Dean Christakos

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November 25, 2008

One last stop

I will have more details later, but I just wanted to put up a quick post mentioning that I am currently staying at a Douglas-Adams-themed hotel in downtown Berlin whose staff seems to have an affection for German Death Metal when it comes to the music at the downstairs bar. Good times.

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November 24, 2008

You are just a man...

At present I am in the lobby of my hostel trying to ignore the loud Persian members of the People's Mujahadeen discussing Iranian politics while I check my e-mail and upload my latest group of pictures. Quite honestly, as someone who has some experience with failed attempts at trying to remove a pig-ignorant fundamentalist warmongering rogue leader from office in my own home country, I want to tell these guys to settle down and be a bit more realistic about their prospects.

There's an act of modesty I like to perform whenever I'm traveling. In ancient Rome, when a general returned to the capital from a great victory, a huge parade would be thrown in his honor and the captured enemy would be paraded in chains. While the victorious general was leading the processing through the middle of the city, a slave would be positioned behind him whispering "you are just a man, you are just a man, you a just a man..." in his ear to remind him not to get any delusions of god-like or emperor-like grandeur. In the end, he was just another human.

In a similar spirit of self-flaglelation and humility, I always like to spend each trip abroad making a stop at a local McDonald's and placing an order for some French fries. It reminds me that for all of my world travels and explorations and stories of my exploits, at the end of the day, I'm just another American tourist.

I switched it up a bit, this year. I still might stop at a McDonald's, but meanwhile, I stumbled across the Route 66 American Diner in Berlin, right on Ludwigkircheplatz in Wilmersdorf:

Here, I ordered a chili cheeseburger with fries, along with a chocolate milk shake. And darn it, they were good.

Meanwhile, I spoke a bit with the waitress, who spoke very good English (as so many people do here), and asked if she was originally from Berlin (many of the Germans here seem to have moved to Berlin from elsewhere). She said that she actually grew up in Berlin but that her family was from Greece. A bit shocked, I explained, in Greek, that I myself was Greek American, and we spoke some more in Greek about live for Greeks in Berlin and where our families were from (she from Corfu, and my family from Laconia, Chios, and eastern Thrace). Ok, so maybe I am a bit cosmopolitan than I give myself credit for. :)

Actually, this is probably a reminder that I still need to make a stop at McDonald's.

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I Have Stumbled into a Fringe Political Convention

I now understand why my hostel seems overrun by Iranians and their families, rather than the motley crew of college-aged backpackers one would expect-- apparently there is some kind of convention for The National Council of Resistance of Iran and its leader Maryam Rajavi. The convention-goers all seem to have hats and banners and coats proudly declaring their loyalty to her. For those unfamiliar with this particular organization, it is actually an armed mujahadeen which was based in Iraq and would launch guerilla attacks into Iran for 25 years or so, under the protection and sponsorship of Saddam Hussein. A lot of their history was outlined in the New York Times in an article entitled The Cult of Rajavi.

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A lot can change in 15 years

To give you an idea how much of Berlin has changed since the fall of the Berlin wall, here's a picture of the old Checkpoint Charlie site, which was the main crossing for foreign visitors from West Berlin to East Berlin, looking from the west side:

As you can see, it is a tourist site on a busy street. If you keep going up the street, it's actually a very fashionable shopping district full of expensive clothing stores.

While poking around the web for some pictures of Berlin, I came across this photo archive chronicling someone's travels through Berlin in 1992. This is what that same area around Checkpoint Charlie looked like 15-16 years ago:

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November 23, 2008

Musical Interlude

This being Sunday, lots of stuff in Berlin is closed. In fact, most everything is. However, I did take some time to check out something that seemed a bit obscure-- I went to the Ramones Museum in Berlin, which is actually more of a café with an adjoining memorabilia collection that you can view for a small fee.

After striking up a conversation with one of the baristas about how she liked life in Berlin, she talked about her love for seeing live music and directed me to Maria am Ostbanhof, which is a live music venue right on the river where The Ting Tings were playing:

My spot inside the club did not allow me to get a good vantage point from which to snap any good pictures of the show, but it was a good time and apparently this was an authentic Berlin night club experience.

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Transit on the Honor System

One of the things that's taken a while to acclimate myself to over the past several years has been the honor-system of using transit in many parts of Europe. It wasn't until the last 10 years or so that I realized how it worked in places like Germany and the Netherlands: you buy a ticket, validate the ticket in a machine which places a time stamp on the ticket, and then get on the train. There is a small but non-zero chance that a ticket checker may arrive, asking you to show your validated ticket, and if you can't do this, or if your ticket has expired, you are fined some large amount between $50 and $100. Presumably the expected time between ticket checks for a passenger is lower than the amount of time it takes to rack up $50 to $100 in ticket fees from taking trips.

I never encountered this before because in places like London, Paris, and in the Athens metro, they don't do this (though the Thessalonian bus system works like this). It struck me that this would, really, never work in the US. First of all, while the law can require you to produce ID when asked, there is no real law that requires you to carry ID, through which you could be given a citation. Next, people would cheat all the time. There's nothing Americans like more than the feeling that, somehow, they're "beating the system." The temptation would just be too great, and everyone would figure, "maybe this time there won't be a check!" Next, the checks would require a real police officer to do, because, ultimately, there would be someone who would refuse to produce ID and/or refuse to pay the fine, requiring someone to be arrested on the spot, which would interrupt all the current and future ticket checks. Next, there would be an inevitable lawsuit over which train lines were being specifically targeted by the authorities for ticket checks, and the judge would then demand that the city come up with a demonstrable random scheme to determine which train lines and which cars would be checked, which would probably require the city to hire a mathematician to devise and supervise implementation of the scheme, and while I'm all for keeping mathematicians employed with well-payed jobs, this seems like a poor allocation of resources. And in any case, if you really just want an excuse to arrest malefactors, it's a lot easier to just post policemen at the turnstiles and wait for someone to jump the turnstiles and fine them/check for outstanding warrants/arrest them then and there.

I might add that then, people might just consider carrying $50 to $100 around with them as "the cost of doing business." In DC, the penalty for driving without a license was $75. Plenty of people just carried $75 in their wallet at all times, in case they were stopped by the police while driving without a license, so they could just pay the fine and move on. Apparently people felt that this was a better way of dealing with the system than actually getting a driver's license.

So far, I've been taking several trips a day, every day, on the Brussels, Amsterdam, and Berlin local subways/trams, and I haven't been checked once.

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November 21, 2008

Greetings from Berlin!

Hello from Berlin, where I will be staying for the next week. This is a picture of the Reichstag, where the German Parliament currently meets and where I spent the better part of this afternoon waiting in line in front of for the chance to get in.

To be more down to earth about what Germany is really like, this is the neighborhood where I am staying, near the Zoo:

Apparently I have arrived right along with a snowstorm.

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November 18, 2008

Pictures!

Ok, I've finally gotten a chance to upload some pictures of Brussels and pictures of Bruges.

Here, in central Brussels, is the Grand Place:

and here is a picture of Brussels' semi-official mascot, the Manneken Pis:

And finally, here's a photo of something that consumed much of my time in Brussels, namely, beer:

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November 16, 2008

Off to Amsterdam

I'm sorry I don't have any pictures yet for Brussels and Bruges, but hopefully I will have a chance in Amsterdam to upload my photos of places I've been. But generally I've had a good time. Brussels seems a bit overbuilt and lacking in personality in the center of the city, but once you get off the beaten track, it has a lot going for it, aesthetically speaking.

Plus, I highly recommend visiting the Cantillon Brewery where you can see how Lambic is made through spontaneous fermentation.

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November 14, 2008

Change We Can Believe In

This take on how things have changed is particularly relevant in light of my latest travels:

everyone you meet overseas is going to ask you about Obama and you may as well say you voted for him because, my friends, he is your line of credit over there. No need anymore to try to look Canadian.

Maybe I should finally sew an American flag onto my backpack, too!

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November 13, 2008

I'm in Brussels

I arrived in Brussels early this morning and have been taking in the city. Unfortunately, while going through my things, I realized that I forgot to bring a USB cable, so there may be some delay in uploading pictures...

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November 12, 2008

This Time Tomorrow

Here's where I'll be...

Ok, not India, but I will be on vacation...

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November 5, 2008

Campaigners Know What Is Best In Life

Conan explains....

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Partying in DC

Here are some pictures taken on U Street late in the evening on election night:

More pics in my flickr archive.

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The blogosphere reacts to the election

From someone's twitter feed as the election unfolded late into the night:

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November 4, 2008

Lines to Vote

At 8am this morning, this was the line to vote at my polling place:

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Last Obama Rally of the Campaign...

... and I was there!

Barack Obama held his last rally of the 2008 campaign in Manassas, Virginia tonight, and I decided to go, seeing as how I had never seen him speak in person. Traffic into Manassas was, unsurprisingly horrendous, and Obama joked about how tough it was going to be for us to get out afterwards, given that there were 100,000 people there.

Here I am standing next to a "Vote for Change" sign:

By the time I got out, around midnight, I still had enough energy to do a late night literature drop at home of supporters reminding them to vote in the morning.

Posted by Dean at 3:56 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 2, 2008

I Don't Want to Hear Whom You're Voting For

... because if you actually cared, you'd get off your ass for these last couple of days before the election and help do something about it:

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