Hi, this is Tony Trischka and you're listening to WBAI, listener-supported, non-commercial
radio in New York.
And you're listening to 99.5 FM, WBAI, New York.
The time is 7pm, time for Off The Hook.
Let's go.
Let's go.
And good evening, the program is Off The Hook.
This is Red Hacking the Studio, joined by Mike.
Hi there.
Jim.
Hi.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And on the phone we have Bernie S. down in Philadelphia.
Happy New Year from Philadelphia.
I'm actually, I'm not in Philadelphia, I'm in the rural regions of northeastern Pennsylvania,
but Happy New Year.
We can tell because the farther away you get from urban areas, the less awful you sound
on the phone.
That is very true.
And also on the phone, I believe we have Emanuel.
Yes, you do have Emanuel.
And I'm calling to you this week from Frankfurt in Germany.
And it's New Year's here as well.
I'd like to wish everybody a happy 2010.
I got a New Year's text message from you many, many hours before my own New Year's.
I think something on the order of nine or ten.
Well, there's a reason for that, Red Hacked, and basically it has to do with the way the
earth moves.
Yeah, I understand.
And the fact that we were both shifted from New York, not just you.
Oh, that's right.
You were in, where were you?
I was in Las Vegas.
You were in Las Vegas for New Year's.
That must have been something.
It was interesting.
The one primary difference I noticed with New York, besides the fact that you could
gamble there, was that unlike in New York, where if you want to go out for the big show,
it would be in Times Square, and you have to get there six hours in advance, nobody
seemed really interested in being outside until about 15 minutes before midnight.
Because they were all gambling.
Because they were all gambling.
So 15 minutes before we were in, I just walked outside, and there was fireworks and all that,
and it was fun.
Well, we had an interesting time in Berlin, actually.
I have Kyle here, who's been here the last few weeks as well.
This was his first time in Europe for New Year's, and first time in Berlin.
Since you've heard my experiences before, I'd like for him to give his experiences.
I have a couple other things to share with you that's going on right now in Frankfurt,
but here's Kyle right now.
Hello, this is Kyle.
Hello, Kyle.
How are you all?
Very good, very good.
How are things over there?
It's a little bit cold, but it's been really, really nice.
Enjoyed myself a lot.
Yeah, New Year's was quite an event.
Were you in Berlin or Amsterdam?
I was in Berlin.
Okay.
And even before New Year's, Manuel had sort of called to my attention these explosions
you would hear every now and then, and sort of told me to watch out.
You might see one a little bit closer to your vicinity than you'd like.
As New Year's approached, we prepared.
We got our own fireworks from a local convenience store, and we celebrated with everyone.
It's really amazing because as it gets closer and closer, everybody sort of goes outside,
and you get the sense that it's huge, and everyone in the city is doing the same thing.
It's this roar of explosions and light from reports flashing, all typical kinds of fireworks
you'd expect.
Americans are used to sort of Fourth of July events, but none of it's organized.
It's not an official sanctioned city event.
This is all people just having fun and letting loose a little bit.
And Kyle?
Yeah, yeah.
This isn't something where you have a lot of police and firefighters running around
screaming at people.
People just seem to be relatively sane with the fireworks, although it even looks insane.
But I've been there before, too, and this has gone off, and there's no police or firefighters
doing anything.
You know, this actually does happen in the States, too.
It does happen in places, just not in New York.
I completely agree, Bernie.
I think we heard one ambulance, maybe two, just drive by going somewhere.
But this wasn't as prevalent as the amount of revelry and fun that was going on.
And yeah, it was organized by people being sort of smart about it, not getting into too
much trouble, and just looking out for where they're directing their fireworks,
watching the trajectory and that kind of thing.
Anyway, I'm going to pass it back to Emanuel.
You know, the thing is, what you have to realize is there's a completely different mindset
here in Europe as far as just how people celebrate and what people do and what's a big deal
and what's not a big deal.
People walking around with open containers of alcohol, not a big deal.
People blowing up fireworks on New Year's, not a big deal.
You know, I have experienced people blowing up fireworks on New Year's, and of all places
it was Texas, so it's not like it doesn't happen.
Was it in the streets of Houston, or was it in the streets of Dallas?
It was in Houston, yeah.
Was it really?
Yeah.
In the streets?
People, does everybody lighting things?
Well, there's not really things in the streets, but I mean, yeah, we had fireworks and we
shot them off.
Uh-huh.
People opening a bottle of champagne and sharing with complete strangers, they had that too?
Well, Houston's not really a city.
It's more of a spread out suburban sprawl.
But I'm saying that this kind of thing does happen here, and it's not just limited to
Europe.
Right.
Well, that's good, and I encourage people to go out and drink openly in the streets
of their respective cities in the United States and light off fireworks as much as
possible, since apparently it's something that's encouraged.
I'm happy about that.
That's great.
But it leads people to really celebrate the New Year and to feel happy.
Of course, the next couple of days there's massive cleanup going on, and that happens
all throughout, but they get it done, and then the rest of the year everyone is all
neat and proper.
But basically, we have...
Well, I have a tradition, and I shared this tradition with Kyle this year, where basically
since hotel rooms soar to something like 300 Euro a night, I just stay up all night, and
I just wander around the Berlin area.
And basically, we went to a New Year's party at a friend's house, and eventually they kicked
us out, and we were walking around.
It was still dark, and you could hear occasional...
Well, first of all, there were fireworks going on for quite some time in the dark hours,
and then when you emerge in the dawn, when it's actually light out, you still hear fireworks,
maybe just one every couple of seconds instead of 15 per second.
They're slowing down a bit, but they're still going on pretty much all day long.
But what we did was we kind of just wandered around the city and explored various scenic
parts, but we found one thing that was really kind of interesting and fascinating.
It actually is the end of a journey I started two years ago, where I was wandering around
a massive train station called Hauptbahnhof in the middle of Berlin.
Two years ago, I spent a few hours looking for missing train tracks, basically.
I believe it's tracks 1 through 8 on the upper level, and tracks 10 through 16 on the lower level.
So that led me to ask, well, where are tracks 9 and 10?
And I just wandered around the station for hours looking, and nobody stopped me.
Nobody asked me any questions, and I found that to be fascinating.
And finally, I realized that those missing tracks were for a future U-Bahn line, which
would be called the U-55.
Well, the exciting news this year is that the U-55 actually does exist now, and we actually
wrote it as part of our killing time over New Year's Day tradition.
And just like Kyle said, a couple of words about the U-55, because it was...
A new subway line is kind of fascinating.
Before you hang up, did it come in on tracks 9 and 10?
Well, they don't call it track 9 and 10, but that is where it was.
And they will be labeling it track 9 and 10, I believe, when the line is finalized
in the years ahead.
Hello, this is Kyle.
The Hoppenhof station has three levels, and we went down to, I believe, the second level.
And the sign where it would say 9 and 10 is actually still blacked out.
It's not officially labeled.
We walked into this area, and that was the beginning of the U-55 track.
So that led us down into this completely pristine area.
They had an art installation of the Berlin Bears, which you see all over the town.
So we were able to walk through this completely new part of the train station that was just
constructed, very clean, just beautiful.
The train car is, I think, a double car, and it's orange.
Absolutely new paint job, super, super clean.
And there's one guy, and his job is to go back and forth.
And you get the sense he does this constantly, because it was 5 in the morning or so.
So we hop on this train, and he had come at least twice, so we were checking out
some of the art there.
And we just noticed that he just walks to the front and then walks to the back of the car,
depending on which end of the line he's at.
So we enjoyed a nice ride on this brand-new train.
And at the other end of the U-55, you're actually under where the Berlin Wall was
and where the Brandenburg Gate is.
And that end, where you get off the train, is beautiful.
And you have a mural on either side, from one end to the other,
that goes through the history of the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall.
And we were able to spend a decent chunk of that night, or then morning,
just going through and reading the history of it.
And the letters are in gold, and it was just brand-new.
They were still trying to clean up the dust and get it settled
so that people could start using it.
It was only a couple people, but it was just an awesome experience.
I encourage anybody to check it out.
So there you go.
I have something I'd like to share with people as far as something we're doing right now
in Frankfurt that you can't do in the United States.
Anyone want to guess what that might be?
I don't want to say it on the air.
Okay, fine.
You know, it can be like that.
But I'm just going to play you some audio.
Are you guys ready for this?
Here we go.
Are you watching Al Jazeera or something?
Is that coming through for you?
Barely, yeah.
Okay.
We're watching Al Jazeera.
It's on television here in Frankfurt.
It's in Arabic, and it's just a channel that people can get.
What was it again?
If you rebroadcast it here, you're a terrorist?
I don't know.
I didn't want to control the radio station.
I'm just on the phone.
But in the British state in Utah, I was able to get Al Jazeera just fine.
That was Al Jazeera English, Voltaire.
And I understand you're in the studio now.
Is that right?
Yes.
Okay, and .red is there too?
Yep.
Okay.
Well, yes.
Voltaire, you were in Utah.
You actually had Time Warner cable,
and somehow you were able to get Al Jazeera in English.
Yes.
Is that correct?
And what channel was it on?
I have no clue.
I didn't really spend much time watching it.
Okay.
Well, next time we go to Utah, write down the channel number so that we can figure out how to get it in New York City as well,
because they use the same system,
and maybe we can just tell them to open up that channel or something, and it might work.
We did get a listener email, I think a week or so ago.
One of our listeners said that there's one of the packages from DirecTV that includes part of Al Jazeera,
but it's just sort of like the best of Al Jazeera, whatever that is.
It's a cut-down, edited version of Al Jazeera.
Bernie, that's Link TV, which is a channel run out of San Francisco,
which airs some excerpts from Al Jazeera, but it's not run by them or part of them.
They just play excerpts from Al Jazeera and from television shows all around the world,
television networks all around the world.
That's what they do on Link TV.
But it's an excellent channel, but it's not run by anyone from anywhere other than San Francisco.
Got it.
Did you publish some cartoons?
I'm sorry, I missed that.
Yeah, anyway, so we're watching Al Jazeera here.
But we have an interesting adventure today, and it might be related to this.
We're in a neighborhood that's very Arabic.
There are all kinds of airlines that you'd never see in the United States.
You see Iran Air, Tunisia Airlines, things going to all kinds of countries that we don't speak to
or encourage people to go to.
And Kyle and I walked into the main train station here in Frankfurt,
and almost immediately, as soon as we went in, we were trying to find out how to get a day pass
for the U-Bahn, for the subway here, as well as figuring out how to take trains
to various other parts of the country.
And we had this group of policemen suddenly approached us and demanded to see our identification.
It was a little bit scary.
And they were doing this to people throughout the station.
I'm not exactly sure if it's a heightened security alert
or if it's something that's normal for this part of the country.
But they wanted to see our passports.
They wanted to know what we were doing in a train station,
which is kind of a strange question to ask somebody,
what do you think we're doing in a train station?
It was a little bit unsettling.
I don't know.
It might be related to the craziness going on in the States with airport security
and insecurity and things like that.
What do you guys think?
Did you happen to try telling them they didn't need to see your identification
and perhaps add that it wasn't the droids they were looking for?
No, that doesn't work with German policemen.
You didn't use the force on them, that's why.
I'm sorry, Bernie, what?
You didn't use the force on them, that's why.
No.
But, you know, we've been hearing various news reports
and things going on in the States as far as all kinds of security issues,
security breaches and things like that.
I know everyone's talking about the body scans
and how these body scans are inevitable.
They're the only way to keep people from blowing things up.
Now, last week we were talking about how apparently the TSA believes
that the only time a plane is in danger is during the last hour
when it's on its way down when somebody might blow up their underwear
or something like that.
Well, you know, based on past actions,
obviously people are going to repeat exactly the same thing.
Yeah, because nobody could do that in the middle of the flight, right?
It's simply impossible.
No, but they never did that before.
Especially things that didn't work, you repeat them to the last letter.
You want to keep your underwear on during the flight.
And then you had another incident in Newark
where somebody walked through the exit
and the entire airport or entire terminal had to be evacuated.
Everybody had to be re-scanned.
They never found the person that went through the exit instead of the entrance
because their cameras weren't recording.
So, you know, it's ridiculous stories like that that make you wonder
what the real issues here are and just how necessary it is
to go through all these incredible screening processes
when obviously people don't know what they're doing to start with
and they can't seem to run their own machinery.
But the latest thing about the body scanners, I was reading a piece.
This was in The Guardian in the U.K.,
basically a critique saying that the prime minister
believes that body scanners in airports are the latest catch-all
for capturing potential terrorists.
And within a few hours of the announcement
that the next generation of convenient hassle-free travel
was about to hit the security lanes,
child protection campaigners were informing Manchester Airport management
that any creation of an indecent picture of a child,
indecent meaning showing the genitalia and child meaning someone under 18,
is a criminal offense.
So basically what we're hearing now is that children will be exempt
from the full body scans,
but adults are going to be forced to go through them.
And how crazy is this that simply because of someone's age
they're going to be said,
well, this is a violation of their rights,
but it's not a violation of everybody else's rights.
Well, it also furthers the thing where they're saying,
well, it's not really that invasive to your privacy,
but then if they're at the same time classifying it
as basically naked pictures of children,
then what does that say about the pictures in general?
I love these conflicts of laws and conflicts of public policy.
Policies don't make sense,
but when they collide and conflict with each other,
it's endlessly entertaining.
Yes, this will produce hopefully a moment of cognitive dissonance
for everybody in the public
where we realize that it's really a false choice
and it's two stupid issues.
Once they collide, you realize how stupid the security theater apparatus is
and how stupid the child protection laws are
because they can't exist at once.
Talking about how dumb this is, won't that make an enormous hole
where everyone under 18 doesn't have to walk through these body scanners?
If these are the necessary things that we need to do to keep our airplanes safe,
what does that say about all these people
that are going to be allowed to go through them without being scanned?
How does this make us safer?
It's part of the whole security theater situation
where it's not really about security.
It's about making people feel safe.
In the 1970s, people would walk on planes without going through security.
They still had hijackings.
That guy that hijacked the plane that went to Cuba
in the 60s or 70s, the Black Panther guy,
and you still had just as many hijackings or explosions or whatever, a lot could be,
but there's no consequences
because they're so statistically insignificant,
and it's still the case today.
And I'm not saying we shouldn't have any security,
but I think that any type of security,
like security enhancements that we're going through right now,
full body scanners, taking off your shoes, taking off your underwear, whatnot,
it's all the same.
By the way, we have a whole lot more tips
on how people can pass the time during the last hour of the flight.
If you go to funwithtsa.com, I think there's about 10 of them up there now.
And, of course, you can email us at othat2600.com
if you have any suggestions for things that you'd like to add to that particular list.
Now, that's not a requirement, is it?
It's just at the discretion of the airline?
Well, it seems nobody really knows what's going on.
That was a temporary order.
I think it was only for international flight judges.
Okay.
Then there were people that flew into Holland from the United States,
and they were subjected to that as well.
And the TSA obviously doesn't have any jurisdiction in foreign countries,
so nobody knows really what's going on.
It's a whole lot of fun for everybody.
Emmanuel?
Yes, Barney?
Who does the artwork on the funwithtsa.com?
Funwithtsa.com.
There's some really great artwork on that page.
Pictorials are showing all the fun things you can do on an airplane
to sort of avoid the angst that goes along with the regulations that are being pushed down.
Yes, it's good.
I like it too.
I'm glad other people are enjoying it.
That's our own Fred who does the artwork for the HOPE conferences,
and he's been coming up with some real gems.
Great stuff, great stuff.
Yes.
Among the latest tips we have on the site, funwithtsa.com,
in-flight college courses is the latest one.
Basically, we all know something that others don't know,
and that last hour of the flight is the perfect time to share this knowledge with others.
It can be something traditional like a history lesson,
something like how to embezzle funds from a large company if you happen to work for it,
whatever it is you're good at.
You simply sit there in your chair staring straight ahead, obviously,
because you can't get up and you can't stand up,
and you just simply lecture, and the people around you listen.
They can pay attention.
They can fall asleep.
They can be irresponsible, or they can take notes.
Maybe there'll be a test.
We have a manual.
They can't take notes.
Are they not allowed to take notes?
We're not sure about that.
How can you take notes?
You have to have a thing.
You have to have pen and paper and put the tray down to take notes.
That's three things you can't do.
First of all, Mike, you don't have to put the tray down to take notes.
I've taken notes on airplanes many, many times without putting the tray down.
Well, then you put it in your lap.
That's even worse.
All right.
Well, then people have to memorize the material, all right?
And I've had to do that in college courses,
so I don't think that's too much to ask people to do that.
Don't the new regulations prohibit having any personal items on your lap on the last hour of flight?
That would probably include a notepad or anything like that.
Well, you know, they have the things in the pocket in front of you on the seats.
Obviously, that's there.
And if necessary, you can simply scroll something on that without taking it out,
if you're not allowed to take it out of the seat pocket.
I'm not sure.
People have to adapt, obviously.
But the important thing is that in this particular instance,
somebody simply teaches what they know, other people listen,
and you have a wonderful experience of knowledge being shared.
And I think, you know, judging from the size of airplanes,
you can have every six or nine seats a different course,
a variable university in the air, flying over our cities,
teaching people as that last hour goes by.
It's a very educational period.
If you don't like that, fine.
That's not a problem because there are so many other tips on the site.
For instance, the whole Marco Polo thing.
Try this.
Next time you're on an airplane, the last hour of the flight,
simply shout out Marco, and eventually somebody somewhere in the airplane
is going to say Polo just to shut you up or to play a part of the game.
You know, it's wonderful the things you can do in that last hour.
I have an idea.
How about having a love in inside the plane in the last hour?
No, Bernie, you can't have things on your lap.
Yeah, how exactly would that work, Bernie?
Well, you know, if you can't be the one with your love,
what has that song go?
Anyway, if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.
In other words, you just, you just, you know.
It's a love in.
If nobody knows what a love in is, look it up.
We all know what it is, but I don't think it's going to work on the airplane
if you can't get out of your seat.
Turn to the person next to you.
Exactly.
Emmanuel?
Yes, sir.
I'd like to report, though, that I brought homemade electronics on the plane
despite the scare, and I received no trouble at all from the TSA.
Well, that wasn't from the TSA.
That was internationally, but I had a little device that I'd built
that I wanted to bring with me to help celebrate New Year's Eve.
It just blinked and made noise and such,
all the things that probably it shouldn't have,
but I received no hassle for it.
Although, on the way back, they did do the thing where they swabbed my bag.
I don't know why.
Checking his DNA?
Maybe it was for that.
Check for rust to do for, like, explosives or what?
I did also bring liquids on the plane
because I had medicine that I had bought in Las Vegas,
and they used a little thing that sniffed it.
They just held it over the top, and then it said,
Okay, and then I was allowed to take it on the plane.
Well, there you go.
It doesn't seem so bad, but, you know, we're flying back in the next few days,
so we'll get to see firsthand what it's all about and what it's like
and, you know, to fly internationally.
Yeah, I was flying domestically, so I pity you.
Yeah, I pity me as well.
But getting into the U.S. is nothing compared to getting in and around the Czech Republic.
We took a visit down to Prague in the Czech Republic,
and, first of all, we were trying to get a train ticket for the metro, a day pass.
Now, this is crazy because the machines downstairs don't take bills.
They don't take kroner bills.
The Czech Republic is part of the EU, but they don't use the euro, so you have to use kroners.
They only take coins.
We didn't have enough coins.
We needed to get change, so we walked up to the guy in the booth
to see if we could get a pass from him, a ticket from him,
and he was on the phone.
He had to finish his phone conversation first.
Eventually, that came to an end, so he turned on the light inside the booth.
I think it was there in the dark.
I don't know what he was doing.
We asked him.
We tried to communicate in English.
Can you sell us a ticket?
No, you have to buy the ticket in the machine.
Okay, well, the machine only takes coins.
Can you give us change?
No, I can't do that.
I can't give you change.
So he said we have to go upstairs out of the station and go to a restaurant to get change.
I don't know what purpose this person was serving in the booth,
but apparently just to tell us to go and get change was his responsibility.
So we went outside.
Of course, it was as difficult as you might imagine to try to get anybody to give us change.
It was impossible.
We had to actually walk many, many blocks to finally find a place that would do this,
and we could get our ticket.
It's an exercise in frustration,
but it's also something that I think people there are used to in various Eastern European countries
where there's just this level of bureaucracy that exists for no particular reason,
and it can get very frustrating.
So did you finally succeed in getting change?
By the way, the currency there is quite beautiful, isn't it?
It's a beautiful currency.
We were admiring it the whole time as we were walking around,
wondering if we were going to get a train ticket.
It's the honor system there where you basically have to have the ticket with you,
and if somebody checks, well, then you get in trouble,
but you don't have to go through a turnstile or anything like that.
But, yeah, eventually we got the ticket, but that was a prelude.
That was a prelude to leaving the Czech Republic the next day.
Here's what happened.
I thought it would be nice to go to the Club Mate people.
We'll get to that in a second,
the people who make the beverage that hackers all over the world are getting addicted to,
and they're in the middle of a very small town in Germany.
So we needed to buy what turned out to be a bus ticket to Nuremberg.
Apparently the train takes longer than the bus, so we decided to buy a bus ticket.
We bought it on the website because trying to figure out how to buy a train ticket inside the station
that's actually a bus ticket was going to take a very long time,
and it just seemed like a much easier thing to just buy it online.
So we did that, bought the ticket online,
and after you buy the ticket, after you have the nice little PDF with the barcode and all that,
it notifies you that that is not acceptable for the bus.
You need to print it out.
So we figured it would be easy enough to just print out the ticket and bring it to the station.
I'm going to give the phone back to Kyle,
who will tell you what nightmare we went through to try and get that done.
All right, so as quickly as possible,
the first place we checked was the lobby of a place we were staying
to see if they would print it out on their machine.
And we originally sent a link which they couldn't get.
Then we sent an attachment which they said they also couldn't get.
It would take five minutes for whatever reason.
I have no idea why, but they take five minutes to get emails, and the computer says no.
So we just continued and said, you know what, we have no time for this.
We literally had about 40 minutes to catch this bus.
So we exited there, caught a tram, eventually had to connect with the metro in Prague
and got to the Hoppenhof where we had to find this bus stop.
We found where the bus was, but we still didn't have a printed ticket.
And showing the driver our laptops, he was like, yeah, right, we'll let you on.
No, no, no.
So he said, no.
Okay, now we had to find where to print out a ticket.
So we knew where the bus was.
We ran back in.
We went to money changers.
We went to cell phone kiosks trying to convince them,
sticking thumb drives places they don't need to be and all this stuff.
And they were quite mad and ushering us around in all kinds of different places.
Nobody had a printer.
So finally they said, go back to this ticket counter.
And we ended up at the, which seemed logical, the Czech train ticket office.
And they directed us to the travel desk, which then directed us to the comprehensive desk,
which was in all Czech and said domestic travel in English, which was not what we were doing.
So I walk in there, and it's literally like 10 minutes until this bus is going to leave.
And there's a girl about my age, and she's like halfway through a candy bar.
And I hand her this jump drive, and I'm like, we have a bus ticket.
Can you please print it?
And she jumps up and says, I can't print from this computer,
and runs back into the back with my thumb drive.
And it's gone for five minutes.
So Emanuel is out there just kind of like, you know what, we're done.
This is over.
We're not going to make it.
And she comes back and says, my supervisor, she's messing with it.
Something's going to happen.
And all I was able to tell her is that the file's on there, and it says bus ticket.
So I had no idea it was going to happen.
And I thought my thumb drive was gone for good, and we had totally been sunk on this.
We waited a little bit longer, and she comes running back in with the ticket printed
and the thumb drive.
And unbelievably, she says, my supervisor has called the bus.
And so immediately upon hearing that, which was a complete shock,
I had no idea that she was really rooting for us like this.
I said, thank you very quickly, and we made our last sprint, you know,
through doors that didn't seem to open.
And we got all the way up to the back to where we had staked out the bus driver,
and there was a Czech train supervisor calling the bus driver, and we managed to get on.
I've got to say, if Kafka were alive today, he would be there with us,
dealing with that crazy Czech bureaucracy, just trying to get out of the country.
I have to say, this one sounds like your fault.
You could have just bought a ticket in the station, and they would have handed it to you.
Well, Mike, that's true, except, you know, to this day,
I don't know where the bus ticket agent was, and there are no signs in our language.
And the amazing thing is you ask somebody if they can do something,
and they say no, but they don't know why they're saying no.
They're just saying no because that's what they're told they have to say.
And they just point you to somebody else, and you go from one level of bureaucracy
to another to another.
I'm telling you, you know, buying a bus ticket, a train ticket is one thing,
but buying a bus ticket in a train station, I've tried that a few times.
It always takes a long time.
It always winds up maybe on a very long line.
I've tried to buy tickets in places like Poland and Russia,
and basically you say where you want to go, you write it down,
and somebody yells something at you, like you've insulted them in some way.
And I didn't want to go through that.
But, you know, the D.B. Vaughn website is great,
and I would be able to simply buy the ticket there, and I did.
I took that notice at the end that, oh, by the way, you have to print this out somehow.
That was a bit of a surprise, and it was more of a surprise, though,
seeing how hard it was for people to simply print something out.
But we got out.
I've tried wandering around New York City with a thumb drive
and trying to get something printed.
I bet it would take at least as long.
Yeah, but, you know, I know how to buy a train ticket in New York.
Because you're from New York.
I know how to buy a train ticket in New York too.
Yeah, well, congratulations.
We both know how to buy train tickets in New York.
But, you know, in Prague, it's a little bit different.
It's not quite as simple.
And, you know, the signs aren't really labeled all that well.
And plus, this was a German bus we were buying a ticket for.
So, you know, maybe they didn't even sell tickets there.
Maybe they had to buy them in Germany.
I don't know.
The point is, it was an exercise in frustration,
and we're both extremely fit now from having that exercise in frustration.
And, yeah, we got out.
We got out and never did that again.
But, anyway, like I said, we visited the Club Monte people.
We went to a small town in the middle of Bavaria.
And I've got to tell you, it was amazing.
Club Monte is, of course, the drink that somehow we've gotten involved
in distributing to hackers all throughout the –
well, hackers and other people as well throughout the United States.
Hacker Spaces are very happy to have this.
And it's kind of like an energy thing.
It's something that was introduced at the Last Hope.
And we visited the Locher family.
They run the brewery.
Club Monte is just one thing they make.
It's the biggest thing.
It's the most popular thing, thanks to the folks at the Chaos Communication Club,
the Chaos Computer Club.
But they also make beer and iced tea and soda and things like that.
It was just an incredible experience because these guys are just –
the way they run their business, it's fifth generation in the same family.
And I thought it was huge, although I'm told that it's rather small
compared to other places.
But just the mentality, the philosophy of running this business.
For instance, they don't advertise.
They don't advertise at all any place.
They don't even consider doing that.
They simply rely on word of mouth.
There seems to be a brewery in every small village,
and they basically distribute to maybe 50 kilometers around, and that's it.
Club Monte, of course, is a big exception to that.
I think it was kind of inspiring to simply see this kind of business model
being run successfully and for such a long time.
What did you do?
Did they give you the grand tour over there and such?
We got the grand tour, got to taste the Club Monte Winter Edition,
which we couldn't even find in Berlin.
Every winter they make a special blend,
and basically just saw all these rooms with all kinds of different machinery.
I think Kyle can explain a little better than me
because I was just all sort of in shock.
Yes, so it's a small brewery in a very, very small village.
He took us through the entire process,
and Club Monte is made in sort of a really, really small part of the plant.
They're a brewery.
They have large tanks and stuff for all their different kinds of beer,
which take up a lot more room because they have to be stored in large quantities
and then age for however long, whatever that takes.
Their Club Monte process is very quick.
They have a huge washing machine to clean all the bottles that come back in on deposit,
and the actual equipment to make the Club Monte is very,
it takes up about the size of maybe four refrigerators.
It's two column, like pressurized tanks,
and they basically have sugar and water in one, and they add an extract.
This is all sort of in one section,
and the bottling machine takes up the other half of the room
next to this really large bottle washer.
So the liquids are added into this section that's maybe three or four refrigerators,
and that is then piped in over to the bottler machine.
They don't actually have to touch the bottles.
They take the crates and slide them in to the washer.
The washer cleans all of the bottles,
and then the crate moves on one way or another into, I believe, just conveyors or rollers,
and it goes into the bottling machine,
which adds the three ingredients plus whatever other things they do to get it to the right consistency.
And then it finishes it by putting a cap and labeling it,
and it goes right off into another section to be palletized and sent out for shipment.
They said they do about, I believe, 80,000 bottles a day.
And these bottles, I've noticed, you can tell they have a lot of wear and tear on them.
They've been used several times before, the ones I've drank from.
It's kind of refreshing.
I mean, you take their word on it that they clean them well,
but it's just kind of nice to see that the bottles are getting reused over and over again.
Yeah.
The washing machine is a big part of it, and it's huge.
And the guys, they were fixing some parts of the process,
and you get the sense that they keep it running really, really well.
And every other part of the brewery was just completely clean,
lots of tile and, like, very permanently installed.
They are expanding parts of the Club Monte section
because that's such a successful part of their business.
But they really run a tight ship there,
and I think they have 30 guys that work at the entire brewery.
Was there any secret, like Coca-Cola has, like, a secret to their formula.
Was there any secret ingredient thing or room or something you were not privy to?
Well, you get the sense that they had the process sort of shut down,
and they were fixing, you know, pressure gauges, this and that.
And generally with production, I've worked in production a little bit,
generally that's kind of what you do.
You don't want to go on a tour.
You don't want to see people doing, have people, you know,
showing your workers doing the whole thing.
The secret ingredient, Bernie, is love.
Yeah, exactly, exactly, and absolutely love.
And, you know, but we saw it in its, you know, component parts,
and he did mention that, you know, yeah, it's the water, sugar,
and extract that is produced by someone else
and there's a different relationship they have.
And he did mention there's some secret involved, but it was very open.
They were very welcoming, and they were really happy to have us,
and it was a really great experience.
So absolutely, it's no wonder they're the only one where you can find this great beverage.
You know, I also thought it was amazing how they treat their workers
because we were there, and it was, what, January the 6th.
And wait, is it the 6th or is today the 5th?
Do I know?
Today's the 6th.
Today's actually January 5th, and it was a half day.
They had a half day, and that was the first day back since the holidays.
And they wanted their workers to have more time off
because they just simply wanted to treat them right.
That's how it was explained to us.
And the 6th was another holiday, some kind of Bavarian holiday.
So basically people just slowly get back into the work routine
after a big holiday like New Year's.
So it was just kind of unusual.
I'm used to it in the States where people just are working all the time,
full days, not such things as half days.
So they were just slowly getting back into it and no real urgency.
I've seen that in other breweries and distilleries.
A part of it, too, is you have to have some downtime, like Kyle said,
for maintenance and repair and stuff like that.
And they go on production cycles and stuff like that.
I'm wondering, while you guys were there,
did you get any feedback from these people about the effect
the hacker community has had on what they do?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, they love the popularity, obviously, of Club Mate,
and it surprises everybody that it's such a hit in the United States.
But they talk about people from the CCC,
the hacker organization in Germany,
and how they like to make these pilgrimages to the Club Mate plant
and just sort of come and hang out,
where there are massive crates of Club Mate going up to the ceiling
surrounding them.
And they can't really understand why they want to do that so much
when they can simply buy it themselves
and have it in the comfort of their own homes.
They just want to be close to the source, I guess.
It's really hilarious.
So the conclusion is that even other Germans
think that German hackers are slightly strange.
Yeah, I'd say so.
I think that's fine.
Now, do you have any idea on what the history is
in terms of how that relationship started?
Did they have any idea, or was it just a beverage
that one day some members of the CCC picked up in a store and said,
hey, this is great?
It just slowly started.
It started in various parts of Germany,
and I think the CCC took an interest at some point,
maybe about nine years ago or so,
and it simply grew from there, going from city to city.
Now it's in places like Austria and Poland as well.
There's a special bottle of Polish Club Mate,
which I thought was pretty interesting.
And it's slowly expanding to different places.
Of course, the United States is really the furthest they've ever shipped anything,
so that's the history right there.
But yeah, the hacker community has definitely had a big part
in the whole Welsher scene.
They're pretty surprised by that as well, I think.
It amazes me how you say they do this all without advertising.
That was the thing.
We asked them that.
How do you get the word out?
Do you advertise?
And right away, Mr. Welsher said, no, we don't advertise at all.
And I think that's something that the small breweries just don't do.
They rely on loyalty of their customers, the people who know them, family.
Family is very important.
Everybody who is a part of the family lives within a few feet of the plant.
We came into this small town.
It's one of these small towns.
If you've ever been to the middle of the country in a European country,
basically it seems like there's nothing going on.
There are no real stores open.
There aren't people walking around.
It's quiet.
There's solitude.
People walking their dogs perhaps.
Just a lot of cluster housing, houses very close together,
and then very wide open spaces of fields and forest.
And every single one of these towns simply has something like this,
like a brewery or some kind of a business.
And that's what the town is known for.
And this has existed for decades, I believe since the 1800s?
1881.
1881.
They have a brochure beer.
They give us T-shirts.
1881 is the name of it.
And that's the year that their company started.
And it's just been passed down generation to generation.
So the people who are part of the family,
they either live on site or across the street,
and it has just been going on for such a long time.
So it's very inspirational to see just how it works.
Did you record any part of this interview?
I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
Was any part of this interview recorded?
No.
We took a lot of pictures,
but we didn't actually interview him,
interview Mr. Loescher for the radio or anything like that.
It was just sort of a stunning thing just to be there.
We just wanted to take it all in.
It's truly amazing.
Anyone who has grown up in the United States surrounded by ads for cola
and ads for beer and TV ads and billboards and things of that sort,
I think it was one of you guys who mentioned a while back,
what would it be like if Pepsi or Coca-Cola
suddenly stopped spending any money on advertising?
Would people forget they existed?
Would the company survive somehow?
It would depend on the quality of the product.
You have all kinds of microbreweries popping up in the U.S.
that people are discovering through word of mouth and just in stores,
and they don't advertise heavily either.
That's an amazing point.
It does depend on the quality of the product,
and that's really just so strange
compared to how things are normally done here.
You drink Coca-Cola or you drink Pepsi or something,
and I don't think anyone drinks that stuff and thinks,
wow, this is great.
I've got to get more of this.
It's just something that's there.
It has a lot to do with loyalty too, the customer loyalty.
People just keep coming back year after year,
and you get a sense of that.
You get a sense these people know each other,
and they're there to support each other.
They're there all the time just to talk and to hang out.
You also have with some of these major corporations in the U.S.
the cheapness of it.
They've gotten themselves into the supply chains and all that
at such cut-rate prices that they beat out things
that really are much better for you in general,
but people just see dollar amounts,
and they don't go for the good stuff.
It's unfortunate.
Yes, very true.
Moving on though to other things that have been going on,
I understand.
I've heard rumors of this,
that there is some kind of a software bug,
a 2010 software bug that left millions of German debit
and credit card holders unable to withdraw money
or make payments in shops.
I haven't seen any indication of that around here.
I haven't seen any panic in the streets or anything like that,
but I have heard this story from a number of sources,
and also there are a couple other bugs involving 2010.
I don't understand.
Maybe you do a lot of programming.
How in the world does 2010 cause programming problems?
Bad programmers.
Yes, it seems almost like malicious programmers.
Seriously, we had the big scare coming up to 2001,
so if you couldn't figure that your code needs to also work
ten years after that,
then you have no one to blame but yourself.
I don't know what the specifics of that issue are,
but if there is an issue,
then you can only blame whoever wrote the code.
Well, it says here in the story that I'm reading from The Guardian,
many Germans were stranded at ski resorts
with no way of paying hotel and restaurant bills.
Holidaymakers are being urged to take traveler's checks,
and experts said it might take weeks
to reconfigure foreign bank machines.
It's really pretty silly, some of the things I'm hearing,
that go wrong sometimes.
Now, when they say many Germans,
do they say if it's Germans that are customers
of one particular bank or several banks?
It's about 30 million people.
Yeah, I think it's a number of banks.
I don't think it's just one.
The card manufacturer is apparently to blame.
They're called Gemalto.
Gemalto, yeah, and they're French.
And believe me, the Germans, I'm sure,
are quite happy about that,
that they can blame them.
But I never saw this one coming.
It's the issue with the cards?
It's not really clear, at least from this article,
what the problem is.
It's the chip and pin cards,
where the card itself has a little bit of programming on it,
and somehow they stopped working with the new year.
Oops.
I'd love to hear more details on this when we find out.
Now, Mike, I understand something is going on
with election machines in New York City?
Yeah, the city has selected a vendor
for its new voting machines,
which I guess we'll be using in September,
and in November when we have elections.
And it's ES&S, which is...
You're happy about this?
No.
Oh.
Well, what choice do we have?
Well, apparently they were choosing between ES&S,
which stands for Election Systems and Software.
They're, I think, the biggest,
if not the only remaining voting machine company.
And there's some Canadian company that lost.
The one thing I'm happy about is that they're going to use...
They're called optical scan systems,
so you fill out a piece of paper,
like a Scantron test,
or like the current...
They're called emergency ballots
if the mechanical machines break down.
So you fill it out.
You fill in the oval with a pen,
and then they have a scanner at the poll site
that counts the votes.
So at least if there's any question,
they can then go in and count these ballots
because they're marked with a pen.
But I still don't understand why...
The contract is for something like $37 million.
I don't really understand why that's any better than just...
You know, you can hire people to count ballots
for the next, like, 100 years for $37 million.
Well, because there's all kinds of corruption
that needs to be factored into the equation.
But first of all, ES&S, right?
That's the name of the company?
Yeah.
They bought out Diebold.
They bought Diebold, the really evil people.
Well, they didn't buy all of Diebold.
They bought Diebold's voting machine division,
which had just so much bad press
that I guess they couldn't do business anymore.
Okay, well, so those are the people now
running the election machines in New York City.
But why do we need this?
Didn't we...
Wasn't this, like, a whole public image issue back in 2006?
I thought we solved this with documentaries
like Hacking Democracy and realizing that
even that the mechanical systems were just as...
were much better than even the optical scans, which are...
No, well, we shouldn't praise the mechanical systems.
They break. They're awful.
No one knows how they work.
I don't trust them either.
They don't have paper trails at all,
so sometimes they break and you just lose the votes,
and there's no way to actually even recount.
Sometimes election officials...
But also, in all fairness,
there's no way to really sway an election one way or another
because of that same obscurity.
Right.
I think that's a good thing.
You can't rig it.
It's not what I know of someone rigging.
Yeah, it's true.
Because there's no centralized...
You can't rig an electronic system.
You could break the machine and then have, you know...
Break every machine.
...in a district that you don't want to have their votes counted.
Right, but then nobody's votes count.
Yes.
Not just the people for the candidate you don't like.
The problem with the optical scans
and the regular computer machines, the touchscreens,
both of them have a single point of failure,
the place that counts the votes.
With mechanical machines and the paper ballots,
you don't have that issue.
You'd have to hack every single paper ballot
or you'd have to hack every single mechanical machine.
But they're not perfect either.
Yeah.
Nothing is perfect.
It's better.
But, you know, I like to see these new machines.
I like to have a chance to play with them
and find out where the weak points are
because I'm sure they exist as well.
I think we should just have voice votes.
We should have everyone gather in one place
and then just say yay or nay and whichever is louder.
Yeah, that's how we got the DMCA.
I don't know if that's the answer.
I think the way they do it in Canada, you know,
where they actually simply check off yes or no, whatever,
nice simple elections, and they count them
and they do it somehow in a couple of hours.
That's the way to go.
Wasn't there some question about the cost of this system
and the cost effectiveness?
Mike, didn't you find that part of the contract
involved using flash drives that were overpriced?
Yeah, if you look at ES&S's proposal,
which is their best and final offer,
so I guess they'll go no lower than this,
they charge about $250 for a thumb drive,
which you can buy the same brand online for about $28.
But, you know, whatever, $28 even times $1,000
is just peanuts compared to the rest of this contract,
but I'm sure that they're making plenty of money from this.
Ostensibly, the rest of the system is equally overpriced.
I'm sure. What does it do?
$37 million, it better do something.
IT contracting with the public feels like
the most disgusting situation we have in our government
because nobody really understands it.
And when it breaks, which will, I mean,
it's a huge complex system, of course it's going to break,
but it will be ES&S's fault.
They charge $250 an hour for tech support.
Ouch.
Can I be the tech support guy?
They're probably hiring. They've got this big contract now.
I should move to India.
Awesome.
All right.
I think we're about out of time.
I think we're about out of time.
Were there any closing thoughts you had, Emmanuel?
Not really, I'm sorry.
I was a little distracted because I'm still watching Al Jazeera.
They're doing the weather report right now.
Yeah, I'm watching.
Well, how's the weather?
Well, I can't make out anything.
I can see the numbers, but the letters I can't understand,
and it's all going in the wrong direction.
But yeah, you know, this is something that's, you know,
one of my pet peeves.
I like to get media from all different parts of the world,
and I think it's unfair that we're not able to see that in New York.
And Voltaire, you went to Utah.
I don't know why in God's name you were able to get Al Jazeera
in Utah on Time Warner Cable, and we can't get it in New York City.
So we need to get our listeners involved in this.
Somebody can find out what the channel number is in Utah.
Usually they use the same channel schemes.
We can call up Time Warner Cable in New York City and say,
can you please add Al Jazeera English so that we can get a different perspective of news.
And it's weird because, you know, people are so suspicious of this,
but here I see some woman in a turban giving the weather report
before I saw a stock market report.
You know, it's different cultures, different people.
You know, we just have to get over that and embrace this
and realize that there's all kinds of alternative views
and just ways of presenting things out there, and that's how we learn.
All right. Speaking of alternative views and presenting things,
I just should mention that a lot of places have their 2600 meetings this Friday.
So check your local sites. If you didn't have it last week, it might be this week.
New York included. New York included.
All right. And that'll be the final word. Good night, everyone.
Good night. Happy New Year.
You.
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You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
You.
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You.
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yeah wow that's great stuff yeah that's that's really good
all right yeah you're listening to WBAI New York 99.5 FM