It's the edge of the world and all of western civilization

Got on board a westbound Airbus A340-600. Thundered through the autumnal sky, roaring over the still-extant floating ice of the north-west passage and above the mighty Rocky Mountains before touching down south of the city at San Francisco International on a comfortably warm evening in October. There was a light breeze coming off the bay as I stepped outside of the terminal and made my way to the "ride share app pick-up" section next to international departures. My driver Mo and his Ford Escape pulled up within moments and for the first time ever, I was ready to experience the California of my dreams.

Finally, after all these years it was happening. I'd made up my mind to make a new start, got a job with a company that captured by heart. We drove past palm trees and a whole lot of tech utopia-esque billboards -- Smart Toothpaste and Internet-connected Toilets and the like -- and soon the Golden Gate Bridge appeared in the distance. We passed the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium where people were lining up many levels deep to see the Arctic Monkeys. I arrived at my hotel with a cool wind in my hair, and the warm smell of colitas¹ rising up through the air. The <REDACTED> hotel welcomed me warmly and I dropped off my bag before heading out to explore the culinary experiences that SF and its reputation promised me.

SF is an amazing city. But in a bad state. The North Shore is beautiful, there are nice parks along the waterfront and great views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and the bay itself. The houses are probably worth a billion dollars each and there are nicely dressed families walking along the promenade enjoying the sun and the sea air. Closer to the centre of the city, there are many things, but two things most predominantly: (1) garbage; and (2) homeless people with either mental health problems, addiction problems, or both. And there are a whole lot of both (1) and (2). It's a crisis. There is shit on the street (not from little white dogs like in Paris -- human shit) and you feel like you're in a zombie movie. The people seem to walk the way zombies are depicted in The Walking Dead. They have a way of shuffling their feet very slowly with glazed eyes not focusing on anything. It's unfortunately a little bit frightening and it's a disaster not because it makes the city dirty and ugly and kind of scary to walk around in (though those are all true), but these people have no way to get out of this spiral. If you thought living in Munich or Vancouver was expensive, try San Fran. It is the most expensive city in the US (yes, including Manhattan) and the median price for a condo is more than 1.4 million dollars. There's no affordable housing and there seem to be no social programs (or not enough of them) to help these people who need them.

The other weird thing is how it all sits on top of each other. There are places in SF that are completely gentrified (like the amazing Patricia's Green which is -- as said -- amazing and a great example of what a city can look like when you take cars out of it, but gentrified in the worst sense of the word: people who aren't multi-millionaires are no longer permitted, essentially) but in the Tenderloin, for example, it's not like there's a "bad area". Instead, you walk down the street literally taking exaggerated steps to get over people sleeping in the street and then open the door into fashionable bar full of expensively-dressed people enjoying $30 cocktails. It's a two-tier society right here in North America (look at me being shocked about that) and it boggles the mind that this can happen in a place that's so rich. Just another way to survive, I guess.

Going back to the good, now: San Francisco is amazing if you have money (and flowers in your hair) and you love good food, coffee, drinks, etc. You are absolutely spoiled here as the number of options of different cuisines with high quality, the best coffee at seemingly every corner, and craft beer breweries and bars every three storefronts.

In contrast to the colitas that wafted up intermittently throughout San Francisco, Palo Alto seems to have a beautiful permanent smell that makes you feel like you're in a tropical forest (with a few highways thrown in for good measure). Some of the leaves are brown (though not all) and all around you is the smell of flowers, liquorice, pepper, and also some kind of "toasted" smell (that I understand is particular to the autumn). Walking through town feels to me like walking through a really nice botanical garden that someone built a city on top of. Remember Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon? Of course you do. Remember the end of the game when Roger Wilco brings the Two Guys from Andromeda (those folks I dig) to the Sierra Online headquarters?

Well good thing YouTube exists because you can find everything there. And there it is, just above. I hadn't thought about this game in years but somehow walking around here I immediately thought of this scene (and it might even be Washington State -- let's hope not) but it made me think of that. Weird. Here's a couple of real pictures of Palo Alto (though they don't really capture it...):

I can't explain it but I feel that Silicon Valley could really only have happened here. It's not just the weather (though that's part of it -- it never rains in California) but it's something about the geography. It feels like there's infinite possibility here with how comfortable it feels outside, how nice it looks, and the infinity of the nature preserves just South and East of tech's Mecca. Looking out the window from the backseat of a Lyft driver's car, you see foothills and mountains covered in cacti and what look to me, anyways, like "exotic" trees. I'm no botanist (duh), but I would describe these natural areas as deserts that have plants. Ha. I mean, there's a lot of vegetation so it's no desert, but there are large swaths of land with nothing and the plants and trees that you see feel "desert-y", let's say. I dunno.

I dreamed of coming here since I was maybe 14 years old. For a long time I thought it would be a dream to live here and then somehow (haha not so hard if you watch the news) I got completely turned off of the idea of ever wanting to live in the United States. My desire to want to come to California waned over the years and I felt pulled to more exotic, quote-unquote, locations for holiday and for living. Lifestyle -- but in a different sense than I had imagined before -- became more important and the "American way of life" (TM) and car supremacy and other things turned me off of this place.

It's hard to be really surprised by a place and normally people are disappointed or feel let down when they finally visit a place they've dreamed of visiting (cf. Paris Syndrome). Things can never live up to how much they've been pumped up in one's mind. Separate from being surprised or delighted, there's also the ability of a place to change your views on things. I think this can often happen -- most obviously by experiencing a different culture that shows you that what you thought was normal and 'standard' maybe isn't necessarily all that so -- but it normally sinks in over a protracted period of time and it's only when you look back that you realize "that changed me".

Well perhaps it's because I had no expectations but California did something pretty impressive. I'm not disappointed and I'm definitely not surprised. But a big change did happen. I would consider living here. Why not?



^{1. Literally. The relevant bit courtesy of https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1053/in-the-song-hotel-california-what-does-colitas-mean/: [...] in 1976, during the writing of the song Hotel California by Messrs. Henley and Frey, the word "colitas" was translated for them by their Mexican-American road manager as "little buds." ↩}

Last hours

Friday, 14:08 CET. Non-descript office building.

Camera pans to MAN, late-30's, shabbily dressed, a T-shirt with perhaps some kind of faded music group thereon, seated at a table with an ernest expression.

   Yes, sir.

Camera rotates at high speed to settle on FAT MAN, early-50's, even more shabbily dressed, wearing German open-toed SANDALS like an unbathed hippy in 1960's San Francisco, even ernester expression, anger swelling in his eyes, brow heavily furrowed, a single drop of sweat slowly dripping down his JOWL -- zoom to single bead slow-mo making its way down his DISGUSTING FACE.

   And if I ever see you around these parts again, I will break your <unintelligible> neck.

Camera tracks the MAN back to his DESK -- a white, modern but very cheap, slab of petroleum-wood alloy covered in haphazardly scattered papers with a keyboard, mouse, and two large computer screens. The MAN sits down and starts typing. He deletes some photos and some other personal documents. He logs into the GIBSON Q3000 MEGA DEEP M TERRAHERTZ BRAIN MAINFRAME CQ49-ER and does some other computer gibberish. He then shuts the computer OFF and gets up to say some GOODBYES.

Camera approches and pans up to a BEAUTIFUL WOMAN who looks a little annoyed to have been bothered.

   Yes?, she asks.

   Today is my last day.

   Do you work here?

MAN walks away and the camera shows the BEAUTIFUL WOMAN rolling her eyes and then -- incredulously!!! -- makes a kind of fake spitting motion but mistakenly (we imagine) some actual spittle comes out and flies on to the ground and it's pretty darn GROSS.

Camera cuts to a group of THREE GINORMOUS NERDS -- WE'RE TALKING UBER-GEEK-DWEEB-AND-SPAZZ KIND OF GUYS sitting around another CHEAP TABLE and they are arguing over which is the most powerful POKÉMON character. The MAN is awkwardly standing just outside of their little posse waiting for a break in the conversation presumably so he can say goodbye.

   Bianca Pokémon double-crossed Shauna Pokémon in scene 917 of the Famicom SE re-release and caused 10x damage on...

MAN cuts in

   Hey guys?

   Who do you like better? Bianca Pokémon or Shauna Pokémon?

   Umm... I guess Bianca?

   You're an idiot. We're glad you're leaving.

Camera tracks the MAN down the hallway to the KITCHEN. There is a SANTA CLAUS sitting at the BAR drinking a COCA COLA and smoking a MARLBORO CIGARETTE while talking on a knock-off SMARTPHONE. SANTA looks ANNOYED.

   Hey Santa?

   Hold on, Santa mumbles into the phone. What do you want?

   It's my last day. I'm just about to leave I guess. I wanted to say goodbye.

   Listen, Kid, Mrs. Claus found some texts that I sent to Twirley, and...

   Twirley?

   Ya, the elf, and, well, she's a little pissed and I've gotta start smoothing things over so I don't really have time for...

   Ok, no problem. See ya.

SANTA gives all his attention back to the phone.

   It was one Christmas Eve, Baby!

Camera cuts to the MAN in the elevator and zooms into him pressing 0. He stands back, crosses his arms, and the elevator doors close.

Fade to black.

---

It was something like that.

Effective Five Year Munich Anniversary Celebrations for Beginners

You can choose to believe it or not, but God's honest truth is that just six days ago marked the Pemulis Family's five year anniversary of living here in the capital of the Southern Europe of Germany. Wow how time flies (to be perfectly non-banal about the whole thing). I can't really remember much about events or feelings that I had that go back further than about month ago or so (on a good day), so I made liberal use of the GWMD archives to try to get a sense of how we were feeling around this time all those years ago and it seems that we haven't really achieved what we aimed to do in choosing to move here. Namely: learn German. You'd think that after spending five whole years living in a place that you would start being able to speak and at the very least understand the language, but somehow it's actually possible to get by with the absolute minimum (i.e. knowing how to buy pretzels and beer and just nodding whenever a question is asked of you). Oh well. We have had some good times though. Let's look back on a handful of those times, now...

We are just a few short weeks away from the most wonderful time of the year in Bavaria. The Oktoberfest Lauf, of course. We have been enthusiastic participants in this beer festival-inspired race 4 of the 5 years that we've been here (the only off year was when our lazy sister/sister-in-law with a name inspired by a tasty breakfast fish was here and we didn't have the energy to take the train up to the Schleiss [as I call the town of Obserschleissheim where the race takes place]). But we will be back this year (I hope) to defend our titles and perhaps use it as a springboard, if you will, to the Munich Half Marathon which I've also participated in a number of times (3, to be exact) which takes place at the end of October. Let's see.

This might be a horrifying revelation to some anonymous reader out there, but we actually came shockingly close to abandoning this beer garden paradise (recently named the most livable city in the world) nearly two years ago. In the end, of course, we didn't, but one thing that came up during that time is that while we managed to visit all 4 corners of the French homeland during only 18 short months of residency, we hadn't really explored Germany at all (other than the greater Bavarian state) in (at that time) three and a half years. One major omission was that neither of us had ever been to Berlin. Can you imagine? Anyways, as loyal readers of the blog you know that we rectified that ugly little oversight just this past summer and since it was such a gem, let's say, I might even be back in the very near future. As a Donald Trump tweet might imply, stay tuned!

Here's a new topic that five years in Germany somehow led me to: California (aka, the Promised Land). If you ever even spent on the order of around 3 seconds or so somewhere within a 200 mile radius of my vicinity when I was a 16 year-old young man, you would know all too well about my California Dream[in]. But despite visiting places from Brazil to China to Northern Sweden and beyond, I've still never made it to my teenage imagined paradise. Well, all that glitters isn't gold (I know you've heard that story told) and with time the shimmer and shine in my mind died down and although I finally had a path to achieve the California Dream, Cali's pull receded and faded away (more than burned out) from my desires. But it never quite fully died.

And so here's an announcement that most likely anyone reading this already knows but you know how they say that nothing's official till it's on the GWMD? After five fruitful fun-filled years at Microsoft, I will be hanging up my Surface Book and starting a new journey as an autonomous-driving car engineer for the good guys in the ride-hailing industry at Lyft Level 5 Labs Munich (recently named the most attractive start-up to work for! Don't you just love these arbitrary click-bait lists?). Yes, we will still be based in Munich but I will spend my first 10 days or so of work on the sun-drenched / fog-covered coast of California's Bay Area at Lyft's headquarters in San Francisco where I'll listen to Third Eye Blind (I guess) and drink Fernet (for sure). By the way, did you know that the worst hotel room in all of San Francisco costs something like ten thousand a night?

Recent Helga news includes the fact that she has now spent two full days as a student in French Kindergarten. Reports suggest that Day One was successful while Day Two was not. We will update these developments as they happen.

The Austrian Pinelands, or, as some prefer, the Pinelands of Austria, is presumably back to "normal" now after the Pemulis family bid adieu two and a half weeks ago. One of the perks of living just South of the town of Unterföhring (or I guess anywhere around here really) is the proximity to the fine country of Austria (speaking principally about the land, I mean). Our vacation to the Austrian Pinelands was very enjoyable. Helga especially enjoyed swimming in the little pool, the big pool, and the outdoors pool (which doesn't get a size designation because there's only one pool outside) and we especially enjoyed not having to cook or cleanup for an entire week. I also got to try out my brand new trail running shoes and I think that the high altitude mountain air did my rapidly aging body good.

What does the future hold for GrenobleWMD? The Pemulis Family? The city of Munich? Self-driving cars? How will Pemulis react when he first steps off the plane into the streets of San Francisco? Will he be overcome with a case of a strain of Paris Syndrome? Will Helga survive the daily stresses of French Kindergarten? Will her German friends abandon her due to her cosmopolitan ways? Will there be a no-deal Brexit? Stay tuned to find out...

Off we go to la mountains!

The No Borders Music Festival

Sandi and I have a goal (well, multiple goals, but just one of them I will describe here) in life to attend Ben Harper concerts in as many countries across the world as possible. Our first was in Canada when we'd only known each other a few weeks in the Fall of the year 2000 (or as we called it in the late 90's: "Y2K"). We then subsequently attended shows in France, Italy, and Germany. Two weekends ago, while officially the concert took place in Tarvisio, Italy, at the Fusine Lakes Natural Park, if one is being liberal with definitions, we added two additional countries to our list by attending Ben Harper's concert at the No Borders Music Festival which is contained in an area that touches the borders of Italy, Slovenia, and Austria (and our hotel was 10 minutes down the road in Slovenia so that must count).

The venue was rather incredible for a concert. Up in the mountains, the concertgoers were instructed to park at a large ski-jump complex (on "our" side of the border in Slovenia) where shuttle buses whisked us up and away (and over the border into Italy) into the mountains and the concert venue. By the way, did you know that you can ski jump in the summer?

The day started off sunny and warm. We arrived a few hours before the planned starting time and visited one of the many beer/sausage tents scattered around the venue (what is this? Bavaria?). As the fateful hour approached, we checked out the stage and seating area.

One last-minute espresso consumed, and we lined up to find our seats. The organizers had promised very specifically that the concert would begin on time. They were actually a little wrong because unlike all events -- especially including concerts -- that have ever happened in the history of Italy, it actually started about 3 minutes early. I believe they were very anxious to get things going as it didn't take a meteorologist to see that a storm was a brewing. Here is a picture a couple of minutes into the first song:

And here's how things looked quickly thereafter:

Despite the rain, however, the concert was a great success. Ben is as great of an entertainer as ever and he even gained a new young fan. I can't tell you how many times I've heard since that day "more Ben Harper concert!". I wonder where the next one will be...

The Duck House Needs Repainting

Every morning on the way to work I bike along the Praterinsel, an island on the Isar river next to Munich's Alpine Museum. In the summer, some friendly (/capitalistic) people (but not necessarily that capitalistic as you'll soon see) set up the Kulturstrand (the Culture Beach) on this island where a bunch of sand is brought in and dumped all around a big fountain, they put down some benches, lounge chairs, a stage is set up, a few huts for toilets, selling food and drinks, and manning the soundboard for the concerts, and people come 'round and have a good old time and sit back and enjoy the summer. I personally have enjoyed said Kulturstrand during this summer and others and it's always a nice sight to see in the late spring when the aforementioned friendly folks are putting down the boards to make the boardwalk around the sand and the big trucks are dumping that sand and the huts are being built and you think "Great! Summer is here!". One envisions warm evenings sitting around with friends drinking Münchner Hell and perhaps laying down a track or two on the keys (this is all pre-children, of course):

Many Moons Ago (what song am I playing? You get 10 guesses but only the first one counts)

But even post-pre-children, the Kulturstrand is a great place to hang out. There's of course the sand for digging and the fountain for sketchy-water-quality swimming/wading and, of course, one (or more) of those huts sells ice cream. And so, that great feeling I described of seeing the Kulturstrand being built up in the late spring is very similar in magnitude but exactly opposite in direction from the one I felt yesterday morning upon return from our summer vacation and my first day back to work. Nearly approaching the turn off to the Praterinsel which would take me right past the glorious urban beach setup where I would typically see the young summer job workers sweeping the sand from the boardwalks back onto the "beach" and cleaning up beer stains and performing other general prep tasks for the beach visitors that would be filling the spaces of the beach later in the day, I thought in my head "hey, since Joelle and Helga are still on holiday this week, they should maybe bike on down to the Kulturstrand this afternoon and then I'll meet them here after work for a refreshment and winding down session before heading home and attending to our domestic responsibilities of feeding, sheltering, and other things you have to do for children (whatever they might be). But as I got closer to the turn off I witnessed a troubling scene: a completely disassembled Kulturstrand where the previously assembled version existed just one week prior. This could only mean one thing: the summer is coming to an end...

Now, the summer is clearly not over yet. Yesterday was sunny with 30 degrees and today promises to be much of the same. Officially we still have exactly one more month to enjoy this most beautiful quarter of the calendar year, but the important symbolic deconstruction of the Kulturstrand is definitely hard on the psyche. So why do these not-so-capitalistic people destruct the imaginary beach so early? Do they hate making money? That place is jam-packed on a warm afternoon and evening and we (hopefully) have plenty more of those to come before the Americans and Australians start arriving for Oktoberfest in 31 days time. Perhaps they just want a vacation of their own too, or maybe (more likely) the city only grants them a permit until mid-August. Either way, it's sad to see it go. Again.

Berlin, Berlin, wir fahren nach Berlin

Making a triumphant return, regardless of where from, and where back to, is a grand occassion. But the circumstances surrounding it can of course intensify the experience to an important degree. I sit, in my desolate seat, no lights, no music, but the at sparsely interplaced and maybe opportune times majestic German landscape out my window, as I travel through this country from my home -- its alpine South -- to the trendy, history-filled, cold war-era espionage center of Europe, North of Berlin. Traveling by train is by far the best kind of traveling (save maybe bicycle in certain situations and maybe private jet though I have sadly little experience with the latter) and I am fortunate to have partaken in a healthy dose of it in the years that have come before this time. Traveling across France and into Catelonia or down through the alps into Italy and north-east from Paris to Brussels, Amsterdam, and beyond, I have experienced a beautiful and intrepid landscape that we rarely get to appreciate from high in the sky or the clogged motorways. Though we traveled this route last summer on our way to Copenhagen the autobahn offered us but three sights: (1) road; (2) cars; and, sometimes, (3) a river that was well hidden by the high concrete walls of the bridge towering above it. Today, now more than half-way to Berlin I've seen mountains, endless forests, lakes, and hillside towns with impressive old buildings that, summed up, present a country that has more to offer than we typically imagine. The ICE train can now get us from Munich to Berlin in under 4 hours. A marvel of technology and will, but I sure wouldn't mind if we were traveling a little more slowly.

The triumphant return of which I speak is the same return that seems to be mentioned every time I return these days and that is to the GWMD. Life moves quickly -- more quickly than ever before -- and finding this kind of time in this new kind of life is rare but important. Why complicate life by taking a difficult path if you cannot sit down to enjoy it? Or, more importantly, experience everything it has to offer. Seeing the country, traveling nearby, participating in what is out there. And to truly experience it, one must digest the experience and write about it. The man across the aisle from me is learning Russian on Duolingo. How about that. We have just arrived for a brief stop at the Erfurt central station right smack in the middle of the country. Looks like a charming place that I'll likely never set foot in. Too bad.

It's been nearly three weeks now since Sandi raced the 25 km distance in the Zugspitz Ultra Trail Challenge from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Grainau. We stayed in town the night before the race and drank beer and ate giant plates of pasta at the foot of a 3 km tall mountain with athletes from more than 30 different countries. During the race Hannah and I swam in the outdoor pool and went down a waterslide seventy-six billion times. No joke.

Last weekend was Canada Day. It was our fifth Canada Day in Germany and to celebrate we drove to a lake at the beginning of the alps to go camping. Camping here is not quite like camping in, say, Algonquin Park, but Hannah slept in a tent with us and we ate banana mixed with chocolate cooked on a BBQ. We played in the warm lake water and watched a swimming race that started and finished right at our campground.

I've been sent (well, I lobbied to be sent) to Berlin as a hired-gun / mercenary to fix all the problems in the Berlin office. I'm sure I will be welcomed with open arms being both an outsider who will somehow claim to know what they should be doing and how everything they have been doing is wrong. Tonight I will attend (my favourite) a Fourth of July party in a park where the temperature is projected to hit 34 degrees. Friday I will be joined by Sandi and Hannah who I'm sure will have an equally relaxing as mine train ride to meet me in Berlin around 9:30 in the evening. I hope that Hannah will appreciate the experience as much as I am.

Until next time, which I sincerely hope will be sooner rather than later.

Sicily

The long winding story of Sicily stretches all the way back through time immemorial to pre-history. Evidence of human occupation exists going at least as far back as 7-8000 BC in caves around present-day Palermo. More "recently" the 4th century BC (the neolithic Bronze Age) saw Proto-Celtic peoples settling the island. Sicily has gone through the most diverse set of conquerers and rulers that one could imagine over the years and each culture has left its imprint on and subtly (and sometimes not so) shifted the dynamic of this exotic land. From the Greeks (8th century BC) to the Romans (who turned the island into a massive grain-producing "factory" for the empire destroying the agricultural paradise of Sicily's fertile soil for literally hundreds of years), going into the early Middle Ages as the Germanic Vandals [side note: did the iconic punk rock band The Vandals name themselves after these barbarous people or after the more modern definition of someone who simply defaces property in their spare time? Enquiring minds want to know...] took over the island, the Muslim conquest of Sicily, the Vikings, the Normans, the Aragonese, the Spaniards, the Bourbons, and finally the long-sought-after unification of Italy, it starts to become clear that there are reasons why Sicilians have a worldview that is different -- and in Canada it might be seen as a "distinct society" of some sort -- from that of mainland Italy. Sicily's tumultuous history and in particular the long line of rulers who more often than not saw the island as one (or all) of either a trophy, a token to be traded, or a place to be exploited -- not to mention large swaths of the islands' complete destruction (on more than one occasion) at the hands of the mighty Etna -- has hardened the land and its people. In short, the Jewel of the Mediterranean has been through a lot over the years. And then, just when it seemed like things were finally starting to calm down a little, along came Hurricane Hannah, like a... well, like a hurricane...

We touched down on Sicily's East coast at the Catania Airport on a warm afternoon on the last day of March. After a very productive meeting with some friendly representatives from the International Air Transport Association, the European Aviation Safety Agency, and the Italian Federal Police (the Carabinieri), who fell just short of banning Hurricane Hannah and the rest of her family from commercial flights passing anywhere over or near EU airspace after a particularly sympathetic EASA agent felt pity when Sandi explained that much of Hurricane Hannah's embarrassingly un-German behaviour stemmed from her finding out that while we had been talking up the excitement of all of us wearing matching new shoes on holiday, when they arrived -- a set of handsome TOMS espadrilles -- Hurricane Hannah's were much too big for her and we therefore didn't pack them (which was the catalyst for much pandemonium to come) we were ultimately let off with nothing more than a warning, we made our way to the airport car rental queue.

While Sicily is very clearly a distinct society from the rest of Italy, there are of course many overlapping traits that remain. In Italy, on average, you can get a great coffee at most bars. Same thing in Sicily. In Italy, on average, anything official takes about ten times as long as it should. Same thing in Sicily. So, while we were happy to find ourselves second in line, minutes in the queue turned into hours which ultimately became days and then weeks [could be slightly exaggerated] and Sandi soon had to take Hurricane Hannah on a "cooling down" walk around the airport. As I heard distant gasps and other assorted exhortations from shocked holiday makers from far off in the airport terminal who were suffering from Hurricane Hannah's wrath, I finally made it to the front of the line where the young man asked me what number I had. "Number?" I asked politely but incredulously as though I had passed a beaten-up red "take a number please" machine on my way to the line, I obviously hadn't stopped to try to use it as it had the appearance of not having been in use since some time in the early 1930's and then hadn't fared well during the war years. Luckily, however, I went back to take a number (somehow one actually came out) after the man's assistant brought it back to life by giving the machine a thorough swat, and when he called out the next number it matched the one I had just been given. I signed seventy-three different official-looking papers, initialed about fifteen, and recited some weird latin verses with my hand on a bible, and just before sunset we were given the keys to a pretty cool, pretty giant SUV that would prove to be too wide for roughly 85% of the roads in Sicily.

Our first destination was the Agriturismo that we had booked approximately two months prior. I remember those days in early January quite well. Booking.com urgently reminded me every few minutes that Sicily is very popular during our requested dates, so we had better book something soon. Time is running out. Do not delay. Why haven't you booked yet? It seems like you don't really want to stay at a very nice place. Bad husband and father. Or at least one who doesn't.. OK! Under immense pressure that our dream farm B&B would soon be fully booked, we finally at what felt like the last possible moment made a reservation for what looked like a beautiful, relaxing quiet destination. And when we arrived and parked in the empty guest parking lot, it was! At least the first part... Our (first) Agriturismo sat close to the foot of the south-east side of Mount Etna, right in the middle of a large orange orchard. The buildings were old stone and really it was quite a nice looking place. The problem was that it wasn't all that quiet. At all. No, this particular Agriturismo (which I suppose I could have plainly seen if I'd paid closer attention to the Google Maps) sits right directly beside the one and only trans-Sicily highway. In our room with the windows and doors closed tight, if you had the air conditioner on high, Hannah's white noise machine was cranked up to 11, and you were hiding under the covers, it didn't seem THAT loud. But if you wanted to sit out in the orchard and spend the afternoon lazily picking, peeling, slicing (OK, so you can't lazily eat an orange) and finally eating fresh oranges in the mid-day sun, it was actually pretty difficult because all you could hear was the sound of Italian transport trucks flying by at 130+ km/h and I couldn't really get my heart rate down to anything below a 150. It's sad really. The place was just beautiful. They didn't lie or anything in any of the pictures, the food was delicious, the people were nice, but man was it ever loud.

We had a really nice dinner there on the first night, and then a 4+ hour Easter "lunch" the next day which involved unlimited wine and what seemed like never-ending courses of pretty delicious Sicilian food. But since I'm old now, becoming more curmudgeonly by the day, and steadily turning into a combination of the worst traits of each of my forebears, I just couldn't stand the noise. I felt a bit embarrassed telling them that we wanted to leave (and even blamed Hurricane Hannah to help save face) but I couldn't relax with all the noise. Luckily, Booking.com had been lying their faces off and when I called up another place that we had considered the guy said "yes, we have room" and when we got there and stayed with them for about a week, we were the only ones there for our entire visit. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's get back on track now to Monday morning when we ate another delicious Sicilian breakfast (a special Easter edition) and then checked-out and headed towards our new abode...

The new and improved Agriturismo was about a 30 minute drive south down the coast. This one also specialized in growing fruit on trees, but instead of oranges (actually it had a few blood orange trees and man those were delicious) it specialized in... LEMONS! First: obviously we were pretty worried that this place would be just as loud as the last one or some other thing would bother us and we'd just keep leaving places never finding that unattainable mythical perfection that is just over the horizon and realize that we've become those awful people who can never be happy anywhere and just as I was looking up the coordinates of the Al-Bustin Hotel as our potential next destination and considering changing my name to G.G, ... it was great! Quiet, close to the sea and a nice small town with a great bar for morning cappuccinos, and even a place to have a BBQ. We dropped off our things and headed towards Catania proper to meet up with a friend whom I hadn't seen in years.

In the heady days of 2003 I was a student activist on the campus of the University of Leeds fighting for the rights of the down-trodden and doing all in my power to bring down the capitalist oligarchy and disrupt its evil roots of power in all their forms. We traveled to London and shouted to the warmongers that you will not drop those bombs in our name! Rosalinda was a fellow socialist freedom fighter and we bonded over our hatred of what seemed back then like a bad US president (hahahaha oh the days of the early 2000's). Rosa was strong-willed and had the heart and mind of a person whose people had been colonized and bandied about amongst essentially all of the different conquerors that are known to history for the last 3000 years. Which makes sense because she's Sicilian. We met up with Rosalinda on the rough-and-tumble backstreets of Catania where she graciously offered to help keep us alive that little big longer by chauffeuring us around for the rest of the day. We started at a local eatery where we consumed 6 or 7 kilos of pasta each with a light Sicilian red wine to help down the pasta. Then it was time for dessert. After strolling through the Duomo Square -- home to the well-known 18th-century Elephant Fountain -- and (something for our Schmitter readers) spending a few moments awing at the grand Norman Cathedral dedicated to the patron saint and protector of the city, St. Agatha (!!!), we were led to a dessert bar where we were to try some Sicilian post-main-meal specialties. We ate frutta martorana, Pignolata of Messina, buccellato, cannoli, granita, cassata siciliana, and probably five or six other desserts that I either don't remember the names of or which I literally have no recollection of eating because my brain had turned off the memory-creating portion in an all-out rally-the-troops effort to produce enough insulin to keep me alive after consuming more sugar in a single sitting than I ever had before. Despite the near-death-experience, however, the sugar rush and tastiness was well worth the very brief trip to the emergency room.

The next day we packed up for a hiking excursion to Mount Etna. This day saw Hurricane Hannah at her most-deserving-of-the-name-Hurricane-Hannah. Mount Etna is the tallest active volcano in Europe and one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (since 2013) and a Hurricane Hannah Greatest Hits site since 2018. What do I say about this? It was awful. It was really quite a terrible experience and possibly constituted the worst few hours of our entire vacation (with possible exception from Sandi's perspective of those hours when she was non-stop vomiting from her food poisoning attack -- discussed infra). Of course part of Hurricane Hannah's hurricaneness probably came from the fact that she didn't get a nap and we didn't have much food with us up there on the volcano but that doesn't really take away any of the sting.

Let's see... we had some nice dinners, some great pizza, we drank Camparis with about-as-fresh-as-you-can-get lemons since just as we needed one for the drink we would step outside and pull it off the tree, we ate ice cream, we walked along the sea, we ate brioche and ice cream for breakfast as Sicilians really do, and a bunch of other cool stuff. But let's get to that food-borne illness part now!

Amongst many other things, Sicily is well-known for having a fine seafood cuisine. The area around Catania in particular is known for a grilled swordfish which we tasted a little of earlier in the week but we wanted a full-blown Sicilian seafood experience. We looked up some places that were nearby (side note: never trust Booking.com -- ever. I've already alluded to the fact that things were not "almost full" at all and even though it was Easter time, we were far from "high season". In fact, most of the restaurants were still closed for the winter break which was a little disappointing but there you have it) and found a place right on the water fairly close by that had some good ratings. The place was pretty empty (cf. side note just above) but we had planned to go all out and gosh darnit we'd come this far so we ordered the "catch of the day". Whatever those fishermen brought back on the boat during today's outing, we were going to down. First, however, we were offered a pretty substantial appetizer. And by pretty substantial I mean almost every type of seafood you can think of: octopus (cold octopus salad which amazingly Hurricane Hannah loved), shrimp, mussels, clams, and ... oysters! I decided not to eat my oyster. Why, you ask?

Since nothing has really happened until it's been blogged about, you might not actually know about one of my many brushes with food-borne-illness and/or death that coincided with trips and air travel. Perhaps you're familiar with my trip to China (minimally catalogued on this particular blog) where I began suffering from the onset of FBI just as we were making our way to the massive Shanghai airport. But what about our nearly decade-ago trip to Canada's shining West coast capital and the bacteria that we brought with us back East? This happened, of course, before the advent of GWMD blogging and so there's no way that anyone could know about it (right?). It was March 2011 (Ok, I just checked that date and I guess that's only like seven years ago) and Sandi and I were newly-weds eager to discover the vast country that claimed us as its intrepid children. To set the mood and to understand how staggeringly long ago that truly was (even if it wasn't quite a decade), let's examine a visual representation to begin with.

Depending on your powers of observation, you will notice a couple of important things that have changed over the years that are clearly reflected in the above images. First, I had a lot more hair nearly ten years ago, and second, I would add a lot more whisky to my morning coffee nowadays. I also have a much cooler winter jacket now.

But back to the matter at hand. We had visited some quote-cool-unquote oyster bar in some hip neighbourhood in Vancouver and eaten a bunch of oysters (naturally). The menu warned us that it was their legal duty to inform all customers that it's possible that eating uncooked food introduces an increased chance of developing symptoms and/or sickness due to FBI-causing bacteria. We scoffed at such a warning that was clearly aimed at those less experienced in exotic food consumption than we and spent the afternoon and early evening helping to do our part in causing the latest oceanic dead zone in our quickly dying planet. Sure enough, 48 hours later on our way back East we both started feeling a little queasy. I remember thinking "weird... I didn't think that I suffered from air sickness..." but then everything came together as I sprinted out of the airplane to the nearest airport bathroom to vomit (btw, have I written about this before? It really feels like déjà vu is happening... hmm...). Anyways, long story short: I got terrible food poisoning and haven't eaten an oyster since.

Back to Sicily now. I felt a bit stupid and maybe even kinda wimpy but the trade-off didn't seem worth it. Even if there was only a 0.001% chance of developing a bad reaction from consuming said oyster, in the end they just taste like salty water with some squishy something or other in there. I'd rather have a lolly pop. Sandi ate one though, and ultimately paid the price. Forty-eight hours later -- like clockwork -- she was in and out of the bathroom praying to the porcelain gods. I'll probably never eat an oyster ever again.

Saturday -- our last full day -- was BBQ day. Rosalinda obviously wasn't traumatized enough by her initial encounter with Hurricane Hannah and so made her way out to the countryside with an SUV full of Sicilian BBQ ingredients. Sandi was still a little under the weather (i.e. she stayed in bed for most of the BBQ) but Hurricane Hannah and I started the day with a trip to our favourite cappuccino bar and to the local grocery store to buy some charcoals and other essentials. Because taking Hurricane Hannah anywhere is -- to put it politely -- a wee bit of an ordeal, we arrived back to the lemon grove far later than we had initially planned and Rosa-Sicilia (actually no one has ever called her that but whatever) was already there waiting for us at the gate. But no hard feelings and all that and we headed down the excruciatingly narrow driveway to the agriturismo-proper and started setting up the BBQ. The first thing -- of course -- is to de-cork the Mount Etna wine and light the fire. You then lean back with your glass of wine and relax while you let the coals wa... and, Hurricane Hannah just fell off the bench that she was climbing on that I had told her ninety-six thousand times to stop climbing on cause she could fall off and there's literally blood everywhere. Hurricane Hannah's mouth and surrounding area are a crimson bloody mess. I am, as you might imagine, not as relaxed as I imagined I might be a few short moments ago and I ask her to spit so we can assess the damage. About a litre (conservative estimate) of blood comes out but thankfully it turns out that she just cut her lip open and there's nothing too serious (that will wait until a few days after we return home and she breaks half of her front tooth off in the backyard, but that's another story). After a fortnight of crying and wet cloth application things calm down a bit and we finally get to the cooking.

Rosalinda is a kind and generous Sicilian. Emphasis on the generous as she brought enough steak, polpetta, and sausage to feed a small Aragonese army. With Sandi sidelined by a bad oyster, this monumental feast/task was left to just three of us: Rosa, me, and Hurricane Hannah. I swear she cooked 10 steaks if it was one, and the polpetta -- cooked between lemon tree leaves -- were not only delicious but almost endless. The sausage was the product of some kind of generations-old secret Sicilian recipe, the only problem with said recipe being that apparently you can only create it for a "serves 50" set-up. Luckily I'm such a terrible host that all we supplied was a bottle of Campari and a zucchini and so instead of having enough food for 1000 we only had enough for about 999. Nevertheless, we were up for the challenge! On certain days (cf. Mount Etna hiking day) Hurricane Hannah decides that nothing is good enough for her particular palette (even things that she's devoured before), whereas on other days, when the wind is just right, and the stars have aligned, she just goes to town... this was one of those days. Let me just say that it's a small miracle that Hurricane Hannah is still alive because she consumed more meat on that fateful BBQ day than many mere mortals consume in an entire lifetime. She ate steaks (plural) and polpette (I guess that's the plural?) and sausagess (double-plural -- get it?) and even some of my measly grilled zucchini (no Campari though). In the end we finished it all and even the Sicilian BBQ Queen of the Island herself was impressed. "Bellissima!" Hurricane Hannah exclaimed at the tastiness and plentifulness of the food.

After a long afternoon and early evening, Rosa left us to our own devices and we began to prepare for our 8 AM flight the following morning. We had some hiccups along the way and Hurricane Hannah was going through a difficult period in her life, but Sicily truly was a magical place that I can't wait to return to. We experienced a lot but only -- to truly bring in a well-used but well-fitting cliché -- scratched the surface (ugh.. barf..) of the mystical experience of this blah blah blah really nice place.

tl;dr*: Sicily has a lot of history, it's different from mainland Italy, Hurricane Hannah was difficult, Sandi got sick, Rosalinda cooked us a lot of food, Hurricane Hannah ate most of it.

* tl;dr (for those who aren't of the Internet generation) means "too long; didn't read" and is a summary often used in forums for long responses for people who don't feel like reading such a long response.

** PSA (Public Service Announcement):

I had written another version of this blogpost (lost to the aether forever) before my computer crashed and I hadn't saved it (well, I had, but about 2 hours before) and so I lost almost this whole story completely. So what you read above is not the original but a poor imitation of something somewhat akin to the original. So sad... Oh ya, and so the PSA part of this message is: SESO (Save Early, Save Often). Ciao!

Blogging to you *live* from the city that started it all

[note: this isn't technically coming to you live from the city that started it all because while I did indeed start this post while I was in Grenoble, I didn't finish it until several days after I left. Oh well, good enough.]

Well it's great to be back. Grenoble is just such a great city, let me tell you. This old trope has been carted out here in front of you folks so many times but it needs to be said again: in Grenoble, as Stendhal (at least) once said, there is a mountain at the end of every street. It's really true. Well, not fully literally in every single sense. There are definitely some roads where you walk down and the road indeed ends but you're not at a mountain -- you're at a café or a shopping mall or one of those awful Nespresso super stores where even though they just sell miniature capsules with pre-ground coffee that are really pulling their weight in destroying our planet and livelihood with their tons and tons of needless trash piling up day after day they somehow need a gigantic store of probably 500 square meters or so. I presume it's for storing all those big George Clooney posters. But in general, no matter where you look, you can see mountains as far as the eye can see. It's awesome.

Right??? I'm here in "the Greno" as we once liked to call it for a few reasons (well I'm not sure about the reasons that we call/called it "the Greno" but I mean I'm here for some reasons of which I'm about to enumerate presently...). The main reason is because I love it and there was an excuse (actually a couple) to be here. The excuses are that I'm attending the 2018 European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR is the cool way to say it) and I will be giving a talk at my old workplace, the Xerox Research Center Europe (XRCE) -- which is now actually known as "Naver Labs Europe" after the Korean Internet company Naver purchased the lab last year. As an interesting side note, this is my second ECIR and the first one that I attended was also where I had my first conference paper accepted and which I presented at the conference in 2011 when it was in Dublin. How about that ("An Iterative Approach to Text Segmentation" available where all good papers are downloaded: here).

Note for the timeline-confused: the narrative picks up here now that a couple of weeks have passed and I'm no longer in Grenoble). The talk at Naver was good! It was a bit funny that there were so many of the same people still there, but it was also nice. And the place is just as easy on the eyes as it always was:

A beaut! Yes, that is the famous Chateau de Maupertuis where I once worked. My actual job. Cool beans yo. Here is an artist's rendition of the building where I currently work (more or less accurate):

So Grenoble was great, seeing friends was fun, giving the talk was nice, all good. Well, it wasn't all good; I had a cold most of the time and the trip was a bit short, but we can't have it all I suppose. Actually, the worst part was that I was there for 5 days and I didn't get to go cycling. THAT, my friends, is where Grenoble really shines. I would have loved to do the hour-long climb up to Lans-en-Vercors or headed down the highway to tackle the Alpe d'Huez or any other of the amazing cycling routes around here, but alas time was limited.

Another insane part of Grenoble that I realized this time but never would have even thought about when we lived there before is the housing prices. Good golly Grenoble is cheap! As is the norm (for some reason) in French cities, there are agences immobilières on essentially every street every few buildings. I'd conservatively estimate that 1 in 4 businesses are agences immobilières and they put up ads for houses and apartments and what not in the windows. This was just eye-opening to the extreme. You can buy a beautiful 3-bedroom house with a swimming pool on the side of the mountain for the cost of our crappy apartment and have enough left over to buy a Porsche each to race down said mountain. You could, if you preferred, buy essentially 3 city-centre luxury apartments in Grenoble for the same price as our non-city-centre non-luxury Munich abode. It seems basically that the prices there are a little cheaper than 1/3 of what you would get here. Insanity. Now, the salaries are a little lower in France. BUT, if your salary is 1/2 but your house costs 1/3, you still come out the other side a little better off, right? Let's see...

Instagram ruined blogging

You've probably seen it all on the Instagram, but here is a classic blog post for you old school folks who choose to conscientiously (or otherwise) eschew the modern world of social media.

Pemulis's Birthday Weekend Extravaganza (TM) started Friday evening with a well-attended mystery wine party. 10 bottles of the finest wines from around the world, shrouded in the secrecy of torn-out pieces of draft graph paper. Taste them all, predict their origin, and win phenomenal prizes. Even Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's vineyard Miraval made an appearance in the grand competition.

Following a night of partying, Helga couldn't start the day until she'd had her morning cappuccino. If you even try talking to her before she's gone through this important breakfast ritual, you're in big trouble.

Being Pemulis's Actual Birthday (TM), he had to start the day with the famous Bauer Frühstück.

Then it was off to the Erstings Familie store for Helga to play with the giant bead toy thing.

Finally, the big night arrived: the Pemulis's Birthday BBQ Dinner (TM). Helga's best friend Anonymous Child came over and they did the actions for The Wheels on the Bus for about 3.5 hours. Pemulis BBQed while he and his friend Anonymous Adult drank Starkbiers in the back yard putting on their own private Starkbierfest.

Sunday morning the party continued as the heroes headed out on the town to the St. Patrick's Day Parade (only 6 days prior to the actual St. Patrick's Day).

Following an intense and tiring bout of Irish Flag Waving, we all settled down for some much-needed Kimchi and other assorted Korean food.

The End.