luck

There’s no long distance travel without a decent screw-up. That’s what I thought when Delta Airlines told me that due to weather conditions the plane might not land in Santa Barabara but be diverted to another airport instead. I was picturing myself in a hotel room in Ontario or at the Greyhound bus stop in Los Angeles. The pilot of the small plane informed his passengers that it was quite foggy in Santa Barbara. Conditions were changing rapidly with visibility range dropping as low as a quarter of a mile. He decided to attempt a landing but told us that if it would turn out to be too risky he’d fly us to Los Angeles.

Luck was with me. He made it. We landed on what my advisor RG calls a “toy airport” with not a single minute of delay. Perfect. Thank you pilot of Skywest Airlines whose name I can’t remember.

OMFG Xtians!

What do you know about Salt Lake City? Right, it’s the Mormon capital. Pardon me, it’s the capital of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. I was a bit worried that the whole airport would be plastered with christian messages. Obviously my prejudice was wrong. It’s one of the classic Euro prejudices about the US: They’ve got fanatic Christians everywhere who nag at you, trying to convert you all the time (if they’re not busy burning witches or hanging gays). I could see a big church from the plane but that was it – no nagging, no conversion attempts. Actually, the SLC metropolitan area is quite a magnificent sight at night.

John F. Kennedy looks shabby

One would expect one of the prime entry ports to the United States to have a rather flashy airport. But no – it looked shabby all the way. I went through immigration and customs to eventually reach the departure gate for my connecting flight. All the time I walked through corridors and halls with low ceilings and naked walls without any plating, never coming across a single window. Even the waiting area right at the gate had an intransparent coating on the windows making it impossible to get a view of the airfield, let alone the city. Well, I saw only a small fraction of this airport. Maybe other parts of it look nicer.

I quickly got a first impression of how this country works. According to US Census only 12.4% of the population is African American. Yet, nearly all the people with low qualification (and low salary) jobs were black. Someone has nothing else to do but stand next to a queue of travelers and tell them to fill in the green immigration form? It’s a safe bet this person is black. The guys loading luggage onto the plane? Black. It’s understandable that some of them perceive themselves as underprivileged, even in the 21st century.

new chapter

Take a look at the top of the page. The title has been changed. Welcome to

chapter two – United States of America

Yes, that’s right. Having conquered Australia I now aim for the most powerful nation in the world. Or so they say. In Australia I found out that every nation has a secret phrase that renders them defenseless. It’s like a customized “open, sesame” and once I find out what that phrase is for the US, they won’t stand a chance.

Wanna know what the phrase for Australia is? It’s derived from the Borg race’s standard invasion procedure (“Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”) and reads:

Resistance is illegal. Penalties apply.

So what happened over here…

…in the meantime? Hessen, the state that brought me up but of which I am no longer a citizen, voted five parties into parliament and there seems to be no coalition forming. That’s what happens when everyone makes definite promises of NOT cooperating with this and this and that party BEFORE the actual election. I am especially happy about Roland Koch and his infamous Christian Democratic Party having lost a great deal of popularity because the voters eventually saw through his polemic xenophobia-based strategy. On the other hand I am especially impressed by the learning resistance of the Social Democratic Party. They have lost millions of members and voters since Gerhard Schröder turned them into the (as I refer to them) Unsocial Democrats. Now they’ve fielded Andrea Ypsilanti, a rather leftist candidate, and gained back some of these losses, at least in one state. But instead of learning from this, redeveloping their social profile and cooperating with the Leftist Party (basically socialists) they denied any cooperation with these fellas even before the election. The Liberal Party (not to be confused with neither the American nor the Australian meaning of “liberal” and best described as market economy preachers), scoring only a few percent of the votes, refuses to cooperate with three of the four other parties – who the fuck do these guys think they are? They’ve always been a laugh but now they’ve reached the top! The fact that I, a professional environmentalist, haven’t been talking about the Greens so far shows how meaningless they are. Yes, I think they have the most competent people for environmental problems, but they are so unsocial I start thinking of them as Eco-Liberals. Market Economy is not going to solve this world’s problems, my friends.

You see, I’m back now, with heart and soul, always happy to have an argument about politics. Looking forward to see my friends now. My mates from Stuttgart had prepared a bunch of CDs for me before I left and unfortunately I was unable to take them with me. Since I arrived these are all I’ve listened to and with many songs bearing a connection to our activities they generated a feeling of being at home. Much appreciated.

back

Eventually I’ve returned to Germany. The trip went by without any screw-ups (only a little delay on the flight from Dubai to Frankfurt). However, sleeping is not an option for a person of my size in an economy class seat. From getting up on February 4th in Brisbane till going to bed on February 5th in Darmstadt I had been awake for slightly more than 40 hours. After 15 hours of sleep I still felt pretty wasted. Last night I couldn’t sleep because my biorhythm is not yet adjusted to this time zone. The transition from 30 °C Brisbane to 5 °C Frankfurt was easier than I had expected, though.

On a side note: How do you know you’re in a police state? There are three policemen (looking rather like soldiers) armed with submachine guns on a crossing in an airport building where absolutely nothing is happening due to the time being around 1 AM. You may have guessed, I was talking about Singapore. On another side note: The submachine guns were most likely made in Germany, in a peaceful village in the Schwarzwald mountains.

It is time to thank a few people of importance. This section is kind of cryptic but I don’t like giving away peoples’ names on the internet and you all know who you are.

THANKS to

CJM for having a great idea, SV for being a thoughtful advisor, AF for being a helpful workmate, PMK for preparation work, TB for intelligent discussions, NE and GD for the background work that keeps everything running and all my workmates for the occasional chat.

SPECIAL THANKS to

CH for being a real Aussie housemate, MS for his totally unexpected appearance and all the nights out and AS for being a good friend.

VERY SPECIAL THANKS to

HS for being wonderful.

Australian made trash

Note: This entry is a service for those interested in amateur horror movies. Anyone not interested will find this post boring.

My friend HS introduced me to an Australian made movie of the above-mentioned category that goes by the name “Undead”. Although the production team’s budget ran out only days after they started shooting the movie, it looks pretty professional. My personal opinion is that it easily catches up with the German movie “Premutos”. The directors spent countless hours on their home computers to produce the digital special effects themselves and the result is quite nice. From the beginning the story mixes classic zombie and alien invasion elements. Most characters are mere caricatures of themselves, but that’s fine in an amateur movie. Best, the directors managed to come up with a rather unexpected ending to their story. I’m not giving away any further details but I highly recommend this movie to those interested in trashy movies, especially my friend FM in Stuttgart.

THE zoo

Not having seen a single kangaroo or koala when my stay in Australia was almost over, I turned to cheating in order to get a view of some specimen of these. Rather than finding them in the wilderness I paid a visit to the zoo. THE zoo. Australia Zoo near Beerwah, home of “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, the great Australian idol who was tragically stingrayed to death in 2006. Once again, my workmate AS was with me. We could have been a larger group, but HS was ill and MS had left Australia (no, not because of us).

The zoo’s layout was all right. Though some animals lacked space I felt that most of them were treated as good as is possible in caption. Not only did we see the most famous Australian animals but also some Asian and American species.

Kangaroos and koalas were free for padding, as were the tiny little piggies in the kid’s zoo (yes, that’s my hand in the picture). Koala fur is actually quite soft and fluffy, as opposed to that of most wild animals. Plus, the underlying tissue seems to be soft as well, so padding them was a real joy. The keepers take care of the animals not being harrassed too much by the visitors. There was one koala on a tree branch with a sign on the branch saying (rewritten from memory): “I’m having a rest. Please leave me in peace.”

This is the zoo’s largest crocodile, measuring 4.8 m in length. Further iconic Aussie animals are the kookaburra and the wombat. The more obscure creatures we got to see on this day were a komodo dragon, a black-necked stork and an echnida. The latter one was, despite its spikey appearance, a total cutie due to its funny way of walking. If you ever get the chance to see one yourself you will understand.

Australia zoo seems to be quite professionally managed, “professional” meaning “business-orineted”. From the first step we took onto the premises the marketing machinery kept following us. Public feeding would be normal but here they have animal shows in the “crocoseum”, accompanied by huge souvenir shops full of useless crap on several locations throughout the zoo. You may have your photo taken with a python around your neck for an insane price and the food court in the crocoseum rivals that of a small stadium. All this is completed by a bronze statue of the Irwin family holding a crocodile at the entrance. Yuck! But well, zoos need to make a living as well. Furthermore, their intention is to raise the conciousness of their visitors – especially that of children – for nature conservation “by exciting education”. Not a bad goal at all, although I think that environmentalism in Australia still has a LONG way to go. Most people think that environmentalism equals nature concervation. The idea that there is such a thing as industrial ecology is not yet rooted in Australian society.

Sky Pi

Having visited several more concerts during my time in Brisbane I don’t feel like telling you about all of them. However, there is one band that the world should seriously know about: Sky Pi

The well-respected progressive rock band Dream Theater played in Brisbane on the last weekend of my stay. With ticket prices easily exceeding 100 bucks I decided that the afterparty at Club Phoenix would be enough for me. Sky Pi played at this venue and they were definitely the ones making it a true Dream Theater party. Every single band member obviously enjoyed playing and the sound was progressive rock at its best. If I had more than two thumbs I’d rise them all for Sky Pi. I would have liked to buy a CD to play it to my German friends but they haven’t recorded anything yet. Go visit their myspace site for a glimpse of their skills.

All right, there is another band that deserves mentioning: Soulscrape. There is a distinctive Brisbane style of metal. Basically a blend of death metal and metalcore with some nu metal influence, played very accurately. Not bad, quite amusing actually, but the cool thing about Soulscrape is that they are different. Soulscrape teleport their listener back to the early nineties when death metal was emerging. A raw and brutal sound. I would also like to thank them for giving me a free CD. Did they know I would introduce some people in Europe to their sound?

Fraser Island

Some of you may have noticed that I am already back in Germany. Anyway, I will complete my Australian diary just for the sake of completeness.

The highlight of my Christmas vacation truly was the trip to Fraser Island. It’s the world’s largest sand island, covering 1600 km². One of the most common ways to explore the island is a self-drive tour, sharing a 4WD vehicle and camping equipment with a group of other people. In our case the group was relatively small, only eight people. You’d think that camping with six strangers is risky, not only in terms of skill level and camping routine but especially in terms of annoyance. Luck was with us, the group – consisting of four Swiss and four German people – was just fine. Actually, we matched very well.

The whole island is 120 km in length and we drove ca. 100 km up to an outlook called Indian Head. Can you imagine 100 km of perfect sand beach? However, swimming is dangerous due to deadly undercurrents and man-eating sharks in the water. Fraser Island also features largely untouched forests and crystal-clear freshwater lakes, such as Lake Wabby and Lake Lake Birrabeen. Besides the beautiful landscape and flora, there are also animals to watch – in case they show up at all. There are signs all over the island telling the unexperienced tourist about how to cope with dingoes (native wild dogs) but it was not until the morning of the very last day that we actually saw some of them roaming around the campsite.

There are hardly any roads on Fraser Island. People just drive their cars on the beach or on inland dirt tracks. Unfortunately I don’t have any images of these tracks but believe me, there are good reasons for allowing only 4WD cars on Fraser Island. It is quite a challenge to drive a vehicle through the woods and although not a car maniac I must admit having enjoyed it.

It started to rain heavily on the second evening and when everyone woke up soaked the next morning (which was also the last) we decided not to visit any more places and return to Rainbow Beach immediately. Having returned we saw on the news that a cyclone had hit the Fraser coast and the campsites on Fraser Island had been evacuated. If that isn’t luck then what?!