I’m on the road snaking north and east with the traffic. A bumper flies off a car traveling the opposite direction; it happens so fast that maybe it almost didn’t. And now there are deer. Four of them including a few horned bucks. Not too many points but too far away to tell. Can’t turn my head because I’m driving. I note with relief that they’re on the opposite side of a fence.
The radio. I haven’t listened to it in years but now it’s my best friend (there’s no iPhone adapter in this car). As the city recedes so does musical variety. Steve Miller band. Aerosmith. Is that Motley Crue? I can tell by the music that Kingston is approaching. If we ever lose GPS or street signs I’ll still know how if I’m in the St. Lawrence River Valley just by the music. Dear god. Supertramp.
The first flakes of snow are starting to fall. And fall faster. And suddenly the other cars can’t handle the road anymore. A hatchback has backed into the bush. A truck has trucked into the ditch. Wait, there shouldn’t be a tractor trailer parked there. Focus, focus, focus. Don’t watch the snow; it’s like a siren that wants to pull you off the road. Trust that the lanes are there and drive through it. Use the car and drive because the snow can’t last forever.
And it doesn’t. But other folks are tired. The gentle turn in the 401 at Lancaster, designed to wake you up, almost fails for another hatchback: the curve becomes the ditch as he goes straight but the rumble strips wake him up and he recovers in time.
Keep driving. Keep driving.
And new music fills the car. Beats. Rhythm. Not classic rock. A city approaches.
Montreal’s highways are a mystery. I could have sworn I drove down this road five minutes ago. Why is a plane flying directly above me? Didn’t I just turn right three times? Oh wait, there’s the city.
Rocketing towards it in the dark. A 12 kilometre tunnel that slowly fades the radio to fuzz. I pop out beneath a construction site as a light snow falls.
I check in to my hotel. The heat is barely on and I can almost see my breath. Was The Exorcist filmed here? It’s late but I need to do a bit of work. I go to a bar in a hotel; not mine. The bar is big, too big for the crowd in it and the elegant decor feels almost embarrassed. I sit at the bar and sip cocktails named for another city. I return to the hotel and sleep in the cold after the clerk insists that his technique to turn on the heat will work; it doesn’t.
Awake. Wash. Why is the faucet detached from the wall? Why doesn’t the stopper in the sink work? I must remember to never stay here again.
Need breakfast. Saw a Starbucks nearby. Dear god, these are the friendliest people on earth. I didn’t realize how good Dr Dre’s headphones were, Mr. Barista. Thank you for the pin to add to the other ones on my bag.
Meetings. The reason I came. They’re good.
And I’m back on the snake’s lair of highways around Montreal. Concrete crumbles and rebar is exposed. Graffiti appears in random locations.
A train is steaming west like me; I slowly pass it counting cars along the way. The Surete drives at exactly 100 and we all slow pass them just over the limit.
I stop outside Quebec in the fringe of Ontario where the French language is making a last stand. At an unnamed restaurant that’s more like a cafeteria, smoked meat and fries seem to hold the community together. The proprietor is a hustler and tries to upsell me a clam chowder; I politely decline and ask if it’s locally sourced from the St. Lawrence. A wry smile.
Back in the St. Lawrence River Valley and that means more classic rock. Again the Aerosmith. And the Motley Crue. How is it possible that I haven’t heard a Crue song in ten years and then twice in two days. Supertramp, round two. Zeppelin: three different songs. The same damn Steve Miller song as yesterday. And the Five Man Electrical Band‘s Signs. Twice. Must be Cancon.
The 401 is noticeably faster than Quebec’s highway 20. The OPP cruises along at just under 130; oblivious to anyone slower than them but warily eyeing trucks.
I briefly catch American radio. It’s all debt reduction and cash for gold ads. Tired of your silver tarnishing? Have tacky gold from the ’80s? Our buyers have over one million dollars to spend this weekend. Head to the Ramada in Messina. I picture an over-lit room with a pile of ugly jewelry in the middle; barkers surrounding it and handing out bills to nervous men and their depressed wives. The reality is probably more banal.
The first rumblings of classical music and hip hop. Toronto approaches. This ride is almost over. Traffic thickens but doesn’t noticeably slow. Two lanes become three, then four and the bifurcate into “express” and “collectors” that move at indistinguishable speeds. Signs overhead predict the future of the road and cars jockey for position.
And then it’s over. My exit appears. I’m off the highway and home and everything slows to a stop.
I just got back from my second trip to San Francisco and Silicon Valley in two weeks. It’s been a whirlwind; some thoughts and photos.
0.
Above all: I have the best wife in the world. We had our first child three days before I had to leave for the first trip and she still encouraged me to go (note that I say “encourage”, not “did not discourage me” from going. Big difference).
1.
If you go to work for a tech company that’s run by the original founder, be prepared to be micromanaged. Steve Jobs was legendary for his focus on individual pixels, but he’s not the only one. Larry Page personally approves every acquisition by Google – even if it’s for a million bucks (they’ve got $40 billion in cash reserves). The other Larry – Ellison – of Oracle has to approve any purchase order over $100,000. And on the Kindle, Jeff Bezos is getting into the single pixel approval scene.
And as a founder, I can’t fault any of them. There are some things you’re never going to give up control of.
2.
As you get closer to Silicon Valley, you’re encouraged to think bigger. This is a refreshing break from Vancouver where you’re encouraged to think small.
When I moved to Vancouver in January and was starting to get going, I met an “entrepreneurship mentor” who told me that the best things in the world are “niche businesses: find a nice little space with no competition and print money.” Nice idea, but if you’re building a web-based business almost certainly not going to happen.
Moreover, I’ve met lots of folks in Vancouver who are aiming to build a small business that could achieve a $10 million exit. More power to them: that would be a life-changing event for the entrepreneurs and could happen – as long as you’re building niche software; no way you can do that with software that’s going to be on every person’s device/used by millions/etc.
We met a VC in the valley who told us that he’s frustrated with going up to Vancouver because people think so small.
And frankly, the odds of failing are pretty much similar depending upon what size company you’re trying to build, so in my world, think big.
When you get to San Francisco, you meet folks who are thinking bigger. To them, success is defined by a company that will be worth $50-100 million in the next five years.
And then you get down to Sand Hill Road in Menlo park where, to paraphrase Linda Evangelista, no one gets out of bed for less than $100 million.
3.
For the uninitiated, Sand Hill Road is where almost all the VCs in Silicon Valley have offices. It’s a tiny little strip of land and it controls billions of dollars of money to be invested; likely more than the rest of the world combined.
When you get there, it’s a remarkably uninspiring place. Think taupe, two-storey office parks that all looked like they were designed by the same insipid architect. Most of the offices themselves are just empty space: meeting rooms and almost ostentatiously large offices. Most of the buildings are shared by many different firms and, curiously, the bathrooms tend to be outside the offices themselves. (I can’t help but wonder if the perk of partnership is the key to a secret indoor bathroom).
It’s only the cars in the parking lot that give you a clue as to the value of what takes place here. Don’t be surprised to see a Ferrari or a Tesla roadster – although, on average, there are fewer luxury cars than I see crossing the Burrard Bridge on a daily basis (why are there so many luxury cars in Vancouver? And why are they driven so badly?).
Also, 3000 Sand Hill road is probably the place in America where you’re most likely to see a billionaire. One of the highlights of my trip was watching one tell off a friend of mine. Upon asking a guy who he thought was a nobody (but unbeknownst to him was one of the most successful investors ever) how much a Tesla roadster costs, he was zinged “If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford one.” It was funny (although maybe you had to be there).
4.
Silicon Valley in general is remarkably banal; it actually feels like a giant strip mall mixed into the suburbs. Only occasionally does a crazy high tech campus pop out at you and remind you that, oh yeah, everything piece of technology you use both today and in the future is created here.
5.
Biggest piece of advice I got: move to San Francisco. People outside the area think you’re crazy to start a company anywhere but the Valley. Time will tell if this is right or not.
6.
On my flight out we flew over the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge was sticking out of the fog which spilled out to Alcatraz and then evaporated, leaving the city centre to glow in the sun. Incredible view; wished I’d had a window seat to take a photo.
7.
And now, some photos. Traveling with an iPhone and some running shoes means that you can actually see a lot of things – although just from the outside.
Continuing this summer’s Gulf Islands theme, a few weeks back Wen and I went to Hornby Island. It’s a spectacular place:
It’s also a place where the ’60s never died. Aging hippies sell $4 lattes and $3 baked samosas in the local market and then retreat to their $800,000 beach homes:
The little touches are the best. The “elder parking” at the co-op:
It hasn’t been much of a summer here in Vancouver and we’re learning that the best way to deal with it is to just get outside and do things. So on Saturday we got up early and went to Galiano Island. Due to the interminable fog, the view from the ferry wasn’t too great:
When we got there, it rained and kept raining. Fortunately, this created quite eerie and unique circumstances up on top of Bluff Park. Normally you’d look out over Active Pass and see the boats passing between the islands. Needless to say, we were treated to something quite different (but equally beautiful):
We had a great time trekking through rainforest, skirting cliffs and pushing through eight foot hight grasses while startling deer and eagles. Can’t wait to go back on a day when it’s actually a clear day…
It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of the Vancouver metropolitan area. A perfectly flat island on the flight path to the airport, it’s frequently derided as not worthy of a visit. In short, it can’t get no respect.
Richmond is at least 60% Asian and the Golden Village feels closer to 100%. Since we moved to Vancouver, Wen and I have assumed that the area must be home to some great Asian food: the question has always been where to go. Thankfully, we finally got a few recommendations so today we set off for Dinesty.
Nuzzled next to a Starbucks and a plus-sized store in an anonymous strip mall, Dinesty captured everything about Richmond. The food was world class; the interior was beautiful and I can’t even remember what it looked like outside.
Curiously, the dining crew consisted of a large number of families where the kids sat playing with their iPads/iPhones/iDevice while the parents ate. Kind of surreal – especially when it was a family of five with three kids who each had matching white earbuds.
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Some people never visit Richmond because it appears to be a series of charmless strip malls abutting the Sky Train:
But it’s worth exploring as you’ll find countless interesting things. Hand-made Japanese chocolate. Countless arcades and billiards halls where you can see the latest crazy videogames on offer and watch legions of Asian-Canadian boys try to frag one another at Call of Duty while sitting in the timeless half darkness. The arcades tend to be off the strip; lurking behind them are the dojos and mixed martial arts academies.
If you walk into a random Japanese store (interestingly, the stores here are a mix of Japanese, Korean and Chinese; it’s as if once you leave “Asia”, your national status is replaced by a continental one), you might find those incredible tiny canned drinks that are normally only found in the land of the rising sun (in the following photo, the cans are abnormally small; Wendy is not suffering from gigantism):
Interspersed are a motley collection of random stores. A hobby shop where awkward teens obviously fantasize about the pretty girl who works the cash; a pet store that feels more like visiting the Vancouver Aquarium – except that you can bring home the exhibits – and numerous computer superstores where the emphasis is on making your own computer rather than buying a pre-made one.
In addition, the malls are a study in the nuances between Asian and Caucasian culture.
The jewellery stores have a lot more jade and gold; a lot less silver. Everywhere the signage is about “success”, “executive”, “prestigious” and “exclusive”. There are a remarkable number of air diffusers and massage stores for sale. If you’re looking for dried foods, these malls are your place. There are countless cell phone stores, but none of them are ones you have seen before:
Every single restaurant has a glass-walled kitchen so you can watch the staff cook:
And the stores sell every form of cute character imaginable:
It’s fascinating and unique place: a bit of Asia built using the latest technology and North American building codes. Bizarrely clean, with not a speck of garbage or graffiti anywhere to be seen. And well worth a visit.
Wen and I just got back from a rapid sprint through London, Paris & Fontainebleau:
Looking back, it’s fun to contrast the two capitals.
London seems to be a city of repeating motifs; the order of the buildings seems to be almost an apology for the chaotic arrangement of the streets.
Paris on the other hand is a monochromatic mesh of near identical ancient buildings punctured occasionally by an era’s vision of the future. (These buildings are also incredibly clean; I suspect that stimulus money from the 2008 crisis was used to polish buildings and remove dog shit from the streets.)
Interestingly, these visions of the future are increasingly rare. There was lots of construction in Paris but it’s all confined to the outer banlieues where presumably the zoning laws are more lax. In contrast, London was dotted with cranes competing to redraw the skyline:
I’d also forgotten how Paris is a chameleon whose colours change at night:
A few other things I noticed:
1.
The English romanticize the wild…
…while the French seek to tame it
2.
Each city has its own dominant smell. On a walk through the towpaths and parks of the city, London’s appears to be the sweet rot of plants that lurk in cracks between stones and in back alleys. Paris’ is the smell of urine in the subway.
3.
France is the one of only two places in the world (the other being New York’s Upper East Side) where men can innocuously, unabashedly and unrepentantly wear red pants:
4.
London was in full bloom for us when we arrived:
In fact, it may have been blooming too much. It hadn’t rained in ages and there was so much dust and pollen floating around that you literally felt like you had just visited the barber.
5.
The French are the European champions at both smoking in public and randomly stopping in the busiest places on crowded thoroughfares. In fact, urban planners could do better than simply following the French around and watching where they stop as a clue as to the most-trafficked places in a city.
I suspect the halting is driven by a subconscious need to have one’s existence acknowledge by others, if only via profanities.
6.
Every airport is full of defeated-looking people and Heathrow may have just that many more than others. I suspect this is because it’s an airport designed by shareholders who do not fly and worship Thomas Hobbes. It’s all angles and no curves, paths that maximize time spent in duty free rather than getting to your gate, and floor space auctioned to the free-est spending luxury brand rather than thinking about how passengers might, say, want to eat rather than buy jewellery.
7.
France is a great place to simply sit and waste time drinking a coffee. I can see how they came up with the word boulevardier.
8.
London has fantastic street art.
9.
I’d always thought that Britain was an extremely free place but then I read about their liberal approach to handing out superinjuctions: press bans that are so severe that you can’t even report there’s a ban (Kafka would be proud).
I was reading the story linked to above while also skimming a British paper. It was surreal to read the paper and see that the local press could only refer to one of the stories referred to by the article:
It was also interesting to see that an article about Gordon Ramsay’s in-law appeared on the same page. Was this also a subtle attempt by the paper to tell users to search the internet as Gordon Ramsay has a superinjunction out?
Inspired by the New York Times’ 36 Hours In… series, Wen and I recently ducked down to Seattle.
I love visiting Seattle because it’s a city that is absolutely unlike Vancouver despite the proximity; going there truly feels like a different world.
It was a great weekend: lots of walking, eating, taking photos, exploring and drinking coffee.
Here are some photo highlights.
Spring was in bloom
Public Art Abounds
A few Richard Serra’s at the sculpture park…
The most dynamic art is graffiti on building scaffolding
Lots of Modern Architecture
City Hall
The Hyatt
The library
You Have To Visit The Market
And a couple of random closing shots:
This is an acoustic sculpture at the conservatory. A speak is suspended against taught wires; inaudible music plays and vibrates the string – which in turn trigger instruments. A unique symphony ensues.
Elliott Bay Books is a must-visit for any reader. One of the best book stores I’ve ever been to.
A view of the city from the sculpture park.
And one more interesting thing. We drove back along the coast rather than the interstate. This takes you from Edison on up to Bellingham. This route is highly recommended (and most Vancouverites don’t know about it).
Edison is a really pretty town with a harbour walk around it; the road between in and Bellingham hugs the coast with mountains on one side, cliffs on the other and forests everywhere. There are also lots of restaurants perched on those cliffs where you can grab a quick meal.
Wen and I have been in Vancouver for almost a week now. We’ve met great people, eaten phenomenal ramen, drank unreal coffee (everywhere) and even found a place (although we can’t move in until Feb 1). We’re gradually coming to terms with the fact that cars actually stop for you when you want to cross the street, that people’s earnestness here is sincere and that no one understands sarcasm.
We’re also noticing three trends.
1. There is a distinct Vancouver style
The “City of Glass” is evolving it’s own style and its creeping into its built spaces. Every now and then you turn a corner and it feels like you’ve stepped into the future. An elegant future of glass and steel and right angles that don’t feel harsh.
I’m looking forward to see how this turns out.
2. There’s Public Art Everywhere
The knock against Vancouver used to be that it was a provincial town. That no longer holds (see entry 1). Moreover, we’ve been amazed at the public art that litters the city.
3. The Views Really Are Spectacular
This is a city surrounded by mountains and ocean, but even then, you can’t really imagine what that means until you spend some quality time outdoors over the course of a few days.
Oh yeah, and, on a good day, you can see a totem pole framed by a rainbow in front of a snowy mountain. You know, like most places.
So Wendy and I are wrapping up our travels. As I write this, it’s been 164 days, 12 countries and 43 different cities since we left New York. We’ve traveled by just about every possible mechanism: jet, prop plane, train, subway, dodgy wooden boat, dodgy metal boat, bus, car, rickshaw, camel and elephant. And we’ve walked miles by ourselves.
To close out our travels, I thought I’d share a couple of thoughts that have popped up while we’ve been abroad. (If you’re looking for a top x list, this will disappoint; fortunately the Internet it full of said lists).
1.
The world’s great travelers are the…French. Perhaps it’s the 26 hour work week and the mandatory retirement at 42, but the French were everywhere we went. The Dutch travel a lot too, but they seem to focus on the former colonies. On the other hand the French are ubiquitous. Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, India; sometimes I thought they were simply following us around.
I was shocked by how few Canadians, Aussies and Americans we saw. There’s a massive gap between Southeast Asia and Turkey where, with the exception of the Golden Triangle in India (Delhi, Agra and Jaipur), you don’t hear much natively spoken English.
The other interesting trend is the rise of the Chinese tourist. They travel in packs and seem like teenagers who are aware that they’re getting stronger but aren’t quite confident with their new muscles. Hordes of them are descending on places that, like Ha Long Bay, seem curiously reminiscent of China.
In fact, their travel reminds me of Canadians. For most Canadians, their first trip is to America. It’s a chance to get a taste of a foreign country and see what “foreigners” are like yet not give up the familiarity and safety blanket of home (heck, they look like you). Yet we all go abroad eventually; expect to see many chinese tourists near you soon.
2.
Everyone loves to compare countries. It’s natural; one of the reasons we travel is to see how things are in different countries (unless you are doing the Canada -> Mexico/Cuba booze run; there’s little anthropology involved there).
The standard way economists compare countries is to use GDP or GNI per capita, adjusted for purchasing power. Said another way, take the value of everything made and traded in a country, divide it by the population and adjust for how expensive things are in different countries.
This sounds great, but having seen it in action, I think it’s one of the silliest metrics out there.
Consider the following:
You’re looking at gross national income per capital, ppp adjusted for India, Uzbekistan and Laos. India is the leader here with a value of $3,260. Uzbekistan is about 10% lower at $2,890 and Laos is the laggard at $2,210.
Based on this you might think that India is more developed than both of these countries and a better place to live. But the reality is a little more nuanced.
When you fly into Tashkent you might mistake yourself for being in a lightly populated European capital; leafy boulevards and cafes abound. You would never make this mistake flying into Mumbai or Delhi (or, god help you, Calcutta). Similarly, Laos is, on average, poorer than India but it’s low population means that you will never be accosted by 5 year old children gently tapping on your car’s window and gesturing to their mouths for food.
So if we can’t compare countries’ development based on per capita income, how might we compare them? Here are a bunch of signs that I think could be combined into some sort of development index to figure out how far along a country is:
Can you get Diet Coke? In the smaller towns?
How many households have washers and dryers?
Are there any garbage cans in public places? If there’s one, is it ceremonial or are there enough and are they frequently emptied?
Are there convenience stores that are not attached to gas stations? How sophisticated are they? Are items just arrayed on the shelves or is there some sort of science behind how they’re arranged? How frequently does the stock turn over?
What is the ratio in the cost of a liter of oil vs. a liter of bottled water?
Are people allowed to park on the sidewalks or is there zero tolerance for this?
Are there wild dogs and cats in the city?
Is there a modern art gallery in the capital city? Do people actually go there?
Can you place an outbound call from your hotel room?
Do stores have price stickers on their goods or are you negotiating every single price?
So how do select countries compare?
Japan is the clear winner in the convenience store category, followed by Hong Kong – with Laos and Vietnam getting into the game. Germany, India and Uzbekistan aren’t doing too well.
Wild dogs pop up in strange places. Istanbul is a giant squat for feral beasts and new breeds of mutt are being created daily. India gives it a run for its money.
Istanbul also has a great and popular modern art gallery; most of Uzbekistan can’t imagine one (modern art is an interesting proxy for political freedom and drive for modernity).
In Japan it’s going to cost you a lot more than gas for a liter of gas. In Germany it’s actually cheaper – thought barely – due to the ubiquity of bottle shops (people buy bulk). In India water is cheap and gas is very expensive.
Not one of these indicators will predict the level of development of any country, but put them together and you get an interesting perspective on how different places are doing.
3.
The seatbelt is universally hated by the populations of all nations. Taxi drivers around the world have rejected it.
Conversely, irrespective of whatever country you’re in, if a car you’ve never seen flashes their high beams at you, you should assume there’s a cop right around the corner.
4.
I like using travel to explore the banal. All countries face the same set of basic challenges: feed a large mass of people, protect them from famine/war/invaders/disease/etc. and then try and raise their standard of living.
I’m particularly interested in what countries do once they’ve satisfied those first two and can start to focus on the third. Because at that point, everyone starts to encounter the same set of banal problems, but lots of countries come up with different solutions.
Consider, for instance, the pressing need to open canned goods. I’m sure that every reader of this blog (all six of you) have, at one point or another in your life, used a can opener. Since many of you are Canadian, the process probably went like this:
a) Pickup can opener
b) Open jaws
c) Place one side of jaw on upper lid of can. Place other jaw underneath lid
d) Close jaws
e) Rotate large bar on side can opener while squeezing jaws shut
f) Watch in awe as your can of Alphagetti opens and shares the wonder of the latin script with you.
Simple right? You’ve done it hundreds of times, so you’re pretty confident you can open a can.
Well, I thought so too, until I tried to open a can in Germany.
Here’s how one opens a can in Germany:
The can opener immediately confused me as there were no jaws. Just two little wheels staring at me. Watching. Judging.
Like a cave man trying to decipher a telephone, I groped at the tool, tossing it gently from hand to hand, sensing its weight and hoping it would yield a clue. After a few minutes, a breakthrough: when I depressed a plastic button in the handle, a handle shot out the side. This must be the right path.
In the third photo above you can see what I tried to do next: I tried to use the German can opener with the North American technique. I thought the handle and the main body were analogues to the jaws on a normal can opener and I had to use them to vertically grip the can’s lid. Every time I closed the jaw, the can opener would shoot sideways and clatter to the floor.
Much cursing ensued.
Hunger stopped me from learning anything and instead I assumed that there was some “trick” and if I could just get the angle right the damn lid would come off.
After five minutes of this I realized that this wasn’t working. Male pride would not allow me to admit defeat and I considered getting out a knife and simply hacking away at the top of the can. (Wounded male pride must be responsible for most household accidents and visits to emergency wards)
But then I had a thought. What if the can opener didn’t work up and down, but rather sideways. It was an Archimedes-like moment of inspiration but instead of yelling “Eureuka” I simply muttered the brand of the canned soup under my breath.
I gently slid one of the rollers on the inside lid of the can and the other on the outside. I depressed the previously inscrutable handle and there was a satisfying lock as the teeth gripped the edge of the can. The can opener stuck out horizontally, sneering at gravity. Solid. German.
And then I turned. With gratifying effort, the top of the can gave way. But I wasn’t cutting off the lid, I was cutting off the top of the can.
And that’s just how they roll in Germany. I’m sure that every German over the age of three knows how to open a can. And now I do too.
I’ve kept the can opener to remind me of just how little I know.
Another banal area that I am now intimately familiar with is laundry. I’ve had the opportunity to be on the receiving end of how almost half the world’s citizens wash their clothes. You laugh, but washing your clothes when traveling – and getting back the same clothes you started with – is a decidedly non-trivial experience.
The only place I could find a self-serve laundromat was Tokyo. Interestingly, it was entirely self-service. No one worked there and it was just trusted that everyone would take care of the place: not trash the machines, take their laundry out in a timely manner, etc.
Whenever we dropped out laundry off in Germany it was handled with Prussian efficiency. Every single article had a sticker with our order number written on it:
Contrast this with India where, at Mt. Abu’s Fawlty Towers-esque Lake Palace, they actually wrote “LP” in indelible marker on every article of clothing we dropped off:
Unfortunately for Wen, they actually wrote “LP” on the front of the neck of many of her t-shirts so she had an awkward little tattoo for a few weeks of our trip.
Sometimes you come across a problem that a country has solved and you didn’t even know you had. One of the ones I noticed was the two sets of alarms on German light rail cars. You can tell the driver how long the door has to stay open when requesting a stop: if you’re traveling with a child you’ll probably need a bit more time to get out of the car:
5.
One of the unintended consequences of globalization is that whether you are in Fort Kochi (India), Hanoi or Istanbul, someone is going to try and sell you a hand-powered mini-sewing machine or a glowing toy that fires a spinning parachutist into the sky.
Somewhere in China is a factory that makes both and the workers there have absolutely no idea what they have set loose in the world.
In other news, I’d love to know the distribution system that makes sure that this useless stuff gets delivered to all the varied corners of the Earth.
6.
When Wen and I go to a town, we try and get at least a little bit off the beaten path. I want to see the popular sites, but I also want to get a sense of how the locals live (In no part because so many of the the locals in many of the countries we visited want what I have – I don’t begrudge them that as I was born very lucky in a great country – and I want to get a sense of where they’re at in getting it).
This lead us to some interesting places. A walk through Tokyo’s, Istanbul’s and Hanoi’s back streets. Aimless wandering in Kowloon. Grocery shopping in Semporna (Borneo) and Udaipur amongst other places.
I always thought Wen and I were a little weird for this, but then I found out someone who is, in part, making a career of it – and came up with the great term “Geopolitical travel.” Here’s a snippet from a great article where he describes it:
There is another part of geopolitical travel that is perhaps the most valuable: walking the streets of a city. Geopolitics affect every level of society, shaping life and culture. Walking the streets, if you know what to look for, can tell you a great deal. Don’t go to where the monuments and museums are, and don’t go to where the wealthy live. They are the least interesting and the most globally homogenized. They are personally cushioned against the world. The poor and middle class are not. If a Montblanc store is next to a Gucci shop, you are in the wrong place.
Go to the places where the people you will never hear of live. Find a school and see the children leave at the end of the day. You want the schools where there is pushing and shoving and where older brothers come to walk their sisters home. You are now where you should be. Look at their shoes. Are they old or new? Are they local or from the global market? Are they careful with them as if they were precious or casual with them as they kick a ball around? Watch children play after school and you can feel the mood and tempo of a neighborhood.
Find a food store. Look at the food being offered, particularly fruits and vegetables. Are they fresh-looking? What is the selection? Look at the price and calculate it against what you know about earnings. Then watch a woman (yes, it is usually a woman) shopping for groceries. Does she avoid the higher priced items and buy the cheapest? Does she stop to look at the price, returning a can or box after looking, or does she simply place it in her basket or cart without looking at the price? When she pays for the food, is she carefully reaching into an envelope in her pocketbook where she stores her money, or does she casually pull out some bills? Watch five women shopping for food in the late afternoon and you will know how things are there.
Go past the apartments people live in. Smell them. The unhealthy odor of decay or sewage tells you about what they must endure in their lives. Are there banks in the neighborhood? If not, there isn’t enough business there to build one. The people are living paycheck to paycheck. In the cafes where men meet, are they older men, retired? Or are they young men? Are the cafes crowded with men in their forties drinking tea or coffee, going nowhere? Are they laughing and talking or sitting quietly as if they have nothing left to say? Official figures on unemployment can be off a number of ways. But when large numbers of 40-year-old men have nothing to do, then the black economy — the one that pays no taxes and isn’t counted by the government but is always there and important — isn’t pulling the train. Are the police working in pairs or alone? What kind of weapons do they carry? Are they everywhere, nowhere or have just the right presence? There are endless things you can learn if you watch.
The next time you travel I highly recommend doing so geopolitically – even if it’s just the city down the road.
7.
Here are a couple of political thoughts I’ve had while traveling; my worldview is shifting:
Corruption is the world’s biggest problem. A corrupt society can never truly be free and will never have a standard of living that, on average, matches those of uncorrupt societies. The only way to stop corruption is through free elections and an accountable judiciary. Influences: Uzbekistan and India.
I’m currently wondering if democracy works at scale. I believe in democracy and think it’s the only form of government that will really work, but after spending time in America and India, I’m not yet sure we have the institutions to make it work at scale.
India’s the largest democracy by population but its politics are captured by caste; you don’t cast your vote – you vote your caste and then get a job from them
America, the world’s largest democracy by economic might, is currently experiencing regulatory capture where special interests seem to dictate what occurs. Direct democracy in California has been a disaster
Maybe when a country hits a certain size it simply needs a new set of democratic institutions (broader executive powers with supermajority recall? Special track for long-term, expensive projects? I don’t know)?
The emergent challenge of the 21st century is not “East” vs. “West” but “Modernity” vs. “Western Values”
“East” vs. “West” doesn’t work because Japan is definitely not Western but embodies many of the notions of the West; Turkey is in a similar but different boat
Instead, in many countries its a question of “can I give my people modern technology without freedom?” China is at the forefront of this, trying to use technology to secure the Politburo’s supremacy all the while soothing its populace at the teat of washing machines and online video games. Don’t think that countless countries in Southeast and Central Asia aren’t closely monitoring this experiment. (Any time a country explains that “social stability” is a prime goal, they’re going to be interested in this experiment)
8.
There are all sorts of indexes out there that tell you how free a country you’re visiting is. Most of the time, it’s hard to tell exactly how “free” a place is (after all, if it’s not free, the locals probably aren’t hunting down tourists to tell them so-although in Uzbekistan they sort of did). Here are a couple of things I’ve noticed are half-decent indicators of how liberal a place is.
Do you need a visa to get in the country as a tourist? Do you need an invitation to get said visa?
Can you get money out of an ATM at the foremost international airport?
Do your bags get x-rayed after you’ve landed but before you’ve entered the country? (Ostentatiously to protect the locals from drugs and contraband)
9.
One final thought. I love traveling and seeing what the social contract is like in different countries. The goods you can buy, the services offered, the quality of the dwellings, the manifestation of the state on the street via cops and other civil servants, how people treat each other: it’s all a signal of a society’s social contract between citizens.
Traveling is most fun when you start to understand how a country’s social contract is different from yours – and that maybe yours isn’t the best. We had the best chance to observe this in Germany as we spent a lot of time there and it was the least foreign of all the countries we visited and thus the easiest to compare with what we know.
Some of the interesting things we noticed: a thriving publishing industry and airport coffee in glass cups.
In North America, the physical publishing is being killed by the online world and this is taken as inexorable; in Berlin there are about a dozen daily newspapers and countless magazines vying for your attention.
In North America, a cup of coffee at the airport is going to come in a disposable mug; in Berlin it came in a glass cup. Moreover, you could take it away from the coffee bar and over to your seat in the waiting room. It was assumed you would bring it back – because why wouldn’t you? This movie would end badly in Canada or America.
—
So there you have it, the results of almost six months of travel summed up in a blog post. It was an awesome trip and hopefully a trip in a lifetime, not the trip of a lifetime. I’m looking forward to a bit of normalcy back in Canada, but one day Wen and I will have to get back on the road!
Wen and I have been living here for a month now and we’re absolutely loving it. I thought I’d try and explain why, so here – in no particular order – are some of the reason why this is such an incredible city.
1. The Entire City is a Canvas
I’ve never been to a city with as much street art as Berlin. There are a lot of crummy tags and the like, but there are also untold works of art hidden across the city.
Sometimes the scale is tiny; a painting hidden at the margin of your field of view:
Other times it’s a massive blow-up that can practically be seen from space:
If you take the U1 between Kottbusser Tor and Goerlitzer Bahnhof, this spaceman appears to float on the wall to your north:
In between are countless images waiting to be found:
One of my personal favourites is this samurai warrior who protects the park near our apartment:
The pure essence of this spirit probably best caught in the Kunsthaus Tacheles, a former department store in East Germany that was squatted in by artists in 1990 who have turned it into a series of spray-painted galleries. Walking around it is a celebration of the countercultural energy that built this city (since it was run by the Allies, not the German government, anyone who didn’t want to serve in the German army fled to Berlin where they could keep citizenship but not be forced to do armed service):
But it’s not just illegal art and grafitti. There are plenty of legitimate random works of art around the town too.
Here Wendy and Aine show off just how big Germans are:
I was in the subway and walked up to this kiosk to buy a magazine:
Then I realized that it’s actually a photo of the other side of the kiosk, where the actual shop is:
There is a joy in finding unexpected art around your town.
2. People are Taking Small Steps to Save the Environment
It’s almost a cliche how North Americans are told “if we all just did a couple of small things we could make amazing changes to the environment”. But here in Berlin (and, really, all of Germany), people have actually done it.
People separate their garbage into wet, dry, paper, three different types of glass, metal containers and packaging. There are EUR 0.25 deposits on almost every bottle – and they can be returned everywhere. People bike everywhere – which is easy as there are bike lanes all over the place and posted bike routes. When you go in the hallway outside your apartment it’s unheated and the light is off by default. The street lighting is also running at half power – but the place is so safe that you don’t feel awkward about it.
There are also a couple of bigger things that are being tried. For instance, you can get hydrogen (Wasserstoff) at some of the gas stations:
3. This is a City Aware of, but not Incapacitated, by its History
The 20th century was incredibly destructive for Berlin. The insane, racist, total war of the Nazis meant that it was leveled. This was followed by fifty years of partition at the hands of the Soviets. The full insanity of this is on display at the Topography of Terror where the Wall happened to run through the old headquarters of the SS:
Some cities get stuck on their past and can’t move on (Rome – I’m looking at you). Some try to build for the future but don’t really mean it (Paris, where anything modern has been relegated to La Defense or outside the downtown). It’s rare to find a city that can acknowledge it’s past but build for the present and the future. London does it well and New York isn’t too far behind.
Berlin has done a great job of it – and it’s even more impressive because the history here is frankly so awful. All around town are tasteful reminders of the past:
Any building from the WW II era is a patchwork of replacement stones to cover up wartime damage:
Similarly, the Soviets dotted the city with war memorials to their fallen:
Berliners could have been forgiven for turning their city into a mausoleum for the 20th century, but instead they’ve simply created a new architectural style that builds off the positive aspects of what they had to offer. Incredible modern architecture abounds and is juxtaposed against older buildings:
Interestingly, many of these buildings are schools. The ones below are a cafeteria at a school and a kindergarden respectively:
It’ll be interesting to see if anyone studies whether modern architecture alters the perspective of children.
4. The Light
Berlin is at roughly 50 degrees north. That means that at this time of year the sun struggles to get above the horizon and is so exhausted when it gets there that it doesn’t stick around too long. It throws weak light and long shadows that paint the city is a particularly beautiful hue.
5. The Bread. And the Sausage
Bread justifies people doing strange things. The New Yorker‘s Adam Gopnik moved from Paris to New York because of a pretzel croissant. Having been to the City Bakery (home to said delectable croissant), I can safely say that if Gopnik had been to Berlin and visited any bakery, he’d now be a Berliner.
The pretzel croissant abounds, as do delicious ham and cheese or marizpan or chocolate versions. I am gorging on kaselaugenstange (a finger of pretzel bread with baked cheese on top). Every morning it’s toast from a loaf containing pumpkin and 12 other seeds; sometimes it’s rye from a curiously cylindrical loaf:
There are sweet-smelling bakeries everywhere; sometimes next to one another. Numerous have been strategically placed in subways so that between trains you can get your wheat/rye/oat/gluten fix.
I am salivating as I write this.
But I must continue as we haven’t even begun talking about the sausage yet.
You know a country is serious about its meat in a tube when they’ve created a self-contained, portable sausage cooker:
The bratwurst in this town is incredible, and if it wasn’t for all the bread, I’d probably just eat sausage. In fact, the Bavarian breakfast – two sausages and a pretzel – is a good equilibrium.
The only thing more common than the bakeries are the sausage sellers. While a good bakery is a beautiful bakery, there is an inverse correlation for your friendly sausage vendor. This charmless currywurst (cut sausage with ketchup and curry power) vendor in the middle of nowhere near the Gesundbrunnen subway stop serves such great sausage that I’d go back in an instant:
6. Berliner’s Have a Great Sense of Humour
Those of you who have been to Germany are probably saying ‘Ha, ha – I get it Lindsay; you’re being ironic because everyone knows that German’s have no sense of humour.” But I’m going to suggest that this is not the case and that some Germans (notably Berliners) actually have a great sense of humour.
Here’s a random example of it.
Germany has a popular, but trashy, tabloid called Das Bild. It’s like the New York Post with bare breasts. They make their money with outrageous headlines and frequently the story gets ahead of the truth.
Bild is part of the Axel Springer Verlag and headquartered in their massive skyscraper that used to sit right on the Berlin Wall. Axel was a conservative who hated the communists and he wanted his building to reflect the freedom of the West and be a beacon to those in the East; his papers reflected his conservative ideals.
Two blocks away, in a squat six-storey building, is the Tagezeitung (taz). It’s a left-leaning paper inspired by the likes of Rudi Dutschke (a 60′s liberal who fought against Springer’s views; he ended up narrowly surviving an assassination attempt). They love to try and stir the pot.
First, they successfully petitioned to have their street – Kochstrasse – renamed Rudi Dutschke Strasse – for three blocks: from them just to the Springer building.
Then in 2002 they wrote an article about the alleged penile enhancement surgery of the Bild’s publisher. A suit immediately followed and a court injunction prevented the article from being published. This was followed by an attempt to sue for EUR 30,000 in damages.
But it was rejected by the courts who said that the publisher (Kai Diekmann) “consciously seeks economic advantage from the violation of others’ privacy” and hence “is less severely burdened by the violation of his own privacy. After all, he has knowingly and willingly gone into the business of violating people’s privacy.”
To celebrate this ruling, the taz commissioned a piece of work by artist Peter Lenk and slapped it up on the side of their building (where it’s visible from the Springer building). What is it? Nothing other than a four storey sculpture of, amongst other things, the publisher and his pneumatically enhanced “cobra penis”.
See, Germans do have a sense of humour.
7. Berlin is Home to the Happiest Place on Earth
I could go on, but let me close with one more thing. I have a weakness for chocolate. Particularly Ritter Sport and their nerdy, only-in-Germany slogan of Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut. (I don’t think a translation is really needed)
So imagine my sheer joy when I stumbled upon the Ritter Sport store. It’s kind of like finding out like there really is a Willy Wonka chocolate factory.
You go inside and they’ll make you your own Ritter Sport bar with pretty much anything you want. They’ve got special flavours that you can’t get anywhere else. There are oversized bars for sale and a cafe.
It’s all Ritter Sport all the time and I love it (and I’m not the only one):
They’ve even got a Ritter Sport advent calendar, so now my Christmas will officially be the best ever:
Berlin. As many reasons to love it as flavours at the Ritter Sport wonderland.
Finally saw EyesWideShut only 12+ years after it's release. My confusion over its meaning led me to this awesome screed http://t.co/xF0e9u0r42 years ago
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