Hanno's blog - Life

In eigener Sache - Umbau

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:44:00 +0200

Seit 2004 existiert nun dieses Blog von mir. Zeitweise viel genutzt, zeitweise weniger und in letzter Zeit kaum noch. Ein privates Projekt, ein Ort, an dem ich schreiben konnte was ich wollte.

Zwischenzeitlich hat sich bei mir einiges geändert. Ich schreibe weiterhin viel und gern, aber selten hier. Ich bin inzwischen primär als freier Journalist tätig und meine Texte können unter anderem bei der taz, bei Golem, bei Telepolis und gelegentlich sogar bei Zeit online gelesen werden. Mein Blog entwickelte sich zum unpassenden Relikt, gleichzeitig habe ich das Gefühl, dass ich endlich eine Selbstdarstellungsseite für meine journalistische Arbeit benötige und mein Blog dafür in seiner aktuellen Form denkbar ungeeignet ist.

Deshalb wird jetzt hier umgebaut. Mein Blog soll weiter existieren, zum einen natürlich als Archiv und zum anderen soll es nicht ganz sterben. Es wird immer wieder Anlässe geben, die für einen Blogeintrag besser geeignet sind als für einen journalistischen Text. Und wer weiß, je nach Laune wird es vielleicht auch wieder lebendiger.

Das Blog wird künftig unter blog.hboeck.de beheimatet. Abgesehen von der Startseite werden alle alten Links umgeleitet. Probleme bereiten könnte das für manche Feedreader und Aggregatoren. Alles, was HTTP-Redirects versteht, sollte weiter seine Inhalte finden.

Unter der Hauptdomain hboeck.de soll dann irgendwann ein Überblick über meine journalistische Arbeit zu finden sein. Vorerst gibt's hier auch schon eine notdürftige Übersicht über von mir verfasste Beiträge in anderen Medien.

Explain hard stuff with the 1000 most common words #UPGOERFIVE

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 11:51:57 +0100

Based on the XKCD comic "Up Goer Five", someone made a nice little tool: An online text editor that lets you only use the 1000 most common words in English. And ask you to explain a hard idea with it.

Nice idea. I gave it a try. The most obvious example to use was my diploma thesis (on RSA-PSS and provable security), where I always had a hard time to explain to anyone what it was all about.

Well, obviously math, proof, algorithm, encryption etc. all are forbidden, but I had a hard time with the fact that even words like "message" (or anything equivalent) don't seem to be in the top 1000.

Here we go:

When you talk to a friend, she or he knows you are the person in question. But when you do this a friend far away through computers, you can not be sure.
That's why computers have ways to let you know if the person you are talking to is really the right person.

The ways we use today have one problem: We are not sure that they work. It may be that a bad person knows a way to be able to tell you that he is in fact your friend. We do not think that there are such ways for bad persons, but we are not completely sure.

This is why some people try to find ways that are better. Where we can be sure that no bad person is able to tell you that he is your friend. With the known ways today this is not completely possible. But it is possible in parts.

I have looked at those better ways. And I have worked on bringing these better ways to your computer.

So - do you now have an idea what I was taking about?

I found this nice tool through Ben Goldacre, who tried to explain randomized trials, blinding, systematic review and publication bias - go there and read it. Knowing what publication bias and systematic reviews are is much more important for you than knowing what RSA-PSS is. You can leave cryptography to the experts, but you should care about your health. And for the record, I recently tried myself to explain publication bias (german only).

Languages and translation technology

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 22:53:19 +0100

Just recently, Microsoft research has made some progress in developing a device to do live translations from English into Mandarin. I'd like to share some thoughts with you about that.

If you read my blog on a regular basis, you will know that I traveled through Russia, Mongolia and China last year. If there's one big thing I learned on this trip, it's this: English language is - on a worldwide scale - much less prevalent than I thought. Call me a fool, but I just wasn't aware of that. I thought, okay, maybe many people won't understand English, but at least I'll always be able to find someone nearby who's able to translate. That just wasn't the case. I spent days in cities where I met nobody that shared any language knowledge with me.

I'm pretty sure that translation technologies will become really important in the not-so-distant future. For many people, they already are. I've learned about the opinions of swedish initiatives without any knowledge of swedish just by using Google translate. Google Chrome and the free variant Chromium show directly the option to send something through Google translate if it detects that it's not in your language (although that wasn't working with Mongolian when I was there last year). I was in hotels where the staff pointed me to their PC with an instance of Yandex translate or Baidu translate where I should type in my questions in English (Yandex is something like the russian Google, Baidu is something like the chinese Google). Despite all the shortcomings of today's translation services, people use them to circumvent language barriers.

Young people in those countries are often learning English today, but it's a matter of fact that this will only very slowly translate into a real change. Lots of barriers exist. Many countries have their own language and another language that's used as the "international communication language" that's not English. For example, you'll probably get along pretty well in most post-soviet countries with Russian, no matter if the countries have their own native language or not. This also happens in single countries with more than one language. People have their native language and learn the countries language as their first foreign language.
Some people think their language is especially important and this stops the adoption of English (France is especially known for that). Some people have the strange idea that supporting English language knowledge is equivalent to supporting US politics and therefore oppose it.

Yes, one can try to learn more languages (I'm trying it with Mandarin myself and if I'll ever feel I can try a fourth language it'll probably be Russian), but if you look on the world scale, it's a loosing battle. To get along worldwide, you'd probably have to learn at least five languages. If you are fluent in English, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic and Spanish, you're probably quite good, but I doubt there are many people on this planet able to do that. If you're one of them, you have my deepest respect (please leave a comment if you are).

If you'd pick two completely random people of the world population, it's quite likely that they don't share a common language.

I see no reason in principle why technology can't solve that. We're probably far away from a StarTrek-alike universal translator and sadly evolution hasn't brought us the Babelfish yet, but I'm pretty confident that we will see rapid improvements in this area and that will change a lot. This may sound somewhat pathetic, but I think this could be a crucial issue in fixing some of the big problems of our world - hate, racism, war. It's just plain simple: If you have friends in China, you're less likely to think that "the chinese people are bad" (I'm using this example because I feel this thought is especially prevalent amongst the left-alternative people who would never admit any racist thoughts - but that's probably a topic for a blog entry on its own). If you have friends in Iran, you're less likely to support your country fighting a war against Iran. But having friends requires being able to communicate with them. Being able to have friends without the necessity of a common language is a fascinating thought to me.

mycare.de und die Zaubermedizin

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 19:20:17 +0200

Folgende Nachricht habe ich heute an die Onlineapotheke mycare.de geschrieben.

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

Lassen Sie mich kurz etwas vorwegnehmen: Ich habe bereits einige Male bei mycare.de bestellt. Die Preise sind meist günstig und die Lieferungen erfolgten ohne Probleme. Ich teile auch nicht die kulturpessimistische Sorge mancher Zeitgenossen, die Onlineapotheken für schädlich oder gar für den Untergang des Abendlandes halten.

Meiner letzten bei Ihnen bestellten Lieferung lag eine Ausgabe des Magazins “Gesund durch Homöopathie”, herausgegeben von der Deutschen Homöopathie-Union (DHU), bei.

Homöopathie ist keine Medizin – es ist ein Glaubenssystem, das nicht auf wissenschaftlichen Fakten beruht. Homöopathische “Medikamente” bestehen aus Substanzen, die meist so hoch verdünnt sind, dass kein Molekül der Ursprungssubstanz mehr vorhanden ist. Nach den Ideen von Samuel Hahnemann, dem Erfinder der Homöopathie, führt die Verdünnung zu einer Verstärkung des Effekts.

Würde dies tatsächlich stimmen, müssten wir wohl große Teile der Biologie- und auch der Physikbücher umschreiben. So ist es kaum zu erklären, wie sich die Idee der potenzierten Information in Wasserlösungen mit so grundlegenden Dingen wie dem zweiten Hauptsatz der Thermodynamik in Einklang bringen lässt.

Aber – niemand muss die Physikbücher umschreiben, denn alles spricht dafür, dass es sich bei Homöopathie um Pseudomedizin handelt. Zahlreiche Metaanalysen kamen immer wieder zu dem selben Schluss: Bei homöopathischen Medikamenten wirkt lediglich der Placebo-Effekt.

Neben der Tatsache, dass es bei Homöopathie um Zaubermedizin geht, weise ich noch auf folgendes hin: Der Herausgeber der von ihnen verbreiteten Zeitschrift, die Deutschen Homöopathieunion, hatte erst kürzlich einen handfesten Skandal vorzuweisen. Sie finanzierte einen selbsternannten Journalisten, dessen Aufgabe darin bestand, Kritiker der Homöopathie anzuschwärzen. Die Details sind in einem Artikel der Süddeutschen Zeitung beschrieben, auf den ich hier gerne verweise [1].

Aber eigentlich brauche ich Ihnen das nicht zu erzählen. Denn ich gehe davon aus, dass auch bei einer Onlineapotheke Mitarbeiter mit medizinischem Sachverstand angestellt sind. Insofern wissen sie das alles längst, vermutlich besser als ich, der ich lediglich die Kompetenz eines Laien mit Interesse für Wissenschaft vorweisen kann.

Ich weiß nicht, was sie dazu motiviert, derart unwissenschaftliche Propaganda von einer Firma mit fragwürdigen Methoden zu verbreiten. Möglicherweise bekommen sie von der Deutschen Homöopathie-Union dafür Geld, möglicherweise denken sie, dass ihre Kunden derartige “Beigaben” schätzen. Ich halte es für schlicht unverantwortlich. Sie tragen dazu bei, dass unwissenschaftliches Denken gefördert wird. Als Apotheke – auch als Onlineapotheke – haben sie eine Verantwortung. Dazu gehört auch, Patienten keine unsachlichen oder falschen Informationen an die Hand zu geben. Ich werde mir gut überlegen, ob ich in Zukunft noch bei Ihnen einkaufen werde.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Hanno Böck

P.S.: Diese Mail werde ich auf meinem privaten Blog veröffentlichen. Sollten Sie mir hierauf antworten (was ich begrüßen würde), werde ich die Antwort dort ebenfalls veröffentlichen.

[1] http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/homoeopathie-lobby-im-netz-schmutzige-methoden-der-sanften-medizin-1.1397617

In der Hoffnung, dass ich nicht der einzige bin und irgendwann Apotheken damit aufhören, Hokuspokus als Medizin zu verkaufen.

Update: mycare.de hat geantwortet:

Homöopathie ist eine in Deutschland anerkannte alternativmedizinische Behandlungsmethode. So haben Arzt und Patient die Möglichkeit, neben der klassischen Medizin auch die der Homöopathie zu wählen. Viele Kunden von mycare zeigen aufgrund ihrer Bestellungen Interesse an der Homöopathie. Wir möchten dem Wunsch unserer Kunden gerecht werden und informieren daher regelmäßig mit unterschiedlichen Beilagen zu diesem Thema. Eine Beilagensperre können wir für Ihr Konto selbstverständlich einrichten, sofern Sie das wünschen.

And you thought 3D printers are useless

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 21:50:05 +0200

Several years ago I bought a kind of very simple wardrobe from IKEA. It's called Bardu and is made out of steel rods and a plastic covering. It stands on wheels.

There are small plastic piece that connects the plastic rods with the wheels. And one of them broke a while back. I went to IKEA and asked for a replacement part. They told me that they don't ship parts for such old items - but they have an offering quite similar to the Bardu that I could buy. Sadly, the design has changed and the wheels are directly connected, so no compatible replacement part. The E-Mail service from IKEA told me the same: No replacement parts for old products.

At this point I could've complained about the fact that we live in a crazy world where someone suggests to you buying a new piece of furniture because a small plastic part of the old one is broken.

I posted a message in the RepRap-forum asking for help. If you don't know the RepRap: It's a 3D-printer, creating objects based on computer models out of simple plastic. The RepRap is an Open Source project built partly out of parts printed on other 3D printers. The idea is: Everyone can (with enough time and passion) built his own RepRap, all the documentation is available online.

I quickly got a response from someone from France who was willing to give it a try and re-create the needed plastic part on his 3D printer. Some message exchange later I sent him the broken and a non-broken part. Today, I got my RepRap-printed replacement part. It fits in perfectly. I'm seriously impressed.

Object on Thingiverse

Update (2012/12/11): I don't want to hide the fact that the whole issue turned out to be much trickier than thought. The original piece broke after a while. DeuxVis was so nice to experiment with likely more stable designs and sent me some more printed parts, but the first one already broke again. You can read the details in the RepRap-forum.

Leihen

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 00:33:03 +0200

Ich spiele ja gelegentlich gerne ein gutes Videospiel. Und seit ungefähr 20 Jahren gerne jedes Spiel der Super Mario-Serie. Shigeru Miyamoto hat im vergangenen Jahr das neueste Werk fertiggestellt - Super Mario 3D Land. Die Videos, die ich gesehen hatte, sahen sehr vielversprechend aus.

Das Problem: Das Spiel ist für den Nintendo 3DS - und ich besitze keinen. Es ist nicht so, dass ich es mir nicht leisten könnte, mir so ein Gerät zu kaufen. Aber es erschien mir doch reichlich übertrieben - mit großer Warscheinlichkeit würde ich auf absehbare Zeit nur dieses eine Spiel spielen wollen. Wenn ich ein Spiel dann durchgespielt hab, ist mein Interesse, es nochmal zu spielen, in der Regel auch eher gering. Da der Nintendo 3DS noch relativ neu ist, ist auch ein gebrauchtes Gerät vergleichsweise teuer (etwas günstiger wird es auf ebay übrigens wenn man eins in Pink nimmt). Das hieße also eher abwarten, bis die Gebrauchtpreise in einigen Jahren günstig werden. Und überhaupt: Mein Interesse, die Menge an Zeug das in meiner Wohnung liegt und ich selten bis nie brauche, zu erhöhen, ist auch eher gering. Von jemand in meinem Bekanntenkreis, der einen 3DS hat, weiß ich gerade auch nicht.

Aber das große Internet ist so toll und hat eine Lösung für mich parat: Leihplattformen schießen gerade aus dem Boden - man nutzt Dinge gemeinsam und findet über das Internet Menschen, die gegen eine geringe Gebühr etwas ausleihen wollen. Bei leihdirwas.de habe ich mir - für einen sehr fairen Preis - einen 3DS mit Super Mario 3D Land geliehen. In meinem Fall quasi die perfekte Lösung.

Videoüberwachung in der Umkleidekabine - abgebaut

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:27:34 +0100

Im Frühjahr hatte ich die Thermen am Europa-Center in Berlin besucht - ein Luxus-Schwimmbad mit Sauna.

Ich habe in Sachen Videoüberwachung ja schon manches erlebt, aber das hat mich dann doch ziemlich erschrocken: In der Herrenumkleidekabine wurde per Kamera überwacht. Ich war zunächst ziemlich empört - und später dann auch ziemlich sicher, dass das kaum rechtlich zulässig sein kann. Eine kurze Google-Recherche zu ähnlichen Fällen bestätigte mir dies.

Erschwerend kam hinzu, dass man als Kunde das natürlich erst bemerkt, wenn man schon bezahlt hat. Ein Hinweisschild im Eingangsbereich oder ähnliches war nicht zu finden, wovon ich mich beim Gehen nochmals überzeugte.

Ich habe mich also folgerichtig an den Berliner Datenschutzbeauftragten gewandt. Vor wenigen Tagen erhielt ich nun einen dreiseitigen Brief mit dem - doch recht erfreulichen - Ergebnis.

Das Amt des Datenschutzbeauftragten hat eine datenschutzrechtliche Kontrolle der Räumlichkeiten vorgenommen. Sie sind zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass die Überwachung der Umkleide eindeutig gegen das Bundesdatenschutzgesetz verstößt. Weiterhin wurde festgestellt, dass die Überwachung im Eingangsbereich zwar zulässig ist, aber die Hinweise auf die Videoüberwachung unzureichend waren. Die Kameras in der Umkleide wurden entfernt und vor dem Eingang wurde ein Zusätzliches Hinweisschild angebracht.

Ich finde es doch erfreulich, dass man sich wenigstens manchmal noch gegen das Ausarten der Überwachung des öffentlichen Bereichs wehren kann. Ein ausdrückliches Lob an die Mitarbeiter der Berliner Datenschutzbehörde (mit denen ich schon in der Vergangenheit gute Erfahrungen gemacht habe).

Einweg oder Mehrweg?

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:27:18 +0200

Ich habe hier gerade zwei leere Bio-Zitronensaftflaschen. Die eine ist von Alnatura, die andere von Voelkel. Auf der Alnatura-Flasche ist deutlich "ohne Pfand" zu lesen, auf der Voelkel-Flasche "Für die Umwelt - Mehrweg" (siehe Foto).

Nur sind beide Flaschen bis auf das Etikett komplett identisch. Beide haben sogar eine identische Eingravierung am Boden: "어 ε - 0,2l 21,2 - E48". Insofern könnte man sich für die "kein Pfand"-Flasche von Alnatura vermutlich auch Pfand holen.

Ich hab mal an Alnatura und Voelkel geschrieben, ob sie mir das aufklären können. Ich berichte hier, wenn ich etwas erfahre.

Update:

Antwort von Alnatura:
Wir verkaufen den Alnatura Zitronensaft nicht nur in unseren Alnatura Super Natur Märkten, sondern auch über unsere Handelspartner wie beispielsweise dm-drogerie markt. Aus logistischen Gründen unserer Handelspartner gab es zu der aktuellen Verpackung (Einwegflasche) leider keine Alternative.

Wir verfolgen einen ständigen Verbesserungsprozess und geben Ihre Rückmeldung zu Mehrwegflaschen gerne auch an die zuständigen Kollegen aus dem Produktmanagement zur Prüfung weiter. Bitte haben Sie jedoch Verständnis dafür, dass wir Ihnen aufgrund der Vielzahl an Kundenanregungen keine Rückmeldung darüber geben können, ob und wann Ihr Wunsch umgesetzt wird.

Antwort von Völkel:
Die Voelkel Flasche ist definitiv eine Pfandflasche. Die Alnatura Flasche ist zwar dieselbe, wird aber aus irgendwelchen Gründen (vermutlich Logistische Gründe) nicht als solche benutzt, sondern als Einwegflasche.

Bei der Antwort von Alnatura hatte ich ein bisschen das Gefühl, dass sie meine Frage nicht wirklich gelesen hatten. So richtig schlau werde ich daraus jetzt auch nicht...

Vortragsfolien zu Wirtschaftswachstum und Stromsparen

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 19:19:17 +0200

Auf dem eben zu Ende gegangenen Klimacamp im rheinischen Braunkohlerevier habe ich zwei Vorträge gehalten und stelle hier die Vortragsfolien zur Verfügung. Web 2.0-Kompatibel gibt's die Folien auch auf Slideshare

Vortragsfolien "Wirtschaftswachstum" als ODP, als PDF und Online auf Slideshare
Vortragsfolien "Stromsparen" als ODP, als PDF und Online auf Slideshare

Der erste Vortrag baut teilweise auf alten Folien auf, die ich vor knapp 1,5 Jahren genutzt hatte.

Behind the great firewall

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:46:58 +0200

When thinking about China, probably many people associate this with censorship.

On my trip, I had the chance to see the infamous great firewall from the inside. I haven't done any deeper analysis, but I'll share some thinkgs I've observed. A couple of famous sites (for example Twitter, Flickr) are blocked. Contrary to what many people may believe, webpages that are often associated with Warez (Rapidshare, Pirate Bay) were also blocked. The situation with Wikipedia was mixed. Most of the time, I could read the texts on Wikipedia, but access to the image servers was blocked. At the end of our trip, I couldn't access Wikipedia any more.

I encountered no blocks on less famous sites, although I regularly surf sites that could be labelled politically controversial. Though this probably doesn't tell much, except that the chinese authorities are not very interested in blocking european websites.

Interesting may be that the blocking works on an IP level. DNS resolution of blocked sites still works, but you cannot ping the IPs. I haven't extensively tried to circumvent the censorship, as I had no pressing need for it. The only thing I tried was an SSH tunnel, but that usually wasn't possible as the connection never was fast and reliable enough for a stable SSH session.

Most Hotels and Hostels provide Internet access - but most of them by cable. Usually, in other countries today this is done via wireless lan. My theory on that is that a cable-based Internet access makes it easier to log activity associated to a specific person (you always have to show your passport when you check into a Hotel). But still, we had anonymous Internet access (both wireless and cable) at a few places.

Another thing I'd like to mention is what the (non-technical) censorship did with me. I knew that in China people cannot just write a blog, they need some kind of license for it. I was very unsure what this means for me as a forein traveller. I came to the conclusion that I likely won't get any trouble if I just write about my trip without touching any controversial topics. Although I hadn't planned to write anything, this was always in my mind and probably influenced my writings. There was one time where I self-censored myself. In the entry about Hong Kong, I originally had this part, which I removed before publishing:

Most notably it is a place where free speech is possible to a much higher degree than in mainland China. This makes it a very important place for political discussion about China in general. We saw chinese dissident groups that had their information tables and spread leaflets around the Kowloon harbour.

Not much and I luckily have the opportunity to publish it now.

Alternative routes through Kazakhstan

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 22:30:14 +0200

I have promised to write something about the route we had planned to take for the way back from China to Europe. We had several variants in mind, I'll list them all. All of them, however, have in common that they start in Ürümqi (乌鲁木齐, ئۈرۈمچی) - and as I already wrote, the train line to Ürümqi seems to be a bottleneck - it was booked out for an unknown amount of time.

Ürümqi is a town in the Uyghur province of China in the north-west. It is north of the Taklamakan desert. China's population is not evenly spread through the country. Most of the population lives in the eastern part. The west is sparsely populated and Ürümqi is one of the very few big cities in the west.

From Ürümqi, there are several options to go to Kazakhstan - there exist trains and busses both to Astana (Астана, أستانا), the current capital of Kazakhstan, and Almaty (Алматы, الماتى), the former capital.

Variant a: Twice through russia (our preferred option).

From Astana, there is a train directly to Kiev (Київ) in Ukraine. The train goes twice through russia. Once it scratches it before Oral / Uralsk (Орал). I think it doesn't even stop there. The other time it goes through the Caucasus region.

It should've been possible to buy the train ticket in Astana and then get a transit express visa in the russian consulate. I read some reports suggesting that EU people were able to do this. However, I was not entirely sure about that: Usually, a russian transit visa only allows to pass the country a single time. I don't know if crossing the country twice would've posed any problems.

Astana to Kiev is quite long - stopping was a problem, because you can only get the transit visa once you have the ticket for the whole journey. So our plan was to take the train just to Kharkiv (Харків) in the east of Ukraine. This would've limited the train trip to a bit more than two days. Still a lot, but acceptable for me.

Variant b: Once through russia.

Oral/Uralsk (Орал) in western Kazakhstan has its own russian embassy. As stated above, the train from Astana to Oral already crosses russia, but there's a way round: One can first take the train to Atyrau (Атырау) and then to Oral. This way, you don't leave Kazakhstan. The advantage: Lots of options to make stops, no overly long train trips.

The problem with this variant was that I had almost no information about the consulate in Oral: I haven't read a single report online that any EU citizen tried or successfully applied for a transit visa there. I only found some people asking that question, but without answers. So it was quite unsure if this would work.

Variant c: Avoiding russia altogether (option we originally intended to take).

It is also possible to avoid passing russia altogether. One can go by train to Atyrau (like in variant b), but then take a train on to Aktau (Ақтау) at the caspian see. From Aktau, there is a ferry service to Baku in Azerbaijan.

Now, this "ferry" has its own problems: It has no regular schedule. In fact, from what I read its no real ferry at all, but a cargo ship. It starts when there's enough cargo. So you have to get there and ask every day if there will be a ship today. Waiting times rank between some days and two weeks. I had liked to take that option, because I like travelling by ship and I thought that sounded like an interesting experience.

From Azerbaijan, one could take a train to Tbilis in Georgia and continue by bus to Istanbul in Turkey. From there, there is a train to Austria (the orient express sadly doesn't exist any more).

We had our visas ready for Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Georgia and Turkey are visa free for EU citizens.

If you look at a map, you may notice that there's another option: Going from Kazakhstan to Turkmenistan and Iran. However, that would've imposed getting two more visa plus the feeling that travelling through Iran might be a risk. So I haven't really investigated that option very much.

Unexpected difficulties on our trip

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:16:41 +0200

My Asia trip is over. I'll try to sum up some experiences I made.

In the end, we couldn't do a lot of things we had planned to do, especially for the China part of our trip. Due to a number of reasons, our approximate time plan completely didn't work. Sometimes this was due to a lack of information (e. g. not finding a ferry / a bus we've read about) and communication possibilities. A surprising problem was also the lack of internet information: It seems having a webpage is far less common in China, many transport operators, hotels or other venues had no internet presence at all, not even a chinese one.
Very time consuming were unplanned stops due to simple health problems like a cold.

I think I wrote that some times before, but I had never expected the difficulties with the language. The idea that English is some kind of "international communication language" is not very common in Russia and China - I think we stayed in a couple of cities where we didn't meet a single person we could talk to. I felt this was a great limitation for my possibilities to get to know those countries better.

Another unexpected difficulty was getting any medicine. I had thought that in any country in the world you should be able to get some equivalent medicine if you show the pharmacy personal the scientific name of the ingredient. This worked in Russia, but it didn't work in China - and I tried a lot of pharmacies. I suggest if you ever go to China, take everything you usually use to handle small issues like a cold or a headacke in large enough quantities.

In the preparation phase of the trip, I was often warned of safety issues like pickpocketing. This was almost a non-issue. Nothing was stolen from me and I don't remember even an attempt to do so, although we visited places like the Naran Tuul market in Ulaanbaatar, where everyone will tell you that pickpocketing is a big issue. I don't know if I was just lucky, but I had the feeling that using common sense and always looking after your belongings is enough to handle this.

Travelling without flying - how I failed

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 09:48:52 +0200

I haven't stepped into an airplane for about 12 years. I travelled a lot through Europe with ferries, trains, busses and hitchhiking. It was my plan to stick to that on this big trip.

It's a simple fact that there is no viable option to use airplanes on a regular basis in a responsible way. There is no thinkable way that all humans on this planet can have access to planes. It only works because it's a privilege of a rich minority. And there's no thinkable way of combating climate change with the current growth rate of the aviation industry - not to mention the dangers of Peak Oil and unconventional oil extraction.

Some environmentalists who like flying found a very creative way to circumwent this: Compensating emissions. You pay an amount of money that's invested in some climate project for every flight you do. If I had to name the three most ridiculous actions people invented in combating climate change, compensating flight emissions would certainly rank amongst them (for the other two I'd vote carrot mobs and lights off actions). As above, this only works for a very small minority of rich people.

Ok, so back to our trip. It was my plan to avoid flying. I wanted to proove myself and others that it's possible. I failed. I took a plane from Beijing back to Germany. For a relatively trivial reason: Our plan was to take a train to Urumqi, then go to Kazakhstan and then we had two options, one with a train through russia to Ukraine and one through the caspian see to Azerbaijan (I will describe those in detail in a later blog entry). All of them requried getting to Urumqi first. There's no alternative route with public transport. And here's the problem: All tickets to Urumqi were sold out - for the whole time they can be booked in advance. So we wouldn't get tickets for an unknown amount of time.

I the end, after checking all alternative options I could think of, I decided to take a plane back to Germany and shorten my trip. I wasn't that unhappy about it after all, because I experienced our trip much more exhausting than imagined.

There would've been one other option: Taking the transsiberian train back. But that imposes another difficulty that has to do with russias visa regulation. A russian tourist visa is valid for 30 days. So ours is expired. It is not possible to get two visa at the same time, so it was not possible to arrange this in advance (it was our original plan to go back through Russia). And it is not possible to get a russian tourist visa anywhere else than in your home country. It used to be possible in Hong Kong in the past, but recently russia has tightened its visa regulations and according to several online sources this is no longer the case. The only option is getting a Russian transit visa. But that means you have to do the whole trip in a row and have all the tickets to Moscow and further to another country ready beforehand. This means several days in a train without much possibility to pause. I decided that I'm not up for that. I already found the many long train trips we did very difficult, partly because I'm slightly claustrophobic. My girlfriend will do the train trip - I won't. If you are ever in the same situation and need a travel agency, I can suggest Monkey Shrine - they are quite expensive, but their service was excellent. They were able to arrange all tickets including ones from Moscow to Kiev or Tallin and offered a lot of different options for all parts of the trip.

Now I don't think that my single flight will change much. It was a symbolic thing. But I think that opening options for flightless travelling is essential and gets far too less attention. If people talk about environmental or sustainable tourism, the issue of aviation is rarely spoken about. Often enough the problem is just that it is never considered. Take the visa regulation: If you enter and leave a country with an airplane, you usually don't need any visa - even if you change the plane within the country. There's no comparable rule for trains. You even need a visa if you enter and leave a country in a train without a stop. If you're looking for organized transsiberian railway trips, almost all the time it's taking the train for one direction and the plane for the other. Different public transport options often don't fit very well together. I always illustrate this with an experience I had last year when I switched from the train in Zeebrugge in Belgium to the ferry to Edinburgh - there was not any proper footpath from the train to the ferry, although they were only some dozent meters apart. You had to either illegally cross the railway lines or walk on a big street without a footway. I think many missing links for travel options could be closed if there would be more people doing it (e. g. there is no ferry from Singapoure or other Asian countries to Australia and none between Russia and Alaska, although the way isn't that far).
These are just some unfinished thoughts, but I could imagine there is a need for a lobby for flightless travelling. There's much more one could write about it. Flightless travelling means slower travelling - which brings up a discussion about our relation to working time.

If you're interested in flightless travelling, the best online ressource I found is the great webpage seat61.

My trip ends here, but some more blog entries will follow with stuff I didn't find the time yet to write down.

Welcome to Fake Disneyland

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 21:52:11 +0200

Maybe you've heared that some years ago, a story about a fake Disneyland amusement park in China made some rumors in the media. As I love good fakes, I obviously had to take a look. The amusement park in question is Shijingshan Amusement Park ( 北京石景山游乐园) and is located in Beijing. It can easily be reached, as it has its own metro station.

The park had the advertisement slogan "Disneyland is too far to go" some years ago and some images of Mickey Mouse and other Disney figures in the park boosted the story (see Wikipedia for details). Also, like all Disneylands, the Park has a Cinderella castle. It seems in the meantime things have changed - we didn't see any Disney charakters there. The only thing that still reminds of the story is the Cinderella castle - but as much as Disneys lawyers might want this, Cinderella is not a Disney invention after all.
I even found a fake Mickey Mouse (at least I think it was fake, it looked somehow wrong) in Beijing, but it was not in the amusement park, it was in the olympic village.

The story of a fake Disneyland seems highly exaggerated. The Cinderella is probably no issue at all, as I doubt there's anything that makes it a special "Disney-Cinderella". I'm not sure if there was a copyright violation at all: The fake Mickey Mouse and other figures in combination with the solgan could probably be considered parody - which is legally allowed in most of the world's copyright laws.

The park itself was kind of weird. Large parts of it were in really bad shape. Some looked like a construction site, many parts were not operational. On the other hand, other parts of it were really well-designed. One could hardly imagine that this was the same park.

A nice thing to mention: They had a dance dance revolution like arcade machine - but the game on it was StepMania - a free software game. I think this is the first time I saw a free software game in an arcade machine.

Unlike most european amusement parks, the pricing concept here is different - the entrance fee costs almost nothing (10 Yuan, approximately 1 €), but you pay for every ride.

Pictures from the park

Beijing

nospam@example.com (Hanno Böck) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 08:56:46 +0200

After Hong Kong, we left the south of China and went on to the capital Beijing (北京). The first days we stayed at a very helpful couchsurfer, later we switched to a Hostel again. That was kind of difficult. In China, not all Hotels are allowed to take foreigners - they need a special license for that. We knew that before, but we never found it to be a problem - at all other places we never went into a Hotel that rejected us. My impression is this rule is only enforced in the capital. Many Hotels are booked out at the moment and we had an unplesant experience with the Drum Tower Hostel: We got a confirmation per email the day before that they have a free room for us. When we got there, there was no free room. When we showed them the email, one of the Hostel's staff laughed at us. We didn't find this very funny.

We were in Beijing during the birthday of the chinese communist party (CCP). We didn't notice that much of it, except a big monument on Tian'anmen square (天安门广场).

We had some trouble with our next travelling steps, which I'll write up in detail in one of the next blog entries.

Pictures from Beijing