What is love? Actually!

Physics, chemistry ... or alchemy of the highest order?

Is it that magic combustion that happens when you meet the *right* person? That fierce bright flame that rises hot and crackling, and melts even the hardest of barriers that guard our innermost desires ...

Or is it that slow burn in the cockles of a heart that learns to appreciate what makes somebody so utterly special that they become incandescent forever in the crucible of your soul.

Either way love for me is a relationship on fire. Whether it burns out quickly or lasts a lifetime depends on the quality of the souls that come together. Whether they combust like gasoline into a raging torrent that destroys everything they touch or they become like coals that glow deep inside themselves and remain unquenchable even after those first sparks that set them alight is gone ...

Love!!! One way or the other it will destroy your heart and turn your relationships to ashes, or make it a warmer place for all. And if love has never set your heart alight, it will remain as cold as the dawn of a winter sky.

But to those who understand that love is also a covenant, something that is kindled by soul to soul, from parent to child ... they will realize that love is also a covenant so sacred that they may even have to give up their lives to keep this fire burning on in those they have cherished and consecrated with the purity of their love.

So here's to St. Valentine who was martyred to death for bringing lovers together for life.

Have you walked on the stones of years?
When you speak, is it you that hears?
Are your ears full?

You can't hear anything at all

From Tarkus by ELP

Friendships ...

“I am looking for friends. What does that mean -- tame?" "It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties." "To establish ties?" "Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world....” - from the book "The little prince" at times like this, when birthdays come and go, and you once again realize that there are friends who are miles away, who are still very close to your heart, and there are friends right here who have grown further and further apart ... and you wonder why ... then for me at least I wonder aloud is it me have I changed so much that some relationships no longer have the same weight in my memories, or is it them that they have learned to find new friends that matter more ... is it that friends come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn, as we are led to those who will help us to grow, if we let them ... and help them in turn. But whatever may be the reasons for the distance or the intimacy, I'm grateful for the moments where we can find reasons to connect again even if it's only for the fleeting space of a Facebook post. And I learn once again the truth that what you invest is what will be returned, in attention, in understanding, in affection and in kind ... after all this is the essence of learning to love and being loved isn't it? To all my friends, good eggs all despite how cracked you may be now and then :)

Stranger encounters of the Close kind

AAt the local Meet Market, they were making the single mingle. In a local pub somewhere north of St. Clair on Yonge @ 7PM, one Thursday evening.

And this is the story of how a Guy meets Girl at these speed dating events. First everybody gets name tags. They circulate. Chat. Wear their eyes out looking all around. Right after Girls are asked to sit at numbered tables. Guys are then told to rotate ten tables based on their alphabets. A goes to table 1, B to table 2. Five minutes with each person. And then clockwise to the next table. Until they reach the tenth and last woman in waiting ... Organizers watch the clock. And ring the bell for the next round.

This really happened. At my second table. In the pages of my unblemished past when I lived as an Urban Monk. Living in the world I had renounced. Celibate. and ready to share an opinion with a stranger for the chance of keeping my distance without leaving them behind ....

He "So tell me something about myself"
She "But I just met you"
He "Yes, and you were hoping for somebody else weren't you?"
She ... looks at me, looks away, laughs nervously
He ... waits
She "Okay, I get it ... you're here to meet people. So am I. is this your first time"
He "Doesn't matter. I know why you came here though"
She "Why?"
He "Because you were sure that you wouldn't know anybody else here"
She "What makes you say that?"
He "Speed dating is marketed at people who'd rather go shopping than hunting"
She "Hahaha that's funny. I do like shopping aisles ....
She ... but seriously it's a numbers game isn't it. In an hour you get to meet ten people ... "
He "But you're not getting ten choices are you? ...

She ... "Umm yes, You get to rate each person. They get to do the same. Yes it's only if we have a match we get a choice"

She smiles wryly ... "You're right"

She "So what are our chances then?
He "It all depends on what the other person remembers ... after this is all over ..."
She nods and smiles in agreement ... "How do we make sure the person we really want remembers us?"
He "Well if you package yourself right, the shopper will check out the merchandise ..."

He "But really selling relationships is not your thing is it ..."
She blushes ... but remembers to smile "Why do you say that?"
He "Because what a person is willing to talk about tells you the kind of risks they will take you know ..."
She "Really? What makes you think it's that easy?"

He "Bah forget all this philosophical theories ... let's do a test you and me, and see if I know what I'm talking about" ...
He "If I tell you which of the ten guys here is going to be your #1 choice, will you be willing to buy me a drink?"
She giggles ...
He "Okay write the name of the person down on your slip, and I'll write the name on my slip"
She nods looks at me sees me watching her unblinkingly ... breaks eye contact, nervously looks around ... writes
He looks at her ... when she's finished he writes on his paper ... they exchange papers.

She gasps "But how?"
He " ... but first the drink no?"
She "Okay now?"
He "No after, I'll go up to the bar, point at you, and you can nod yes ... that way you can continue to stay here"
She "Sure, okay tell me"

He "When a woman is attracted to a guy, she tries to make eye contact yes?"
She "I guess ...." He waits and then gives a knowing grin. She's nervous now "Yes"

She "Okay but I didn't try to make eye contact"

He "Well, the second thing a woman does when they're attracted is to figure out how to make the first move yes?"
She gasps ... "I don't know"
He "You know what's the first thing I did when they told us we'd be doing the rounds?" She "What?"
He "I figured out who'd be my first, second, third ... etc"
She "Why?"
He "That way I can give myself a minute to check the other person out before I make my way over"

She "And ..."
He "If I'm their first choice they'd be sure to make eye contact, because they automatically look around for the guy they were interested in the first place to see if they're next"

She "How can you be sure of that?"
He "Like I said ... eye contact" grins
She "That was it ... you looked at who I was looking at and you figured it out"
He "No, I couldn't see who you were looking for ... as people were milling around"
She "Then how"
He "my initial questions, they unsettled you ... you looked away ... you looked for him again"
She "No, I did not ..."
He "Not consciously but you couldn't resist seeing who he ended up with ...."
She shakes head kind of ruefully "Hey you seem to know a lot about women"
He "Not in general no, but if you had been interested in me I could have told you a lot about you" grins
She "I'm not so sure you are interested in me either ... but hey return the favor who are you interested in?"

He "Do you really want to buy me another drink?"

Top seven tips for

travel adventures

1. Get travel insurance. I used www.worldnomads.com and got for about just over 100$ medical (over a million dollars plus half a million for transportation back home), lost baggage coverage 2.5K, trip cancellation (1K), and about 10K in life insurance coverage. This is the most important thing to travel worry free.

2. Travel door to door. Use www.busabout.com for Europe, www.bazbus.com for South Africa (Note door to door option only works for backpackers and some hotels. Check first). For about 500$ (this was in 2007 so do check) you can go from Joburg to Cape Town via Drakensburg and then through the Garden route. Ditto for Europe. Go from Paris all the way around to Barcelona for about a 1000$ through 20 plus different cities in seven to eight different countries (about thirty days if you're in a hurry. Recommend six weeks though). However do note while it might be possible to do this cheaper, but it will take a lot more organizing and planning. Here it's just a pass you buy, and phone calls you make from your hostels to get picked up. No worries. No hassles. The other great thing is that as people hop on you get to make friends in the bus, and learn about places they've been to etc. Note there is a similar option for Australia, but distances are quite far and hence prices are not that cheap, and also some of the locations are remote so you'll have to pay your bus company to organize food/lodging. It will therefore cost about 2K to go clockwise around the country from Cairns to Alice Springs using say www.ozexperience.com. However it is possible to do this cheaper and better. Use http://www.premierms.com.au/newhome/home.asp for a less flexible option but it's also a lot lot cheaper only about 400$ from say Melbourne all the way up to Cairns. Greyhound has a by the kilometer option as well which can be useful ... Also do check out discount airlines and Western Australia passes by Qantas etc. They have some really good deals. Year before last I flew to Sydney and from there to Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and back to Toronto for about 2K Canadian. There's also some amazing fares from Perth/Sydney etc to Singapore/Bali/Thailand etc and vice versa.

3. Go local. Staying with locals can be exhilarating or weird depending upon YOUR attitudes and personality. Help with the dishes, pay for the groceries, use the bathrooms carefully, speak softly and pleasantly, be easy going, observe/ask cultural boundaries/house ruls and stay focused on your host(s) while staying. There are many ways to do this. I have a list of places to call and arrange this for countries such as Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy etc that I picked up during my travels and can email to those interested in using them. Use bar referrals, or check with local convents, monasteries etc to find your own places. Look for homestays, farmstays, teaching English options etc if you are planning on a bit of a long term stay. France esp. has a grape picking season where you can stay and get fed if you're willing to work really hard for a few days. It's worth trying once :) Goto http://www.pickingjobs.com/ to find a job and arrange your stay.

4. Wear a bag. Get Scott eVest pullovers, windbreakers, Shirt/Pant shorts. You'll never stop thanking me for this tip as it helps you wear your kindle/netbook, cameras, and a whole lot of other things while looking stylish and cool. Check out www.scottevest.com. Highly recommended

5. Get travel friendly clothes/gear. Tom Bihn Aeronaut + packing cubes, Quick dry underwears from Ex Officio (and also their Insect repellent/wrinkfle free/quick dry clothes, and a great travel hat), Quick dry socks from Tilley, a Steripen kit for water sterilisation, a silk sleep sack, a quick drying microfibre towel, a combination travel alarm clock/timer/flashlight/world time, dual voltage travel iron/steamer, electric adapters for the country you're visiting etc are a must have for the backpacker. Check out www.exofficio.com or www.travelessentials.com or www.travelsmith.oom etc for ideas and catalogs, but consider using amazon.com as they usually have better prices and shipping options.

6. Research ahead but stay flexible. Use Lonely Planet for doing the hard grind months ahead as they have the most detailed coverage. I tend to use Rough Guides for my initial read as they are more fascinating in their coverage of history/culture etc, and then follow it up with Lonely Planet for the more detailed planning as required (or if required). A related tip is get a Kindle if you're planning on doing a lot of travelling. It's easier to carry Lonely Planet guides in a Kindle than lugging ten pounds worth as you backpack from Japan through to Cambodia. Also don't get too hung up on plans/itineraries. That's why busabout etc are such a boon. You can always change plans last minute without having to worry about non refundable air tickets etc. And remember the most important thing to research are the local beers, the local festivals, the local day passes/discount cards, local bus/transit options, bicycle rent places etc.

7. Eat local. You'll save so much money and have so much fun doing this. Use your commonsense in picking places. Get a phrasebook and/or some practice on local phrases before you head out so you can ask around. Makes the trip sooooo much better if you can ask and get basic information from locals. Also really opens up a world of options if you have basic conversational skills. Okay now do pack your basic medicine kit/bag with anti-diorheaa pills etc just in case you're prone to stomach upsets etc ... Worst case scenario, you'll lose a couple of days :) I use www.chowhound.com and local websites to find places and/or exchange information with locals on their boards.

Also don't forget every place you visit will have local free rags that you can use to pick up events happening around. But the best place to find good local options is to go to the bar where the locals hang out and buy a few pints and chat them up. That's where a few local phrases help break the ice. Of course it helps if you're charismatic enough to have the locals come up and invite you over to their place :)

So the plan was ...

to spend a few weeks meandering from Amsterdam to Brussels via Haarlem then Maastricht to visit friends, and from there to Cologne via Aachen. Then head to Munich and from there to Vienna, on to Budapest and then end up in Prague. From there I was planning to fly back to London, and then to Paris, train down to Besancon again to catch up with friends. And in between I was hoping to visit Bordeaux where a friend's sister and her husband own a vineyard.

I ended up coming in to Brussels, then going to Ghent, from there to Brugge, and out to Maastricht. From Maastricht I took the train to Amsterdam and then onward to Haarlem, from where I got back to Schipol and flew back to Toronto cutting the trip short by about fifteen days. Not a bad trip but not enough to satisfy all those cravings for eurocentric cultural experiences ... y'know dancing on cobbled streets, playing hide and seek in catacombs, drinking beers made using a six hundred year old recipe (Remember the Stella Artois ad ... Time demands change - We politely refuse, since 1300), climbing turrets of castles that were old when Richard the Lionheart was leading crusades to the holy land, and drinking the kind of wine that warms the cockles of your heart and enjoying the sundrenched medittaranean vistas, and the unique ambience of a live your life to the full attitude that Europeans seem to have a corner on more than any other region on the planet. Plus let us not forget the bargain Armanis, the post modern swiss watches, the costly as hell but style to burn man purses that Germans toss off seemingly effortlessly and other shopping delights not possible anywhere else. Of course paying in Euros is a bit of a heartburn for my North American soul used as we are to cheap prices this side of the pond but something has to give and it's certainly not going to be my good taste heh.

Well, for the September trip I plan now to fly to London, go up north via Edinboro to Inverness to say hi to Nessy heh, and from there to Glasgow and from there via Stanfarer for the ferry to Belfast through to Galway, again ferry to Aran Islands and end up in Dublin.

From Dublin I might either go to Wales or go to Paris directly via one of those superbly low Ryan Air flights and then head south of France, via stopover in Bordeaux of course, and practice my winedrinking and french cussing skills all along the way until I cross the border over to Barcelona. From here I hope to catch a cheap flight out to Rome, go over to Bologna to visit a friend and then head out to Munich for the Oktoberfest which should start up around the 15'th to the 20'th of September. Yeah not sure why it's called the Oktoberfest myself :)

And that does mean that this time as well I give the old iron curtain side of Europe a miss, as I do the Scandinavian side of things as well as Portugal, but that's another trip waiting to happen next year, hopefully with things kicking off in Belgrade and then just going on an on until I end up in Riga or St. Petersburgh.

And now for my top ten tips:

a. Always carry tissue. You never know which toilets are out of paper.

b. If you plan to stay in hostels, invest in a good set of earplugs and eyeshades. Also padlocks (for lockers), flashlight (to navigate the dorms in the dark without waking up the sleepers), some plastic bags (for dirty laundry/slippers), towel, a bath soap (and a laundry soap if you want to do some hand laundry), a basic first aid kit, power adapters to recharge your mobile phones, a reliable pocket alarm clock (for those early morning flights just in case your mobile phone stops working etc). Pack light (my recipe for backpacking trips is 2 shirts, 3 t shirts, one swimming trunk that can double as a pair of shorts, one track pants that can double as sleepwear, six underwears one black pant, one windcheater + one scarf (if it's not summer) and one set of slippers. If it's cold one can always buy a sweater locally and just layer the T-Shirts inside.

c. Get a travelling partner. Really helps cut down costs as most deals are for twos.

d. Use overnight train journeys to go from point A to B. Saves a night's rent.

e. Keep euro coins and cash handy. Most places / machines are not geared towards North American plastic.

f. When using low cost airlines make sure to factor in the costs of getting from your hotel/friend's pad to the airport as well. Also remember to not pack more than 7Kgs, as there are significant overweight charges.

g. Get copies of Knopf Mapguides for the cities you plan to visit. Very handy, very lightweight, and the maps with sights/restaurants is very useful if you just want to randomly explore using buses/bicycles etc.

h. Get Lonely Planet Guides but use it for your research prior to your trip and make plans using it. Carrying it around is not advisable as it can get pretty heavy. In fact do what I do, get a Kindle and get the Kindle edition. Amazingly practical and well worth the money invested when you are lugging your bag around every day up and down places for a month and every extra bit starts to weigh you down.

i. Pack a light camera. Those fancy digital SLRs can take amazing pictures but the weight also kills you. I use a small Olympus XA film camera. Yeah it's a pain to pay so much money to process your shots (costs about 15$ for a set of prints and to scan a 36 exposure roll to a CD here plus another four to eight dollars to buy the actual roll so don't do this unless you know what you're doing in terms of metering your shots on film and can afford the risk of a shot not panning out as you expect). I plan to save money and buy a Leica M9 as I already have a few thousand invested in Leica lenses and this way I get a lightweight camera that can take superbly professional looking wideangle shots of landscapes as well as unforgettable portraits.

j. Plan alternative routes/food places/transportation means etc. Also be prepared to meet new friends and change itineraries on the drop of a hat. This can lead to all sorts of greet adventures, but you also need to know what you're doing if you don't want to blow your budget :) Spending time before you travel to lookup train routes, bus options, accomodation options, low cost airlines, Eurail passes, day/week passes for local transit, bicycle rent options etc can really pay off when you change plans midstream.

And if you have any other trips or suggestions on routes, festivals, places to eat and drink, or even if you just know somebody who wouldn't mind letting me crash in their place do tell ... I can always return these favors in spades :)

Living in the past

is a thing that Europe does better than anywhere else ... and nowhere else is this typified more than in Brugges one of my favorite places in Belgium.

Some notes from a recent trip there for anybody looking to go there ...

The Bottle Shop on 13 Wollestraat in Brugge looks like a tourist trap from the outside. But to not step inside would be a big mistake.

Belgium publishes a 1500+ page guide to their beers, about 900 of them. (it's called the bible locally). This store stocks about 850 of them, along with some nice beer glasses, jars of Genever, Geuzes and an astonishing selection of mineral waters.

It's just off the market and you can always head across to the Hobbit afterwards ...

Of course if you want a real pub it doesn't get any better than at Brugs Beertje on 5 Kemelstraat. Stocks about 300 beers. And then there's the Cranenburg which is set on the site of the house that Maximilian of Austria was held captive. Yellowed walls, elaborate stained glass, and wooden tables make you feel like you're back two hundred years and you're almost tempted to bang your tankard and shout for the wenches :)

And if you want to give the tourists a complete miss, there's the 'T Estaminet which is an old tavern facing Astrid Park, and it also has the distinction of one of the best jazz collections as reported by TimeOut. Try the heavenly Poperings Hommelbier here a golden wild honey flavored beer that goes down like silk.

Another authentic tavern is the De Garre at 1 De Garre, off BreidelStraat set in a 16'th century house with dark wooden beams. It also stocks some 130 beers and I will admit I couldn't get past the first twelve *sigh* Which is why I'll be going back one of these days.

Of course if you want to party there's no such thing as a real club in this town but there's a couple of places like the De Rupubliek which hosts a late night "Cactus Club" the main place for DJ's and live music and "The Top" which plays some decent dance sounds for a mixed crowd of young locals and tourists hunting experiences in the early hours.

For food, the Karmeliet on 16 Langestraat (very expensive with main courses starting from Euro 50 and up) is very hard to beat. The food is simply out of the world and the place itself was just down the street from where I was staying. Try the farm chicken with goose liver, or the rack of lamb with garlic morrels. The Chagall is a small cosy seafood restaurant and their scampi and north sea mussels are particularly good.

For Chocolates there's a lot of good places. I'd recommend that you go around checking out the free samples as there's a lot to like in each place and it's tough to say which one is the best. Dumon is the famous one, and next to it there's a couple more stores ... honestly all of them are really good.