Cottage life: The ultimate Canadian experience

If you ever get a chance to visit Canada, you will have to go to a cottage, for a weekend at least. Cause honestly, if you've never been to one, you wont know what the Canadian way of life really is about.

There simply is no arguing about it: Being at a cottage is the Canadian experience. Hanging out in the Canadian wilderness, nothing but woods, lakes, animals and bonfires to experience.

Talking about animals: The squirrels in Canada must be on anabolics. They look as if they've just eaten three South Tyrolean squirrels. As a little snack. Before they have a South Tyrolean badger for supper.

And! There are flying squirrels in Canada. Yes, they are squirrels. And yes, they fly. Or rather glide between the trees. I used to think, that this kind of animals lives in Madagascar only and has big parties singing "I like to move it". Well, that's how wrong one can be...

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Munich Oktoberfest in numbers

This year's Oktoberfest, or "Wies'n" as the locals call it, is coming up.

For quite a while now it hasn't just been a local thing anymore, people from all over the world come to say "Prost!" and "Mahlzeit!" which results in some crazy numbers:

• 95 gastronomical companies feed the visitors

• Oktoberfest employs 8.000 fixed and 4.000 changing workers

• the biggest tent is the "Hofbräuzelt" with 10.000 seats available (including the beergarden)
• all in all there are 14 big tents and 21 little ones (the smallest has 60 seats available) and together they offer 105.000 seats

 

 2011

• had 6.9 million visitors
• 7.5 million liters of beer (Maß) were consumed 
• 522.821 chicken and
• 118 oxen were eaten
• 4.750 things landed in the lost and found office including a Viking's helmet and some fake teeth

Wies'n Hendl

entrance of a tent called "oxen roaster"

even crazier: in the previous year 2010 the same office had to deal with a pug dog, a bunny, riding crops oh hello Christian Grey! and more hearing aids and fake teeth.

the poor dog found in 2010 - who would even bring one to Oktoberfest?!

 

200 people ask here for their lost phone DAILY!

Flying with Delta part II: Never again

So, we arrived in Ottawa one day later than we had thought. Spend 10 great days there, visiting family and friends, hanging out at cottages, eating, drinking and relaxing.

When the day of departure came, we were driven to the Ottawa airport, which is very nice, clean and you even go through customs there already, so you don't have to do that after your actual arrival in the US, waiting in lines for hours. Super convenient.

You might see it coming: After three hours of waiting, our flight was delayed and then -surprise!- cancelled. Due to a storm in NYC. Well, we were quite bummed out, but at least we knew we could just call family and stay with someone until the day after, for our rescheduled flight in the early morning.

This time, we were smart enough to recheck our flight online in the evening. And again -who would have guessed?!- it was cancelled. At least we didn't have to go back to the airport, waiting there for nothing. Our next flight was supposed to leave the same day at 2 pm, but checking again online on both airport's and the airline's homepages, it appeared to be cancelled on one of them. So we called the airline and the airport but nobody could help us. Nobody knew what was going on. So we went there anyways, but we were pretty pessimistic about the outcome of this anew attempt. We felt like we were just not supposed to go to New York.

And we were surprised again: This time the plane took off almost on schedule. We made it to New York, had two wonderful days there and there was no problem whatsoever with our flight back to Europe.

By the way, asking our cab driver in New York about that storm, that was supposed to have caused the cancellation of two of our flights, he said, that there was one in the morning the day before, but since then the sun had been shining. And other airlines flights had gotten in just fine and on time.

What remains is our declared intention to never fly with Delta Airlines again and an odd allergic reaction hearing the word combination "air traffic problems".

Canada, eh!

Obviously, this map doesn't show, what Canada is all about. In the upcoming posts, I'm gonna share some of my recent Canada-experiences with you; e.g. what a chiropractor does to you if you let him, that there really are fast food chains where you get delicious food (McDonalds & Burger King pale in comparison) & why I will never ever ever fly again with Delta, ever!

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