Global Fast Food. Doner Kebab, Danish Pork Sandwich, French Hot Dog

Doner Kebab, St. Petersburg, Russia

The Doner Kebab.  Here, our latest:  Russian doner kebab.  Doner kebab is a global fast food phenomenon, a vertical roasting conglomerate of stacked, compressed slices of meat, shaved down as you order, and plated with some veggies, a pita, whatever.

Doner kebab, Roskilde, Denmark

We have no corner on the market as to fast foods, street food.  Find earlier Kebab finds at Turin, Italy: Doner Kebab
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For the famous Danish pork sandwich, see http://denmarkroadways.blogspot.com/2010/09/roskilde-best-fast-food.html

And the infamous hot dog, condiments in the cylinder, see Sweden's version at http://swedenroadways.blogspot.com/2011/05/uppsala-korven-med-brod-french-hot-dog_19.html

Oppression - Restricted Experiences. Then Usual Gender activities

Oppression

Slovakia.

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We found fine, warm people, but

• Photo inside a supermarket.  We were not allowed even to take a picture inside the supermarket to show back home how alike theirs are to ours.  No! Arms waving. Stop.  And 
• Sex Trafficking, Farm. out in the country, across the border about half an hour from Hungary, Sign, in English, Sex Farm. A paved road, but a farmland-unsettled area, flat in all directions, some hedgerows, little woods, and a dirt road going off to the left. Nowhere to run. Arrow pointing the way off-road. And the road just went on and on until it disappeared. No getting away from there.  And guess the nationality of the clientele. We did not stop. 
• Otherwise great stay. But there are watchers.

Usual gender activities:

On the more predictable, moneymaking side:

 Passed this little red house need the border from Switzerland to Liechtenstein. Sign for the activities inside in general.

The Red House, Switzerland

• Overnight at a "zimmer" (rooms above a pub, main road) for a room, between Vienna and Bratislava. Had supper, went upstairs, then saw that the room had no curtains, bathroom no door. Just turn off the lights and sleep. Slow night. Good food, friendly people but the function rooms are clearly that. No curtains, and the parking lot below? 

Woman Sass. Equal Opportunity, Gender Equality, Gender Parity, Sass

Woman's armor, Chillon Castle, Switzerland (second from left.

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Woman's armor (left) Thun Castle Museum, Switzerland

The life after the wedding.  She works, he writes. Mariaplain Convent, Salzburg, Austria

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Woman in britches, sass finger signal, Sonderborg Castle furnishing, DK

Woman sass. Body language, hand and finger gestures: two fingers up can mean rudity crudity, see http://www.simplybodylanguage.com/finger-gesture.html.

 

Traffic control

Traffic opportunities, issues.

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 Ultimate Off-Road. San Bernardino Pass, Alps, Switzerland side (no injuries).

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Napoleon crossed the Alps here and also had problems. Here, the motorcycle won. The Grand San Bernardino Pass.

Traffic-calming on a budget, Thal, Austria 

Just put out some square planters in the road, add pretty flowers, and make the cars go around; or stop for each other. This is Arnold Schwarzenegger's home town. The idea actually works. Economical, effective, pulchritudinous.
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Here is Poland, telling you to slow down:

Poland. Budget-friendly speed non-trap

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Here is Switzerland, telling you to slow down.

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Switzerland. Budget-friendly speed non-trap.

That fake one aimed at the bikers, at an Altdorf repair shop.

Headwear: The Men's Driving Cap

The men's driving cap.  Perhaps the golf cap, in later years.

So practical.  So understated. So ...so ... bewitching. Mysterious, even.  The driving cap.  There are differences between the economy models, and the Heir Apparent. 

An Heir Apparent will be sure that his cap is stitched to the visor, all the way across, and not snapped.  Fit from the base of the skull, back at the hairline, angled a little to the front at that hairline (remember to comb your hair or smooth it down when you take the thing off, or it looks like you have bed hair).  Not too wide on top, and certainly not the eight panels that the old newsboys' caps used in the 1930's.  The proper driving cap has three panels. Three.  No more, no less.

Men's driving cap, guide at Vlad Dracula's ruined castle, Poinari Citadel, Romania

 For techniques of sizing and measurement, see that Romania site at Romania Road Ways II, Vlad Tepes Sites.

This fetching model, on the spousal tourist-gent on Aran Island, Ireland, was lost somewhere thereafter, as I recall.

Men's driving cap, Aran Island, Ireland (with horse)

This next Irish model, at Blarney Castle, Ireland, seen from the top down, looks like one piece of fabric at the entire top, like a U going to the visor,  not a lot of segments radiating out. Then other pieces angled toward the visor from the back, wide in back, narrow and pointy where they meet the visor area.

Men's driving cap, a Holder at the Blarney Stone, Blarney Castle, Ireland

The one being held is Himself, Daniel.

The Wood-Burning Stove. The End of the Dark Ages? The Renaissance Stove.

Renaissance stoves.  Tiled. Ceramic.

Did the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Reformation, depend upon the development of this efficient, handsome wood-burning stove. See descriptions at ://www.castle.ckrumlov.cz/docs/en/zamek_oinf_renkac.xml/  These wood-burning stoves are an aesthetic far cry from those of today.  See collections of separate tiles, see ://www.wawel.krakow.pl/en/index.php?op=18; then feast upon the great complete ones.

Now, sidle up. Here is a collection of some fine old stoves we have found, some tiled, some enamel, some ceramic, some ceramic tile, some humble, some gloriously excessive.

Renaissance wood-burning stove, Gasthof Maria Plain, near Salzburg, Austria

 Renaissance stove I, Salzburg Castle, Festung, Salzburg, Austria

Renaissance stove II, Salzburg Castle, Festung, Salzburg, Austria

 Renaissance stove I, Kremsmunster Abbey, Kremsmunster, Austria

 Renaissance stove II, Kremsmunster Abbey, Kremsmunster, Austria

 Renaissance stove III, Kremsmunster Abbey, Kremsmunster, Austria

Renaissance stove, Cheb Castle, Cheb, the Czech Republic

Renaissance stove, Wittenberg, Germany, in home of Martin Luther

See Martin Luther's Stove for issues arising from too much warmth. Gravity and whimsy around the heater.

Perhaps the rebirth of great thought did depend on availability of reliable, sustained, even heat. The old fireplaces sent that heat right up the chimney. Consider the effect of sustained, relatively even warmth on talk. Imagine the further difference that ductwork made in cold Europe and its colony appendages, bringing warmth elsewhere in the house. Can you really explore issues when you are shivering. Is warmth the reason civilization bloomed in warm places first.  Of course.

Read Gary Novak's suppositions at this site, that addresses morality issues - but that is not our focus here.  See FN 1 for a fair use quotation. In summary, the snowy parts of Europe specialized in outdoor activities like horses and wars, because they couldn't heat their houses - goes the idea.  Enter the wood stove, and intellectual activity grew, away from the chill, in the nice warm insides. Is that so?  An interesting thought. FN 1.  Finger on chin, tilt head, hmmm.


Missing:  stoves from Goethe's house, Weimar, Germany. We weren't interested at that time, and took no photo. -

In contrast to the fancy ones is this plain one - very plain and we recall elaborate ones, but here is a fair use thumbnail -and consider the gaps between rich and poor, whose lifestyles get touted, and whose do not.

See it at  ://images.google.com/url?source=imgres&ct=ref&q=http://flickr.com/photos/your_teacher/147683919/
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FN 1  Read Gary Novak's site, Why Thomas Aquinas Was Wrong (the site focuses on different issues not endorsed here, just this interesting notion that does apply to our love of wood-burning stoves). 

Rough summary:  Mr. Novak lays out that people in more northern Europe could not heat their houses in the dark ages, as could those in warmer climates such as Italy in the south. 

Then the northern Visigoths beat the Romans - and took up residence in the south - and ideas spread to the north.  

What difference did that make? This: If you are cold, you tend to stay inside to try to get warm -- and that may well foster "intellectual" pursuits, but on your own. Stay at one place, think, huddle, write, etc.  Outside is cold, stay inside, and that is cold, too.

If you can get warm inside after being outside, however, you may well do more outside -- with the security of a stove within.  Is that?  Head for soldiering, hunting and pestering your neighbor, horses and wars. Go ahead. Think up reasons to hunt other people. Is that so? 


Why didn't fireplaces do the job.  Fireplaces are inefficient because they require vent holes, and that lets in cold air. Open the window to get the smoke out, if the smokehole fails. And heat vacates with the smoke. 


So, it took enclosed stoves to make the difference. No air gets in except what is needed to keep the combustion going. Smoke stays in. Heat radiates out. 


Enter, the Renaissance! Dependent on the stove in the north. Is that so? That led to a joint scholasticism, not just the isolated intellect shivering over there. Share the warmth, share the ideas.  Next, the Reformation. Martin Luther's Stove made a difference.  See Martin Luther's Stove.

Humanity's Humor and Oddities, Advertising, Communicating.

Update:

We are separating out the more frivolous photos, out of concern that they might distract from more serious issues.

See the LITE at Common Thread Roadways Lite:

Surnames, place names, graffiti portion of post now exported to Common Thread Roadways Lite, Surnames, Place Names, Graffiti

Unexpected rest stop portion of post now exported to Common Thread Road Ways Lite, Unexpected Rest Stop .
Others:  go to same site

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 Nonsense and Intellect

Does the nonsense benefit us?

Silly People are Smarter? - if they don't go overboard?

1.  The serious anomaly.

Nonsense and intellect.  See the connection.  See Benedict Carey's article, How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect, at NYT ://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html/

Find something that defies expectation, defies logic, an anomaly, something absurd, and can you laugh at the disorientation that results? The good news, is that the discomfort at the outset, getting bearings, signifies an ability to find a new pattern, solve a new problem.  Some anomalies have serious intent, others merely fun. 

Here is a deadly serious anomaly.

Geneva, Switzerland. Landmines protest. Near Palace of Nations.

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Is the new image a threat? Threat results in clinging to biases.  How about thinking of death.  The article points out that thinking of death produces a hyper-patriotism, hyper-religionism, and less tolerance. Do a bad job on a test, and watch the heightened feelings of loyalty to the winners.

We want coherence. We will impose a pattern to help us get that. The brain gropes for meaning, while the hands and voice go toward old ritual for comfort.

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2.  The Thought-Provoking Anomaly

The odd Juxtapose. Posejuxta.

Charlie Chaplin at the Fork, Montreux, Switzerland

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Charlie Chaplin was here first. Then came the fork.
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3.  The Literary Allusion

Climbing the walls.

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This bug on the building needs a metamorphosis.  We are in Prague now.

Prague, CZ. Kafka's building bug. Metamorphosis. 

. A literary refresher course.  Meet Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis (the novella, see ://www.themodernword.com/kafka/kafka_works_novellas.html).

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 4. Attention-getting advertising

Liquid recreation.

And back to Poland.  This Pharaoh in the Field is nameless, as to  identity or function.  Until you drive a few miles to the next one, similarly situated.

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Poland, Pharaoh in the Field

Welcome to the Egyptian Bar, waiting just for you with some nice schnappes, just in the next town.

Carving and Scratching: The Decorative Arts. People Enriching and Recording their Daily Lives

Column capital, Medieval Battle, Malbork Castle, Poland*

Rather than spend tens of thousands a year on institutional public education, do this: somehow surmount the liability issues, and use part of that money to take very small clusters of students to any foreign country locale, with a castle, and live in that area for two solid weeks.

Learn all you can just by first hand observation and personal research. Knights, armor, types, customs, music, art, crops, trade, plague, religion. Malbork, or Marienburg, Poland is rich in all that.

What the students learn they record. What they don't see themselves, you don't tell them. Just steer their observing. Have them play the instruments, try carving. Was this castle later destroyed? By whom and why? See if they don't come back with a vital interest that does not come with all our dumb passive education feedings year after year.

Hradec Kralove, Sgraffito

The Czech Republic. Go to Hradec Kralove, not just Prague.

Sgraffito - decoration design by scraping away top layer of light plaster to reveal darker layer below, here at Hradec Kralove. See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgraffito

The child diarist, Petr Ginz, World War II, tells us that his mother used to go back to this, the town of her childhood, from Prague. She came to get away, and return refreshed. See Places of Petr Ginz, Hradec Kralove. Young people can identify with one of their own in a war. Try them. Reading about it is not enough for empathy.

Telc, Sgraffito fooling the eye

Some forms of sgraffito are a trompe l'oeil technique - fool the eye - into seeing three dimensions, when there is really a flat surface.

The lower floor here is flat, with sgraffito. This dates from the second half of the 16th Century - a burgess' house. See ://www.discoverczech.com/telc/square.php4.

Exploring. No better way to learn. Bottoms up, kids.



On the way somewhere, see this in Poland.








Have the kids research it.



It is a visual hook to a pub down the road, for the chaperones.


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* Malbork Castle, a/k/a Marienburg. See Poland Road Ways: Malbork as Marienburg, Brick Gothic, Archways, walls with roofs, Reconstruction after 1945, Teutonic Knights, Grand Masters.

Op lopveop yopuop - Language sites

Common ground. The world's languages. Learn some French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Chinese, "Other" - at ://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/. Find some Polish there also, and Urdu.

And from another site:

Op lopveop yopuop
Means "I love you"
In "Op."

As in:

La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la means...

Universal human theme.
See the world saying it at ://www.translatum.gr/etexts/i-love-you.htm

Special Ops. Diplomats, soldiers, tourists. Learn to say the basics wherever you go.

Op. Which way is Op? *
Need to meet
Op Ed.

Portunity knocks.

Testing... testing....

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* Is this Opao, a language in an area near Papua, New Guinea, spoken by some 1116 people? See Ethnologue at //www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=opo

Ethnic group rights or non-rights, migration, immigration and co-existence

Considerations for the world -

1. Which factors more: Equity and fairness, or Time passing since a conquering, and then comes the rule of tough (does England go back to the Saxons, or the Normans, or the Romans or the Celts); and would the US go back to the Native Americans (as a practical matter, hardly); whether the ethnic group now seeking recognition was itself the conquerer or instead followed on the coattails of conquerors since displaced (Kosovo); whether Scotland reverts to the "Scotties" in Ireland, the Basques away on their own from Spain and France, on the lineages cry, let us join with ourselves, and let us be. Then, most recently perhaps, the Tibetans from China.

2. Keep it IYBY. In your back yard.

We have a concept here in the US - NIMBY meaning Not In My Back Yard.That means that a solution to a problem may be fine so long as it does not affect me or my property. Put in the town water tower, but not in my back yard. That also applies to population changes - let them do as they like, so long as I and my lifestyle are not affected.

We look at areas like The Balkans, current borders a far cry from original ethnic borders, given its location as a crossroads for conquerors of religious and military and commercial bents over centuries. And our resolutions may well be too simplistic - these people are not in our back yard, think our officials, so impose a resolution and get on with it.

But would we be so fast to impose that solution in our own country? Doubtful. What criteria would work for multiple separatist situations, not just Kosovo.

3. Get rid. But where or how? And why?

Now, in the US, what to do with immigrants here, without documentation, having crossed open borders like an invitation for years, and the backlash is now against them by many who would like to turn back the clock

The Balkans have dealt with issues of "unwanted" and "uninvited" population groups (like successive conquerors) for centuries. What can we learn from the Balkans?

• The issue moves from the legal or equitable right, of who to what; to a step beyond - what we have now, in 2008, and where to go with it now.
  

4. Dignity. The vital importance of it.

None of the earlier approaches have worked. They all included Rankism - me better than you.
Try the dignitarian approach instead.

We cannot undo history, we can only cope and adjust in a way that reasonably works, while affording full dignity to all groups - a new mindset. See ://www.humiliationstudies.org/news-old/archives/001256.html; rankism and peer to peer studies at .//blog.p2pfoundation.net/dignitarianism-a-p2p-movement/2006/03/08; and rankism at ://www.commondreams.org/views/100700-102.htm.


Ethnic groups worldwide, and how to coexist.

Starting point: Here we are, up there in the top row of 18,000 in Hartford's main city center (listening to Barack Obama).

Background of issue: We were in process of correcting some errors in identifying a certain statue in Zagreb. Croatia - see Croatia Road Ways (our believed Officer Yallatchich turns out to be King Tomas, or Tomislav).

VM, who provided the correct information on Tomislav, asked about another issue common to all countries whose borders include ethnic groups that do not identify with the dominant: what rights attach to the defeated, the conquered, who now seek their own identity in a perhaps more (?) civilized and tolerant world.

Unresolved. But we in the meantime heard candidate Barack Obama here, and we would like to share our thoughts.

Immediate trigger. We heard Senator Barack Obama, with his mixed racial heritage and the claims of blacks and whites, and reds and yellows and blues and the just plain drabs, like me and, as ancestors of all colors and ethnicity we all have somewhere.

Who has what rights to land and identity.

Does power have to mean eradication, or can we get beyond that, for a common good.

Conflicts of laws addresses this in jurisdictional terms, with mixed results in acceptance, so this focuses on how to foster coexistence, so that separatist movements are not needed. People are ok with the arrangement.

• So far in the US, the candidate addressing human issues on a global reference scale, and the dignity of people, is indeed, in our view so far, Barack Obama. He acknowledges all our own weird families and how that plays out in a culture. And uses that commonality to move forward.

• We may well be into new analyses and understandings, as he suggests. We may need to look to the future, while respecting and acknowledging the inequities of the past - move on to consider entire mindsets, and administrations and assimilation, not deportations and population exchanges.

Only so many resources, yet populations at odds.

Can we overcome our fear of each other, that the gain of one group means the diminution of another's opportunities.

This is an open call for comment, because the Balkans have dealt with this for years, and the US is just beginning as a nation, and an identity, and we may yet trip over our own feet.

• A starting point may be that small window of time where Islam in Spain coexisted for so many years with Jews and Christians, with handicaps and taxes to be sure in the "dhimmi" status of the Non Islam population. But it managed, without bloodshed.
  

What models can Europe, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, offer the US. We start with offering a moratorium on acting against undocumented immigrants here, until a new administration can review the situation. See PoseJuxta, Plank, Legal Temporary Immigration Status.

My vote could go here or there because there is time left before decision is needed. But for Obama's speech on race, try this:

http://my.barackobama.com/hisownwords

Is there hope for America? Dare we be audacious? All of us. And hope? Watch the Powers drive it down again. Or try.

For war issues, contemporary, much stemming from missteps and lack of understanding of the dynamics between other countries' ethnic groups or religious divisions, hear his ideas at

http://my.barackobama.com/fiveyearslater.

We are working on ourselves. I may change my mind. But so far, this is the most reasonable, optimistic yet realistic candidate. So there we are.