Angelika It's really not easy to find a present for Michael, as he has the bad habit of buying everything himself, especially as short a week before his birthday or Christmas.

Michael In December this year, we traveled to Canada. This time, we set out to explore the French-speaking part on the east coast and first had a stop-over after a five hour flight in Toronto. According to several previous experiences, Canadian immigration personnel are about the unfriendliest people on earth, and living up to our expectations, the person behind the counter greeted us this time by balking "What do you want in Canada?!" at us. Luckily, we know how to deal with this kind of situation. But, really, Canada?

Michael Four days later, we hauled our rolling luggage on partially de-iced sidewalks to the train station "Gare Central", located about half a mile from our hotel. We were headed to Quebec, about 160 miles north-east of Montreal. The city of Quebec is referred to by "Quebec City" by Canadians to avoid confusion as both Montreal and Quebec City are located in the Canadian state of Quebec. Bulky luggage wasn't permitted in the train vestibules, so we dropped ours off at the baggage check, just like at the airport. There wasn't any annoying rigamarole like having to show ID or being chased through a body scanner. Since we had our passports in hand, the baggage handler even jokingly snatched them and hid them behind his back! Most travelers boarded the train 30 minutes before departure. The train wasn't going very fast, only about 60 miles per hour, but offered a stable and pretty speedy Wifi connection.

Michael In the beginning, there was only the Google bus. Dating back to 2008 ( Rundbrief 05/2008 ), the Internet giant has been picking up employees all over San Francisco and is driving them down to Silicon Valley every day. And even back then, upset neighbors complained about the dark heavy luxury buses, roaming through small residential streets in the early morning hours, some of them letting their engines idle for ten minutes while waiting. The gossip site Allthingsd ran the story "San Francisco May Crack Down on Corporate Shuttle Buses" and even rumored that San Francisco might soon be imposing new regulation for the tech buses.

Angelika Michael has been known to brag about that there's usually not a drop of rain between the months of April and September in San Francisco, which is actually true. But if then there's hardly any rain between October and March as well, that's a problem, especially if this condition reoccurs for a few years in a row. And if you remember that we've had a similar situation in 2009 ( Rundbrief 03/2009 ), then you are an astute reader with commendable memory.

Michael