China is cleaner than Zurich!

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The first reaction of most people who’ve never been to Switzerland’s city of Zürich when they come here: how can a place be so clean?!

And of course, most people who’ve been to big Chinese cities like Shanghai or Beijing have a similar reaction: how can a place be so dirty?

Well . . . if you think China is dirty, think again!  The tourist island of Hainan is at least 10 to 15 times cleaner than the cleanest city in Europe!

Here is a view of downtown Hainan from the city park, with the Hilton Hotel framed between the trees:

And here’s another view of dowtown Hainan, taken from a beautiful park built along the north coast of the island:

Why is Hainan so clean?  The government has mandated this: strict fines for pollution, a huge staff of people to keep it clean.  And the amazing part: only electric vehicles are allowed in some areas of the city, as you can see from the electric scooters here:

It probably also helps that Hainan is a small tropical island, to the rains and winds keep the air clean.

 

Incredible Baroque Church

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Located deep in Southern German Schwabian landscape, it does not look impressive from the outside; in fact, it is one of the most boring, plain church facades I’ve ever seen:

But when you step inside, your brain explodes:

 

As you walk around the church and look deeper and deeper, you’ll find that even the gold and diamond encrusted details have gold and diamond encrusted details:

It might be so boring on the outside because in fact it is not a church, but a Benedictine Abbey.

If you want to visit, don’t worry about tourists. I don’t think anyone outside of the locals know that this place exists – and probably even they avoid it, to keep their brains from exploding.

Fancy trucks

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Just as in Europe or the U.S., truck drivers who are owners/operators usually like to decorate their trucks.  Perhaps the Indians take it to the next level, as this snap from a truck stop in Rajasthan shows:

In this snap, the owner is on the left.

True story: The first snap I took was of the empty truck – no people.  Then two guys (on the right) jumped into scene and wanted to be photographed.  Then the owner came along, tried to smash his two younger “lakeys” with a big stick he was carrying, made it clear to me that HE was the owner . . . and he had me take a photo with him on the left, and his “hired hands” on the right.

Moral of the story for me: first ask – and be careful of truck drivers carrying sticks.

(PS. In case you are interested, I priced out Indian trucks like this one. At current conversion rates, trucks like this one can start at about $15K – but a Kenworth in the U.S. can easily cost ten times this amount. Believe it or not, if I did the arithmetic correctly, and adjusted for local currency, Indian truck drivers can earn “more or less” the same as their American counterparts.)

Let sleeping camels lie

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I took this picture of a sleeping camel in  Rajasthan, India:

What is really interesting, and what I never really thought deeply about until I saw this picture, are the various patches of calloused skin, particularly the one in the center between the front two legs. When camels stand up or sit down, it is this part of their bodies that presses against the ground.

I’ve seen camel roadkill, and it is much, much worse.

Following Jason and the Argonauts

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One of my favorite all time stories and movies is called Jason and the Argonauts. All the scenes were memorable, but who could forget this especially memorable scene:

Many historians believe this chronicles events dating back to around 1300 BC.

So on a recent trip to Turkey, it was a thrill for me to take this photograph of the Bosphorus Strait opening to the Black Sea – the original location that the Gods tried to destroy Jason’s ship by rolling huge boulders into the water to crush him.

This ship about to cross into the Black Sea looks pretty safe from huge metal statues and any boulder hazards.

Big Schwabian Bug

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I saw this fellow in the Southern German town of Zwiefalten.  At over an inch long, he looks somewhat like a cross between a Jerusalem cricket and an earwig – maybe a Jerusalem earwig?  It on my to-do list to one day learn what kind of a bug he is.

In case you didn’t catch it, the town is named Zwiefalten, not Zweifalten. I’ve never understood why, but vowel shifts from /e/ to /i/ (Gleichfalls –> Gliichfaus) are a common feature of the Alemannisch language, which is spoken in that area.

Hungry seagull

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Well, probably they are all hungry, all the time.

This fellow joined me for lunch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida:

I’m not making this up: this fellow was so used to humans that he not only ate out of my hand but ate WITH me, sitting next to me and taking whatever he wanted from my plate.  I wonder if this is how the race of dogs originally got their start?

Slow cooker

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The process of slow cooking is so effective because some chemical reactions that occur during cooking, such as the elimination of the chemicals that cause meat to be tough, require time.

Ingredients:

In the slow cooker:

Final result over pasta:

World’s highest tunnel ventilation shaft?

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I don’t know if it is or it isn’t.  But this photograph was taken at the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland, at an elevation of 2106 m high in the Swiss Aps:

And hundreds of feet below this open shaft is the Gotthard Tunnel, a two lane road that lets automobiles and trucks pass underneath the Swiss Alps. It was build in 1882 and until recently one of the world’s longest tunnels.  Even from the point at where I am standing you can hear the roar of the traffic deep underground.

An amazing bit of trivia that goes directly to the heart of Swiss innovation: dynamite was invented in 1867, and this tunnel project was the first large scale industrial use of dynamite in the world.

Joshua trees and giant sloths

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This is a picture of a Joshua tree that I took in the Mohave desert:

And this is an artist’s view of the giant sloth, which roamed the Mohave desert until their extinction about 11,000 years ago:

Joshua trees are an endangered species, and scientists now believe that the demise of the giant sloth had led to their endangerment. The sloths would eat the flowers of the tree, and the seeds would be disbursed in their dung. Without any more sloths, it is harder for the trees to reproduce.

Just imagine the giant sloth bending over to eat some flowers:

Swimming pool

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That’s a swimming pool high in the sky, spanning these three towers in Singapore:

It’s called the Infinity Pool, and it belongs to the Marina Sands hotel. Coincidentally, I was visiting on the day that the hotel management was doing the handover from the building company, and I got to watch the “walk-thru.”  SCARY STUFF, talking about cracks, defects, etc.

Fish, chips, and mushy peas

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Even though I am an American, I’ve long known about fish and chips. In fact, I can still sing the Arthur Treater’s (“the original fish and chips”) jingle – and what you might not know is that Arthur Treater’s is an Ohio establishment, from just a few miles from where I grew up!

So when a good friend of mine invited me to try some real fish and chips and mushy peas – in the part of Northern England where it’s most famous, no less! – I immediately thought: Peas? Mushy peas?  What do peas have to do with fish and chips? And are English cooks so bad they can’t cook up nice, firm peas – do they have to be mushy?

Well, here is what one of the best fish and chips restaurants in the seaside Yorkshire town of Whitby:

And those green things: that’s the mushy peas.  I would have never believed it until I tried it, but mushy peas do go well with the fish. And of course the fish itself – I can tell you, this batter fried fish is in a completely different category than anything I’ve ever tasted.

Oh, and that plastic bowl in the middle contains little pieces of batter that have dripped off into the oil. Not shown is the mash vinegar that the English love to pour over their fish.

(Correction:  Above I stated “one of the best fish and chips restaurants” but I have since learned that this was Hadley’s, which has been rated THE BEST fish and chips restaurant!)

Hidden canals #3: Vanishing near the Rivetoile

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The nineteenth century saw an explosion of canal building, and with good cause: railroads were a monopoly, and trucks and automobiles had yet to be invented.

But today, many of these canals are disappearing fast – but not overnight. So they present a wonderful opportunity to watch how and where they slowly slip from reality into archaeology.  I’ve provided some examples here and here.

Below you’ll see a new landmark site in the middle of downtown Strasbourg, the Rivetoile “complex.” It’s a shopping center / underground parking garage / apartments / movie theater all rolled into one.  The old historic cranes are a reminder of the industrial past, and the water looks wonderful, filled with seagulls, swans, and an exploding community of muskrats:

(By the way, a few years ago it was rare to see a single muskrat, but now there are so many – including some really big, fat ones – and they are not shy about approaching visitors and begging for food. This is probably why the population has exploded.)

But this is about all the visitors and tourists will see. If you don’t mind the smell of urine and the occasional homeless person, you can explore further down the canal and you’ll find the original railroad tracks that were used to pull the boats down the canal:

Back in the day, even this would have been quite modern.  The earliest canals relied on horses to pull the barges along.

Stone sculptures in Sofia

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When I was building an IT organization in Bulgaria, I’d often take long walks through the capital city of Sofia.  It’s a wonderful old city, whose intrinsic and ancient beauty was still visible underneath the more recent Communist neglect.  Anyway, in addition to the old stuff, there was plenty of new stuff there as well, such as stone sculptures like this:

and this:

and this:

I’m not sure if they are still there or who the artist was. As soon as I find out, I’ll update this blog!

Oldest building in Sofia

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In Bulgaria you can see some of the oldest buildings and ruins and structures in all of Europe.

This is the Church of St. George, dating back to the year 400:

What’s just amazing is that you are free to enter the church, touch the old stone walls, and even walk on a real section of a real Roman road located outside!

The writing on this placque looks Russian, but be careful – it’s not!  The Cyrillic alphabet  was created by two Bulgarian brothers, which just adds to the wonders and great gifts that Bulgaria has to offer!

School discipline in Hainan

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I took this photo of schoolchildren, lined up outside their school, in Hainan, China. The temperature was 35 C, and the children stood in this organized manner for 2 hours, without moving. Here’s what it looked like from my hotel room on the 55th floor:

And here is a blow-up of the children in the school yard – amazing.