Blessed by the Potato

Paris is a big city. It doesn’t really seem to have an identifiable “downtown core” like most Canadian cities do, no single major street or intersection that defines the centre. There’s the La Defense district, which we haven’t been to see yet, but seemingly the whole of the city is crowded with one-way alleys and 5-storey apartments with retail on the ground floor. It makes the whole city seem like a teeming downtown core, and I just can’t quite wrap my head around it all.

The stonework is impressive though, and Wayfare and I were wondering how it was that they managed to put so much effort into seemingly every building over such a wide area. Of course, the downside is that there’s very little greenspace to be found, and any little patch of lawn seems to instantly spring sprawling sunbathers in this summer heat.

Oh, the terrible heat. I don’t know how it’s so hot underground, but that has to be the biggest downfall of the metro system here. None of the trains are air-conditioned, which is especially bad when bathing seems to be as optional as it is here. They open the windows so there’s a bit of a rush of air when the small trains are moving, but the system is quite a bit different from the subway of Toronto. There are an enormous number of stations and lines, all criss-crossing across the city. It’s kind of nice knowing that up on the surface a metro stop is never much more than 300 m away, unlike the 20+ minute walk you could face in North York or London just to get from your house to the nearest bus stop, let alone subway station. However underground it means that the trains spend way too much time stopped at the stations, baking with no air movement, rather than making progress through the tunnels. There’s also no guard car like the TTC has — no one checking to make sure that everyone is off the train, that those boarding aren’t getting caught by the doors. The buzzer sounds (and it’s an unpleasant noise that does not help the claustrophobic nature of the situation), the doors slam closed and the train moves. The doors don’t even open on their own, you have to hit the release yourself. Of course, none of these issues stop it from being a very well-used service: even at night just before the system shuts down the trains are fairly busy; at one stop the people hadn’t even finished getting off, let alone given a turn to the hundreds of people on the platform to get on, when the buzzer buzzed and the doors tried to close.

Today we spent a lot of time walking and looking at buildings, including the impressive Notre Dame cathedral. However we were pretty baked by the heat and the sun and a slight bit of dehydration given that a bottle of water or can of pop runs us north of $3, so we haven’t been taking as many pictures as we should have been. We walked by the Louvre, where bizzarely enough a gang of people were giving out free hugs (with the signs to advertise it). Wayfare was quite excited by the free hugs, and got 7 or 8 on the way through the crowd.

“Yay, free hugs!”

We grabbed some crepes for lunch at a small restaurant in the shadow of Notre Dame, where there happened to be a small white kitten sleeping on the bench (until some American girls came in and decided to pick him up and tell him how cute he was). We now have more pictures of the little white cat than we do of the Louvre and Notre Dame cathedral combined.

Imagine you step off the train coming in from Davos into the busy Zurich main station, and find yourself confronted by a full orchestra warming up. A dancefloor is in place within the airy main hall, gauzy chandeliers have been set up, and linen-topped picnic tables separate the hustle-and-bustle of the train-riding public from the other-world-ness of the dance floor. You think to yourself this must be some cool, swanky black-tie, invitation-only event.

Only when you see excited passengers in jeans and t-shirts run out to the dancefloor to join with those who dressed in tuxes and ballgowns do you realize that it’s free and open to any who care to dance on the shortest night of the year. Sounds too fantastic to be true, doesn’t it? Like something from a dream?

But that’s what we saw last night at Zurich HB for the mid summer’s night ball, it was quite the sight. Unfortunately, we were too tired after the conference and all the travelling to come out to dance (that, and at one point while watching it looked like someone was calling a particular dance in German, and there’s no way we’d be able to follow directions, or waltz as well as most of the dancers out there).

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Previously, I wrote about the fear surrounding hybrid cars, specifically the magnetic field exposure:

For the hybrid car issue, we have the question “what are the fields?” and we don’t even have a good answer to that, from which point some people fall into hysterics (up to selling their car). The real issue is then several steps removed: the Prius may have higher magnetic field exposures than other cars, and those fields have an unknown but probably small effect on human health, and that might outweigh the positive aspects of the technology.

I was understandably baffled that some people would make a mountain out of a hypothetical mole hill, especially in light of the fact that there are many other EMF “risks” that are obviously higher in everyday life, such as using a hairdryer, cell phone, or riding on a subway, which may not offer the benefits of a hybrid drivetrain. I was upset that the few people that have actually taken the measurements have not published or shared them in any way. I figured that when I eventually get a Prius for myself, I would have to borrow the magnetometers from the lab and do the job myself (and possibly get a published paper out of the deal!). (Un?)fortunately, someone has beaten me to the punch: G. Schmid and colleagues from the Austrian Research Centres in Seibersdorf have measured the fields in a Gen2 Prius under various conditions and reported the results at an international conference.

The exposure frequencies can go up to 1000 Hz due to some of the power switching. They found that near the floor in the backseat the exposure was highest, averaging 10% of the permissable general population chronic exposure according to the ICNIRP guidelines (which are frequency dependent), and could reach 30% in the maximum case (a switch from maximum acceleration to maximum braking). Even just at lap level the exposure is <5% of the guidelines (since children have short legs, this is perhaps the more appropriate measure).

They accounted for the effect of the tires (rotating tires with steel belts/cables in the makeup produces magnetic fields of up to 4% of the guideline exposure), which would be present in all cars. They also compared to some conventional cars — and the Audi A4 and VW Passat both had significantly higher exposures than the Prius! In fact, the Audi A4 exceeded the ICNIRP guideline in some conditions. The main source of exposure in those cars was from the air conditioning systems, which are “not as sophisticated” in their electrical management as in the Prius. One factor in particular that they mentioned was that the conventional cars tended to use the chassis as a current return, wheras the Prius has dedicated, shielded wiring loops that return to the battery.

In other hybrids it was found that magnetic field exposure does not correlate with installed electric motor power — the Honda Civic Hybrid has nearly 3X as much magnetic field exposure as the Prius does.

For comparison, another presenter looked at exposures on British Rail cars (not the underground — the motors are in locomotives separate from the passenger cars) and found that the fields were also in the 5-10% of ICNIRP guidelines range.

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“Do you have any open wishes?” is our new favourite saying after being asked by the waitress at a cute little restaurant.

The city is incredibly closed right now, I have no idea why they chose here for a conference. The vast majority of what few restaurants there are are closed for lunch (and almost half are closed completely — it’s the off-season here), yet there are a lot of tourists who really have nothing to do but eat at restaurants for lunch. For that matter, I can’t quite understand why all the restaurants and hotels are 20 minutes away from the conference centre rather than all clustered together. There doesn’t look to be much in the way of air conditioning, though for the most part it’s not really needed, but fans are. The air just sits and stinks and it gets sticky inside, even outside the breeze off the mountains seems to stop for a large part of the day.

I’m actually quite surprised at how warm it is here, since the weather reports keep saying it’ll be 11C or whatever, but the thermometers I’ve seen on the walls and the subjective feeling is that it’s between 25 and 30, with no air movement for much of the day.

The hotel (Sunstark Park) is so strange: it’s supposedly a 4-star hotel, but is just missing some basic amenities (not the least of which is air conditioning). The windows don’t have any screens, so it’s sometimes hard to even open those for air if the bugs are out. The washrooms have giant bottles of hand soap and shampoo, but no conditioner or hand cream. There is wireless internet in every room — but it costs up to $45/day to use!! (8 CHF, which are very close to CAD, per half hour) Despite being close to an international conference centre, the concierge thought I was crazy to think they might have a north american voltage converter to borrow/rent. Supposedly to avoid fire risks, the rooms don’t have irons or coffee makers.

Strange things in Switzerland in general is that many of the doors have a flange to them to seal up to the fram, rather than a jamb in the frame (i.e.: part of the door goes around the frame, rather than in it). There’s a toilet brush next to every single toilet. The toilets are crazy about sanitation! This sponge comes out to clean the seat after you flush and squirts some sort of cleaning fluid (or possibly just water, I don’t know). Many of the other public restrooms had disposable toilet seat covers available.

So, highlights: Mountains, of course. We went on a crazy long bike-ride up around the lake and partway up the mountain, almost 3 hours of pedalling, which is about 4 times longer than I typically bike for, so I was pretty wiped by the end. Great experience though, and my first time doing “real” mountain biking (i.e.: flying down tree-root-laden goat paths, and hitting hills so steep I had to walk the bike up many of them). I stuck my feet in the lake, and it was about as cold as you might expect glacier run-off to be.

We had a social event at a former asylum for tuberculosis patients at the top of a mountain, and we ran a little late and missed the last cable car down (actually, we just made it, but stupidly followed the person who said “oh, too late, let’s walk”). So we walked down the mountain in the dark, with only the lights of our cameras’ LCDs and one tiny LED flashlight to guide us. It took the better part of an hour. About halfway down, with the trees closing in on us, and us coming to the realization that we had walked ourselves into a horror movie, a small white kitten jumped out of the bushes and swatted at my foot, playfully.

Man, I’ve never been so scared of a kitten before, I must have jumped 3 feet in the air.

We’ve arrived in Zurich, and aside from the people beside us harrassing the flight attendants and knocking us over with the “snuggle train” it wasn’t too bad — even though we didn’t get our pre-picked seats in the 2-seat part of the 2-4-2 plane setup.

Wayfare’s brand-new Air Canada branded suitcase fell apart. Hopefully it’ll hold together long enough to get it home, where hopefully the Bay will take it back.

Our hotel room is great — probably bad to start with the biggest, nicest room, because it’ll spoil us for Davos and France, where the rooms will undoubtedly be smaller and less luxurious. But for now it’s fantastic, quiet, with our choice of 5 different types of pillows (goose down, duck feather, new wool, spelt chaff, ortho latex, or memory foam). The internet is free, but strangely enough the ice costs $5/tray.

We’re pretty beat from the flight, so we didn’t spend too much time exploring the city, but so far it’s been really good. I’m surprised at how many people speak English — I thought my broken French would have to serve as a lingua franca, but so far it’s been no problem. I don’t know if it’s the pale skin or what, but most people even greet me in English from the get-go. The main shopping strip is really cute with pedestrian and trolley/tram access only — many of the cars seem to have to navigate around.

One thing that’s really struck us about Zurich is that it has a really intricate trolley/bus/regional train system, which is amazing since the city is pretty much the same size as London, Ontario, which has pretty terrible transit (ok, I like the LTC and it’s not bad along Richmond or Oxford, which is surprisingly good for small-town Canada, but this is just a whole other league). Even on Saturdays the trams have been coming every 5 minutes.

The streetlights are suspended from cables strung between the buildings, which looks especially strange in the daylight when the lights are off and you can’t figure out why all the cables are strung all over the place.

Oh, and the river was a fair bit larger than I was expecting — I figured the (Ontario) Thames was a decent-sized river, but this one is a good 10-15′ deep, with fish snapping at bugs in the early morning!