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.

September 22, 2010

The new sport center at Science City, ETH Hönggerberg. The fancy building stood two years before it got completely flooded during the rains in July. Now it has to be dried out for a cost of 2 million Swiss francs and will only open again in October.

In the elections in Sweden the left made the most disastrous election ever whereas the right Alliansen made made a big move forward. No wonder when the left goes so far into people meddling in peoples private lives and removing their rights to their own choices as to encouraging the Swedish women to use a breast pump in order to give the maternity leave to the fathers. It is difficult to compare the Swedish left and right with the blocks in other countries as the Swedish right still is pretty left of the right in other countries. The biggest chock in the election was that the extreme right party made it into the parliament making neither of the blocks being capable of forming a majority.

In Switzerland two new members of the Federal Council was elected today, one of which was a woman. This is the first time ever that there is a majority of women in the government. Not that it really matters as the Swiss government is known to have almost zero power but one can only hope that it will be a trendsetter for different areas.

September 1, 2010

ETH Hönggerberg.

A crazy pastor in Florida wants to organize a burning of the Koran. This is an event that should, if media had any conscience, have passed unnoticed and no one would have cared. Instead media all over the world are blowing up the story and Obama needed to comment and beg the pastor not to go through with it. It is pure idiocy that media take notice of these kind of affaires. Of course fundamentalists think that we are evil if it gets published every time a wacko gets a crazy idea in his head. On the other hand it might be fair, because every time a group of 10 or more Muslims burn a western flag it gets exploited in the same way to make all the westerners believe that the entire Muslim world is worked up about a theme that the 95% of the people don't care about at all. I guess that we just have to taste a scope of our own medicine.

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?