A Continental Series of Tubes

By the way, Paris Metro subways are beautiful and not as sketchy as one would read, even though it might be smart to keep your belongings as close to you as possible. The stations are wide like squashed ovals, and have lots of seating and signage. Don’t expect to lay down if you’re stuck in the station for long. Also, prepare for lots of gates and stairs.

Paris Metro, Mabillon station

London Underground tube subways are claustrophobic as Hell, and you really do feel how small and constricted the tunnels actually are. The walls of the cars are not straight; they are rounded to fit the tube, which means you don’t have much floor for standing during peak ridership. Ventilation isn’t great, either. Also, some of the stations are so deep underground, you have to take an elevator and several escalators just to reach surface. Get comfortable with that, and you will be able to go anywhere.

London, Piccadilly Circus station

London has the Oyster card; get one and preload it with fare money, because you are charged between turnstiles, from the station into which you enter the transit system to the station from which you leave the transit system. You tap the card to login, and tap to logout and be charged.

Berlin’s U-Bahn is large and spacious, but trundles with an unknown speed. The stations are frequent, and usually lined with glossy tile, giving the typical Berlin vibe of clean-everything. The S-Bahn overground stations are elevated and as airy as airplane hangars. And the biggest station is the HauptBahnhoff, even though Zoologischer Station is the previous king of West Berlin.

Berlin S-Bahn (S5) line
Berlin, Potsdamer Platz U-Bahn station
Berlin, Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station

Berlin (and most European cites) require you to handle your tickets in the two-step method: 1) purchase the pass (usually 1 day), and then (most importantly) 2) validate your pass, which starts the timer on the ticket’s usefulness. If you buy a ticket but don’t validate it, you will get fined and/or kicked off the train by Kontrol. The validation machine is usually next to the ticket vending kiosk. And the Kontrollers usually don’t have uniforms; they’re in street clothes, and you will only know them by their badges and their handheld ticket verification devices. There are no turnstiles, so fare revenue is guaranteed only under the honor system of random Kontrol.

Zurich HBf

Zürich’s train stations are lined with steel, concrete, and shiny grey marble, and everything is as clean as a church bus and as punctual as you’d expect from Swiss time. The analog clocks at every platform have a second hand that runs fast and pauses at the top of the minute until a timing signal is sent down the line to start the next minute. That’s what you use to synchronize your wristwatch. The outside platforms have lots of overhead shelters, because it’s generally rainy there.

Zurich S4 S-Bahn station
Köln U-Bahn station

Finally, Köln (Cologne) has an U-Bahn/S-Bahn/Tram system that works very well, keeps great time, and gets you to most places in the city. Be prepared to wait a while on the platform, and you will be rewarded with a busy but clean ride.

Köln U/S-Bahn, route 18, Barbarossaplatz station

Filed under Travel Tips for Newbies and Yanks of All Stripes.

Fold, Stack, Wipe, Wash

One observation I have about Europe is how common it is for residents to have cloth napkins at their dinner tables. I don’t mean the thick, rich satin, fine-dining cloth napkins; I mean basic, all-cotton square cloths. Bedsheet material. Most households have holders for them on their tables, like a flat dish or tray, usually with a rock or hinged weight on top, for easy dispensing.

And you use your cloth all day, multiple meals. That’s why it’s important, and clever, to make your cloths out of a multitude of different prints and styles and mix them up, so your household members remember which is theirs throughout the day.

Then, when the day’s done, or when the cloth is so soiled it’s no longer useful, you toss it in the laundry and clean it to use again. Wash, hang, dry, repeat.

We stayed with a handful of people who made their own, and it’s a source of pride for some. They picked a random selection of cut-off fabric leftovers, took them home, ran a serge seam around the edge, and boom, no more paper napkins.

Me, I’m just a bachelor living alone, but lately I’ve had a change of heart about using fabric napkins. I carry a handkerchief of some sort in my backpack, and I can’t tell you how often it has come in handy (it’s a lot). So why not have some at home?

I think Europeans’ love for fabric napkins comes from necessity; many cities and nations have strict laws about landfill trash. Some places require residents to buy barcoded stickers for their bags. Others just don’t have large dumpsters or frequent service, and your options for throwing away lots of waste are limited and certainly not cheap. So you have to cut back, improvise, and be smart.

Several times on our trip we carried our trash with us as we checked out of the B&B. Being a group of 4, we generated a fair share of it. So in order to not be a financial burden on our B&B hosts (who would certainly pass the fee to us), we trucked our stuff out, and part of our transit to the next train was finding the nearest recycling receptacle. If we couldn’t dump our landfill trash somewhere nearby, we’d carry it to the station.

It’s small things like this that matter. If I’m only using paper napkins to wipe my mouth and hands while eating, do I really need a paper towel when a cloth would do?

No Constrictor

Guys, I hate to say this, but I have a confession. After decades of being a staunch Perl and Ruby zealot, I confess that I… I… I love Python.

A year ago, I started my current job at a research lab where Python is the lingua franca next to C. It’s just what the actual nerds use to prototype everything. I had never written, let alone seen a line of Python before starting there.

Within my first month, I had written a utility to control web-enabled power switches, and wrote a web service to control a farm of device outlets. Woah.

I’ve also built a GUI to interact with this system. Buttons, menus, icons, events! Me, doing event-based programming! Yes!

And, recently, I’ve built a client-side daemon that runs in the background and does some important USB stuff for a virtualized automation farm. I wrote a daemon! It starts at boot and writes to syslog! And listens for Unix signals! What!

All those damned years wasted trying to shoehorn Perl into my present needs. Thanks to a fat ecosystem of modules, lots of capabilities are within reach.

I no longer feel constricted.

Cold Chopped Veggie Salad

Tonight’s chopped raw veggie salad experiment: SUCCESS.

It’s bright, crunchy, and has a touch of heat. Can’t wait until it chills overnight!

The dillweed really adds a special something, and the tomato seeds, vinegar, and lemon juice brighten up the day.
  • 1 cucumber, chopped
  • 2 tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 red onion, chopped
  • 1/2 bunch of fresh parsley, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp dried dillweed
  • 1/2 tsp dried oregano
  • 1/2 tsp dried cilantro
  • 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
  • several dashes white wine vinegar
  • several dashes lemon juice
  • course grind black pepper
  • salt

Adjust according to taste. Tumble and mix thoroughly, then chill. And drool while it’s chilling.

Produce, Express, Vegetate

No real news to post, but it’s a new month and the last night of a holiday weekend, so here’s me at the keyboard. Didn’t really do that much over the weekend, and that’s exactly what I needed.

Well, that’s kinda a fib, but whatever. Actually went out a few times and sat among the drunken public. Read a little. OK, fine, a lot, really. Churning through Jack Kerouac’s “Desolation Angels“; it’s a great rag.

Took some time this weekend to do things at the apartment. I hate being at home, but sometimes I have to be at home. Saturday, I did something unusual: I broke my schedule and didn’t actually go to Epoch after breakfast and shower. Madness! Horror! Really though, I made my own coffee during breakfast and stayed home Saturday afternoon, managed to do a ton of work on my To-Do list. Funny how that happens.

Funny still is how most of my To-Do list involves something on my home workstation PC. Finished my trip journal. Grabbed a bunch of billing statements. Balanced my checkbook. Waxed the tadpole. Cleaned the bathroom. Even dropped off the dry cleaning and went to the hardware store to get stuff for a radio project, and then assembled that project. Outstanding!

How did I ever find the time to do all this? Wait, I know, it’s because I didn’t sit at the cafe for an afternoon and waste the most productive hours of my day sweating on a patio. Shocking!

Even picked up the latest Tool album “Fear Inoculum“, and found it to be a next-level opening of the third eye so far.

I miss doing stuff and being productive. I used to look forward to sitting in front of my PC and churning through a project to produce a piece of pure gold, but now that I’m always online, that I’m always split between realtime, realspace, and the virtual world, I don’t want to commit to do anything. Half-assed actions.

Meh. To hell with all that. I need product.

So yeah, anyway, Labor Day weekend has been a busy, busy success. As proof of that, please enjoy this picture of a badass cold veggie salad I made. Cheers!