Die Hard Three

Do people really know where their happiness comes from? It’s strange because right now part of my contentment is derived from something that makes me sad: not having my friends and family around. As previously mentioned I have, in the past, suffered from a small measure of guilt resulting from not spending enough time with the people I care about. But here in Berlin I’m less susceptible to this because of the physical distance. I also have some friends here that I get to hang out with and this dulls the pain of being away from home. I imagine if I was alone in a city with no one around, it would be different.

To go back to my original question, I had to think a lot about this to fully understand the conflicting emotions I am experiencing. Here in Berlin I have time to reflect and understand why something that should make me sad is making me happy. I imagine that others suffer from similar issues, say, missing your kids when they’re at camp / but happy you have the weekend free. It’s a simple example but I bet that most people experience these types of situations.

In fact I think the problems of most people are probably much more complex. And when things are more complex it takes more time to understand the situation and it takes more energy. And I think this is a big problem. People these days have no time (and by extension, capacity) to actually detach from their lives to do a systems check.

“Honey, you mind looking after the kids for the next 9 days? I need to sort some things out.”

You can sleep on my couch when you get back.

But there is also another component – the actual ability to do a systems check. Some people have a natural ability to do this but it is rare. I know a few and let me tell you if one in ten people were like them, they would be no war. Most people either need to have someone else do the check, or receive training on how to perform one themselves. In each of these three cases, it’s important to have an independent third party to validate the proposal / results.

Man, there’s a lot here and I could go on. But I think this is enough for right now. More on this later.

I’ve been using the streetcars a lot here in Berlin and I would like to take my next few thousand words and compare them to buses. First off, I think it’s important to look at the usability aspects from the perspective of a new user of the system. The holy grail of public transportation is to implement a system which a person unfamiliar with the city can use at ease. My experience back home is that we have a great system once you figure out how it works. But if you want to increase ridership you need to make that initial ride a good one.

Strassenbahn - Streetcar of Berlin

Streetcars vs. Buses – A North American Living in Berlin

1. To start, streetcars are bigger so they are more comfortable and can carry more passengers than a bus plus have more space for strollers and bikes.
2. There’s much less side-to-side motion and being attached to the track they are generally more stable (buses can hit bumps in the road, curbs, potholes, etc).
3. Over here there’s no such thing as a rude tram conductor (in Berlin the payment systems are all automated) and the drivers have their own booth separate from the passengers)
4. The trams themselves are fixed to their route (buses take detours, make wrong turns) so passengers can be more confident that they’re going to get where they expect to go.
5. Some parts of the tram lines are dedicated so they are less affected by traffic jams. A bus-based system is more likely to share a greater proportions of its route with regular traffic.
6. Tram stops are fixed and set up as an actual station. If the city decides to build one it has to be done properly and take into account vehicular and pedestrian traffic with dedicated traffic signals for the trams. It seems that most of the bus stops in my city were set up by simply erecting a sign for the bus stop and eliminating the street parking.
7. There are less tram lines so it’s less confusing. A busy tram stop in the middle of Berlin services maybe 5 different lines – at the most
8. The trams are electric and this means two things. One: when stopped they are silent save the noise from the passengers and two: they produce less pollution in the city center (but who knows what method is being used to produce the electricity)
9. Knowing when the next tram / bus is going to arrive is in my opinion the most important thing for an effective public transportation system. With trams it’s easier to determine (and publish) arrival times as the fixed track allows for simple position-based location tracking.
10. The next most important thing is to know when your stop is up. The fixed track allows for low-tech solutions to announce the next station to passengers. (i.e. if you had a line with 30 stops you could make mechanical display safe in the knowledge that once the line is set up it’s unlikely to change that often). A given bus on the other hand could run a dozen different routes in a week. This means stop-announcing on buses is more complex and more costly – and less likely to get implemented and less likely to work properly.
11. It’s a fixed element of the city. I arrived in Berlin at 8:00 and all the trams in the city center were not running because of the marathon so I simply followed the tracks to the station where I had arranged to meet my friend.

So these are all of these are reasons I could come up with for why one would be more inclined to take a tram than a bus. At the end of the day, most of the things that tend to annoy bus passengers are minimized with trams. Streetcars are more expensive but more likely to be used by more people.

Most people are not natural storytellers. I have one friend who is the most gifted person I know when it comes to telling stories. To watch him do his thing is truly inspiring. It’s unfortunate more people are not better at this. Lots of people have interesting things that happen to them but they are unable to convey the wonder / mystery / hilarity / gravity of what has transpired. I think things are easier when one is writing the story versus telling it orally. When you are writing you can review what you’re going to say and ensure that all the essential points are present. You can also easily remove the unimportant bits.

I remember the time I laughed the most in my entire life. Like it was yesterday. It’s strange because at the time I was laughing so hard I thought I was going have to go to the hospital, yet when I tell the story I know that it is impossible to accurately impart the absurdity of what happened. And to be honest, the story is way funnier from Tim’s point of view because I had at least spoken with Spencer the previous class. Tim had no idea who the hell this guy was.

And then there was that moment of silence right after Spencer said it.

The words he spoke, in isolation, are nothing special: bummer, last night, of, busload, Mickey Rourke, movie – to name a few. If he’d been sitting across from us in the university cafeteria the impact wouldn’t have been as great. Humans are naturally social creatures and I think he just wanted to share something that had interested / surprised him from the previous day.

Either way, confusion turned to disbelief then back to confusion and then it became understanding. And then the laughing started. And we couldn’t stop. I think the reason we laughed so much was because we were in class and it we couldn’t laugh out loud so we had to internalize it. The fact that Tim looked like he was about to explode made me laugh even harder.

And looking back I feel bad for Spencer. He knew we were laughing – he was sitting right in front of us. But we were not laughing at him, just something absurd he said. And I’m sure right after he said it, he probably realized that he’d just said the mother of all non-sequiturs. The very first “awkward”, if you will. Remember, this was way back on November 15, 1994.

I’m waiting at Kottbusser Tor for the U8 to take me to Alexanderplatz and on the platform there is a man and a woman both dressed in bright yellow – it was hard to miss them. I notice that the man has something about Vancouver written on his shirt. The train arrives, and by the time I get on and sit down, the couple from the platform have vanished from my mind.

As the train pulls away from the station I hear some music starting. I turn around and the couple has set up a keyboard in the middle of the car and they start playing and singing and dancing. It was amazing. I managed to capture some of the action on my tape recorder

They were dancing and singing and it was awesome.

(stupid iPhone 3G with no video capability). Got some pics too.

Anyway, these guys are Trike from Canada (Vancouver to be exact). You can find them at http://www.trikeaband.com or http://dothetrikey.wordpress.com/

They are my heroes for so many reasons. Inspiring, truly. I recommend you check them out.

So I’m out last night and I meet up with a friend from Bonn (second best capital city in all of Germany). After going to a CD release party we head over to Belushi’s to catch the first few innings of the ALCS game one (go Tigers!). It’s about 00:30 and there’s an empty table with a good view of the game but it has no chairs. So Nicole and I hunt around the bar and find two seats that are not being used. We move them over and set up camp to catch up and watch the game. I then head to the bar to order a beer for me and a radler for Nicole. For those of you who are unaware, a radler is a beer with Sprite (or lemonade with beer, I can never remember – it should be obvious why). Anyway it’s taking forever and while I’m waiting, I notice Nicole is no longer sitting by herself as some dude has sat down at our table.

I return and am introduced to Thomas and while he does not give his country of origin it’s obvious he’s from Australia (hint – just listen for the word “heaps”). I immediately wonder how long he’s going to stay, I’m not annoyed – more curious to see how this is going to play out. I will say that my shields were up, he seems pretty drunk and he’s not really saying anything of interest, that is until… after about ten minutes of awkward conversation he announces that Nicole and I are pretty arrogant people. He seems to be interpreting our reluctance to engage in meaningful conversation with a complete stranger (who quite frankly was being rude) as arrogance.

In retrospect had he (after I showed up with two drinks) given me back my chair I would have been a bit more relaxed with him, but he didn’t so I wasn’t. So I said, “look buddy you’re not the first guy to ever start talking to a woman who was sitting by herself in a bar, but when a guy shows up with two drinks you’re supposed to stick around for a minute or two, say something funny, and move on”. He apologized and a couple minutes later he was gone, upstairs playing pool. I had a similar experience to this about 8 years ago. I was in a bar, having a drink with a girl I had just met a few hours earlier, and this guy just totally joins in and starts hitting on her.

It seems that I never have the clever thing to say when it’s needed. In situations like this, my preference is to say something that *indirectly* indicates what I want – this is to give the other guy an escape route. The idea is *not* to be rude but to be assertive. You want to avoid the inevitable escalation “hey buddy, chill out” that will make him look relaxed and you look not relaxed.

So last night after all this happened the best I could come up with was, “you mind if we switch places so I can sit and watch the game?” I’d like to think he would have gotten the hint.

Guy

When I’m speaking English with a foreigner and they don’t understand me, I usually try to rephrase what I’m saying. This is because maybe I’m using words they just don’t know. When a native English speaker doesn’t understand what I’m saying it’s usually because I’m not speaking clearly. When I’m asked to repeat or “say again” I slow down and enunciate my words properly. This sometimes does not work with foreigners as I am usually already aware (or should be) of the need to speak clearly.

This is a trap that many travelers fall into – speaking louder and more slowly when they should really be looking for another way to say what they want. I understand their behaviour, they’re doing what comes naturally when someone does not understand them, but it’s totally ineffective (and hilarious) in most situations.

So today it’s freaking cold here in Berlin. And it’s not that pleasant dry cold that we have in Ottawa – it’s a wet, damp, windy, chill-you-to-your-bones kind of cold. When I packed for this trip, I brought with me the absolute minimum gear I would need. I didn’t even bring a proper jacket. I figured if I was starting out in Rome, I would not need it as it would be stupid hot – and I was right. In fact, I was pretty lucky until the past couple of days when it started to get cool.

So today I’ve got a busy day of touring around all planned and I need to get a proper jacket. It’s sunny out but cold. So I go online and I find this used clothing shop. It’s way on the other side of the city so I take like 3 different subways and a streetcar to get there. And on top of all this I get lost between the subways station and the store. So by the time I arrive I’m freezing my ass off.

The store is nice but kinda expensive. Plus it’s mostly women’s clothes. There’s only a small section for men’s stuff and the coat selection is almost non-existent. So on top of all this most of the coats are way to big for me and they don’t accept credit cards. I stupidly did not think about this and I have only 15 euros with me. It’s freezing out so I’m not going to a bank machine. So long story short there are only two coats less than 15 euros that actually fit me. Here is the one I choose.

I’ll probably ditch it when I find a better one, but until then, this is me.

Calling me the Gay Terminator is probably insulting to gays as well as terminators.

I found out that on Saturday, here in Berlin, there is an ice hockey contest scheduled between two professional squadrons from the national hockey federation in North America. The Sabres of Buffalo will be pitted against their arch rivals the Kings of Los Angeles. It promises to be epic. Fernando, one of the Spanish guys in my class, informed me that the game is being played at eight o’clock in the afternoon. I checked on the price of tickets – 64 euros for standing room, then some seats at 107 euros, and then some other seats at 134 euros. I asked the ticket guy to stop right there, that would be enough, and he told me the game would probably sell out.

I don’t think I will be going. If I go see any hockey game when I’m here, it will be the Berlin Eisbären against the hated Mannheim Canadians (they’re playing on Sunday). You might think that’s a strange name for a German hockey team but Eisbären (pronounced “Ice Bears”) is the German word for “Polar Bear”. It makes perfect sense when you think about it.

Sometimes I see a good idea over here in Germany and I wonder if it has already been implemented in Canada. At least once a day I’m all like, “man, we should totally do that back home” or “it’s so stupid that in Ottawa we don’t do that, my God”.

I had one of those moments yesterday on my way home from school. In Berlin most of the tram stations and all of the subway stations have these LED displays that indicate when the next tram / subway is going to arrive. They have this in Ottawa but it’s not set up like it is here. Allow me to explain:

In Ottawa it’s like this

• the electronic timetables are only found at the larger Transitway stations (Hurdman, Campus, Place D’Orleans are three that come to mind)
• there is only one per station (someone correct me if I’m wrong)
• they are usually located in the central area for the station – not at the place where people actually wait for the buses. At Campus Station the one display is located in the on the westbound side of the station inside the shelter. If you are familiar with this station you know that you have to walk about 50 meters to get to the other side. Here’s hoping that you don’t have to go back and check a second time.
• the displays themselves are 20-inch, old tube-style televisions with a poor-quality low-resolution display and they suffer from a significant amount of burn-in
• the back-end appears to be Windows NT (I’ve noticed some blue screens)
• the information being displayed is (and I could be wrong) simply an electronic version of the paper timetable. So the bus could have come a minute early and it would still show that it has not arrived yet. This is important because sometimes people are able to take more than one bus and they may skip the less convenient one for the good one they think has not arrived yet.
• because the stations with these displays are the large ones there are dozens of buses times that need to be displayed. So what you end up with is a rolling list of the different times because the screens don’t have enough real estate. Sometimes it feels like a life-or-death decision between waiting for your bus time to be displayed or just running to the stop.
• the displays are showing the times for the buses traveling in both directions. You can’t just look up and see “the 95 comes in 5 minutes” you have to check the direction. Does not sound like a big deal but it is if you are in a hurry. You also have to know additional information like: direction Orleans is on the other side, Kanata is on this side. This can be confusing – especially for new users of the system.

The electronic display you've heard so much about.

I am aware that what works in Berlin might not work in Ottawa. Berlin is a city of 3.5 million people with a spread-out city centre with many high-density neighbourhoods. Ottawa is smaller with a compact downtown core with many low-density neighbourhoods spread out over a large area. Trams have dedicated roadways and are not as prone to traffic delays like buses are. These differences will influence the exact implementation of their respective public transportation systems. But that being said, there are some core components that I think would be the same in both cities. I will list them for you now (from an Ottawa perspective)

• Every major bus station on the Transitway should have at least two electronic timetable displays
• There should be a minimum of one display for each direction
• Large stations like Hurdman should have four displays
• The displays should be outside where the passengers wait for the bus
• The displays should be capable of displaying n buses (where n is the number of buses that are serviced by that station)
• The information should be the realtime e.t.a. for the bus (not simply the schedule – even though that would be a great place to start)
• The displays should be a simple old school LED (like the one in the picture)
• The information on the display should be for the buses going in one direction only
• The displays should be dual sided

I want to be clear, the purpose of this post is not to shit on OC Transpo. I think overall they do an amazing job. And honestly I never gave much thought to the electronic displays because I almost never used / needed them. This is just my ideas on how the system could be made even better.

Note 1: it’s possible that everything I’ve written about OC Transpo in this post is inaccurate. I cancelled my bus pass back in June so they may have changed a whole bunch of things in the past 4 months.

Note 2: before you post any anti-OC Transpo comments, please re-read the title of this post

Today in Berlin it’s going to rain with a high of 13 degrees. This officially signals the end of flip-flop season. Somewhat ironically, before going to bed last night I decided to do laundry. So I wake up this morning and I put the laundry out dry and I realize that it’s freaking cold out and I need socks. And of course all mine are wet and the drying system here is one of “air dry”.

Is a caption really necessary?

So not wanting to wait 6 hours for them to dry, I decided to bake them in the oven. I think about 8 minutes at 100 degrees should be enough.

And it turns out it is enough.

Now my feet are toasty warm! I'm going to do this every morning.