I have made it to Lubljana and am installed in the youth hostel here. It's a pretty town with a pedestrianized center, lovely art nouveau buildings, and a river. The city is littered with sidewalk cafes with umbrellas and candlelight in the evening. There's even a castle up on the hilltop overlooking the dense little city. Lubljana doesn't feel like a country's capital, it's so small.
They've taken countdown signals to a new level. Not only do the lights count down the amount of time you have to cross the street, they also count down the amount of time the cars have to get thru the intersection. Unfortunately, the peds have 9 seconds and the cars 30, and this is in the pedestrian city center!
What else? I met these 2 young English girls on the train here, and we had dinner last night. I had fried calamari and salad, just like I might at home. I guess I am just know what I like.
I still have lots of conference stuff to catch up on. I will start with a story a Dutch bicycle specialist told us over lunch. So, the queen of one of the United Arab Emirate countries noticed that both her husband (the king) and the rest of the country were getting fat. They are, of course, very wealthy and no one has to work because of the oil. She is an elegant lady, and she wants things and people around her to look nice.
The king had hired the Rand Corporation to run his country so that he didn't have to bother with it. So, he calls them up and tells them that they have to come up with a plan by which he and his nationals will lose weight.
The Rand Corporation thinks about this for a while and decide that if everyone road bicycles, then they wouldn't be fat. They call my lunch companion for assistance.
But there are problems: the country is incredibly hot. No problem, they say, we will air condition the streets using solar power (there is lots of sunshine). They design a system where the streets are covered with like a Bedouin tent and water is sprayed below it cooling the air. Second problem: how do we measure success? Well, very sophisticated athletes have this machine that measures everything about them (blood pressure, percent body fat, etc.) just by stepping into it. So, they are going to install some of those along this street, and all of the citizens are required to bicycle up and down the air conditioned street and then have their condition checked by the machine on a regular basis. Actually, eventually it will be a network of air conditioned streets. This is a dictatorship, after all. Citizens risk death is they do not comply.
It's like a planners wet dream, isn't it. I just have some problems with the plan: where is this water coming from? and also, is air conditioning the streets going to change the climate?
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3 comments:
Isn't Ljubijana the best?
Glad you took my advice. It's the prettiest town I have ever seen, especially in the center.
Go find the anarchist neighborhood called Metelkova. It's close to the Center. Here is more http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors2/grzinictext2.html and http://www.metelkova.org/indexe.htm
It's intimadating to walk in there, but they are actually really nice and eager to talk about their community. Stay for a night and you can see bands and drink with the locals.
Loving your blog. Feels like I'm still on the road.
I forgot one aspect of the story: fashion. It was another problem. They wear these long flowing robes that would get caught in the bicycle chain. So, RAND calls up a fashion designer from NY to redesign these traditional robes for bicycle compliance.
Grace wanted to know if women would ride as well, and I don't know.
Also, the light actually gives cars 80 seconds for every 9 that peds get. Sorry.
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