Land of Ice and Fire

Iceland does not feel like changing scenery - it is like changing planet. Going for a week off road in Iceland’s South is a good thing to do, while on my construction site the house foundation went through the finish line. April is a little to late for a good chance to see Northern lights. But Iceland has a lot to offer: glaciers, volcanos, waterfalls, geysers and all you need to push a 4x4 to the limit. Equipped with a 2022 version of the Suzuki Jimny. This car is like a gecko. It goes up everything. With a curb weight of just above a ton, crossing rivers it has a bit of a handicap though. But with anything else, this is a perfect car to go quite extreme. And that’s what Iceland is - extreme.

Driving around the whole island in a week, is a little too much behind the wheel. That’s why I focused on South Iceland, took more stops. Walking towards the glacier lagoons gave me the opportunity to see the effects of climate change and to recall my University lectures in glaciology. From the most recent end moraine you walk around to 2 km to the lagoon. Then it’s another 500 - 800 meters to the glacier itself. This looks like the retreat of ice in the last about 100 years. And that’s a lot. I have seen similar scales in New Zealand a few years ago - maybe even more. I do appreciate all the effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But it does look to me, that we better also start to also prepare coping with what’s coming anyways. And then there is the whole field of climate engineering, which I studied quite intensively during my PhD time. I am pretty sure, that the whole topic of global warming is too serious to keep it to the hippies trying to fix it by drinking oat milk and soy beans. And anyway the concept is known at least since I started studying in 1986. It’s a little late for voodoo, right?

The last two days I spent in Reykjavik to give the trip an urban ending and troll around with humpback whales and dolphins in the Reykjavik Bay, which was fun.

Winter 2022/23 is over

The time of my birthday is usually the coldest time in the Middle-European winter. But not this year. I made the boat winterproof in December, when there were actually some minus degrees. But now it is at times + 14 °C, while -14 °C would be seasonally possible. The next 10 days forecast also stays above zero. So then, if no cold snap surprises us, winter here is over. Well, it helps the gas bills as also the heating season is mild like I cannot remember it from before.

My birthday, this year, I went to my birth town and visited the hospital in which it all started back in 1966, during a snow storm. It’s the Brüderhaus St. Josef in Koblenz located in Kardinal-Krementz-Straße. This hospital was founded in 1899 by Brother Peter Friedhofen, who before started the Catholic congregation of Barmherzigen Brüder von Maria Hilf in 1850. My short visit this year was on a rainy day, not a snowstorm at all.

Of course, people debate whether this weather change is in the context of man made climate change. Seems very likely, yes. But in any case, I decided, perhaps prematurely, to wave winter goodbye and start spring time. After Covid and war in Ukraine, with all it’s implications, it’s good to have some light in 2023.

Brüderhaus Koblenz

Carbon footprint and the Covid-19 endgame

Finally, I found an easy way to offset my carbon footprint: I bought a forest. This is a quite a simplification, compared to the accounting hassle you have with commercial carbon trading for every poo. And it also comes handy in the context of social distancing.

Watching the Covid-19 endgame in Germany now, some of my compatriots are quite a disgrace for humankind after the Enlightenment. Among others, we have a movement called "Querdenker", indicating that the direction of their thoughts is lateral to the mainstream. To me, it appears that their thinking has no direction at all. And also, the length of the thought vector is very small. It must be a tough job for a democratic government to be the intermediate between science and these "citizens." Mostly, it is holding up well, but there are also weird debates on loosening the contact limitations over Christmas etc. They must have found a way to negotiate a cease-fire with the virus during these days.

Luckily, I brought a few Covid-19 Antigen-Tests from Hong Kong. To my surprise, they are not available for general retail in Germany. In Wanchai you can pick them up at the cashout at Watsons, between the chewing gums and the condoms. Made in Korea.

Even my own life is relatively untouched by the restrictions, of course, I do miss a few things also: the museums, the library and even our Anne Sophie Mutter concert in Frankfurt Alte Oper has been cancelled. I hope this year does not damage the cultural landscape permanently. But I assume until mid next year, things will pick up again and we can assess the damage.

The first snow was falling a few days ago. Eddie is a spring dog and has never seen this. But of course, even he is not a sled dog; he knows Iditarod and the great race in Alaska where dogs and mushers raced to deliver serum to an isolated settlement with a diphtheria outbreak. I told him. I wish our American friends would have kept a bit of this spirit, instead of what we have to observe today. When people don’t work together, luckily, we can always count on our dogs.

I am not clear yet which model to apply for assessing the CO2 absorbtion capacity of these trees. I only found numbers for pines, but not oaks, which have the seasonality in dropping leaves in winter and other differences in parameters.

Eddie following ths call of the wild in Taunus.

Dreaming of a White Easter

The pictures below would not be anything special, if taken in Frankfurt during the time December to February. But now, getting off for my morning run on March 18th, this is quite a surprise. It should be spring-ish by now. 

Bockenheim residential street

Our "parking space".

Highway underpass in Niddapark which is also used as a graffity gallery.

Niddapark, Frankfurt am Main