Five years ago, an American lady contacted me about applying for German citizenship. She fell into that group of people who could qualify without living in Germany, but she would need to pass the German language test at a high level.
She had paid a consultation fee, I had assessed her case, we had discussed it, everything was on track.
Now, five years later, she e-mails me again, saying that she narrowly missed the required number of points in the C1 exam. That’s actually still very impressive, as C1 is the level required for university studies in German. Even if you miss that by a few points, it signifies an extremely good command of the language, possibly at a higher level than some native German speakers.
Naturally, my advice was to simply retake the exam after studying and practicing a bit. You can retake it as often as you want.
That advice did not make the lady happy. She asked if we couldn’t argue some exception. I told her that it would be a waste of her money and, more importantly, my time. In any case, I had already given her the best possible advice. For free! She kept insisting on submitting her application for German citizenship without retaking the test and asked me what I would charge for reviewing her application.
Two-hundred euros, I said, generously, to which she replied:
Okay. And before I pay you a fee for your help, I’m hoping to better assess my chances before I apply. Do most Americans in my situation request dual citizenship? I see that on the application, it asks why you would not give up your former citizenship. What is an acceptable answer to this? My answer is that once my children are in college, I would like to move to Germany to be near my mother’s side of the family. This is still some years away, hence, the reason for requesting both citizenships.
That sounded like someone was trying to get me to answer even more questions for free, something I have become rather allergic to.
Hence my short reply:
Before I answer your questions prior to potentially receiving payment, let me quickly go to the bakery and eat the cake before I decide if I want to pay for it.
This is the moment when a client with a sense of humor would wire the money and make a joke about cake. Not this one:
I take offense to your snarky response
I paid you quite a bit of money in 2014 for help with this application
I would have been willing to pay you more to help me see this through until receiving your email. My last connection to my family in Germany was my mother who just passed away through suicide
Obtaining dual citizenship is close to my heart as the rest of her family is still in Germany
I’m disappointed but have to remember not everyone has a kind spirit
For New Year’s Eve, a friend invited me to Cochrane, about 15 or 20 km west of Calgary. Looking at the map, I noticed that it lies by the same Bow River which flows through Calgary, and thus I came to the following decision: I would walk there. Simply following the river all day, even I should manage that.
On top of that, the walk goes through Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park, so it should be beautiful. If the weather would be cooperative.
I leave the house before sunrise, to make sure that I will get to Cochrane before sunset. First, I have to walk through suburbs like Bearspaw (which you have seen in the third season of Fargo), but soon, my excited eyes catch sight of the mountains.
The first shock appears in the shape of a huge bison on the other side of the road. My heart almost stops beating, that’s how scared I am. Such a monster! Luckily, it is fully occupied with having breakfast and doesn’t spot me. (Maybe it’s actually a moose or a reindeer, I am not that familiar with these Nordic animals yet.)
Having risen early saved my life. That way, the owners of the gardens which I have to trespass in order to reach the river were still asleep. A few hours later and they would be sitting on their patios with rifles, ready to shoot.
In case I miss the river, I could also use the railway for orientation. This is actually a general piece of advice for hiking in Canada. Following the railway, you will always reach the next town or ultimately the sea (if you don’t die of hunger or cold before). And when one of the long freight trains passes by, you can jump it and shorten your journey.
Instead of the train, I have to jump yet more fences, because there is no other way to reach Glenbow Ranch Park from this side. If you want to emulate the hike, this is the spot where you climb into the park:
There is no other way. Unfortunately, most land is Canada is fenced in and barbwired off. If a park ranger will catch me, I am simply going to say that I was walking on the frozen river and got lost.
Just as the first building comes into sight, my stomach is alerting me to the fact that I forgot to have breakfast. This is Bearspaw Ranch, which sounds like they will have coffee and cowboy-style breakfast with a huge pan of eggs and bacon.
As I step closer, jumping over another fence, I realize that it has been a long time since the last breakfast was served here. The map, which still shows a kiosk on this spot, must be from around 1890. The ranchers have gone off into the oil business, as practically everybody in Alberta. People here are in such an oil rush that they are even drilling for petroleum in the ice.
Well, then I’ll have to eat the first cereal bar. I don’t need to worry about drinking, though, for there is enough water, snow and ice. The river comes directly from the Rocky Mountains, so the water is potable.
Slowly but surely, it is becoming sunnier, warmer, more colorful. But next to the river, I detect traces of another dangerous predator. I have no idea what it is, but its teeth are sharp enough to bite off whole trees.
For the fact that there is a little bit of forest left, we have to be thankful to the great fire that ravaged Calgary in 1886 (in memory of which the local ice hockey team is called the Calgary Flames). After that, wood was no longer a fashionable construction material and got replaced by bricks and sandstone, both produced along today’s hiking route. On the other side of the railway line, and of course separated by more fences and prohibitive signs, you can still see the remains of a quarry.
Stones from here built the second Calgary, which has sadly and mostly been razed to the ground since and replaced by the third Calgary. The latest version of the city has been built with steel, glass and concrete, and we can’t really claim that it has become more beautiful in the course of so-called progress.
Good that I am spending the day in nature instead. In the distance, I can see the Rocky Mountains. I won’t reach them today, but with such a goal in sight, the walking is brisker, jauntier, happier.
On the other side of the river, in the distance, I can see the ski jumping hill from the Olympic Games in 1988. One day, I have to walk there too, to find out if anything is still going on there today or whether it is decaying without purpose, like an abandoned quarry.
Calgary was one of the candidates for the Winter Games in 2026. But a few months ago, the city held a referendum and 56% spoke out against doping and corruption. Probably, Qatar will now also get the Winter Olympics.
I am a bit surprised to discover that I am hiking along the Trans Canada Trail. The landscape is really beautiful, no doubt, but how is a hiking trail from the Pacific to the Atlantic supposed to work in a country, in which everything is fenced off and closed off?
Later, I check the map of the Trans Canada Trail and indeed, the trail runs to the eastern end of Glenbow Ranch Park, from where the hikers are then sent back and asked to walk into Calgary along the highway.
That’s a huge detour! And not at all suitable for hiking. So, I already have one suggestion for improvement. Once I will take a look at further sections, I will probably come up with more ideas. Maybe some expropriation will be necessary, but private ownership of land is a strange concept anyway.
Here too, the land only really gained in value once the railroad arrived, picking up stones and straw and delivering cigars and cider in return. The land appreciated in value even more when the railroad built a water tower and later a station at Glenbow. This led to a village, which turned into a small town.
A small town, but one that had a school, a post office, a store and of course plenty of farms. The village store would actually come in handy, because by now, it has become lunchtime.
Damn it, the retail trader seems to have been put out of business by the bloody recession. The investment in the picturesque location does not seem to have provided the expected profits. To make sure that he ain’t just sleeping, I knock on the door, but except for a few deer running away, nobody and nothing moves.
The farm is deserted, too. No rabbit to kill, no cow to milk. Maybe people here only discovered oil for lack of alternatives?
I gulp down another cereal bar. These things are beginning to become boring. But the day is becoming even more beautiful than expected. It’s the end of December, but I estimate the temperature to be at least 10 degrees. This is not the Canadian winter I feared (I will get to know it one month later, though). I have long taken off the hat and the gloves, now it’s time for the winter jacket to go. I even lay down in the warm grass for a nap in the sun. Let’s hope that the herd of buffalo will remain calm and won’t want to trample across the prairie all of a sudden. But the stampede is only planned for July.
Speaking of lethal dangers, at one of the rest places I see a sign, which is equally informative and disconcerting. Now I know which monstrous animal eats the trees around here!
Luckily, it’s winter, and snakes, geese and Canadian retirees have moved south. It would be good if somebody could keep the announcement of spring from the snakes, so they would remain in Mexico instead of scaring innocent hikers in Canada. (Mexico is so dangerous anyway that a few snakes won’t make any difference.)
As I see a teepee, it raises hopes for Native Americans inviting me to a buffalo barbecue. But the aborigines have disappeared too, whether fled, expelled or murdered, I don’t know. Maybe they have just been assimilated into Canadian capitalism and are also drilling for oil now. I am left with yet another cereal bar, and I am beginning to seriously hate those chunks of protein.
But I discover that a content heart offsets a discontent stomach, at least temporarily. The sun is on extra power, the hills are becoming more curvaceous, the grass is getting greener, the peaks in the distance appear pointier. All of this together consolidates into a mood of fulfillment and satisfaction, pride and happiness. Setting one foot in front of the other for ten hours is one of the best ways to spend a day. New year’s resolutions aren’t really my thing, but now, a few hours before the new year will kick off, I know what I want from 2019: more days like this one. Where in the world I will do it is almost irrelevant. I don’t need to travel far away for that purpose. I just need a pair of sneakers and some dollars for the bus back.
As darkness descends and brings the night’s cold, at around 5 pm, I reach the place of my friend Edward in Cochrane. Immediately, I tell him that all restaurants, kiosks, fast-food places and kebab shops along the way were closed and how much I am looking forward to a steak or a hamburger. “But you know that we are vegans?”, he shatters all my hopes for an unhealthy end to an otherwise healthy day. In such a household, I don’t even need to ask for a New Year’s cigar.
The internet is full of questions about travel and, having visited or lived in 62 countries or so, I regularly receive many such questions myself:
What is the best place to visit in Germany?
When is a good time to visit Spain?
What do you recommend to see in Israel?
Is it better to go to Cluj or to Brașov?
Is Colombia safe?
How many days do I need for Vilnius?
How much money do I need for one month in Europe?
Is Scotland worth it?
I refuse to answer such generic questions. More importantly, I suggest that you never pose them. Because travel advice is personal, like relationship advice or like financial advice. Its value depends on the goals, ideas, wishes, limitations, expectations of the individual traveler.
It’s impossible to give good travel advice to people without knowing them. The advice which I might give about hiking in Chapada Diamantina in Brazil might be wonderful for Joe, but terrifying to Anita. Some people think that 35 degrees heat or more is a requirement for enjoying a place, while others (like me) prefer to go in winter when you are the only visitor and the locals will have time for a chat. I hate masses of people, particularly when there is no compelling reason for everyone to be there, but others want to go to Oktoberfest, inexplicably.
I know some really quiet spots.
I would need to know if you prefer nature or cities, how many kilometers you can walk, if you prefer medieval architecture or communist brutalism, if you prefer to be among people or not, if you speak the language, how much time you have and how much money you want to spend.
Whenever I read questions like “We will be in Germany for one week. What do you recommend us to see?”, I also wonder why people even bother to go to a place if they have no idea about it. Is it only to check it off a list? How sad.
I might send you to towns where nobody lives anymore.
Having said that, of course I am going to continue giving unsolicited advice on this blog. But keep in mind that it’s my blog and that my idea of traveling is doing it slowly, preparing well, getting to know people and trying to understand a country. With those of you who think similarly or are curious to try it out, I am happy to exchange advice. Not surprisingly to master travelers, this will be far less about places than about methods and strategies, for example on traveling with little money, on adventure or on making friends in new places.
If you are the kind of person who is after yet more Instagraph photos, this is probably the wrong blog for you. Anyway, in that case, you don’t need to leave the house at all, because you can do everything on Photoshop. That would also be better for the environment. – All others, please keep the questions coming, but tell me more about yourself and what you want to get out of a trip! Otherwise, I won’t be able to help you, and I might send you into some mountain range from where you will never find the way back.
Be prepared to end up at the cemetery when you ask me for directions.
I haven’t been to the Calgary Zoo yet, because I am always a bit wary of watching animals locked up in cages. But then, I have seen so many wild animals walking around the city that I am beginning to wonder if the zoo might have an open-door policy.
One day, as I got up early, I saw a monstrous moose by the side of the road.
I don’t know if they are really dangerous, but the sheer size makes them appear quite intimidating. I was definitely happy that it was having breakfast and was thus less interested in me.
By the way, if anyone can explain the difference between a moose and an elk, I would be thankful. Not that I will be able to remember it, probably.
Much more numerous and definitely not dangerous are the deer.
Some of them even work in agriculture.
Other animals are just passing through, like the Canada geese. I was surprised to see them migrating south only in January, but they are an amazing sight (and sound), flying in large formations.
A particular phenomenon are white rabbits. They are all over town, and the story of their origin is quite peculiar. A few years ago, there was a magicians’ conference in Calgary. They performed tricks upon public demand and, as clichés are persistent, most people wanted the wizards to pull a white rabbit out of a hat. After a week, there were thousands of white rabbits roaming the streets.
Of course there are also plenty of squirrels.
Already on my first day in Calgary, walking in Nose Hill Park, I saw coyotes. A bit of a scary sight, at least for me, because I had never met them before and didn’t know how they would react. It turned out that they kept their distance.
Many people have warned me of coyotes, advising me to take baseball bats, hockey sticks or rifles with me as I go for walks. I never do that, of course, because most times, I even forget my glasses, my phone and my hat.
Also, it seems that fear of coyotes is more due to cultural heritage than realistically warranted, similar to the wolf in Europe. In Native American cultures, the coyote was an ambivalent creature, a trickster on the one hand, but also a hero or the creator’s sidekick. Anglo-Americans depicted the coyote as untrustworthy and cowardly, an image which seems to have stuck.
There have been attacks by coyotes on humans, but usually on small children. And many more humans get killed by dogs, other humans or cars.
One night, as I came home, there was a coyote hanging around the rubbish bins. I was startled at first, but the coyote seemed neither aggressive nor scared. It gave me time to take out my camera and then slowly walked away.
And then there are lions, watching over the city at sunset,
Everybody knows the line “no man is an island”, but nobody knows that when John Donne wrote Devotions upon Emergent Occasions in 1624, he actually warned of Brexit.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
I am not a big fan of John Donne, I should add. When I was in prison in Iran, I was given one book in English: John Donne’s Selected Poems. It was a nice gesture by one of the interrogators, but I am simply not a big fan of medieval poetry. Lying on the concrete floor, fighting insects and fear, listening to the screams in neighboring cells, still rooting for a revolution from whose ranks I had been plucked, I was not in the mood for romantic poetry.
I was in prison for one week, but I only got to page 5 or 6. And I would have had plenty of time, believe me. The light was on for 24 hours a day, too, which is quite a nice service for readers. But Evin prison should get some tomes of John Steinbeck, Alexandre Dumas or Thomas Mann, the kind of books one only finds time to read on internet-free islands, aircraft carriers and during incarceration.
It’s winter and I am in a big city, so I felt like watching a movie about the outdoors and about hiking in anticipation of the coming summer. Wild, the story of Cheryl Strayed’s hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, promised to be such a film.
Disappointingly though, there is not much about hiking and the nature along the trail beyond what you already saw in the trailer. In the film, the walk is interspersed with flashbacks to a life of misery, drugs, affairs, death and confusing flashbacks within flashbacks. These bits and bobs of personal drama, completely irrelevant to the hike, didn’t manage to arouse any interest. Nor did the many scenes of Reese Witherspoon in the shower, I should add. All of this was rather annoying because it cut up what I had believed was the actual story. But maybe I had gotten that wrong.
Sure, there were a few mountains and sunsets, but for a 94-day hike depressingly little of it. In the end, I didn’t quite get how Cheryl had covered more than 1,000 miles, for I hardly saw her hiking. Maybe she hitchhiked most of it.
I also didn’t like how the film made it appear as if everyone going on a long hike has psychological issues. Not everybody going on a long hike is trying to overcome some trauma. A lot of us just enjoy being outdoors. We like the slow change of scenery, the surprise encounters on the way, being close to nature, the sense of achievement.
The only two good pieces of advice about hiking were (1) to carry as little as possible (but you already learned that from my hiking adventures) and (2) to have packages sent to you, using the poste restante service of post offices on the way. That’s something I hadn’t thought of yet, and I may utilize that on longer hikes in the future. Be prepared for me begging for chocolate and cigars!
But, to leave on a positive note, the music was good.
Trying to come up with better recommendations, I realize that hiking simply may not be suited for movies. Weit is the only one I can think of, but that’s in German. You are better off with books like Into the Wild (there is a movie version, but I haven’t seen it yet), A Time of Giftsor Walking the Woods and the Water.
Links:
Here are the Amazon links, if you want to get the movie or the book.
I had gotten up early on Sunday morning. I was all energetic and fired up. I had put a motivational cassette tape into the walkman. I was ready to run, to lift weights, to punch the bag, to push-up and to sweat.
But when I got to the gym, they told me it’s for women only.
I kept walking around the neighborhood in Calgary, quite a workout in itself, but faced the same problem at each gym I attempted to visit: women only. GoodLife, Curves and many others apply this apartheid-like policy.
Slightly fed up, I decided to join the next club that would not discriminate against men. It was a Papa John’s.
And thus, with a quest for fitness, began my path to fatness.
Humans who are cold can’t really be beautiful. Nature can.
It looks like the perfect day for a long walk, with the sun shining from above and being reflected by the snow on the ground. So much light, and so few people to share it with. Because it is what they confusingly call a weekday, which seems to prevent them from walking, enjoying, almost from living.
I am usually quite happy to be alone, but today, I wouldn’t mind sharing the walk with a special person. The day would be even brighter, the walk brisker, the conversation more interesting, the heart beating faster, the smile wider, if she was here.
But she is in prison.
It doesn’t bother her anymore, because almost everybody she knows is there, too. Most of them wouldn’t even think of it as prison because they are allowed to go home at night. But if they ever didn’t show up the next morning at the large cage of steel, concrete and glass, each of them assigned to a different cell on a different floor in a different building, depending on their sentence, they would be in trouble soon. Same if they ever wanted to go home early. Or if they wanted to speak their mind. Trouble rarely arises, though, because these prisoners are rather docile.
I have reached the top of the hill, maybe led by a romantic wish to see her from afar, and the complex comes into full view.
These places have evolved, it seems at first sight, yet looking more closely, it’s the same old idea as on the plantation. People in power use those without power for their own gain. Pressure and control are exercised from the top down. Whoever can’t stand the pressure will pass it on. Downward, of course, for that is the only direction. The other direction, upwards, is reserved for time and labor, transformed into profits, ever growing, but never enough.
People wear uniforms, just like in a labor camp. Different uniforms for different groups of laborers, because what is divided is so much easier to control. People don’t see that they are in the same boat if half of them wear a green uniform and the other half an orange one. Even less so if you pay some of them more and promise everyone else that they, too, can earn more if they just work harder and shut up. And in case the paltry income wasn’t enough to keep them toiling, you can promise the serfs an even paltrier pin for every five years of obedient service. And maybe a watch after 15 years. It’s so insipid, it’s insulting.
By the way, employment is not primarily the sale of work, it’s the sale of time, the sale of an irretrievable part of your life, day after day, until most of it has disappeared or you are too exhausted to enjoy it. In the process, companies get richer by exploiting labor, banks and real estate companies (and probably a few lawyers, too) get richer because you need to live in a place where you would never need to live if it wasn’t for work (similar to the owner not allowing you to move off the estate). Car companies get richer because you think you need a car to get to the place of work (like the companies in Steinbeck novels than “lend” you the tools you need for your daily job, for a fee, of course).
Punishment for non-compliance is no longer the withholding of food, but the withholding of money, rendering the perpetrator poor, homeless and destitute. But again, this rarely happens, for fear itself is enough. Ostracism also works wonders. You don’t even need to ship people to an island anymore. If you dare to quit, you will lose “friends” and prestige. And thus, people who are only at home for breakfast and one hour of TV after work invest tens of thousands of dollars into the house, which they don’t own because it really belongs to the bank. Instead of going for a walk or a run every day, people sell their time to a factory or an insurance company, then pay a gym for the privilege of being allowed to run. The saddest thing to observe is how sincerely people believe they need stuff, which until a year ago they didn’t even know existed.
Sometimes, it seems everyone has gone mad, selling their whole adult lives for mere stuff, most of it produced in China. Nobody has time to deeply reflect on this, because everybody is running back and forth, making sales calls, attending meetings, writing reports, advising, consulting and bullshitting.
But a prison with a lot of inmates is still a prison. Or maybe a madhouse.
My friend knows herself how bad the situation is. She has complained about it often enough, when she had to interrupt a dinner or a movie for a phone call, an e-mail or a spreadsheet. She is younger than me, yet she has more grey hair. She is so tired and exhausted that every Friday night, she falls asleep as if capitalist vampires have sucked her dry of all energy. She gave up her dream of being a singer in order to boost someone else’s quarterly figures, just like lawyering once squelched my writing. She probably earns a hundred times more than me, yet I have a hundred times more time, more life, more peace. Granted, she could beat me at a game of Excel.
It has gotten considerably colder, windier, icier, chillier by now. The beautiful day has turned into a proper snowstorm, as many things in life do. Pondering the situation from which my friend sees no way out, although there are so many, I want to ride down the hill into town, storm the office tower and liberate her. But instead of a lance, I only have a pen.
The irony is, of course, that she will never have time to read this.
Links:
My TEDx talk for those who are thinking of making some changes to their life.
The photos were taken in Nose Hill and Nose Creek in Calgary.
Well, the Union Jack is already flying at half-mast here. Or two-thirds mast at best.
Canadian businesses are quite worried, given that the UK is Canada’s third largest export market and many Canadian companies use the UK as a base for their European operations. Unless the UK still changes track, it will drop out of CETA, the free-trade agreement between Canada and the EU, in less than three months.
I had promised that I would bring a pizza, but apparently, she didn’t trust me, or men in general. She had also prepared a huge pot of soup and an even larger bowl of salad.
As we, purposefully working together, finished barely a quarter of each of the dishes, we came to speak about homelessness in Canada. I had seen a few representatives of this species on the short walk from the pizza shop and we, both non-Canadians, were shocked by the prevalence of poverty in this rich country. We spoke of the presumed reasons of homelessness. We spoke of women fleeing abuse. We spoke of our encounters with homeless citizens. We spoke of feeding the hungry.
At the time, I am ashamed to say, we didn’t even notice the irony.
No social problem has only one cause, nor is one remedy ever sufficient. But that the abundance of the many has something to do with the poverty of the few is something which we probably couldn’t have denied, had we only bothered to think of it.
I blame it on the excellent lemon cake, which my new friend had prepared for dessert, and which clouded my usual clear thinking. Or maybe it was her beautiful eyes, an excuse which she, staring into mine, could similarly avail herself of.
The Happy Hermit 