Simulacrum

Soviet Aluminium Paper

2012-01-23T12:21:00.000+01:00

While in Russia, we found a roll of aluminium paper produced in 1986. As the picture above shows, it had a very small hole in the middle. Now, 26 years later, when we buy aluminium paper, we buy mostly an empty hole, as the picture below shows.

Until when are we going to let advertisers fool us into buying empty packages? Until when are we going to let advertising tricks prevail over technology (e.g. the ability to make small holes) and over environmental concerns?

By the way, in the pictures it is not possible to see this properly, but both rolls actually have about the same external diameter...

Very Old Russian Church on the Way to Staritsa

2012-01-10T19:41:00.000+01:00

Playing with Huskies and Other Dogs

2012-01-10T19:39:00.000+01:00

Siberian Huskies

2012-01-10T19:37:00.001+01:00

On the way back from Staritsa to Tver' we stopped in Чукавино (Tchukavino), a small village where we intended to ride on sledges pulled by siberian huskies. The lack of snow made our initial plan unfeasible, but we could still see beautiful dogs of various kinds and play with them!

I thought huskies were always black and white and with blue eyes, but there I learned that they can also be brown and white, or even completely white. And it is very common for them to have one eye of a different color.

Staritsa

2012-01-07T08:38:00.000+01:00

To the southwest of Tver' (Тверь) lies the village of Staritsa (Старица). In one side of the river, there was a monastery for women, now abandoned and still in ruins. In the other side of the river, the monastery for men has been fully restored and brought to a great state of beauty. Inside one of the chapels, there is a small bathing pool of holy water! Anyone can come and take a holy bath there (and one of our friends did it!).

Crossing the bridge was one of the coldest moments of my life. The strong and cold wind flowing over the river made my eyes cry of cold, even though they were closed. I was wearing three hoods, but it felt like my head was naked and completely bald.

We had lunch in an old soviet-style restaurant. For just five euros, I had солянка (solyanka) soup, греча (buckwheat), котлета and компот juice.

The Soviet Musicians of Bremen

2012-01-06T08:55:00.002+01:00

Yesterday we watched the theater musical "Бременские музыканты" ("The Town Musicians of Bremen") here in Тверь. It was very interesting, particularly because the story turned out to be quite different from the story I vaguely remembered from my childhood. There was even a king and a princess, and the main theme was the troubled love between the princess and a musician. The donkey, the dog, the cat and the rooster are just secondary characters, forming the musician's band.

So, when we came home, I decided to investigate the discrepancies. Here is a summary of what I found out:

1) The original story, Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten, is a german folktale recorded by the Brothers Grimm and depicts the four animals (who represent various classes of the people) escaping from their owners (who represent the feudal nobility) and going in the direction of the free hanseatic town of Bremen.

2) The musical from yesterday is faithful to the soviet cartoon Бременские музыканты, made in 1969 by the famous animation studio Soyuzmultfilm. Can it be that government funding of Soyuzmultfilm contributed to inhibiting the story's original theme of search and fight for freedom, transforming it into a love story instead?

3) The story I knew was the one told in a recording of the musical Os Saltimbancos, made in 1977. As Brazil was governed by an authoritarian military regime at that time, the revolutionary freedom fighting aspects of the original story were intensified. Especially songs like "Todos Juntos" ("All Together") make it sound much more communist than the soviet version!

Here is the beginning of the russian cartoon:

Forest, Field and the Sun at Noon in Russia

2012-01-02T07:32:00.000+01:00

Ice on the River Banks

2012-01-02T07:30:00.000+01:00

The water level lowered and the thin layer of ice collapsed. The result was this very unusual (at least for me) on the banks of the Tvertsa river by the village of Городище...

Ice Skating

2012-01-02T07:29:00.000+01:00

Ice skating with your own ice skates is so much better than ice skating with rented skates.

Caviar

2012-01-02T07:20:00.000+01:00

Katya's parents bought a big fish, and it had lots of caviar inside!

Рыбалка - Fishing on a Frozen River

2012-01-02T07:19:00.000+01:00

One year ago, when I saw people fishing on the frozen river Volga, I found it really cool, and I wanted to try it this time. So we went to a frozen river close to Sonkovo, and Katya's grandparents taught us how to fish.

The device to make holes on the ice is interesting. It is quite easy to use, although not too easy. It requires just enough physical effort to warm you up after you start feeling cold from just sitting and waiting in front of the hole that you have previously made.

We spent about three hours there, but we didn't manage to catch any fish... I almost caught a fish three times, and Katya four times. We felt the fishes biting, but we either pulled too fast or too slowly, and the fishes escaped. One of the fishes Katya almost caught was so big and strong, that it managed to cut the line.

Where is Winter??

2011-12-28T17:37:00.003+01:00

Exactly one year ago we walked on the frozen river Volga in Russia and Katya's grandfather's house was covered by two meters of snow. Now the temperature is +5, there is no snow, the river is flowing, St.Petersburg had the warmest 27th of december ever.... We couldn't ride on sledges pulled by huskies, because there was no snow... And so far we couldn't ice skate, because it is so warm that the ice melts...

Where is winter???

Centralized Planning

2011-12-27T17:07:00.003+01:00

Centralized planning is usually considered to have contributed significantly to the failure of socialism in the soviet union. I wonder if it shouldn't be seen as a significant factor in the capitalist crises that we are experiencing in recent years too.

Money (and hence power) is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. And even if these few are still much more than those who had power in socialism, they seem to be all brainwashed to take the same decision: basically, whatever it takes to make the stock prices and profits grow (or at least not fall too badly, in bad times like these). The effect is that decision making behaves essentially as if it were centrally planned.

Now if we give these few decision makers financial instruments and investment schemes that allow them to bet on (or insure against) what will happen in five or ten years, the result might be analogous to five-year plans.

Centralized planning eventually fails because it is bureaucratic and slow to adapt to changes in the market. In capitalism (at least according to the fairy tales), the financial system, with its banks and the stock market, was supposed to decentralize planning, to make the whole system more dynamic, to speed-up the transfer of capital to more demanded sectors... But, paradoxically, the opposite is
observed. The few who have information and lots of money take the same decision (or their betting algorithms take the decision for them), the others try to ride the waves as well as they can, multiplying the effect of the decision and creating bubbles of artificial prices that lose correlation with real market values.

To this financial perspective, the accomplice actions of centralized governments can be added. Their centralized bailouts, over-spending and austerity plans temporarily interfere with natural supply and
demand levels, seeking to temporarily maintain stability (and thus the status of the powerful few), even when society is already stressed by wrong centralized planning.

Furthermore, people are being convinced by the media that giving up their local economic sovereignty and letting centralized decisions be made by blocks and unions of countries is the
way out of the crises. Maybe not...

If it continues like this, soon the majority of the people may end up starving on queues, just because a few made bad centralized bets five years before.

Tarragona

2011-12-17T23:13:00.000+01:00

The main attraction of Tarragona is a big roman amphitheater by the sea. It was used mostly for gladiator fights, as usual. By the end of the roman empire, some christians were executed there. A few centuries later, they were recognized as martyrs and saints, and a church was built on the ground where their blood was shed, simply inside the amphitheater and using stones from the amphitheater itself. Now both the arena and the church are in ruins.

At one end of the new Rambla we ate Paella with a view to the Mediterranean sea. There we also saw a curious fountain with a statue of a boy squeezing a duck, from whose mouth the water came. Pigeons were fighting and occasionally changing positions to drink the water from the duck's mouth. Somewhere along the new rambla we saw what seems to be the lowest pedestrian traffic light ever. It looks like a traffic light for children. And even further down the road, we saw a monument to the tradition of building human castles. In this sport practiced in Catalunya, people are supposed to climb over each other and form a tower with about five or six levels of people. The last level is made by children, almost ten meters high! The old city center is also a very nice place to stroll around.

Pamplona

2011-12-17T23:12:00.001+01:00

Pamplona is the famous town where once per year they let the bulls loose in the streets and people have to run from them. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, this event didn't coincide with our visit to this town. Nevertheless, the spirit of the bull run is kept alive all year long through monuments, ads, souvenir shops.

Pamplona is also part of the pilgrim path to Santiago, and its Cathedral seems to be one of the checkpoints. In some streets, it is possible to see the traditional shell symbol marked on the ground, indicating the path.

Another sight that surprised me was the sale, in the town's market, of whole dead rabbits and pigeons, with skin, fur and feathers and all...

San Sebastian

2011-12-17T23:12:00.000+01:00

After Biarritz I drove to Irun, in Spain, just after the french border, in order to meet Katya at the train station there, and then we continued to nearby bigger town of San Sebastian. Since it was already late in the evening, we had made a reservation in a simple hotel, in order not to have troubles looking for a place to spend the night. But we had troubles anyway. First it was very hard to park the car in San Sebastian. And second, our hotel had no reception. We were supposed to phone some numbers when arriving. My austrian mobile didn't work in Spain. So, we had to go to McDonald's to use its free internet to phone via Skype. But nobody answered our calls.

We ended up finding a place by the ocean to park the car, and we simply slept there. Surprinsingly, it turned out to be a very comfortable night.

Biarritz

2011-12-17T23:11:00.001+01:00

Finally I reached Biarritz, and thus the atlantic ocean. In spite of winter, there were so many people surfing there! The town is very sophisticated. One can easily see that it is frequented by the rich french people. There is a very unusual bridge connecting the mainland to a small rocky island, from where there is a privileged view of the cathedral as well as the beaches and the ocean.

Bayonne

2011-12-17T23:11:00.000+01:00

Bayonne lies in the french side of the Basque country, where people speak Euskara, an alien language unlike any other. It lies in the point of confluence of two rivers, one of which is very wide. I had a pleasant time walking there for a few hours.

Pau

2011-12-17T23:10:00.002+01:00

Pau has a funny name: the portuguese word "pau" means wood, and the french pronunciation of the french name "Pau" sounds exactly like the german pronunciation of the german word for butt.

The city is really nice and pleasant. It is located on an elevated plateau with beautiful views of the valley and the pyrenees mountains in the horizon. The pedestrian streets had loudspeakers playing christmas songs and creating a very cheerful atmosphere everywhere.

The youth hostel in Pau was full, but they arranged a place for me in the youth hostel in Gelos, which is basically a quite green neighborhood of Pau in the other side of the river. I paid only 15 euros for a very spacious single room with private bathroom and shower. If you have a car, I definitely recommend staying there, instead of staying at Pau's center.

Caminho de Santiago

2011-12-17T23:10:00.001+01:00

The highway resting places in the french pyrenees are sometimes quite interesting. This one had a small museum about pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, with lots of historical and geographical information. All in the middle of nowhere, by the highway...

Lourdes

2011-12-17T23:10:00.000+01:00

A long time ago, a girl claimed that she saw the spirit of the virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, in a grotto. Thanks to that, millions of people visit the town of Lourdes every year. As many of them feel like touching the walls of the grotto, these have already become smooth. On the walls of the basilica on the left side of the grotto, there are many taps of holy water channeled from the grotto. On the other side, there is a region for candles, some of which taller than any candle I have seen before.

The basilica and its surroundings are nice, but the town didn't seem very pleasant to me. Nevertheless, it was interestingly unusual to see so many religious shops spread everywhere in the town.

Another surprise was to hear almost as much italian as french in this town... Indeed, even the church offers masses in both languages.

Around Foix

2011-12-17T23:09:00.000+01:00

Not so far from Foix I drove by many picturesque french villages and pre-historic sites. Unfortunately, the pre-historic sites are not open to the public in winter. At least I could see a cave from the closed gate.

In one of the resting places by the highway, there was a very nice monument to the tour de france biking competition...

Foix

2011-12-17T23:08:00.001+01:00

After Andorra, my next stop was Foix, in France. I had to wait about half an hour until 10:30 for the Castle to open, but the views of the town from up there were worth the waiting time. In the meanwhile, I ate a french baguette for breakfast.

Andorra

2011-12-17T23:07:00.001+01:00

Andorra is indeed as people say: basically lots of ski resorts and tax-free shops. I was there in the second week of december, and it was very warm, though, and there was almost no snow yet (global warming perhaps?). Apparently, it was only possible to ski in one track at Pas de la Casa, by the french border. Other ski sites, such as Soldeu, were completely dry and closed.

Andorra-la-Vella, the capital, feels like a tiny metropolis. It combines the small size of a village with the traffic jams of a big city.

Although I didn't buy anything in the shops, the almost absence of taxes turned out to be quite helpful in the trip. I managed to reach Andorra with an almost empty tank, and I filled it with 30% cheaper Diesel, which was enough for almost the whole trip afterwards. I saw people coming from France and filling gallons with cheap fuel at Andorra...

In spite of its geographical location squeezed between France and Spain, Andorra has a quite distinct although not particularly special architecture, which fits well with the surrounding mountains.

Eastern French Pyrenees

2011-12-17T23:07:00.000+01:00

Roads with beautiful landscapes... small villages... Ax-les-Thermes with a hot water lake in the middle of the town... That was my quick impression of the eastern french pyrenees, on the way to Andorra.