Topic: Hello North America, Goodbye North America

[DJ Doena]

So,

this evening I'm going to leave Canada and I am going home to Germany ... except I've been back in Germany for the past two weeks ...

On May 30th my mum and I flew to Toronto with the intention of staying a week and then driving up the Saint Lawrence River to Ottawa, Montréal and Quebec City.

We arrived in Toronto at 12:00am (Monday to Tuesday) local time (5 hours delayed flight) and were quite tired and then my mom took a wrong step down the stairs and hurt her knee. The next day we wanted to take our first visit to Old Toronto when it started to hurt badly. So after a short visit we returned and made it a short evening (still being ahead 6 hours biologically anyway). Wednesday she was in bed all day hurting, so on Thursday morning at 4:00am I decided to take her to Toronto General where we were until 10:00am. She got a shot in her arm that numbed the pain somehwat and we returned to our apartment.

By Thursday evening it became clear that it would not get any better so we rebooked and got a return flight on Monday, June 6th. We've been home since the 7th.

But being somewhat stuck in that apartment for alomost a week I got a taste of North American live television and I pity you. I watched Hudson & Rex (a remake of the Austrian show Kommissar Rex and the dog actor is actually a descendant of the original Rex dog actor) and Private Eyes which takes place in Toronto.

But you've got ad breaks seemingly every 4 minutes and the episodes appear in constant loop (this was were I truly understood the 100 episode rule for syndication). And the ads were always the same! I bet I saw this group of ads at least 30 times in that one week.

And when watching a US channel I learned that there are elections for govenor in New York state apparantly and every single candidate is going to LOWER YOUR TAXES!!! (No one explained how they're going to pay for the crumbling infrastructure, but they will lower your taxes!).


My mum is on the mend, we've already been to the orthopedist and now we're cursious about the incoming bill from Toronto General. Luckily we've paid 24 Euros for a travel health insurance for Canada. 

[DJ Doena]

At least we got to see the alien from War of the Worlds in Old Toronto 

[Tom]

I am sorry to hear about your troubles. I hope your mom gets well soon.
I recently watched some horror YouTube videos about the problematic US health care system. I am really glad that I do not have to fear about paying any of my medical treatments or that we get financially ruined just because someone in our family gets sick.

I was wondering if something happened to you because you weren't online here for a few weeks.

When I hear your troubles with your vacation, I have to be glad, that our trouble with our recent vacation was "only", that our flight back had an overall delay of 50(!)h with mostly waiting for further news.

[DSig]

DJ Doena ... sorry to hear of your troubles ... hope your mom does well

Dsig

[Achim]

All the Best Wishes for a complete recovery of your mom's knee! (At this point maybe already better...?)


I haven't watched TV in Germany in years... Is it that much better? I do remember there being less breaks (maybe every 10 minutes for TV shows and every 15 for movies?), but on some channels these breaks can get rather lengthy...(?) But like I said, I haven't watched it in a while, so I might remember it worse than it is. (I don't watch it, because of the dubbing, I really don't like dubbed programming.)

[DJ Doena]

I haven't watched TV in Germany in years... Is it that much better? I do remember there being less breaks (maybe every 10 minutes for TV shows and every 15 for movies?), but on some channels these breaks can get rather lengthy...(?) But like I said, I haven't watched it in a while, so I might remember it worse than it is. (I don't watch it, because of the dubbing, I really don't like dubbed programming.)

The breaks are really predictable and simultaneous on all channels so that you don't need to bother switching channels because everywhere else there is an ad block, too.

As for the quality of the actual program. No it's not really better. Most of the program slots are filled will cheap-to-produce pseudo-reality stuff like pseudo cops investigating pseudo crimes in a documentary style using amateur actors. Or you have cooking shows or quiz shows. On the public channels you'll either find a self-produced medical show or a cop show or you get a quiz show.

Live TV has become awful