Beyond the silver rainbow: Ten years, ten days..

Tomorrow we'll leave Toronto and I have quite mixed feelings about that. After seeing the mighty Niagara Falls on Friday my sister and I drove to Toronto, where a good friend of mine lives. I was already a long time looking forward to this visit as we haven't met in over ten years. What made this special was also the fact that he visited me in my hometown in Germany and finally I had a chance to visit him at home. Arriving in town just felt so surreal and it was hard to believe we'd see again. We met him and his wife in the hotel lobby for dinner and it just felt as we had seen each other ten days ago. Sometimes these things go like that...

On Saturday they took us on a 90 minute ride to visit St. Jacobs, a little town West of Toronto. Located there is Canada's biggest Farmers' Market, where one can buy all kind of food and clothing. Mennonites are living there as well, selling their harvest and hand-made products. It was interesting to see them traveling with horse and buggy, refreshing as to all the cars. The only thing I bought was pure maple syrup, yummy!
A stroll around the town center was lovely with the nice houses and we even went to the maple syrup museum. Now we are all experts, theoretically :) A Korean grill dinner and a visit to the 'Biermarkt', a pub with live music and many different beers, wrapped up a nice day.

To be a real tourist for half a day, my sister and me went today by ourselves to the harbor area, took a boat cruise for sightseeing and went up the CN tower, from where we had a great view over Toronto. This afternoon we went to my friends place and after that to his parents, who had us over for dinner. In addition

to the tasty paprika-chicken, we all prepared a typical meal from my home area - Kӓsspӓtzle. It was great fun and apparently also eatable :) After a lively discussion, dessert and sitting in front of the fireplace it was time to leave.

Back at the hotel, we all said our goodbyes and I must admit, it was quite hard. Those couple of days were great and it simply felt wrong to say goodbye - again. So tonight I'm glad that I had the chance to visit the very nice city of Toronto, but I'm also a bit melancholic for obvious reasons. One reason is also the fact that i couldn't share this with my wife, apart from phone and emails.

Today - more than ever - I realize how great this opportunity is for me to have this sabbatical year. I can travel around, see all kind of places and meet up with old friends. Also I have the time to listen inside myself figuring out new, old and perhaps forgotten things and put them into perspective.