Home, thoughts on America and Europe

Home again, home again, jiggety jig.

I'm home and life has wrapped its warm sameness back around me, all its varied tendrils latching back on, down to/including my lethargy towards research. Of course, I can blame some of that on recovering from 2 weeks of mathmathmath, but it's mostly just a convenient excuse. I am unenthused.

It was jarring to walk around Chicago from one train station to another. Black people! Cabbies! The poor, the disenfranchised. The land of unfulfilled dreams, of unrealized hopes.

On the plane there was a program about how the Danes were the "happiest" country in the world. The Danes interviewed said that perhaps what was meant was "most content". The average work week is more like 35 hours. The country pays for as much college as you want, as long as it takes you. Everyone is roughly in the same income/living-bracket, all middle class. And their advice to America? Give up on the American dream. More is not better. More will not buy you happiness.

I was amused that the first movie following this was "The Bucket List", whose moral really is that the RichDivorcedWhiteMan's money will buy happiness, with the very slight catch that he only thinks to buy happiness and achieves it by sharing it with PoorButReligiousAndFamilyOrientedBlackMan.

We are a young country. We reward youth. We tear down the old to build up the new. Our attention spans are short and we dream big. We deny our mortality. We forget to take care of the old, of the environment -- we will live forever, we live now, we don't need to preserve anything because it's all about us. About our quest for happiness. Our guarantee to pursue happiness. Our entitlement.

Leaving Germany

My last day in Cologne/Germany, I re-check the train departure times and note that the ones heading straight to the Frankfurt Flughaven (Airport) are all ICE, or fast-trains. I remember Inna telling me that Eurail passes would not get me on such a train, and I remember also that when I read the rules, travel was allowed on all rail in Germany. So, deciding to perhaps play a little Russian roulette (if you have the wrong ticket, you are subject to fines on the order of 100 euro, which is 20 more euro than an actual ticket on this train costs), I get on the train that will put me in Frankfurt's airport about 3 hours before my flight. I board the train and ask to sit down to a nice little old German lady, who, against trends for people in Germany her age, actually does speak English. I look a bit worried as I realized I should have probably re-read the rules to make sure and the lady asks if I'm on the wrong train. I say no, but my ticket might not work. So, I settle in and wait for the conductor to eventually come by. Or not. The woman I am sitting next to is going to Munchen (Munich) to her nephew's wedding - he's marrying a korean girl, but came back to get married in Germany. Then they're going on a vacation by car to Austria.

Eventually the ticket-person came by and, indeed, Eurail passes work on superfast trains. Score. I should have been riding them all along. The regional trains are terrible (and, terribly cheap). If I make it back to Germany with another Eurail pass, I will make sure to either buy less days or travel more, but randomly. You know, hop a train to Hamburg to just tool around for one hour, and then hop on another train. Of course, I would like my next trip abroad to be less stressful. Inna pointed out that it probably would have been a better idea to travel before the workshop and conference, just due to how exhausted we were by the time we traveled. Then, you know, biking 70 km(about 43.5 miles, the furthest I've ever biked in one go) and hiking up a hill to sleep on uncomfortable beds didn't help. I think that probably shouldn't have been our first day of travel post-conference, because it really wiped me out.

Ah, so I got to the Frankfurt airport. This is not a good example of German efficiency. I think it has been cobbled together haphazardly over time, and is generally rather unpleasant and confusing.

The flight was close to 9 hours and followed by about 1.5 hours in customs, a 1 hr train ride to the Amtrak station and about 2.5 hours on the Amtrak train to Champaign. I didn't sleep on the train and got to bed around 3 am. I'm a trooper :P

Customs sucked. A lot. Also, now, if you want to visit the US, you have to be fingerprinted and photographed. No wonder people hate us.