I'm now on the plane from Gothenburg to London, flying over the Northern tip of Denmark at the moment. No the plane doesn't have wireless (I wish), but I'm just writing this offline and I'll publish it when I get home. The Gothenburg conference was very fruitful, I made a lot of contacts and it gave me a clearer picture of our magazine's ideal target audience, which will be helpful for the conference we're planning on organizing in San Francisco early next year.
Gothenburg itself was nothing special, pretty small. It is the second biggest city in Sweden, but I guess that's not saying much. One amusing anecdote from the conference, during one of the main sessions someone's cell phone went off, and I think they get the prize for the most embarrassing ring tone to go off at a very bad time. The speaker was in the middle oh a rather passionate speech about IP reform when all of a sudden a blaring police siren went off somewhere in the room. Everyone looked around a bit confused, thinking maybe it was a fire alarm. Then a familiar tune started, and I realized it was, I kid you not, the theme song for the cartoon "Inspector Gadget." It begins with a police siren. And I thought my ring tone was embarrassing! (It's Mason's Exceeder).
I’m now on a train from Malmo to Gothenburg in Sweden. The high-speed trains here have internet access which is VERY nice. Especially since I’ve had a hell of a time getting access to internet the last few days. Copenhagen was fun, it’s a lot more cosmopolitcan than I would have imagined. The town hall square is just packed full of neon lights, kind of like Times Square as a medieval centre. I hit all the requisite sites, including the little mermaid statue, which yes, is very small.
Here are some things that there are a lot of in Copenhagen:
-7/11s
-bicycles
-squares
-Americans
There really were tons of Americans there, you couldn’t shake a stick without hitting one (and not just because they’re so fat). Even beyond just Americans, you hear tons of English there. So much so that there’s no need to ask if someone speaks English before you just start speaking, as opposed to France or Germany where that would be rude and somewhat presumptuous (I did ask the Danes I met if they were ok with that). 7/11 seems to have taken over all of Scandinavia, it’s almost eery. Literally there’s one on every corner.
I’ve just arrived in Copenhagen, I’m at a café on the harbor with my laptop. It’s a bit cold to be sitting on the harbor for this long, but it seems like something one should do when traveling across Europe in the 21st century. The train ride here from Hamburg was really cool. Long, but cool. The train actually goes right onto a ferry and then the ferry crosses over to Denmark, then continues making its way on to Copenhagen. You can get out of the train and walk around too, it’s nice. Here’s a photo of the ferry.
Cologne did not dissapoint in its debauchery. Me and Hale went to this huge party at a club under the bridge that leads to the zoo. It was quite far but apparently there was this gay bus full of the gays picking people up and bringing them there. I thought the bus was just about the funniest thing I had seen in my life. Of course by that point we had finished off a whole bottle of rum so I was pretty amused by just about anything. The club was pretty crazy, here’s a picture of that too (love that cameraphone). Thursday was a holiday in Germany, the day of the ascension, so noone had work the next day. After that club we went to another club somewhere (who knows) and ended up staying there till 7:30 in the morning, at which point I realized my plan to catch a 9:10 train to Hamburg didn’t make a whoile lot of sense, so I decided to just head right to the train station and get the next train to Hburg.
I'm here at the Cleantech Conference in Frankfurt, overall it's pretty interesting. This is my first time in this city (apart from the numerous times I've transfered through the airport), and the first thing you notice is how incredibly un-European it is. It really feels like an American City (an impression aided by the fact that there's tons of Americans here). The downtown is made up of tons of tall skyscrapers, and there's really no quaint "old town" area to speak of. The general impression I get from Germans is that it's maybe their least favorite city in the country (well, aside from Dresden!) beause it doesn't have much character, and feels just like a big conglomeration of skyscrapers. Kind of like if you made Canary Wharf into a whole city.
But, it has some flavour to it I suppose. I went out with my friend Sasha, who I haven't seen since I was in Pragut five years ago, last night. Him and his boyfriend (pictured left) took me out to this great sushi restaurant and then went to the gay neighborhood to a bar there. The city was all pretty quiet, but that was I'm sure partially due to the fact that Thursday is some kind of holiday here and everyone is saving their energy for tonight. We went to a karaoke night at this bar (pictured above), it was fun, reminded me of Pieces back in the day. One thing that was interesting was they give you this card when you go in the door, and when you order a drink the bartender swipes your card rather than taking your money. When you leave, they swipe your card to find out how much you spent on drinks, and you settle up there on the spot. It's a great system because it frees the bartenders up so you get your drinks faster. Those Germans, so efficient!
I'm on a break at this conference, here's a picture of where I am right now. Ha I love pointlessly using technology. I'm going to some panel discussions this afternoon and then I hop on the express train to Cologne to hang out with Hale. I haven't gotten much sleep this trip, and I have to be on a 9:15 train to Hamburg tomorrow morning. Hopefully I can sleep on that train, but that's doubtful.
I'm here in Munich, the weather's been absolutely amazing, such a nice change from London which has been rainy for weeks now. I got here Saturday and was a little bummed about the timing because Saturday night was the Eurovision Grand Prix, and a friend of mine in London was having a party for it. I've been so excited about being able to see Eurovision this year! It's this gigantic contest that's been going on for decades where each country in Europe holds a contest to select one song to compete for the nation, and then all the nations compete in a final round. It's a huge big deal, like the superbowl or something. I went outside to grab something to eat during it Saturday night and noticed it was like a ghost town. Everyone was inside watching the Grand Prix!
Sadly I just had to watch it in my hotel but it was still fun because I was messaging my friends all over Europe while it was on, and it was pretty cool that everyone was watching the same thing. The two favorites to win this year were Sweden and Ukraine, but the actual winner was Serbia. It was interesting because the Ukraine entry was a drag queen, the Swedish entry was this sort of glam rock guy with a feather boa and lipstick, and the Serbian entry was a lesbian (I think?). Apparently this is just about the gayest contest ever. I was routing for Ukraine, they were so freakin great (here's the video below). Sadly they didn't, and the Serbian won. She was ok though, although I didn't understand what was going on in the song. It's just her wailing about something in Serbian surrounded by beautiful models comforting her. She's a good singer, but come on, Ukraine was AWESOME! At least they came in second.
Munich's been fun, much better than my last visit here five years ago. Last night I went to this gigantic beer garden with this guy I met Saturday night. He's a doctor and we were talking about health insurance here. Did you know Germany doesn't have national healthcare? I was shocked. They have a kind of hybrid public/private system where people who make under 40,000 euros a year can buy insurance off the state, and their employer contributes. But you don't have get get health insurtance, it's not required. Still, he said, probably 99 percent of people do, even though if you're unemployed it can be quite expensive. I think I may have made some assumptions about healthcare in Europe that aren't true, this will require some further investigation.
One thing that's funny about Munich is people seem to obsessively follow the walk signals. It doesn't matter if it's the middle of the night and there isn't a car for miles. If the walk signal is red, they'll just stand there on the street corner and wait. It's very strange.
Tomorrow I head to Frankfurt for a conference on Wednesday. I'll see my friend Sasha there who i haven't seen in five years, and then it's off to Cologne to visit Hale.
I’ve been telling two highly embarrassing stories about miscommunications here in the UK, and people keep telling me I should put them in a blog. So I figured I’d write an entry about some of the difficulties of being an American surrounded by British English, which sometimes feels like a whole other language. Some are just minorly confusing, while others have caused big misunderstandings!
The first came just a few weeks after I arrived here. I was in the break room with a group of my coworkers and we were discussing a project that needed to get done. They were saying that a certain woman in the office needed to get to work on it because she hadn’t done anything so far. So I said,
“She just needs some pressure on her, give her a little kick in the fanny.”
The room went silent. They stared back at me with expressions of horror and disgust. And I left completely puzzled as to why it got so quiet after I said that.
I'm now on the plane from Gothenburg to London, flying over the Northern tip of Denmark at the moment. No the plane doesn't have wireless (I wish), but I'm just writing this offline and I'll publish it when I get home. The Gothenburg conference was very fruitful, I made a lot of contacts and it gave me a clearer picture of our magazine's ideal target audience, which will be helpful for the conference we're planning on organizing in San Francisco early next year.
