Denmark is only 90 minutes away from Hamburg, so for me visiting that country has never been much of a big deal. If you are travelling the Californian coast, however, driving into a Danish village certainly gets really exciting. While in Santa Barbara, I first heard of Solvang or, in destination marketing speak: “California’s Little Denmark.” Solvang was founded in the early twentieth century by Danes with the vision of establishing a “Danish village, where the arts, crafts and customs of their homeland could be created anew.” Also, they wanted to build a Danish folk...

You’d think that the shores of top carp waters such as Lake Ontario would be jam packed with fly anglers, given all the media coverage fly fishing for carp has been receiving in the past years. Yet I hardly ever run into anyone else casting their flies at carp. The only person I meet on a regular basis when wading the shallow bays of Lake Ontario near Toronto is Gildo, who, admittedly, is out there way more often than I am and who knows a thousand times more about carp behavior than I do. Gildo is also responsible for getting me my very first carp on the fly. Only an hour or so after he...

2012 has been an interesting year for my writing business, and I am happy to report that my stories ran in more newspapers, magazines and online outlets than ever. As usual, most stories were travel features. Particularly popular were two topics: the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede and the Edge Walk at the CN Tower in Toronto. Stories about these two happenings have each been published in five major German and Swiss newspapers. (Among them, by the way, were two great new clients of mine: Mannheimer Morgen and Die Rheinpfalz.) The most challenging trip of 2012 took me to Reindeer Lake in...

For the past three years I have been fly fishing for carp, and I still think it’s a super exciting way to catch fish. This is particularly true when you live close to the Great Lakes where a lot of carp grow into the 30+ pound monster category. Every now and then I’ve written about this relatively new, yet fast growing branch of the sport. The posts aren’t so much about my own fishing experiences, but about linking to others’ great content that helps us understand how carp tick. (For the European readers, here is a post in German.) Now however something new is online: CarpPro...

Earlier this year The New Fly Fisher, one of Canada’s best fly fishing TV programs, launched a new YouTube channel designated to fishing hot spots in Ontario. In cooperation with the Go Fish In Ontario marketing initiative, Bill Spicer and other show hosts travel the province fishing for bass, trout, Atlantic salmon, pike and more. All that’s missing, for my liking, is some Southern Ontario carp fishing. However, with the growing popularity of that sport, I am sure they’ll add a show soon. For now, that leaves more carp for me! Winter is coming, and it’s the best time of the...

To me one of the highlights of each trip home to Hamburg is the harbor cruise from bustling St. Pauli-Landungsbrücken, the tourist hub of Europe’s second largest port (after Rotterdam), to sleepy Finkenwerder, located at the south side of Elbe River. If you buy a transit day pass, the 30 minutes boat ride is free because HADAG Hafenfähren, the small ferries cruising the harbor, are part of the city’s public transit system. Annually, 22 boats (running on six routes) transport almost eight million passengers around the port. It’s the perfect way to discover the city. The ferries stop...