Time for Finals

Real updates coming soon!

For now, I am in the middle of that beloved period called "Final Exams". I shouldn't complain; after all, I only have one final ... as opposed to the five or six I usually had for undergrad engineering. The class is on sustainability measures in engineering. The concepts are fairly rudimentary, but we have so much material to learn: at least 500 pages of PowerPoint slides, one 230-page book, and four scientific articles -- and all of that in German. The exam is also in German and it is a written exam. I'm not so much worried about the vocabulary as I am about the "scientific" grammar and the time limit. I write slowly in English, and even more slowly in German!

We'll see how this goes. Watch out for new blog entries next week, after the ball and leading up to Fasching (Karneval, Mardi Gras, whatever you want to call it).

Back to studying ...

Thoughts on Race and Nationality on the Eve of MLK

I was sitting in a cafe yesterday afternoon, enjoying a cup of tea and working on some schoolwork. More precisely, I was correcting the English grammar of an engineering student's Masters thesis. Why Austrian engineering students insist on writing their theses in English is beyond my comprehension. This one looks like someone used Babelfish to translate directly from German to English without bothering to proofread the result. It's a grammatical disaster. But I digress.

In the cafe, I was sitting at a long table across from a Pakistani student who spoke perfect Austrian German, as I found out when he answered his cell phone.

We were both working intensively as a woman approached the table to borrow a chair. "Ist der Sessel frei?" she asked the guy. He looked up and without even waiting for him to respond, she repeated in English, "Is this chair free?" He nodded his head: "Ja, yes" and she took the chair.

The guy and I glanced at each other and laughed at what had just happened. Even though he spoke perfect German, the woman addressed him in English because he looked foreign. "It happens to me all the time," he said. "Better get used to it." I shook my head in disbelief. I've witnessed similar situations more times than I care to count. People address me in German because I am white and don't always stick out as a "typical American", while others who speak better German than I do are addressed in English because they have darker skin or look otherwise foreign. Granted, we all know that there are worse things that could happen based on one's skin color, but that doesn't make this particular situation any less annoying.

I wonder when will certain Austrians ever understand that the people of their country are not all blond-haired and blue-eyed and that not all German-speakers are fourth-generation Viennese?!

Ecological Sanitation 101: Ecosan

My research for the year (or rather, for the remaining five months!) deals with ecologically sustainable sanitation, or “ecosan” for short. This is a technical term for basic waterless toilets—usually built in Africa and Asia—that offer economically, environmentally, and culturally favorable alternatives to expensive conventional toilets (the flush kind). Ecosan attempts to close the loop of water-food-sanitation-waste and therefore recycles waste from the toilets to be composted into agricultural fertilizer and used for other nutrient-rich applications. (More about this below.)

From an aesthetic standpoint, there are a million “cleaner” research topics than sanitation for environmental engineers, but from a theory and design standpoint, the topic of sustainable sanitation is actually quite fascinating. After all, environmental engineering was originally called “sanitary engineering”. One of my former engineering professors was fond of saying that every environmental engineer will at one point work for, or in conjunction with, a wastewater treatment plant due to the importance of waste management in industrialized society. Well, I haven’t exactly been dealing with wastewater treatment plants—mainly because there aren’t any such plants in the developing countries where I have been working (Uganda, Honduras, etc.)—but I think I’ve gotten as close as I could possibly get without actually working in a treatment plant!

Below I’ve written a quick guide to ecological sanitation, based loosely on the guide from Austria’s “EcoSan Club”. Hopefully, it answers a few questions people have about the topic. Feel free to ask me more questions. I’ll respond to them all as best I can.

EcoSan 101

Human excreta (urine and feces) and wastewater (dirty water from baths, showers, and sinks) collectively form one of the primary sources of household sewage. Ecosan, as described here, focuses on issues pertaining to human excreta and waste, especially the mixture of urine and feces. This mixture is a dangerous one, and therefore deserves attention, because it contains pathogens that can contaminate sources of drinking water and cause disease.

Ironically, the same mixture that causes disease also contains valuable nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, which can be used in agricultural manure for fertilizer. In many of the countries where contaminated drinking water is a problem, lack of sanitation and food scarcity are also problems. Ecosan combines these to create an innovative solution.

The main feature of ecosan is the dry toilet. Dry toilets use simple technology to separate urine and feces. The most important rule for the dry toilet is to never mix the urine and feces. The toilet is designed with one section for liquid waste (urine), one section for solid waste (feces), and a small wall dividing the two. The urine flows through a short pipe and infiltrates the ground. The feces pass through a larger hole in the toilet and are collected in a chamber or basket underneath the toilet for storage and drying.



The person using the toilet needs to cover the feces each time with some sort of drying agent, usually ash or sawdust. The drying agent absorbs the excess liquid and prevents the formation of maggots and foul odors. When one of the collection chambers or baskets gets full, it is transported to a storage site, where it stays to dry for six to eight months. After this point, the waste from the storage site is composted with other organic waste (food scraps, grass and leaves, etc.). The composted product is manure that is dry, soil-free, odor-free, and safe to use on agriculture.

Many different versions of dry toilets can be found around the world, but they all provide several common advantages:

* They use no water, which is critical for regions where water is scarce.
* They protect the environment and even provide nutrients for fertilizer.
* They prevent disease and reduce health risks.
* They are built as permanent structures, near or inside homes (as opposed to traditional pit latrines, which need to be rebuilt on new sites every couple years)
* They are adaptable to local resources, climates, and customs.

So why would we want to promote the use of ecosan toilets when we already have the technology for regular flush toilets? First and foremost, flush toilets are too expensive for communities that don’t even have access to clean water. In addition, consider the fact that, according to the UN, half of the world’s population lacks access to basic sanitation facilities. Consider the fact that 80% of all diseases and 25% of all deaths in developing countries are caused by polluted water. Consider the fact that in Africa, 85% of all arable land is losing an average of 30 kg of nutrients per hectare per year. We clearly have a need for clean water, proper sanitation, and suitable land for agriculture. Ecosan addresses all of these needs in one solution. It converts “waste” into a resource and ultimately helps to provide food for the community. I have yet to hear of a better idea.

100 Ugandans arrested for not having toilets.

KAMPALA (Reuters) Dec.19, 2007 - Local authorities have arrested at least 100 Ugandans for failing to build toilets in their homes in the midst of a cholera epidemic that has killed 8 people and infected 164, state media reported Wednesday.

"We cannot watch as people die (of cholera)," northwestern Bulisa district administrator Norbert Turyahikayo told the New Vision daily, justifying the arrest of Ugandans found to have huts with no pit latrines Tuesday.

Police spokesman Hassan Kasinje told Reuters the building of homes without proper toilets was forbidden in Uganda, though he did not know of the arrests.

"It is illegal ... but it is not an arrestable offence. Whoever arrested them is wrong," he said. "A health officer is supposed to instruct them to build or they can be cautioned."

In September, 70 Ugandans in the east were seized for the same offence. Many in remote villages lack latrines.

Cholera epidemics spread by poor sanitation are common.

The lack of logic here baffles me. Yeah, let’s arrest the people who lack “proper” toilets (i.e. pit latrines) in the middle of a cholera epidemic. Could the law enforcement officials not use their time and power a little more efficiently? Arresting people without pit latrines does not alleviate the epidemic.

These people do not have toilets most likely because they do not have the money to build toilets. Even families that do have enough money tend to share pit latrines with other families when their own latrines become full. And pit latrines aren’t even sanitary toilets! If officials truly want to alleviate and eliminate the cholera epidemic, they need to fund more ecologically sustainable toilets and educate the people about proper hygiene. Arresting, or even fining, “perpetrators” is not the answer.

Zurich and Paris: Part V

Read Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, and Part IV here.

Our last day in Paris was nice, but it couldn’t compare to New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. We finished seeing the sights that we had missed on our first day, including the Tuileries Gardens and the outside of The Louvre art museum. (The inside is so massive, it would take at least a week to see all of the exhibits.)

In the afternoon, I began my journey back to Vienna. After picking up my luggage from our hotel, I took the subway to catch the bus to the airport. That journey alone took about two hours – the same length of the flight itself. When I arrived at the airport, I saw on the “Departures” screen that the plane was delayed for 20 minutes. Not bad. Later, the flight officials announced the plane was delayed for an hour, and then another hour. By the time I left Paris, it was 10:30 pm and by the time I arrived in Vienna, it was 1:00 am. At this point, all of the public transportation had stopped running for the night, so I had to take a taxi back to my apartment. However, there were also four other delayed flights arriving at Vienna’s airport at the same time, so I had to wait another 30 minutes for a taxi. By the time I got back to my apartment, it was 2:00 am. I was so glad to see my bed again, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

All in all, it was a great trip and a great New Year’s celebration. I wonder where my next destination should be – perhaps Budapest or Bratislava … we’ll see.

Zurich and Paris: Part IV

Read Part I here, Part II here, and Part III here.


Supposedly, whatever you do on New Year’s Day, you will do for the rest of the year. If so, I will have quite a happy 2008. We started the day with brunch at a quintessential Parisian boulangerie, or bakery-café. I ordered a croissant and a cappuccino. I rarely drink any kind of coffee, but this cappuccino was by far the best I’ve ever had. It had just a tiny bit of espresso, lots of milk and froth, and dark cocoa sprinkled on the top. I could watch the man making the cappuccino and watched his little daughter watching him. Everyone involved was enjoying this drink!

After brunch, we went to the Eiffel Tower. We waited about an hour in line before we could start climbing. Once we started climbing the 1665 steps, we probably could have gone straight to the top, but instead, we stopped at every landing to take pictures. Between the three of us, we have close to 300 pictures! The design of the tower is breathtaking and gave me a little more appreciation for the tedious statics and structures classes I took as a civil engineer in college. It’s amazing to think that people actually had to put all of those iron bars in place, bolt and weld them together, and paint them, too! I certainly wouldn’t be volunteering for that job!

Zurich and Paris: Part III

Read Part I here and Part II here.

We arrived at the subway station to find absolute chaos. So many people wanted to spend New Year’s Eve at the Eiffel Tower that the subway trains were completely full at every stop along the way. Against all logic, people tried to force their way into the overcrowded trains. At our station, the train remained motionless for at least 40 minutes. At this point, we decided it would be smarter to walk a few stations instead of waiting for the train. So we walked to the next logical station so we could get, not to the Eiffel Tower since it looked so chaotic, but rather to Montmatre, an artsy neighborhood on a hill overlooking the city, where we could still watch the fireworks in peace.

Our plan worked. We arrived at our destination 20 minutes before midnight. As we ran up the hill, however, we began to feel drops of rain. I refused to believe that it was going to rain on New Year’s Eve in Paris. I could not fathom that we had come all this way, had pushed our ways through the subway crowds, to have the fireworks and our ideas of a perfect evening washed away by droplets of water falling from the sky. I was not disappointed. The rain stopped five minutes before the New Year, just in time to see the fireworks. Although I’ve honestly seen better fireworks displays in the US, the atmosphere itself was still incredible. Flame throwers, street performers, and a drum circle played for the crowd. People were holding banners with all sorts of wishes for 2008 painted in bold lettering. Everyone was happy.

After the excitement died down on the hill, we walked to the area around the Eiffel Tower. It was clear that that’s where all of the excitement had been. Police brigades lined the streets with officers dressed in full body armor, holding shields and automatic weapons. I saw a line of police charge at one stumbling drunk person and at that moment, I was quite content with our smaller New Year’s celebration on the hill. Paris police do not play around, and this is quite understandable considering the recent youth riots they have had to deal with in the neighboring suburbs.

We spent the rest of the night strolling down the famous avenue of Champs-Élysées toward the Eiffel Tower. People everywhere were shouting “Bonne Année!” or “Happy New Year!” and generally having a good time. When we finally returned to our hotel, we fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows and slept soundly through what remained of the night and early morning.

Zurich and Paris: Part II

Read Part I here.

We thought we might have to walk around the city a bit to find someplace available and affordable, but we were lucky once again. We asked the woman at the information desk in the train station for recommendations for hostels. She not only recommended one to us, but even called ahead to reserve a room! The hostel was centrally located in the city and fairly clean. However, it only had a room available for the 30th, so we still needed to find somewhere to stay for the nights of the 31st and 1st. We were lucky once again and found a second hotel for the final two nights fairly quickly. This hotel was tucked away in one of the side streets and looked perfectly fine, so we booked it right away for two nights.

Back in the original hostel, we met one girl from Thailand and two girls from Greece. The girl from Thailand was extremely friendly, but unfortunately she was leaving on the same day that we arrived, so we didn’t get to spend much time with her. We also talked for a while with the two girls from Greece. They were studying architecture at a French university. They had traveled to Paris together and when it was time for them to return, only one of them wanted to go back and the other wanted to stay a few more days in the city. So, after the first Greek girl left for home, the three of us remaining—a Greek, a German, and an American--ended up spending the next two days in Paris together.

Conversation between the three of us was hilarious at times. We all spoke English, so that was our main language of communication, but Lilli and Catherine (the girl from Greece) both spoke French and Lilli and I both spoke German. In addition, Catherine obviously speaks Greek and Lilli speaks Spanish, so between the three of us we covered five languages. Most of the tourists in Paris spoke one of these five languages, so it was fun to guess exactly where each person was from. Interestingly, the largest percentage of tourists aside from Americans, seem to come from South America, Mexico, or Germany. I had expected to hear a lot of German, since France borders Germany and many Germans speak French, making France a logical tourist destination, but I did not expect to see so many people from Mexico and South America, and particularly from Colombia and Venezuela.

In Paris, we saw all of the sights--and with the exception of the massive Louvre art museum--I do mean all of the sights. On our first full day, December 31st, Lilli and I walked for 10-12 hours all over the city. Some of the areas we visited include: Place de la Bastille (site of the famous French prison and the beginning of the French Revolution), the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Concorde (site of the Egyptian obelisk monument, marking the former site of the guillotine), the Arc de Triomphe (an arch in honor of French soldiers killed in the Napoleonic Wars), and the Champs-Élysées (today a major shopping avenue that connects the Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe). My favorite landmark by far was the Eiffel Tower, but more about that later.

After Lilli and I went sightseeing together during the day and Catherine took her friend to the train station, the three of us met up for the evening—actually New Year’s Eve. We knew we wanted to watch the fireworks at midnight, but we had a few hours to spare before then. Catherine wanted to see a play, so we decided to see Woody Allen’s “Puzzle”, a story about complicated family secrets, at the Theatre du Palais-Royal. By sheer coincidence, I vaguely remembered hearing about this play, which is titled “A Second Hand Memory” in English, when it debuted in New York in 2004. I was lucky in this regard because the entire play was in French and required some serious filling-in-the-gap storytelling on my part. Still, it was interesting to watch a play in another language and I found out later that even Catherine and Lilli, both of whom speak French fairly fluently, only understood about 80 percent of the story.

We left the theater around 10:00 pm and headed to the subway to go see the midnight fireworks. Of course, on New Year’s Eve, everything takes longer than planned …

Zurich and Paris: Part I

Zürich is called the “little big city” and it really is. It has the flair of a major international city, but is actually quite small and walkable. At one end of the street is the train station and at the other end is the Lake Zürich. All along the “Bahnhofstrasse” (Train Station Street) are upscale clothing and jewelry stores and, of course, one bank after another after another. Every so often, you come across cobblestone side streets complete with houses that look like they were built in the 18th and 19th centuries.

While in Zürich, I stayed in one of the best hostels I’ve ever stayed in, and later learned that Zürich is known for their hostels. This hostel was very clean, had hot showers and even internet access, and included a buffet breakfast in the price. I shared a four-bed room with a girl from Brazil who was traveling through Europe for a month after finishing her degree in journalism.

After a day of exploring the city and a night in the hostel, I met up with my friend Lilli for her cycling race. This was the Zürcher Six-Day Race, which is known to be both more show than competition and also more dominated by men’s teams than women’s teams. Lilli’s team (the only female cyclist team competing in Zürich) raced on Saturday night and because they did so well, they are allowed to come back for not one, but two, days next year. Unfortunately, the representation (and compensation!) of women's teams in cycling leaves much to be desired. Men's teams still get more money, more equipment, and more attention. This holds true not only for cycling, but for so many other sports, too.

I had never seen indoor track cycling before. The sides of the track, or “velodrome”, are beveled upward like a racecar track would be. The track is actually made of four pieces: two relatively straight segments and two 180-degree curves. The cyclists ride typically around 35 mph, though I saw one cyclist in a short time trial bike at a rate of nearly 50 mph!

After the race, we went back to the hotel and rested as much as we could for the next day. (Since the races are held all during the night, by the time we got to bed, it was nearly 3am!) After breakfast and checking out in the morning, Lilli and I went to the Zürich train station to buy our tickets for Paris. What an ordeal that was! I would have preferred to buy our tickets online before leaving for Zürich as I did for the train ride from Vienna to Zürich and the flight from Paris to Vienna. However, the website for Zürich trains lists neither seat availability nor price. After registering online with a username and password, I could book a train, pay with a credit card, and still not see the price of the ticket! There was no way that was going to write a blank check, so I was left with no other alternative than to buy the ticket to Paris in Zürich. When we spoke with the ticket salesperson, we learned that all the direct routes were already booked for the day, so we ended up transferring twice before Paris, but we were able to sleep for about four hours during the final stretch to Paris.

Sleep was crucial because we also hadn't been able to pre-book a hostel in Paris ...