Two more photographs (1, 2) of the Swedish countryside. This time, they’re more representative than the one in the first Sweden post. They were taken right next to a highway between Falköping and Göteborg. The latter is quite a nice place. While Stockholm is the total history overload and makes me feel completely meaningless, Göteborg is more a common European city. They do have a good amount of old architecture (unlike many German cities in which the entire center has been bombed to kingdom come in World War II) but also many fifties and sixties style buildings. The population is pretty mixed, I noticed a lot of people with arabic or black complexion. Bad luck for my readers, I forgot my camera when I went out. Sorry, no pretty pictures of the second biggest city in Sweden.
Falköping rocks
Posted in Falköping, Sweden on September 10, 2008 by JanMy first business trip. For a job I haven’t even started. Nice. The only problem is that I have to pay everything in advance and then have to ask my employer to pay it to me (which takes months). Anyway, should you happen to spend a night in Falköping, Sweden, ask me for a hotel recommendation. In the one I’m currently sitting in, they offer free dinner and free WLAN access, which is not standard in Swedish hotels, as I can tell by now*.
By the way, the blog title changed again. I’m now conquering the EU from within. Well, this month. Next month it’s the US again. This world domination business is getting really stressful.
*) It seems to be in Göteborg though.
open sesame
Posted in USA on July 19, 2008 by JanGetting back to the world domination business, I should spell out my USA conquest strategy. You might remember the “open sesame” words for Australia. Now it’s time for the US. Well, I reckon the best way to make Americans surrender is to make them believe that it’s natural. Just market forces. You can’t oppose the allmighty market, can you? Second, make them believe that everyone does it. If that doesn’t help it, tell them it’s God’s will.
back again
Posted in Germany, Stuttgart on July 19, 2008 by JanBack in Stuttgart, Germany (as stated before). All right, so what was good and what was bad?
First of all, I’d like to mention that Californians are very friendly, communicative and helpful. They seem to be very practical people, too. If there is a problem and they have a solution at hand (albeit far from perfect), they simply go ahead and implement it. Germans would take forever to find all possible solutions and then discuss which one is the most perferct, perfect, perfect one. This certainly has an advantage when it comes to long-term planning (e.g. infrastructure investments) but is a pain in the ass when the problem is rather minor in nature.
What I didn’t like are those flat, wide cities. You can’t walk anywhere, so no one does, so the streets are empty and the whole thing feels like a ghost town. Also, what do you need an SUV or pickup for if you only drive to work and drop your children off at the school?! Obviously the gas is still not expensive enough for you to switch.
I had the impression that Californians don’t whine as much about their problems as Germans. This could be a side effect of the fact that far more risks (such as illness, unemployment, etc.) are private matters there while they are partially social matter over here. The tax level is considerably lower in the US than in Germany and consequently citizens get less from the state. They seem to regard their problems more as their own problems and less as society’s problems. I like the attitude but am still in favor of a government that takes care of its citizens. Seeing your problems as your own problems exclusively makes you miss the point that in part your problems ARE due to structural problems in your society. In a competitive society someone just has to loose, no matter how hard they try. That’s the principal fallacy of the American Dream.
John Cleese (who lives in Santa Barbara) said that he likes living in the US because it has both the best and the worst people in the world. I wouldn’t go as far as that but generally agree. The country is very, very diverse. You can find people like the ones I worked with and people like the current federal administration. Talking about people, I think it’s time for a thank you list:
THANKS to
MF and RG for establishing the contact, DS and FD for their wisdom and expertise, BW and UB for their support at the “home front”, and the “German crew” EvW, RG, KF, SW for the interesting discussions (and the great meals we had, of course).
SPECIAL THANKS to
RG for keeping everything together and for the many invitations. TC for being a cheerful housemate, DW for being an unbureaucratic landlady, and the “Euro crew” SW, LB, JB, JO for the many nights at the local pubs. LB became a close friend of mine, which is kind of a surprise to me as I didn’t expect to find such a friend in California.
touring
Posted in Californian outback, Las Vegas, San Francisco, USA on July 19, 2008 by JanI’d love to write a little more about the US but am simply too busy becoming what Germans call a Dipl.-Ing. Before I left I took a rental car and traveled a little around the state where I had spent three months just working (something I was dumb enough not to do in Australia). You may be interested in some of the places I visited so I compiled a few images.
Let’s begin with San Francisco. One of the few cities in California which is not sprawling out into the surrounding land. It is confined to its peninsula in the San Francisco Bay. The positive effect is visible: Most places are in walking distance from each other and consequently the streets are populated with people. Overall, San Francisco is a lot more European than any other city I saw in California.
Market Street, one of the city’s busy arteries. A street in Chinatown with the Transamerica Building in the background. Golden Gate Park, a huge and very beautiful park in San Francisco. And last but not least a view from Alcatraz with the city in the background.
I continued my trip to the east (well, there’s only water to the west) through the Central Valley. Parts of it are pretty neat but most of it is boring, overfertilized, salinized, endless cropland. Ugly to any sane person and even more ugly to anyone with a tiny bit of ecologic knowledge. On the other hand, I did enjoy all the tasty fruit and vegetables from the Central Valley.
I spent a night in Freson which seems to be one of the most boring places in whole California. A wide, flat city with no personal character. My judgement may be biased so please correct me if I’m wrong. Much better was the (far too quick) drive through Sequoia National Park. People told me that Yosemite offers the more beautiful landscape. However, Sequoia features the trees from which its name is derived. Standing in front of a giant sequoia tree makes even me feel very, very small. Here’s a picture of the world’s largest giant sequoia. Note the people at the bottom. After all, the landscape wasn’t that bad.
The last stop on my trip was Las Vegas. I went there primarily to watch a show of George Carlin at the Orleans Casino. The show was great, though he did take some time to get to the hard-hitting political punch lines that I love so much. At the peak of the show he called the ever-recurring phrase “God bless America” a PATRIOTIC TOURETTE SYNDROME. Bam! In your face, nationalists. Interestingly the audience laughed a lot more about the simple, superficial jokes than about the ones criticizing their own beloved country. It seems that this nation needs a lesson in self-loathing (for good reasons, that is). This particular show was my last chance – he died shortly after, at age 71. I didn’t gamble a single cent in Las Vegas. Instead, I invested my money in armory. Nevada has far more permitting firearms laws than California and a number of ranges specialize in gun rental to tourists. Overall I shot two pistols, four submachine guns, two rifles and a light machine gun. For those of you who know what these letters mean: HK USP .45 ACP /w silencer, MR Desert Eagle .50 AE, IWI Uzi 9 mm Para, Thompson .45 ACP, Colt M635 9 mm Para, HK MP5 9 mm Para, HK G3 7.62 mm Nato, SIG 556 5.56 mm Nato, FN Minimi 5.56 mm Nato. It was a hell of a lot of fun (for a gun nut like me). The Hoover Dam nearby is not as spectacular as people may tell you but for a professional environmentalist with some knowledge about hydro power it was worth a visit. What puzzled me is that at no point during the tour did anyone mention the fact that hydro power produces no carbon dioxide. In Europe this would be practically all they’d tell you. The importance of (anthropogenic) climate change has not reached Nevada yet.
A big thank you to the other motorists whom I shared the highways with. I have never encountered more civilized drivers than in California (and that tiny piece of Nevada).
gorgeous gorge
Posted in Californian outback, USA on June 13, 2008 by JanNow that I’m finished and just wasting my time I can catch up with the stories I didn’t tell. I won’t cover everything but there is one issue that must not be left out – the Grand Canyon.
My dad visited me over here and besides checking out many of the restaurants in town we also took a longer trip to Tusayan, Arizona. This is a tiny village just south of the entrance to the Grand Canyon National Park that only exists to provide services to tourists.
Getting there takes a while. In fact, it’s a 10-hour drive (given no major jams on the way). Once you leave the Los Angeles metropolitan area on the Interstate 15 you cut across the mountains into the desert towards Barstow. We came across this freight train near the Cajun junction. These trains (we saw more during the trip) are extremely long and usually pulled by three or four locomotives. Once over the mountains the road turned into what people in Europe have in mind when they think about American highways: an endless boring road that makes drivers fall asleep and crash into trucks. But even there in the desert, you will find lots of small and medium size villages and towns, scattered across the landscape, along with which come the shopping malls that enrich the dull desert backdrop with a blast of colors. Capitalism 1 – desert 0. Hurray!
Same as Germans, Americans whine about the ever-rising gas prices. The cheapest we got on this trip was 3.55 Dollars. Per gallon. That’s 3.8 liters. I’d laugh if the problem of dwindling fossil resources and carbon dioxide emissions wasn’t so serious. Now it’s around 4.80 a gallon in the coastal urban regions of California, which is still ridiculously cheap. If people in Germany don’t consider to carpool (let alone switch to – heaven forbid – cycling) at 1.50 Euros per liter, it just has to get yet more expensive. Fuck you gas-guzzlers, that’s a solid nail in your Hummer’s coffin!
After hours and hours and hours of driving we eventually arrived. On the next day we headed towards the canyon and – Bam! – it is absolutely mind-blowing. You stand on top of the rim, gazing at billions of years of rock formation and millions of years of erosion. You take photos over photos but it’s plain impossible to capture. Here’s one of the best photos that I took but it gives you just a glance of the grace of this breathtaking landscape.
If I tell you that the gorge is an average 1 mile deep this sounds impressive but you probably still have a hard time imagining a vertical distance of that dimension. In this image you can see people walking on the crest. The following image provides a wider view. That’s not even the full height – it goes on. And on. You can’t even see the Colorado River at the bottom from this point.
We even took the liberty of a helicopter flight across the canyon. The view was fascinating but I was scared out of my mind in this light and unstable helicopter on such a windy day.
But there’s more than just the gorge to gaze at. Along the rim you can find some interesting rock formations, spooky tree carcasses and cuddly squirrels. Then there’s the Imax in Tusayan. Seriously, what’s the most famous gorge in the world without a killer theater?!
On the morning of the day we were planning to leave I opened the curtains of the hotel room and – Bam again! – stared at three inches of snow. Over night. This was reason enough to take a quick look at the canyon instead of leaving immediately. Since the climate inside the canyon is very different from the one on the plateau there was no snow inside. An interesting view.
The take-home message of this entry is: If you ever get the chance to see the Grand Canyon, take it. Whether you just walk on the rim or actually hike down and back doesn’t matter, but you have to see it.
happiness is a clean graph
Posted in Santa Barbara, USA on June 13, 2008 by JanAll right, Jan is back in action.
Eventually, my work in California is done. This is what I’ve been working on for the past three months. The graph probably leaves you puzzled. That’s fine because I never intended to reveal any results on the internet.
