Family members building the basement

This blog was supposed to describe my coming to terms with living in the US: the differences, similarities, surprises, eye-openers and frustrations. However, until today, I've been postponing a post about one of the essentials of American culture - and one that confuses me terribly: the Founding Fathers (not my capitalisation).

Of course one would expect some level of idolatry - after all the country that gave use Hollywood is very proud of its independence, unlike countries like Australia and Canada who claim independence while being pervaded of nostalgia for Britain, clinging to an anachronistic monarchy like a toddler to its mother's apron. But idolatry isn't a sufficient description of what's going on here: the fact that you find the founding fathers everywhere (banknotes carry their images, cities, newspapers and universities carry their names) is only part of the issue: the thing that really amazes me is that everyone - without exception - seems to think them infallible and whatever side of the political divide you're on, you'll call on the founding fathers for support.

The unquestioning adoration of these guys seems ultimate. In his political manifesto ("The Audacity of Hope"), Barack Obama writes how he looks up to them and how he studied their (and Lincoln's) writings in a bid to gain insight into politics and into what course the country should take. The one thing Fox News and John Stewart (respectively the default source of news and information for the political right and left) seem to agree upon, is that the founding fathers are untouchable: you don't ridicule them, you don't evaluate them, you don't question anything about them. The independent podcast commentator Dan Carlin whose main selling point is that he is so independent that he upsets both Democrats and Republicans, does exactly the same: whatever the founding fathers wrote, is scripture and untouchable. Even - and now it's really starting to sound like a rosebud-and-moonshine-everyone-is-happy Disney film - even the ever-shocking, inexcusably obnoxious animated sitcom South Park, who drag everyone through the dirt in ways unthinkable only ten years ago, even they do not question the founding fathers. The only episode I've found where they make an appearance, states (Episode 701):

This country was founded by some of the smartest thinkers the world has ever seen.

That particular episode (broadcast on 9 April 2003) discussed the Iraq war and the way in which both pro-war and anti-war groups claim the founding fathers to be on their side. To solve this conundrum, one of the kids travels back to 1776 and hears the founding fathers debate whether their country is to be a warmongering or a peace-loving country. They decide it should be both. At this point, I would think the moral of the story could easily be that the founding fathers were only human after all and that a constitution that was set up over 200 years ago to organise a limited number of colonies focussed on manual labour and trade, that such a constitution and the people behind them, could hardly have an opinion - or any guiding thoughts for that matter - on 9/11, Al Qaeda or going to war in Iraq. Interestingly, that's not what the moral of the episode turned out to be at all: they pointed out that the government had been given the power to go to war whenever it felt the need, while the people had been given the freedom of speech to voice their anger at the government, thereby putting the blame if anything went wrong, on the president instead of on the country. Of course there could be sarcasm in there and we may not have to take this at face value: the episode could easily be interpreted to be an attack on Bush - or on rednecks or on peace-demonstrators - you could really go just about in any direction you like with this, except... it really does not criticise the founding fathers, however easy that would have been.

Seeing all these agreements and realising that the American constitution has guided this country from its humble beginnings (demanding independence because they were taxed without being represented in parliament - inhabitants of DC must see the irony in this) to two world wars and throughout the cold war as one of only two superpowers in the world - while only being amended 27 times since 1776 (12 of which were proposed before the end of the 18^th century!)... that makes me very suspicious. If apparatchiks, presidents, comedians, independents, intelligent people and idiots all agree without a single note of dissent, that really brings the 1984 feeling home to me - surely there must be something really wrong, really dangerously wrong and some horrible creature will eat me if I think of telling the wider world?

Luckily for my peace of mind, I stumbled upon Gore Vidal and the first book ("Burr") of his series on the history of the US of A. I had read the last book of that series ("The Golden Age") years ago and it painted a really positive picture of F.D. Roosevelt, so I had no reason to suspect this book would be all too critical. Yet it was. It painted Washington as in incompetent fool and most of the other founding fathers as insubstantial minions doing his bidding. It doesn't leave any room for doubt when stating that the French won the war of independence, in spite of the founding fathers, not because of them. It goes straight against everything I had always heard and in doing so, it was very much a refreshing read.

Now I guess the truth lies in the middle as it always does, because the founding fathers were human after all. However, to slightly misquote the Simpsons (Episode 144): who cares if the founding fathers weren't what we believe them to be? If it makes people happy and allows them to live in peace, then why not settle for a white lie?

Paris - simply Paris

While New York kept surprising me in not being quite what I expected, Paris didn't surprise me at all. In fact, from the very first moment onwards, the familiar style of the buildings and avenues almost made me feel a local even though I had only been to Paris once before - for a single day.

If you have trouble picturing the "familiar style" I mention, then have a look at this. It's a paiting from 1898, courtesy of Wikipedia. The charriots have been replaced by cars but apart from that, everything still looks exactly the same - and exactly the same as it looks in every movie you may ever have seen, that played in Paris. (Ratatouille and Moulin Rouge come to mind, but I'm sure there must be heaps I'm forgetting.)

It turns out this recognisable uniformity in architecture is mainly due to a massive remodelling of the city in the mid-to-late 19^th century where large parts of the city were dramatically torn down in order to reshape the city. Pulling off such an authoritarian effort sounds like the sort of extravagance that may have been typical of pre-revolutionary France, but not exactly what I expected hardly 60 years after the revolution. Yet, there is something to be said for it, because it definitely doesn't make Paris ugly.

Partly I guess that is because it would be really quite hard to make Paris look ugly. Wherever you go, whatever direction you turn to, you will stumble upon some monument, park or fascinating building. The number of sights to see and places to go really seem to be without end. (I'll admit that the subjective density of worthwhile sights might be increased by my "slightly-higher-than-average" walking pace, but even so Paris is a nice city to look at.)

Paris is also a big city. As always, I didn't fully appreciate the scale when I checked the maps to find a hostel that was near the conference venue - so between the fact that I managed to book a hotel on the opposite end of the city and the fact that the conference was conveniently organised at locations on opposite sides of the Quartier Latin, I managed to spend a lot of time walking the Parisian streets. (I cannot tell you how I delighted in having proper sidewalks again!)

Other positive things about Paris are the bins that really are everywhere and that prevent junk from littering the streets. Sadly that logic doesn't count for everything, though, since the large number of public toilets (almost though not quite as omnipresent as the bins) do not rid Paris of certain odours which I could have done without. Maybe that has something to do with the tramps (who aren't really all that prevalent but you definitely do see them sleeping on the streets), or with the nightlife which yours truly can of course not comment on. (You do know me better than that, right?)

One major annoyance is the large number of tourists. Being a foreigner myself (and lacking enough french skills to pull off pretending to be a local), I cannot say I mind noticing my barman is Scottish or Singaporese and if the first pub you hit upon turns out to be Irish and has the Ashes on the telly, who would I be to complain? (Especially not once I noticed one end of the pub to be full of Englishmen and the other half full of Aussies. Guess where I was sitting...)

But I can imagine it would start to annoy me to have people speak English to me all the time, to have to deal with unsuspecting, ignorant aliens performing random walks on your streets and sidewalks every day, not being able to take in the beautiful buildings, churches and parks without having a crowd of Nikons obscuring the view. In fact, walking up the stairs to the Sacré Cœur it's hard to notice the Basilica for the throng of visitors who meander about like cattle. In a way I guess it's interesting to realise how annoyed I can get when I find myself doing exactly as the masses - following the tracks that are laid out for me, going to see exactly what they want me to see. (I guess that annoyance and in-built nonconformity is part of what makes me a physicist rather than an accountant.)

But really, the view from the Sacré Cœur - like all the rest of Paris - is worth your while. Just beware and approach it from the back instead of the front. Saves your elbows some work.

Here is the "news"

I've just watched the only Belgian news podcast that seemed to be up-to-date (latest update on 28 July 2009). Turns out some interesting things have happened last July. For example, Hillary Clinton is still in the race for the White House, after defeating Barack Obama in Ohio:

(I'm not kidding you: see 28/07/2009 in the title? There you go.)

Also, there was an offset between the sound and vision - 7 sec at the start, 100 sec at the end. Interestingly this gave Elio Di Rupo the voice of Yves Leterme. (And now you can all check Wikipedia to figure out who on earth these two are :-P)

If ever you wonder why I don't keep track of Belgian news, you'll find me listening to BBC or NPR...

A small town in Germany

Bonn really is a small town in Germany - but a beautiful and very European small town. According to wikipedia it has around 300,000 citizens, but reliable sources told me this is mainly because Bonn was merged with a bunch of surrounding villages and towns back in the days when it was West Germany's capital city - in an attempt to make it look bigger than it really is. (Wikipedia seems to confirm this, pointing out that Bonn has doubled in population through a few mergers back in the 1960s.) So Bonn itself is not all too populated - though it's far from being in the wilderness: the trainride to Köln only takes about 10 minutes and needless to say, there is plenty of well-functioning public transport going just about anywhere. As for it being European: most of the city centre is inaccessible to cars - a pedestrian Walhalla, just what I needed. And of course you have good bread and delicious sausages - I could imagine worse things.

But as much as unexpected nostalgia reared its head in making me feel at home after years across oceans and continents, I did manage to get disappointed by what should have been one of the highlights of Germany: its beer selection.

To clarify this point at once: Germany does make many good beers. Both in Australia and the US it shouldn't be too hard to find some fine examples in support of that statement. (I have no clue how available non-Belgian beers are in Belgium, but my guess would be you'd have to try hard to find anything besides Guinness.) Yet, as it turns out, German pubs don't necessarily serve those beers. There's a bit of a selection effect in Belgian pubs as well, since most pubs are linked to a distributor and therefore only serve beers owned by a particular brewer. Even so, you're either likely to get a very wide choice in types of beer anyway, or I've been surprisingly lucky with the few Belgian pubs I've ever tried. Not so in Germany. All the non-Irish pubs I've entered (I know I'm starting to sound like I'm an alcoholic, but you'll have to believe that I'm not. It's simply astronomers on tour, ... I guess they do tend to go out for a couple every few days - what else would you do?) anyway - the non-Irish pubs I've tried all had two, maybe three - and if they're really special, even four types of beer on offer. One lager (I'm still not sure what the actual difference is between lager and pilsener), one wheat beer (weissbier), and then possibly an unfiltered beer or one that is low on alcohol. That's just about it. The pub nextdoor would have the same choice, just a different brand: it looks like this is really all they make here. No ales, stouts, pale ales, abbey beers. Nothing that has any more alcohol than, say, 5%. And this would be "Germany the nation of beer and sausages"? Good heavens.

Okay, I'm sorry - that rant went on for quite a bit longer than it should have, because on the whole it was a great place to hang around and I was sorely disappointed when late on Friday I discovered my Saturday outbound train would leave at 8am, not at noon, necessarily postponing the real sight seeing to March next year.

Finally, it obviously goes without saying that the telescope was great, impressive and beautiful all at the same time - and that I forgot to bring my camera so I don't have any pictures to show you. Again. Sigh. I really should learn that, shouldn't I? Maybe someday I will.

Leiden

(Still catching up...)

There's little to say about Leiden: it's a small, typically Dutch city, which means there is a lot of water everywhere, it's built up of many old houses that look nice from the outside (I'm sure there are quite a few that look nice on the inside too) and it's overtly bike- and pedestrian-friendly. Call it "small Amsterdam" if you like. (Now that I check Wikipedia, it seem Leiden has more than 100,000 inhabitants - so I guess there must be a quite a few stylish appartment buildings on the outskirts where I couldn't see them.)

Since most of my time in Leiden was spent working at the astronomical institute, however, I really haven't got much to say about the city at all. Except for this: it was here that I first started to feel more positive about the American tipping culture. Let me explain...


One of my former classmates from Göteborg (Roberto) has for the past several years been working for ESA in Noordwijk - and therefore been living in (or close by) Leiden. So every time I get close to the Netherlands, we agree to meet - and generally fail due to overfull agenda's, miscommunication or crashed cars. Now before I go too far on a tangent, this time we actually did meet - in a Belgian restaurant close to the centre of Leiden.

Because Roberto is Mexican - or, to be politically correct, because there was something mad going on all throughout Leiden and I had come on foot while he came by car, I made it to the restaurant about half an hour before Roberto did, so I ordered myself a beer. I'm not sure if it was the condensation on the glass, my tiredness after the walk from the hotel in Oegstgeest, or the fact that I was minding the door more than my drink, but I succeeded (for the first time in my life, I promise) to tip my glass and spill about three-quarters of a drink onto the table and chairs. Now I would have been happy to give these things a swipe before the beer gets sticky and impossible to remove, but there were no napkins and there was not a waiter in sight. Off I went to the kitchen. On the way a waiter passed me with some steaming platters, but clearly I was no more than air to him, even when I waved my hand and asked for his attention. At the kitchen door itself, I was still unable to find any waiters - or, more to the point, to be seen by any - so I uselessly returned to my seat.

After a while a waiter did show up and managed to clean up the mess. He sort of acknowledged my order for a new beer, but it took him so long to get that to me that I honestly started wondering what was happening. (Interestingly, when the bill came, it only contained one of these two beers - which I would bring down to confusion more than anything, but you never know.)

Being a Belgian restaurant, all dishes were paired up with a suggested type and brand of beer; so when Roberto finally arrived and we placed our orders, I ordered my third beer of the evening - the one to go with the dinner. Because the dinner did, of course, take a while to come out, I ended up ordering yet another (4th) beer, just to have something to do before dinner finally arrives. This fourth drink never made it to my table - and when food finally came, it came without adjoining drink, leaving me dry once again.

Long story short: I managed to order two drinks that never came, and from the two that I did get, I only paid for one. Whenever I did want to order something - or when I needed help or a cloth or napkin - there was no one to be found. Of course it was a sunny day and there were many customers, but at least when you order a drink you expect to get it, right? How else would places like these make any money?

In subsequent weeks and subsequent European countries, I would get the same feeling I got in Leiden: I would want to order something - anything - and there simply wouldn't be anyone interested: it turned out to be really hard to get these people to allow me to spend something in their establishments. In the USA, on the other hand, you generally order a single drink and it gets refilled for free (in the case of soda, at least) - in that situation I would imagine they have nothing to lose by not being around when I need a refill - and yet there they are - always right at my table whenever I want something!

I'm still not convinced obligatory tipping is the way to go, but if I compare the service I got at pretty much any place in the US (well, any place I've tried, which is limited so far to a few restaurants, bars and hotels in Morgantown, NYC, Washington DC and Charlottesville VA) to what passed for service at some places in Leiden, Leuven, Bonn and Paris,... I'm starting to see a point.


While writing the above - and through carrying myself back to the days in Leiden, I remember there was one more thing that really struck me in Leiden as well as in Belgium: the weather would be slightly warm - not even necessarily going much beyond 30C and not humid at all - and people would be complaining about it being too hot, while I didn't really understood what they were on about. Maybe people can get used to different weather - after long training in extreme conditions ;-)