This is NOT a travel blog.

Posted on 2015-08-20 by Andreas Moser

I don’t call my blog a “travel blog” for several reasons:

My blog is not only about travel, but about politics, history, books and about other serious, silly and random stuff. Some of it you find interesting, some of it you find curious, some of it makes you hate me and unsubscribe. Because my blog is like me, a person with many different interests. I am not a brand or a product or a company, I am a human being.

blog brand

Or, if you don’t already know what you want to say, you could just shut up.

I don’t want to be grouped together with most other travel bloggers who are going from sight to sight, from beach to beach, take a photo of a sunset here and a cup of coffee there. Seriously, what’s so special about coffee mugs that people fly halfway around the world to bring back photos of them? Probably, they never leave the hotel or resort, don’t meet anyone interesting, let alone experience any real adventures.

And that photo isn't even straight.

And that photo isn’t even straight.

You know these kind of bloggers: Everything is “the greatest”, “the most adventurous”, “the most beautiful”, “perfect”, “breathtaking”, “amazing”, bla, bla, and everything “needs to be on your bucket list”. By the way, a bucket list is for people who are about to die or for people who don’t know how to enjoy life. Lists are for going to the supermarket, not for leading your life.

With at least 11 stunning clichés, that you have already read on 11 of the world's most extraordinary travel blogs.

With at least 11 stunning and breathtaking clichés, that you have already read on 11 of the world’s most extraordinary travel blogs.

These bloggers travel to wherever they get invited by hotels or tourism associations, and of course they have to write positively. I, on the other hand, I go where I want to go, and I am interested in looking behind the glamour of travel. I don’t shy away from conflicts, tensions, poverty, lies, environmental destruction and the complexity of life. And I write about that. If it offends some people – as it often has – I don’t mind, because I am not a paid PR blogger.

I have to throw up (my hands in despair) when I read the umpteenth blog which praises the old cars and the music of Cuba, the beaches in Dubai, or the pyramids and camels in Egypt, without mentioning that these countries are authoritarian, oppressive or even dictatorships where people get imprisoned, and sometimes executed, for trying to exercise basic human rights.

When I read praise about Thailand, for example,

Thailand

I can’t help but point out:

Thailand reply

Having lived in Malta or Sicily, I can’t help but write about the thousands of refugees being washed ashore, dead and alive. Living in Romania, I can’t help but write about the discrimination/segregation of the Roma. Traveling through Eastern Europe, I can’t ignore the falsification of history that is prevalent in many people’s minds.

While it is sad that most travel bloggers know nothing about history and politics and probably aren’t interested, as long as they get paid for swimming in a pool and taking photos of their drinks, the most shocking surprise is their lack of geographical knowledge. Or how else would you explain that they constantly “discover” “surprising” “hidden spots” and “secret destinations”, when every 8-year old knows these places from school or the documentary channel?

I don’t even know which examples to pick because the internet is full with this most annoying fad. The “10 wonderfully secret tourist destinations” include Tasmania (it’s one of Australia’s states!) and the Pyrénées (a 500-km long mountain chain between France and Spain, you can see them from space or from Barcelona, that’s how secret they are). These “19 secret travel destinations you never knew existed” include Machu Picchu (!!). If you are the only person in the world who doesn’t know Machu Picchu, go on Facebook and check your friends’ profile images. Yes, the ruins in the hilly jungle.

How can the capital city of a European Union country be

How can the capital city of a European Union country be “hidden”??

Isn’t it insulting to readers if an author refers to places like these as ones “you never knew existed”? The people who put together “Europe’s best hidden gems” don’t ever seem to have read a book about Europe either, let alone been there. Lugano, Cinque Terre, Trieste, Santorini and Kotor as “unknown destinations”? Hm, I wonder how all the cruise ships with thousands of tourists find some of these places, then. Every day.

Because I currently live in Eastern Europe, I don’t want you to miss the “20 hidden gems in Eastern Europe”. The list includes capital cities like Bucharest, Tallinn, Riga and Budapest. My Romanian readers will be surprised that Brasov “has numerous Black Sea resorts”.

Brasov Black Sea

I couldn’t help but comment:

Black Sea

This “secret”, “hidden” and “unknown” mania is getting so out of hand that I bet you can find New York, Paris and Berlin on some of these lists. If you want to read about a genuinely hidden spot, check this out. But that requires a ride on a boat and a bit of walking, for you can’t even fly to that island.

I have now come across someone who seriously claimed Sevilla as an “undiscovered gem” and “one of the most underrated destinations” in Andalusia. I had to point it out to him:

Sevilla comment

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Please, please don’t ever lump me together with people who write terrible stuff like that!

So, if you have been wondering why my blog never appears in some “Top 50 Travel Blogs” list, why I never get invited to anywhere, why I can’t even return to some places where I have already been arrested, why my blog is banned in some countries, you now know why.

If you have been wondering why I don’t write very often, why my articles are sometimes years behind my travels, it’s because I need time to prepare my journeys, to read, to think, to write, to research. Keep in mind that I don’t travel to show off or to tell others about it. I travel to satisfy my intellectual curiosity, to experience other places, to get confronted with new ideas. Some of these ideas I will share on my blog, mainly to motivate you to explore the world yourself. But most of the time, I prefer to simply live my life instead of writing about living it.

Lastly, if you have been wondering why I don’t have many friends, you may understand that a bit better now. – No, I cannot be silent when people spread bullshit.

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In the interest of naming and shaming proper sourcing, if you click on any of the photos in this article, you will get to the original website/blog.

Now that I have ranted a bit, I am asking you, my esteemed readers, to nominate your favorite travel blogs in the comments below and to tell me why you like them. I am thinking of putting together a list (oh, the irony) of the best travel blogs and – this will cause lots of enemies – of the worst travel blogs. Obviously, don’t nominate me. You are free to nominate yourself, but please add an explanation. What I am looking for is original, thoughtful or thought-provoking writing by people who care about people in other countries and who regard travel as an intellectual journey, not as a list to tick off. I won’t consider the quality of the photos or the design, only the text. – Thank you for your comments!

Posted in Travel | Tagged | 53 Comments

Time Management: “No thanks!”

Posted on 2015-08-19 by Andreas Moser

Time management. To-do lists. Multi-tasking. 24/7 availability. Many of you are desperately trying many different methods to squeeze more productive time out of your days or weeks, to get more done and to become more efficient.

Forget about it! You cannot manage time. Time flies. You cannot stop it. You can’t do anything to change that. And before you know it, you’ll be dead.

If you feel that you have too much to do, that you are over-worked and close to a burnout, you need to manage something else than time: you need to manage your tasks. Because time is a fixed value, it is the amount and the scope of the tasks accepted by you or given to you which determine how much you work and how exhausted or how relaxed you are.

There is only one proven method of “time management”: Do less!

Because of this, the word “no” is the most important management tool.

Most of us instinctively say “yes” when we are asked if we want to do something. With new tasks come new clients, new responsibilities, more income, more excitement. When I had my own law firm, I was happy that so many people wanted to become my clients that I almost always accepted them. It made me proud that people from around the world wanted me as their lawyer. It made me happy to see that opening my own business right after graduating from law school was the right decision. But then I didn’t have time to deal with all these cases, I had to work nights and weekends, I burnt out and eventually I quit.

Also, it seems to be socially expected to say “yes” when somebody asks you something. “Do you want to come to my party?”, “could you help me with this sales project?” or “would you like to watch my children over the weekend?” If you say “no”, you will seem anti-social, suspicious, selfish, weird. You may simply say “yes” out of a reflex or because you don’t want to lose a friend or a job . You are too afraid to say “no”.

I have developed a few techniques how to deal with this problem:

  1. Say “no thanks” instead of “no”. If someone asks you to watch their children over the weekend and you say “no thanks” in a very nice and genuine way, you make it sound as if they had offered you a favor but you graciously declined. I have often experienced that people don’t even know how to react to that. They just walk away, totally confused. Try it!
  2. Another reply I sometimes use is the famous line from Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener who coincidentally also works at a law firm: when asked to do something, he politely responds with “I would prefer not to.” However, I have found this to be less  effective than a simple “no thanks” as it sometimes elicits the question “why?”
  3. Don’t reply at all. This works very well with e-mails, letters and voice messages (another reason not to answer your phone). Every day I delete some of the e-mails I receive from prospective clients without replying to them. I know I won’t have the time, or I am not interested in their case or they sound as if they don’t want to pay for my services. You find this impolite? It isn’t. Nobody has an entitlement to your time. It is your time and you alone decide what to do with it. You do not owe anything to anybody, especially not an explanation. 
  4. Reply late. That’s a less drastic, but very effective version of method no. 3. Reply after a week or after a month. Usually the project will have found somebody else to do it. Or it will have turned out that it wasn’t that important after all. You will innocently ask “does this still need to be done?” and to the reproachful account of how somebody else already completed the job, you will reply – with a thankful smile – “that’s good, I am happy to hear that.”
  5. I understand that all of this is harder when you are in employment because you have signed a contract that gives somebody else some control over some of your time. My first advice therefore is to avoid employment, but I realize that this is not always possible. When your manager asks you to do something which you don’t find worth your time, I suggest you reply “Sure I can do that, but then I cannot work on something else in the same time. Which other project/client do you wish me to abandon/neglect?” Make sure that your boss realizes that every hour can only be spent once and that every task they give you comes at the expense of some other task.

The last point is also an important point for your own life, even if you are not employed. You may think “it doesn’t really cost me much to go to this party which I won’t enjoy, but it will make other people happy” or “well, it’s only one evening of the week”. But always remember: whatever you do, it prevents you from doing something else! This something else could be something that you would enjoy much more. 

(This advice was also published by Medium.)

Posted in Life, Philosophy, Time | Tagged , | 20 Comments

Easily Confused (53) Recycling

Posted on 2015-08-18 by Andreas Moser

Recycling in Germany:

Mülltrennung

Recycling in Romania:

recycling1 recycling2 recycling3

Posted in Germany, Romania | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Idols

Posted on 2015-08-17 by Andreas Moser

One is Michael the Brave, at one time the Prince of Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldova, and the first Romanian ruler to rule over these three principalities together, albeit only for half a year. The other one used to play football.

One was assassinated. The other one gets paid for having his image put up, preventing people from using their windows.

One hardly anyone would recognize. The other one you already knew.Mihai ViteazulKids, if you want to become famous, don’t go into politics or war.

(Photographed in Cluj, Romania.)

Posted in History, Photography, Romania, Sports, Travel | Tagged | Leave a comment

Book Review: “Young Philby” by Robert Littell

Posted on 2015-08-16 by Andreas Moser

I don’t know why I go for historical fiction or alternative history again and again, when I should know by now that I’ll be annoyed or disappointed.

Young-Philby-HardcoverIn Young Philby, Robert Littell tries to flesh out the early life of British spy Kim Philby who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union, where he defected to in 1963. Obviously, that involves some guesswork and some creative liberty, which is fine for a novel. Littell tries something different by writing each chapter from the perspective of a different person. At first confusing, this trick actually caught my interest. It may have worked to make the book more interesting, but I will never find out, for I stopped reading after about a third, when the amount and severity of historical inaccuracies became too much to bear.

When Kim Philby is in Vienna, he joins an underground group of left-wing students and workers, many of whom have escaped Germany. Littell lets some of these characters speak about Nazi Germany as if the problem was solved if Hitler was killed, when people in 1933 actually knew much better than most people know today that the problem was not one person, but a society in which a large number of citizens were racist, anti-Semitic, nationalistic, militaristic, anti-democratic and so on. Littell transfers the simplified explanation of events which took root after the Nuremberg Trials back to the 1930s.

The book had already lost all credibility, but I finally closed it for good when Litzi Friedmann, who in reality was a rather well-informed and active young woman, is quoted as saying “[Hitler] controls the important strings. He had a plurality in the Bundestag until he expelled the Socialist and Communist deputies, at which point he had an outright majority.”

The Bundestag?? That conversation took place in 1934, and the Bundestag did not become Germany’s parliament until 1949. The parliament in the Weimar Republic and during the time of the book’s plot was called Reichstag. If an author can’t even get that right, then he can write children’s stories or poetry for what it’s worth, but please no historical fiction.

The best book about Kim Philby is probably still the one by Phillip Knightley.

Posted in Books, Cold War, Germany, History, UK | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Is this a Police Car or an Ambulance?

Posted on 2015-08-16 by Andreas Moser

Either way, it doesn’t spell good news for law enforcement or the emergency services in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

police car

Posted in Photography, Romania, Travel | Tagged | 1 Comment

First or second class?

Posted on 2015-08-16 by Andreas Moser

At the train station in Cluj-Napoca, Romania:

– First class or second class?

– What’s the difference?

– Well…

1-2 class CFRTo be fair, this was not one of the operational trains. It had just been parked at the train station, waiting to be sold for scrap metal because Romania already has too many trains anyway, comfortably and reliably whizzing from each town to each other town every hour.

Posted in Photography, Romania, Travel | Tagged , | Leave a comment

When terrorism was a women’s issue

Posted on 2015-08-15 by Andreas Moser

Remember when your grandmother told you about her time with the Suffragettes, the women campaigning for voting rights in early 20th-century Britain?

But they did not only pass out pamphlets, give speeches and sit around knitting and drinking tea. No, some of these early feminists resorted to more radical methods. Terrorism, we would call it today. They smashed shop windows, cut telephone lines, burned down houses and vandalized public parks, golf courses and cricket grounds. They smashed artifacts at the British Museum and attacked paintings in the National Gallery with axes. They even built and detonated bombs.

arson wild women

St Paul bomb suffra-abbey-bomb-jun12

burn church

These ladies were some really tough chicks. Respect!

Links:

Posted in History, Human Rights, Law, Politics, Terrorism, UK | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Film Review: “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”

Posted on 2015-08-14 by Andreas Moser

There are spy stories which have become better by being turned into movies (Ian Fleming’s James Bond being the prime example) and there are those whose writers never should have given permission for their stories to be put on the screen. Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 is the latest example in a list which is longer than that of failed espionage plots during the Cold War.

I haven’t read John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and I am not a particular fan of Mr le Carré anyway, but the film adaptation is horrible. Well, I could have guessed that much from watching the trailer.

You fell asleep, too? The two-hour film is worse. Much worse! Pretentious acting, annoying soundtrack, no coherent storytelling, no real suspense, no drama, none of the characters allows any emotional connection to be built up.

The film is trying to be something like a period drama with old-fashioned suits, old cars, creaking wooden floors in dusty offices. But isn’t the book set in 1973? It is! Weren’t the 1970s colorful, exciting, fun- and action-filled times? They were! Throughout the whole film, I had the impression that the film crew had accidentally booked a 1950s set instead of the 1970s set.

"When are we going to get a new office?" - "I already applied for one in 1962."

“When are we going to get a new office?” – “I already applied for one in 1962.”

If you want a good spy movie set in the 1970s, go for Argo or Munich. Much better films, better actors, better storytelling, better editing, better soundtrack and above all, true stories.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tries to be a very serious, thoughtful, mature, dark spy movie, but it tries too much and fails miserably. Even watching something as silly as True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger is a better use of your time. Reading a good spy novel, by Eric Ambler for example, is even better, of course.

Posted in Cinema, Cold War, History, UK | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Ted Cruz on Gun Violence

Posted on 2015-08-14 by Andreas Moser

You missed the news about the latest mass shooting ? Don’t worry, there will be another one this week.

mass killings USA today

The only good thing about this high number of killings is that it provides a lot of data. We can compare gun violence in states with different gun control laws, we can compare the US with other countries that have similar socio-economic factors. We can compare the US with other countries that have relatively liberal gun ownership laws and those with a very strict regime of gun control.

This allows us to have a fact-based, calm, educated and polite debate among people from all ends of the political spectrum who surely agree that it would be nice to get the number of violent deaths reduced. Granted, there are policy disagreements, constitutional arguments, questions of cause and effect, of correlation and causation, of practicability, but as nobody will argue for more killings, all sides of this debate should at least be united by a common goal.

Yet this debate doesn’t happen, except in some academic journals which nobody bothers to read. “Those who live in America, or visit it, might do best to regard [mass shootings] the way one regards air pollution in China: an endemic local health hazard which, for deep-rooted cultural, social, economic and political reasons, the country is incapable of addressing,” The Economist wrote in response to the Charleston massacre. “This may, however, be a bit unfair. China seems to be making progress on pollution.”

Meanwhile, one of the contenders for the Republican Presidential nomination, Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, displays the shockingly low intellectual level of his contribution to this non-occurring debate:

The thing Mr Cruz refers to as a “machine gun” is not even a machine gun. It’s an AR-15 rifle, used in mass shootings throughout American cinemas, schools, post offices and churches. Relatives of gun massacre victims will surely find the Senator’s video very empathetic and sensitive.

Posted in Food, Politics, USA | Tagged , , | 2 Comments