Going on a Cruise again

Posted on 2017-05-02 by Andreas Moser

For my imminent return to Europe, I have, in line with my romantic and old-fashioned disposition, chosen the steamship over the plane.

Thus, I will be cruising the Caribbean and the Atlantic for two weeks, leaving from Cartagena in Colombia on 11 May 2017 with stops in

  • Sint Maarten,
  • maybe even a walk to Saint Martin, which will hopefully still be in the European Union after the French elections,
  • Antigua and
  • Madeira

before arriving in Lisbon on 25 May 2017.

booking

At 550 Euros, the journey is only slightly more expensive than by plane, but it includes the food for two weeks, more space, comfort and adventure, so it’s well worth it – particularly considering that my next trips will be long walks across Europe which won’t cost anything.

As on my last cruise, I am also looking forward to two weeks without internet. But that means that if you want a postcard from one of the islands in the Caribbean, you have to tell me by 10 May 2017 at the latest. Considering the icebergs, accidents and pirates, this may be the last chance. But even if I survive, it will be a tough journey:

If you feel sick after watching this for three minutes, imagine what it will be like to endure this for two weeks – day and night.

(Hier gibt es diese Ankündigung auf Deutsch.)

Posted in Antigua, Colombia, France, Madeira, Portugal, Sint Maarten, Travel | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Random Thoughts (13)

Posted on 2017-05-02 by Andreas Moser
  1. Where exactly is the line between the Near East, the Middle East and the Far East? 
  2. I am so old-school, when I am in a remote location, I miss newspapers more than the internet.
  3. I have never received as many Couchsurfing invitations as in Colombia.
  4. If you need to learn being patient, postpone it to next year. That’s a good first lesson in patience.
  5. I admit that I use Tinder, but mainly for learning Spanish.
  6. But sometimes, it also helps to get a feeling for a city: in Cartagena in Colombia, half the girls on Tinder are prostitutes. Sad city. So bad that the rest of the women feel the need to mention that they are not prostitutes.
  7. I can’t afford other ways of adrenaline, so I have to wait for natural disasters.
  8. If you set your computer’s location to Afghanistan, you get bombarded with less adverting.
  9. One day, the majority of people may find it gross or obviously morally wrong to kill animals to eat them.
  10. But this might take longer in the Republic of Georgia, where patrons of a vegan restaurant were disturbed by a mob of people who pelted sausages and meat at them.
  11. Even in the 1990s, my grandmother in Germany believed that I would die if I didn’t eat meat. My counterargument about the millions of people in India who never ate meat and lived until old age didn’t convince her because, as she put it: “You are not an Indian.”
  12. Anyway, I am alive now and my grandmother isn’t, so I won the argument.
  13. I have no fixed plans beyond June.
  14. Macedonia is becoming increasingly interesting. Maybe I will move there after my return to Europe.
  15. The story about an FBI translator who secretly traveled to Syria to marry Denis Cuspert, the German ISIS recruiter, is crazy. But if a white, middle-aged American woman who makes no secret of working for the FBI can travel around ISIS territory unharmed, maybe it’s not that dangerous there after all.

Posted in Afghanistan, Colombia, Food, Georgia, Germany, India, Macedonia, Politics, Syria, Terrorism, Travel, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Germany 1945-1949

Posted on 2017-04-29 by Andreas Moser

These two films illustrate – with quite drastic footage, you are warned – what the Allied powers thought of Germany immediately after the end of World War II. They did see, correctly in my view, a continuity of German militarism and aggression from Prussia to the German Empire to the Third Reich.

What changed so quickly after 1945?

The Cold War.

If it hadn’t been for the division of Europe, these two films and not the Marshall Plan might well have set the tone for the future treatment of Germany by the rest of the world, for decades to come.

Posted in Cinema, Cold War, Germany, History, Holocaust, Military, USA, World War II | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Romania in Paintings by David Croitor

Posted on 2017-04-28 by Andreas Moser

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Yes, Romania really looks that romantic. In all seasons.

(All images taken from the website of David Croitor, where you can find much more.)

Posted in Romania | Tagged , | 14 Comments

Did you notice the irony? (21) NRA

Posted on 2017-04-28 by Andreas Moser

When Donald Trump will speak at the annual meeting of the NRA, surely talking about the 2nd Amendment, attendees will have to leave their firearms outside.

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And I thought more guns were supposed to make every place safer.

Posted in Politics, USA | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Praise the Lord with your Spray Can!

Posted on 2017-04-28 by Andreas Moser

In Sicily, even the graffiti sprayers are religious.

YAHWEH graffiti Palermo

(Seen behind the Cathedral in Palermo, Sicily.)

Posted in Italy, Photography, Religion, Sicily, Travel | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Random Thoughts (12)

Posted on 2017-04-27 by Andreas Moser
  1. If you have doubts about humanity, listen to this podcast about a hospital in Israel treating wounded and sick Syrians.
  2. I wouldn’t have thought that many people read articles as long as the one about my decision to return to Europe, but the number of comments surprised me. Thank you all!
  3. More than a hundred years after the Armenian genocide, new evidence is still being uncovered.
  4. One thing to consider when choosing a university for your PhD: in Finland, you receive a sword upon graduation. phd-degree-with-distinction-in-molecular-plant-pathology-biotechnology-e28093-the-ultimate-key-to-yeshitilas-succes
  5. On the other hand, I can imagine that wearing a top hat and carrying a sword on the bus or at McDonald’s may lead to even more resentment against the elites.
  6. Wild boars killed three ISIS fighters in Iraq.
  7. The fifth season of The Americans is rather lame and uneventful, which is disappointing after the previous seasons.
  8. So if you want to know more about the KGB “illegals” living in the US during the Cold War, you may do better by reading the book of one of these ex-spies, who coincidentally was from Germany.
  9. A small part of the higher numbers for asylum applications in Germany may be due to Germans pretending to be Syrian refugees and applying for asylum, like in the case of this German military officer.
  10. Let’s hope that in most other cases, this is only done to collect some extra money, not to plot terrorist attacks.
  11. War Dogs, based on the true story of some youngsters who supply weapons to the US military, was actually not that bad. Only the depiction of Albania was unfair.

Posted in Albania, Armenia, Cinema, Cold War, Finland, History, Israel, Military, Syria, USA, World War I | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

AllExperts is dead

Posted on 2017-04-25 by Andreas Moser

Quite a number of readers have come to this blog through AllExperts, where I have been answering questions on German law for a decade. With more than a thousand thoroughly answered questions, my profile there was a great source of information on all aspects of German law.

But it ain’t no more.

Why? I don’t know. All I got was this e-mail with a few days’ advance warning that the site would be shut down.

AllExperts

No explanation was provided, even when I asked for it. Stupidly and annoyingly, AllExperts even made all previous answers inaccessible, proving my point that one should never rely on a free service like Facebook or Google for business communication. At the whim of a madman, everything can be taken offline. Come to think of it, maybe I should stop blogging and only write books from now on.

For those who still have questions, I point you to my ever-expanding list of FAQ:

If there is anything else of particular interest to you, legal or otherwise, please let me know in the comment section below. If I notice a lot of demand for one particular subject, I will prioritize it, so get your friends to weigh in, too.

Posted in Family Law, German Law, Germany, Immigration Law, Law, Technology, Travel | Tagged , | 41 Comments

My house in Colombia

Posted on 2017-04-22 by Andreas Moser

Bogotá is actually quite green for a large city, but I wanted only nature, without the city. So I rented a little house north of Colombia’s capital, which I reached on smaller and smaller roads, shared with a surprising number of cyclists, past gentle hills and meadows with cows. The last kilometer went straight uphill, like to a mountain hut.

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It is situated between Tenjo and Chía, both towns 6 km away, or, as the owner said “one hour and twenty minutes on foot”. And you better don’t come home too late, for there is no light in the whole valley after 6 p.m.

Also, at an altitude of more than 2700 m, it may get cold at night.

But when I spotted the literary corner, I was excited.

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And what an impressive selection awaits me in this remote cabin: Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, Hermann Hesse, William Shakespeare, Jean-Paul Sartre, Robert Musil, Viktor Frankl, Mahatma Gandhi and of course the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Most of the books are beautifully bound editions from the 1930s to the 1950s. There must have been an intellectual hiding in the mountains at that time.

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There is even a comprehensive history about the Gestapo,

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bookmarked between pages 368 and 369 by the ticket for a bullfight on 3 February 1968.

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Somewhat more unsettling was the Spanish translation of Joseph Goebbels’ diary,

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the reading of which was however already aborted on page 46, judging by the bookmark.

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The bookmarks are receipts issued by Remington Rand, one of the first computer manufacturers, and dated 1955. What was going on in the Colombian mountains back then? Very mysterious.

On my desk, please note the sufficient stock of cigars on the right. When cigars cost only 0.17 dollars a piece, you don’t need to hold back.

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“What about the pistol next to the computer?” you are wondering. That came with the house, too. The ammo is stored under the staircase.

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But the first evening came to a peaceful end, overlooking the valley whose green colors had been intensified by recent rainfall and were glistening in the setting sun.

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(I found the house through AirBnB, but it doesn’t seem to be available anymore. If you register for AirBnB via this link, you will receive a discount of 35 euros, of course not only in Colombia. – Zur deutschen Fassung.)

Posted in Books, Colombia, Photography, Travel | Tagged , | 35 Comments

Is university worth it?

Posted on 2017-04-21 by Andreas Moser

The Freakonomics podcast “Is college worth it?” was sadly centered on the economic returns of studying and on US colleges, but one student of economics and philosophy had this universally applicable answer:

If a bunch of people from the community sat in a park every day for three months straight and just exchanged books and had lectures, we’d learn much more than we had in three years here.

That’s a very good answer. Of course it depends on the university, the specific degree, the professor, but this student has a valid point.

Sure, you will know more after studying for three or four years than you knew before, but the real question is if you learned more than you would have learned on your own – or by other means – in the same time. I dare to say that most universities probably fail that test.

Posted in Economics | Tagged , | 15 Comments