All quiet on the Western Front

If you cast your memory way, way back to late summer (when one could be forgiven for imagining that the whole Covid thing might actually be on its way out of our lives), and if you happen to be a regular reader of this particular forum, you might recollect some two posts ago the Pemulis Family's planned two-week trip to Austria that was recounted in a story entitled Bad Gastein to the Emergency Doctor. If you do recall such a thing, or if you have just come from re-reading the story now, you'll remember / have just learned that while the trip was planned for two weeks, due to forces beyond our control (force majeur as some call it, and if you're so inclined, you might find yourself reading Threoux & Grosse's interpretation of force majeur in Canadian law conveniently available right here and determine for yourself whether or not in this particular case the fact pattern -- namely Heinrich having become violently ill -- would actually constitute force majeur in a legal sense but then you'd remember that the whole thing took place in Austria which is far outside of the legal jurisdiction of Canada and you would probably start wondering why you were wasting your time), we were forced to abandon the second week and retreat safely to the shores of the Isar. Shortly after our return home, however, we made the astute decision to immediately book the "make up" vacation to ensure that it would indeed take place at some point in the future. Perusing the children's school schedules, it became clear that about the only possible week would be the first week of November and thus we made it official.

Before we get to the ins and outs of Kaprun and the famed nearby Kitzsteinhorn glaciers, let's come back to the present to marvel at the miraculousness of this vacation make up actually having taken place. Not only did the entire week pass by without any incidents of malady from either child, but this week was the first week that the hotel was opened again after their between summer and winter pause. Further, with Covid reasserting its dominance over all things especially in the former land of Emperor Franz Josef, Archduke Otto von Habsburg, et al., all hotels in Austria have been forced to close their doors as of last week for a pre-winter lockdown. So if the holiday had gone horribly awry, like for example we had gotten ourselves all tangled up in a fatal cable car accident or some such thing, one might look back and curse the Gods at the sheer unfairness of it all that we just happened to sneak in during this limited time window where the whole thing could have taken place and it must have been destiny and all that. But, since the holiday went surprisingly quite well, I will instead argue that God must have decided that we deserved it. Or the universe is simply a series of coincidences and people love trying to impose some meaning on top of its chaos. The reader may decide as he, she, or they see fit.

We arrived in Kaprun on a warm fall day with temperatures hitting the environs of I believe 17 or 18 degrees. Upon our arrival we learned that while the hotel was basically empty, in addition to our table and maybe one or two others filled at breakfast and dinner, there was also the Swiss Freestyle Snowboard team and the Japanese Freestyle Ski team in attendance. This place was very different from the family/kid hotel in Bad Gastein. It's more like a party hotel for skiers. Or something like that. But it was great. The food was good, the surrounding mountains were nice, and there was almost nobody there. On our first full day we walked through the Sigmund Thun Klamm: a massive gorge cut through the mountain with a wooden pathway built through.

The next day we took two long cable car rides up to the glacier where skiing happens year-round. We did a long hike with Helga walking the whole way and Heinrich sleeping in the backpack. We walked through the snow which seemed like a novelty at the time but Kaprun had more tricks up its sleeve in the ensuing days...

A day or two later, I can't remember exactly which, we woke up -- in the town -- to snow. Not just a little snow in the air but real snow that stayed on the ground and in some spots just a little ways up the mountain could reach just about to your knees. This is the same town that just days earlier had greeted us with near-20 degree sunny temperatures. Helga loved the idea of swimming in the pool (outdoor, heated) while it snowed on us from above, and it was kind of cool, but the novelty wore out quickly as her lips became blue and her teeth chattered, and we ran through the snow back to the sauna-like warmth of our room.

We did some mountain trail running (only the parents, that is), some more hikes, we visited some Austrian bakeries, drank the local beer (again, just the parents), picked up some lunch pizza from the restaurant down the street, watched some télé (the kids), and even one night went out to the hotel bar after the kids had been safely put to bed.

All in all, although the hotel is not really designed for kids (it's not adults only, of course, but it's not like some of the places that we've been where there's kids programs and kids running around everywhere screaming and yelling and carrying on) but it was really quite pleasant and to paraphrase my older brother, because it fits so well here, the kids were 50% well-behaved, which was double the expected rate.

THE END

Everyone loves marathons

It's been a long time -- probably two years at least -- but we can finally offer an instalment here on GWMD of the widely loved derided race report series! Many of you know that for the last two years Joelle and Pemulis have signed up for an epic 63 km run through the German and Austrian Alps involving thousands of meters of elevation gain and plenty of opportunities for one's soul to be either crushed or redeemed through personal heroics (or lack thereof). Because Pemulis would in all likelihood have fallen into the crushed / non-redeemed / lacking of personal heroics camp, the fact that Covid led to the cancellation of both the 2020 and 2021 versions of the event can be considered, by Pemulis, to be one of the few (along with many aspects about working from home) quite positive outcomes of the still extant global pandemic. But, the strange compulsion to want to do a "race" -- an itch that was left unscratched by two (mercifully) cancelled races -- remained, and in the deep of summer when thoughts and intentions seem magical and one can imagine a fantasy future where time unfurls endlessly, the nights begin well into the very much later parts of the day, and kids never get sick, Pemulis made the foolish decision to register for the Munich Marathon.

The first several weeks of training went well. Warm summer evenings, kids busy doing whatever kids busy themselves with, injury free, and armed with a plan to propel himself to the upper echelons of the running hierarchy, Pemulis (running-wise) felt at the top of his game. But in mid-August, as it was bound to do, tragedy struck. Shin, ankle, foot, you name it, it was hurting. Pemulis dialled it back (aka did nothing) for a week, then the family went on holiday for a week, then Pemulis finally succumbed to the sickness that the rest of the family had been struggling through, and all of the sudden three weeks that had earlier held so much promise for running improvement had crumbled into the forgotten dust of history. Or something. The point is, you're kind of supposed to run most days if you're going to be doing a marathon, and Pemulis had ran 0 days in 3 weeks. Not the most auspicious approach to marathon greatness.

The good that came out of the extended break was that the injuries had settled down and Pemulis was able to run again. Not fast, and his fitness had all but disappeared in the days ensuing the initial back-dialling, but it was something, and the possibility of at least participating in the race started to gain a feeling of substantiveness (aka reality). While the injury pain had clearly subsided, it was by no means gone, and following a relatively long run 3 weeks before race day, severe tendonitis had arrived in Pemulis's right foot and it was not planning on leaving any time soon. This kept the distance of his longest preparation run at a paltry 28 km which is far short of the typical 34 to 37 km that one might typically "top out" at for a proper marathon preparation. The weekend two weeks before race date was no better and Pemulis settled for another medium-length run and then NOTHING on the week before.

While the preparation had been sub-optimal at best, his body was betraying him, tendonitis scored through his body, and his exhaustion levels were nearing all-time highs, Pemulis looked forward to the race and to the internal battles of the soul that it would entail. As is typically the case, most of the members of the Pemulis family at this period of time happened to be suffering from some kind of malady. A cold, a virus, coughing, sneezing, and the like. Thursday night before bed, Pemulis was struck down by the virus and the race seemed further away than ever. Friday was worse and Pemulis was even too sick to leave his bed and collect his race kit all the way on the other side of the city. Saturday was a little better and he managed, with Helga in tow, to make the long trek to the Olympic Park and collect the race kit. Sunday morning finally arrived and though he was now two night sleepless, coughing, nose running incessantly, and body aching like something fierce, it was time to race.

Now, it was not Pemulis's greatest display of athletic performance. But in the end he did OK and managed to finish the marathon in a time just over 4 hours. In the running community, we refer to this class of time as a "running room mom" time. But Pemulis will take it. He also beat this guy below (I think)...

Bad Gastein to the Emergency Doctor

Well, we did at least make it to Bad Gastein. While the worry was that Heinrich would be too sick for us to make the trip in the first place, in the end we got there and then he got so sick while there that despite one visit to the town doctor and another emergency doctor intervention resulting in antibiotics from the emergency Apotheke on a Sunday, we had to cut our full trip one week short (the original plan was to spend the second week on the warm shores of the Austrian lake Zell am See) and drive home to spend a week wallowing in our small home with 75% of us just barely clinging on to life through the depths of a severe bout of illness.

The bad news is of course that we missed out on a week of vacation in the mountains by the lake, but some of the good news is that finally everybody is slowly starting to get better (and somehow Pemulis never contracted the dreaded illness). Other points while viewing a glass half full in the context of the current discussion area are that we get to look forward to another holiday as the second-week hotel allowed us to re-book for some time in the Fall (which was really quite decent of them considering that the official policy as clearly stated on the bill and the website is that if you cancel within the last 7 days you are SOL and have to pay in full and I called them to cancel literally a couple of hours before we were to arrive); it will be the first week of November so potentially it will be freezing cold and miserable, but at least we will be in the mountains and eating breakfasts and dinners without having prepared them or having to clean up afterwards. And the other noteworthy good news is that the first week in the fashionable luxury Austro-Hungarian Empire town of Bad Gastein was really quite pleasant.

Somehow Mr. and Mrs. Pemulis continue to fool themselves into thinking fantasy thoughts like "we will have so much time together on this holiday!", "Helga will want to spend all of her time in the kids club", "Heinrich is probably old enough now to be happy to go with the caretakers so we can go do some things on our own", "he probably won't get sick in the mountains", "he's over screaming at the top of his lungs all night long now that he's 2 and a half", "because of Covid the hotel won't be very full", "with all of the good food available there Helga will stop being so picky and will actually eat something on the holiday", and other such silly imaginings.

Nevertheless, the place was really quite nice. The hotel sat at just above 1000 m and we both got to undertake a handful of trail runs / hikes up into the environs of 2000 m. The landscape was quite breathtaking with mountains and waterfalls and old world architecture and nature. The food was good and the bartender made a mean Negroni. We both got to do some yoga and spend some quality time with the offspring feeding the local squirrels, going on hikes to the llamas, baking bread at a nearby farm, spending hours in the swimming pool, and I of course got to do some extra bonding with Heinrich by walking him along the mountain path to the town to take him to the doctor. Good times.

But upon our return, and Heinrich screaming throughout the night, and Covid continuing to haunt our plans, Pemulis has started to wonder what in the world we're doing here in the Southern Europe of Germany and do any of these life decisions really make any sense whatsoever? To put one of these factors in North American context, we are a family of 4 living in an apartment of about 850 square feet. That comes out to two bedrooms and a living room, basically. Now I know that many people -- most people in the world -- live with much less, but the fact that we have the very easy possibility to have a nice big house back in the land of Trudeaus, where the screaming from one child wouldn't every single night wake up and disrupt the sleep of the other, is just one of the factors that helps make me wonder what on God's Green Earth we are up to.

Bad Gastein to the Moon

It might be considered strange to write the blog post about the place you're going before actually going there, but all's fair in the world of blogging especially because I don't even think people use that term anymore. Blogs used to be the Feuilleton of the early 2000's: kind of short, easy to digest, not full of complex or important thoughts, etc. But now, even Blogs are too long. We have dumbed-down even the standard information-point from Books to Magazines to Blogs and now to pictures (Instagram) but even that required you to read the caption sometimes to get more full content so now the current it verb is TikTok-ing and it's like a 15 second video. I'm sure there's some study that says 15 seconds is the perfect amount of time for someone to watch the whole thing even if it's not good and then it's so easy to go on to the next one and you just never stop. But anyways, though it's not updated that often, we still have the Blog and there are currently no plans at GWMD headquarters to put anyone on the TikTok file.

If all goes according to plan (a big "if" with most parents sending their small children as sick as dogs to the daycare everyday resulting in Heinrich being perpetually ill and our headfirst sprint towards the 4th [or is it 5th?] wave coming on strong) then the Pemulis Family will soon find themselves high in the Austrian mountains at the historic spa town of Bad Gastein. Bad Gastein was of course the fashionable 19th century resort frequented by European monarchs such as the Empress Elisabeth of Austria and the German Emperor Wilhelm I with his chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

Before our Austrian trip arrives, we have 14 months of chores to catch up on. Helga has just finished her second swimming course of the summer, and we took out a second mortgage on our apartment so that we could afford the specific backpack that kids are supposed to have for starting grade 1 / erste Klasse / CP ("cours préparatoire"). Interesting life experience Helga and her parents are getting in this whole school thing. As most dedicated readers will know, while Helga is according to international law a Canadian Citizen, and meanwhile was dismayed that Andre de Grasse blew away the field in the 200m finals ("awwww I wanted the German to win!"), she also for some reason attends school through the local Lycée run by the Ministère de l’Éducation nationale, de la Jeunesse et des Sports. Quite a mix of France and Germany you get there. One recent humorous example involved the list of required items to start CP. Amongst items that one can only obtain in France (or, thank goodness, through amazon-dot-F-R), there is the bullet-point entry "1 SH noir pour les évaluations". The list is written in French (as you can see). We had no idea what an SH was. So we asked a friend in France. She had no idea but asked a friend of hers with children. The guesses came back: "Steak Haché; Super Hero; Soupe de Hérisson; ...". None seemed likely. We eventually somehow realized that this was a classic example of mixing German with French. SH means "Schnellheft" (or "leaflet") and is basically what I would probably call a "duotang". Lo and behold, no one has ever heard of a duotang and thanks to the Internet I know why: "Duo-Tang was a brand name for paper folders made of cardstock paper." Who knew!?

Bonn

Bonn, the capital city of West Germany from 1949 to 1990, is a medium-sized city located in the western middle of Germany, not far from the French border, and sits right on the edge of the impressively large Rhine river. While not very large in terms of population, it has important historical connotations due to it having been the capital for 40 years, and maintains an unofficial special governmental status with around a third of all ministerial jobs being located in Bonn, and the secondary seat of the President, the Chancellor, and the Bundesrat. In addition to then being a government town, it is also a college town with an important university -- the University of Bonn -- and also an important concentration of UN agencies including the UN Climate Change envoy.

I mention all this because just two short weekends ago I took a solo (solo from the fam, that is) trip on the ICE from München, traveling at just under around 300 km/h, for a long weekend in the former capital of West Germany. While the Pemulis Family has made Germany their home for nearly eight years now, we haven't managed to actually see that much of the country. We've spent some time in the now-capital of Berlin, been a little bit around Bavaria for the mountains, and many years ago I visited my German sister in Hannover and its environs. But beyond that, not much. And so, a German friend, whose parents happen to live in Bonn, invited me for a cultural enrichment tour where we would stay with his parents, visit the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland covering post-WW2 Germany, bike (on a funny-looking tandem bike called a Hase Pino) along the mighty Rhine a few dozen km's to Köln, and drink Jever with his father while he recounted stories of working as a doctor in nearly every war-torn and/or dilapidated country you can think of.

The train trip was a rather liberating experience because I was by myself for basically the first time in probably a year, the train car was nearly empty, and (related directly to point 1) I could actually read a book without being interrupted or distracted with some disaster to deal with for more than like 5 minutes at a time. Actually, I found it a little bit difficult to stay focused for a long time and had to take many breaks where I just stared out the window for a while because I guess since I haven't really had any opportunities of being uninterrupted for such a long time, I don't really know how to focus for very long at all. Ah well.

In any case, I arrived safely in Bonn and was met at the station and chauffeured to my friend's parents' place in the hills overlooking the Bonn city centre. Even though I arrived rather late (it was around 11 pm I believe), both of his parents were up, and for the first of 3 subsequent nights, we got into the Jever. I learned a great deal about the people of the Rhineland (not the parents), kids these days, and all sorts of things about what the CIA gets up to (or at least used to get up to back in the 60's and 70's), and how to pace oneself while drinking a whole lot of Jever with an 80-something-year-old German left-wing doctor.

While my body was moving for some time before this, I eventually became conscious on Saturday morning after having drunk 3 or 4 large coffees. I was then ready to hit the road: that meant picking up the funny bike at the bike rental store, biking it over to the museum, and spending around 3 hours on my feet reading museum displays in German meticulously covering the waning days of WW2, through the 50's and 60's and the Berlin blockade, through the 70's and 80's and modernization, and finally the 90's and 2000's all the way up to the influx of refugees in 2015 (was it 2015?). Highly recommended place to check out though.

I soaked in the local culture by eating a Döner in a park for lunch and then we biked the Bonn Street Art route which is probably not something the city should advertise if they want to be taken seriously. At this point it was later afternoon and I was pooped (slang for exhausted in case anyone is concerned). We headed home, rested up a bit before dinner, and then actually went out to eat in a restaurant! Wow. If nothing else, Covid sure has made once-standard things seem totally exciting. It was a warm evening, we sat outside at an Indian restaurant where I drank a Kingfisher to prepare myself for the Jever that would later surely come.

Kölner Dom

The next morning we packed up the Pino and headed the 30-40 km north along the Rhine to the much larger city of Köln. The wind was heavy, but we had two-person-pedal-power (plus the e-bike motor of course) and it was a lovely warm, sunny day in the Rhineland. Biking along the Rhine is quite beautiful and it's also impressive to see how big of a river it is. This is not your standard Isar or whatever: it is big and deep and there is constant boat traffic hauling oil and gas and containers of goods and people too. You can almost feel like you're beside a lake or even the sea because of the sight of lots and lots of water and the strong wind that comes off the river.

The Rhine or the South of France? You decide!

Anyways, we finally made it and spent some time around the famous Cathedral which is more than enormous. Enormous times 50 or so. We had some Kölsch (as you do) around the Cathedral and I fuelled up, as I often do, with a plate of Currywurst. On the way back home later that evening, we stopped at a river-side restaurant (the other side of the river this time) and it really felt like being at a beach. Good times. Unlike a smaller river such as the Isar, putting a bridge over the Rhine is no small feat. Therefore, when going to the other side, you need to plan ahead for how you will eventually get back. This time, we took a route that involved crossing a big highway bridge just before Bonn that also involves the necessity of crossing a tiny river in comparison, called the Sieg. Crossing the Sieg was a laugh because there is a tiny little boat where you pay 50 cents and the captain is a surly old guy in a sailor hat and he pushes you across the Sieg with a giant stick. Kind of funny.

Crossing the Mighty Sieg

Back home in Bonn we settled in for our final night of drinking Jever and listening to stories of the old (and, to be fair, recent) times. It was a great experience seeing more of Germany and experiencing it too. Signing off for now... Pemulis.

Lago di Garda

Lake Garda is the biggest lake in Italy and, after Majorca, probably the biggest vacation destination for German holidaymakers. Which is saying a lot, actually, because -- while large, see supra -- and if my stated statistic is actually true (which it may very well be), the lake takes up only around 370 square kilometres and there are a lot of Germans out there. Nestled into the Italian Alps, touching three different Italian regions, it boasts a Mediterranean climate, beautiful surrounding villages bursting with Italian culture, and a geographic proximity such that one can arrive at the northern part of the lake from the Munich city centre in about four and a half hours (much less if you drive as fast as the Germans do).

After somehow surviving at least a handful of lockdowns, complete with school closures, extreme cold, rainy and generally soggy weather, and thus extreme sequestration within our 80 square meters of living space for something like 365 days (plus or minus), it was high time for a vacation. Pemulis donned a certified FFP2 mask and braved the potentially unvaccinated masses on the U2 as he made his way (only third time on the underground in the last year I believe) to the Europcar kiosk at the local train station to collect a very fancy Volvo SUV. He signed away more of his paycheque to secure all manner of (allegedly) required insurances and upgrades and keyed in his home address to the onboard GPS. Later, and as usual, following something that felt like 6 months but was probably closer to around 3 hours, the car was painfully slowly loaded up and finally the family was off! Italy bound at last.

While the Covid-19 "situation" has been improving a lot around these parts as of late, things are still definitely not back to completely normal. As such, there are a number of procedures in place for if and when one so chooses to travel around. For example, when you enter Italy, you need a negative Covid test result from within the last 48 hours for everyone in the car. You also need to fill out a pre-entry clearance form with information on where and when you will enter the country, who is all with you, and where you've been on your journey, and you need to print out this form and carry it with you (who has a printer these days?). If you travel through another country on the way there, you don't need to fill out a pre-entry clearance form for that country, but if you stay in that country at all (other than simply passing through, I mean), you do. So, normally, we wouldn't have to do all this for the required trip through Austria on the way to Italy. But, since the Pemulis family includes two small children, one of whom very stereotypically started asking "are we there yet" about 10 minutes into the journey, and went on to ask said question approximately seven hundred more times before arrival, we decided (ahead of time, of course) to spend the night in Austria on the way there, and therefore had to do the whole procedure for Austria as well.

[Inline footnote: Helga is an "expat kid", I guess you would say. While we speak English at home and with most of our friends, she interacts with other kids either in German or in French. When she watches TV she watches it in German. Neither Pemulis nor Joelle has ever, at least in her presence, asked the "are we there yet?" question and she has never been on a trip with other kids somewhere further than maybe a 15 minute ride. My conclusion is that asking the specific question "are we there yet?" over and over and over ad nauseum is an example of nature, rather than nurture.]

Now, after getting Corona tests all around, collecting the results, planning the route, finding the border crossings for Austria and Italy and the estimated crossing times for each of those borders and filling out personal details such as passport number, place of birth, and known contacts within the last 2 weeks, finding a printer, and realizing that Heinrich's resident card is expired (a bridge we will hopefully cross safely at some point in the near future) we were good to go. Of course, no one at either border ever asked for any of this documentation, and it just sat untouched in my bag for the duration of the vacation. However, having spent nearly 8 years living amongst the Germans, we felt good knowing that we had followed the rules.

The en-route night in Austria was fairly uneventful and by Thursday at lunchtime we had reached the promised land of Lake Garda. Many popular tourist destinations, though surely popular for some reason, never come close to living up to expectations. They are always touristy (imagine!) and never quite as nice as you hoped they would be. Lago di Garda, however, was something else: the natural beauty actually surpassed my expectations. The snow-capped mountains that raise straight from sea level at the lake way up to 2000 metres and beyond are breathtaking. The lake is not only naturally majestic but the towns are so old-world Italy and the climate -- even though the daily highs are not so different from Munich -- so Mediterranean in how it feels and the atmosphere is just really, really nice.

Our hotel was on a small street just off the main road running north-south that hugs the west side of the lake. We stayed just outside of the town of Limone -- home (or perhaps just vacation place) of the rich and beautiful. The hotel had a big swimming pool, a view of the lake, and a 2-minute walk to a beach where we spent some apéro evenings while the kids dug stones and made "soup". Joelle and I each had a chance to do a solo trail "run" (quotation marks because the inclines of the mountains here are so steep that one cannot run) in the surrounding mountains which was really nice but would naturally have been nicer had we been able to do so together. We ventured into Limone proper for lunch a couple of times and found reasonably priced food that, in my professional opinion, ranked as "authentically Italian". We took a boat ride across the lake to the town of Malcesine where we had another delicious lunch and somehow survived the kids' fighting and yelling and general carrying-on which surprisingly did not result in either of them either falling or getting thrown into the water below.

Making Soup

The hotel clientele was probably 80% German and 20% Italian (and then a rounding error: us). Most of what we heard spoken in the streets and on the boat ride and in the restaurants also reflected roughly this ratio of people. The people of the area itself, though, unlike Südtirol where the locals actually speak German as their mother tongue, are Italian but obviously cater to the German tourists and thus people working in the tourist industry tend to speak German. The signs, maps, and other information / documentation is in Italian, German, and often English as well. It's a good place for a family vacation. Highly recommended.

Everybody loves procrastination

I'll admit now, as I often do (ironic the use of the word "often" given what the coming admission relates to), that it has been a long while since any new writing has appeared at this particular Internet destination. One might even say that when something does appear, from time to time, that I often mention that it sure has been a while. Well, far be it from me (if it was easier to create footnotes through this blogging platform then I likely would add a reference right here about that strange saying: far be it from me. But it's too hard to do so I shall not) to make a drastic change to something that seems to have been working out (but has it really?) so I just had to start this particular entry with a note that aims to assure the reader that we recognize that it has been far too long and we do indeed wish that it weren't this way, but sadly it is.

Surprisingly, a lot (relatively speaking) has happened lately. Pemulis and Joelle both got vaccinated and Pemulis gets his second shot already tomorrow. Pemulis's employer sold the autonomous driving unit in which he worked to a subsidiary of Toyota but the Munich office will remain part of the erstwhile owner of said AV unit and will instead start working on more rideshare-related topics such as mapping, routing, ETA modeling, and the like. Pemulis was actually aware of this change (not that it was Toyota though) for several weeks but couldn't say a word under threatened penalty of prison (literally). The good news (at least some of it) is that when Pemulis next goes to California (if ever) he will actually have a reason to stay in SF instead of just having to come up with an excuse, and theoretically the stock should go up.

Spring is finally in the air after what felt like roughly a year of snow in April. Today is 20 degrees and sunny, however, and the air holds a promise of something new. While new Covid-19 cases are basically the worst they've ever been in Germany, I feel a probably-rooted-in-rationality hope and belief that we are right now set to turn the corner with the vaccination drive really having ramped up in the last couple of weeks and I have the confidence that some special magical point will soon be hit where the combination of many people having been vaccinated and the warm weather encouraging people to be outside and a little bit of magic will all come together and we will be able to live life somewhat normally this summer and we will soon be able to spend all the money we've saved by not doing anything over the last year (who am I kidding we spent it on other things we don't need) on a long, relaxing (ha) vacation somewhere in the hot, hot sun. I will keep you updated.

A quick trip to the Greek Islands

Since Heinrich has made it impossible for me to sleep more than about two hours a night and I've had enough of this whole Covid BS, I decided that since it seems like every single other person doesn't care about what one should or should not do to get us out of this ridiculous situation and as far as I can tell is flying to France or Spain or wherever and if you say something like "oh so that's why this F-ing thing is never going away" they kind of smugly smile and say "I don't think it has anything to do with it. Besides, you need a negative test to fly" and I work really hard to not hit them (actually I don't have to work that hard because I'm talking to them virtually), I decided to just up and take a trip to the Greek Islands.

I flew to Santorini and going through the airport didn't wear a mask because I figured "everyone who is here had to show a negative test so everyone is safe". On the plane I drank 3 bottles of Dom Perignon because why not and when I landed I rented a Landrover (cause fuck it) and drove straight to the marina obviously not wearing a seatbelt because I figure everyone driving there has to have passed a driving test.

I rented a sail boat and gave a fake driving license and used a stolen credit card because I can't afford to rent a sail boat this big (actually it was a yacht) and it's just been a really long time (actually my entire life) since I've sailed a 40 m long yacht and so even though the government suggests that you shouldn't pay for things with stolen credit cards these last 40 years have been tough so I kind of feel like I deserve it.

Before I took off I quickly hired a staff to do catering and all that other commoner stuff and got them to make sure I had enough Champagne and other expensive goods like I guess foie gras and caviar -- "whatever rich people normally ask for" were my instructions because if I'm paying with a credit card that's not really mine it would be silly and selfish if I didn't go the extra mile as it were and since we're in a pandemic (not that anyone on the full plane seemed to have noticed) I felt I should support the people who are making sparkling wine and the livers of force-fed goose and the fish eggs from beluga sturgeon before they finally go extinct and since I was basically a fugitive from the law (but apparently crimes aren't prosecuted anymore as long as you're stealing enough money) I also bought a bunch of guns and hired some mercenaries in case I wanted to do some pirate-like stuff from my giant yacht like plundering or whatever.

We sailed to Crete, then Mykonos, then Corfu, and finally anchored down in a bay on the island of Kos. I chose that one because I thought they might be into Cosplay there but apparently they're spelt differently. Nobody got Covid (well, most of the staff did but they don't count), and I only crashed the yacht near the end but it's somebody else's credit card and the ID I used was totally fake so I'm in the clear. All in all it was a fun quick trip to the Greek Islands even though I didn't really like the foie gras or the caviar so just ate like a shit ton of tzatziki, feta, and pita breads.

Update: I actually did get Covid and now I'm dead.

Last hours of my 30's

It's hard to believe but tomorrow Pemulis will be 40. Years old, that is. Fourteen thousand, six hundred days. That basically means I'm most likely halfway through my life.

What does it mean? It doesn't really mean anything, but it's a culturally important age and gives an excuse to maybe "take stock", as it were, and ...

Hello again. It's now about a week and a half later and I've been 40 for nearly 10 days. Looking at that life expectancy graph above, combined with the obvious fact that I never really got around to completing the original "last hours of my 30's" blog post, suggests that actually I'm probably for all intents and purposes well beyond halfway through my life if for no other reason than with kids and work and all that it's extremely difficult to actually get around to anything and so if "normally" -- i.e. pre-grown-up and for sure pre-kids -- something might take you, say, four hours to do, then at the grown-up and with kids stage then it will instead take you probably around seven hundred and thirty hours, give or take.

So the 40th birthday party celebration, deep in the thick of the Covid European 3rd Wave, was naturally nothing too crazy. I did cook a huge steak on the BBQ and drank some exceptional Piemonte wine that had shown up at my door unexpectedly.

Since it's impossible to plan for anything these days, we don't know exactly what the future holds, but we do hope to go on vacation as soon as humanly possible. Well, not actually as soon as humanly possible because all kinds of people are already going on vacation because they're selfish. But, once it makes sense to be able to go on vacation we will go somewhere where an airplane does not have to be involved and hopefully where it's a bit warmer and we will drive there and hopefully relax! I'm thinking maybe here:

The first person who guesses where it is wins a prize!

Pandemic Life Update 2

Remember like a week ago when, although we were still in the proverbial woods, there was that major breakthrough where the kids were out of the house and our sanity was somewhat returning and they were getting the social experiences that humans crave and children require to become functioning members of society / human beings and even though it was Hell on Earth to wake Helga up and get her ready for school the trade off was worth it because we could actually survive a little bit and get some work done and all that? Well, that's all over.

Two kids in Heinrich's daycare tested positive for the 'roner last week so he is under quarantine and the facility is closed until at least March 15th. Being the good citizens that we are, we are also keeping Helga at home (despite the good news which is that we have two negative tests from Joelle and Heinrich) until we're a bit more positive that all is safe to proceed. Separately from that, Helga woke up this morning coughing away so even despite the whole Covid thing we're not sending her under such conditions.

So we're right back to struggling along with two children at home 24/7 and things are actually a little bit worse than before (who'd have thought that was possible?) because Heinrich is not allowed outside even for a little walk. The home has never felt smaller!

Disclaimer: we are well aware of our privilege and the fact that most are struggling through this Pandemic Life with much more difficulty than us. But it's fun to complain!

Pandemic Life Update

Hello fellow so-far survivors of the Covid-19 Global Pandemic. How are you today? While in the grand scheme we are very much still right in the thick of the woods, there was a big breakthrough for us personally this week as today marks the end of an entire week where, for the first time since a few weeks before Christmas, the kids were back at school / daycare! What a different world that is. For one thing, I have time to write something here. For another, I can actually concentrate on work a little bit. For even yet another, they are learning to socialize and learning to speak other languages and they come home exhausted and fall asleep quickly. Of course, we have to wake them up in the morning (well, Helga anyways) and to describe what that's like, let's turn to my favourite reference book, the Oxford English Dictionary, Pemulis Edition:

So too bad on that front, but overall I am more than happy to take the trade-off. In other news, we've seen unseasonably warm temperatures as of late and I even went for a bike ride for the first time in a long time yesterday in sunny 20 degree celsius weather. Good old climate change.

Monday could turn our world upside down yet again so let's see what it brings us!

Top 6 Reasons I'm a Joe Biden Fan

For a Canadian citizen, resident in Germany, never having lived (and with zero plans to ever do so) in the US, there sure seems to be a lot of American political content on this blog. But as I've mentioned before, there are many reasons that American politics -- whether we like it or not -- affect us all. Seems major newspapers in, e.g. Germany, France, Spain, and Canada agree (from top-left clockwise: der Spiegel, le Figaro, el País, and the Globe and Mail):

I have to say that somehow I'm finding myself a bit happier with the new guy "running things" (in quotes because Trump clearly never ran anything) than I was with the old guy (although they are both clearly old). But the more I read about Biden, the more I like him. Now, like any politician -- and especially one who ran for and is now the President -- he is far from perfect. But it sure is easy to like someone when they replace someone who was just so indescribably bad. So without further ado, here are the top 6 reasons that I'm a Joe Biden Fan.

1. He's a Watch Guy

While Trump may have worn a solid yellow gold Rolex Day Date (among others), there are important differences between wearing a watch -- especially an ugly, ostentatious, and very expensive one -- and being a Watch Guy. Biden is the latter. It is to appreciate craftsmanship, design, attention to detail, ingenuity, expertise, and engineering; connect oneself to history and the daily passage of time and anchor yourself to a moment; acknowledge the connections between social, cultural, and historical moments and the people therein. While there are people who wear a Nice Watch (TM) to try to display their wealth, for most others, it can be a way to express who you are: that you care about some of the above-mentioned things, for example, or that you see yourself as someone who appreciates finer things, more classical things, analog things. For men -- who have fewer options in terms of "fashion" than women -- a watch can fill that void in terms of how you might choose to partially show who you are: an adventurer, an artist, a racer, whatever. The most important thing for a Watch Guy -- I think -- is the story that the watch tells (to him- or herself -- yes a Watch "Guy" can also be a Girl).

Biden's watch collection is a pure reflection of a true Watch Guy. They reflect a "tool watch viewpoint" that projects his working class roots and shows his appreciation for historically significant watches that are either connected to events or people and that have a deeper meaning than just "this watch is expensive" (it seems all of his watches are in steel rather than a precious metal such as gold or platinum). Biden is a well known partisan of the famous Omega "Moon Watch" the Speedmaster, more affectionately known as the "Speedy". This watch was, of course, the first (and I believe only) watch worn on the moon, and is still certified by Nasa for spaceflight. His (good) taste in watches has been chronicled by Gear Patrol here [and where I grabbed most of the below pictures], and they put things quite nicely by describing his watches as "down-to-earth workwear [that still] communicates that he values quality and style" and they "reflect on Biden as serious but not extravagant". His collection includes other noteworthy members such as the James Bond-style Omega Seamaster 300m Diver and the "harmless dog whistle for watch enthusiasts" Seiko Alarm Chronograph (from top-left CW: Speedmaster, Seamaster, Seiko).

For Biden's inauguration on Wednesday, he chose another watch world favourite: the Rolex Datejust, in steel of course. Danny Milton, for one of my favourite websites in the whole world, Hodinkee, covered it fully here and sums up the watch with:

The Datejust is a great choice of watch for anyone, let alone the POTUS. It's sporty but goes with a suit. It's also legible, accurate, and tells the date – important for someone with such an ungodly schedule.

(from the Hodinkee article linked above)

Side note: Cam Wolf, for GQ magazine, covered Joe Biden's "Victory Watch" (the Seiko mentioned above). This was the watch he wore on the Saturday night in November when the election was finally called for him. But Wolf goes further to mention two other notable watches connected to this particular victory. His running-mate, and as of yesterday, vice-president, Kamala Harris -- the first ever woman and first ever person of colour to occupy the VP post -- also showed her high level of watch taste by wearing one of my favoured brands: a Cartier Ballon Bleu in two-tone. Wolf says: "Purposeful or not, Harris is bringing Cartier back into the White House." Joe Biden's wife, Dr. Jill Biden, also supported the famous French maison by sporting a gold Cartier Panthère.

[both pictures from the GQ article linked above]

2. He has Battled Adversity

Ok, battling "adversity" (which every Hockey Canada team must do during the World Juniors, Olympics, etc. by losing some early not-so-important games so that they can build their character and learn how to work as a team and not take things for granted) isn't necessarily a reason to like someone -- or for sure a reason to be a fan of them. But going through what Joe Biden has gone through and still functioning as a human being -- let alone the President and let alone being seemingly the good person that he is -- is quite the task which leads to an admiration that directly leads to being a fan. And I have to say I admire Joe Biden.

If you don't know about his story of personal tragedy, Antoinette Bueno‍ for Entertainment Tonight (sorry) outlines it pretty well here. Basically, among other things (leaving out his childhood stuttering problems which play out as very "The King's Speech"-esque), just after being elected as the youngest ever Senator in 1972, in a "stunning upset against two-term incumbent J. Caleb Boggs", Biden's wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in a car accident while out Christmas shopping. His 4- and 2-year-old sons were also in the car that was slammed into by a tractor-trailer but escaped with their lives (and some serious injuries). He planned to resign from the Senate before even being sworn in but was encouraged to keep going by his colleagues and for his sons. Famously, he would commute to Washington, D.C. via Amtrak (and would do so for years) so he could stay in Delaware and raise his sons. He was sworn into the Senate in early 1973 at his son's bedside who was still recovering from the accident.

(from ET article linked above)

After everything he'd been through, he would later lose his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015. And then we all know how evil, disgusting, dishonest, [etc, etc, etc] Republicans tried to invent a scandal about his other son's dealings in China, and then when that didn't pan out in Ukraine, and then inventing some kind of weird laptop scandal that they tried to connect with some stolen e-mails which showed that his son suffered from a drug problem and that Joe Biden loved his son and supported him through it. Big Scandal! But man it makes me like him all the more.

3. He's a Cyclist

Not only is it amazing that Joe Biden is a cyclist, but while looking for a recent picture of him riding a bike, I came across this great story that again reinforces (as if we needed any more reinforcement) how plain good Biden is and how plain terrible Trump is. In addition to disparaging John Kerry for riding a bike when he fell and broke his leg while cycling in the French Alps, and claiming he would never ride a bike in his life (thank you Trump for keeping the sport pure! ha!), there was also a great tidbit about how (of course):

in 1989, [Trump] sponsored what was billed as the American equivalent of the Tour de France. The Tour de Trump [ran] for two years in a row, [where cyclists] raced a multi-day stage race on the Eastern seaboard. [...] One of the teams on Trump’s signature event was Sauna Diana, a Dutch squad sponsored by a brothel.

But greater yet, the fact that he's a cyclist gives us our first view of a return to normality. Normality in the context of many things, but specifically, normality for presidential "scandals" as reported by Fox News, et al. on presidents who might actually just be good people. This particular type of "scandal" is often referred to being of the "tan suit" variety (if you'll remember). This is just such a good synopsis of the "scandal" that I have to reproduce it here from Wikipedia:

The Barack Obama tan suit controversy occurred on August 28, 2014, when Barack Obama, then-President of the United States, wore a tan suit while he held a live press conference on increasing the U.S. military response against the Islamic State in Syria. Obama's appearance on television in the tan suit sparked significant attention and led to media and social media criticism. The issue remained prominent in the media for several days with the issue being particularly widely discussed on talk shows. 

Just love it. Even better though, consider, while keeping in mind the most recent President's daily embarrassing behaviour and his very recent incitation of treason among his supporters, this priceless note:

Conservative Republican Representative Peter King of New York called Obama's wearing of the suit unpresidential, and stated that “There’s no way, I don’t think, any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday. I mean, you have the world watching.”

Anyways, back to the cycling. As many commentators have expressed in varying ways -- but on the same topic -- thank God, we're back to this level of scandal:

i see we're moving seamlessly back into "tan suit scandal" phase of discourse... https://t.co/z493yo5xW0 pic.twitter.com/t5XXIBwetq

— Gasca (@gasca) January 19, 2021

So, to fill you in, apparently Joe Biden has a "Peloton" bike which is basically a stationary bicycle with an iPad connected to it that allows you to do live workouts where you follow what the instructor does on the screen. It's kind of like a virtual spin class. Anyways, I don't know what extra commentary this requires: "It doesn't exactly comport with his 'regular Joe from Scranton' persona". Obviously no other person in Scranton could afford a stationary bike for their home or something. I dunno... But super cool that he's a cyclist. Cyclists are good people (except for Lance Armstrong, I guess 😁).

4. He's a Dog Lover

While I have to admit that not all cyclists are the greatest of people (though we do have Mike Woods who maybe I should also write a "top 6 reasons I'm a Mike Woods fan" post about), if you're also a dog lover then it gets harder to imagine that you're not a good dude. And Joe Biden is both.

Can you believe that Trump didn't have a dog? Of course you can. Trump and dogs don't go together (though I have to admit that of all the terrible and horrible things related to Trump, and I hate him in all ways possible, I do have to admit that I just loved the press conference where for some reason they were talking about the dog that helped somehow to take out a terrorist and Trump says "Our ‘K-9’, as they call it, ... I call it a dog. A beautiful dog. A talented dog." You just have to hear that NY accent emphasis on the dog in "I call it a dog". Hilarious.).

Anyways, how can you not love a dog lover?

5. First act as President: put the US back in the Paris climate accord

Just hours after being sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, along with a "flurry" (as most press outlets seem to like to describe it) of other executive orders, Biden returned the US to the Paris Climate Accord. As we all know, the US -- the world's second-largest CO2 emitter -- pulled out of the Accord under Traitor Trump.

Now, simply re-joining the Accord is not going to solve climate change, obviously. But if we learned anything over the last four years in American politics (and I hope we learned a lot, even if it was all very obvious from the get-go), it's that symbols, actions, words, whatever: they all matter. Even separate from any legal weight that the Paris Accord might have, the fact that the US is back in it sends an important message not just to regular people and other states, but especially to kids: it matters; the climate matters; decisions matter; getting along matters; multilateralism matters; etc.

6. He's not Trump

'Nuff said.

May 12th, 2022

It's hard to believe but it's now been a little more than two years since the pandemic started. And around a year since it really started to die down. I was just thinking about that today as I made my way up the hill to our vineyard and saw our Grape Guy wearing what looked exactly like a good old FFP2 mask and thought to myself "I haven't seen one of those out in the wild in months!". I asked him what was up (we're an organic winery, naturally) and he said that since he had a box of the masks lying around -- it was literally an old FFP2 mask -- he thought it might help with his springtime allergies. Fair enough.

I think it's fair to say that almost no one predicted how quickly and enormously the rideshare industry would not only rebound post-Covid but take off beyond any of even the most extreme optimistic projections leading to a drop in car ownership across the Western World of near 40% (led, surprisingly enough, by the United States which was clearly helped by President Harris's executive order banning all gasoline cars from the road after January 1st 2022) and literally not a single person anywhere could have foreseen the implosion of Uber and subsequent world domination of their kinder, gentler, fairer, and all-around better competitor Lyft. The fact that Lyft's stock increased in value roughly 100x in under six months was really quite nice for us and you might think that led to me being incredibly wealthy but unfortunately it was only enough to make us rich and allow me to quit my job to buy a vineyard in Piemonte.

The kids are still liking Italian / French / German school and Heinrich seems quite at home in the Italian language. Helga still prefers German but now that she's in the first grade she got to choose an elective and she's making a lot of progress in Greek (especially useful for our upcoming sailing trip around the Greek islands).

Joelle wasn't sure about becoming a winemaker at first but she's really taken to it and was just awarded the Gold Medal at the OIV 2020 gathering in Argentina for "Most Promising New Vintner or Vigneron" (unfortunately she just missed out on the "top 40 under 40 in the wine industry" list but she's hoping for next's year "top 50 under 50").

For now I'm just enjoying living in Italy with a little less stress than what we were subjected to during those tumultuous days of 2020 and I'm slowly figuring out what to do next with my life. I'm pretty busy helping with the cultivation and wine making, taking the kids to football practice, reading Goethe's Faust in the original "old German", selling my fresh bread products at the farmer's market on Sundays, entering coffee making competitions, training for the amateur Giro d'Italia, building a functional replica of the famous Rolex Triple Calendar Moonphase Reference 6062, and binge watching the latest season of Lupin: dans l'ombre d'Arsène on Netflix. Hopefully I'll have a plan for what to do professionally by the end of the 2020's.

The 2020's

Exactly one year minus a day ago I wrote a post on this blog called "The 2010's" that was sort of a high-level synopsis of the decade. It seems that all in all there were some pretty good times and the post ended with these words:

Let's hope the 2020's bring just as much [...] good.

Whoops! I guess I probably jinxed it for everybody. Sorry about that. Then again, things can only get better from here, right? (imagine having said that about, e.g. American Democracy around January 4th!). Yes, things can always get worse, but they might also get better. Everyone has a bad day or a bad month or a bad year (*cough* 2020 *cough*) and the 2020's could still turn out to be good. While The 2010's recounted a lot of highlights, let's not forget about that time in October 2016 that I planned to fly direct from Munich to Redmond but then some snowstorm (!!!) cancelled flights, I got sent to Frankfurt, sat there for several hours, got sent to Vancouver, sat there for even more hours, finally got on a plane down to Seattle and arrived some 28 hours after having left Munich and then went on about 3 hours sleep per day for an entire jet-lagged week of giving presentations and not being able to remember more than approx. 0.7 seconds into the past at any given time. The point is that despite that, the 2010's recovered. The 2020's can too! (plus it's a lot harder to have a flight cancelled and then get re-routed all over the world since you can't really take a flight in the first place. Score!)

Ms. Merkel said yesterday that the hard lockdown in Germany would probably have to last up to another 10 weeks. That brings us to the middle of March which is coincidentally exactly when Lockdown #1 started so many moons ago. If the thought of 10 more weeks of this bullshit doesn't fill you with happiness and excitement then we are one and the same. Helga had one of her 3 per week 45 minute Zoom sessions for "online learning" this morning. Heinrich wasn't too amused so did a lot of screaming during that, Helga couldn't hear the teacher and was subsequently muted and so couldn't say anything, and I couldn't get any work done. It was a lot of fun. In this gloomy scenario, however, I force myself to be reminded of the words of a great philosopher of the 2020's (unknown) who said: the two best things about working from home are that (1) you have a home; and (2) you have a job. Good point, Mr. or Ms. Philosopher of these modern times (however, kids might lead to cancellation of point [2] which will then eventually lead to cancellation of point [1]. I hope not though).

I was thinking today that maybe we should move to Augsburg. Why not, right? I had previously considered a change of scenery, perhaps to Zürich for example, but upon discovering it's basically the most expensive city in the world to live in, the shine sort of wore off a bit. But Augsburg? You mean the city that "[a]fter Neuss and Trier, [...] Germany's third oldest city, founded in 15 BC by the Romans as Augusta Vindelicorum, named after the Roman emperor Augustus" [thanks Wikipedia]? Hell ya. But then again, what would we do in Augsburg?