exile. a while

i'm in brussels for the libre graphics meeting, which is an intense gathering of passionate programmers, articulate artists & various other inspired & inspiring folks, all working with &/or on open source software for graphics. there is so much out there now! yesterday i presented UpStage & gave a workshop - well, tried to give a workshop, but the wireless network didn't like 10 people trying to be online at once. we got cables but it didn't help. happily everyone was patient & some people did get on, & i think everyone got a reasonable idea of the project.

i'm staying with bob & liz, friends of suzon & james, conveniently close to the piano fabrik which is the venue for the meeting. i stayed here for a couple of nights in i think 2003, so even tho it's a brief & distant memory, the neighbourhood feels familiar, & i've been having great conversations with bob & liz. i haven't seen anything of brussels on this trip, beyond the few blocks from the train station to here, but i have another day after the meeting so i'll have a bit more of an explore then.

this week the nz government announced further tax cuts in its latest budget - offset by an increase in GST, from 12.5% to 15% on all sales of goods & services. those on high incomes get the largest reduction in income tax (from 38% to 33%) giving them an average $90 a week extra in the hand, while middle income earners will be only $28 better off, & will lose half of this to the GST increase. those on the lowest incomes (beneficiaries, single parents, etc) will actually need to be compensated for the GST increase to insure they aren't worse off. there are also significant tax cuts for business. the government has handsomely rewarded the top end of its voters, moving the tax burden from the wealthy to the workers; what a surprise (not!).

73% of earners in nz are now paying a mere 17.5% income tax. we already had the third lowest personal income tax rates in the world in 2005, surely now we must have the lowest. combine that with the comparatively low income level (or that's what we're told) & the logical conclusion is less tax take, less government spending. already many small things have been quietly dismantled, closed, removed. either slashes to social services, or privatisation, or both must be on the agenda.

in this situation, less really is vinegar - or more correctly, weniger; nicht mehr!

meanwhile the green party has released its alternative proposals to counter the growing inequality in new zealand. it's heartening to see an alternative to the monetarist profit-driven approach - which has already proved itself to be massively flawed. at least there are people out there presenting realistic, long-term, positive alternatives.

my deutsch-by-immersion is coming along slowly; i can now insult a bavarian in more ways than i can greet them. i'm not sure whether this says more about the type of company i'm keeping, the national bavarian character, or my own selective memory. happily so far i have only had to use the insults as terms of endearment or amusement. possibly the most useful thing i've learned recently is that "up" (spelt "ab") means down, but i've been too scared to use it because apparently "ich gehe ab" can also be used to in situations of extreme ecstasy; one shouldn't say it to a stranger when they ask if the lift is going up or down. so for now i'm sticking to insults and food items.

on tuesday night we went to a performance by christophe reiserer - actually he did not perform, but it was his concept & many long days of work. four musicians (2 drummers, bassist & guitarist) improvised together for a while, then gradually the drummers dismantled their kits, placing drums around the edges of the room with little mechanical arms on them that were connected back to a central computer. it was entertaining & mysterious as sounds came from the drums all around us, & the audience twisted & turned to see, wondering what this was leading to. then the bassist laid down his instrument in a sort of metal cradle, & carefully adjusted things so that when he hit a key on a keyboard, the bass was played by a little mechanical arm. the guitarist also did this. finally, the four musicians were standing there watching their instruments being played by intricate electrical workings, all controlled by a computer that contained 8 samples recorded by the group during the earlier part of the performance. it was as if the instruments took on lives of their own, & the musicians could go, leaving the machine playing - which is what's happening for the rest of this week, as an installation in the villa stuck.

yesterday was a public holiday (they have a lot of them here) & we went to austria for the day. i don't think the novelty of being able to go to another country for a day-trip will ever wear off (where i come from it's a minimum 3 hour flight to the nearest country - it is physically possible to go there & back in a day but you wouldn't do it just for something to do on a public holiday). we went to salzburg, another novelty for me, & it was great. it was an overcast day & by late afternoon the rain had started, which meant that it wasn't too packed with tourists. i imagine on a sunny day it would be too crowded for me to enjoy. we spent hours wandering around festung hohensalzburg, the very well-preserved medieval fortress/castle, had a good wander round the old town & also checked out the very pretty graveyard at st peter's church (pictured below) & the cool catacombs dug into the solid rock cliff-face. at one point we ventured across the river & stumbled across a good covers band playing on a truck-stage. after a tasty late lunch in a building where mozart's sister lived, we went to mozart's birthplace. this is a very extensive & diverse museum, filling not just the apartment where he was born & lived for most of his childhood, but also a couple more floors below with all kinds of things - letters, portraits, sheet music, mozart's clavichord, set models from many of his operas, videos, & 3 strange/interesting rooms that i realised after were meant to have music & things happening, but weren't functioning.

because it was also a public holiday in austria, nearly all of the shops in salzburg were closed; even the trucks are not allowed to drive on public holidays (apart from those carrying food or hazardous substances) - there were big packed truck parks at the petrol stations along the autobahn. one shop that was open (i suppose because it was selling food) was a gourmet chocolate shop; one of our purchases was asparagus chocolate ("heller spargel"), which i just had to try. it's green! & it tastes good! the chocolate & asparagus flavours make an interesting sweet & savoury combination, a bit like chocolate-dipped garlic. yum : )

the skies of europe are once more streaked by planes & here in my little corner of munich the apartment buildings are disappearing behind blossom & foliage, & colourful flowers are popping up all over the place as the days are getting warmer & longer. but just as i am settling into a routine of cycling 30 minutes to the nearest affordable scwimhalle for my twice-weekly swim, one of my fellow-swimmers cheerfully informed me that in two weeks the schwimhalle will close and the outdoor swimming will start, somewhere "over there" (with a general wave of her hand - but the schwimhalle is in the middle of suburbia with no outdoor swimming place visible nearby). other sources tell me it is a very small lake, but no-one's quite sure where. why can't they leave the schwimhalle open as well as the lake? i like the schwimhalle! even if there is only one proper lane for lane-swimmers, & the more agressive ones practically swim over me, i like being able to count how many lengths i've done. lake-swimming is fine for relaxing but for exercising i prefer a pool. & call me a warm dusche but i like being able to see what's on the bottom of where i'm swimming.

warme dusche is one of the many useful terms i've added to my deutsch/bayerische vocabulary; along with schatten parker & weich ei, it's what you call a wimp & it's quite a big insult to the staunch bavarian folk. i'm progressing pretty slowly in the language department - altho i have only been here a month so i can hardly be expected to be fluent. also, most of the people who are teaching me things are bavarian, so i'm having to learn both bayerische und deutsch at the same time which is a little confusing. aber ich versuche!

at the weekend, we made an expedition to the allgäu region, to relax in the mineral waters at bad wörishofen. this large complex includes a schwimhalle, so i dutifully did 30 lengths before joining the others in the child-free water wonderland. as well as the variety of bubbles, whirlpools & shoulder-massaging showers that the germans love, bad wörishofen has pools of sole (salt), jod (iodine), kalk (calcium i think) & something else that is sulpher (but doesn't smell anything like the sulphorous pools of rotorua). the main pool features a pool bar, which you can swim up to and have a drink, and the area around the pool is crammed with recliners where people lie about reading or resting. after a couple of hours of the pool and a hearty lunch of semmelknüdel und pilzen, we drove then to diessen, a pretty town on the edge of ammersee. as well as lots of tulips and humorous sculptures, diessen has a fine example of the bavarian baroque church, and the traditional painted scenes on the walls of houses and buildings (there's a name for this but i've forgotten it ... i've also forgotten the name of the church ...).



since that day of tourism, i've been pretty much glued to the computer; i spent three days participating as a copy editor in a book sprint to create a manual for CiviCRM (you can see the results here) and in between that trying to plan my travel to the Libre Graphics Meeting in Brussels in May and to a meeting in Madrid in July to help redesign the /etc web site. the book sprint copy editing was quite intense work so i had a backlog of email after that, one of which contained a link to "biocouture - or how to grow a frock"; naturally the word "frock" caught my eye & i checked it out - looks like a really interesting project; i want one!

this evening, with news reports warning that the volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajokull in iceland continues to drift south across europe, we brought all the pot plants back inside from the balcony. the sun sank like a molten orange ball into a hazy red sky & there was a funny taste in the air so we shut all the windows too ... apparently munich was the only airport in germany to keep operating today - & it's uncertain if it will be operating tomorrow. stranded passengers are complaining, but really - who would want to be up in the air with the possibility of dust and glass particles jamming the plane's engines?

speaking of glass, today in the supermarket we bought milk in a glass bottle, & i post photographic evidence here for my mother, who was distraught when glass bottles were finally phased out in dunedin. as with glass beer bottles, you get a pfand (refund) when you take the empty bottles back to the supermarket. you can get this refund on many plastic drink bottles, which is great - although not on wine bottles. but there are recycling depots everywhere for just about everything - paper & cardboard, glass, plastic (all types), and aluminium.

my ethnographic study into the bavarian kitchen has identified a strong preference for food that falls within the "white-to-brown" colour spectrum: kartofell (potatoes), nudeln (pasta), brot (bread), knödel (dumplings), brezen (pretzels), weisswurst (white sausage), sauerkraut, radi (radish), cheese of all shades of cream/beige, white wine, white beer, schnaps, etcetera ... and spargel - white asparagus.

spargel is a big deal in bavaria; the spargel season was officially opened yesterday by the bavarian minister of agriculture, and suddenly special spargel standl have popped up along the roadsides - small wooden huts selling spargel plus the necessary cream-coloured accompaniments (kartofell, hollandaise sauce, wine). always quick to take advantage of an excuse to party, the bavarian people celebrate spargel season with "spargel essen" - gathering together to eat spargel and potatoes with hollandaise sauce and other white-to-brown foods.

bavarian spargel is asparagus, but not as we know it; they don't have the green variety here at all, & the white sort that we have at home is much smaller than the bavarian species (this is true of a lot of things). check out the spample in the photo above - these are the size of sausages.

yesterday, as we waited on the 6th floor for the lift to arrive, a movement outside the window caught my eye: a small dark squirrel was happily hopping up the unbroken vertical wall of the building. it was climbing on the corner, which perhaps gave it a little more purchase along with the roughcast surface, but it must have come all the way from the ground as there are no trees close enough to the building for it to have hopped across; & no convenient window-sills or ledges, let alone branches, for a rest! on it hopped, up to the seventh and eighth floors then disappeared onto the roof ... andy, who's lived in this building before, had never seen a squirrel scale the building before.

so, the wildlife here is almost as unpredictable as in australia ... well, ok, it's less dramatic. but as well as the cat-burglar-squirrel, another novelty for me is the woodpeckers. they're incredibly loud & sound like a drill - but the bird itself is not that big, & quite hard to spot as they camouflage beautifully against the bark. the more obvious wildlife is the bavarians, who i have been closely observing at public viewing spots such as the supermarket, bike shop, library and schwimhalle. there's nothing like a trip to the schwimhalle in a foreign country to emphasise cultural differences - the etiquette of lane swimming, for instance, what to wear & around the sauna, or which areas are segregated & which uni-sex (at munich's westbad, the changing rooms & saunas are mixed, while the showers and toilets are clearly segregated; my deutsch may be scheise but at least i know my damen from my herren!).

meanwhile outside the first signs of spring are appearing: blossom in pink, white & yellow, hyacinths and daffodils and tulips pushing up, magnificent magnolias, and hordes of people at the garden centre replenishing their window-baskets and balcony pots. we've bought an array of herbs and flowers to plant over the weekend.

sorry, no photos to illustrate this post. i wasn't quick enough to catch the squirrel, & i don't think they allow cameras in the schwimhalle. i'll see what i can capture during the weekend, when we'll go to see "If/Then Installed" by richard siegal at Muffetwerk, & perhaps also pipilotti rist at the neue pinakotek.

i am landing slowly in münchen; it's still winter here - most of the trees are still leafless, which makes the place look very different from last summer. some days have been sunny but there's still a chill in the air, & on thursday it snowed. i haven't left the apartment much at all, but when i have it's with coat, scarf and hat.

i'm adjusting slowly to the northern hemisphere: north is where it feels like south should be & everyone is driving on the wrong side of the road. the light switches are upside down & the windows open inwards & are hinged two ways (side & bottom). there are fantastic bakeries everywhere. these things are all familiar but foreign at the same time.

i'm taking my time to get back into work; the last couple of months were so hectic that i want to do as little as possible for a while. i'm sure this lethargy won't last long, so i'm indulging in it while it's here.

at 4.05pm on tuesday 23 march, just a little to the west of nelson (where the road begins to wind up that big hill), lucy the valiant did something amazing: she went round the clock! we had been eagerly watching the odometer since leaving karamea that morning, with increasing frequency as the numbers rolled round (it's amazing i didn't rear-end anyone in nelson!). the anticipation and excitement built up to a frenzy as we reached the bottom of the hill, aware that we might not be able to pull over at the crucial moment to document this once-in-a-lifetime event. however luck was on our side, and there was ample room to pull over just as the numbers clicked to 99999 ... then drive forward long the shoulder to roll onto 00000 ...



(no, i wasn't driving when these pics were taken, the speedomoter just descends slowly & gracefully.)



once the auspicious event was documented, we celebrated - andy shared a beer with zecica & k.b. while i did some whooping & cheering & jumping. then we headed off again, bound for portage in the keneperu sound. this required an even slower and windier journey than we'd had previously (arthur's pass, karamea bluff, the buller gorge and the road out of nelson all providing plenty of hairpin bends and one-lane bridges to negotiate). we arrived in portage in time for a beautiful still evening & romantic sunset ...



... however this morning we've awoken to a full-on torrential rainstorm. unfortunately, due to her age, lucy has a couple of leakage issues, plus somewhat inefficient wipers. if we didn't have to leave today we wouldn't, but we're booked on the 6pm ferry back to wellington - where apparently gale force winds will greet us. perhaps the ferry crossing will be cancelled. we've had far too much rain on this trip! i suppose it serves me right for trying to have 4 summers in a row, but this has really been a poor summer. i'm just going to have to go back to europe ...

it just keeps getting worse. first of all it was forcing untested & unnecessary "national standards" onto overworked school teachers & coming up with the bright idea of increasing GST to fund a reduction in the top tax rate, to name but 2 of the many stupid things the national government has done; now, they have frozen the funding of our already underfunded (yet still pretty damn good) public broadcaster & decided to open up our national parks to mining; i would rant about it but bomber bradbury has already articulated it all very well (the scariest bit is that everything he says is completely true).

the only positive thing i can think about it all is that as long as john key & his cronies keep on in this fashion, they are sure to lose the next election. then perhaps at last we will have a green government ...