Paddy K has a link to a site that covers stories about “The day’s local newspaper disappointment“. It is in Swedish, but Google will give you the gist. It collates lame stories of people whining about nothing that papers run to show, a) they care about the little person’s problems, b) they had fuck all else to fill space with.

We need such a service for the English speaking world.

In my new job I am responsible for covering 8 countries (Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia Herzegovina). Little by little I am working my way around all of them introducing myself to people. As a history geek of course it hasn’t escaped me that this makes up much of the old Austro-Hungarian empire. The big exception being Poland. Right now I am in Warsaw.

It’s not my first time here. I visited back in March 2007. Poland is the one country in my new stomping ground where I will make my visits by plane. With pretty much all the others, going by car or taking the train is the most practical. And what a change that makes after about 400 flights in the last 5 years. I took the train to Budapest last week. No queueing, no pointless security checks, just walk on, loads of leg room, huge windows with a great view, high speed Internet, seat power, restaurant car and a meal cart (dinner for less than €10), moving map of our progress, and city centre to city centre for €110, return, first class. I would never fly again if I had the choice.

After dealing with the early closing shops, and the lack of a smoking ban, it’s the accessibility of so much of Europe that is one of the most significant things to adapt to here. Although, unlike the other two this one isn’t in your face. But the fact there are half a dozen European capitals no further away by car than the west of Ireland on a bank holiday weekend is, to use the cliche, going to require a paradigm shift. If you are not Irish (or British) it may take some thinking to understand how isolating it is for us living on our island, where escape is something planned far in advance with flight or ferry bookings. A bit of isolationism really is part of our national mindset. I am hoping that my few years on the continent will open my mind in this regards in ways I will hardly realise.

The danger with this accessibility is that I have been lax about taking time to look at these places. I have two years, so I feel there is no hurry. I have to make sure that when I do come to go home I don’t regret all the things I haven’t done and places I haven’t visited.

In the mean time I have been trying to get to see a bit more of Vienna. Every year for about 6 weeks they set up an ice-skating rink outside the Rathus. I can’t skate myself, but I went along to enjoy the spectacle. It’s an amazing backdrop. The glühwein went down pretty well too.

One of the things I like about the continent is they are much more relaxed about pets. You see people with their dogs on public transport, or in some shops. You would never see that back home. Food shops of course bar dogs. But they do provide parking outside for them

I have jokingly said in the past that people should demonstrate that they are qualified to vote before they are given a ballot paper. Whatever your feelings on the Lisbon treaty right or wrong, the fact that 1/3 of people voted “No” because the treaty was going to bring in conscription is very worrying. Jason O’Mahony has come up with what is probably an easier way of discouraging people who have no business being in a polling station from voting - give them a tenner to go away. Maybe it is something worth looking into

Of course years from now when I hold high office, or am running for something this post will be dragged out of some murky corner of the Internet to bite me on the ass. But dem’s the breaks. Maybe I should be nicer to our wonderful, hardworking, under paid and under appreciated friends in the meeja?

…because the powerful feel they are entitled to it. A report in the Economist on some interesting behavioural research.

I have just had my first Austrian haircut, and it didn’t go too badly. At first I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out where I could get my flowing locks cut. My wanderings around the city hadn’t shown me anything that looked like a men’s barber. The locals in work let me know that here hairdressers tend to do both men and women.

It’s a scary experience walking into a hair salon for the first time in your life, when it is in a foriegn country, and you don’t speak the language. I think it also was the first time (since I took responsibility for getting my own hair cut) I had to make an appointment to get shorn.

They did find me an English speaking operative, so that made the next hurdles a bit easier - explaining that, I don’t want a cup of coffee, or a hair wash, and you can put away the scissors, just bring the clippers. This didn’t cause the consternation I had feared (or seen when I asked for the same thing in Beijing a few years ago), but they didn’t understand me when I asked for a “blade 2″ cut.

After a bit of trial and error the two of us figured out that I wanted a 6mm top, and a 3mm back and sides (I need to remember that). Things went pretty well after that, and I was pleasently surprised that it only cost me €15 in the end. That isn’t too bad a price even by Irish standards.

Now I just need to make sure I keep my hat on at all times, as 3-6mm of hair is not sufficient for the -7°C cold we have here!

A few years ago I got into a row/discussion with a few friends about Hugo Chavez. It was shortly after the attempted coup to remove the man, and while I wasn’t supporting the coup, I was saying the man was dangerous. The people across the table from me (heavily influenced by the RTE documentary on the events of 2002) were very supportive of Chavez. I haven’t repeated the discussion with them since. But I would be interested to hear their opinions on the man 8 years later, after he has shown that he will support any dictator around the world, no matter how odious as long as they are opposed to the US (e.g. Iran, Sudan), it can be argued that income inequality and poverty has increased in Venezuala under him, and he has undermined democracy to his advantage. But most especially he seems to be a complete loon. His latest deranged idea - the US deliberately triggered the earthquake in Haiti in order to occupy the country.

The man would be a joke and you could safely laugh at him, if he wasn’t the leader of a country of 26 million people who is destabilising the region all by himself.

I have been very quiet about Austria so far. Part of it is being busy with other things like house hunting with Laura last weekend, and part of it is knowing where to start. I am still finding my feet here. And there are loads of things I have never had to worry about when traveling that now are critical, because I can’t go home. Like getting my hair cut for example. The centre of Vienna doesn’t seem to have barbers, just hair dressers and I am not going to make an appointment with one of them to hand over €30 just for a blade 2 cut.

There are a whole load of other things I am getting used to. Like the fact that shop opening hours are very restricted here. Everything (and I mean everything other than bars, restaurants, and petrol stations) closes by 19:00 or 20:00 at each day. the do late night shopping on Thursdays and Fridays, but there is absolutely no Sunday shopping. The non-touristy streets of Vienna were like a ghost town on Sunday at lunch time. Coming from Ireland, where there is a 24/7 Dunnes down the road from me in Cornelscourt I am struggling a bit. You need to be well organised in stocking your larder, and/or be out of work early to do the shopping. And woe betide you if on the lord’s day you discover you need milk.

Overall I will describe that as something I am neutral on. I am negative about the smoking situation here. Again coming from Ireland (am I sounding sanctimonious yet?) I love our smoking ban, which will be 6 years old in March. Doesn’t time fly. They Austrians have yet to implement such a ban. This makes for stinky clothes when you go out. One restaurant we were in on Saturday wasn’t even sure which was the non-smoking section and in the end they let people smoke wherever they wanted. *cough* splutter * cough* get with the rest of Europe Austria. Shit if lawless Ireland can manage to successfully implement a ban the law abiding Austrians should have no trouble.

And that is another thing about the place. One of the ones I like, even if it might make the place a bit boring. They are all very law abiding. It’s most obvious at the pedestrian crossings. Everyone stands and waits for the man to turn green. Some will scuttle across the road if it is empty but no one will attempt it if there is a car in sight. Down on the metro there are no barriers. It is up to you to validate you ticket if required. Even the Swedes don’t trust their citizens that much, and have automated ticket machines. To be fair I did run into a ticket inspector once, but they are not as scary as the ones in Munich who have a serious paramilitary thing going on.

I must start sticking some pictures up. Maybe this weekend as I am here on my own.

Tschüss.

I was reading a Tech Radar article about Apple discussing changing their search engine from Google to Microsoft. Reading the article and thinking back over the history of these companies I got this vision of Orwell’s 1984 where there is permenant war between the three powers - Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. At any time two of them will be allied with the third, but never for long. The most important thing in this world war is not victory but the fight and ensuring none of the three becomes too big. Bit like our global tech companies a bit.

I forgot to mention this article from the Register. I think I would agree with pretty much everything in it.

Despite this being something of a travel blog I haven’t posted anything on the infamous underpants bomber. Mostly because pretty much everyone else (e.g. Schneier, or Gulliver for example) has said what has to be said already. The attempt was farcical, it was foiled by existing security measures, and the new security measures are even stupider than the attack. It’s just a pity that the voices of reason are being relegated to the fringes and not enough mainstream commentators are pointing out that the over reaction is leading to security measures that don’t actually provide any security, but just inconvenience passengers in the name of looking like something is being done.

Mark Mardell had a good analysis where much of the problem lies - the media. As he says:

There is a general assumption in America that al-Qaeda simply wants to kill as many Americans as possible, that murder is their objective. It is of course one of their goals but not for nothing are they, by many, still called terrorists. They are, after all, trying to effect political change by using violence to create a state of fear by terrorising people and, in a democracy, that can send politicians into a blind funk. Terrorists want to create terror.

The danger is that al-Qaeda did succeed on Christmas Day with the help of their unwitting foot soldiers in the American mass media. People here have been terrorised.

it is.. ..those who thought Bush got it right who are really soft on terrorism, giving al-Qaeda what they desire: a terrified United States that dances to their tune.

Too often the media takes this easy Chicken Licken approach to the story, running around declaring the sky is falling. That is the easy thing to do, far easier than to stop and be sensible. As Mardell points out, the…

mood of high seriousness has robbed the West of a really effective propaganda weapon. It has made it difficult to exploit the sheer ridiculousness of an underpants bomber. If the thought of the state of al-Qaeda’s undergarments made people snigger instead of quake, that would be a moral victory.

It’s almost a Shakespearean tragedy. You laugh at the terrorist plot, but end up crying because of the authorities reaction.