The culture is lit and I've had a ball

Working in the computer industry you would think that things like this wouldn't happen to me. Or at least that they wouldn't happen as often as they do. For the first time in probably a decade I was writing a second blog post in the span of a week or so and it was several paragraphs long and it was this whole thing about being a famous [redundant] Instagram Influencer and how these brands paid for us to go on a trip to the Dolomites so I could post pictures of us wearing/using their products and trust me it was gold but then I somehow pushed some strange button that erased the entire thing and then I stupidly pushed another button thinking that would undo the damage but instead it actually just cemented-in the damage thanks to autosave which I think is supposed to make things like this happen less frequently but in this particular case was the very cause of the damage itself. Oh well. I will start again but talk about something else because obviously the universe sent me a sign that nobody wanted to read a semi-fictional account about me being an Instagram Influencer taking an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy (semi-fictional because everything was fictional except for the fact that we actually did go to Italy). Instead, here is a run-down of the top 5 things I got up to this past weekend.

1. Built a bed.

Helga is now probably at least a metre tall and her tiny Kinderbett just wasn't cutting it anymore. Plus we wanted to convert it back into a crib for [Helga's baby brother who still doesn't have a German pseudonym]. So after careful-ish deliberation we ordered the cheapest least-expensive child bed that Ikea sells along with some butterfly bedding/sheets so that the new bed could be conveniently played up as a "butterfly bed" and sent a chunk of our hard-earned money to the Stichting INGKA Foundation in the Netherlands and in return they sent us a box with about 74,000 tiny pieces of cheap metal. Since we had nothing better to do on a warm Saturday morning, we turned most of the pieces into a single furniture item: Helga's new bed. I didn't even make that many mistakes.

2. Attended a French party.

Later Saturday evening, although I was fairly wiped-out from the intense bed-constructing (was going to call it bed-making but that seemed too much like I just folded some sheets on to a bed), I made use of Google Maps's new "mixed-mode" feature and rode my bike to the U-bahn station and then took the U-bahn from said station so that I could visit a friend's massive party on the top floor of a swanky downtown apartment overlooking the Munich-famous Hackerbrücke.

Surprisingly after not speaking French for six or so years it was difficult to formulate sentences at first (did I mention it was a French party?). However, thanks to time and alcohol, after a little while I was able to express myself and I think convincingly explained that having small children is difficult. Especially without their grandparents around. I also ate about nineteen donuts, nine pieces of cake, and 3.7 million sweet potato chips.

3. Ran a half-marathon.

A full marathon seemed too long so on Sunday morning I only ran half of one. But luckily a half-marathon (with dash) is a recognized official race distance. It was hot and I hadn't slept much and I partied hard in French the night before so it was probably about twice as hard as it should have been so if you look at it that way I more-or-less (with two dashes) ran a marathon. Sort of.

4. Attended the Isarinselfest.

The Isarinselfest (the Isar Island Festival) is a street party/festival organized by the Social Democrats and some labour unions. Unsurprisingly it's not organized very well (ha) but Helga had a ton of fun jumping up and down and up and down in the bouncy castle for what felt like approximately four days. This tired her out a lot and since the festival was pretty crowded and pretty loud we biked up the road a bit to...

5. Visited our 7th-favourite Biergarten.

Up the street from the festival is our 7th-favourite Biergarten. This is actually pretty high (in the top 10 is really good as there are at least 500 of them in Munich) and so everyone was happy that it was only a 10 minute walk or so from the festival. It was a nice reprieve from the loud and rambunctious atmosphere of the Isarinselfest and the fact that we got to finally have a healthy dinner (currywurst with fries and beer) was an added bonus.

6. Bonus sixth item.

We listened to our new best American record: Norman F$%^ing Rockwell about 9 times. Helga loves it.

Before we flew back east, we flew west, and four flew over the cuckoo's nest

They're out there. Consternated older ladies in unflatteringly tight-fitting pacific blue and burgundy uniforms with sewn red maple leaf insignias on the left breast hurrying to install inattentive stupid looking passengers in their 43 cm wide of seat space. I'm used to being smiled at but this particular sub-species of human just glares unhappily in my general direction and more than once asks Mom to clear the space in front of her seat before takeoff. I mentally fist-bump her when she just keeps ignoring them because tear down the old foundation brick by brick and all that. The way up is something new. My ears seem to "pop" and that is something new; I just wish that they would have un-popped too. At a cruising altitude of around 10,000 km I decide to sleep. My older sister has no such allusions, of course, but since I'm sort of like that Chief in that Ken Kesey book that even though I'm only 5 months old I for some strange reason know about, I need to keep up appearances and from what I've been told, babies need to eventually start sleeping at some point.

When the fog clears to where I can see, we've apparently touched down in the capital of Ontari-ari-ari-o. Leaving the aircraft the humidity hits you like a firehose. I had imagined ice, igloos, and eskimos, but this is the Amazon when it still existed [ouch]. Our possessions have magically appeared through an U-bahn system for suitcases and I need a nap. <ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ>

We're back and doing 7 km/h in a BMW M3. The Bavarian firepower is keeping my homesickness at bay but I'm wondering how people live in this place when there are so many cars on the Autobahn at any given moment that the fastest you can take a car designed to go 230 km/h is held to slower than I'm often pushed in the stroller. I show my displeasure by emitting a ca. 160 db scream for the duration of the 3 hour drive.

We come to a farm full of cats. I don't have a well-recognized German pseudonym yet like my older sister Helga so for now people call me The Baby. A bit like that movie Baby Driver but way, way, way less bad. There are cats that live inside as well as out. Cats that allow Helga to pick them up and cats that do not. There are chickens too. But only outdoors. Did I mention how much I hated that car seat sitting in that Beamer moving more slowly than an Australian tourist on Vomit Hill after 5 Maß at Oktoberfest? I sure hope that whole car-travel thing was a one-time event. I've never seen so many cats before. I've also never eaten sushi but I feel like the former is a more extreme never.

We're soon in the car again. I hate it like Donald Trump hates poor people but there's some solace in the fact that it's a red Beamer from the motherland. There is further solace in the destination. It turns out that not all dwellings reside extremely far from bodies of water and I kind of like that. We're at a cottage and while for the most part it's all the same to me, unfamiliar environments give me extra incentive and excuses for just crying like you wouldn't believe. I do like the proximity to the lake too.

I love Helga. She is hands-down the best person I know. Except when she dangerously compresses my windpipe while hugging me. And when she carelessly falls on my face nearly crushing my skull. And when she pulls on my arms so violently that it's a medical miracle that we'll eventually have to look into that not all of my bones get broken. And when she makes that sort-of fart noise with her lips and ends up spitting into my eyes. And when she shoves her hands into my face and nearly deoculates me. Over and over and over again. But overall I really like her and I hope that this trip will help her chill out a bit. But hope is a dangerous thing for a baby like me to have [please read this line in this tune].

In London at one point I'm left completely alone with the grandparents. I'm introduced to Peppa the Pig and though my brain is much too immature to process the colourful fast-moving pictures, and in the years to come I will now suffer an untold number of regressions in my development as my psyche is too fragile at this point to have any exposure whatsoever to television, I thoroughly enjoy the 83 episodes of Peppa that I get to watch with Helga.

Burlington is an interesting place.

I'm still not loving the car but during one ride a song came on the radio that I really enjoyed: I know it sounds funny but I just can't stand the pain. Girl I'm leaving you tomorrow... I think about that song now when Helga swats me in the head. Girl I'm leaving you tomorrow... But seriously I could never do that. What a fun trip this has been.

Canada is a majestic and beautiful place that I hope to return to some day. My time there was a special time in my life and I will cherish these memories and others that I have kept for myself as the years unfold before me. But here a new story begins: the story of a man's gradual renewal and gradual rebirth, of his gradual crossing from one world to another, of his acquaintance with a new, as yet unknown reality. That could be a subject for another tale -- our present one has ended. Sorry for that borrowed ending to my blogpost originally entitled "Hugos 6€ a Dozen, now available in Canada", but is it just me or does anybody else love them some Dostoevsky?