Regina Glei's Blog, page 21

Finnish Depths

The flight from Stockholm to Vaasa in Finland came with a downer, since SAS airlines claimed that my ticket didn’t include the transport of a suitcase. Eh? I booked all my inner European flights via Expedia Germany. I tried to book the flights all together but my crazy route: Stuttgart – Duesseldorf – (to Berlin by car) Berlin – Stockholm – Vaasa – Frankfurt (Vaasa – Helsinki – Frankfurt), then by train from Frankfurt back to Stuttgart, didn’t produce a ticket that made sense, so I booked all flights one by one. I had no problem with my luggage from Stuttgart to Duesseldorf and no problem from Berlin to Stockholm, so I was very surprised that I suddenly had a problem from Stockholm to Vaasa. I do not remember any special notice about luggage when I booked my flights. Further I booked them in March or so and of course did not remember. Anyway, they made me pay an additional 60 euro to carry my stupid suitcase along. Sigh…

The plane from Stockholm to Vaasa turned out to be a turbo prop and when we landed we were the only plane at Vaasa airport, where you walk over the runway to the tiny airport building that has one baggage delivery band

Three Days in Stockholm

Stockholm is a great place to visit, if you have money. The Nordic countries have a reputation for being costly and that’s pretty much true. Museum entry costs roughly 20 euro per place, per person. A no-frills sandwich and a pet bottle soft drink costs you 10 euro and so forth. The Swedes seem to be well off though, everything looks kind of “rich”. I saw nothing run-down or neglected anywhere. Just wondering what kind of pay checks people are bringing home.

That said, I arrived at my hotel in the late afternoon and since it was a bit off the beaten track, I didn’t bother to get back into town that evening. Instead, I wandered along the waterfront to a supermarket ten minutes away. I love going to supermarkets in the countries of the world, just to test what kind of wondrous stuff they have there. Then, for lack of other possibilities, I had a pricey dinner in the hotel, which wasn’t even very good, too much frying fat on the plate.

The next morning I bought an all you can ride ticket and ventured by bus into town. A shopping street leads to the Swedish parliament and to the King’s palace behind it.



To take a look at its innards costs you the standard 20 euro. The palace looks much prettier inside than outside though and is worth the investment.



On the journey goes to a church, which is included in the price and turned out to be the not so super interesting burial church of the kings and queens. Next I ventured to the Stockholm city hall for a late lunch and a guided tour through the hall, whose highlights are the blue room, where the Nobel price winners banquet is held and the golden hall which is clad in gold leaf mosaics and quite impressive.



After a short bus ride to the old city center, I wandered there through the pretty and narrow streets alongside many other tourists, then by bus back to the hotel.

The all you can ride ticket I bought was also valid for the water bus and on day two I took that one to the “amusement” island Djurgarden. My first stop there was the ABBA museum. I’m not a particular fan, but it just felt like a must see if you’re there. The museum comes with the heftiest price of them all, around 23 euro. It’s very nicely done though, also trying to be interactive, with karaoke opportunity and even a singing on stage opportunity. It describes ABBA’s climb to fame, shows many costumes, all those gold and platinum LPs, guitars and other equipment, plus life-size wax figures. There, of course, is also an extensive shop for memorabilia and a cafe attached.



I next visited my personal highlight of the trip – the Vasa museum.

Vasa is the name of a failed warship. One of the Swedish kings ordered it to be built and ship construction took over two years from 1626 to 1628.

The day of the maiden voyage came in August 1628. The Vasa left Stockholm and was supposed to pick up soldiers on a nearby island and then to go to Poland with which Sweden was at war at the time.

After a mere 1000 meters, a gust of wind made the Vasa keel over, water flowed in through the open gun ports and she sank within minutes. She was too top heavy with two gun decks and not wide enough, apparently. A major design disaster. More than thirty people went down with her, stuck in the hull. The others were saved by boats nearby. The ship lay in the harbor in 32 meters of depth for 333 years until she was raised in 1961. I don’t know how long it took to restore the ship and when it moved into its current location, but it’s pretty damn impressive. You walk into the concrete building and there is this huge, complete, 400-year-old ship, which is 98% original they proudly say. The restoration work is never finished. These days they are replacing all the bolts that were inserted in 1961 with stainless steel ones since the old ones are rusting.





They claim at every corner that the Vasa is unique and I do believe them. It’s the biggest restored ship of its kind etc. It survived for so long because the Baltic Sea water is brackish, with low salt content that prevents e.g. ship worm from being around that would have eaten the wood.

The museum around the giant ship is very nicely done too, describing the life and work of the shipbuilders, the town in 1628, and also the salvage work for the Vasa. On seven stories you can see the Vasa from bottom to top. It feels like you are on the set of a pirate movie, only that the ship is real.

I have a weakness for ships and the ocean, admittedly, but I was so impressed with the Vasa that I can honestly say that museum alone is worth a trip to Stockholm.

The Vasa could not be topped and my last stop for that day was the Skansen outdoor museum, which is a kind of Nordic park including traditional human endeavors from glass making, shoe makers, pottery etc. and a small zoo with Nordic animals. It was a warm afternoon and all the beasts were soundly sleeping, wolves, elk, bears, seals, otter etc. all snoozed peacefully in their generous enclosures. The only guys up and awake were wild boars

18 hours in Berlin

I made a deal with my boss that in between two work events in Stuttgart I could take a week of holidays. I spent those busy as usual and went from Stuttgart to Düsseldorf and on to Dortmund to visit my sister and my dad first of all.

Then it happened that during my stay with my sister, her favorite musician, Bruce Springsteen, would play in Berlin. So we made the decision to drive from Dortmund to Berlin to see Bruce together.

The ride to Berlin was happening on a Sunday, thus the traffic was bearable, even if the car was packed with in total four people and not much legroom on the back seats.

Arrived in Berlin, we only quickly checked into the hotel and went straight to the Olympic stadium by subway. The subway soon got crowded and it is amazing to see how people in Berlin cope, or rather not cope, with crowded trains. The trains also aren’t the best, rattling and shaking much more than subways in Tokyo and they have zero air conditioning. With lots of people on board they soon get hopelessly overheated.

We made it to the stadium all right and on the battle went through massive unregulated crowds to our seats. I am reversely fascinated what a great job the Japanese do in regulating large crowds. I’ve been often enough in Tokyo Dome which seats 50,000 and never is there such a hustle as with the Berlin Olympic stadium.

The gig was great and the unstoppable Bruce sings over 30 songs non-stop for 3 hours and 20 minutes.

His stage has no frills, special light shows, or movies, he just plays straight on, of course including his all time hits like Born to Run, Born in the USA, Dancing in the Dark.

He didn’t talk much either during this particular concert. It’s amazing to see the amount of energy this 66 year old guy still has. I find it quite amazing that Bruce attracts all age groups. There are people in the audience from their twenties to their seventies. I think that such a broad reach is quite rare in nowadays music world.

The ride back by subway had nightmarish proportions. Tons of people shoved into the subway station, did not line up in any fashion and squeezed into the train like panicked cattle to the slaughter. When the 50,000 leave Tokyo Dome, they distribute over a dozen lines, not only one that comes only every ten minutes with one or the other special train in between and it’s much less of a drama.

I have the self-imposed task of visiting at least one country I’ve never been to before per year and I’ve never been to Sweden yet, so I took the opportunity to visit Stockholm during my week off on my way to Finland and the Nummirock heavy metal festival.

Getting from Berlin to Stockholm sounds easy enough, but it was quite some hustle. My flight was supposed to leave at 12:30 so I thought I have plenty of time if I leave by airport bus from Berlin Alexanderplatz at 10:00. Pre-information said that it would take half an hour to get to the airport. It took an hour while the bus struggled through the car-packed downtown where people park all over the place and in any obstructive way possible. Funnily the bus was free of charge, at least the driver didn’t want to have any money and waved airport guests through.

Berlin Tegel airport is maybe from the sixties, tiny and not laid out for the masses of people who are flying these days. The SAS check-in counter was hopelessly understaffed and people were queuing for ages. Then, when I had almost reached one of the check-in counters, the woman in charge there switches off the monitor and leaves, despite twenty people in her row, saying, line up elsewhere. You gotta be kidding me. Unthinkable behavior in the service haven Japan. A couple in the neighboring row was so kind to let me squeeze in. The next ridiculously long queue awaited disgruntled and stressed passengers at the security check with not all machines open due to lack of personnel. Then the guys at the security check pulled me out for a “random” special screening. I bet it’s not random. They pull me out because I am “weird”: a German with a Japanese address flying from Berlin to Stockholm seems to be suspicious. Luckily that special screening didn’t take overly long. A lady with a cloth wiper sweeps over your bags and belt to test for explosives.

The boarding area behind the security in Tegel is ridiculously small and was thronged with people. The gate leading to the bus for the Stockholm airplane was so crowded that people waited up the stairs unable to enter the waiting area. This airport is truly laid out for only half of the amount of people it is handling. Pretty much of a nightmare – avoid Berlin Tegel if you can. I wonder whether the other Berlin airport Schoenefeld is any better.

Eventually the flight left some 45 min later than scheduled. How good that I’m on the road for holidays at the moment, not business…

Nihonium

Ever heard of Nihonium? Not yet, I suppose – it’s brand new. It’s element 113 on the periodic table of elements and was just officially announced last week by the “International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry”. Thursday night, in the only still watchable form of news on NHK (see comments about the NHK news here) the “jiron koron” news digest, the ten minutes of this program were dedicated to Nihonium, that’s why I heard about it.

They showed the periodic table of elements with national flags, indicating which country’s scientists have discovered the respective element. There were a lot of German flags out there, the US flag, and some other European flags and now for the first time, Japan is on the list as well.

By the way, Nihon (or Nippon) is what the Japanese name their country.

There is a lot of pride around of course to be the first non-western culture to claim such a stake etc. but my point today is the people who discovered the element (who were able to generate it for 0.02 seconds, they said in the news report).

The scientists who discovered the element, and of course all other such scientists quite independent of their nationality, are super specialized people who dig into one topic for years and years on end trying to achieve a result. What they need to have in order to do that is, in my opinion, immense intrinsic motivation, frustration tolerance, patience and relentless persistence.

These Nihonium scientists managed to create the element three times in 2004, 2005 and 2012. I don’t know how many years before the first success they started trying. So, after 20 years or so they get their element on the periodic table. Yeah! The journalist spoke of this research having cost millions of Euro and there is no immediate or even mid-term use for Nihonium. It’s basic research, which he defended as necessary, sort of a basic human right and there is also the aspect of “you-never-know-what-it’s-gonna-be-good-for”.

I’m all for that, too. Basic research like that tries to get answers to ultimate questions like our place in the universe and its meaning, and I too consider this to be indeed a basic human right.

The people who discovered Nihonium got their reward now for their persistence, patience and frustration tolerance but just how many scientists and also artists are out there who never receive such recognition? In a world with by now over 7 billion people it gets more and more difficult to gain wide-spread recognition for what you do. Most of us only have the recognition of our friends, families and co-workers to go on. And we all want recognition, we want the people around us to positively acknowledge our existence. If we don’t get such recognition we become unhappy, depressed, and worse. = We shall all try to push the “like” button on Facebook a bit more often – just kidding

Dome Child – Revised and Abridged

It’s almost five years since I released my novel Dome Child into the harsh world out there. Back then I thought Dome Child would be a stand alone and that I would not go back to the Dome of Souls world, which has been with me since – OMG – around 1997 (!). I wrote the Dome of Souls stories in screenplay format and only the Dome Child, which I started in 2007, was originally written as a novel.



After the release of Dome Child, I thought I was done with the Dome of Souls world, but before long the bug bit me again and I decided to rewrite everything from scratch and this time in novel format.

I wrote four TV series, the first is called Jeronimo (the J is deliberate), the central piece of the Dome of Souls world. Next I wrote a prequel to Jeronimo called The Anatomy of Anarchy, then the two sequels of Jeronimo.

Things stopped there because I was turning away from screenplay format and wrote the pre-prequel of Jeronimo: Dome Child as a novel. A sixth story always spooked in my head but has so far never been written down.

Rewriting the Anatomy of Anarchy from scratch into novel format was much more fun than expected and it changed quite dramatically compared to the screenplay version.

The Anatomy is now finally ready for release and will come out in July (I hope… I’d like to bring it out in June already, but I will be on a longish international business trip plus some holidays that will interfere with the publishing plans)

Taking the release of the Anatomy as a trigger – five years after Dome Child, I took up the Dome Child again and revised it.

I was very pleased that I am still fully behind the story, the plot, and the characters of Dome Child, but the revision was very necessary, since I’ve learned a lot about writing the past 5 years. I reduced the Dome Child from from 397 to 371 pages, deleting some scenes, shortening others, revising wording. None of the shortening affects the overall plot. These are my greatest problems, I think, over-wordy sentences (I blame my German mother tongue for that) and repetition. I suffer from the phenomenon: some things are so “awesome”, they need to be said a couple of times in other words…

I am confident that the revised Dome Child is more compact and flows better now, but the process made me kinda wonder just how much I would throw out if I were to repeat this revision process in another five years?

You’re Nothing But A Number

Japan has fallen upon the big brother idea of giving all people living on its shaking islands a number. The story is adequately called “my number” or in Japanese-katakana English: mai nanba-

I have no clue what the practical use of this thing is supposed to be. They say it will simplify some bureaucratic shit, but at the moment it’s nothing but increasing bureaucratic shit and on top of that an excellent governmental tool to control its citizens and spy on them. The most unbelievable of the “my number” usages is that you need to register it with your bank and need to state it in the future if you want to make bigger international money transfers. WTF… I don’t want the government to know what I do with my hard earned money, damn it…

Anyway, everybody who lives in Japan for more than a year (I believe) already got the bloody number on a flimsy piece of paper. You could order a plastic card, which is what I did, and received a written notice that I can pick it up from the ward office responsible for my address some time in March. I couldn’t simply go there, but had to call them and make an appointment, which was only some two months after I received the notice. Ridiculous.

So, finally, my appointment for picking up the damned thing had arrived and I went to the ward office. Arrived there my appointment had apparently slipped through the registration net… pffffffff… first major mishap.

They made me wait for a bloody half hour and then the card’s expiration date was wrong because I got the original “my number” on the flimsy paper in January or so and in February my visa status changed from limited to permanent. So the official dude vanished again in the depths of his papers and needed another bloody half hour for writing onto the card that the expiration date is different.

In the meantime you have to think of several security codes for the card and input them into a computer system (now how secure is that, I wonder). The official dude was citing computer trouble for why it took so long to take care of me as one of his lame excuses.

So I spent an entire hour in that bloody ward office for a card that I don’t want… Needless to say that I got angry at them and told them what a crap this all is… I know it’s not their fault either but the incompetency, rule-stickiness and idiocy of such officials just drives me through the roof.

I felt very sorry for an old gentleman, over 80 for sure, who was going through the process parallel to me and he stood bewildered in front of those computer screens. Security codes? Input? Where? What for? How? What? The old guy was totally confused and didn’t seem very computer literate in the first place. Another official dude treated the poor guy like an idiot while explaining to him what he had to do with the computer.

Now I’ve got this stupid card that I will try to avoid using if ever possible… but my company has it already and my bank will get it if I don’t find another way to send money to Germany to feed my private retirement fund… big brother is watching you! No thanks! And greetings from the country of bewildering bureaucracy or was it bureaucrazy?

Ishigaki Island Report – Part 3

Kuroshima

I felt a bit better about the scooter knowing how I get to the ferry terminal and boldly rode there again. Next on the island list was Kuroshima. A speck between Ishigaki and Iriomote.

Funny, despite even less people living on Kuroshima, I found a sign with 202, it was less desolate and lonely than Hateruma. One influence might be that dairy farmers seem to be richer than vegetable farmers. The same sign stating 202 inhabitants stated over 2400 cows on the island. The houses in the settlement looked much nicer than the ones on Hateruma too, the road was better. All those small signs tell you that there is a bit more money on this island. It also comes with a sea turtle research center and small aquarium. They have a bunch of turtles and other local wildlife including cute little reef sharks that you can feed with small dead fish, which of course I did. I love sharks. They are very elegant and beautiful swimmers and the small ones aren’t scary either

Ishigaki Island Report – Part 2

Iriomote – Uehara side

Together with the lady from Canada, I went to Iriomote by speed boat. These speed boats are quite some monsters. They have turbo whatsoever engines and ride at 50 to 60 km/h. At such speeds the water becomes like rock and there is quite some bumping involved. The engine roars like a beast from hell and conversation in the back of the boat is impossible. Inside the cabin it’s still loud but you can talk to each other.



Iriomote is famous for its mangroves and untouched nature and we went by bus to the mouth of a river and booked a mangrove tour. The fantastic river looks like from an Indiana Jones movie.



The boat throws you off at the edge of its shippable terrain and from there you can hike for an hour to two waterfalls. The hike through the woods was wonderful. The vegetation reminded me of Able Tasman national park in New Zealand, curly farns everywhere.



The way close to the first waterfall is off limits, and you can only see it from afar. You can get much closer to the second one.



Then back to the boat landing place and it returns you to the river peer where you then have to wait for an hour for the bus back to the harbor. The day was perfect for this hike, sunny with a few clouds, but still astonishingly cool with some 25 Celsius only. A great day and Iriomote is breathtakingly beautiful.

Hateruma

There is no guarantee for the weather out at such islands. The forecast said it would go downhill from May 1st onwards and so I set out for the farthest-away island of Hateruma. That involved going to the ferry terminal with the scooter! I could only right straight and had to push it around corners but made it to the terminal all right and parking a scooter is indeed much easier than a car and cheaper too. I successfully dumped the thing in a bike and bicycle parking space next to the terminal for free.

The ride to Hateruma was bumpy, the weather heavily cloudy and cool. 500 people seem to be living on Hateruma and in the hazy distance you can see Iriomote looming.

Hateruma has, let’s be honest, only one real attraction, the Nishihama beach. It’s a stretch of two or three kilometers of the finest sand beach with glass-clear water and plenty of dead coral pieces on the shore.



You get around the island by bicycle and I rented one.

As soon as you start riding around the island you’re more or less alone. There are some fields with whatever growth and that’s it. The weather turned worse and it started to rain and it was quite cool and windy. The bad weather might have added to the feeling of “desolate” place.



There is another beach at the south of the island but I found it roped off, with a sign in Japanese that it’s too dangerous to swim there due to strong currents. I gave up on going to the most southern rock where there is apparently a signpost saying you are at the most southern spot of Japan. but rode through the settlement instead. The houses looked all rather old and shabby. One shack had a shop in it with minimum necessary groceries, one gas station, end of story. I rode back to the Nishihama beach and got rained at again. I love this end of the world kinda feeling, but Hateruma was a bit depressing! Mostly due to the weather I suppose. The boat ride back was again quite bumpy and I was happy to arrive safely at the hotel after another scooter ride.

Ishigaki Island Report – Part 1

My search for the “perfect” island continues. This time I went to the Yaeyama islands in Okinawa prefecture, which are another 100 or so kilometers southwest of the Miyako islands that I visited last year.

Climate wise they are of course alike, (very) humid subtropical.

Let me say again that I have fear of driving (myself, not being driven) anything faster than a bicycle. Last year in Miyako, I nevertheless rented a car, this year in Ishigaki I had the weird notion to want to rent a scooter, even though I’ve never sat on a scooter in my entire life…

More on that later

Island Greetings

Greetings from small islands somewhere in the Pacific east of Taiwan! Reports shall follow