Mark

Mark is a guy from Michigan who lives in Switzerland. He's a photographer, occasional writer and trained research engineer. His free time is sometimes monopolized by mountain touring or travels. On occasion he attends and presents at BarCamps and blogging events.

Iraq the Foolishness of Imitating post-WWII Germany

Politics, , ,

Iraq 2007 is not post-WWII Germany

Why does following the model of post-WWII Germany not help the rebuilding effort in current-day Iraq?  What about US troop levels, stabilization, and rebuilding?

After the fall of the Nazi Regime, the main players of the Original Coalition of the Willing: England, the US and the USSR, who had pulled together to defeat the Nazi Regime – ensured the stability needed for Germany and other European countries to rebuild.  For Germany, rebuilding required the input of funding and resources, which could be distributed without fighting an insurgency or negotiating internal ethnic tensions.  There was the occasional action by the Nazi Werwolf units, but the vast amount of troops from England, the US, and Russia more or less kept the country stable.

Iraq-2007 is so unstable that rebuilding can’t even start yet.  Iraq is a menagerie of different city-level battles without defined enemy armies and milestones for victory.  If a town is taken by insurgent armies, it can be retaken by coalition forces, but retaken again by a new insurgent army the very next month (after the US forces move out).

I don’t think that the insurgents can be mentally beaten the way the German and Japanese armies were defeated.  Those armies were commanded by Hitler and the Japanese Emperor respectively, while the insurgents are not fighting under one specific destructible entity.

Should the US troop levels of post-WWII Germany be used as an indication of a successful military strategy in current-day Iraq?

Why were a number of US military bases built in Germany after WWII?  To ensure stability and rebuild the country?  Was this the only reason?  Well, maybe also because those military bases were the first line of defense against a Soviet expansion across Europe.  Such an expansion would have included the traditional infantry-Army-Air Force attack and the US Army and Air Force bases were in place to repel such aggression from beyond the Iron Curtain.

Pumping more money into Iraq and sustaining troop levels is pointless without a real strategy.  Using the analogy of post-WWII to validate the current US strategy in Iraq will not lead to the stabilization of the county or of the region – which was the only real reason the war was fought in the first place.  A similar strategy won’t work because the facts and events surrounding the US occupation of Iraq are very different from the US occupation of Germany.

Oh, well – I mean, the US could build Army bases to prevent an invasion from Iran.  That sounds logical, no?

Thinking outside the political box is required to fix Iraq-2007, because simply falling back on old success stories without considering the differences to the current situation is not going to lead to a solution.

So if lessons don’t exist in the rebuilding of post-WWII Germany, where does one look to for lessons on how the current Iraq War can be ended?

First, in my view, you need to consider the lessons of the US-USSR Cold War and the battle field of Afghanistan.

Coming up Next:

A bed-time story of how the US is Ignoring History and Inviting Disaster in Iraq

Why post-WWII Germany is not 2007 Iraq

Politics

I occasionally checkout the online paper of Michigan State University when I need to send some white noise through my brain and recover from the last dissertation writing session. The Editorial on April 13th by Jacob Carpenter got me thinking, and over a cappuccino those thoughts turned into some ideas that’d like communicate concerning the current situation in Iraq – specifically the interconnection between the US and USSR, how lessons from the Afghanistan War can be explored to explain the foolishness of the US government heading into Iraq, and why Iraq 2007 is not Germany – post World War Two (WWII).

Jacob wrote that Iraq can not be abandoned via a US troop withdrawl.

“To better understand the democratization of a country, which is the current mission in Iraq, it helps to reach back into the history books and revisit an example of a similar case.”

His reasoning sounds nice and has been echoed before, essentially that the US must stay in Iraq because after WWII the US pumped billions into then-devastated Germany and Japan, which eventually lead to their stabilization and democracies.

This Blog Post shouldn’t really be taken as a response to the State News Editorial, these are just some things to consider on the current state of geo-political affairs.? His editorial just gave me some motivation to write them down.

“Following the end of World War II, the United States didn’t abandon enemy Germany in its vulnerable state of disarray ? relatively equivalent to that of modern day Iraq.” – Jacob Carpenter

First, and this should be crystal clear to any half-interested Generation XY wannabe historian, Iraq is not Germany.? The circumstances surrounding the current Iraq War shares little with World War II, and the problem in Iraq is not so simple as staying the course or pumping money into the country or simply pulling out.? Using the post-WWII Germany/Japan analogy to rationalize the current US strategy in Iraq is dangerous and shot-sighted because it does not shed light on the current problem, which is:

How can Iraq move foreword in the current political situation?

Now some background on where these thoughts are coming from. I like to read, and if history is to be learned from, you have to move beyond the classroom and seek out your own facts. For an understanding on why post-WWII Germany is not Iraq and why it shouldn’t be treated as so, I recommend reading the following books:

Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism
Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times
America’s Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between the United States and Its Enemies
The Kite Runner

Some history notes (as I know them), prior to the establishment of the German state and national borders, Germany was a collection of different kingdoms and princes and landowners, which eventually formed into a set of German States. Then, with Bismarck in 1871 the various states were united into what is now (minus a few border changes) Germany.? Prior to WWII Germany had a functioning democracy with elections and checks and balances (which were to fail and allow Hitler to take absolute political control of the country).

The pre-WWII German scientific-industrial contribution to the world was massive. Most of the Nobel Prize winners prior to 1940 came from Germany, in addition, companies such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Zeiss and others started and still thrive globally. I think it’s often ignored or understated just how powerful German was, but the concept is easily illustrated by remembering that the division of German scientists after the war essentially defined a number of current global political situations.

Prior to WWII Europe was the Well from which scientific discoveries flowed. After its destruction the US realized it would need to establish its own Well and the federal funding of research in the US with public funds began in the 1950’s.

How did the US and USSR develop the ability to shoot long range missiles at one another and at any other country? What was the enabling movement which allowed the USSR to send cosmonauts into space and the US to land men on the Moon? Simple, after the defeat of Nazi-Germany the US picked up Wernher von Braun (the head of the Nazi V-2 Missile program) with a truck full of rocket research documents. Around the same time period, the Soviets forcibly transplanted every German rocket scientist they could find in occupied Germany to Siberia, where they reenacted the work they had done on the Nazi missile program. Dr. von Braun eventually became the head of NASA while the US and USSR began the Nuclear Arms Race and the Space Race.

The point here is that Germany had the knowledge base, collective will, and stability to rebuild after its destruction – because many of those elements were in-place prior to the devastation.? Hitler was really only in total control for a short while (compared with Iraq).? He took over more or less around 1933, and Nazi-Germany was defeated in 1945. Saddam Hussein was in total power from about 1980 until 2003. During this time he was able to build a lasting framework for keeping the people down and eradicating the notion of a real democracy.

The most important difference from my view is that Germany was united by language and religion. Iraq is mostly united in language, but for sure very divided by religious and ethnic traditions. Also, I think that in general, Germany has maintained a social tradition of working for the common good of the country, because the internal conflicts between different ethic groups and religious desires were more or less worked out in the centuries preceding the First World War.

Currently the fragmented factions and ethnic groups in Iraq have had to fight for the survival of their own entities, therefore a unification of the country is a monumental task even without the instability of the war to prevent rebuilding.

Ok you say, but still it was all the US military personnel in Germany that made the difference between chaos and rebuilding. Let’s just keep the troops in Iraq, and do the same as with Germany post-WWII and Iraq will be ok in 20 years.

Coming up next: Why imitating the US military strategy of post-WWII Germany doesn’t easily translate to stability for 2007 Iraq.

The Mind in Focus – Mountains and Latin Mottos

Climbing

Sometimes I find it hard to focus, bring all the elements together in some form to comprehend.  A glitch just beyond the motivated shell you create to make it through the brain bleeding pressure cooker days.

This is the time when I need a reboot, pump the veins full to the 9’s of that thing you can’t fathom from behind your office walls and the comforts of plush down covers and Italian coffee makers.

Some days I go to work in the morning, then head out after lunch, chill in Star Bucks with a chocolate chip cookie and coffee writing my dissertation, then go over anodic bonding, and finish up with a review of the last German lesson before heading next door to the Inlingua language school by the Stauffacher tram stop where I sit brain-drained as my German teacher points out my lazy pronunciations and misrepresentation of the akkusativ.

When the soul cries out for an adventure you’re a fool to deny it.

Santis is the mountain for when you want high adventure without the effort required of a real alpine beast.  You can ascend from nearly every direction and I’ve been up three different paths in the past four years – in summer that is.  In winter snow morphs the mountain into a different breed of excursion.  Last year I turned back on a snowshoe ascent due to staying too long at the bar the night before – and general laziness.  Plus there were long streams coming off the peaks and I knew in my heart that it was the best to avoid the prospect of permanently visiting the nearest climber’s cemetery.

But those were comfortable days when relenting made sense – when the prospect of turning back seemed ok.  These days are illuminated by different suns – for now the PhD culmination looms threateningly beyond the next few months and there was that Functional Surfaces exam on Feb. 12th.  I may have passed it, but I screwed up the section on polymer surfaces, the topic of reversible reactions, I probably should have started talking about block copolymers.  Now the exam is done with and it’s too late for bright ideas.

Without the drive to conquer the physical trials you present to yourself, how can one hope to tackle the analogous mental ones? 

Summiting peaks is a pointless exercise in determination – and in my eyes, no different than dedicating three years to a PhD.  But we do many things which appear pointless on the surface.

"Mens sana in corpore sano."

"A sound mind in a sound body."

The school motto was one of the few useful things that I took away from Detroit Country Day School.

Halfway up Santis I ran into the Hut warden near the pass.  In the end I took the route down the other side of the pass to Schwende, instead of the route up Altmann and the summit ridge to the Santis summit.  The conversation was short and in German (the language class did work), in summation he said there was too much snow, and that it was better not to be featured in the newspaper on Monday or Tuesday – so that one would not need to read about another fool climber claimed by the Alps.

I took his advice, crossed the mountain pass and then half-skied, half-walked down to Schwende.  Backcountry sking isn’t easy for me, and it’s a tad chaotic when trying to do it in the Alps with short trekking skies.  Eventually I made it back to Zurich where I wrote these words to fulfill my pointless need to write.

BlogCamp Switzerland 2007

Swiss
On Saturday, March 24th, I affirmed by place in the "Global Blogsphere" by giving a presentation at BarCamp Zurich.  Essentially it was a gathering place for bloggers, and the coolest concept for a conference I’ve ever experienced and would love to explore this format for Smart Materials and other research endeavors.  I won’t try to relate all the topics covered, as there were real journalist type bloggers who have done a much better job than I would.

The concept is simple, meet people with similar interests (200 participants) and learn about what other people are doing.  No paper to write, no registration deadlines for presentations, you sign up on the internet, you go there in the morning, pick your time-slot, you network, do your talk, network – awesome conference experience.

I don’t actually remember how I found out about it, but when I found the BarCamp webpage and checked out the agenda, I signed up to give a talk on Photography and Writing for Blogs.  I also won’t try to communicate all of what went on at BlogCamp Switzerland 2007, because bloggers with better talents for reporting facts like PeetTheEngineer and Markus Tressl have already done so.

Why did I give a talk at BlogCamp Switzerland 2007?  Because I normally give talks on Active Fiber Composites with graphs and microscopy images and focus on the finer points of delamination in Smart Materials or crack propagation due to stress concentrations at the interface between Interdigitated Electrode fingers and PZT fibers.  Not that this is bad, but it seemed like a nice change of pace to talk about off-camera flash techniques and creating a "Mental Anchor" when creating blog content.

My presentation centered on the idea of creating a Visual Anchor when creating blog content, in particular with writing and photography.  Part of this included off-camera flash techniques, and how the advent of cheap radio triggers and flashes makes it easier than ever to create good photos and communicate ideas.  In in the process I promoted www.strobist.com, as the best source on the web for learning how to use your flash.

The writing section focused on using descriptive language to communicate a visual image for the reader in addition to transferring information.  Naturally I used examples from the blog.

You could write:

"The Laughing Lemon cooking school is located in Zurich."

Or:

"It sounds like the coolest cocktail you’ve ever heard of, but the Laughing Lemon is actually a cooking school in Zurich."

They both communicate information, but the second passage gives a visual anchor (an image in your mind) – and it sounds cooler.  I got into workflow a bit and the use of writing programs like Ulysses to organize yourself and write more effectively.


I closed by saying things like,

"Focus on developing good content to make the web a better place."

and,

"Delete the embarrassing photos your girlfriend takes of you."

The discussion brought up some cool points, one (from Stefan Bucher I believe) being the idea that German bloggers tend to comment on and discuss events in their blogs, while American bloggers generally maintain a larger focus towards creating content.  Essentially it’s the difference between writing a blog about your life versus writing about and creating a dialogue about world events on your blog.

I’m hoping the folks who were at my presentation took away some warm feelings and fun ideas.  From reading the bloggers who covered the event, it seems like the talk went better than the technical ones I give.  It’s also possible that some thought I was some crack-pot American fool with a pointless blog who spends too much money on cameras – but I’m ok with that, life gets boring if you don’t take risks.

Plus, and this is another reason why I did it, I get to add the following to the Presentation section of my CV:

Light painting and Scribbles – BarCamp Switzerland March 24, 2007, Zurich, Switzerland,  International conference on blogging.

The Day of My Mortality

Zurich

In honor of my Birthday the Swiss Weather Gods said unto the Swiss Weather Lookers,

"He’ll no doubt want to take the day off for his birthday and climb the mountains around Zurich.  This can not be allowed as he needs to write his dissertation."

It’s been snowing in Zurich every day or night since Monday, and will probably continue until Saturday.  The Avalanche Warning in the mountains around Zurich is a nice 4 out of a possible 5, and the highest I’ve seen around here.  So it was for sure the right decision that I took off work last Friday to snowshoe above Kandersteg.

A Personal Day in the Alps

Climbing, ,
For some reason the pressure cooker was working harder on my head than normal.  Probably something to do with writing my dissertation, trying to find a job, and organizing a research trip to Japan.  In any event I felt a need get out of Zurich for the day.  So I took a personal day and shifted the weekend foreword by one day.  Friday morning I got out of bed at 4:30 and biked to my girlfriend’s place to retrieve the trekking poles I had forgotten there.  An hour later I was heading to Zurich and then on to Kandersteg.
Of all the mountain valleys in all the regions I’ve visited, the view from the Kandersteg train station is one of the coolest in the world if you’re looking to get into the thin air.  The Blumesaple rises at the end of the valley like a fortress of mythic bygone kings.  You think of monasteries in the Himalayas and tales of adventure and journeys through time.  I was up at the Bluesalp before, the hut there is one of the highest at 2800m, and even has it’s own T-shirt for sale.  This time I took the cable car up to the opposite side, along the route leading to the Gemmi pass.  Three weeks ago the avalanche conditions were about a 4 out of 5 in this region and the cable car from Leukerbad to the Gemmi Pass wasn’t even working.

But these were now bright, stable, low avalanche days.  I took the first cable car up, half of my fellow travelers were 60 something, since this is what many Swiss senior citizens do to pass the time.  The rest were back-country skiers and one pair that had their ice climbing gear.  I took the well-groomed walking path for a bout a mile before taking an extreme left and strapped on my snowshoes for the ascent.  My goal was the Rinderhorn, an easy 3200m peak which, given the agreeable weather, wouldn’t be an avalanche factory.

The other people on the ascent were all skiers, and probably had stayed in the hotel the night before.  Yes, there’s a hotel at the Gemmi pass, sitting there at just over 2000m above sea level.

Every excursion into the Alps looks good on paper.  The topographic map does little to convey the physical power needed to ascent the slopes.  I looked up and the skiers were as ants on a white hill.  I cursed them for being so fast and wished I had bought that touring ski-snowboard for the season.  The skiers came down, some in perfect tight turns and some looked as though they were just concentrating on not crashing and looking the ski-fool.

Soon I was alone and the incline took the inevitable turn to the extreme.  These are the features I never get from maps, at first it looks find and you think, "yeah, sure, no problem."  The thing is, all I had for breakfast was some birchelmuseli and a coffee; then two white-bread sandwiches, one salami and one cheese.  This is not what one would consider a healthy breakfast for one who needs to ascend 1000m on foot.
Below the ridge is the worst, the mind start asking the logical question "why am I here?"  Does the last 30 meters really mean that much?  I’ve come most of the way, it’s been a nice hike, why not go down, avoid the last extreme slope the…

Then you look up and the sun crests over the ridge and you can almost see the cool blue expanse beyond, that vista, that fleeting moment that draws from your bed at 4am.  The slope was too steep for snowshoes and I put on my Grivel crampons – at last getting to use my climbing gear for something besides a photo shoot.

The last 20 meters were an amazing lesson in perseverance.  My energy was gone, because given my pitifully breakfast, I was hiking on empty.  The snow was now hard and my spikes bit in and held firm.  I was pouring sweat inside and thought my heart might explode.  You just focus on your feet and keep moving…a few minutes later you crest the ridge and realize anew why you came.

The Rinderhorn is one the easiest mid-alpine peaks, the cable-car gets you most of the way and then it’s just up the slope.  So I was confused when I looked at the map and saw an easy route, but looked at reality and saw a rather intense 30-40m rock climb to the summit.  It was no matter, I had to be down for the last cable car and it was already 1pm.  I was in fact, standing on the ridge to the Balmhorm, slightly higher at 3600m, it would take far too long to summit and get back down.

On the descent I became slightly aware that I was standing on a 50 deg slope without an avalanche beacon and no one to hear me scream.  Not that I would, screaming is a waste of energy, and when a mountain is bearing down, you run like hell because it’s what your survival instincts say is needed.
I imagined the mountain letting loose and rushing at me, pulling me down into the valley.  I probably could’ve ridden the bastard out.  As long as you stay on top you’ll survive.  But fear swam through my blood.  Now in these older years I could feel it.  I had no desire to leave this life so soon.

Drugs and Brain Hugs – a Recollection of Sobriety

Deep Thoughts

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

(Hunter S. Thompson)

It’s still interesting to look back on my life are realize that far too many of my role models were drug fiends. Jim Morrison and Hunter S. Thompson – two rather influential figures in my development, both with historical personas fully ripped to the hilt on psychedelics. As were Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane. Howard Hughes was addicted to his meds and his need to succeed. There’s a Richard Feynmen and an Ursula K. Le Guin thrown in here and there for balance, and a Lynn Hill opposite a Mia Hamm, but the big influences were famously portrayed as drug freaks.

I’ve often wondered why I never got into the drug culture – that mythical component of society we hear about, are at times fascinated by and sometimes want to imitate. Would Pulp Fiction be half as cool if John Travolta was on a sugar high instead of pumping heroine into his body.

Oh, lord, set me free of my worldly senses and drop my mind down a rabbit hole that I’ll never want to crawl out of.

The thing is, although there’s some sort of dangerous allure, like wanting to take up smoking cigarettes – rage against societal conventions, it just seems like too much work to really get into drugs. Even the dead-head culture, those hippy souls born twenty years too late that wear their colorful drags and talk in aluff tones, the ones you see at the University of Michigan head shops and trip over at any number of open air concerts – that look isn’t by accident. It takes thought and determination to appear that spaced out.

I’ve seen some of the drug scene – you have to go to parties and know people to buy drugs from, and then there’s the paraphernalia investment.

Accessories like three foot Joker bongs don’t come cheap, and what kind of gutter college kid degenerate wants to toke from a plastic pipe? Yes you "can" fashion a pipe from an empty tube of M&M-mini’s (or an apple), but why go to the trouble? If you’re going to take a hit, you want to do it in style – and I’ve seen the prices of those colorful handmade glass smoking accessories. The thought of dropping $50 on a piece of glass to smoke from just doesn’t compute.

Probably the allure is so docile in my brain because I do more or less act like I’m "on" something from day to day. Nothing serious, it just looks like I’m on a mild tranquilizer most of the time. The thing is, I’m just naturally mello, probably due to low blood pressure and a weak heart.

Maybe my body is too sensitive, if you’ve never gotten into drugs in the first place, then a cup of Star Bucks still gives your heart a stiff kick and one beer makes the head swim like a nymph in Bacchus’s cup of ale. So what’s to be gained from escalation?

"Dude, I’m taking drugs to expand my mind."

"Oh, really?"

I’ve actually heard a searching-for-purpose prelaw student drop this line before. If that’s the argument, wouldn’t you want to be expanding your mind on a continual basis? If it’s really to gain some new perspective, wouldn’t it be better to have that ability all the time, not just after you pop a pill? If you rely on a drug to do all the work – you’ll never have any hope of reaching Nirvana, just brief windows of enlightenment that close before you can crawl your lethargic mind through the opening.

I suppose you have to get into the habit of taking drugs. I tried this with cigarettes. I was stressed out doing a Master’s in Materials Science and thought I’d take up smoking to bevel the edges of my twisted head – but I’d never finish my pack of American Spirits and the cigarettes never really fit that well between my lips.

I also smoked cigars for a time – and never inhaled again after nearly vomiting my brains out one fine afternoon while sunning myself on the outdoor patio.

All of this doesn’t really make sense, my parents both smoked for over thirty years and both my sister and I grew up in a smoking environment. Most kids I know in such a situation grow up puffing with their parents, or hiding it when they go home for Thanksgiving. Is this undesire to get my head twisted around a drug addiction just my quiet way of rebelling against my parent’s cigarette habits?

I hear it’s more colorful to get twisted in this world, but my mind has too many turns as it is. I pity the fool who need a hit to see the light – and the equally uninspired pious minion who never even considered the option.

"My attorney had never been able to accept the notion — often espoused by former drug abusers — that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them. And neither have I for that matter."

-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Movie Script

Photos and Blogs

Photography

Do the photos illustrate the text or do the words supplement the pictures?

Photos should tell stories and stories should form pictures in the reader’s mind. I keep revisiting the thought of doing an exclusive "photo blog", but half the time I don’t like the idea of not including written things – text for tempo, words for background, sentences for structure. And when I write something, there’s always a picture in my head – the columns of words look incomplete without some visual anchor.

The fact is, I get bored flipping though photo galleries on the web and hardly read anything on the net if it goes on for more than 700 words. Books and printed media are another story, and I have no problem chilling with a novel, calmly thumbing through an Annie Leibovitz photo book, or staring at the photos on my walls.

That photo of my Jack Daniel’s bottle is boring on it’s own, but to me it looks interesting when juxtaposed against that photo from Greece.

And that picture from Chaco Canyon just seems so at home next to the one of a doorway in Berlin.

But let’s be honest, they’re actually a bit boring if you don’t have an emotional connection to the back-story. I like them because I lived, wrote, and can remember the background elements which lead to their creation.

On their own I might not really care.

But on their own, they might invoke a backstory that you have stored somewhere.

Then they might mean something to the viewer.

From a consumption standpoint, the net is boring and poorly written with lax formatting and little inspiration because it’s easy to do – and so, most people don’t appreciate the little effort that most people put into making their webpage (like me).

Writing a blog gives some motivation to make the photos for the story and learn .css and get a feeling for CMS. Things that I wouldn’t do otherwise because there wouldn’t be much outlet for the effort. The words on the blog then give a framework for the photos.

When a paycheck isn’t involved you’re free to do what you want. Without the economic pressure you can publish whatever you want, because it means something to the author; not to the advertisers, and there’s no editor to worry about pleasing.

The Laughing Lemon

Zurich, ,
Whipping by hand
I tend to write a lot of drivel about heading into the Alps, there’s no method behind it all, it’s just what floats around in my head. But it seems like a good time to digress and focus on more important topics. I’ve often thought about taking up chocolate science as a career, but much like joining the CIA, it just doesn’t seem to fit me. I’ve also harbored ideas of being a wine connoisseur and knowing how to taste the subtle differences between a pinot and a merlot, but like writing as a career – I’ve generally lacked the desire or drive to get serious about the subject.
That’s where the Laughing Lemon comes into play.
It sounds like the coolest cocktail you’ve ever heard of, but the Laughing Lemon is actually a cooking school in Zurich. I learned about the Laughing Lemon from Jack (he invited me to the Swiss wine class) who’s dating Kara, who is friends with Kate, who grew up in Ohio, but I met her in Michigan, and then we ended up sailing through Greece with Allison, who’s from Hawaii, and was dating Kevin, who cheated on her, and now I’m dating Iris, who was born in Virginia but grew up in Germany, and went to New York for college where she met Kevin and Evan (who’s wedding I attended in July) the non-sequitur thing is that it’s not the same Evan, and this Kevin is no relation to the one who cheated on Allison. Oh, and the Jack who invited me to the wine course is no relation to Jack McNulty – who runs the Laughing Lemon with Silvia Gautschi McNulty. The point here is that the Laughing Lemon offers a Chocolate and Wine class – which I signed up for without a second thought.
I took the class on a fine Thursday night last Fall. We started off learning about the history of chocolate in Switzerland and various facts like: soldiers used to eat high-purity chocolate to stay awake when on guard duty. Then we started tasting an array of chocolates with different cacao contents. Everything from the bitter dark madness to the white too-sweet-to-be-delicious variety. Then came the wine. We learned how to pair different wines to different chocolates. I can’t remember what goes with what, but it’s all written up in the information packet that one is provided with.
Then we got hands-on
Truffles are some of the coolest things that I had now idea how to make, and the creation of chocolate mousse has long befuddled my brain. So it was a bit of a godsend that we learned how to do both that night. Dipping in melted chocolate, whipping egg whites and gently folding the chocolate in so the mousse has the right texture, we went over all the little things that always intimidated me about chocolate creations in my kitchen.
We ended the class with a tasty-amazing-yummy dinner, consisting of rabbit cooked with peppers and dark chocolate used to thicken the sauce. Chefs who do this stuff for a living will tell you that an alternative thickener is blood – I like idea of using chocolate. For dessert we ate the truffles and mousse (goes well with prosecco/champaign), in addition to slices of truffle cake (I think it pairs well with a mild-bodied red wine).
All in all the Laughing Lemon cooking school is one of the coolest things to do in Zurich, rivaling a club night at Kaulfleuten, summiting the Glärnish, or even jamming to Karaoke from Hell at Mascotte on Tuesday night.
But the test of any class is not what you learn during the lecture, but what you’re inspired to do after you go home. I got inspired to bake a chocolate truffle cake.
pict1950_400pix.jpg
They’re simple things to make; nothing but chocolate and butter and sugar and eggs.  Melt chocolate in a double set-up, it’s not rocket science.  However, not having an electric mixer of my own, a chocolate truffle cake is more work than you’d think. Egg whites just don’t whip up easily (like when Martha does it on TV) when you’re going it all manually with a whisk. In the end, it didn’t look like the one in any cookbook, but I’m not dead yet and still have time to perfect my technique.

Mountain Zen

Climbing
The shit thing about exploring the in the mountains is that you can’t purge it from your system. The sickness gets under your skin and the more you do it the more you want to be out there above the ridges touching the clouds. You walk through beautiful corridors and past quiet peaceful cafes and wonder,
Can I climb that?
What would it be like if I were three inches tall and could climb up that table leg? If I leave at 5 a.m., can I get my head into the thin air by mid day? You climb the stairs two at a time because you’re trying to keep the legs honed for the next tour.

Every hour behind the computer you’re getting weaker and mountains are still rock and ice and as hard as before. And when you do get out there, when you’ve been walking up a mountain for 3 hours, after the face climb, when your knees are banged up and your knuckles are raw, when you crest the main ridge and still see a path leading up to the summit and you wonder, Is this it?

Where are the long rock spines we were promised?Where are the cliffs and mountain chills that make the body uncomfortable and remind your spirit of its sad mortality? Where are the knife edges and notch finger holds daring you to fall off balance and let go into oblivion?

Where is the fleeting morning light? That grey-transient morning kiss morphing into a golden pre-afternoon blaze? Feel the solar atomic rays frying the DNA of your exposed skin, courting a cancer inspiration set to break out in 10 years time.Where is the death whisper you were promised? The avalanche roar, the glacier snap, that last sound your brain will ever process. The rock breaking loose and your toe slipping off a razor edge. Like that same edge Col. Kurtz crawls along before he’s transformed into something lifeless.

You might call it the dark side of my Mountain Zen

This is my Ice Tool

You’re confused because you don’t lust for anything material, neither power nor money or fame, but you have a deep desire to exist on that divide between living and some something else.
 Mountain Madness

Only when one realizes that the line doesn’t exist will the mountain lust be purged from the soul – and the true Zen attained.

I’m not quite there yet.

Couch Potato

Climbing
The city is quiet on the morning of the Saturday before Christmas. I’ve always enjoyed walking through public places decked out in mountaineering tights and big red boots. The mind focuses, going over scenarios: getting lost, hoping the weather holds, pondering the logic of it all.
I had a mushroom pizza for breakfast, and I felt ready. My legs are tired and out of shape, but we’re not tackling a 4000 meter peak today, just a few hundred shy of 3000 meters, but as I have an aversion to paying for lift tickets, I’ll be starting from the valley floor.
With the cable cars and lifts, the Pizol summit, hanging above the popular Zurich ski area, is just a few hours hike from the last cable car station, but starting out from the valley at 546m, it becomes a race to get there before the sun starts to fall or the weather turns ugly.
I’m wearing the Big Red Beasts, the Koflach Degree mountaineering boots that were with me on my failed attempt to the summit of Huyana Potosi in Bolivia, and on the long winter nights along the great frozen lake in Northern Michigan near the Porcupine Mountains, and they were with me on the summit of the Wiessmies, and now we’re heading to Pizol with a new pair of short trekking skis.
 
I get to the mountain plateau at 2222m around 3:30 p.m. and in the back of my mind I know that the sun goes down sometime around five. Most of the ski tour to the hut involved me trying not to get decapitated by downhill skiers and now, while enjoying a hot bowl of Goulash – I’m pondering the thought of heading to the summit.
 
But I say "Ah fuck it," to myself, this is Christmas vacation after all. The front of my shins are ragged and bloody from my socks and boots.  I could do it, but the 1500 meter ascent up to the hut was a lot for me in one day, and the act of doing another 400 meters up to the summit and being back before sunset just isn’t happening.
This is why I’m just a couch potato – an armchair mountaineer.  A real athlete would tackle this beast of a trip and would have been on the summit an hour ago.  But I am by-and-large an armchair mountaineer.  The thought of the summit is nice, but not altogether necessary for my enjoyment of the mountain environment – and so, much of my collection of climbing paraphernalia is mainly used as props in photo shoots.

More Fool

Fashion, , ,

On a cool Thursday night after German class and before a Greek dinner party I had a deep desire to do some fashion consious shopping in Zurich. I walked into one of the bright storefronts on Bahnhofstrasse to find a jacket, and perhaps some pants to match.

"We" is a cool clothing store for guys, more realistic style than H&M, more cutting edge than Fossil, way cheaper than Hugo Boss, and they have decent quality stuff. There was a cool olive blazer, but I wasn’t ready for the shoulder inserts, plus it seemed to fan out too much around the sides. I can’t do black velvet yet and the purple relaxed velvet is just so beyond realistic contemplation for me I didn’t even try it on.

Distraught and subdued I took one more look around the ground floor before leaving and my eyes settled on a non-fitted (only small, medium, and large) urban relaxed styled offering. It was made to look like linen; a rustic brown with faded white vertical stripes. I wasn’t expecting much but I tried on the medium and it seemed to fit like a glove. It was only two button, but it was also only 99 CHF, I took it to the counter without a second thought.

Heading back along Bahnhofstrasse I stopped in at H&M. It’s not my favorite store since they like to sell too many trendy trinkets (sparkling belts and leather wrist bands) that kids buy like bubble gum cause Brittany wore it on MTV. But the guy section actually has some cool suits and pants. I only had one goal; and found a cool blue-stripped button down shirt to go with the blazer.

The Pose

I fell in love with the H&M dress shirts earlier this year when I picked one up on a whim. Seeing as I used to be quite the chubby Star Wars/G.I. Joe geek, there’s some sort of quiet contentment in buying shirts with the words "size medium – slim fit" on the tag. They hug my body like no other non-sport shirt I’ve ever worn. Up until the age of 18 I’d say that over 80% of my clothes came from my mom via various second=hand stores. Now the idea of spending $80 on a pair of non-waterproof, non-tear resistant, just-cause-they-fit-well-and-look-cool pants is almost digestible. The next night I wore the blazer, new shirt and light blue Levis. The red tie made an appearence, as did the Saks 5th Ave. scarf.

More ShadowShadow

As I was heading out the door I grabbed the Purple Dr. Martin 10 eye combat boots (not pictured), they just seemed like the perfect addition. The aviator sunglasses were just for the photographs. I don’t really wear sunglasses during the night, unless I happened to have lost my normal glasses – which has happened before (Oktoberfest is a dangerous place). I wasn’t really drinking during the shoot, mainly because the beer had been sittng out for two or three days.

Mirror

The Look