Markus’ Blog

Yum! And yes, that’s tours as in “more than one”.

It’s great times when upcoming vacations are getting close enough to book cool stuff to do. We are already practiced winery visitors (see the Napa adventure, the Victoria adventure, as well as the Niagara adventure). It’s still fun doing it, though (one might think we are big lushes :-D), especially in Canada and even more so in BC, where we can bring home as much wine as we please (not a measly two bottles per person you get to bring with you from the US).

This time around, my parents will come along, too. It’ll be their first time in the Okanagan, which prompted this whole trip-idea to begin with. Since my parents and I come from a wine growing region back in Austria (the region is officially know as the Weinviertel — and we have tons of Heurigen there), they should get some good times out of these tours.

We’ll be doing the Signature Wine Tour by Discover Okanagan Tours and the Nothern Bench Winery Tour by Wildflower Trails & Wine Tours.

Happy September 4 and 5 to us!

I am sitting at a table at my parent’s place writing this post (typing on a German keyboard no less — leads to many wrong characters ;-)).

Happy New Year everybody!

Today was another day meeting with family — and saying good bye already. It’s almost time to head towards London already. It was a fun afternoon that went on for way longer than originally thought. My Grandma had tons and tons and tons of food — as per normal. And the most asked question there is “Do you want something to eat? To drink, maybe?” And if it’s not my Grandma asking, it’s my Aunt.

Brigette’s most used phrase these days is “Nein danke.” LOL

Tomorrow will be a shopping day in Vienna, on Thursday we’ll visit some exhibits and we’ll see if we can find some other ways of experiencing Vienna on our last day. Friday morning we’ll leave for London.

It’s cold and grey out (only -5°C, but a wind chill of -15°), but we’re having a quite good time nonetheless.

We met my relatives for Christmas day, took the 26th off of meeting people, went to the opera on the 27th and for dinner with my relatives again on the 28th. Tonight it’ll be the first encounter with my friends (at one of my friends’ apartments in Vienna) since summer 2005. Hopefully I’ll be able to meet more of them tomorrow night at the only pub in Korneuburg (Gwölb). We shall see, I still have to phone around a bit.

It’s Christmas Eve, the day we traditionally give and open presents in Austria. We’ll be doing a sort of culturally merged Christmas this year: opening presents the evening of the 24th and doing our stockings the morning of the 25th. My parents have had stockings of their own for two years now (don’t think they have put them to use yet ;-)), after I sent them stockings as one of my Christmas gifts two years ago.

Tomorrow (on the 25th) is also the time for the “big” traditional family get-together at my Grandma’s place. My auntie Irene, uncle Leopold and my cousins Günter and Marion as well as ourselves will show up at my Grandma’s place for yummy, yummy lunch (roast pork with bread dumplings) — to die for and soooooooo unhealthy lololol.

There’ll be a few more presents to open there, as well.

My mom’s sister, Hermi, has also invited us over for a short visit. We’ll be going there some time in the afternoon.

It’ll be a long day, but it should be fun. And that’ll be it for Christmas 2007.

We’ve been following the pre-Chrismas tradition of visiting Christmas markets yesterday and we’ll be going again today.

Yesterday we went to see the market at Schönbrunn. It was quite cold, not so much because of the temperature itself (-5°C), but more because of the strong wind. We were bundled up, but apparently not bundled up enough.

We had originally planned to visit another market yesterday, but were too frozen to do so, despite the hot fruit punches with rum.

Before venturing out to Schönbrunn, we had lunch with my parents and my grandma at the Donauturm, Vienna’s small version of the CN Tower (it looks more like CN Tower than the Harbour Outlook in Vancouver). The food was quite delicious (except for the salmon, which was only average), and the company was certainly nice. The view sucked big time, though. But what else is new in fall/winter in the Eastern (flat parts) of Austria: low fog every day and grey-in-grey all around. Above the fog layer it’s bright, clear sunshine, that’s why it’s beautiful weather in the Alps. Not so much in Vienna or Lower Austria. We still enjoyed ourselves, though.

Today, the plans are to do what we didn’t finish yesterday and to visit two or three more markets — and have more of that punch or some mulled wine (why else would one go to the Christmas market if not for the booze? lol)

We’ll be dressing warmer, this time, too.

Brigette and I had the following slightly odd bet going: if she had passed her CHRP designation exam, she’d buy me a new digital camera. If, on the other hand, she had failed, I’d get her a new Coach purse.

One can tell that she was seriously considering the possibility of having failed. So, that bet would guarantee her one pleasurable experience (passing or at the very least new, pretty purse).

I was fairly certain that she had, in fact, done quite well. I gladly accepted, since I very much wanted a new camera, and I was sure I would get it. lol Besides, I had been telling her that I was positive that she had not failed the test. She wouldn’t listen, so I figured I may as well get something out of it.

Turns out I was right. Of course I was. — You can only be right if you expect Brigette to do well on her exams. (Rule #1: Don’t listen to Brigette when she tells you how she’s not sure she passed.)

So, congratulations to you CHRPy girl, for getting your muchly desired (and deserved) designation. I am proud of you.

And thanks for buying me this fancy new toy from my wish list.

It’s less than a week now till the next big trip — this time back home to Austria to spend Christmas and New Year’s with family and friends. Starting to looking forward to it.

It will be the exact opposite of last year’s Christmas experience:

• It’ll be cold, not tropical and hot.
• It’ll be “old”, well known places, not new locations to explore.
• It’ll be with people I have know for a long time as opposed to new acquaintances.
• We’ll be gone over New Year’s as well.

For my schveetie pie it’s of course going to be the different than for me, given the language barrier, the fact that my family and friends are essentially strangers to her, and all the places are foreign as well. The different climate’s going to be the same for both of us, though.

My schveetie just sent me this YouTube link about a cat doing its wakeup routine in the morning. (Click here if the video doesn’t show below.)

It’s hilarious and so freaking true. That’s totally me every morning. As far as I can tell, though, there hasn’t been a bat involved — yet. But only because I am too easy a victim, I would imagine.

Queen Calli Boo the Kitty has tried on occasion, however, to suffocate me with her long fur. She curls up next to my head, her fur ending up in my nose and mouth. That usually happens during the night, though, not in the morning.

Update:

Looks like this animation was created by a guy named Simon Tofield. More of his stuff is available at Tandem Films. They even changed their start page to advertise the kitty animation. They are also saying on their home-page that this was just the beginning of a series and that we can expect more along the same lines.

Yay! We’ll be going to Kamloops for the Thanksgiving long weekend. We’ll meet Brigette’s mom and family friends there. We’ll be taking it easy, have some good food and an all around good time. Sunday we’ll have traditional turkey for dinner. Yummers!

Let’s hope the Coquihalla is not too bad. Supposedly there’s a little snow there already. We shall see. On the way back we’ll probably take the slower, but more scenic Fraser Highway.

Brigette’s mom came to visit this weekend, and since I had to return my US visa waiver stub (I-94W) by September 28, we decided to go down to Bellingham for the day and do some shopping. The fact that (after this decision had been made) the Canadian Dollar reached parity with the US Dollar, didn’t exactly deter our plans.

We expected quite a bit of a border lineup — and we got it. We decided to try out going to the duty free store on the Canadian side to see if that would shorten our wait. It probably did, but only by a bit. They had a system in place they called “ferry lineup” where you had to wait your turn like a regular ferry lineup. So, it took about an hour to leave the parking lot of the duty free store. They must have put that system in place to deter people from jumping the line too much.

We did buy quite a few things, though, at the duty free store, because they looked to be good deals: a bottle of vodka for Brigette and me for $27.25US. Brigette’s mom got some cigarettes and baileys. After crossing the border, we had a nice brunch at Denny’s and a good three and a half hour shop at Bellis Fair Mall. We got some really good deals on clothing and books.

Then, at 3:30pm, came the trip back home, with a very short lineup at the border. It took about half an hour to drive from Bellingham right to the custom’s booth (including a stop at the Starbucks drive through to get some coffee). So, really good. We made it before the crowd, which was the plan.

Since we figured it would be quite obvious that we had been shopping, we decided to declare our purchases. We were asked to park and go inside to pay duties and taxes. We weren’t very concerned. That changed very quickly, when we saw how the face of the custom’s officer got very somber. He said taxes on our “duty free” liquor/tobacco purchases would hurt. Since we hadn’t been out of Canada for at least 48 hours, we weren’t eligible for any personal exemptions. We still didn’t think very much of it at that point. We figured it’d be maybe $50 in taxes on a $110 purchase.

Very wrong!

Apparently the provincial government marks up alcohol purchased outside of Canada by at least 100%. Our $30 vodka bottle would have required a $70 duty payment. It somewhat works like this:

• they take the price of alcohol ($30)
• they add provincial a markup of another $30 or so
• then they add GST and PST on the combined amount

And that’s what you have to pay. Absolutely ridiculous. Brigette’s mom was asked to pay $170 in duties and taxes for her $110 purchase.

The Customs official was very nice, though, and totally didn’t want to charge us all that money. He let us go across the street to the duty free store to return our purchases (luckily we had bought everything on the Canadian side).

The duty free guys took our merchandise back without any issues. They’ve obviously had this happen to them before. They even apologized for not pointing out to us that we would have to be out of the country for at least two days to be eligible for the exemption. We had the sneaking suspicion, though, that they were doing it on purpose, because they know people would buy less otherwise and they wouldn’t make as much money.

In the end we didn’t have to pay any duty or tax. We returned our alcohol and tobacco purchases. And the Customs officials didn’t charge us tax on our books or clothes.

It was a good trip, all things considered. And a valuable lesson learned: provincial tobacco and alcohol markups are ridiculously insane. Don’t buy any alcohol unless you’re gone for 48 hours (or more) and if you do, do not go over the exemption limit.