After a long time, the last December I managed to organise a real down-on-the-road trip (by train) getting to the Netherlands and northern Germany, in places I have never visited before, except one: Berlin, where I've been once 15 years ago.

It was that kind of journey I always long for, just travelling on local trains, watching people and places. And what a nice feeling to meet also people I know living in many different places. That was what gave me the most of the whole trip, that was a real fun everyday everywhere I have been!

I got to Amsterdam by plane and then started to travel by train making my way through most of the main towns in Holland, and then I shifted to to visit the winter markets (and not only) of many German towns. All the way to Berlin, which I have to mention separately.

I've been just once in Berlin before, in the summer of 1995, and I really have to say i couldn't recognise it, so much it has changed after all these years. Still, the atmosphere is so particular, I couldn't avoid to get involved in the night life, full of people at any time. Without much chaos, it looked also quite safe, a big town where maybe life is not that bad, after all.

Here below the full route of my Dutch-German trip, and I've also taken some pictures.

The Dutch-German trip 2009

27.11 – Oulu-Turku-Riga-Amsterdam-Leiden
28.11 – Leiden
29.11 – Amsterdam
30.11 – Amsterdam
1.12 – Den Haag + Delft
2.12 – Rotterdam
3.12 – Utrecht
4.12 – Leiden
5.12 – Leiden
6.12 – Amsterdam
7.12 – Leiden-Schipol-Osnabrück-Hamburg
8.12 – Hamburg-Lübeck
9.12 – Lübeck-Kiel
10.12 – Kiel-Bad Kleinen-Berlin
11-13.12 – Berlin
14.12 – Berlin-Riga-Turku-Oulu

View Holland-Germany 2009 in a larger map

There has been a lot of moaning about the bill on publications announced by the Italian Government (no English there, sorry) on requiring any blog and Internet journal (in law language, “any website with a purpose of information, education, dissemination or entertainment“, Art. 2, Par. 1 of the above mentioned law) to subscribe to a national register (Art. 6 and 7 of the same law), as well as to name an editor in chief responsible for the information published.

Many complaints came immediately from almost everywhere, and all the media talked about that, warning about the freedom of speech.

Then, after some excuses by the responsibles of bill, and the Government itself, the author of the draft has stated a paragraph will be added to Art. 7 stating ”Excluded from the obligation to register with ROC are those who use the Internet or who operate on the Internet in forms and with products, like personal websites or websites for collective use that are not for an entrepreneurial work organisation.” (I found this source, but nothing from the web site of the Italian Government).

Now, I do not really understand what “entrepreneurial work organisation” literally means, nor in English, neither in Italian, but I guess the point is that this kind of registration would be required just for big newspapers and stuff like that. However, yet people complain.

Then I ended up to freedomhouse.org, a non-profit organisation that shows a map of press freedom classified per year. There I read some information regarding the freedom of the press in Finland in 2005 where it’s stated:

A new Law on Freedom of the Press, prepared with input from media organizations, went into effect in January. It requires that all publications, including Web-based outlets such as blogs and listserves, name a responsible editor in chief and archive published materials for at least 21 days.

Häh? But that’s almost the same proposal made by the Italian government! And it’s already in force in Finland! And actually I had to get more information about that, since the server of my blog is in Finland. In the page related to the freedom of the press in Finland in 2006 then I read something different:

Since 2004, internet traffic logging is no longer required, and online discussion groups are beyond the scope of the law. However, web publications must name a responsible editor in chief and archive published materials for at least 21 days.

Mmm, still confused. Now we are talking about “web publications” and the previous year about “all publications, including Web-based outlets such as blogs and listserves”.

I had to go and have a look at the law, that’s the best solution, and I found that the former statement above is wrong and the latter is misleading.

The Finnish law they are referring to is “Laki sananvapauden käyttämisestä joukkoviestinnässä 13.6.2003/460“, that is “Law concerning the Use of the Freedom of Speech in Mass Communication 13.6.2003/460″, where it’s really stated so:

4 § Vastaava toimittaja

Julkaisijan tulee määrätä aikakautiselle julkaisulle ja verkkojulkaisulle vastaava toimittaja.[...]

which in English means

4 § Responsible journalist

The publisher has to define a responsible journalist for a publication or an Internet publication.[...]

So, what’s the point? Well, the point is just in the previous article, where you read

3 § Soveltamisala

Tätä lakia sovelletaan Suomessa harjoitettavaan julkaisu- ja ohjelmatoimintaan. Yksityisen henkilön pitäessä yllä sähköisen viestintäverkon kotisivua häneen sovelletaan vain 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 22 ja 24 §:ää.[...]

that is

3 § Scope of application

This law is applied to publications and show activities practised in Finland. To a private person maintaining pages on an electronic communication network, only Art. 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 22 and 24 can be applied.[...]

That is, Article 4 applies only to enterprises which have internet journals (like electronic newspapers), not to private people having a blog or maintaining a forum. Two lessons learned, then:

• freedomhouse.org should specify that a responsible editor in chief is not required in Finland for private persons keeping a web site
• The Italian Government can just copy the Finnish law. They will most probably write the same thing, in a more tangled way, spending a lot of resources, and putting under stress a lot of common people, who think that they just want to put under control of the State anything that is published on the net.

I personally don’t believe that. Or maybe I just want to assume good faith. However, I agree on the main point of a provocative article published on Times Online, namely “A geriatric assault on Italy’s bloggers“, where the term geriatric says it all.

If the Italian Government is interested in my suggestion, I can help them with the translation of the Finnish law: just contact me, I’m much cheaper than any other Italian consultant, I promise!

Alcohol consumption per capita
Units: Liters of pure alcohol per adult (15 years and older)

Source: Global Alcohol Database, World Health Organization (WHO).
Rationale for the statistics

Interesting results, that is, no way of getting a particular trend, each country seems to behave differently.

• Contries below the European average (year 2003):
  Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden
• Contries below the European average (year 1963):
  Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, UK
• Contries above the European average (year 2003):
  France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Spain, UK
• Contries above the European average (year 1963):
  France, Germany, Italy, Spain
• The strongest drinkers in 2003 were the Irish (13.7), while in 1963 the French really beat everybody (24.3).
• The weakest one in 2003 were the Swedes (6.0), while in 1963 the Finnish had almost nothing to drink (3.1).

More resources:

• WHO Global Status Report on Alcohol: European region
• The Global Alcohol Database

I’ll leave this as an open question, since I’m not expert in economy. But I’m a good nerd: so I got the currency exchange rates from 1.1.2002 to 18.5.2007 and plotted the values in euro of 1 British pound during this period:

Source: http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory

Update 10.7.2007: The European Central Bank has a wonderful page to plot the historical exchange rates.

This time I’ll talk about unemployment. Here are the figures at March 2007 (if not otherwise stated), from the lower to the higher (Denmark and Holland rule, nothing to say).

Source: Eurostat

And here is the behaviour in the last six years of the average unemployment rate in the EU:

Source: Eurostat