Friday, February 16, 2018

transit from Spain to Deutschland

If transitions weren't such an everyday part of life, how would be cope?  One thing I've learned in this journey is that nothing stays the same... change (along with dukkha - suffering) always happens... i think the saying it 'shit happens' :-)
And so it is on this Chapter 3 of 24:  from sunny, warm, passionate Spain to Teutonic Land Germany.  Last nite it felt like coming home - hey! it is my homeland... yet so far removed from my uber-consciousness.
The Barcelona T2 airport was a real pain of mis-directions... at least this
time I got the special non-EU stamp that almost caused me to miss my flight 3 years ago in Santiago coming off the Camino.  If nothing else, we are all 'trainable' :-)

Arriving in Cologne to sleet and snow on the ground was oh, so welcome from the sunny Cali and Barca environs.  and then the uber modern and so german efficient, quiet, clean, fast train system was a god-send!  Ahhh  german efficiency!

But finding the AirBnB last nite was anything but easy... bad directions all around... my tablet with off-line navigation saved my butt... after asking 6 people where 'D street' was and no one knew...  and then there was no answer from the doorbell and no key where it was supposed to be... ahhh  dukkha again and again... i finally convinced a merchant across the street o give me a key... turns out the AirBnB host changed his mind at the last minute, sent me an email mi-flight and totally ignored my email to him about my travel time schedule... but here I am... and that was yesterday.

It's sunny and bright in Koeln on the Rhine... and my german nativeness
is about to come out - ha! beware? :-)  but i like my american buddhism more... so I'll be chillin' and gettin' lost in a wonderful way...

Btw:  i have always, always bought all my cosmetics and most of my seeds from Europe over the years for two BIG reasons:  All EU countries practice the 'precautionary principle' (The Precautionary Principle is a strategy to cope with possible risks where scientific understanding is yet incomplete, such as the risks of nano technology, genetically modified organisms and systemic insecticides.)
with all commerce and they are still all mostly anti-GMO.  I am really a bit more neutral on GMO than most people in NorCal... some of the GMOs are fine and indeed a blessing for starving kids in 3rd world countries... and some GMOs are downright dangerous Frankenfood instigators.  Europeans tend to follow their precautionary principle and therefore stay away from all GMOs.   The precautionary principle focuses on negative (bio-cumulative) chemicals NADA - none can be used.    When I sat on an advisory panel for Cal's  OTSC a while back i was amazied how Dow Chemical and Proctor Gamble and others bragged about how proud they were NOT TO FOLLOW the precautionary principles... yuk!

As many of you know, I'm a big proponent of Cradle to Cradle having interned with Dr. Michael Braungart at EPEA in Hamburg back in 2005.  
So it's nice to be back and relish in the safety of water, air pollution, chemicals, etc and where the government proactively protects humans first rather than ... well what USA does (may the best rat win? :-) 

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