15 Oktober

Here it is noon and I have gotten nothing done. And I can tell you why; I have learned something new that I can complain about:

How to Order a Delivery in Switzerland

1. Do not expect that delivery people know the heights of underpasses in their delivery region. That is your responsibility. If you do not know these numbers, you must go out and measure (heights are conveniently posted).
2. If someone says she is around for the morning, but not the afternoon, do not expect her to be working at 11:30AM as that clearly constitutes “afternoon”.
3. If you can no longer reach the initial contact person, (because, for example, she has left for the afternoon during the morning), do not expect anyone else in the business to be able to schedule a delivery as that is clearly a highly complicated task that only one person among the 50 employees can do.

14 Oktober

How to Receive a Delivery in Switzerland

Before I impart this wisdom, I need to review a few basic Swiss banking processes. First of all, it seems that the personal check is not used here. When someone wants your money, they send or give you a red or orange invoice (the latter has a reference number of some sort but otherwise I don’t know if there is a difference between the two.) Then you take said invoice to the bank or post office and give the agent there the cash equivalent to the invoice. Just be sure to go early before the brontosaurus traffic jam! If you’re really modern and high-falutin (like me) you can input all 500 bits of information from the invoice into a website and square your bills electronically. Don’t tell too many Swiss people about this or their heads may explode.

Thus far, everything I have ordered (about 30 items) have arrived either with, or followed by, said invoice. In fact, even the painter handed me one in person. The following information is for those who seek more ambitious delivery options.

1. First you must read minds to know that a certain delivery is cash only. I received two deliveries today with no such advance warning. Clearly, this is to be intuited in advance.
2. When the delivery person arrives, have exact change ready for delivery people do not carry change. If you do not have the proper change then you did not intuit the amount properly in advance and you need to practice step 1 further.
3. When making a delivery, it is reasonable for the delivery people to expect payment before the goods have actually been handed over. This holds true even when the deliverer needs to “go elsewhere to collect goods for the second part of the delivery.” Payment in full is expected upon arrival. You can double check inventory after you have paid – if the deliverer and the goods are still around.
4. It is reasonable for the deliverer to expect payment in full regardless of the amount to be paid. If you have ordered, for example, over 1000 kilograms of furniture, you should have the required amount of cash lying about.
5. You should be prepared that your credit card may suddenly only have 5% of its usual limit. This is normal and clearly your fault and you shouldn’t expect your bank should be able to rectify this within the next week.
6. If you have failed at steps 1-5 you should be happy to drive to the nearest bank, even if it is 30 minutes across a lake (for example).
7. Do not assume that said bank can give you the money in your account and do not make such unreasonable demands. Your money belongs to the bank. Do not expect to get money out of the ATM – it is there to make the bank look official, not to dispense cash.
8. It is reasonable for the bank teller to have to call your personal advisor and her assistant in Zürich to verify you can access your money. If said personal advisor and her assistant are out to lunch, do not expect to access your money until they get back. If they are out or the bank in which you are making your ridiculous demands needs to close for a ninety minute lunch, then you are welcome to return afterwards.
9. If the deliverer chooses not to wait and would rather pack all the inventory back into the truck and then send you a bill for the whole process afterwards, you should greet said bill with great joy.

If you properly follow these Nine Simple Steps, then YOU TOO can receive deliveries in Switzerland!

5 Oktober

My dad makes friends with the locals.


Last Sunday we took a little trip to Indemini. Francie was talking about it a few weeks ago as an old smugglers’ hideaway as it is nestled up in the mountains between Switzerland and Italy. I’m a sucker for medieval towns so I talked my dad into going to see it. It wasn’t a hard sell. It takes about an hour up the switchbacks and over the pass to get there even though it’s only about 5 km away as the bird flies. But it was well worth the trip and I had a great time wandering around the old alleys winding around the mountainside. They were also having a chestnut festival so we sat around, had a beer and joined them for some smoked chestnuts. Europeans seem to have a knack for making up excuses on Sundays to sit around outside together while drinking beer. Its pretty smart if you ask me. And since you’re reading my blog, you are asking me.

8 October

Another full day crashes to its weary end. It started with my discovery of my phone not working. It turns out that when Swisscom sent me five copies of my internet contract, one of them was actually a phone contract – identical in every way except for the one word near the top. I threw it away assuming it was the overzealous Swiss bureaucracy at work while I was on vacation (that’s how they here refer to my time in the US). Once this was all untangled, I exhumed the document, scanned and emailed it to said bureaucrats.

From there we hurried off to Ikea, with a quick swing by Lugano for sightseeing waylaid by snarly traffic. Our Swedish sausage lunch highlight was the pregnant girl standing at the standing table next to us. I swear she was about 12 and definitely pregnant. She was there with her 10 year old sister and mother who was younger than I. I would have sworn she were prepubescent but I remember enough ninth grade biology to know that pregnancy is a strong counter-indicator. These kids nowadays! We ripped through the kitchen section in record time, fully equipping two kitchens in under half an hour. But once we hit the curtains we came to a full stop. After staring at the assorted samples for way too long and wondering why they were all 3 meters long when no window is that high, we agreed that we are not genetically equipped to buy curtains and immediately began thinking of women we could cajole into going to Ikea to pick them out.

It was when we got home, however, that the real craziness began. I had scheduled an electrician to come tomorrow morning but then my dad pointed out that Hannes could probably do whatever the electrician was going to charge 100 CHF an hour to do. I called Hannes quickly to make sure before calling the electrician. Since my phone wasn’t working, this involved a combination of cell phone and computer to make the calls. Mmeanwhile, the contractors started descending. Firstly, Signor Nicola, a painter came by. He was talking to my dad while I was on the phone. I couldn’t tell what was going on with his linguistic skills as he was speaking a German that was both broken and in a very heavy dialect. He must have been taught only a little German and by someone high in the mountains. He and my father barely understood each other. It turned out that Italian was far easier as he was a jolly and patient man, willing to say some things twice. He spent about an hour, asking all kinds of questions that Leandro never did, getting into all kinds of nuances like the ceiling above the balcony. Towards the end he called up a coworker (I think who works for the paint company) who burned a tiny patch of the house and then peered at it through a magnifying glass. Then he poured water on the house and measured how far the water spilled and tested its Ph balance. I’m not sure how scientific it all was, but it looked pretty cool. Nicola will get me an estimate by Friday but he gave me to believe it would be about half of what Leandro bid. I really don’t understand how these bids can vary so widely.

Meanwhile the stoner gardener from Croatia showed up. Wasic has long blonde hair and wore a leather jacket and responded to anything I said about 3 seconds after most people would. Dude, wo ist dein Auto? I showed him the yard and he would point at certain plants and say their names (which usually I didn’t understand) and then tell me what needed to happen to them. I got a pretty decent sense of what he would do both now to prepare for spring and then next year over the course of the year. But the bottom line seemed to be that next year, over the course of the “season” (which is 8 months), he would come by twice a month for two hours each time for 2500 CHF. As far as I could figure it, this would be about 78 CHF per hour! That seems a bit much for gardening.

Meanwhile Mauro came home. This is the first time he’s been here since we’ve been here. As the contractors faded away into the dusk, Mauro came upstairs as my dad and I were making dinner. He joined us for our sausages, pasta, salad, and insanely good bread that Ines turned us on to. (And now we know where to buy it!) I had to carry the conversation at first, but it’s amazing how wine improved Mauro’s English and German and my dad’s Italian. By the end I think they were debating strategies for addressing the financial crisis.

8 October

The view out my window early morning and late afternoon.



Today I made a big discovery. I was getting the shovel out of the toolshed in order to replant some palm trees and I found a stack of tiles. It’s a big stack, maybe half a meter high. Of course I had noticed them before, but somehow it hadn’t registered. Maybe now because I’ve been looking for tiles for the kitchens, bathrooms, and balconies, I’m more tile-sensitive. I was very excited and forced my dad to come look and help me sort through them all. There are about 10 types and most are not hideously awful – as you might expect from tiles stashed in a corner of a toolshed of an old house.

I suppose this is an apt bellwether of my state when a tile discovery makes the highlight list.

In other news, we found a great sign a couple days ago. We were cruising around Pfister, the high end furniture store where the average sofa costs 5000 CHF, and we came upon a sign that would make Uncle Sam proud. Next to a collection of sofas, in bold print on the wall, it simply stated: “Sit For You.” I think perhaps there may be no more elegant way of saying USA #1.

9 September

I got sick of using those "stupid bags" so I upgraded.

You can see how much debris the Maggia river dumps into Lago Maggiore after 4 days of rain.


OK, this is now getting weird. I got my voicemail working today and found a message from one Ines Zimmermann from Saturday. You remember Kai, the helpful guy from Ikea? Well he’s her brother in law. She’s a realtor with RE/MAX in Contone and wanted to know if there was anything she could do to help. I wasn’t sure what to tell her, there was a ton of stuff – where to start? I told her my situation and she said she could probably help out. Since I’m leaving on Thursday, we decided that she should come over tonight. She definitely seemed “highly assertive” shall we say. I didn’t get a bad feeling from her at all, just that she’s a go-getter – and that stands out here in Ticino. In any event, I figured I’m buying stuff, let’s see what she’s selling.

So tonight she comes over and is giving me feedback on the house and what’s being done and what needs to be done. I’m glad to get her perspective. She says to emphasize the kitchens and get rid of the dark colors – which I am working on. It turns out (here’s the rub) that her other brother in law (her husband has 7 siblings, a point we’ll return to shortly) is a contractor. But he’s more a general contractor in the American sense. If you’ve been following my story, you’ll notice that I have been playing general contractor to a bunch of Italian-speaking subs. This guy could do that for me – he lives across the lake in Cannobio, in Italia.

But she’s not really pushing anything, just talking a mile a minute. If the energizer bunny were 50 years old and a type A German women, Ines is it. But it’s fun to kind of complain about the hard parts of the process and get opinions since somehow blogging hasn’t really afforded me that opportunity. We decide that she’ll bring her brother in law by tomorrow morning. As she’s leaving, I ask her where she’s from. She says she was born near München and I look at her skeptically and she quickly adds that when she was 2 they moved to near Düsseldorf. I say, “That’s funny, my family is from Dortmund.”

She’s shocked, “Get out!” (or the German equivalent) That’s what she meant by near Düsseldorf. I say my uncle lives and I used to live in Aplerbeck. She practically faints, she grew up in Höckenheim and her husband is from Aplerbeck! It’s quite likely our families know each other.

Wow, things like this happen for a reason. We’ll see what it is.

8 September

Just so you know that I’m not just wasting time buying furniture and dealing with contractors, today I did my best for cultural understanding as well. I overhead Marco, the painter, singing along with the radio downstairs as I was on my way to the garden. He was struggling a bit with the sheer poetry of the English language. I gave him a little lesson I’m sure he’ll carry forth and teach to his loved ones: it goes “Oh Mandy you came and you gave without taking, but I sent you away oh Mandy.” I think Ticino is a more beautiful place now due to my efforts.

7 September

The universe laughed at me today. After all the tension and mishaps we had with the key: not being able to see La Perla in the first place to not being able to take ownership, I found one under the mat. It was probably there the whole time – at least long enough that Sylvia didn’t have it on her inventory!

Marianne and Wälle came over today and really helped me out. I had attached the shower curtain to the rod Berri had installed and it had come down. It also seemed mounted too low. Wälle also pointed out it was mounted in the wrong place. He went home to get his drill and mounted it for me properly. Meanwhile Marianne and I cleaned out the studio. We ripped out the carpet, peeled off the glue, cleaned the floor, and vacuumed the cobwebs and spiders off everything. It looks pretty slick now, especially with the freshly painted walls.

Europe is over 500 million people committed to the career of Belinda Carlisle. This is a woman who has stood atop the charts here for some 22 years now. But Europeans are as interested in breadth as well as depth. Not only is it critical to play “Heaven Is A Place on Earth” at least once a day per radio station, but one must essay the lesser known gems such as “Circle In the Sand,” about which I had completely forgotten. And if you can remember a Top 20 hit from the 80s (from one of my biggest crushes no less), that I, the Master Recorder, had forgotten, that is a feat worth celebrating! And we’re not even talking about “Summer Rain” or “La Luna” which I have also heard repeatedly. By the way, no one has ever heard of the Go-Go’s so don’t ask – despite their appearance in the international mega-smash film Hillcrest.

Wow, I just took a shower and I’m so excited I think I could join the Pointer Sisters! It may not sound like much to you heathens, but I was able to enjoy the shower on my floor for the first time. I didn’t have to go downstairs for the adventure. Wälle did a masterful job setting up the curtain. I didn’t realize, until it was done incorrectly, and then redone, how brilliant his work is. He made a curtain that is too small, fit perfectly nevertheless. He covered all the leakpoints without me telling him where they are. He adjusted the height perfectly. And I was able to step out and shave right there without having to do the nude sprint upstairs past the baffled painters! La vita e bella!

3 September

Today has been the first fully bad weather day. A sun ray or two may have hit my head, but it was just coincidence. It’s been dark, cloudy, and rainy all day. It seemed a good day to go furniture shopping. I’ve been thinking about La Perla like this: I have taken steps to get the big jobs done, but these big jobs are improvements only. There are still things needed to make La Perla – the middle unit especially – livable: a bed for example. So that’s where I went. I collated all my furniture notes, compared prices and quality of the four places I’ve visited, and decided Ikea had most of the best stuff.

I’ll skip the details of what I got where, but, suffice it to say that I spent 4 hours at Ikea. I closed the place down. Seriously. An employee had to unlock the door to let me out! I may be Swedish, but I don’t love Ikea that much! It just takes that long. Ironically, I knew what I wanted more or less when I walked in and expected it would take about an hour – silly me! For each department I had to locate a free salesperson (and it was almost as crowded as last Sunday) Then I had to show them what I wanted and to make choices about the size, color, etc. Obviously this was slower in Italian. Then they had to enter it all in the computer (and their software made my 1990 Mac Classic SE 30 look fast). Then there was some issue about some items being in the central store (probably hidden in a hollow mountain near Bern) or at the local store. That required about an hour of finagling – which, I believe, is an international word.

My fifth department salesperson was Christel. It was like getting out of the shower and opening the window on a winter’s day or pulling out of a traffic jam onto an open freeway: she spoke German!!! And I don’t mean Schwitzerdeooutch, I mean real hard-core Queen’s German. I was so excited! We made decisions about 3 beds in about 1/4 the time it took for one 90 franc desk. It felt so good I threw in a couple guardaroba/armadio thingees too! They don’t have closets here so you have to get a big piece of furniture instead. I’m not sure exactly what the English word is. I think it may be wardrobes, but other that entrances to Narnia, I’m not really sure what they are – just like hedgerows, pheasants or copses. Some British thing. And we all know how I feel about British things.

Due to the hang up with the different sources for some items, Christel took me to see Kai. I knew something was weird straightaway but I wasn’t sure what. When people speak Italian to me, I understand maybe 75% but when they speak with each other, I understand about 10%. But here I was following them effortlessly. Then I realized it: they were speaking perfect high German with each other and I could understand everything! Christel left and as Kai was settling my accounts we got to talking. He told me how he had moved from Germany to southern Spain and then Mallorca and now here with his Argentinian wife and kids. I started looking around for the camera because it seemed like senseless and unmotivated exposition and I was wondering when the plot payoff would come. Germans aren’t this forthcoming, but he clearly was German. He asked me why I was buying up half of Ikea and I told him about La Perla. We agreed that Ticino was the perfect blending of Northern and Southern Europe and that we enjoyed it’s diversity and how people really do come together. It’s easier when the common culture is Italian – which is, of course, empirically better than most cultures and easier to sell than mainstream Americana. Kai was quite friendly and helpful.

Then once I had all 38 items entered (keep in mind that an Ikea desk is comprised of a plank and two bases, etc.), I took my list to the kasse. I figured she would freak out but she kept her composure. In a fit of efficiency, the folks at Ikea had put a barcode at the bottom of my printed out list. She scanned that like I was actually buying real stuff. She said a bunch of stuff in Italian and I smiled and said “si, grazie.” Then I stuck my little card in the little slot and presto! Rifuta??? What? OK, this was bad. The kassedonna told me to go to customer service or back upstairs. I glanced at the long line and howling kids swinging off strollers at customer service and tried to find my way through the Ikea maze back to Kai. But he was gone. I eventually found Christel and she said they could charge me 30% down and bill me the rest. She redid the list and I went back downstairs.

I obediently cut back in line and again rifuta!! The kassadonna wasn’t pleased. Nor was I. Nor were those in the growing line who eventually started taking items off the conveyor belt as kassadonna started calling everyone over on the PA. I felt like a superstar. Or maybe more like one of those hated ones like Paris Hilton. Yeah, for the first time in my life, I felt just like Paris Hilton. I think. Who is Paris Hilton exactly? Did I feel like OJ Simpson? Anyway, I finally just gave up and used my American visa card. See, when push comes to shove, it still comes down to the almighty dollar. Even eight years of tyranny and imperialism can’t change that. God Bless #1.

Half an hour later the customer service guy had worked his magic and assured me all my stuff would come on the same day from the same truck – whenever that might be! During the course of the afternoon it became clear to me that only I can supervise and ensure the delivery, moving, and building of the 38 subparts of the furniture I ordered. Guess who’s coming back to Ticino?

As I left, I couldn’t tell who wanted to leave more, the woman ending her shift or me. I had my shrink-wrapped pillow I picked up somewhere on the way still stuck under my arm and I told her I was ready to use it after a day at Ikea.

Luckily Marianne was about an hour late with dinner so I made it early and got in a bocalino of fritz and a crash course in competing satellite dish offerings from Wälle before another amazing meal of some sort of Peruvian cornbread casserole. Then we played the dice game with no name. Mauro calls it gioco de dadi (game of dice) and Marianne calls it 10,000. I think its kind of like Mormor’s (my mothers mother) card game she called Casin – even though no one in the world has ever heard of it. Even though I had watched tons of people play it over the years, this was my virgin tour. I had some 8000 points when Wälle won. I still had a turn and asked Wälle if he was scared and he laughed at me. Somehow, with extensive coaching, I managed to roll some 2500 points on my last turn and come from behind to win. Unfortunately, I only got a bronze medal on my sophomore attempt and that’s not impressive when there are only four players.

1 September - Monday

My return trip was almost as long as my trip north three days previous. It was intermittently rainy and generally unpleasant aside from this charming German farmhouse. As I rounded the bend in Magadino where you can first see the lake, the sun greeted me.


For some reason, I think we both slept even worse Sunday night than before. I had those dreams about bugs biting me and making me itch. But then when I woke up, they weren’t dreams.

Jaimey packed up his life of the last couple months and I helped clean up the bachelor residue. We toured around a bit looking for a post office for some last minute mailing, but failed to coordinate our schedules with the BundesBureaucracy. I deposited Jaimey at the airport and the next thing I knew I was crossing the Rhine and heading south again…

When my Oma died in 1983, she left me a small, but not trivial amount of money. Over the years, and particularly during the summer of 2002 when I lived and worked in Frankfurt, it wound up in a Commerzbank account in Frankfurt. Now, my myriad attempts in various countries and employing all sorts of methods over the years, had resulted only in me understanding that only a certain Frau Schmidt could ever help me. No money-machine, no teller, no online banking procedure, could ever grant me access to my money. The trick was, of course, that Frau Müller was never there. She was always on vacation, in kur (German for being lazy and preferring to call it thusly to allow the insurance to pay for it), not in, or only available for in-person consultation. It didn’t help that often Frau Grober was actually Frau Schmidt or Frau Müller.

I can see your outrage dear reader: “but it is your money, how could they not give it to you!” I can only assure you, dear reader, that you are not a German bureaucrat. For, if you were, your outrage would be: “ach, so little you understand you silly little cog on our Byzantine system. It is the system that rules, incomprehensible as may be, and your desires don’t even warrant passing curiousity.”

Thus you can imagine my surprise when I called last Thursday and asked to speak to Frau Grober, and, for the first time in Commerzbank history, the name on my statement corresponded to a human being currently physically present in the bank. Even more surprisingly, she quite reasonably stated that I could fax her a signed request stating my intention to close the account and to transfer the assets to my new account in Switzerland. I still have not recovered from the lucidity of this conversation. Naturally I rushed to the post office to fax said document.

Now return with me to my drive south from Düsseldorf. As I am traversing (at occasionally rather high speeds) the 300 or so km to Frankfurt, and I am summarizing what I know, or what I think I know about German bureaucracy in general and Commerzbank Sachenhausen specifically. Interesting to note that the news of the day was that Commerzbank was getting acquired by Dresdenerbank – a landmark I’m sure to all my German banking readers. Ultimately I figured that my chances of ever seeing my money again would be improved by personal contact. I knew no one could resist my charm when standing at the teller’s desk.

Thus I steered Luciano into Frankfurt and through the streets I once knew well to the Sachsenhausen quarter of Frankfurt – just south of the Main. It was an odd trip down memory lane as that was a particularly evocative summer for a variety of reasons both professional and personal. In any event, I reached the bank with nary a hitch and parked Luciano illegally but where I remembered I was unlikely to be controlled, and dashed into Commerzbank Sachsenhausen. The teller received me but told me (naturally) that Frau Grober was out, but that perhaps she could help me. I stifled a laugh and asked her if they had received my fax. She disappeared for a moment and returned to inform me that no fax from me had arrived. Then I proceeded to explain my tragic tale as I have told you, omitting perhaps a few flourishes and embellishments concerning German bureaucracy, as self-reflection is not a hallmark of such people. She informed me that the branch simply couldn’t cash out that much money (and we’re not talking about a lot of money here). I helpfully suggested that maybe I could give her the wiring instructions and resorted to that age-old trick of whipping out my computer. Europeans don’t usually do well with magic or new fangled devices. Technology is like kryptonite to the bureaucrat. Her eyes bugged and then slowly began to glaze over as I pulled up the complicated transfer instructions. As she started copying them down, I explained that maybe I could log into their network to use their printer. That didn’t mean much to her. Then I whipped out my magic wand, er, USB memory stick. It turns out that our wonder teller had the only computer built in the last five years without a USB port. Somewhere around there my plan reached its climax and she sighed and retreated to the back. When she came back, she unlocked her drawer and started pulling out Euro notes. Victory was mine! I was once again reunited with my own money, successfully wrestled away from the evil forces of German bureaucracy.

31 August Sunday III

After walking around the Dom a bit, we went into the train station and made our purchases, had a leisurely lunch in a sunny square, full with tables and people enjoying the weather, and headed over to the movie theater. By August 31, they had not yet dubbed The Dark Knight into German and so we were able to watch the original version in English. Jaimey and I share a deep dislike of dubbing – no matter what languages are involved, it looks stupid.

After the movie, I cajoled Jaimey into having a big German meal with me. Despite being a German professor and his several years of living in Germany, he rarely eats German food. But I think it’s growing on him after my many years of prodding and conniving. After such meals, especially when accompanied by tasty Kölsch beers, it’s easy to agree Germany is simply a better country than the US. Although I think we agree on this point when hungry as well. Of course, since Jaimey likes places called "Crazy Chicken Grill," it's hard to take him too seriously. Vikas, we were wondering why it's called that . . .

Slowly we returned to Luciano as storm clouds began brewing on the horizon. On the autobahn the hail began to fall so hard the traffic completely stopped. Many cars took refuge under trees or bridges. When we got back to Jaimey’s apartment we could barely stay awake to hear more analysis of Palin’s appointment as running mate on Jaimey’s CNN.

31 August Sunday II

We wandered through the squares and cafes to the famous Kölner Dom – which is every bit as impressive as when I was a kid. It really is worth going out of your way to see. They have almost finished cleaning off the soot of the area’s 100 years of coal production. As my dad will tell you, most of those factories have been shipped off brick for brick to China to continue their pollution there.

I suppose 4711 is the most famous fragrance from "Cologne" so i took a picture of the headquarters.

As we walked along, I told Jaimey of my plan to get my dad a vest-jacket as a joke and a test. There must be a law that requires every German male, as soon as he turns 60, to buy a vest-jacket with multiple pockets. Nearly every older man wears one and they look like imbeciles. We were speculating what these guys could be thinking as they bought one of these monstrosities, and we concluded, in union, “aber ja, das ist sehr praktisch!” Practical – the rallying cry for all older Germans – especially when it comes to fashion. Let me reiterate: if you like trains that run on time, hang out in Germany, if you want people who look good, go to Italy!

31 August Sunday

Since Saturday had been at least six hours of driving on top of the nine from Friday, sleeping in seemed advisable. However, the cushions I borrowed from Marianne did little to mitigate the concrete floor of Jaimey’s apartment. Unfortunately, Jaimey’s bed being little better, he got up early to type up a short novel. Good sleep was clearly not going to be the cornerstone of my stay in Düsseldorf.

Jaimey had made some tentative plans to go to Amsterdam with a colleague of a friend or a friend of a colleague or somebody named Mahmoud anyway. A long drive seemed a bad idea and suddenly two small children were now part of the program, which would, of course, limit our activities in Amsterdam (because kids have shorter tolerance for museums and such). Thus the first order of the day was to disentangle ourselves from that plan.

Jaiey’s brilliant alternative was to head to the train station in Köln (Cologne). Although I confess it was a harebrained scheme, I do maintain Jaimey is smarter than he looks. His rationale was that he had still failed to get anything for Jacqueline and Germany, being terribly German, was closed on Sundays. However, through some odd transportation subclause loophole, train station stores were still open. As sweetener, Jaimey threw in the idea of seeing The Dark Knight – which I had seen before in the US but I was happy to see again. Honestly, I mainly went along because I had not been to Köln for maybe about 8 years when I had been there before with, you guessed it, Jaimey and his girlfriend at the time. I had also a special fondness for the city, having visited several times as a kid – maybe to see the cathedral.

Köln, as you can see from my dramatic pictures, is a pretty city. Of course, any large German city is significantly nicer than any large American city save perhaps San Francisco and New York. Maybe it has something to do with use of public space, pedestrian and preserved old downtowns, and urban planning to minimize sprawl and strip malls?

30 August Saturday - entertainment options

Do you trust a place called Kinky Star? Or perhaps you prefer to hang out with the other charlatans? I'll be at the Bar des Amis thank you very much . . .

30 August Saturday

Jaimey was looking a bit uitgezonderd - even if it was his birthday!

Another example of how Dutch/Flemish, although a separate language, seems more similar to Hochdeutsch than schwitzerdootch, which is supposed to be a dialect. I hope someone can explain the difference between a language and a dialect to me before I go mad.

30 August Saturday - more pictures

30 August Saturday

I can't believe how many pictures I took. Luckily they're all brilliant and you want to see them all!

The shot with the flags is, of course, deeply symbolic of my mixed heritage. Any disparagement of Ireland is strictly coincidental.

30 August Saturday - Altstadt pictures

Any scantily-clad women or pontificating professors appearing in the photograph are merely coincidental.