Int'l Travel Update: Central Europe in March 2024

Reminiscences of a weird trip, via Germany, to Austria and Czechia, with plenty of anecdotes about contemporary weirdness in Central Europe

Long-time readers know that every time I’m travelling internationally, I’m also penning a few lines about my experiences. This is another posting in this kind of category that was gloriously kicked off in spring 2022:

Today, I’ve got a few lines of my sojourn to Austria and Czechia last week, replete with commentary about a connecting flight in Frankfurt am Main.

My Itinerary

I left Norway on Monday last week, aboard an outbound flight that took me to Vienna, Austria, via Germany. As a seasoned traveller of the Covid era, I had avoided any German airport for more than five years now, mostly out of consideration of Berlin’s insane Covid policies (sic). This time, I made the ‘mistake’ of relying on the travel agency my university partners with (with minimal instructions, i.e., ‘I need to go to Vienna’), and so I ended up with a layover in Frankfurt am Main.

There’s another reason why I’m avoiding any German airport, and that has to do with the fact that unions representing (sic) employees in Germany’s service sector are very much prone to strike, which compounds the decrepit state of affairs further: the delays, problems, and clusterf*** known as Deutsche Bahn (Germany’s federal railways) are legion, but these days, it’s far from being on the butt of any kind of train-related joke: the Swiss Federal Railways don’t do many, if any, connections beyond the German border anymore (e.g., in Basel-Badischer Bahnhof) because German trains are too delayed with too often (and imagine how bad this must be if even the Swiss are pissed off).

And then there’s the looks at the airport: everything looks (and partially smells) like it’s from the 1990s, with minimal efforts having gone into upkeep, maintenance, and overall cleanliness. At some point, I found myself on the loo and there’s these buttons one could press (‘how happy are you with the cleanliness today?’)—but the appliance was so disgustingly dirty, you’d probably catch any kind of disease…(not that I ever press these, least of all on airport toilets, but I can’t offer visible proof as that bloody thing was hanging right above the hand dryer and I had wet hands).

Biometrics is the Wave of the Future

What I noticed, though, was the profusion of ‘automated ID check’ machines, such as the ones below:

I noticed a few newer such machines (they were still covered in plastic) upon arrival: Frankfurt Airport is using facial recognition/biometric scanners now to help you out with connecting flight arrangements and the like. Yes, there were such machines in place before, but they came without any of these facial recognition/biometric scanning features.

Do note that the above border control check point sits in-between the Schengen/Non-Schengen area of the airport, with the ‘opportunity’ to leave a digital picture, biometric data, and what else data there—as a ‘privilege’ (sic) of being a EU passport holder. (Disclosure: I once, in 2022, used one of these checkpoints when travelling to Dublin via Amsterdam—it’s that above-linked trip—due to time/Covid mandate constraints; I don’t like them at-all, but somehow these machines are spreading like, well, certain respiratory illnesses…)

Speaking of these awful machines, I found their most troubling application to be—that the gate barriers (where one presents his or her boarding pass) have been ‘upgraded’ with digital cameras.

At some point, I suppose this was to be expected, and, no, it’s not about me not caring about my looks but about whatever company is running these services™ now holding digital photographs of me and every other passenger on the flight.

Upon reflection, it’s actually way worse—I found these snippets of information in my boarding passes:

If you search online for ‘Star Alliance Biometrics’, this is what we may learn:

Star Alliance Biometrics (SBH) transforms airport journeys for passengers of partner airlines within the Star Alliance by conveniently improving their experience at the selected airports through facial recognition. SBH creates a secure, integrated identity profile that allows you to elect to be biometrically identified at checkpoints of certain airports and airlines that are our partners (Travel Partners).

This is what opt-in tyranny means: it’s a three-step process:

1. With one-time enrollment, you can use your SBH Profile across your travels with Travel Partners at select airports, including touchless passage through pre-security, boarding gates, and lounges checkpoints.

2. During enrollment, you will be invited to review and agree to the Customer Consent [who reads EULAs?] Then, all you need is to take a selfie [they don’t even care about the pic being shitty—tells you all about the advanced state of biometric/facial recognition stuff out there (and the intel community certainly has way, way better stuff)], scan your passport and verify your information [simply use a digital ID]. We will create your SBH Profile and store it on your device

3. Your SBH Profile is encrypted and securely stored within your mobile device, except when you request us to identify/authenticate you.

Re-read the third point: it’s ‘encrypted’ and ‘securely stored’, that is, except when you share whatever biometric data in exchange for a bit of convenience.

What a shit-show, eh?

My Stay in Vienna, incl. a Day-Trip to Prague, Czechia

This was a work-related trip, so, while I enjoyed the company of my parents and siblings while there, most of my time was filled (stuffed) with work-related things. So, I went from one meeting to the next (Tuesday), travelled (by car) to a small town in rural Lower Austria to obtain archival materials (Wednesday), took the train to Prague, Czechia, to give a public lecture about my recent monograph (Thursday; DM me for particulars if you’re interested in 17th-century Bohemian history), and gave a presentation at the Vienna U Law School before departing for Norway (Friday).

Vienna looked o.k.-ish, but note that the area where I stayed was pretty close (5-10 minutes on foot) away from the city centre. I actually grew up in that ward, and the most striking difference, of course, was something else: I remember there being small and medium-sized businesses, you know, like plumbers, electricians, small retailers, etc.; these days, there’s a profusion of restaurants, eateries, and chain stores selling indoor decorations. It also felt quite crowded, but take that sentiment with a grain of salt as I’ve lived away from Vienna for 16 years now (and counting).

Despite the recent uptick in assault and battery reported by Austrian legacy media—mainly due to mass immigration (a few weeks ago, someone was stabbed in broad daylight in the city centre)—I had no such encounters; I didn’t feel unsafe, with police unofficially informing me that there’s no problem anywhere in Vienna’s public transport system, that is, as long as one avoided talking to, or gazing at, ‘gangs of young foreign-looking people’ on the subway. They are ‘all carrying knives’, it is said, but ‘as long as you don’t bother them, there shouldn’t be any problems’.

Finally, a note about cultural trends: while Woke-ism and DEI appears to be on the way out in the US, their accoutrements—ranging from stickers on restaurant doors to ‘discussions’ in media to flags proudly displayed in totally irrelevant contexts (see below)—are still very, very visible. Now, I don’t know how that plays out in everyday life, but I do sense a kind of maniacal virtue-signalling taken to its depraved and, frankly, insane conclusion: while here in Norway there was a very heavy emphasis on LGBTQ+ (sic) sentiments in 2022 with both the Oslo ‘Pride’ and a mentally unstable migrant attacking a known bar (Wikipedia summary), which led to the cancelling of the event over public safety issues.

Yet, the Norwegian ‘pride’ stuff was always with the so-called rainbow flag (which it isn’t: the rainbow was God’s symbol of the renewed, post-Noah covenant and includes a bit of light-blue; the original ‘LBG’ flag notably didn’t feature this colour); it was ubiquitous—companies flew it, as did public buildings, incl., most disturbingly, primary and secondary schools. Some municipalities banned it from public buildings, and generally, summer 2022 was a wild, heavily agit-prop-infused time. It was also the first such ‘event’ after Covid mandates were lifted, hence it was quite vividly debated. Yet, while ‘Trans’ (sic) paraphernalia were certainly displayed here and there, it really wasn’t—and still isn’t—‘a thing’ here in Scandinavia.

So, you may imagine my surprise when I found these things literally all over Vienna (none of them were seen by me in Prague, by the way), incl. most notably—and perhaps also most tellingly—hanging around one of the city’s theatres in the centre:

I took that picture last Wednesday, and I do think it’s telling in more than one way: in a city once renowned for its culture, this is what the commercialisation and mass-production of culture™ looks like.

Everyone is entitled to feel his or her own things, and as long as this kind of sentiment is expressed in pre-approved™ ways and means—such as displaying the international symbol of (child) castration, mutilation, and sterilisation—it is all o.k.

Woe upon those who disagree with (child) castration, mutilation, and sterilisation, as one of my—sadly, super woke-ified brothers (who’s also a mainstream journo™) invoked.

We were chatting about this and that and he casually invoked ‘the Covid mandates’ as an example of gov’t overreach or the like.

So I told him that’s an utterly depraved and entirely false statement as all of these bloody things were incorrect, as well as all politicos™, experts™, and journos™ did during the Covid Mania was way off.

My brother, sensing an argument he couldn’t ‘win™’, switched to calling for the genocide of ‘all Russians’ because Putin.

When I noted that the Russian people are like all other people and at least differentiation between the Russian gov’t and the Russian people was warranted, he doubled down on these ‘sentiments’—by claiming that he ‘doesn’t want to live in world where even one member of the LGBTQ+ community feels unsafe’.

Then I merely mentioned that the last Austrian to speak like this was, well, Adolf Hitler. Fortunately, this was towards the end of the meeting, which couldn’t really go on thereafter, but I suppose at some point—whatever.

It was wild beyond anything I imagined.

The next day, we met again (I borrowed his car for the day trip and returned the keys) and he told me that I ‘shouldn’t consider all he said the day before as sincerely held belief’.

Well, that’s about all I will say about this episode here; it was very wild, but it also fits the general mood among the current régime’s water-carriers.

And water-carriers for whatever kind of régime have always been around; they will always be around, and there’s nothing that will change human nature (except, perhaps, synthetic hormones and tons of other drugs inducing neuroplasticity…).

Bottom Lines

That’s it for this instalment of my travel notes.

Please let me know if you saw some of these camera-devices at airports, too.

I suppose that the future of Western countries (whatever that means these days) will look more and more like the dystopia featured in ‘Minority Report’: biometric access points for the sheeple (which is unfair to my sheep) who are permitted to participate in whatever.

I also don’t think there’s anything other than a grid failure that will prevent this trajectory from leading to its inexorable endpoint: those who don’t smile for the gov’t will be denied access even to most ‘public™’ places as ‘terrorism™’—remember: that’s a prominent theme in both Brave New World and 1984—ramps up to bolster gov’t measures to ‘do something™’ about it.

I suppose I should also leave you with a reading suggestion about the history of passports: the best (and only) such book-length treatment is by Valentin Groebner who wrote the wonderful Who Are You? Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe (Princeton UP, 2007).

‘Regular’ themes will continue tomorrow.

Godspeed, dear readers.