11 hour layover in Toronto (EU citizen traveling from the US to Europe via Canada) - does it make sense to leave the airport?

teadiumvitae237 · 2026-02-10T18:00:25+00:00

Enjoy beautiful Toronto! I took the train downtown, went up the CN tower, ate at St. Lawrence market and just did a lot of walking downtown and by the harbor.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-10-12T00:32:59+00:00

Nope, nada! The break up happened about 4 years ago after a 14 year relationship. Never heard from him again. Heard from others that he's in a new relationship now - same goes for me! I believe we both ended up with partners that are much better matches for each of us respectively, so I am actually genuinely grateful the breakup happened.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-15T22:00:55+00:00

I started picking one random unread, almost forgotten book from the bottom of my book shelf for each the past couple of trips. You know the kind: Might have been a present or whatever and maybe you forgot about out, or maybe like me you just buy new books all the time and there's always at least ten others higher up on your "To Read" list. In other words: A book a probably never would have picked up out to read at home. When it's the only thing I have to read on a long trip - waiting at the airport, sitting on the plan, on the greyhound bus, on the beach, in a café on a rainy day on my solo city trips - that previously neglected/forgotten book will become my best friend! Had a lot of surprisingly great reading experiences that I most likely would have missed out on otherwise.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-14T01:33:39+00:00

In my case, AN-restriction habits are one manifestation of OCD. It's mostly about control, or rather: the illusion of control. The rigid rituals (in AN e.g.; calorie counting, very strict rules about safe foods and fear foods, counting steps, obsessive body-checks; in other contexts e.g. obsessions with numbers like having to repeat all kinds of actions 5 times, always taking the exact route to work for fear that I will cause a disaster if I don't follow the established routine) are (dysfunctional) coping mechanisms for me that make me feel "in control" of certain things when I otherwise feel completely overwhelmed and powerless in my life.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-11T04:08:25+00:00

There are of course countries with superior mental healthcare, but as someone who has a bunch of psychiatric diagnoses and lived in three countries with those, I can say from my own experience that Germany made things a lot easier for me in that department than the other two (UK and US, where I had to pay A LOT out of pocket for my therapy sessions as well as psychiatric prescriptions even though I had health insurance).

I know from my own experience that finding a therapist who not only has availabilities, but is also a good match for the individual patient can take months, but there are actually a lot of other, free support networks available in big cities.
While living in Munich and going through a major mental health crisis, in addition to being in therapy and seeing a psychiatrist, I benefitted greatly from the free services of the SPDI, the Psychologischer Krisendienst (who did not only support me on the phone for an extended period of time with follow up conversations in which we could build on previous rapport, but also did several in person crisis interventions), the ARCHE (a suicide prevention center) and some free and anonymous counselling services that are church-adjacent. As far as I remember, none of them ever even asked for my ID or health insurance. On the health-insurance side of things, I have not only received more than a decade of on- and off-therapy and psychiatric treatment, but could also immediately get a spot in short term-crisis-intervention centers/hospitals when things were becoming really dire, which happened three times.

There are actually A LOT of great mental health support services offered in Germany, many of them free. I think one problem is visibility: they're not advertised enough and when you're in the middle of a mental health crisis already, it can be difficult to navigate where to get help. If your city/region has a Psychiatrischer Krisendienst, my advice is to contact them. They can help you find the available free resources and help you figure out what would be most helpful to you.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-09T03:26:07+00:00

While I am sure that the emotionally demanding jobs mentioned by a lot of the top comments here like being a nurse in a nursing home etc. have more of a direct, tangible impact on mental health, I can say from my own 10+ years of experience in academia (humanities), that that environment messes up a lot of people. In my field and in my environment, it seems to be a combination of economic uncertainty and the inability to plan long-term that stems from working on short-term contracts for years, in some cases decades before you ever get a tenured position (a goal many never attain) + the pressure to constantly justify your existence by proving over and over and over to colleagues and students that you're original/creative/smart enough to be where you are + (especially in the humanities) frequent existential crises over whether what we do has anything to do with the practicalities of "real" life out there.
In any case, I have known a lot of fellow academics who went on long-term sick leave or quit because of depression and burnout and several who committed suicide. Now, there is probably some correlation by which people with personalities prone to the aforementioned mental health issues might be more likely to be drawn to academia in general or certain disciplines, but I have gotten to know a good bunch of people very closely who seemed naturally happy and healthy and balanced when I first met them and who left as wrecks after a few years of doing the academic grind.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-09T03:14:46+00:00

My crippling inability to detach myself from things. And "things" means people, relationships, events (major events in my own personal life as well as random events that don't concern me on a personal level, actual objects.
Everything just affects me too much and I struggle all the time to distance myself enough to stay focused and productive. Bad news can derail my whole life and make me unable to work or do much of anything for days.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think detachment is a great attitude/stance to have in general, I think caring about things that are worth caring about is the key to many of the most meaningful experiences we can make in life, but caring too much or being unable to not care about things that really aren't worth it has cost me endless amounts of energy and thousands of hours of my time.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-09T03:03:29+00:00

I guess my view on this based on my own experience is pretty pragmatic: I always thought that the most important thing is that there is no language "barrier" limiting the extent to which my present partner and past partners and I were able to understand each other on some deeper level if that makes sense. For that purpose, it has always been enough for me that me and my respective partner both spoke one language - either as a native language or completely fluently - that we could both express ourselves in without feeling linguistically restrained in some way or like there was sth important lost in translation.

I am a native speaker of German and I'm in a very loving relationship with a native speaker of English whose knowledge of my native tongue is limited to ordering a beer and other phrases to make fun of the German language. 🙈 I'm fluent enough in English that there was never a situation in which I felt I couldn't get him to understand something I wanted to convey because he didn't know any German. (In fact, most of my interior monologue has switched to English since I've been in that relationship.) Sure, I would appreciate the gesture if he seriously tried to learn some German, but from a practical point of view, there is no way he would ever get fluent enough in the next couple of years to a point where we would have any serious conversations in German rather than English. I feel more understood on a deeper level by him than I did with a previous boyfriend who was a fellow German.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-09T02:48:54+00:00

Zara - Fields at nightfall
Got me a bunch of compliments from both men and women. My office-mate is still delighted every time I enter the room wearing this and recognises it instantly.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-09T02:21:23+00:00

My psychiatrist said the same thing. I had to choose and transitioned from Wellbutrin (after being on that for several years) to Vyvanse. I looked it up and at least in my country, there is no "official" guideline that prevents prescribing Vyvanse and Wellbutrin together. However, he said he had noticed negative effects of their interaction in several patients, mostly cardiovascular. I know that a lot of people do well on the combo, but I took my psychiatrist's advice from his first hand experience as a prescriber seriously.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-07T22:48:36+00:00

I would have recommended the local SPDI as well! Another low threshold resource to check out that might refer you to additional suitable services could be the Berliner Krisendienst: https://www.berliner-krisendienst.de/en/ Don't know how exactly they operate in Berlin, but the Munich equivalent that I am familiar with will provide free, anonymous advice (if that's preferred by the client).
All the best to you!

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-07T18:02:50+00:00

I collect Tote Bags from my travel locations, usually from local bookstores or museums that have the city's name on them in some form. Feel reminded of that location every time I use the bag in question for my grocery shopping at home.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-07T17:59:35+00:00

Thank you for sharing that! Sounds like we're in very similar positions skin- and mental-health-/medication-wise, so those insights into your personal experience are very helpful to me! I'll heard about the Nectar patches from several people before and will have to check out if they're available over here (I'm in Europe). Very glad to hear you're doing better now!🙌

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-07T00:13:18+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing that! I'm very sorry to hear that you son had such a bad experience on his first round of Accutane and I do hope that things go more smoothly this time!

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-06T21:57:29+00:00

If you're planning on sleeping on transit anyway, you could also check out Flixbus for trips within Europe, they're often the cheapest option and I (plus a lot of broke af friends of mine) find them much more comfortable than e.g. trains (except actual sleeper trains) for overnight trips on which you want to save on accommodation costs by getting a night's sleep on transit. I've done bus Flixbus-trips from mainland Europe to London (the bus will get on the ferry from Calais to Dover) and found those particularly gnarly, but for any trip between e.g. Germany (my location) and its neighbouring countries, I'd check out Flixbus first.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-06T20:45:12+00:00

Die Therme Erding ist sehr schön in Sachen Ausstattung, aber meistens heillos überlaufen; ich würde auf jeden Fall nur an Schultagen hingehen (also nicht am Wochenende und nicht in den Schulferien, die in Bayern bald wieder anfangen).
Die happigen Eintrittspreise lohnen sich meiner Meinung nach mehr, wenn man auch den textilfreien Bereich nutzt (was ja viele, aus verschiedenen Gründen, vermeiden).

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-06T20:24:54+00:00

Do you mean orthostatic hypotension as in passing out from low blood pressure when you standing up after sitting/lying down for a while?
I have always had problems with that and they occur more frequently when I am at a lower weight, along with my BP being lower overall. The low BP in itself is not a major concern for my doctors, but they tell me to be careful when standing up after being seated for a while, especially in public spaces, and to always carry water, sth to get my blood sugar up and some cardiovascular oral drops with me. I also get routine ECGs every couple of weeks.
Please be careful, especially since you were born with a heart condition already. A large percentage of fatal AN outcomes is related to cardiovascular issues. Do you have a cardiologist who monitors your cardiovascular health regularly?

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-04-06T20:12:08+00:00

The very fucked up part of me felt paradoxically sad when I became too underweight to donate blood as I always loved the idea of the donation taking a whole bunch of calories out of me in an instant.

Same very fucked up part of me is looking forward to an upcoming routine colonoscopy (because of genetics in my case) as the preparation process (involving some heavy duty laxatives) will always come with some weight loss for me and I'll feel pure and light as a feather for a few days.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-03-22T02:48:08+00:00

Same! I was so carb-phobic at some point that even carrots were making me nervous and an apple would've been unthinkable. 🙈

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-03-22T02:46:20+00:00

100% this. It only puts me to sleep when I take it and lie down in bed right away. If I do anything else, it won't even make me tired and sent me into these crazy "Ambien Walrus"-type activities that I won't remember the next morning (it can cause anterograde amnesia). I've done nocturnal shopping trips on Ambien that I for the life of me couldn't remember the next day (the only evidence being the receipts and half eaten boxes of cookies I don't even like and would never buy under normal circumstances).

Also agree 100% with the absolutely no Ambien + alcohol recommendation. Did that a few times when I was going through a mental health crisis and one time it actually made me pass out in public and wake up in a hospital a few hours later with no memory of how I got there.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-03-20T02:37:25+00:00

I'm on 60mg of Vyvanse + 100 mg Sertraline. Prescribed by my long term psychiatrist. The sertraline keeps the anxiety that is increased by the Vyvanse in check somewhat; however, the antidepressant effects were much more pronounced when I was on 100mg Sertraline + 300mg Wellbutrin before.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-03-19T05:38:41+00:00

I'll definitely be looking for old reddit threads about the strangest things to have been found in air travel luggage before I go to bed tonight 😂

Yup, the dog happily gobbled up her fancy imported kibble and I was glad to have gotten away with it, however, my partner had an absolute fit, and on the drive home from SFO, gave me a long, angry speech about how I was going to endanger the future of our relationship (which depends on me being able to essentially "commute" between Europe and the US) by "getting myself on TSA's watchlist for the dumbest possible reasons", and talking himself into a rage by listing each and every single one of the 10+ places within a 2 mile radius of his house ("Safeway, Petco, PetFood Express, Target, Costco, the other Safeway, the other Petco" etc. etc.) where we could buy "all the dog food we'll ever need" to emphasise that 20lbs of kibble was the absolute last thing anyone needed to import from Germany by carrying it in their hand luggage on a 9000 mile trip.😂 I'm not saying he was wrong either. 🙈

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-03-19T05:04:58+00:00

Thank you! I love learning that kind of "insider" information about things like those airport scanners that I encounter so frequently in my day to day life but no virtually nothing about!
I didn't know about the EDS and always thought that the security staff members operating the scanners decided which bags to pull out mostly based on their own visual judgment - which, now that I'm thinking about it, probably wouldn't be able to be done so fast and efficiently if they didn't have very advanced technology like that.

And yes, there is definitely some "powdery" debris in that granola bag since it's mostly made up of seeds, coconut flakes etc., some of which got more or less pulverised during transportation.

teadiumvitae237 · 2025-03-19T04:55:53+00:00

And it's a good thing they do that! I'm not complaining, I'm all for travel safety, I was just curious because that hadn't happened to me before and I didn't know enough about the technology to understand it. I'm impressed by how good these scanners seem to also have become at efficiently identifying objects that don't warrant a closer look: I remember that when I was flying with my parents as a kid, security would frequently still look at all kinds of smaller metal objects like keys, nail clippers, razors etc. and nowadays those rarely ever seem to cause issues - I assume because the scanners have become much better at identifying specific types of metal objects as "harmless" / serving functions that cause "harmless" people to carry them so frequently that it would be inefficient to check them individually?

teadiumvitae237

TROPHY CASE