race

Among the many expenses that I would have considered absurd half a year ago but which have now started to take chunks out of my monthly budget, a car would be by far the biggest.  It hasn't happened yet.  I consider privately owned cars a bit of an anachronism, something like a relic from the last century.  It is hard to see how they contribute to efficient or even pleasant travel these days.  I have a bicycle to get to work, buses around town, a car rented by the hour for quick dashes, longer rentals for road trips, the train for middle distances, and the plane to see the world.  This list is too long already; where would my own car fit into this?

The reason I'm considering the purchase at all is the same that drives all the other unexpected purchases.  The reason doesn't yet exist in this world, but its or rather her, to let the cat out of the bag, imminent arrival is getting Flucha and me into shopping like never before.  The need for clothes, furniture, tools and care products has taken me to websites whose existence I didn't know of this time last year.  And what's up with pink?

The car is not exactly a need, but because I work in Switzerland and Flucha lives and works in Germany, there will be a moment in the next three months when I'll want to be in Heidelberg double-quick.  I could take the train, which I do every weekend, but last weekend's experience had made me reconsider my smugness about cars.

On Friday, my train to Basel ground to a halt in a village of no import.  The announcement of a passenger incident promised no good.  The local train out of the adjacent platform had been canceled.  Another train pulled into the station ten minutes later, but it only took us to the next town, Rheinfelden, famous for its brewery, and then stopped.  Railway traffic had been suspended between Rheinfelden and Basel.

Outside the station, yellow buses were waiting to take us to Basel, but that was not an option for me.  The journey would have taken too long for me to make my connection.  Luckily, I overheard a woman in the same predicament, on her way to Germany like me.  She had the same idea that had come to me – go to the other Basel station and gain ten minutes in the process.  We shared a taxi whose morose driver promised nothing but drove like a champion, insisting throughout that we wouldn't make it.  A good many Swiss Francs later, I stood on the platform a few seconds before the train rolled in.

This being Switzerland, such a disturbance must be a rare exception, I thought.  But when I arrived in Basel on my way back from Heidelberg on Sunday, I found that the train to Baden was canceled, with no reason given.  A rail replacement bus was advertised, but it didn't go all the way.  "What's wrong with this country?", I wanted to ask the man in the information kiosk, but he was just doing his job and I settled for "How can I get to Baden or Brugg?" instead.

We spent precious time discussing whether I needed to go to Baden or to Brugg before he put my final destination, a village halfway between the two, into his computer and printed an alternative connection for me.  With a "Good luck!" that was as full of encouragement as it was of doubt, he sent me off to the ticket machine and on the race to the platform.  When the train left the station three minutes later, I was on it.  Nevertheless, to the question of how I'll get to the hospital when new life emerges, I must now also add whether I'd like to avoid weekly travel dramas.  Could a car be the answer?

I haven't thought about cars in years.  But, and this is the main motivation for this post, when I flew to Hannover last week to show my new employer’s logo at a conference in Göttingen, a rental car was waiting for me at the airport to take me there.  The car was brand-new, with only 10 kilometers on the clock.  Another only was the number of cylinders.  There were only three.

Three-cylinder vehicles have become popular in Europe as a way to achieve legally mandated fuel economy goals.  It’s a valid strategy; the fuel consumption numbers that emerge from standardized tests are impressive.  Still, these cars achieve the uneconomically high speeds that are only permitted in Germany.  On motorways, the consumer feels no downside.  In cities, however, the story is quite different.

Off the stoplight, the three cylinders propelled our Citroën C3 forward with the desperate intensity and high-pitch noise of a Formula 1-homologated lawn mower.  More than once, we inadvertently caused terminal panic in people crossing the street far ahead of us.  Surveying the situation from the safety of the other side, their look changed to one of utter incomprehension when failing to square the vicious noise with our speed, which was perfectly compatible with safe conduct in a pedestrianized urban environment.

It was fun to drive that car, but only in a momentary way.  Later I will come to realize that having a car sit around in the driveway while I cycle to work is rather wasteful.  I will also come to realize that I don’t want to have to drive for three hours at the end of an exhausting week at work.  The train is so much nicer, no matter what.  And when Flucha does the Kate halfway through June, I just have to cross my fingers and hope I’ll make it on time to see the head of the heir appear.

Waffle House

Four days into my new job and almost back from the first assignment, in one of the darker recesses of Charles de Gaulle, almost ready to board the plane that would take me to Zurich, I was wondering how best to keep memories of the travels (or possibly travails) that will pile up hard and fast this year.  Trinkets were the first thing to come to mind, something local but useless, entirely uncreative and prone to accumulation and dust collection.  Not a good idea.  Better would be something marginally less useless, T-shirts for example, but what UGA in Athens, Georgia, where I spent the past two days, offered, didn't pass my taste test.

I could keep the stubs of the embarkation cards.  I used to do that way back when they were still made of heavy paper, handed to you upon check-in.  Now they're displayed on smart phones.  Not a good souvenir either.  There were a few other options, but I rejected them all.  Instead,  I'll write a little something, pointless but subjective, about all the places I'll visit for work.  I'll label the category out of office.

If there's one thing that encapsulates Georgia, from the narrow perspective through the window of the airport shuttle, an hour and a half of darkness on the way to Athens and a bit more than that on a foggy day back to the airport, it's Waffle House.  Waffle House is Georgia.

You might argue it's peaches.  That's what the state marketing department tries to communicate, but the only peaches I saw were syrupy halves scooped from a tin, served during one of the coffee breaks of the workshop I attended.  They didn't make an impact among the chunks of pineapple and mango.  Waffle House, in contrast, stood out.

Waffle House was everywhere, at every freeway exit and at every highway intersection.  There were a few scattered about the suburbs of Athens as well.  I half expected to see them on license plates, glorified as if they were Idaho potatoes, but there it was peaches.  Everywhere else, it was Waffle House, and everywhere it looked the same, rather elegant in a minimalist-modernist way.

The restaurants were all based on elongated rectangular footprints, built from brick without embellishment but with a panoramic glass front pulled around one of the corners.  Inside one could see hanging from the ceiling a long line of regularly spaced spheres that cast a light like lemon yogurt.  Against the back wall was the kitchen.  The diners sat by the window, a bit like Hopper's Night Hawks but without the curves.

What exactly Waffle House is I didn't bother to find out.  My guess is fast-food franchise.  This was America, after all.  On the other hand, it's rather un-American to understate your assets in the bright world of neon advertisement, and I doubt the House sells only waffles.  That, by the way, would also be un-American.  Waffles are Belgian, or at least the thing the Belgians are most mocked for.  Georgia seems to be a confused state.

Maybe I just misunderstood it, because there was some consistency:  The Belgian theme continued at the bar.  The local Terrapin Brewery made available a few fruity ales that were better left alone and a concoction that even the bartender could only describe as interesting, the ominous inflection in his voice indicating that this was no regular beer.

I have dramatically changed my attitude towards beer over the last year.  Before I went to Brugge in June, I drank only Pilsener, the bitterer the better.  Then I was faced with the madness the Belgians put into bottles (and then pour into a thousand distinct glasses), and redefined my world.  What I wouldn't call beer came in a wealth of flavors that it would have been a shame not to explore.  In Brugge, I discovered Achel, had my first proper Lambic, a geuze that tasted like sparkling citric acid, and an Ingelmunster Kasteel Donker that weighed in at 11%.

In the bar in Athens, memories of Brugge coming back to me, I choose the "interesting" Liquid Bliss two nights in a row, a black beer that tasted strongly of dark chocolate and peanut butter.  It was rich as a meal and not to everyone's liking.  Sitting with me, another German, his taste buds more traditionally attuned, drank it only reluctantly.  I put my feet up next to the fire and marveled at the weirdness of the world.

going south

Tomorrow, my career as a detectorist will begin.  Tonight, fashionably late and enveloped by the darkness of a painful farewell, I hopped onto the train to Basel.  Thanks to the poster with schematics of every long-distance train from that platform, I had waited in the right place and got straight into the restaurant car, the best aspect of railroad travel.  Before the train had even left the station, I had ordered dinner and a beer.

Dining on the train is a pleasure from a different age.  Sitting on a proper table with a white tablecloth, a meal served on a porcelain plate and eaten with silverware, beer in a glass, and space for arms and legs – this degree of luxury can be achieved in the air only at irresponsible financial expense.  On the train it is within the reach of even those not traveling on expenses.  I opened the Borges purchased in Mannheim and waited for my order.  The train rolled through the night.

The man at the neighboring table wolfed down a bowl of chili con carne in a manner that belied his appearance.  He was tall and lean – and, in brown nylon pants and orange sneakers, dressed in the way of those who value their physical shape over the elegance of their appearance.  When he was done with his chili, he ordered rolls and Nutella in a curious two-two-three ratio.  I leaned back and glanced around, securing the beer against the kicking of the train.

In improv comedy and other jocular banter, there's a rule for the maximization of humor:  Never dissent.  Whatever the other person says or asks, agree and take it from there, inflating the ridiculousness of the initial proposal if possible.  Social interactions follow a similar paradigm; they are fueled by agreement.  When my neighbor stated with interrogative inflection that the car was rather hot, my reply that I didn't find it disagreeable at all killed our nascent conversation at once.  At this point, my meal arrived.

My neighbor wasn't fazed.  He picked up the telephone to speak to what I deduced to be his nutritionist, a late-night call out of the ordinary made necessary by his binging.  The conversation was brief and cordial, but not all was good.  My neighbor seemed thrown off-balance by words or actions unseen.  He pulled a book from his bag, leaned over to show me the cover of it, big and blue, and opened a page for me to inspect.  Sections were highlighted in neon yellow, the entire page glowed.  Then he stood up and pontificated, for everyone in the restaurant car to hear, about the tribulations of a recovering alcoholic, starting with the fact there is no such thing as a recovering alcoholic.

Alcohol never loosens its grip.  Its memory sits in your brain, ready to come back and bit at every opportunity.  And even if you're strong, even if you drink water when your neighbor enjoys a cold beer, the obsession within you might get out, making you pig out on carbs as if they were vodka-colas.  He wasn't embarrassed in the least about his performance or his confessions.  He was used to speaking up from countless AA meetings.  I was less experienced and not sure how to react.  I nodded and asked a couple of hushed questions but felt a bit out of place.  In Freiburg he got off, saying goodbye as if we had just chatted about the weather for five minutes.  The train continued south for another half hour.

Swiss German

Approached from the north, Switzerland looks a lot like Germany.  It's not as close as Austria, which came into its own only 150 years ago, but still, Switzerland shows more similarities with Germany at first glance than differences.  Radio, TV and street signs are in German, trains leave from platforms shown in the timetable, thus avoiding the scrum when they are finally announced, five minutes before departure, at Victoria Station or Gare de Lyon, and bakers sell tasty bread that the locals proceed to have for dinner with cheese and cold cuts.  To a German, it looks as if it could double for home.

The Swiss would probably disagree.  They are known for their independence and the pride they take in their idiosyncrasies.  Their love of local specialties and a good meal out couldn't be further from the German cheap-is-good mentality.  What they speak among themselves is probably more distant from German than Dutch and certainly more than Yiddish.  It is entirely incomprehensible to me.

The border region is intertwined to such a degree that it's hard to discern what's one country and what's the other.  On my trip to my future home this morning, I had to change trains in Basel.  Basel is in Switzerland, but one of its train station is on German territory.  I hopped onto another train that noisily rumpled along and up the thinning Rhine, on the German side.  I was in Germany all the way until the last regional train, a commuter towards Zurich, but the border patrol checked passports before Basel already.

Plenty of Germans work in Switzerland but reside on the German side, never mind the suffocating taxes and mandatory insurances in Germany.  Cheap rent and money saved on groceries make up for that.  The Swiss, in contrast, come to Germany to have their cars repaired or their teeth.  The recent revaluation of the Franc has only intensified that.  To foreigners, prices in Switzerland are extortionate.  Paying the largest coin in common circulation for a double espresso is all right in the EU and a bargain in the US, but if that coin is worth nearly five euros, it hurts.

Once I've lived in Switzerland for any amount of time – I presume a few days will suffice – the differences between Germany and Switzerland will come into focus.  But for now I cling to what I read in Swiss Watching,  a collaborator's parting gift in which an Englishman describes his impressions after living in the country for a few years.  Almost every time he contrasts Switzerland with England, I feel at home – because I've contrasted Germany with England in the same way.

last day

On Monday, the population of London rose to its highest value in history, 8.615 million.  On Tuesday, it was one fewer.  I jumped onto a plane towards the continent and was gone.  As the plane rose over my former home, I felt relieved, probably mostly due to the dissipation of the tension of previous day.  When East London came into view and then, increasingly distantly, the Thames Estuary, a pinch of loss spiced my farewell, but my heart wasn't heavy.

The day before had been exhausting.  I didn't do much all day, but I had never been so tense over such a long time.  I'm not one to grind teeth, but when I sat in the pub at the end of the day with the last Doom Bar in front of me, my jaws hurt.

In the morning, I carried a third of a metric ton of belongings down to the ground floor and stored them in the hallway that is the building's fire escape.  Collection was promised to take place between 9 and 5:30.  That window was a bit wide for my taste.  Around ten, I called the local office of the shipment company to see how they were getting on with the job.  The lady was responsive to my predicament but of little help.  I'd like to have the collection time narrowed down a little because I have no food in the house and need to step out to eat, I explained.  She said 1 to 4 but there was doubt in her voice.

In the morning I had to stay in the flat anyway.  I needed to finish cleaning kitchen and bathroom.  According to the gospel of Perl, laziness is a virtue.  The desire to minimize work makes one efficient, leading to better code and a better life.  I see the value of laziness, but my philosophy is procrastination.  Doing things the last minute avoids unnecessary work.  Something done prematurely might be superseded or become obsolete.  Something done when it's due is done at the right time.  The later one starts with a task, the less time it takes to finish it, simply because more time isn't available.

I had finished taping up all the boxes only the night before.  I had hoovered the living room and the bedroom, but the rest was a disaster.  At noon, the property administrator was supposed to stop by to inspect the flat and give his verdict on the likely distribution of the deposit between me and the company.  In the half hour before noon, I started seeing real progress.  The bathroom came to life, the kitchen looked better.  With ten minutes to go, all was done.  It would have been a wasted ten minutes, except I had nothing else to do but wait.  And then the admin was two hours late.

Neither cleaning nor the admin had anything to do with my tension.  The tension came from the slow ticking of time and the immobility that this forced me into, waiting for something to happen while hoping that it hadn't happened yet.  The tension was then exacerbated by what I saw outside my front window.  North End Road runs a market every day except Sunday, with fruit & veg stalls all the way from the Lillie Road roundabout to St. John's Church.  With the stalls, wheelie bins, rogue parking and deliveries to local businesses, there's hardly any parking in the street during the day.  Where would the lorry fit?

I had booked the move on the cheap, through a third-party company that collects payment and then tenders the shipment to companies more suited to the task.  I was told that the driver would not carry a phone.  Be by the door at all times, I was warned.  If the driver cannot get to you, if the driver cannot park, I understood, he would abandon the collection.

My doorbell was broken, but I had left a note on the door with the request to bang hard and my phone number just in case.  Upstairs, I left my door open and got worried every time I turned the vacuum on or the hot water with its explosive boiler.  When the cleaning was done and the admin had come and gone, all that was left for me to was pace between door and window like a tiger in a cage.  Looking outside was not uplifting.  Parking spaces opened up from time to time, but only momentarily.  And with every minute that passed, I got more convinced that I had already missed the collection, that the driver had gone by and seen that there was no way of stopping in front of my building and just continued driving.  It was way past two, five hours into the initially specified collection period.

It got so late that I made peace with the failed collection attempt.  No need to get worked up, I told myself.  Won't change a thing.  Better come up with a plan B.  I dug up my car sharing membership card in case I'd needed a van to move the boxes myself.  It should be possible the next morning to find storage and leave the boxes there before rushing to the airport to fly out, I schemed, before running back to the window to not miss the collection lorry, should it drive by that very moment.  The fruit sellers were praising their produces by the price, as always.  A pound a bowl, a pound a bowl.

By three o'clock I couldn't take it anymore.  I went outside and stayed there.  It was cold, but there was no point staying inside.  I remained a tiger, pacing from the Goose along the bus stop next to it on one side of the road and back on the other in a neat rectangle, watching traffic, counting vans and buses but never getter further than one before abandoning the task due to preoccupations and fogginess of mind.  By half past three I was getting cold.  By four I started to shiver.  Then I got a call.

It was the driver, who had just driven by.  I directed him back and occupied a double parking spot that had mysteriously opened just a few moments earlier.  It was the only time during the day that this much space was available, and it was dearly needed.  When the driver arrived, he didn't do so in a van.  It wasn't a moving van either.  It was full-size lorry, and it barely fit into the spaced I had claimed.  I moved a wheelie bin into the road, which was half blocked by the parked truck.  Five minutes later the boxes were loaded and the driver on his way.  All worries fell off.  I needed a beer.

In the Goose, the late afternoon crowd was having a good time.  I got my last Doom Bar and joined two tiny octogenarian ladies who bantered and laughed, a wheelchair parked inconspicuously next to the table.  One table over, a rough-and-tumble couple, with stained clothes, wild hair and an acrid smell, were having their beers like everyone else.  Further back, three Chelsea fans in blue garb a few days away from the next game had their eyes on the TV screen that followed the inaction of the closing of the winter transfer window live.  The ubiquitous loner with a smartphone, a pensioner with white hair in this case, couldn't care less.  He stared at his little screen as if mesmerized.

trust and consequences

An hour from now, I'll be out of work. With the end of January, my employment at Imperial ends. At almost the same time, my five-year tenancy at North End Road is coming to an end. Getting my life into boxes turned out less difficult than I had feared. I don't have all that much stuff after all, despite the best efforts of my friends who kept giving me leaving presents.

Getting rid of furniture took a while but wasn't all that difficult either. Some things I put on Gumtree. People then called me and offered not only to pick them up from my flat but also reward me monetarily for the privilege. That was good, but it didn't work for everything. Other things I put on Freecycle. This community might be rather small, despite even me heaving heard about it. My shoe rack and my stereo rack were picked up by the same person, about a week apart. I wonder if she'll react to the ads I've posted just now.

Much to my relief, the most difficult sell wasn't the sofa I had brought over from France. It was already broken when I bought it second-hand nearly ten years ago and then almost broke Flucha's back when we hauled it up the stairs to my flat. I dreaded the effort of getting rid of it, but a couple who had just moved into a flat were happy to give me a hand and then drive off with Klippan to make their new home homelier.

My dining table, solid wood and with four matching chairs, was more persistent. The ad languished on Gumtree for a good week with no response. Then, today, there were two expressions of interest. Heather was quicker and definitely more eager. She called, asked for my bank details, and five minutes later an amount matching the asking price showed up in my account. In return, I gave her my address and told her when to pick up the set.

The speed of the banking transaction should be enough to take my breath away, but what really stunned me was the trust this woman put in me. On Ebay, at least there's feedback. You can have some confidence that the person behind the ad is legitimate. With Gumtree, there's absolutely nothing. I could be a complete scam. There might be no table, or at least not at the address I gave.

And yet, this woman was ready to part with her money on nothing more than a phone conversation, nothing more than my word, essentially. In times when religiously confused nutters rampage through Paris to fight the pen with guns, it's most comforting to know that civilization has not died. Maybe I should buy Heather chocolates for being such a good neighbor.

boxed up

With seven boxes filled, I can see the light.  I spent all day today transferring the nice things I own from their assigned places in my flat to the insides of large white cardboard boxes.  The pattern was always the same.  Some padding (blankets or sheets) for peace of mind, a thick layer of books as a foundation and random stuff to make volume.  Seven boxes are filled now.  I didn't write down precisely what I put where, which is going to come back to bite me, but at least I can now imagine an end to this process.  When the boxes were delivered earlier this week and I set the first one down on the carpet and started contemplating their eventual content, I almost started crying because it was too much.

How did I do it last time?  I don't remember the move Grenoble to London seven and a half years ago, except that I drove a van through France and then was blasted across the Channel by a supersonic ferry.  Or something like that, it's all been written down.  What hasn't been written down is how I packaged my stuff and what I took.  I remember that I gave a lot away, but I also rented a van and I filled it with junk.

Back then, I think, I just went to the ATAC grocery store and collected produce boxes that they didn't need anymore.  Into these boxes, I piled me stuff.  There was a box for shirts, a box for CDs, a bunch of boxes for books, and a box or two for khakis.  My stereo and speakers had their own boxes – how convenient.  The bike, mattress and furniture were piled on top.  It was easy.  By first approximation, I just threw everything I had into the van and drove off.

This time around, this won't do.  I'm not driving, even though a friend volunteered in case I needed company.  But it would be too much of a hassle.  I would have to get the van back to the UK and then fly to Germany.  Might as have someone else do the driving – and save money and time in the process.

This someone else is a company that does shared-load removals.  I'm supposed to fill the boxes they delivered, and they will come to pick them up when they're ready.  They will go on a lorry when there's space.  To Germany, this should only take a few days.  The catch is that I pay by the box.  Thus the task is not to put kitchen utensils into one box, socks into another and tools, easily retrievable, into a third.  The challenge is to fit 30 kg into each box, and mix and match heavy and light items to get away with the fewest boxes.

I ordered twelve boxes.  Filled to the brim, they will hold 360 kg.  This is a third of a ton.  How can one person have a third of a ton of possessions?  It makes me dizzy to even think about this.  I stupefies my mind that I will only stay below the limit if I, well, limit myself.  I'm not talking about the furniture, which is too big to go into the boxes anyway.  But Oxfam will take a special delivery of books, my clothes with make the poor in Africa happy – and destroy the local textile industry – and most small electrical appliances will go.  Even so, the first seven boxes are full already.  Each one of them weighs at least 28 kg.  Leaving room for error in the bathroom scale that I bought a few days ago, this is as far as I dared to go.  Now there are five empty boxes left – and so many things in my flat.

radio four

When I started college, way back when, I purchased a CD radio to keep myself entertained.  Those were simpler times.  The mp3 algorithm had just seen the light of day, but it hadn't made music ubiquitous yet, and I didn't have a computer anyway.  Sitting in front of one at the university computing center for the first time, I was quickly foiled because I had never encountered a scroll bar before.  I had no idea how to get the content of the window I didn't see.

The CD radio was compact, white and had womanly curves, presaging the resurgence of Apple by style by a good five years.  It was beautiful, but I realized quickly that I didn't like radio all that much and that I'd like my CDs with proper sound.  A month of two after I bought it, the CD radio was on its way to the bin when I crammed my HiFi footprint stereo into my little dorm room.

The radio got a second lease on life when my grandmother's aging system died a few years later.  I was glad to part with it, and she happy to have music.  She even started buying CDs.

Years passed.  I went to the US, graduated, and moved to France.  My grandmother had upgraded to something more sophisticated that could, inexplicably, play DVDs.  I took the CD radio back but didn't use it much.  French radio didn't agree with me, and for music I had the stereo.  Then I moved to the UK.

It was at that point, when the little sound cloud was almost twelve years old, that it started to shine.  Sitting in my kitchen atop the fridge, it was and still is, playing Radio 4 for me in the morning and when I get back home from work.

From looking at the program, you'd think that Radio 4 couldn't be more boring.  It's full of news and talk and reports from Parliament.  It's politically correct, ostentatiously impartial and painfully inclusive, catering to a zoo of disenfranchised minorities, like the blind, women and gardeners.

Maybe I've grown old, but I don't mind the slowness of the programs.  And I positively enjoy the quirkiness   Racing tips, any one?  The shipping forecast?  The self-deprecation and the feeling that everyone is a big family because most programs have run for decades, the voices of the anchors engrained in the audience. The replacement of a retiring morning show host with someone new a while back wasa jolting experience, like bumping into a stranger of menacing conduct in a dark alley.

I don't think it's too much to say that Radio 4 is the soul of Britain, more essential to the nation than the Queen.  Radio 4 is such an integral part of society that if Radio 4's Today program is silent for three mornings in a row (and superiors on land can't be reached), commanders of the Trident submarines are instructed to bring out the nukes and strike for there must have surely been a murderous attack on Britain.

I take a pass at the Archers, though some say it was only to broadcast this "everyday story of country folk" that the BBC was established in the first place and that everything else   Doctor Who, Top Gear, various talent shows, you name it   is afterthoughts, but listen to almost anything else.

Used to listen, anyway.  My time in the UK is now coming to a definite end.  With the move only weeks away, it was time to say goodbye.  I put the CD radio on Freecycle and handed it over, earlier this evening, to a recently arrived immigrant with a colorful clothes and a patchy command of the English language.  He could do worse than listening to Radio 4.