or as westerners know it: vienna. the capital of austria is quite nice. it's pretty obvious they serve a lot of tourists (even in the winter when we went). large sections of town are set up exclusively for tourists. for the non-german speakers, this is where you'd spend most of your time...although a large portion of the non-tourist catering population also speak passable english.
i felt almost completely at home there. most of this is attributable to my ability to conduct basic communication (greetings, ordering/buying things, etc.) in german. as it is a major tourist attraction as well, most things (like public transit) also have directions in the common european languages so if you happened to get lost just get the translation.
while we were there, i got to visit the christmas markt (christmas market...funny how they used the english word for christmas). as with any european style market, i enjoyed running around sampling the food. there were trinkets available as well, but i'm not much for trinket shopping. so i got to enjoy the food and practicing my german.
we also visited the schonbrunnschloss (schonbrunn palace...roughly). this was the summer residence of the habsburg dynasty. it was quite impressive, and an excellent demonstration of the power and influence of the austro-hungarian empire. the entire palace is huge! the building currently houses the museums of schonbrunn and sisi as well as provides housing for quite a number of people (or at least i assume that huge wing is housing as it would be rather large for a museum). in it's glory days when it was still functioning as a true palace, the royal court included over 1,000 attendants that were also housed in the building.
all in all, i loved the short trip. this is rather funny as my hosts (the long family) were not at all impressed, and prefer the 'comforts' of budapest. i suppose this is a good thing as they are missionaries to hungary; not austria. i hope they'll forgive me for not sharing their sentiments though. the next blog will include my experience(s) on their home turf.
2010-12-26
2010-12-19
travel (part 1)
well...i'm in hungary now so i thought i'd share my experience about the trip here (more about the rest of it will be posted later).
so first i had to get past the fascists at the airport (aka the transportation security administration). to my surprise, i discovered the indianapolis airport wasn't taking everyone through their new 'screening' methods (aka porn or grope). they seemed to be either rolling with a random or profiling system. i would have stopped to ask them about it, but i didn't want to be profiled/selected to be groped so i quietly moved along...this was, of course, after removing everything from my pockets, taking off my belt and shoes, and going through a metal detector. the metal detector's fine, but my shoes...really?
anyway...the little hopper (plane) going between indy and chicago was running late as they had to contend with snow and ice at both ends of their trip. you'd think they would account for cold weather as it was (after all) winter, but they didn't. this caused me to miss my connection in chicago and get re-routed to a later flight. that part was, surprisingly, easier than i expected: just run over to customer service and presto...easy (and no charge)! the only thing i had to do was shoot off a quick email to the receiving party over here (in hungary) informing them of my new itinerary. this is when i discovered just how convenient it is to have a smart-phone.
fast forward to duseldorf (in germany). i had to go through their screening process as well...i think i unnecessarily left their 'secure' area...i guess i'll find out on the way back through. anyway, their process is so much easier than ours. they simply had me remove everything metal from my person and walk through a metal detector; no removing of shoes or any of that nonsense. clearly, the TSA have lost all sense of reality, and are implementing unnecessary procedures. conspiracy theorists would claim it's a power grab to prepare us for the new fascist state, while i simply think what we're seeing is the result of government being too large and full of incompetent people (especially around the top).
after a bit of a wait, i hit the plane to budapest. apparently, they don't get a lot of air traffic here as the airport is tiny: it consists of the baggage claim section (2 small carousels), and a non-secure area that's only twice the size of the baggage claim section. the small size made it easy for me to recognize my bag did not arrive with me. the lost baggage claim process was fairly simple; i just had to wander between lufthansa, customs, and the airport's claim desk. other than the back and forth though...easy.
my bag finally did arrive about 30 hours after i did. the airline was kind enough to deliver it to the house (score)! i opened it up and possibly discovered why it was so late: my laptop had been disassembled and poorly re-assembled. i suspect this was done by none other than the no longer so friendly TSA; it would make sense as they're incompetent in everything else they do so why would laptop re-assembly be an exception? i find it rather disconcerting that dis-assembly was necessary to see there weren't any explosives in there as well as we have machines that could have determined it was clean. i guess they're fans of the more intrusive method; again, hardly a surprise from the TSA.
fortunately for me, my job insures i have no trouble fixing sloppy re-assembly of laptops. i get the feeling most people would have a little more trouble with it though. so if you don't want your electronics to be opened up and have who knows what done to them, don't put them in your checked baggage. that would be lesson #1.
lesson #2: lufthansa (a german airline) is far nicer than any american counterpart. they afford you more leg room (at least in economy class), their flight attendants are more friendly, and they're all multi-lingual. not that language is a problem when it comes to the more common ones like english, german, spanish, even greek...but i quickly discovered i've had zero exposure to hungarian. i've managed to learn 2-3 words since i've been here, but starting from a clean slate is quite frustrating.
which leads nicely into point #3: next time i travel to a foreign country, i'm going to at least learn some basic phrases. not being able to greet someone in another country in their own language is unacceptable (at least for me). this time, i did the typical american thing and hurled myself into a completely foreign country with no method of fending for myself. if i didn't have friends here, i'd be screwed.
well...i've gone on enough for now. more will follow about the rest of the trip later.
so first i had to get past the fascists at the airport (aka the transportation security administration). to my surprise, i discovered the indianapolis airport wasn't taking everyone through their new 'screening' methods (aka porn or grope). they seemed to be either rolling with a random or profiling system. i would have stopped to ask them about it, but i didn't want to be profiled/selected to be groped so i quietly moved along...this was, of course, after removing everything from my pockets, taking off my belt and shoes, and going through a metal detector. the metal detector's fine, but my shoes...really?
anyway...the little hopper (plane) going between indy and chicago was running late as they had to contend with snow and ice at both ends of their trip. you'd think they would account for cold weather as it was (after all) winter, but they didn't. this caused me to miss my connection in chicago and get re-routed to a later flight. that part was, surprisingly, easier than i expected: just run over to customer service and presto...easy (and no charge)! the only thing i had to do was shoot off a quick email to the receiving party over here (in hungary) informing them of my new itinerary. this is when i discovered just how convenient it is to have a smart-phone.
fast forward to duseldorf (in germany). i had to go through their screening process as well...i think i unnecessarily left their 'secure' area...i guess i'll find out on the way back through. anyway, their process is so much easier than ours. they simply had me remove everything metal from my person and walk through a metal detector; no removing of shoes or any of that nonsense. clearly, the TSA have lost all sense of reality, and are implementing unnecessary procedures. conspiracy theorists would claim it's a power grab to prepare us for the new fascist state, while i simply think what we're seeing is the result of government being too large and full of incompetent people (especially around the top).
after a bit of a wait, i hit the plane to budapest. apparently, they don't get a lot of air traffic here as the airport is tiny: it consists of the baggage claim section (2 small carousels), and a non-secure area that's only twice the size of the baggage claim section. the small size made it easy for me to recognize my bag did not arrive with me. the lost baggage claim process was fairly simple; i just had to wander between lufthansa, customs, and the airport's claim desk. other than the back and forth though...easy.
my bag finally did arrive about 30 hours after i did. the airline was kind enough to deliver it to the house (score)! i opened it up and possibly discovered why it was so late: my laptop had been disassembled and poorly re-assembled. i suspect this was done by none other than the no longer so friendly TSA; it would make sense as they're incompetent in everything else they do so why would laptop re-assembly be an exception? i find it rather disconcerting that dis-assembly was necessary to see there weren't any explosives in there as well as we have machines that could have determined it was clean. i guess they're fans of the more intrusive method; again, hardly a surprise from the TSA.
fortunately for me, my job insures i have no trouble fixing sloppy re-assembly of laptops. i get the feeling most people would have a little more trouble with it though. so if you don't want your electronics to be opened up and have who knows what done to them, don't put them in your checked baggage. that would be lesson #1.
lesson #2: lufthansa (a german airline) is far nicer than any american counterpart. they afford you more leg room (at least in economy class), their flight attendants are more friendly, and they're all multi-lingual. not that language is a problem when it comes to the more common ones like english, german, spanish, even greek...but i quickly discovered i've had zero exposure to hungarian. i've managed to learn 2-3 words since i've been here, but starting from a clean slate is quite frustrating.
which leads nicely into point #3: next time i travel to a foreign country, i'm going to at least learn some basic phrases. not being able to greet someone in another country in their own language is unacceptable (at least for me). this time, i did the typical american thing and hurled myself into a completely foreign country with no method of fending for myself. if i didn't have friends here, i'd be screwed.
well...i've gone on enough for now. more will follow about the rest of the trip later.
2010-12-09
wikileaks
so i don't know how many of you have been following the wikileaks news. i'll give a brief synopsis up to this point. as i'm sure all of you know, wikileaks is at the heart of an international drama of epic proportions because of their unfailing commitment to publishing material world governments strive maintain sole possession of.
so which government has the most secrets? the united states of america! that's right, our own government has more secrets than any other. i have no proof of this (of course) because proving it would require someone have access to every government secret across the globe. i'm quite certain, though, we the are the proprietors of the world's most secretive government. this is rather ironic as we started off as the world's most transparent.
as a result, the world's (arguably) sole superpower we are the best positioned and most concerned with an organization that's publishing secrets. it's become quite clear in this case, we are leveraging this position to it's fullest. to see this, we merely need to check out what's happening with wikileaks' spokesperson, and editor and chief; julian assange.
a few months ago, mr. assange was in sweden for a conference. during his stay, he had sex with a couple women. apparently, they weren't too pleased as they attempted to file charges against him. the swedish courts, however, would have none of it and dismissed the case. this was, of course, before wikileaks started publishing extremely embarrassing, and possibly destabilizing material.
fast forward to today and we see sweden has issued an arrest warrant for julain assange. this has to do with the same case their courts dispensed with a few months ago. but that's not all. the swedes have also failed to present any evidence against mr. assange; nor have they even presented charges. they're demanding his extradition (from britain) to sweden. so chances are good there's still no case against him.
there's speculation the united states is behind this as sweden has been used in the past to dispose of terrorists we'd rather not hold here. though there are more obvious cases of our government applying pressure to wikileaks. amazon stopped hosting wikileaks, and paypal froze mr. assange's account. there's no evidence here either, but i'm convinced these attacks were also the result of government pressure.
so there are several interrelated questions that come out of all this: 'is this action warranted', 'is wikileaks a terrorist organization'.
as a soldier who's been charged with keeping government secrets, one would think my answers to these questions would be yes. after all, that's the stance our government is taking. they've called wikileaks and all the journalists associated with it information terrorists, and are utilizing most of the 'weapons' in their arsenal to negate the 'threat'.
at first, i have to admit i agreed with this assessment. i was in a war zone surrounded by fellow members of the military, and my access to news was severely limited by both logistics and time. the brainwashing factors were high. fortunately, i've returned to civilization, and re-gained access to the free media. (this is opposed to the mainstream media that often become cheerleaders for our government.)
now i've heard 'wikileaks' side' of the argument. i've heard how they've redacted their leaks to protect the 'little guys' it would have otherwise condemned to death. (did you know, for example, the government used their own unabridged copies of the material on wikileaks when they cited how many people were in jeopardy.) the only things threatened by the wikileaks' postings are our government and its officials.
i'm of a mind this is a good thing as the world's biggest terrorist organization is now our own government. we terrorize the people we imprison and torture it guantanamo bay (innocent until proven guilty? please, we won't even try them in a civilized court). we terrorize the iraqi and afghan people (i've seen the collateral damage; it's not something i'd want anywhere). we even terrorize our own citizens (hello transportation security administration in our airports).
i truly hope julian assange is released; as i hope the onslaught of wikileaks will end. however, reality tells me mr. assange will probably end up in some secret prison to be held without trial. and wikileaks? i imagine mr. assange is merely the first of many reporters to be repressed.
so which government has the most secrets? the united states of america! that's right, our own government has more secrets than any other. i have no proof of this (of course) because proving it would require someone have access to every government secret across the globe. i'm quite certain, though, we the are the proprietors of the world's most secretive government. this is rather ironic as we started off as the world's most transparent.
as a result, the world's (arguably) sole superpower we are the best positioned and most concerned with an organization that's publishing secrets. it's become quite clear in this case, we are leveraging this position to it's fullest. to see this, we merely need to check out what's happening with wikileaks' spokesperson, and editor and chief; julian assange.
a few months ago, mr. assange was in sweden for a conference. during his stay, he had sex with a couple women. apparently, they weren't too pleased as they attempted to file charges against him. the swedish courts, however, would have none of it and dismissed the case. this was, of course, before wikileaks started publishing extremely embarrassing, and possibly destabilizing material.
fast forward to today and we see sweden has issued an arrest warrant for julain assange. this has to do with the same case their courts dispensed with a few months ago. but that's not all. the swedes have also failed to present any evidence against mr. assange; nor have they even presented charges. they're demanding his extradition (from britain) to sweden. so chances are good there's still no case against him.
there's speculation the united states is behind this as sweden has been used in the past to dispose of terrorists we'd rather not hold here. though there are more obvious cases of our government applying pressure to wikileaks. amazon stopped hosting wikileaks, and paypal froze mr. assange's account. there's no evidence here either, but i'm convinced these attacks were also the result of government pressure.
so there are several interrelated questions that come out of all this: 'is this action warranted', 'is wikileaks a terrorist organization'.
as a soldier who's been charged with keeping government secrets, one would think my answers to these questions would be yes. after all, that's the stance our government is taking. they've called wikileaks and all the journalists associated with it information terrorists, and are utilizing most of the 'weapons' in their arsenal to negate the 'threat'.
at first, i have to admit i agreed with this assessment. i was in a war zone surrounded by fellow members of the military, and my access to news was severely limited by both logistics and time. the brainwashing factors were high. fortunately, i've returned to civilization, and re-gained access to the free media. (this is opposed to the mainstream media that often become cheerleaders for our government.)
now i've heard 'wikileaks' side' of the argument. i've heard how they've redacted their leaks to protect the 'little guys' it would have otherwise condemned to death. (did you know, for example, the government used their own unabridged copies of the material on wikileaks when they cited how many people were in jeopardy.) the only things threatened by the wikileaks' postings are our government and its officials.
i'm of a mind this is a good thing as the world's biggest terrorist organization is now our own government. we terrorize the people we imprison and torture it guantanamo bay (innocent until proven guilty? please, we won't even try them in a civilized court). we terrorize the iraqi and afghan people (i've seen the collateral damage; it's not something i'd want anywhere). we even terrorize our own citizens (hello transportation security administration in our airports).
government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have....the course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.part of our government's growth and influence includes its ability to hold secrets that should not be kept. don't get me wrong here; there are secrets that absolutely need to be kept. what wikileaks has posted, however, do not fall into the category of necessary secrets.
- gerald ford
i truly hope julian assange is released; as i hope the onslaught of wikileaks will end. however, reality tells me mr. assange will probably end up in some secret prison to be held without trial. and wikileaks? i imagine mr. assange is merely the first of many reporters to be repressed.
i don't wanna be afraid
i don't wanna run away
i don't want to be here fading
it's more that I can take
i'm never gonna be the same
i threw it all away
i don't want to be here fading
just let go! (look what you do to me)
let go! (look what you do to me)
- red 'let go'
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