday in Bayern and the family made a short trip to the local Beer Garden for a much-needed Bavarian dinner fix. The sun sat low in the sky on a warm still-clinging-to-summer evening. By this point in 2020 the children had lost all semblance of social skills, connection to reality, and ability to cope with anything, and the adults were not any better. We ran into some acquaintances who were entering the Garden at the coincidental same time as Pemulis & Co. and much like a hilarious sitcom episode re-running on Netflix the acquaintances asked us if we would like to join their table; as in the TV show, Mrs. Pemulis tried as she might to silently show her extreme disapproval of the idea but following the perfectly honed over time formula, Mr. Pemulis goofily accepted the invitation happily and prepared the audience for an evening full of laughs for some and pain for many others.

The first (and probably most severe) disaster happened when Pemulis ordered a cold, fresh, delicious Weißbier but was instead delivered what the good Bavarians refer to as a "Russ": Weißbier mixed with sparkling lemonade. Now, I'm all for a good Radler (sparkling lemonade with Helles) on a hot mid-morning bike ride, but sitting in a beer garden on a Sunday evening sparkling lemonading down a perfectly good beer for no reason other than to upset a customer? Well, I never...

When Helga disappeared the first five minutes were really quite lovely. It's easy to all of a sudden get lost in a moment when you happen to be enjoying it and are not busy having stress take over your body and doing whatever can be done to keep the temperature of your blood below the ignition point and realizing that Hey! it can actually be relaxing sitting around having dinner with your family but then things come crashing down and it quickly becomes clear that the only reason things seem OK is that your child is nowhere to be found.

Don't worry she was eventually found behind a tree where she had attempted to pee I guess (hopefully) on the ground but actually peed all over herself. Par for the course and all that.

Heinrich had a small cold which developed the previous week at Krippe (pronounced "KRI-PUH" and which means DAYCARE) that was basically completely gone by the time we arrived at our allegedly relaxing Sunday evening outing. The acquaintances were also sitting with some of their acquaintances and Joelle sat down with Heinrich on her lap next to a man from this latter group and he asked how serious we were about this whole Corona thing and if it was OK if they sat next to one another. Joelle told him that she should warn everybody that Heinrich was a little bit sick because of Krippe but the man didn't hear Krippe he heard Grippe (pronounced "GRI-PUH") which sounds really quite close to Krippe but instead means influenza. Surprisingly he got up very quickly and made one of the most disgusted faces I've ever seen. Quite something, really. Somebody explained that Joelle had said Krippe, not Grippe, and things continued as they would but in some ways the atmosphere was never really quite the same. Pemulis ordered another beer and made sure they didn't dilute it with Sprite.

Then the Biergarten people lit the Tiki Torches. Luckily it turns out that Tiki Torches are only a White Supremacist thing in the US and they were just a nice looking way to light up the beer garden once it got dark. Unluckily, however, it turns out that kids just love fire. We left shortly thereafter.

All in all another enthralling Covid-19 Biergarten Experience. 8 / 10. Would go again.

Urban Arrowing and then Disaster

You might as well just call us Copenhageners. We are now officially a cargo bike family. It is pretty rad. It was the heady days of Summer 2020 and though we were still right in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic we were doing our darndest to adapt to the New Normal and it was high time that we upgraded our family transportation options. Despite my long-standing proponent nature toward the virtues of public transit, powers beyond our control had obviously pushed that option further down the list of things one has any desire to participate in due to not wanting to die and/or spread disease. With two small children instead of just one we found ourselves landlocked so to speak and somewhat sequestered to a more-or-less 5 km radius surrounding our abode if we wanted all to participate in any kind of outing. One option would have been the ever-dependable automobile. I looked at prices for the quite handsome Porsche Panamera, however, and -- because if I'm going to buy a car that is the car I'm going to buy -- moved on to the next option on the list. And that option was a family cargo bike. Not just any cargo bike, of course. The Porsche Panamera of cargo bikes: the Urban Arrow Family.

Yes, it's a beautiful transportation machine. It's as good as it gets for a Copenhagener, IMO. And we were embracing the Dutch Life wholeheartedly. We dove in with both feet (or whatever you say). We went to the Isar, we headed towards the mountains, we were embracing life. And then, Heinrich took a giant bite out of the side of the bucket, and we came crashing back down to Earth.

Is this the new normal?

Welcome to Summer 2020: home of the new normal. I'm surprised that there are people who -- I think anyway -- are able to act like nothing is any different and life continues as normal. What a crazy trip. I feel like life is on hold. We can kind of do a lot of the things that we're used to doing and that we want to do, but every now and then there is some big reminder that things are more than a little weird right now.

Helga starts farm camp on Monday. Ah the classic list outlining for parents what their kid needs to bring on the first day of camp. Sunscreen, rain boots, 2 face masks that fully cover the mouth and nose, a hat, a water bottle, antibacterial wipes, rain clothes, and plenty of disinfecting hand sanitizer.

We are hoping to go on a holiday to Italy next month. I found one hotel that looked promising. They even outlined their new special procedures: you don't have to wear a mask when you're at your table eating, but of course when you get up to go to the buffet you do. And you don't serve yourself. There is now a glass partition between you and the food and you ask the staff -- who wear full face protection -- to serve you what you would like. And the pool is open! Using a "special anti-viral form of chlorine" (???).

We bought (well, ordered) a cargo bike recently. It is an Urban Arrow Family and it is mad wack. But to try it out and fill out the forms choosing all of the accessories which you need and which bring the total price to greater than what we paid for our first car, we had to wait in a line outside as only one group / family / whatever in the store at a time and of course you have to be wearing a mask the whole time.

But once it arrives it is going to be sweet!

Österreich und Corona

This past weekend the Pemulis family left Munich for the first time in 5 months. We drove deep into the alpine mountains of Salzburger Land in Austria where we had rented a cottage for a 4-night getaway. The cottage sat at approximately 1400 metres above sea level in a small town surrounding an alpine lake called the Zauchensee.

The trip got started as I made my first use of public transportation since March to head to the north of the city and pick up our rental car. As somehow seems to be rather common (and which you wouldn't expect in Europe -- let alone Munich) I was led to a Ford station wagon. It was pretty sweet with all the standard cool stuff you expect nowadays like rear camera, radar alerts, integrated navigation system, etc., but often ending up with a Ford when renting a car in Germany feels a little weird.

I successfully manoeuvred the shiny black estate car toward the south side of Munich and before heading home I had a quick stop to make at the local baby store where we had on the previous day purchased a very expensive child seat. The man (I should say boy actually) installed the seat in our car and I was ready to head home to start packing up the car. First, however, I experienced a very authentic Munich Moment when leaving the parking lot of Kinnings Baby: besides my rented Ford, there were 5 other cars in the parking lot. 3 Audis -- all station wagon A6s, and 2 Porsches -- a Panamera and a Cayenne. So clearly this was one of the "common" baby stores...

Over the next 6 or 7 hours (approximately) we packed up the car to get ready to go. Somehow this takes longer every single time we go anywhere. But finally, after a lot of stress and struggling, and tears and sweat, we were all loaded up and off we went! One nice breakthrough of this car trip (both out and back) is that Heinrich was happy in the car! He didn't cry at all and he slept a little in both directions. This is a huge development as with every single other car trip (including as recently as February when we were in Spain) he would scream at the top of his lungs for the duration of the ride. This was, as you might imagine, less than ideal. Spoiler Alert: while he learned to be happy in the car, he is further than ever from learning how to sleep.

We arrived at the cottage quite late in the day and of course we had an original plan of grocery shopping in the nearby town after arriving but upon arrival the grocery store was already closed. Since there was no food in the cottage, Helga and I headed down the hill to town to get a pizza (or 4) from the local pizzeria. Interesting that while in Germany there are strict regulations about mask-wearing, in Austria no one was wearing masks in the grocery store (which I went to the next morning) or in the restaurant. While of course here in Germany you don't wear a mask if you're sitting at your table (you have to eat after all), all of the employees are doing so at all times. Here it was as if Corona didn't exist. It was almost strange in its semblance of normality. Anyways, we paid for the pizza and headed the 10 km back up the hill to our cottage for a traditional Austrian dinner: take-out pizza.

I will spare the details of the night as it was the same as at home and repeated each of the four nights that we were there: Heinrich not really sleeping at all and screaming and yelling as loud as he could for a good portion of the night. Fun times. In other unfortunate news Helga had caught a cold (it did take 3 weeks of being at Kindergarten for it to happen though) and so she wasn't sleeping that great either -- but nowhere even close to in the same universe as the disaster that her younger brother represents during the nights.

One of the highlights of the area where we were staying was the high quality hiking and trail running. We went for a couple of family hikes

and both Joelle and I got to each do a couple of epic trail runs covering quite a few hundred metres of elevation gain.

On Sunday we took the chair lift up a few hundred metres to explore the mountain a little more. Another funny thing about the regulations here is this: as I mentioned previously there are no requirements for masks in stores or restaurants. However, for the open air chair lift, with only our family members on board, masks were required for everyone aged 6 and above. Weird.

But the trip and wearing the required masks was worth it because up high on the mountain it was really nice, we had some nice lunch (beer for mom and dad and ice cream for Helga), and there was a big Spielplatz.

All in all it was a nice short vacation and great to get out of the city for the first time in a very long time. We look forward to our next excursion to the mountains... coming soon!

The Covid-19 Biergarten Experience (TM)

In this brave new world we need to adapt or die (so to speak) and eventually life must go on. If you step back and think about it for more than two seconds it's really quite astonishing that this is "a thing" but it is and so we accept that there has to be a balance found between keeping people alive and the other very important thing of companies continuing to make money. And so there's a push from politicians / businesses against the push from public health experts about when and how much to open up economies and societies and whatever else and I have to admit that people also need to be able to do things that make them human like socialize so it's not all just greedy business owners. But, in doing these once-normal things, we can't just jump right back into how things were before (though unfortunately many will see the opening up of life as we knew it to mean exactly life as we knew it and put all of us in danger but that's another story I suppose). We have to adapt and to participate in things like, you know, living, we have to approach it quite differently. Restaurants can now open here in Germany but tables have to be some very large distance apart and everyone has to wear masks (except when they're eating of course), etc. And then there's the ever-so-important part of Bavarian social and family life: the Biergarten...

The Biergarten / "Beer Garden" is -- not joking -- like really important in Bayern. It's not the roped-off licensed area for over-19's at outdoor festivals like in North America. It is where you go on Sunday with your family and friends. A beer garden isn't really a beer garden without a playground for children and, unlike in a restaurant, you sit wherever there's room and it's not weird at all to share tables. You're supposed to. You have to. It is all very informal, very low-stress, and very relaxing. But not so much in the Covid-19 times...

To research this story, on a recent unfortunately rather blustery day -- a Sunday, in fact -- I visited a popular local Biergarten with both family and friends. The very first thing that you notice that is now different than before is that when I said above that the Biergarten is not what they often call the "beer garden" in North America, one of the many aspects making it not that kind of beer garden is its openness; there is almost never any kind of specific single entrance or exit and there are definitely not gates or barriers or something of the sort to clearly delineate and enforce what the confines of the Biergarten are and are not. Well, not anymore. The Biergarten was roped off with a single entry point and a single exit. Fine. But related to these people funnelling devices is a new requirement which makes sure that you do not forget that you are living in the time of Corona. There is a long table with stacks of paper forms and some pens. It looks very much like the registration area at a small running race where you can sign up the day of the race but you first have to fill out a form and then pay your entry fee. Here, however, you must write down the name, address, and phone number of your entire party as a form of analog contact tracing. This is the primitive version of what Apple and Google are trying to do with mobile phones and what China is probably doing by Satellite and Artificial Intelligence. The idea is that if anyone who was at the Biergarten on that day eventually gets Covid-19, then everyone who was also there will get a call saying you had better quarantine yourself and you had better get tested. Now I'm not 100% sure how this information gets back to the Biergarten people. Like I'm not sure if it's voluntary on the person who gets sick to remember they were there two weeks ago and to call the place up and say "hey I was there two Sundays ago -- can you call all those people?". I sure hope not because if I got sick with Coronavirus I think the last thing on my mind would be "hey I better call that Biergarten where I was a couple of weeks ago before they hook me up to this ventilator"...

On the way through the entryway you have to wear a mask. When you go up to buy your beer (only bottles except they'll give you a glass for Weißbier because drinking Weißbier out of the bottle would be unthinkable for a German, Corona or no Corona) you also have to wear a mask. When you are sitting at your table (tables are now all spaced nicely far apart) you do not need to wear your mask. When you arrive at a table there is a small laminated card saying that this table is safe to sit at because it has been disinfected. When you leave the Biergarten you must bring that card with you on the way out so that people know your former table is now contaminated. They will then sanitize the table and put a brand new card back on so that the cycle may repeat itself.

All in all the visit was pleasant. While we probably wouldn't have chosen by ourselves to let Helga go play in the Spielplatz, it may have been therapeutic to have that outside push by the anonymous parents of the child she really wanted to go play with and for whom playing in the playground was clearly no problem at all. And it was definitely therapeutic for Helga (as long as she doesn't get Corona as a result). She needed that freedom and social interaction and for a brief moment in time she almost looked like a kid enjoying life and living in simpler times. Perhaps we can look forward to one day experiencing more than just a moment.