Quietly enjoying Berlin...
Petra and I have been in Berlin for two weeks now, and this is the first time I've managed the energy to post. We've been leading an extravagantly lazy lifestyle, a welcome respite from our last hectic week in Hong Kong.
We flew to London, met a Mut Mee friend for breakfast, then headed off to find some sort of transportation to Berlin. Flights were way to expensive, and the trains didn't seem to run on a Sunday. There was a 19 hour bus, but it would be a lot cheaper if we spent a night in London and took it the next day. We retired for lunch with said Mut Mee friend and another former Mut Mee-er in order to evaluate our options. At the end of the afternoon, Petra decided she really wanted to get home and so we took the bus that day.
Didn't get a lot of time on my first trip to Great Britain, but we did have a spectacular view of Big Ben and Parliament as we crossed the Thames in ther bus. Other than that, our time was mainly spent looking for transport -- although I did manage to get some fish and chips (without any vinegar! don't these Brits know how to serve their own dish?!?) and get a hand-pulled pint or two. I also got to here one of our Mut Mee friends, a native Brit, say "Blimey" in his own natural habitat. Kind of cool.
The bus actually got on a train for our trip through the Chunnel, which was a first for me. The most notable thing from the rest of the bus is that the German landscape is just covered with wind turbines. The landscape consists of a surprising number of farms, all with huge wind turbines sprouting up out of them. It's interesting to see that at least one European country (and I would assume other large portions of the continent) is a hell of a lot more serious about energy policy than almost anyone in America is. For years I've been interested in the realities of wind energy, since living in New York City where I think a real move toward wind energy could really help fill in the gaps of the city's energy needs. It's interesting being someplace that is really trying to put that technology to use.
I was somewhat happy to see that we had flown out of Hong Kong instead of having probably gotten caught up in some of the flooding in south-east China earlier this month -- areas where we had planned to probably still be traveling. We did make it back to Berlin in time for a state of emergency to be declared here due to severe storms and flooding, but the apartment we're staying in is on the fourth floor of the building, so no worries there. Fortunately, we also managed to get to continental Europe before apparently all of England got washed away as well -- one city reported their entire average June rainfall coming down in less than one day. If you're wondering whether it is a coincidence that the last three countries I've spent more than eight hours in have all been absolutely inundated in the last month, I would just like to note that Pakistan and Georgia are also having massive flooding, and those are countries I haven't even been to. So the thought of me being some kind of apocalyptic figure propelled onward by the literal flood of destiny...well, they're probably a little overblown.
The only thing I have had to suffer with is the Worst Internet Service Contract Ever(tm), and the exquisite annoyance of trying to use a German keyboard. It's not a lot difference, but the Z and Y are in opposite places (which doesn't sound like much of a change, but you'd be surprised how often you actually do use those keys), and the punctuation is way the hell all over the place. So you really have to be paying attention, because it's really easy to just reach for the normal apostraphe and wind up with a "ö" instead.
We flew to London, met a Mut Mee friend for breakfast, then headed off to find some sort of transportation to Berlin. Flights were way to expensive, and the trains didn't seem to run on a Sunday. There was a 19 hour bus, but it would be a lot cheaper if we spent a night in London and took it the next day. We retired for lunch with said Mut Mee friend and another former Mut Mee-er in order to evaluate our options. At the end of the afternoon, Petra decided she really wanted to get home and so we took the bus that day.
Didn't get a lot of time on my first trip to Great Britain, but we did have a spectacular view of Big Ben and Parliament as we crossed the Thames in ther bus. Other than that, our time was mainly spent looking for transport -- although I did manage to get some fish and chips (without any vinegar! don't these Brits know how to serve their own dish?!?) and get a hand-pulled pint or two. I also got to here one of our Mut Mee friends, a native Brit, say "Blimey" in his own natural habitat. Kind of cool.
The bus actually got on a train for our trip through the Chunnel, which was a first for me. The most notable thing from the rest of the bus is that the German landscape is just covered with wind turbines. The landscape consists of a surprising number of farms, all with huge wind turbines sprouting up out of them. It's interesting to see that at least one European country (and I would assume other large portions of the continent) is a hell of a lot more serious about energy policy than almost anyone in America is. For years I've been interested in the realities of wind energy, since living in New York City where I think a real move toward wind energy could really help fill in the gaps of the city's energy needs. It's interesting being someplace that is really trying to put that technology to use.
I was somewhat happy to see that we had flown out of Hong Kong instead of having probably gotten caught up in some of the flooding in south-east China earlier this month -- areas where we had planned to probably still be traveling. We did make it back to Berlin in time for a state of emergency to be declared here due to severe storms and flooding, but the apartment we're staying in is on the fourth floor of the building, so no worries there. Fortunately, we also managed to get to continental Europe before apparently all of England got washed away as well -- one city reported their entire average June rainfall coming down in less than one day. If you're wondering whether it is a coincidence that the last three countries I've spent more than eight hours in have all been absolutely inundated in the last month, I would just like to note that Pakistan and Georgia are also having massive flooding, and those are countries I haven't even been to. So the thought of me being some kind of apocalyptic figure propelled onward by the literal flood of destiny...well, they're probably a little overblown.
The only thing I have had to suffer with is the Worst Internet Service Contract Ever(tm), and the exquisite annoyance of trying to use a German keyboard. It's not a lot difference, but the Z and Y are in opposite places (which doesn't sound like much of a change, but you'd be surprised how often you actually do use those keys), and the punctuation is way the hell all over the place. So you really have to be paying attention, because it's really easy to just reach for the normal apostraphe and wind up with a "ö" instead.