August 25, 2010

Josefwiese with a nice café in the park and a picture from the Hardbrücke station.

A large part of the Americans are all worked up about a new Mosque that will be built close to Ground Zero in New York. It is such a shame that they don't take this opportunity to show the Muslim world that they are supposed to be a country of tolerance and freedom of religion. You can question whether these people know if there is a difference between fundamentalists and moderates. They call Ground Zero a sacred place but it is only too sacred for a mosque but not too sacred for a strip club that is in the same block. As Obama is supporting the building of the mosque the Americans are taking it out on him and 1 out of 5 seriously believes that Obama is a Muslim. Scary that these 20% also have the right to vote.

In Chile 33 miners are trapped in a collapsed mine and their saving is estimated to take four months. I can't imagine what it must be like to be trapped underground like that for such a long time, four minutes would be too long for me. They can get supplies but the hole that they are drilling to get them out is too small for nine of them to get out unless they loose weight. That's what I call a motivation to diet!

August 18, 2010

Sihlquai (upper image), the place to go if you look for sex (and are willing to pay for it) or for a new passport (middle image). If you note the little sign in the lower left corner you see that there was indeed an entry for trolleys, you just had to walk around the entire block to get there. Due to the new biometric passports you are then kindly requested to make your 4 weeks old baby to hold his head still and straight and his eyes opened and fixed at the same spot for 5 seconds in order for the new, specialized camera to focus. It is always so nice to see how totally in touch authorities are with reality when they invent new regulations. Thanks to the lovely and patient people working at the passbüro we managed after only 14 attempts.

After that my baby and I had a well deserved coffee at Josefstrasse (lower image).

Yesterday the people in Switzerland collected 13 millions swiss francs to the floobding victims in Pakistan. It is a good thing but I always get a funny feeling of trying to buy away my bad conscience of not doing anything that really matters.

A couple of weeks ago Wikileaks published about 90'000 confidential reports concerning the Afghan war. The U.S. has condemned them as irresponsible whereas other thinks it is important things to reveal. What is a bit scary in the world at the moment is that nobody has any trust in any kind of authorities anymore. Today, we almost take for granted that we are being fooled and kept in the dark. I can really miss the trust I used to have when I was a child seeing the US as the heroes saving the world from all evil as when they helped Europe beat Hitler. I think that we have almost become too critical against them, especially in Afghanistan. It is not as if they went into a peaceful paradise with their tanks. Afghanistan has known nothing but war as long as people can remember and one additional reason to go to war against the Taliban, a part from the terrorist one, is for the women. Under the Taliban rule the conditions for the women are absolutely horrendous, they have absolutely no human value, no right to work, no right to health-care, not even to make sound with their shoes against the pavement when they walk on the street. In addition to that they can be stoned to death for the mere suspicion of having been seen with a man that is not a relative or their husband. It is awful what is happening to the afghan people in the war but I honestly don't believe it used to be much better.

August 11, 2010

Even though I have been too busy, or maybe too lazy, to write anything during the summer doesn't mean that I haven't been around enjoying Zürich in some of the endless ways that it has to offer in the summer.

Cooling down with a swim in the Limmat at Ober Letten.

Another swim in the Limmat at the charming Unter Letten.

A relaxing walk in the forest on Hönggerberg with a coffee at Grünwald.

Enjoying the view over Zürich from polyterasse in from of the ETH.

Just because I have been lazy this summer doesn't mean that everyone has been. Entire Switzerland seems to be a huge "baustelle".

The Prime Tower, still under construction but just passed the limit of becoming the highest building in Switzerland.

Switzerland has always been a rather liberal country when it comes to drugs and even though the consumption is not yet legal, report after report by experts in federal commissions keep on insisting that all drug consumption should be legal. Not to encourage the consumption but to better be able to fight against the dependencies. Although the experts seem to be united on the topic the public isn't, a couple of years ago there was a vote for the legalization of cannabis that was rejected. To the big disappointment of the cannabis grower Bernard Rappaz, who until very recently was in prison for drug dealing. To protest against his punishment and to favor the legalization of cannabis Rappaz went on a thirst strike this summer and the authorities got confronted with the choice of letting him die or to force feed him. In the end they went for the second option and Rappaz could serve the rest of his punishment at home with a personal guard. Is he a hero standing up for his beliefs or is he a junkie? People are of different opinions but most people are not so happy about using their tax money to pay for him being guarded at home. Anyway, Rappaz is now comfortably at home and can start thinking about on how to reorient his business towards pharmacies, to where he can sell his weed legally for medical purposes from 2011.

Pakistan is being washed away by rains and landslides and Russia is burning due to an extreme heat. Is this another effect of the global warming caused by humans? Probably. Will it make us change? Probably not. We are indeed very resistant to changing our habits by choice even though we are constantly forced to change for adapting to a changing world. According to the famous physicist Stephen Hawkings we have less than 200 years to spread into space to save the human race. Well, throughout the history of mankind we have always believed that we are doomed in one way or the other, through the wrath of God, through the atomic bombs, through the swine flu etc. We have always been very innovative in predicting ways to our extinction. We should definitely do our best to keep our planet clean but I think that there are more urgent reasons for doing so than fear of Armageddon, such as for instance the luxury of clean air and clean oceans.

July, 2010

The beginning of July has been incredibly hot, July 14 it was 37°C. In Zürich there are currently only two options to survive the heat. Either you go swimming in the lake or the river or you hide in an air conditioned public place. The two upper pictures are from Badi Mythenquai by the lake if you chose the first option and the last two pictures are at Sihlcity where yo can go for the second option, namely afternoon cinema. Sihlcity has a really big american style cinema palace where each toilet has its own little screen showing film trailers.

I'm not sure if it is the heat that has soften my brain so much that I couldn't make myself turn on the computer or if it is the World Cup in football (soccer) that anyway made it impossible for any real news to get through. For a person who is not the slightest interested in football it was easier just to shut down all external information and just worry about how to kill Spanish slugs (or killer snails as we call them in Sweden) and whether or not the dengue fever is really coming to Europe as a consequence of the global warming.

The thing currently dominating the news is the corruption scandals in France which is rather difficult to care about unless you are actually French. It is quite peculiar to see a country where people in general are so politically engaged that the politicians are so far away from the people (the "small people" as a particularly unpopular swede would have expressed it). But on the other hand, as the French goes on strike for about anything these days, what means are left when something really happens? That was by the way the most funny thing that happened during the World Cup, not even there the French could deny their true nature and the French national team went on strike during the competition. What other team in the world could ever have come up with such an idea?

June 16, 2010

In Höngg you can still get the feeling that you live in a little village even though it is indeed a part of the city.

A lot of good things have happened lately. I am not only talking about the incredibly unlikely event that happened today when Switzerland beat Spain in the FIFA world cup but also about some other things that is going on in the world. Among other things it looks as if Obama is going to use the disastrous oil spill to push through some harder, greener politics. In general it is not very well seen to exploit these kind of events for you political agenda but this time he is really right to do so.

The Swiss hostage in Libya, Max Göldi, was finally released this week! This poor guy who got stuck in a conflict between two countries that doesn't concern him at all and were held prisoner in various places in Libya for about two years is now back in Switzerland. It was an incredibly silly conflict to start with and it has taken so much diplomatic efforts and international collaborations to solve it. All because Khadaffi's son decided to beat up his personnel while in Geneva. Many political and economical concessions were necessary from the Swiss side to get Göldi free. In one sense it is really crazy to negotiate with a lunatic like Khadaffi but on the other hand I think it is great to live in a country where a citizens freedom is worth all this sacrifice. So even though this solution might have been a political failure it is at least a human victory.

In this conflict that Switzerland couldn't have done anything against Khadaffi if they didn't get help from the other European countries. Switzerland often like to see itself as being totally independent but it is just a tiny little country with very little to say in the big world. This time we will have to thank Spain (who we just beat in football), Germany (who we fight against to protect their tax-fraudsters) and Berslusconi (the closest thing there is to a democratically elected dictator).

In Sweden only one thing is covered in the media nowadays, the crown-princess wedding to a man of the people on Saturday. The celebrations have already started and just as in the fairy-tale they will last for days. Even though the Swedes can never really make up their minds about what they think of the monarchy we all wish them to live happily ever after.

June 9, 2010

Werdinsel, kreis 11, nice and peaceful in the morning and very crowded in the afternoon, especially by mothers with children as there is a nice pool for very small children to play in. Today it was 30°C warm but still only 17°C in the water.

June 2, 2010

Today it has been raining the whole day and I hardly left the house so here are two pictures from Saturday showing the street life at Kalanderplatz in the middle of the new built, industrial chic, shopping center Sihlcity.

On Monday Israel stopped a ship convoy going with food and medicine to Gaza in the most brutal way. The ships were boarded while still on international water by armed and masked troopers killing nine unarmed people. The people on board the ships were no terrorists or criminals but well respected people like doctors and politicians. A famous Swedish author, Henning Mankell, was there and also an Irish Nobel prize winner.

It is unbelievable how Israel doesn't give a damn about anyone but themselves. They totally take the law in there own hands and show no respect what so ever to human rights. This has been going on for so long against the Palestinians but we in the west have somehow continued shutting our eyes plagued with guilt for what happened to the Jews during the second world war. Now when they are treating Europeans the same way as they treat the Palestinians daily we can no longer pretend as if it is not happening or in any way justify their actions. It's really time to remove them from under the protective wings of the west and make them face international charges. We should shut them out from all international trading until they start complying to international law and human rights, just as we did against South Africa until they abolished apartheid.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very complex and it is difficult to know who was originally right but to continuously violate human rights and to build protective walls and turning the Palestinian territories into ghettos is morally detestable and wrong. It is impossible to understand what the long term goal is for the Israeli. Nothing they do is going towards a stable and sustainable solution. You really have the impression that they just want to erase the Palestinians from the map. Even if the Israeli think that they are right in this conflict, how can they want to live like this? Every Muslim country in the world, even the moderate ones, hate their guts and soon also all the western countries. In every relation, if it is between two people or between countries, you sometimes have to take a step back from what you are convinced to be right and make a compromise that in the end will make your life easier and happier. You have to stop being so damn stubborn to make the world a better place.

Well, now to a completely different matter. I heard the official song for the World Cup 2010 in South Africa on the radio the other day and it is sung by Shakira. I really love Shakira and the song is not bad but I can't for the world understand why a Colombian artist is selected to represent South Africa? When I tried to find an official reason by googling I didn't find one but at least the South Africans seems to be quite upset about it as well and also a blogger that had some other concerns about the song.