November 25, 2009

The trees have lost their leaves in Kreis 10. Frauenmünster and Grossmünster in Kreis 1 are lightening up the dark and long nights in November together with the newly installed Christmas decorations.

In Switzerland the market of mobile telephony is heavily dominated by Swisscom. Their huge dominance is related to the extremely slow process in Switzerland of liberalizing the telecom market. This gave Swisscom plenty of time to build up their networks in peace and quiet. The late incoming alternatives to Swisscom have had an impossible task to compete against them. Today, the two main competitors, Sunrise and Orange, have announced that they will fuse to keep up. Having only two companies on the market will most likely not benefit the customers so we will probably continue being one of the most expensive countries in this sector as well for quite some time.

Roman Polanski, who was arrested when he was entering Switzerland to collect a price in the Zürich film festival for a crime that he committed over 30 years ago, has now paid 4.5 millions Swiss francs to spend his time in his luxury chalet in Gstaad instead of in jail. It is indeed nice to be rich. What I think is a bit funny with the Polanski story is the attitude of the majority of the Swiss people. Last year they voted for making sexual crimes against minors punishable for longer than 15 years after the crime was committed. However, when it comes to a famous movie director he should be allowed to rape 13-year old girls when he's 40 without being bothered with it when he's 70. Taking Polanski into custody is considered as an embarrassment by the very same people who voted for changing the law. Again, it is nice to be rich and even nicer to be famous.

November 18, 2009

Gaswerk, Schlieren. Most people come here to climb overcrowded and overpriced artificial walls that have been constructed in the old Gaswerk. It is an old industrial area but with some unexpected sights, if you are in the neighborhood it is definitely worth a quick visit.

The swine flu has now had its first victim in Switzerland, a little baby boy that died on his way to the hospital. It is such a tragedy and the saddest thing is that it will most likely not be the last time in the months to come.

Sarah Palin has released her memoirs, Going Rogue - An American life. Most of us had sincerely hoped that we would never have to see her face again after the American elections but maybe we were wrong in wishing so. It might be scary to have the impersonation of the American conservationism and religious hypocrisy in reach of great power but as a book author safely stowed away in the far north she could very likely be a good laugh.

November 11, 2009

Affoltern, kreis 11. Affoltern is a part of Zürich in great expansion, new apartments for 5'000 people were built since 2006. Still parts of it has kept its charm.

The vaccinations have now started for the risk groups in Switzerland. Last week I was wondering why it took such a long time for the vaccinations to start. Now certain people are claiming that it is because Switzerland are not in the European Union.

For the very same reason Switzerland was not officially invited to the most fascinating event this week, the celebration of the fall of the Berlin wall 20 years ago on the 9'th of November. I was only 13 years old when it happened but it had a major impact of my vision of the world. Before the wall fell the world was black and white, it was good against evil with no shades of gray. In the east, behind the iron curtain, the poor people where living in gray concrete blocks suppressed by evil armies and it was continuously raining and misty. In the west the good, happy peopled lived and the sun was shining. In Sweden we were terrified of the Russian submarines that were said to be intruding our archipelago. Since then the vision of the world has become more complex, it is no longer so obvious who is good and who is bad and many of the Russian submarines in the archipelago turned out to be minks.

November 4, 2009

Zürich airport, Kloten. The airport opened in 1953 and is the largest airport in Switzerland and hub to Swiss International Airlines. Swiss, that rose from the ashes of Swissair, Switzerlands national airline, that collapsed in 2001. The grounding of Swissair was a huge chock to the Swiss people that for the first time made them realise that the Swiss economy wasn't as intouchable as they had always thought. In 2008, 22 million passengers passed the airport of Zürich. This is in average 60500 passengers per day (read more).

The Treaty of Lisbon has now been signed and it looks as if we will get a president in Europe. Maybe Kissinger´s old problem will finally be solved and Europe will get one phone number? It is still very hard to imagine Europe speaking with one voice but if Switzerland would join maybe Khadhafi would not play around with Merz as a mean older brother and finally liberate the hostages in Libya.

The vaccinations against the swineflu are now taking place all over Europe but for some strange reason Switzerland are weeks behind the other countries. Do we know something about the vaccine that the others don´t? Do we somehow consider the vaccination in the other countries as additional clinical studies? Should we be comforted about this or worried that the flu will get us before we´re protected? In Sweden a hockey team managed to be considered as a risk group and got the flu vaccine before everybody else, now they win the games in the national series as the other teams are short of players due to the flu.