One hundred and four years ago my great-grandfather Ivan Potiahaylo, a teenager, left Ukraine for Canada. We know little of how or why he left. As far as we know he was never in contact with his Ukrainian family again. He died in 1940 at the age of 46. The same age I am now. My father was 3 years old at the time; he remembers going to the funeral. Here’s his record in the 1911 census in Fort William, Ontario, where he settled:

He had two children, and of those children it was only my grandmother who had a child of her own, my father. Other than his birthplace of Serafintsy and his birthdate (tomorrow, July 17, in either 1891, 1893 or 1894 depending on the source) we know nothing else of his life. It has always seemed like a miracle to me that he was, somehow, able to leave the remote rural western Ukraine and make his way to Canada. It’s hard to imagine even the simple logistics of travel.

Last year, in another sort of miracle, an email from Ukraine:

Hello Piter! I write you from Ukraine.

A woman named Aleksandra writing. Over subsequent emails we established that we share the same great-great-grandfather, and therefore are third cousins. She found me through the page about my great-grandfather in the Rukapedia. The first contact in over a century from our Ukrainian family.

Fast-forward 7 months and her husband Sergey is in Prince Edward Island learning English, with hopes of finding work. He becomes part of our family. We fly to Ontario and meet my parents. Visit the grave of Aleksandra’s grandfather near Simcoe (he also someone who came to Canada never to return to Ukraine). Spend Christmas together.

In two days I will land in Kiev. Sergey will meet me at the airport. I will meet Aleksandra for the first time. We will drive across Ukraine and see the birthplace of my great-grandfather. And meet the family that remains there to this day.

I’m both terrified and very excited.

Olle and I sat on a bench under a grove of trees in Pildammsparken tonight reviewing the day that had just been. It was near-dark, and we were alone save for a woman wearing fuschia skipping (skipping!) by on the trail across the way, and some late night walkers who briefly interrupted our aerie. Steps away were three glowing orange orbs, they looked like Cocoon boulders, public art deep inside the park. The weather was chilly. The rain that had threatened all day still hadn’t come. The buzz of (slightly) too much champagne filled our heads.

“I hope you realize,” I said, “how privileged you are to have such precious friends.”

We had come from the after-party. The after being after the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-themed birthday of a friend, a party that I was generously included in, despite being un-Swedish and travelling without sufficient moxie nor foresight to be able to conjure a costume of Bill the Lizard at the last minute. Wonderful cakes and sweets stacked three high. Champagne and punch. Dill pickles. Gifts exchanged. Talk of learning styles and assembly language and teachers who refuse to use email. And innumerable Swedish conversations buzzing all around that created what my friend Pedro calls the “bliss” of not being obligated to understand.

When all was said and done I helped haul the spare champagne to the Peugeot convertible for delivery home, and then was faced with a fork: recede home to regroup, or forge onward with the now-smaller group to the apartment for the party-after-the-party. “Onward,” I proclaimed. In my mind the tweet I sent to son of an old friend earlier in the week: “always do that of which you are most afraid.” Good advice for a fork in the road.

I have developed some small skills at being the only unilingual anglophone in the room; I’ve no idea how it looks from the outside, but on the inside it is simply a matter of relaxing into the moment and not worrying (“are the plotting in Swedish to throw me out the window?”; unlikely). Kind accommodations to my limitations are made: “speak English so the Canadian guy can understand!” The room thins out as the night wears on. We talk of gender and politics and the best techniques for arguing with a spouse effectively (“timeouts are very useful”). Historical clothing and its parallels to architecture. Is there music inside weaving? Are there unforgivable things? “Women of all genders.” Our favourite typefaces. The day-to-day practical challenges of polyamory.

In the midst of it all, during an extended Swedish soliloquy, I think to myself “this is where I’m supposed to suddenly feel uncomfortable and bolt for the door with an excuse about an urgent telegram.” But, oddly, the feeling’s not there. Intriguing people, a greathearted host, bits and bobs of the remaining cakes to keep me fed, Olle refilling my champagne cup enough but not too much: I was happy and content there and somewhere else, for a change, didn’t need me.

“I hope you realize,” I said, under the tree, once we’d said our good byes, and cycled to the park, “how privileged you are to have such precious friends.”

Friends who will dress in authentic corsets, or wear rabbit ears, or pocket watches, for whimsy’s sake. Friends who, with a head tilt, can wordlessly telegraph “I wasn’t finished talking yet.” Friends who feel free to speak uncynically about deep and important things without being too deep or self-important as they do so. Friends who seek shelter from the storm in each others company, but who know how to live in the outside world.

“Yes,” said Olle. “Yes I do.”

We got back on our bicycles and rode through the cool Malmö air toward home. 

First you make the wood type:

Then, of course, you need something to carry the wood type home in, you so you make a type box:

Another wonderful day in my “makeaction” here in Europe (see also the wood type I made earlier in the week and the Polaroids I took in Düsseldorf before that). Thanks to Jonas for facilitating today (he’s a patient educator) and to Elmine for getting the ball rolling.

Bill & Marj Mallard, ages 91 and 90 respectively, filmed at the 27th Annual Bluegrass & Old Time Music Society Festival in Rollo Bay, PEI by the Eastern Graphic. It will remove all fear you might have of falling into a sedate and uninteresting old age.

When we last talked I was in Enschede in The Netherlands. Three days later and now I am in Berlin in Germany.

I took the train across the top of Germany on Tuesday evening, helpfully shepherded to the station by Elmine, who waited to ensure that I wasn’t stranded forever in a remote Dutch border town. The trip took me through Hannover and Wolfsburg (ah, Wolfsburg) arriving in Berlin around 10:00 p.m. A quick zag and a quick zag and I was installed in my compact but clean and inexpensive hotel room on Moritzplatz.

Wednesday morning I was up early to handle my burgeoning laundry situation; fortunately I found an excellent solution: the Wäscherei & Schneiderei am Moritzplatz is 100m from my hotel door and would wash, dry and fold my entire travelling wardrobe for only 15 EUR with 24 hour turnaround (10 EUR if I could have waited an additional day). Given the complexities of hauling laundry to the nearest laundromat myself, buying soap, and waiting around for it all to wash and dry, this seemed like the deal of the century. As it turned out, the laundry was ready at 7:00 p.m. when I walked by on my way home; this is what I picked up:

After handling the laundry situation I headed over to Betahaus, just around the corner, and purchased a membership and a day’s worth of flex-desk (10 EUR and 12 EUR respectively) and set myself up with a workstation:

I immediately set to work — this was, after all, my “vacation from my vacation where I get some paying work done” — broken up by a delightful lunch with Igor, Peter, Martin, Madeline, Michelle and Geoffrey at 3Schwestern.

After a productive workday I set out toward Prenzlauer Berg in search of Tweek and my old Plazes colleague Til. Tweek has moved to a ramshackle new office in a lovely old building since my last visit, and before Til and I headed out to supper I had a chance to get updated on the product — and the world of television and movie information on the web in general — from 2/3 of the co-founders, Marcel Düe and Klaus Hartl (himself a former Plazes coconspirator).

Til and I had a very pleasant night out, starting with tacos at Maria Bonita and finishing up with a walk around the neighbourhood and beers at Eka.

I’m back in Betahaus this morning for another day of work; later it will be lunch with Martin and supper with James and then tomorrow it’s off to Malmö by jet for a rendezvous with the crew there for 5 days.

Appearances would seem to suggest that despite my protests to the contrary I am something of a social butterfly; I’m finding, to my surprise and delight, that refueling with friends and colleagues old a new is an excellent way to stuff my head full of new ideas. I except to return to Charlottetown in a few weeks full of vim and vigour. Isn’t that what vacations are for?

Back in the beginning, I asked you in the readership to tell me who you are. It remains a great little snapshot of all of you.

I’d like to ask you to do it again: just make a comment to this post with a little biographical information and tell me how you found your way here — like “I am a shepherd from Bulgaria interested in open data. I found your blog through Peter Bihr in Berlin.”

I have an ulterior motive here, other than my usual curiousity: I’m testing the areyouhuman.com anti-comment-spam tool as a replacement for the increasingly annoying reCAPTCHA service (I too am tired of figuring out that text actually says “antiverticular”). Let me know if the new “CAPTCHA in a game” is more delightful or annoying, if you don’t mind.  (Or, if it confounds you altogether, and you cannot comment, drop me a line).

While I was in Enschede I was twice given mint tea made from, well, mint. It was a nice surprise. To make it you put mint in hot water, wait, and drink. Perhaps not novel to those more well-travelled than I, but to me, yes.

My friend Elmine graciously took me on a visit to the Fablab in Enschede yesterday — my first visit to a bona fide Fablab — and, to my surprise and delight, she asked “so, shall we make something.” It’s nice to have maker friends. So this is what we made:

The process started in Adobe Illustrator where we (and when I say “we” here I mean “Elmine”) set up the job, a simple alphabet in Futura, reversing it because, well, it’s type:

We “printed” this to a virtual printer set up for the Trotec laser cutter. The job then appeared in the queue in the Trotec job management software, where we aligned it on the cutting surface, set the DPI (the cutter will do up to 1000dpi) and selected the material (we cut both 4mm and 6mm plywood).

Then it was a simple matter, after placing the plywood on the cutter bed and focusing the laser, of clicking “go” and the job started; here’s a video (note that the job in the video is the one where we forgot to reverse the type first, which is why it’s right-reading).

The job took about a minute, and was incredible to watch.  When it was all done the letters popped out, and what was left was this (this is the reverse side, so it reads properly):

My next step, when I get home, is to figure out a way of mounting the letters so that they’re “type high” (0.918 inches) so that they work properly when mounted on a letterpress. Then the challenge becomes seeing whether the material is strong enough to withstand the pressure of being printed with, and whether I need to shellac the material before I use it (I suspect yes). My inspiration in all of this is this project to make a font of Winchell by a chap in Buffalo, NY. Stay tuned.

To create this post I had to create a new tag for the blog, The Netherlands, as it’s my first time in the country. And, apparently, my first time expressing anything about the country at all in public.

After a pleasant Sunday roaming around Düsseldorf with Patrícia and Pedro, my kind hosts in that city, and Ton and Elmine, my kind hosts-to-be here in Enschede, we headed out onto the autobahn toward The Netherlands, thus taking my summer journey into its second country (and into one of only two countries in the world with “The” in its English name — the other being The Gambia).

The drive through Germany was conducted, in part, at a thrilling 160+ km/h, which, thanks to Ton’s calm demeanour and driving skill, seemed like the most natural thing in the world (albeit the most natural thing in the world that moves really, really fast). Somewhere toward midnight we arrived in Enschede, a place I’ve heard about in folklore (or at least Foursquare), got settled, and fell immediately into a deep, deep sleep.

Today, after waking up late for the second day (travel is taking it out of me), we enjoyed a lunch together Forum Café, after which Ton left Elmine and I to our own devices: we launched out on an ambituous walking and cycling tour that took us through the city centre and then out to the campus of University of Twente and back. It was more cycling than I’ve done in a long time — likely since my last time in Copenhagen — but I survived, learned a lot and had a very nice afternoon. Fortunately we made it back home just before the heavens opened in a sudden and short-lived deluge.

We’ve plans to see more of the city tomorrow, and then, around supper time, I will dart back out of The Netherlands into Germany by train, where I’ll remain in Berlin until Friday when I fly up to Malmö by way of Copenhagen.

In retrospect this mid-trip work-break in Berlin was a really good idea: I love my friends dearly, but I’ve done more socializing in the last 6 days than in the last 6 months, and my brain’s social centres, atrophied as they are, need a rest after powering back up to full. Berlin will be a useful respite before I go back into the fray in Malmö and then head on to what promises to be a very full 8 days of visiting family in Ukraine the week after. Although now that I think of it, I’m made plans to have lunch or supper with more than a couple of Berlin friends, so perhaps I’ll just have to keep on going as I have…

As we were speeding along the highway from Düsseldorf to Enschede last night my friend Elmine asked me what the Canadian view of the situation in Europe is, and this led to a conversation about supply management and agriculture trade issues. There is no better observer of this topic in my network than Ian Petrie, both former-farmer and former-journalist and, and, now unshackled by the need to shape pieces around the demands of television, someone free to comment fully and intelligently about issues he knows very well:

It’s the import controls (high tariffs) that the business media and aggressive dairy exporters like the United States, New Zealand and Europe want rid of. What’s often forgotten is that Canada’s system begins with the producers’ real costs, then processors and retailers add their margins, and that’s what the consumer pays.  It’s farmers who get paid less in these dairy export countries that allow large processors to export so successfully, and they clearly want to add a wealthy country like Canada to the list of countries they sell too.  And recent data indicates that the consumers in these exporting countries  pay a price too to keep these countries competitive on the world stage.  Don’t forget that until UHT milk becomes more palatable/popular, it isn’t fluid table milk that’s on export markets, it’s dairy products like cheese, butter and yogurt.  While Canadians pay on average (varies in different provinces) $1.45 a litre for milk, consumers in New Zealand pay 20 cents more ($1.65) and Australians $1.55 per litre.