blog traffic

A couple of days ago I wrote about a Bundesliga game I attended in Munich.  One poorly researched team name later and this little blog experienced more traffic in a single day than it received in my first year – in fact it blew the doors off the most recent monthly totals as well.  Yowza!

around the world – part 42.3 (the two ton sled)

The two ton sled

 

Cars are getting too damn smart for their own good; unfortunately Junior is going in the opposite direction.  Thinking I might save a few shekels – because the car rental agencies gouge on everything – I declined snow tires at the hire car station at Munich airport.   

Being an experienced Canuck, I surveyed the piddling amount of snow in the fields nearby, noted the otherwise dry roads and calculated the odds of encountering more snow during this trip – which given past trends should have been low to non-existent.  As it turns out, rather the opposite has occurred, snowing about two inches every night since arriving last week.  Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a cause for concern, except for the following: 

• The rental variant of this vehicle is not all wheel drive;
• It does have a very clever traction control computer that denies power to any wheel which might encounter ice, thus for instance making it a little challenging to get moving from a stop.  Yes, one can turn off the traction control, but then you are faced with the option of spinning the tires.  Oh, and did I mention it is an automatic?  Don’t ask, I drive stick, but it was all they had left;
• While the autobahn benefits from the snow clearing attentions of the highway authorities, local roads not so much;

So lets review: a slightly tired traveller thinking to save money declines snow tires on a  powerful saloon car without all wheel drive = 2 ton sled.

around the world – part 42.1 (the beautiful game, FC bayern edition)

02 Feb 2010:  Upperdate – apparently if one refers to a football club incorrectly, watch for the sudden spike in traffic.  Apologies to those who follow TSV 1860 Bayern, and thanks to those who corrected me.

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In which Junior goes to a Bundesliga Game.

Undoubtedly there are sports writers much more eloquent than I who could provide a readable summary of the game, say for instance on goal.com, or bundesliga.de - instead here are my thoughst about the entire experience.

We ( a US colleague and I) departed Greding just after noon on a motor coach filled with semi drunk German soccer fans for what would normally be only an  hour long trip.  Unfortunately just 5km down the autobahn we came up against the back end of a colossal weather induced ’stau’ (traffic jam – which we later learned was stopped for at least three hours).  Fortunately the parade of brake lights in front alerted the driver and tour leader to the lengthening jam ahead and our driver wisely dived off the motorway onto snow covered local roads where we continued on at a somewhat slower pace south towards Ingolstadt and then back onto the autobahn.  However while this slowed us considerably, we succeeded in avoiding the jam.  For the remainder of the inbound trip, traffic on the autobahn consisted of nearly equal parts soccer fans, Polish upper middle class families heading south to ski the alps and long suffering locals just trying to get home from Saturday shopping.  Consequently we arrived about an hour later than planned, but still with plenty of time to find beer and pretzels. As an aside, staying in a little town at a family owned hotel, where the staff knows you by name pays off in little things, such as the hotel owner’s son making all the arrangements for us to obtain tickets and transportation, – all paid through the front desk – and introductions with our tour host.  They made us very welcome, treating us to beer on the bus and asking kindly when we might be back.  It turns out that at home vs Hannover 96 could fit very nicely with my next trip.

will the climatists please now shut up…

the beautiful game (Bayern Munchen version)

Update 19 Dec 2009

5-2 vs  Hertha, and a UEFA CL draw against Fiorentina.   Doom and gloom banished.   Third place (9-6-2)  in the standings with momentum…

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Update 13 Dec 2009

5-1 vs Bochum.  Thats three points to the good!  Now 8-6-2 in the standings.

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Update 12 Dec 2009

7-6-2 in Bundesliga 1 – climbing up to number four with a sniff at Champions League qualifying (2010 season) with a win over Bochum today.

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Update 08 Dec 2009: 

Through to the knockout stages of UEFA Champions League with a 4-1  drubbing of Juventus.  That’s more like it!

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Update Nov 06 2009:

5-4-2 with a game tommorrow against FC Schalke 04 in Munich.  Need a win lads.

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Updated Oct 29 2009:

That’s better – or at least moving in the right direction. Bayern Munchen 5-3-2. Now on 18 points, they’re within a sniff of qualifiying for the Champions League.
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Updated Oct 10 2009:

Sigh.  8th overall in the league standings.  Bayern Munchen 3-3-2

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Update Aug 30 2009:

Seems like Arjen Robben delivered.  Two goals vs Vfl Wolfsburg.  Bayern Munchen 1-2-1. 

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Aug 28 2009:

Worst league start in 43 years 0-2-1; and

• FC Bayern Munchen signs Arjen Robben from Real Madrid.

I guess they had to do something.  Is it the right thing though?

it may be a failure, but swiss bank accounts will continue to grow

When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?

Hold a big environmental sleepover….

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And so it is over. All of the right thinking folks are terribly let down by PMSH – imagining perhaps that he had been elected to hand over a fantastic amount of our wealth to the keptocracies that characterise the developing world; all in an effort to obtain redemption of some sort for our imagined climate debt.  EU Referendum summarises nicely the gnashing of teeth and disappointment of the loony left, but quite rightly notes that it was always all about the money.    The National Post helpfully offers the coles notes version…..

Bottom line: They may be down, but they’re not out. Never underestimate the ability of the Rentier class to extract money from your wallet, all without benefit of democratic legitimacy natch…..

alarmists…

…..calling themselves GREEN, because they are too YELLOW to admit that they are REDS.

Lord Monckton on Climategate at the 2nd International Climate Conference from CFACT on Vimeo.

light blogging

Well- away from the ‘desk’ so to speak for a couple of weeks and realised I have added nothing in quite a while. Add in the fact that Christmas is fast approaching and with the littlest’s birthday tomorrow, I think I may be excused the lack of posts.

Anyway – back at it….

more auto goodness

no taxation without representation

Copenhagen:  The imposition of the largest tax grab on the western economies by unelected, unaccountable and undemocratic forces:

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By Václav Klaus

Many thanks for the invitation and for the courage to organize such an important gathering in the moment when political correctness tells you not to do it.

We are meeting one month before the Climate Change Copenhagen Summit and several weeks before the U.S. Senate hearing regarding the cap-and-trade scheme. For these reasons, today’s meeting can’t be an academic conference, even though the topic still needs academic discussion. There is no consensus — neither in science, nor in economic analysis or politics.

I have already been at a UN Summit in Copenhagen before. It was in 1995 at the so-called Social Summit. At that time, the Summit was attended by then U.S. Vice President Al Gore who — so it seems — will be there again this year. I did also attend, as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, but I don’t plan to go there now. I don’t see any chance to influence the results or to be listened to.

around the world – part 41.7 (poland)

Many moons ago, the mother of SWMBO was born in the town of Romanshof (now Romanowo), Netzekreis (county Netze) just north of the market town of Czarnkau in Poland.  She and her family, not being of the correct ethnicity (not Polish) and coincidently being on the losing side of the Second World War, as a seven year, were ‘invited’ to leave by the victorious Red Army.   There are delicate memories involving traumatic loss, dispossession, violence and so very slowly over the years I have been able to encourage her to offer up her recollections, supplemented by those of her older brother and now with opportunity to travel to Warsaw the prospect of visiting the mother in law’s birthplace engaged my curiosity….

Although I did not have the time to travel out towards Poznan, I did find quite a few websites dedicated to the geneology of German settlers in hinter Pomern, the area which encompasses the Netze.

name the car quiz

AND PASSED WITH AN ABOVE AVERAGE SCORE. B+

Quiz Created By Auto Insurance.org

around the world – part 41.5 (warsaw)

“Few cities can claim worse luck than Warsaw.  Over time the city has been burned by the Swedes, smashed by Russians and then flattened by Germans.  Not surprisingly all that’s left Warsaw looking like it’s gone ten rounds in a boxing ring.”

Hardly inspiring then.

Palace of Culture - Warsaw, October 2009

 Despite the ubiquitous grey brick buildings and the cold windy streets, there is something appealing about Warsaw though, and I think it is in the spirit of its residents.   They would certainly need it given all they have been through in the last century.

I had no idea, other than a vague understanding, of just how smashed this city was by 1945.   For instance the Jewish Ghetto was so thoroughly destroyed, levelled, that very few traces of its existence may be found today.  The only remaining portion of the wall is found in the courtyard of an apartment building at ul Sienna 55.  No longer than about twenty-five feet, it is one of the few items remaining of the Ghetto.  The area around it was completely transformed after the war, a grid pattern of streets, boulevards, parks, office towers, and of course the mighty Palace of Culture were superimposed over the pre-war streets and alleys. 

 More photos here.

around the world – part 41.3 (beer)

Does a body good…..tyskie, tyskie…

around the world – part 41.1 (warsaw)

A 'gift' from Stalin

When I think of Poland, I think of tragedy.  A country which has been intermittently independent, but more often under the thumb of one empire or another, Swedes, Germans and Russians to name just a few.   Tragic because they sit smack in the middle of the east-west european invasion route and thus were ravaged in the Great War, again in the aftermath of the October Revolution (a little known war between USSR and Poland from 1919 – 1921), and soon after the dismemberment by both Nazi Germany AND The Soviet Union in 1939, the two Warsaw Uprisings (1943 and 1944) which left the city in ruins, and of course the soul-destroying years of the communist regimes.  Poland lost the largest percentage of its citizens of any combatant nation during WWII.

And yet it survives.  I somehow get the feeling that if this country could ever catch a break, they might wield considerable influence within europe – but then again the nature of tragedies is such that what can be imagined never comes to pass.