Most of what I express here will be directed towards North America’s path dependency on the private vehicle although some of it will also be relevant to policy incentives in East Asia. As my father always used to tell me: “You have to think in systems, you can’t expect everything Read more…
A short distance away from Halle, Wittenberg, and Leipzig where Martin Luther frequently lectured, Eisleben is his famed birthplace and place of death. It’s a good idea to visit these places all in one trip to get a feel of what it was like to live during the 16th century, Read more…
The real reason why I wanted to go to Hannover was to see the Waterloo Column. Why does Hannover have a column to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon? In fact, the Kingdom of Hannover actually used to be in a personal union with the monarch of the United Kingdom until Read more…
If you look at a large fold-out map of the VBB (Verkehrsberbund Berlin-Brandenburg, the regional transit provider for Berlin and its suburbs), you’ll find Brandenburg on the western end of the map. Travel 90 minutes by train west of that and you’ll get to Magdeburg. It’s easy to see why Read more…
In HPAIR’s 2018 Asia conference I had the privilege of participating in a workshop with the World Bank in Malaysia to come up with a tentative policy proposal for providing internet access for rural Malaysia. The key issues are spotty and inconsistent internet coverage across Malaysia as well as slow Read more…
Adjacent to Nürnberg, Fürth doesn’t only have it’s own beer, it also has a Faber-Castell outlet and factory. When I was there they gave out free balloons reading “Einkaufsstadt Fürth” – shopping city Fürth. Though I would have to disagree, I found the local fruit markets and restaurants with ice Read more…
In the 1990’s, there was a joke on the Internet about how someone could be from Bielefeld, but the phrase was mistake for something else. The Bielefeld Conspiracy was born and it had three questions: Have you ever been to Bielefeld? Do you know anyone that has been to Bielefeld? Read more…
Leipzig, Eisleben, Wittenberg, are all a hop on a train, a skip past the countryside, and a step down onto the platform away from Halle, and all historically significant for the Reformation in the 16th century. Martin Luther visited frequently to lecture in the University of Halle where he was Read more…
By some standards Münster is one of the most liveable cities in the world, by other measures it is one of the youngest cities in the world. With a population of just 300,000, more than 20% of those are university students, most of which study in the University of Münster. Read more…
The first thing I want to bring to light is the widespread misuse of the world ‘holocaust’, it should only be used to refer to one particular incident, which is the systematic massacre of Jews, Romas, Sintis, the disabled, the dumb, and others considered ‘undesirable’ by the national socialist regime. Read more…