December 9, 2010

Between Stadelhofen and the lake you find the opera. The lakeside was very beautiful today with the snow lying on the Uetliberg. I walked along the lake and then along the Limmat and I was surprised to see that someone seems to have been playing paintgun around the old buildings along the river as you can see on the last picture.

Julien Assange is really the man of the month, in charge of Wikileaks he is the man that the US authorities want to charge for high treason and the Swedish authorities want for rape charges. The latest publishing from Wikileaks was a large number classified documents on the communication between the US and their embassies. I don't really know what I think about leaking classified information but there is at least one very positive aspect of it. For a long time now we have been going in a direction of a surveillance society where big brother is constantly watching us. The authorities can demand information about our whereabouts on the web and telephone communications. Privacy seems to be a notion of the past but at least the Wikileaks shows that this is not only a one way thing, the authorities are watching us but we, the public, are also keeping an eye on them. They can't expect to get away with any kind of behavior which will probably in the long run force them to well consider their actions and keep them within moral and legal frames.

December 1, 2010

Winter has come! There is plenty of snow on the Hönggerberg and on the Bahnhofstrasse the Christmas shopping has kicked off. The have change the lightening this year as the old one was so profoundly hated by everybody.

The Swiss once again got through a xenophobic vote although I am not quite sure it was really out of xenophobia that they voted the way they did. The vote was whether or not to deport all criminal foreigners. Listening only to the slogan I can understand that people voted for the suggestion, after all, who wants to have criminals of any nationality? It is only once you looked closer in to what the proposition really was about that you almost had to be against it. The proposition was that you will get automatically deported without having any kind of individual hearing about your personal circumstances meaning that you can be born in Switzerland, lived your whole life here and then be deported to a country where you have never set your foot. True to the Swiss mentality tax fraud is of course not one of the crimes that would lead to deportation.

I think that this vote is mostly about that we are all longing back to a society where the crime rates are so low that we could leave our door open and were never afraid to walk home alone at night. In nostalgia we are blaming what is the biggest difference between now and then, namely the amount of foreigners. It was quite clear in the aftermaths that the cantons most favorable to the proposition were cantons with the lowest amount of foreigners and probably the lowest crime rates as well. I am therefore convinced that this is not about disliking foreigners, it is about being afraid of them, or rather afraid of the unknown.

Another less philosophical reason could simply be that people are victims of catchy slogans and to lazy to read what the vote is really about.

November 17, 2010

A walk in Niederdorf, one of the old parts of Zurich.

Just came back from two weeks in Sweden where the traditionally biggest party, the Social Democrats, is facing a major crisis. They had a disastrous result in the latest election and now the leader, Mona Sahlin, has resigned. This is not the first time she is resigning. She did it once many years ago from a position as a minister in the government because she had bought Toblerone (swiss chocolate) and diapers with the credit card of the ministry. An affair that might seem ridiculous for the more southern Europeans that are used to more political extravaganza but that really pissed of the Swedish working class.

Anyway, what is so funny about the situation in Sweden at the moment is that there is this huge pool of people that are terribly loyal to Social Democrats that don't know what to think any more. They actually mean what they are saying: "we don't know what to think" because the party hasn't decided on their politics and therefore haven't informed the "grassroots"about what opinions they should have. One would expect that you belong to a political party because you share their ideals and visions but in Sweden people are so loyal that they stick around until the leaders of the party have decided on a new policy. I find that rather hilarious.

October 27, 2010

A fantastic autumn day at Hönggerberg. In and around the Friedhof Hönggerberg there are really some extraordinary views. It is very peaceful but a bit awkward to wander around in graveyards, especially when you walk in to a group of people about to bury one of their loved ones. I am not a big fan of the church and I am not sure but I might not even be a member any more but whenever it comes to funerals they are doing a great job. I read a couple of years ago that now when people are not believers anymore they go around spreading their ashes a bit everywhere and that in some places in Switzerland, like Zermatt, they start becoming really annoyed with all Germans going there to spread the ashes of their dead. I think it is more that they annoyed with Germans in general because ashes are biodegradable and unless you believe in ghosts I don't see why they should create any trouble.

In France they are still striking as that is what they do best. It is quite difficult to sympathize with the French movement that are against lifting the retirement age from 60 to 62 when all countries I have ever lived in have a retirement age of 65. The poor frenchies might also loose their 35 hour work week which must be really hard when all their neighboring countries are working 40 hours a week. I am not claiming that there are not problems in France and their economy but if they worked a bit more and went on strike a bit less I am sure that many problems would solve themselves. The most ridiculous thing is when the Lyceens (people in high school) are also manifesting as if the "old people" are taking their jobs. It is so obvious that they are just happy to skip classes and hardly know what they are protesting against. No wonder they will not get any jobs when they graduate if they spend all their time demonstrating in the streets instead of learning something useful. In the end they can't all become union leaders. I know I sound terribly conservative but sometimes I just can't grasp what planet these French people are living on.

In Switzerland the extreme right party SVP has a new slogan "Swiss votes SVP" which is a rather silly slogan as only Swiss people have the right to vote. I guess they expect 100% of the votes in the next election.

October 20, 2010

A really nice walk is to go from the ETH, passing the University and then down to the Kunsthaus where there is currently a great Picasso retrospective from his early years until 1932. It is more or less the same exhibition that Picasso himself set up in Zürich more than 70 years ago. If you are interested in art there is a well done audio guiding that explains all his different phases. If you are not interested in art it is still very beautiful to walk around there. Without any difficult interpretations Picasso simply made fantastic paintings and you don't need to have specific knowledge or passion for art to enjoy that.

October 13, 2010

Bahnhof Enge and around in kreis 2. This is a really beautiful part of the city that I visit much too rarely.

This week is indeed the week of the miners. The 33 miners trapped in a mine in Chile all got rescued and the longest tunnel in the world, the basis tunnel of the Gothard pass here in Switzerland, 57 km long, was finished. Both exploits were huge successes, the miners in Chile was saved 2 months ahead of schedule and the two tubes of the Gothard tunnel met at only 8 cm divergence. I hope that the aftermath of the events will be as positive as the feelings this week. When your trapped in a black hole for almost three month I guess a lot of things will happen in your head, apparently one guy decided to get married but I wonder how many of the guys decided to get a divorce or make another radical change in their lives. You can do an awful lot of thinking in three months. I am also curious to see how many of them that will stay in the mining industry.

With all the glory being cast on the miners this week I wonder if this will be the new dream job for young boys.

September 28, 2010

A walk on the Züriberg, where you can be pretty sure that people have more money than you do. It is not that they necessarily earn more money than you do. Take the Züri king of brats, Carl Hirschman, that everybody loves to hate who has zero declared income but still lived permanently in a suite in Hotel Dolder (see photo above) until he got thrown out for too much partying. On Züriberg you also find the headquarter of FIFA.

In the swiss parliament they discussed yesterday whether music should have the same importance in school as sports. The debate was mainly focused about what music bring to individuals but music in school, free for all, can actually turn out to be a rather good business. In Sweden we always had free music classes for everybody who wished to learn an instrument or to form a group. Now Sweden is the third largest music exporter in the world with hundreds of millions of benefice, only exceeded by the US and UK.

On Sunday the World War 1 will officially end and be put into history as Germany will do the last payment of the reparation determined in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. It will be about 94 million dollars and one can only imagine how a German taxpayer must feel paying this 92-year old dept in these hard times of financial crisis.