For the past two years, like most reasonable people, I have despaired about the direction taken by the world’s most powerful country (to which I happen to be closely connected). The hope was that the opposition would mobilise to win a majority in Congress in this November’s midterm elections, with a view towards a turnaround in the presidential election in 2020. But what I see so far this year largely extinguishes this hope.
My main gauge of political sentiment in the US is social media, and in particular the posts by my many progressive friends and by progressive movements in general. The vast majority of those posts are about how bad the current fascist regime is: corrupt, evil, etc. I share those feelings 100%. The problem is that to win elections, you have to put forward a positive agenda for the voters. And so far I have not seen one from the progressive wing of the Democratic party, except for various fantasies from Bernie’s friends. Criticizing T***p for using words such as “nigger” or “pussy” only reinforces his appeal to the people who voted for him in 2016–because they use those words in their daily discourse and therefore interpret the orange head’s use of the same words as proof that he is a regular guy just like them. Likewise, droning on about impeachment which is just not going to happen given the configuration of the House, is not going to win any votes. The average person does not relate to alleged interference in elections through fake news on Facebook and he (because most of the time it is a he) does not care whether Putin helped T***p win in November 2016.
Elections are won with positive messages: “ask not what you can do for your country”, “morning in America” or “yes, we can”. So far I have not heard anything like that from the current crop of potential candidates. I fear for another six years of this madness. If I were religious, I would hope for a fatal heart attack or a thunder strike on the golf course…but since I am not, I just despair.
On 27 August, my best friend Lars and I set out to cycle a 300 km brevet, a route in central and northern Jutland starting and ending in Aarhus. A brevet is a type of bicycle event where you do not race against others but simply have to complete a given route within the time limit, checking in at various control points along the route (which can take the form of buying something in a shop or withdrawing money from an ATM, so as to have a receipt to prove that you were there at the specific time). The time limit for a 300 km brevet is 20 hours, but from previous experience, Lars and I expected to make it in about 15 hours, so that, having started at 8 a.m., we would be home around 11 p.m. to enjoy a well-deserved cold beer. The weather was cool but dry as we set out on our ride. I was a bit unsure whether I would make it; I have done a 300 km brevet before, but this time I had been battling with a nagging knee inflammation for a couple of weeks, and I was wondering whether my knee would hold up during so many hours of riding. But once I got going, my confidence increased. There was pain but it was manageable.
The landscapes of central Jutland were pretty:
We completed the first 100 km with a hot dog at Himmelbjerget, the second-tallest point in Jutland (not saying much). This was also a control point, so I made sure to keep the receipt from the kiosk. And then we turned north. After 132 km, we stopped for coffee at a supermarket in a village called Ans. While there, I noticed that my lower lip had swollen for some reason–I had not felt any insect bites but something must have caused it. It did not look pretty (and actually, it looked a lot worse outside the supermarket, this photo was taken after I had already received drugs to make the swelling go down).
Lars did not like the look of my lip, so he called the doctor on duty (vagtlægen, reachable on the same number anywhere in Denmark) to ask about possible over-the-counter remedies we could buy in the supermarket. However, once he explained my symptoms, the doctor told him that given that I was apparently suffering an allergic reaction to something, and given that the swelling was near my mouth, he was concerned that it may spread to my throat, and not being able to breathe is not healthy–so he was going to send an ambulance for me right away. They sure take allergic reactions seriously in Denmark!
This was a real bummer; the leg I had been worried about was OK but my brevet was being cut short by some unknown Danish insect. But there was nothing I could do. So while Lars was phoning his brother to arrange the logistics of returning our bicycles to our home base in Aarhus (about 50 km to the south), we waited for the ambulance. Here I am removing the handlebar bag from my bicycle to take it with me to the hospital:
The ambulance arrived after about 10-15 minutes, with a doctor in a separate car to have a look at me:
In the ambulance, they inserted the IV, gave me some drugs per the doctor’s instructions, did an electrocardiogram, and took me to the nearest hospital, in the town of Viborg, about 20 km away. During the ambulance ride, I was chatting with the nurse who was taking down some basic information, including my CPR number (a Danish identity number that is the key to accessing all public services). I said that I lived in Spain and although I am a Danish citizen, I am not in the Danish public health insurance system, but that was irrelevant–they told me that they were worried about the medical aspects of our transaction, not the administrative ones.
In the hospital, additional tests were done, I was given some more medications and kept for observation for about 2-3 hours. I was not happy about not being able to complete the ride, but I was grateful for the medical attention I was receiving.
It all ended well. The allergic reaction was controlled, and after checking a few more things and giving me some more drugs (including some to take over the next 3 days), they discharged me. By 9 p.m., Lars and I were back in Aarhus (as were our bicycles), eating pizza and drinking beer.
I have only good things to say about Danish medicine–this was my first interaction with it since my father died in 2004–both the ambulance crew and the people at the hospital were superb on this Sunday evening, and the issue of payment or insurance was not even mentioned by them. I did mention, as I had in the ambulance, that I did not live in Denmark and had an EU employee medical cover rather than the normal Danish sygesikring, but they were completely uninterested in the financial aspects–all they cared about was the patient. To this day, two months later, I have not received any kind of invoice, and I doubt that I ever will.
On the other hand, within a couple of days, all the details of my ambulance ride and hospital visit were accessible to me on the Danish health service portal, so that if I need to share any of the tests or information about the treatment I received with my doctor here in Spain, I can just print it out.
This is what medicine looks like when it is regarded as a basic human right and not something that exists primarily to make a profit for someone. My heartfelt thanks to the people at Regionshospitalet Viborg and the ambulance service of Region Midtjylland for the superb care they gave me on that Sunday in August. Tusind tak!
Recently, I posted some photos from Copenhagen’s Churchill Park on my weekly photo blog. For me, Churchill is the greatest figure of the 20th century, the man who stood up to Hitler at the darkest hour in 1940, when Britain was all alone, with the Continent occupied, America neutral, and Hitler conquering all before him. But then I got an e-mail from a friend in India. For him, Churchill was not a great man. He viewed him as a butcher in the same league as Hitler and Stalin, because of his role in colonial India and in particular the Bengal famine. This is a side of Churchill of which I knew little or nothing until my friend from Chennai made me aware of it. What it does show me is that history is complex. Churchill still is a great man in my eyes but I recognise that not everyone will share my perspective.
In a similar vein, the world of art, entertainment and sports is full of good people and bad people, just like the rest of society. This raises the question (for me, anyway): how to deal with a great performer/creater who is also a bigot, a racist, an extreme right-winger, or similar scum.
Of course, if the artist in question is no good, there is no problem. For example, Mel Gibson is an utterly disgusting character, but since his films are by and large forgettable garbage, it is no sacrifice for me to ignore him.
No, the problematic cases are those people whose work I admire but who have despicable traits or views that are anathema to me. Take the great Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, for example. His novel Sult (“Hunger”) is one of the great pieces of world literature, and his Nobel Prize in 1920 was thoroughly deserved. But alas, Hamsun was also a Nazi. Not just a Nazi sympathiser but someone who met with senior figures, up to and including Hitler, and who was unrepentent even after the war (he died in 1952). His mastery of the language is such that even his last work, Paa Gjengrodde Stier (“On Overgrown Paths”) from 1949 makes for great literature despite its defense of his repugnant views during the war.
Or take Ernest Hemingway, probably my favourite writer of all. In this excellent article in the Jewish Forward, Mary Dearborn discusses the very dilemma that is the subject of this post. Hemingway was clearly an anti-Semite, as were many Americans in the 1920s or 1930s. As Dearborn notes, however, later Hemingway showed his strong anti-Fascist stance, beginning with the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), which for many serves as a mitigating circumstance and is certainly in contrast to Hamsun. I conclude as Dearborn does: we should continue reading Hemingway, but we should also not close our eyes to the nasty aspects.
Things become even more complex when I consider Wagner, Hitler’s favourite composer. Obviously, given that Wagner died in 1883, I cannot blame him for the rise of Nazism 50 years later. But the connection is still there because of Wagner’s anti-Semitic writings and the nature of his music. And so, despite the undeniable merits of his operas and other compositions, I shun Wagner. It is wholly irrational, I know.
So what is the point of this post? Not much except to say that the world is complex and things are rarely black & white. Most of the time, they are a shade of grey.
While the focus of my blogging is mostly on beer, photography and current affairs, this post is about my day job which is what pays the bills. I am the Chief Economist of the EU Intellectual Property Office. Thus, I manage a small team of economists who carry out studies on topics such as the importance of IP rights to the economy, the damage caused by counterfeiting and so on. The quality of their output is very high, and I am fortunate to be the manager of such a skilled group of people. One of the best rules of management is this: “hire people who are smarter than you and get out of their way”. I don’t know if the people who work for me are smarter than me in the everyday sense of the word, but certainly their expertise in the technical disciplines that we rely on to do our work far surpasses mine. And that is how it should be. I am good at the communications and political aspects of our work, they are good at the economics. Together, we are having a real impact of how IP is viewed by the policy makers in Europe and beyond.
“Ask not what the country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country” – John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, 20th January 1961.
“In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write.” – Lyndon Johnson, inaugural address, 20th January 1965.
“Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall!” – Ronald Reagan, West Berlin, 12th June 1987.
“Yes We Can” – Barack Obama, various occasions.
“Grab ’em by the pussy, you can do anything” – donald trump, 2005.
Back in June, I predicted that Trump might end up winning because, among other factors, of the damage done to Clinton’s campaign by Bernie Sanders. I was right, even though I will admit that Sanders’s quixotic quest for the nomination was not the only factor. Hillary was clearly a flawed candidate, and the Democratic party should have done a better job of choosing its nominee. And most importantly, once again we see, as with Brexit, a collective failure of the commentariat and the pollsters to predict the outcome. As I write this, I listen to a Danish politician admitting that “we (meaning the established political class) communicate on a completely different frequency” that simply does not reach the people who voted for Trump. A lot of people–the Democratic and Republican establishments, the leading commentators, the pollsters and analysts–all of them have a very rotten egg on their faces.
But this slight sense of Schadenfreude cannot hide the deep depression I feel as I write this. The election of Trump is an even greater disaster than Brexit. It will affect the most powerful country in the world deeply and steer it in the wrong direction, even if Trump only delivers on a fraction of his election promises. He may only be President for four years, but even then the damage will be lasting. The damage to international relations; the misery at home; the reactionary Supreme Court justices he will appoint–those will endure.
The irony is of course that the people who elected Trump will be among those who will suffer the most from policies like the upcoming abolition of the Affordable Care Act. That they voted for him is an expression of the same nihilism that led to Brexit: a feeling among wide segments of the population that the established political system has let them down, that they have been left behind by globalisation, and that they have nothing to lose by “shaking things up.” This is related to my previous post. Unless the issues identified there are addressed, there will be many more Trump-like results in 2017. I wonder how President Le Pen will get along with President Trump…
I have been meaning to write a post about the state of economics for some time. For many years, I have been unhappy about the increasingly abstract articles in the most prestigious journals (e.g. the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy etc.). My PhD is from 1991; yet, today, I do not understand most papers published in those journals. The level of mathematics required to read them is simply beyond me. So we have a group of people publishing for a narrow circle of like-minded academics with absolutely no impact on public policy.
This general malaise is not new, and others have complained about it as well. And of course there are exceptions, people like Paul Krugman or Thomas Piketty or Joseph Stiglitz who write about real world problems in an understandable manner, but still based on rigorous analysis of empirical data and on sound theoretical foundations and methods.
No, what prompts me to write this particular post at this particular time is the increasing influence of populist parties and movements in the Western world. Whether you look at countries where the crisis hit hard, like Spain or Greece, or those where it had much less impact, like the UK or Scandinavia or the USA, you see different expressions of the same phenomenon: an almost nihilistic rejection of the established order, as expressed by Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Front National in France, the Brexit vote in the UK and the rise of Donald Trump in the US…I could go on, but the picture is clear: increasingly, large groups of voters in Western democracies are voting for parties (whether on the left or on the right) that promise easy solutions to complex problems and that feed on the general sense of betrayal felt by those voters.
So, who are those voters and why do they feel betrayed? A big part of the answer lies in the globalisation that we have experienced in the past few decades and the failure of the political system to deal with its consequences. The Economist had an interesting article about this in early July, summarising the work of economists such as Dani Rodrick of Harvard, who question the consensus about the inevitability of globalisation and free trade.
Let us take a step back, to the birth of the economics profession in the late 18th century and early 19th century. The two significant names are of course Adam Smith who explained how society gets richer if everyone focuses on work that s/he is particularly good at and on the importance of the profit motive (“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”); and David Ricardo, who took Smith’s analysis further and extended it to international trade.
Adam Smith is often regarded as an ultra-liberalist who advocated a minimalist state, letting Darwinian capitalism rule otherwise. This is a complete misunderstanding of his ideas. In The Wealth of Nations he recognises that business owners will team up to take advantage of the consumer if the government does not prevent them from doing so, and more generally, there are many quotes in his writings to which progressives can sign up to without reservations. For example, the following two quotes clearly show that Smith was concerned about inequality and was in favour of a progressive tax system:
“No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.”
“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
In his 1817 book, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Ricardo formalised many of Smith’s concepts and formulated the main principle of international trade theory. Using a simple example of two countries and two goods, he showed that even if one country is better at producing everything than another country, both countries are still better off if they trade, with each country specialising in the products where its superiority is relatively greatest (this is what we call “comparative advantage”). By doing that, consumers in both countries get at least as much of each of the two goods than they do in a situation without trade. This fundamental insight is behind all subsequent trade theory. Later researchers have developed the theory further to take into account various complicating factors from the real world, but the principle of comparative advantage remains the basis of the economics of international trade.
So, if trade (and the associated globalisation of supply chains, finance, etc.) benefits everyone, how come large portions of the electorate are turning against it? The latest WTO-sponsored round of international trade talks, the Doha Round, which began in 2001, is basically dead, and the future of other major trade deals, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and even the EU-Canada free trade agreement is in doubt. I will argue that at least part of the answer is the intellectual failure of the economics profession to deal with the real world consequences of globalisation.
When we economists say that trade and globalisation benefits society, what we really mean is that in aggregate, society benefits. As consumers, we all benefit from the lower prices we pay for our electronics, for instance, now that manufacturing of such things takes place mainly in low-cost countries, first and foremost China. But it does not mean that everyone benefits. Clearly, there are losers–namely the workers who lose their jobs because making stuff in rich countries is too expensive when competing against the likes of China. This is not new. We have known it all along. The implicit assumption behind the near unanimous support for trade liberalisation among economists is that the winners compensate the losers. In other words: since the aggregate gain from trade is positive, there is room for the winners to compensate the losers and still be better off. This is undeniably true on the level of calculation. Unfortunately, in the real world, the losers have not been compensated. Instead, the winners simply keep the gains to themselves and smugly tell the unemployed steel worker that he must acquire new skills so that he can perform the higher value-added tasks that are needed in the new economy.
With a few exceptions, we have ignored the rise in inequality since the 1970s. Until recently, the only people who worried about it were inconsequential left wingers. Today, the situation is changing. Even the quentessential establishment organisation OECD, often referred to as “the club of rich countries”, is increasingly concerned about inequality and its social consequences. Hopefully, during the coming years this concern will lead to some policy changes. But meanwhile, out there in the real world, those people who have not gained from the economic changes of the past decade have concluded that they have nothing to lose and are rejecting the established order. They are doing it in diffuse ways. This is not an organised revolutionary movement of the sort Marx would have imagined. Sometimes the anger is expressed on the left, as in Spain or Greece; sometimes on the right, as in France; and sometimes in ways that are completely nihilistic and impossible to fit into the left-right catorisation, such as the rise of Donald Trump in the US or the vote to leave the EU in the UK. What these political forces have in common, however, is a desire to turn inwards and even to reverse globalisation, exemplified by Trump’s promise to cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, to deport 11 million illegal immigrants and to build the wall on the US-Mexico border. Whether or not he will be able to carry out these promises if elected is irrelevant; what is important is that the people who vote for him, or a large proportion of them, anyway, either believe in these promises or at least are looking to Trump to “shake things up”, whatever that might mean.
So I finish with a plea to my fellow economists: worry less about equations and more about describing and analysing the real world, including the political consequences of economic developments. I, for one, am no longer convinced that globalisation, given the political context, has been a good thing.
This is a year of three important elections (possibly more, but these are the three that I truly care about): the Brexit vote in the UK on June 23rd; the Spanish general election on June 26th; and the US presidential election in November. All three votes have something in common: a large proportion of the voters will decide their vote based on emotions, and in all three cases the results will be disastrous.
In the UK referendum, it seems this morning, with just over a week to go, that the LEAVE side might win. The people who vote this way do so for a variety of reasons, of course: some genuinely dislike the EU, rail against the “Brussels bureaucracy” and really think that the UK would be better off on its own. This is a fantasy. Still others (and I believe this is the majority among the LEAVE camp) are voting based on a vague fear of globalisation, of foreigners, of immigration–even if those things have little or nothing to do with the EU. The end result might well be that the UK votes to leave the EU, with grave economic and geopolitical consequences for itself (including a likely breakup of the UK as Scotland will surely hold another referendum on independence) and for the rest of Europe. Because regardless of this vote, geography will not change, and however much the Little Englanders dislike it, the UK is part of Europe.
Then the Spanish election three days later. Again, large numbers of people will vote for the new left-wing Podemos party, probably pushing the social democrats PSOE into third place. The people voting for Podemos have the idea that the two big parties on the left will then come together to form a governing coalition. This is another fantasy. In this scenario, the PSOE should accept that the larger partner, Podemos, gets the prime minister post. They will never accept it; nor can PSOE ever accept the Podemos line on Catalan independence. So the most likely result of the many Podemos votes will be that PSOE will abstain in the vote on government formation, allowing Rajoy and his reactionary and corrupt Partido Popular to continue governing. Surely this is not the outcome the Podemos voters want, but this is what they will get.
And finally, the US presidential election. Here, once again, we have millions of people who support Bernie Sanders in his hopeless quest to become the Democratic nominee. In the past I have had a lot of sympathy for Sanders. I certainly agree with many of his policies, much more so than with those of the other candidates. But sadly, Sanders is unelectable–he is simply too far to the left for most Americans (as opposed to Democratic primary voters). By continuing his campaign as long as he has, Sanders has accomplished only one thing: he has damaged his party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton, to such an extent that what used to be a comfortable lead for her over Donald Trump has now become a dead heat. So once again, by voting with their hearts rather than their heads, the Sanders supporters have probably accomplished only this: Donald Trump is the next president of the US. Surely this is not what you intended, my friends??
The year began with both children here, a rare pleasure now that they live on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
But soon after this picture was taken, I found myself in Madrid airport, saying goodbye to Moses.
Lars came to visit as he does every January, and we spent a couple of days in Barcelona. We met up with my friend Lluis.
We looked at art, at the Joan Miró Foundation and elsewhere.
It was a very nice trip, although it ended on a sour note: Lars’s rental car was broken into and our backpacks were stolen while we were out and about during the day on Sunday. We did not lose our photo gear, since we had that with us, but I did lose my laptop and iPad, a major headache. And this was in a supposedly guarded parking garage on Plaça Catalunya!
Monica was still here, so we did some things together, including eating at L’Indret, a vegan restaurant in the centre with an awesome salad bar.
And of course Lars treated us to a delicious evening meal at home.
But then it was time to say goodbye to Monica as well, as she headed back to Cardiff for the spring semester.
After Monica’s departure, Lars and I engaged in one of our two shared passions, cycling (the other is photography). One day we climbed the Puerto de la Carrasqueta, one of the mountain passes in the Alicante area which sometimes features in the Vuelta a España bicycle race.
I finish January with a portrait of our dear Cheeta. The pets have aged during 2015 (who hasn’t?) but they are still with us to love and to cuddle.
February is usually a quiet month for us, and this year was no exception. We got together with friends.
I continued to feed the cats that live on the golf course.
And on February 14th, our own Taco turned 15 and received his serving of tuna.
Later in the month, I had a brief business trip to Mannheim, a city I had not visited before. It was cold and rainy.
On the last day of February, we visited our friends Carmen and Hilarión in Almoradí. As always, it was a day of friendship, delicious food and relaxation amid the orange trees.
In early March, we took advantage of Moses’s weeklong business trip to England and met up with him and with Monica in London. We arrived on the 6th, and Monica came by train from Cardiff. It was nice to be together again. We took Monica to one of my favourite pubs, the Chandos near Trafalgar Square.
The next day, Moses flew in the from US. He was tired but we spent the whole day out and about in the great city, including having some fun at the Southbank book market.
As always, we ate well, and we did not go thirsty either.
Back in Alicante, we went to visit friends whose little dog had a rash and therefore had to wear a “lamp shade” to keep him from licking it.
Later in the month, I had yet another trip to Brussels, a city I visit often in connection with my work. This time I was there for St. Patrick’s Day. The City Hall on Grand’ Place was illuminated green for the occasion.
As usual, I went for a beer at Poechenellekelder, my favourite watering hole.
And later I got together with a visiting fellow photographer from England for a pint of Guinness at the Six Nations pub.
Then back home for a couple of days of rest with Aixa and the pets.
And then it was time for another business trip, this time to Geneva, for a meeting at the World Intellectual Property Organisation, a UN body based there.
We celebrated Aixa’s birthday with a party at our place. By late March it is nice and warm in Alicante, and our back terrace, adjacent to the den, is a perfect venue for this kind of thing.
On March 31st, I had an all-day meeting at the OECD in Paris. I took advantage and flew to Paris already on Sunday morning so that I could visit my cousin Francis whom I had not seen for 5 years. We went for a relaxed bicycle ride along the Seine.
Later, during dinner, we were joined by Francis’s daughter Iris who is now an 18-year old young lady.
As always, I enjoyed the magnificent sights of the city.
But then it was back to work, and I spent all of Tuesday at the OECD headquarters. Afterwards, I had a drink with Piotr, a Polish economist at the OECD.
April began with Semana Santa, the week of religious processions which culminate on Easter Sunday. I always enjoy these events because of the photographic opportunities they provide.
The high point of April was my first ever trip to Latvia–in fact, it was my first trip to any of the three Baltic countries. Latvia held the rotating EU presidency during the first half of 2015, and so certain institutional meetings that we organise every spring were held in Riga. I really loved the city.
We have a very good working and personal relationship with our Latvian colleagues, especially Linda (on the right) who had basically organised the entire 3-day event from their side.
Linda had arranged a truly wonderful evening for us, dinner at Folkklubs Ala Pagras, a restaurant with traditional Latvian food and traditional Latvian dancing.
From Riga I flew to Copenhagen to visit my parents’ graves and my childhood friend Beata, here lounging with her children.
The Japanese cherry trees at Langelinie, close to the Little Mermaid, were in full bloom.
And then it was on to Brussels for some more work-related meetings, but also an opportunity to help open a photo exhibition by members of Viewfinders, a photography club in Brussels to which I have belonged since we lived there in the 1990s. Our exhibition was at Halles St-Géry, a great location in the centre of Brussels. I participated with two images.
In early May, something truly joyous happened. Both my American and my French families came to visit! Here are the two senior men of the global Wajsman clan, uncle Zev from Florida and uncle Joseph from France.
One of our traditions is to play an international match of pétanque, a game at which Joseph of course excels.
The American side provided stiff resistance…
…but in the end, France prevailed.
The elder Wajsmans flew off to Israel from Madrid, but first I took them to Toledo, a city not far from Madrid which is one of Spain’s most interesting places to visit. It is a place where the pre-1492 Jewish and Moorish culture is very much in evidence, of course along with the now dominant Catholicism. All this gave rise to many interesting, serious and not-so-serious conversations.
Late in May, the Miracle of the Cactus happened again. A bit of background: when my mother died in 2001, I took one of her beloved plants, a round cactus, to Switzerland (where I lived at the time). Later, the cactus moved with us to the Netherlands, and in 2007 to Spain. The Spanish climate apparently suits it well, because after a couple of years of living here, it has started blooming a couple of times a year.
Also in May, the younger generations of US and French Wajsmans came to visit–my cousin Nicole from Brussels and Renata from Florida, with assorted offspring. It was great to have them all here.
We put the young ones to work at the BBQ.
And I still fed the golf course cats.
On the last day of May, I cycled to Puerto de Tudons, one of the most challenging rides around here.
In early June, we got together with our Spanish friends to watch “el clásico”: Real Madrid vs. Barcelona.
Later that month, I went to Denmark to spend a week in my hometown with Lars. His daughter Klara works part-time in Den Gamle By (“the old town”), an outdoor museum of life in the 19th century. She has to dress in 19th century clothing and becomes Jensine.
Lars and I spent two days cycling in Jutland. It was very intense, 250 km the first day and 266 km the second day.
Denmark has a lot of water which means that often you have to take as small ferry like this one to cross a fjord.
Towards the end of the first day, a selfie somewhere in western Jutland. My lip is swollen due to an insect bite.
After a long day, we have arrived at Klitmøller on the west coast of Jutland where Lars had reserved a bed & breakfast for the night. We found a place to have a much needed dinner.
The next day was really hard. It was cold and rainy for the first several hours. Utter misery. Lars is wringing his socks which have become totally water-logged.
But the weather improved and we made it back to Aarhus before it got dark. It helps that it does not get dark in Denmark until 10 p.m. in June.
Later in the week, I attended the midsummer celebrations on the beach in Aarhus. It is a very traditional Danish celebration, going back to the pre-Christian era.
Then Lars and I drove to Berlin and spent a few days there, hosted by his friend Dominique.
We also did some sight-seeing, including a visit to the former Stasi headquarters, now a museum.
Back in Aarhus, we were visited by Lars’s daughter Marie, along with Lauge, Lars’s first grandchild.
We also visited Aros, the local art museum, one of the best in the world.
And we took pictures, including my portrait of Lars, inspired by Helmut Newton’s famous portrait of Stravinsky.
On July 2nd, we had the last wine tasting at the office before the summer break.
Then we had our friend Iñaki’s birthday party.
July and August are lazy months. The heat of the Alicante summer means that both people and animals spend most of their time lounging around.
Monica was home for the summer. She has recently developed a taste of beer, in particular Belgian fruity beers such as Mort Subite.
At the office, we had a festive luncheon to say goodbye to a departing colleague and to usher in the summer vacation.
Then August arrived. I continued my cycling in the mountains around Alicante. This is the kind of landscape that I traverse on two wheels.
Every year, EU employees have a medical checkup, part of which is an urine sample. I always try to inject a note of humour into the procedure.
We were going to the US to visit Moses for 3 weeks. Instead of putting the dog and cat in the usual pet hotel, we arranged for my sister and brother-in-law to come and house- and pet-sit during our absence. Here they are, arriving at Alicante airport from Poland.
Before flying off to the US, I took Irka and Telesfor for lunch at our favourite beach eatery, Hostal Maruja in La Marina.
Then we flew to Philadelphia, rented a car and drove to Lansdale, where Moses was staying. On the way we stopped to buy a few things at a drug store. It was nice to be together again.
And the babies (who are no longer babies) are together again!
Philadelphia is a great city, with its history, its monuments…and its vegan pizza!
It also has great bookshops. A proper bookshop needs one or more cats, and this one, near the Barnes Foundation, ticked all the boxes.
One of the really great things about Philadelphia is that my friend Jim and his husband John live there. They are great guys in many respects, and they have the coolest car of any of my friends.
They treated us to dinner in a Brazilian restaurant, transporting us there in this magnificent driving machine.
The food at the restaurant was great, but the company was even better.
Jim, as always, told funny stories. I think this one involved a woman with large breasts.
And then there was dessert…
Another Philadelphia delight we discovered was the Barnes Foundation.
A few days later, we drove to Montreal, the first visit there for all of us. We arrived tired and hungry but fortunately there was a Korean restaurant near our hotel.
Montreal is a wonderful, multicultural city, where you can get sushi even in the metro.
There are lots of cool neighbourhoods in Montreal.
We visited Montreal’s cathedral where the children lit candles for their grandmother.
And we tasted some nice locally brewed beer.
Just before driving back to Philadelphia, we visited the iconic park at the top of the hill. Moses and Monica assumed the American Gothic pose.
Back in the USA, we visited the part of New Jersey where we lived in the early 1990s and where Monica was born. This is the bridge across the Delaware River which forms the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
We walked around Princeton, the town where Monica was born.
August 13th is Aixa’s and mine wedding anniversary, and we celebrated it with the children at a nice restaurant in Doylestown.
We also went to Washington for a day, with a visit to the Holocaust museum the first item on the agenda.
I have been there before, but not Aixa and the children. We had an important mission; Moses took with him one of my late father’s war medals and we photographed him with it in the Hall of Remembrance.
And I made sure to pass by the exhibit that always makes me so proud of my beloved country.
A boat used to ferry Jews from Denmark to Sweden during the rescue in October 1943.
We also visited the monuments on the Mall.
Back in Pennsylvania, we visited Amish country. The town of Intercourse is quite touristy.
We also went to see a Phillies game, just as we had gone to see the Yankees during our 2014 visit to New York. Sadly, the Phillies were quite inept, and we left during the 7th inning, secure in the knowledge that the game was decided.
In Moses’s apartment in Lansdale, Monica is doing some exercise, following directions on her computer screen.
We then flew down to Florida to visit uncle Zev and the rest of the family there.
It was wonderful to be together with our Florida family. A highlight of the trip. Zev and Alina treat Monica and Moses as if they were their grandchildren.
My cousin Renata with one of Ilan’s doggies.
We stayed one night with Ilan in Jacksonville, and then moved on to Zev and Alina in Jacksonville Beach. In the morning, this is the view from their back porch.
My cousin Dan who lives in California keeps a bicycle at his parents’ place, so I was able to do a proper ride, about 100 km to St. Augustine and back. The coastal route A1A is not the most exciting cycling road, but I still enjoyed it.
On the way back, I met another cyclist, a nice man from Alabama. We had a chat outside a convenience store where we had stopped for a drink and a snack. And I got him to take a picture of me.
We spent the last few days of the US trip at a hotel in Philadelphia, since Moses had moved out of the Lansdale apartment. He works a lot on the road, like this.
On the last Saturday night, my two children went out in Philadelphia. Monica got nicely dressed for the occasion.
We spent one of the last days in Philly walking around the Reading Terminal Market, an utterly wonderful place.
We walked to Rittenhouse Square, where a farmers market was taking place. We had a chat with this nice couple from Lawrenceville, NJ, the town where we lived for five years.
We walked through the gay neighbourhood.
And to top off a great day, we happened upon the Naked Bike Ride.
And then it was time to say our goodbyes and to fly back to Spain. September was around the corner, which meant return to work.
Back home, we were greeted by my sister and brother-in-law who had been house- and pet-sitting while we were in the US. A win-win-win situation, for them, for the pets, and for us.
And then, just a couple of days later, I was off to Scotland to attend a conference at the University of Glasgow. I was very pleased with this, as I am one of the few people who actually prefer Glasgow over Edinburgh. After arriving and checking in at my hotel, I walked to the other side of town, to the Brewdog pub (the mothership of Brewdog pubs, so to speak) to meet up with a former trainee and consultant in my team, Antanina, who is now doing her PhD in Italy.
And then I spent most of the next couple of days at the university.
Glasgow has a rich history, and the main gate of the university has the names of famous alumni. Since I am an economist, none is more important than this one.
On the last day of my stay in Scotland, I rented a car and drove north from Glasgow. It is an incredibly beautiful country, and I intend to return soon.
I stopped for lunch at a famous restaurant by the shore of the lake of the same name, and had the best oysters in my life.
Just over a week later, I was back in the UK, but this time further south. Monica was going on a placement at a hospital in North Wales, and I accompanied her there. We flew to Liverpool and spent the first night there, having a good time, including a visit to the local Brewdog pub.
The next day we enjoyed Liverpool some more. The city is home to two of my lifelong passions, Liverpool Football Club and The Beatles. Both are much in evidence, from the moment you land.
We did some shopping in the Liverpool One shopping centre. Our kind of shopping.
And Monica had something or other done to her eyebrows at one of the department stores.
And we ate well too, at Wagamama, a favourite for both of us.
But then it was Sunday morning and it was time to head west in our rented car, to the town of Bodelwyddan. It is a very small town with a very big hospital, where Monica was going to spend the next three months. To say that this is a rural area is an understatement. Here is Monica with one of the neighbours.
But the house turned out to be very nice, and Monica shared with a lovely young doctor, working at the same hospital (which was just a few hundred metres away).
In the second half of September, I had a meeting of an international group of photographer friends in Barcelona. This is a group that originally met through the internet but have since become friends in real life, and we get together occasionally. As usual, we met in Barcelona, with my good friend Lluis as the host. Here he is (on the left) at our customary restaurant, El Julivert Meu, with Geoff from Australia. As I said, this is a very international group.
Here I converse with the lovely Mariela, a friend of Lluis’ in Barcelona.
The ancient Catalan art of drinking wine from a porrón was demonstrated by the natives and attempted by the rest with varying degrees of success.
At the end of the evening, stained shirts and all, a group photo outside the restaurant. The people in this picture live in Spain, Australia, France and the USA, and between them probably have at least 7-8 different citizenships.
Back at work in Alicante. A new restaurant called Moments has opened on the beach just a few minutes drive from our office, and it has quickly become a favourite among my colleagues. I took my team for lunch there one day in late September.
I finished September in Brussels, a city where I go so often (for work reasons) that it feels almost like a second home. The fact that I lived there in the 1990s helps, of course. I am always struck by how seriously the Belgians take their comics. I know of no other airport in the world which is decorated with Tintin artifacts.
I had a free afternoon, and I walked to the European Parliament where some vegan activists were giving out free food. As an economist, one of my mantras is that “there is no free lunch” but in this case there was. The main esplanade at the Parliament is named after Poland’s Solidarity movement which was one of the main forces behind the liberation of Eastern Europe in 1989.
The vegan food was being cooked on a truly industrial scale.
This nice lady showed me around and explained the political agenda to me. I always enjoy seeing the various demos and other happenings around the EU institutions in Brussels. One can get cynical about things sometimes, but this is real democracy in action.
One of the pleasures of visiting Brussels is to walk through Parc Cinquantenaire. This time, they were getting ready for celebrations of the 25th anniversary of German re-unification.
Back home, I went to an interesting photo exhibition in the cultural centre of El Campello, called Tales from Lemuria, a strange and wonderful fantasy world created by photographer Mitar Terzic. I got him to pose for me with one of his images.
I continued my almost daily cycling. In El Campello, just one km from the beach, one encounters a completely different world.
Aixa has taken up golf in a big way, and spends many days on the course.
On October 13th, my sister turned 70. To celebrate the round birthday with her, we flew to Wrocław for the weekend. The day before, we left Cheeta in the good hands of the people at Canicat, the doggie hotel we always use.
Wrocław has become a nice, dynamic city since 1989. This is the view of the Ronald Reagan Circle from my sister’s balcony.
My sister and brother-in-law are both in their 70s now but they are keeping well.
Irka had made my favourite Polish dish, bigos. This is simple, delicious food.
Aixa and I really enjoyed Wrocław despite the usual autumn weather.
Then it was back to work. In late October we hosted a big meeting with participants from all EU member states and other organisations. As always, one of the evenings was devoted to a nice dinner, and I had the opportunity to meet my friend Linda from Latvia again.
The following weekend, I had the pleasure to visit Oktoberfest in the sunshine, hosted by Jenni and Hilarión in Rojales. The weather was Spanish but the food and the beer was totally German–wonderful!
November began with my first ever trip to Vienna, to attend a conference there. It started terribly, thanks to the utter incompetence of Iberia, Spain’s old national airline. The picture below will give you an idea. For the details, look at the special web site I set up to express my disdain for this joke of an airline.
But once I got to Vienna, I fell in love with the city. So much wonderful art–just like Rome, except that the streets are clean and the public transport works.
November 11th is the anniversary of the end of World War One, but it is also Poland’s independence day. So the Polish people at my office arranged a festive lunch to celebrate the day. As this was a Polish event, the vodka flowed freely.
Later that month, Aixa and I went to visit Monica in North Wales. We spent an afternoon across the border in Chester, a beautiful town. However, English weather in November is not the best.
But thanks to all this rain, the Welsh countryside is lush and green. This is a view of Monica’s house in Bodelwyddan as seen from the neighbouring farm.
We visited Bodelwyddan Castle which provides wonderful views of the surrounding countryside.
Rainbow over the Marble Church, Bodelwyddan
There are many interesting things to see inside the castle. One of the interesting bits was an old-fashioned photo studio where period clothes are available to the visitor.
We drove around the countryside and visited the various towns and the coast. There is a certain stark beauty there.
On Monday morning we said goodbye to Monica, who posed for one last picture in her NHS Wales uniform.
We flew home from Liverpool. There is a statue of John Lennon in the airport terminal. I really “dug” that.
As we usually do, we celebrated Thanksgiving on the last Saturday in November. We invite our Spanish friends and Aixa makes all the traditional Thanksgiving foods.
I had to be in Paris on November 30th for some meetings at the OECD. I took advantage of the opportunity and travelled to France the day before so that I could visit uncle Joseph in Le Mans.
We had dinner with his daughter Isabelle who lives very close, just a few minutes walk.
The next day I took an early morning train to Paris and spent the day at the very fancy Château, part of the OECD headquarters in the 16th arrondissement.
Before flying home the next day, I had just enough time to visit Place de la République to see the Marianne monument which had become the focal point for people to pay their respects to the victims of the terrorist attacks in November.
Back in Alicante, there is a more modest impromptu memorial on the main seaside esplanade.
There was a parliamentary election in Spain just before Christmas. The campaign here is short, only about 3 weeks, and quite low key.
The approaching holiday was in evidence both in the streets of Alicante and at our office.
A few days before Christmas, we released a report on counterfeit toys. The press conference was held at a toy factory in Ibi, a town near Alicante. Not the typical corporate setting.
My colleagues Claire and Carolina with the genuine and fake articles.
The holiday season officially started with the arrival of Monica.
We had a Danish Christmas lunch at the office.
On December 22nd, I drove to Madrid and picked up Moses who flew in from Philadelphia. A few hours and 440 km later, the family was re-united, and the holidays had truly begun.
On Christmas Eve, we had our holiday dinner of turkey and other assorted goodies. Cheeta just waited patiently on the kitchen terrace.
But then she took a more active interest in the proceedings.
Moses got to do the honours.
On Christmas morning, Monica is waiting for the distribution of presents to begin. She and Moses are now adults, but on this day they are children again.
At the end of the gift exchange, we made the official Christmas portrait for 2015.
Between Christmas and New Year, we just relaxed, watched football on TV, and I took advantage of the good weather to cycle in the mountains.
We welcomed 2016 at our favourite restaurant, La Ereta.
And that was the year that came and went.
Some people might say that I never fully did. And of course, growing up is a long and gradual process. But in my mind, there is one particular date that stands out, and if I were to pick a date on which I lost the illusions of my youth, it would be 9th December 1980, early in the morning.
I had recently turned 20 and was studying economics at the University of Aarhus in my hometown in Denmark. I lived in a large student housing complex in the suburbs of Aarhus, Skjoldhøjkollegiet. That particular Tuesday morning was an ordinary one. I woke up and began the morning resuscitation ritual, involving strong coffee and such, in preparation for the day at the university. But then I turned on the radio… Just a couple of hours earlier, around 11 p.m. on 8th December local time, John Lennon had been shot and killed outside his apartment building in New York.
I had been a Beatles fan for many years. Unfortunately, since the band stopped touring when I was 7 years old and broke up when I was 10, I never had the chance to see them live. For a decade, I had held on to a dream–that one day they would reunite and make some more of that wonderful music that I so loved. But on that December morning 35 years ago, I suddenly knew that my childhood/adolescence dream would never be fulfilled. Childhood was well and truly over.
When I am in New York, whenever I have the time, I go to Central Park and visit Strawberry Fields. And just recently, I had the pleasure of flying home from Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport, where he is honoured with a statue in the departure hall.
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you
Nathan's Musings 