It’s some interesting topic! by Kaj Arnö

From Sunday 11.4.2010 to Thursday 22.4.2010, I used my Twitter account @kajarno to send

• 26 Swedish tweets
• 41 German tweets
• 69 English tweets

(not counting direct replies) of which a clear majority (but not all) were of a volcanic nature.

Most Swedish readers can follow German and English too, and most German readers also follow English. Hence the large number of English tweets and the larger number of German tweets.

Here’s a subset of the English tweets. The dates and times are local (California 9 h different from Munich; Chicago 7 h different).

Thursday 15.4.2010

• 13:12 Kaj Arnö wonders whether LH459 will leave at all MUC-SFO tonight 21:00, and if so, which route #iceland #volcao #ash
• 20:18 Damn, flight was cancelled. #lh #iceland #volcano SFO-MUC LH459
• 21:06 Even though it isn’t a #Lufthansa owned #volcano they provided me with a free hotel. Danke! #Island

Friday 16.4.2010

• 07:56 John Cleese took the taxi from Oslo to Brussels. I doubt taxi is an option from San Francisco to Munich. Stranded in Oslo, Cleese takes taxi to Brussels
• 14:56 Whoever put the soap in the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, don’t add it to Katla #ashtag - http://is.gd/bw7fz great funny 2min video

Saturday 17.4.2010

• 7:34 If many MySQLers meet, disruption happens. 2008: Sun buys MySQL. 2009: ORCL buys Sun. 2010: Eyjafjall erupts #ashtag #mysqlconf (via JWiss)
• 10:51 Kaj Arnö wonders if a competent lawyer could send a cease and desist letter to @Eyjafjall #ashtag
• 11:15 Under Icelandic influence, Europe has turned to the most xenophobic continent of them all #ashtag @Eyjafjall
• 15:42 No LH459 SFO-MUC tonight either. Later meeting with fellow stranded MySQLers for dinner in Redwood Shores. #ashtag #mysqlconf

Sunday 18.4.2010

• 10:48 Sorry Twitter followers and FB friends for erupting so many msgs but being stuck on the wrong continent is no fun #ashtag #getmehome
• 11:38 Kaj Arnö just extended his involuntary stay at Sofitel until Wed, like his fellow LH passengers (good hotel, wrong continent) #ashtag #getmehome #SFO
• 11:41 Kaj Arnö sees that today’s LH459 is cancelled, too — tomorrow (for which I was rescheduled) is still on schedule, though #getmehome #ashtag #SFO
• 13:25 Lava all, nerve all? RT @Eyjafjalla: To my 1125 followers: I lava you all! #ashtag
• 14:40 Progress rpt: Now @Lufthansa_DE follows me and @Eyjafjalla laughs at my jokes. If only I could connect the two. #ashtag #getmehome

Monday 19.4.2010

• 00:42 Sun’s travel agency found me a flight Monday morning 9:40-15:45 SFO-ORD (=Chicago) +16:40-07:40+1 ORD-MAD. If it flies. I’ll try Madrid!
• 00:44 Issues: Little time in Chicago. And perhaps ORD-MAD will be cancelled. But worth a try!
• 06:25 *If* I get home to Europe over Madrid, here are my trains: 16-18:38 M-Barcelona 19:38-5:45 B-Geneve 6:14-8:56 G-Zürich 9:16-13:28 Z-München
• 17:33 Boarded! Madrid, here we come! And there I will stay, my wife predicted. Trains and buses told to be full until Monday. #ashtag #getmehome
• 17:57 Iberia Airbus A340/600 is moving, due East! Bueno, señorita stewardess, I’ll turn off the phone. To be continued. #ashtag

Tuesday 20.4.201

• 08:18 Kaj Arnö greets Europe and thinks about his fellow European #mysqlconf attendees still captured in the US #ashtag
• 12:32 There’s an ocean of difference between waiting in Madrid and waiting in the US. #relief #ashtag
• 12:53 Done: SFO-ORD 2956 km. Done: ORD-MAD 6763 km. Todo: MAD-MUC 1481 km. That’s a mere 13% or < 1/7 #ashtag http://is.gd/bAuXU
• 19:24 Kaj Arnö is on his 8th day of handluggage only business travel and still finds a spare pair of unused socks #happy #frugal #greedy #ashtag

Wednesday 21.4.2010

• 08:27 Kaj Arnö will make an attempt at the MAD airport to go to MUC #ashtag 8:55-11:20 IB3534 http://bit.ly/b9Wv4a
• 09:22 Sign of air travel normalisation: frustration over MAD “security” process temporarily won over joy of returning home #ashtag
• 09:37 A jetful of passengers are still queuing for boarding. Hope or desperation? 8:55 IB3534 Madrid-München #ashtag
• 11:43 Landed in Munich! Although I am now a released Eyjafjalla hostage, most #mysqlconf Europeans still aren’t. #hashtag

Thursday 22.4.2010

• 08:46 Fun science! RT @stewartsmith: Best giggle for today: #boobquake - also, a world of awesome.

Five days of uncertainty, trapped far away from home by an Icelandic volcano, provide plenty of time to think. Here is my attempt at drawing conclusions the day after returning home: partly on a personal level, partly on a general human level, partly on a societal level.

To recap what has happened: Ten minutes before the intended boarding time of LH459 from San Francisco home to Munich, I got an SMS about the flight being cancelled. This was Thursday 15.4.2010 at 20:20. Thereafter I lived in uncertainty in airport hotels, most of the time 40 km south of San Francisco, to finally arrive home five days later than plan on Wednesday 21.4.2010 at 13:00..

Personal conclusion

Conclusion 1: Uncertainty and losing freedom are hard to cope with. In retrospect, I never was in any real trouble. No physical suffering, no bodily harm, hardly any material loss. Still, the experience was amongst the strongest ones in my life. If that’s the case, what do I really have to complain about? Losing freedom for an indefinite period of time. Unmet expectations.

Conclusion 2: Europe is my home continent. Emotionally, it was terrible to be stuck on the wrong continent, 9474 km away from home (SFO to MUC). Last time Eyjafjalla erupted (1821-23), it took one and a half years, and knowing this instilled a feeling of potentially being a hostage for countless weeks, away from family and friends. How could anyone know for how long intercontinental air traffic would remain closed? Sure, the relief when returning home was enormous, but the real euphoria happened when I saw Europe again in Madrid. I was rescued! Sure, I was still 1481 km from home, but that distance I can make by train, bus, car or even bike. Fellow sufferers amongst MySQLers have shared my feeling that although it’s fantastic to be home, the real pressure was off already upon “merely” returning to Europe.

Conclusion 3: Humour is a strong weapon. From the start, we who got stuck kept a good mood through joking. Some of the humour was black enough not to merit being captured in print. “Send cash not ash” was the first successful joke on the web, but the self-made jokes provided more solace. Most jokes were somehow language dependent and I shared them with the two biggest language groups amongst the stranded colleagues and friends: the Swedish speakers and the German speakers. Language jokes seldom translate but the illustration on the right is 1:1 transferrable between Swedish and German. The word for “surprised” in both languages is literally translatable to “overrashed”, so leaving out one “r” means we were “overashed”. One particularly fun web link is to the three-minute Icelandic terrorist video, where Icelanders keen on keeping their Icesave money threaten to put soap into Eyjafjalla’s big sister Katla, so we won’t have a summer for years (a Katla eruption in 1783 caused hunger and poverty across Europe, believed by some to have been a key trigger for the French revolution six years later).

Conclusion 4: Language creates closeness and strengthens a sense of kinship. This one may be impossible for monolinguals to understand, though. Basically, sharing raw information about my situation would have been technically doable in English, making Twitter and Facebook texts understandable for (nearly) all. Yet, the whole point with the social media communication for me was to shorten the emotional distance and increase the mental well-being of those at home, of fellow sufferers and of myself. For this to happen, there needs to be a en emotional closeness to the language itself. I need to communicate in the same language as I would use in person. Hence, I used mostly Swedish and quite a bit of German, with English only as a third choice. It wouldn’t have felt right to use English only.

General conclusions

Conclusion 5: Humans are social creatures, and social media give true consolation in times of hardship. Facebook and Twitter became lifelines for us volcano hostages. I got more Facebook events than ever. On my way from Chicago to Madrid I had 51 events, and from Madrid to Munich 48 events. It felt great for me to know that someone cared. And to judge from the content of the comments, people really did care: “I hardly get time to work - having to follow the exciting serial story about ‘will-Kaj-get-home-or-not-and-when-and-where-and-how”. Reply: “That’s how I feel, too! Is this Reality Entertainment? (Sorry Kaj - perhaps not from your perspective…)” whereas a third fellow hostage pointed out that “this is a bad reality show, as no matter how hard I try, nobody votes me home…”.

Conclusion 6: Individual characteristics, good and bad, are underlined by the exceptional situation. Stoic peace could be seen amongst those who stay calm under normal circumstances. Systematic work and concentration amongst those not easily distracted. That I found consolation in humour, in writing and communicating with others was no coincidence. Sadly, I regressed into an old bad habit of being too keen on following superficial web news, instead of just carrying on as if nothing had erupted.

Conclusion 7: The possibility and ability to make the best of a bad situation varies according to attitude, character and luck. Myself, I had set my mind to returning home quickly. I have visited to California quite often and (picky as I am) have problems in the US to find food I enjoy, particularly for breakfast. I dislike driving cars; lazy as I am, I prefer public transport. I was in no mood to spend time somehow getting the 40 km to the city centre of San Francisco, which I have visited many times. For others stuck, the situation was quite the opposite, and they were happy that San Francisco was the place fate had chosen, if they had to get stuck. For me, the good part was that I had my running gear, books and notes, as well as car-borne colleagues with whom I could have a run and share dinner.

Conclusion 8: Wishful thinking is more common than panic reactions. “How may hours will you be delayed?” was a typical question in the beginning. As hours grew to days due to closed airspace, the questions became “Have you got closer to home?” or “Do you know when you’ll be home?”, although nobody had a clue when air traffic would be allowed again.

Societal conclusions

Conclusion 9: Flying, especially for tourists, will become less frequent. Both rational and irrational reasons speak for travelling less. Personally, I will evaluate the need for travel outside Europe more stringently than before. And I believe many will even avoid intra-European travel.

Conclusion 10: The value of insurance will be questioned. The idea with insurance is to minimise exposure to risk if something unexpected happens. Financial Times Deutschland points out that insurers exclude many unexpected events from the list of what you’re protected against. Consequently, customers may see less value in being insured in the first place.

Conclusion 11: Social media grow ever more in importance. Although Lufthansa were bad at communicating during the Eyjafjalla eruption, it turns out KLM already has done what I have nagged for Lufthansa to start doing. KLM actively communicates in Twitter, has a good Facebook page (I became the 38704th one to like it), and an impressive YouTube video with their CEO. And the sense of belonging created amongst private users during times of crisis won’t fade off as quickly as the ash cloud.

Conclusion 12: Risk assessments may become more rational. BBC’s question whether it’s more dangerous to drive a car than flying through ash clouds stresses the unethical aspect in the populist politician statement of “security above all”, since we irrational human beings readily accept highly dangerous activities such as high speed limits for cars, smoking, alcohol and unhealthy food, all of which cost considerably more lives than air traffic. And even airport “security” control (de facto a form of state sanctioned systematic mobbing) will over time get easier to question, as we travelers use our newly gained vulcanic experiences and contemplations to become less gullible.

Today, I’m amongst the lucky ashmob hostages returning back home. And five days later than planned, spent at airport hotels in San Francisco and Madrid, gave me time to think and jot down a few recommendations for service companies to improve their communication policies.

Note: I’ve already stressed it isn’t Lufthansa’s volcano, nor their politicians, and that I am in general a happy Lufthansa customer. I’m also happy that American Express Travel Bureau got me home as quickly as they did. Nonetheless, I claim the communication policies of both Lufthansa and AmEx can be substantially improved. That said, though, they’re probably not any worse off than most other companies, as a majority seems to be quite lousy at efficient customer interaction.

My suggested lessons boil down to common sense: Respect the time of your customers. Set expectations properly. Underpromise, overdeliver. Communicate with personalised information. During a crisis, be more communicative than normally, not less. None of these suggestions are specific to the travel industry nor to volcanoes, but the Eyjafjalla eruption provided ample opportunity to illustrate how companies execute badly on these simple, common-sense guidelines.

So, here are my suggestions:

• First: Communicate at all. From the standpoint of a stranded passenger abroad, Lufthansa was near-silent. One SMS about the cancellation of the flight was all proactive communication I got during five days as an Eyjafjalla hostage.
  My suggestion: Speak up, don’t leave me in the dark. Send me SMS:es! Send me email! You send plenty enough of promotional email at “peace time” when I’m not so interested in it. Now I was craving for news, any news, and got none.
• Second: Bad news is better than no news. No news means uncertainty. No news means I’m worried, and that you put the burden of finding out answers on me.
  My suggestion: If things look bad, tell me. Bad news don’t disappear by themselves, you can’t defuse them through silence. Instead, tell me in advance.
• Third: Use asynchronous channels that scale for both you and me. Pushing out bureaucratic semi-information on your own web site may seem to offload you work, but it doesn’t answer my questions and causes me to approach you using methods that don’t scale for you. I want to know with what likelihood my flight leaves, and if you give me this information only in person, it requires me to wait. And remember, I’m stranded far away from home and have other things to do, such as stand in another queue, slowly crawl through airport “security”, check in to my hotel, talk to worried family members at home, calm down my own customers or just too tired to listening to your overly cheerful recorded messages.
  My suggestion: Send me personalised information by email and by SMS. This scales, as I don’t have to wait (and pay the phone bill for listening to your information-free recorded messages) while you reply to me. And my questions should be easy enough for you to anticipate: Do you think my flight will leave as planned? What costs will you cover? Your communication should also be simplified, not made more complex, by the fact that I can live with understandable uncertainty (”LH459 will probably be cancelled tomorrow. We will decide by 14:00 PST, but may give you further information earlier.”)
• Fourth: Make your recorded messages accurate. If you make your communication scale, fewer of us need to use the phone hotline in the first place. But if we do, I can tell you it’s frustrating to hear once a minute in a joyful, happy tone that “You will be served by the next available person” for all of 45 minutes as I did on the Senator hotline, when my simple need was for a credible LH judgement of whether LH459 would leave Monday 19.4.2010. I had to give up and catch my alternate escape route. It now turns out I would have been able to take LH459 for a direct Business Class flight home, and instead took an alternate route over the Atlantic in Economy with another airline, for a total cost that including the extra hotel night in Madrid cost much more than the ticket I left unused.
  Suggestion: Indicate my position in the queue. Hearing “There are 15 persons still to be served before you” being replaced by “There are 14 persons …” about five minutes into the call will make me give up in time, understanding it makes no sense to queue on the phone. That means less frustration for me, not more. And don’t interrupt the music for an identical, nagging text too frequently — I do have other things to do while waiting on phone, than getting my train of thought interrupted. Worse still, AmEx: Don’t say “The next available person will serve you shortly, we ask for your patience” on the recorded message, when what you de facto mean is “This phone number is closed now, as it operates only outside German business hours. Please used +49-xxxx instead.” In fact, I missed an urgent and important call by an AmEx customer representative, just after midnight Californian time, while in queue for catching that person over a phone number that wasn’t operational at that point.
• Fifth: Increase communication capacity during a crisis. Airlines should have plenty of idle pilots and stewardesses during volcano eruptions.
  Suggestion: Let the cabin crew communicate. Give them a crash course. Let them talk to customers at extra check in desks, over email, phone, SMS, Twitter, everywhere. You’ll calm down passengers quickly, serve them better, and have your cabin crew learn a thing or two about your customers. It seems a Danish airline called  Cimber Sterling was smart enough to do so.
• Sixth: Make it easy for the customer to contact you. Filling out web forms is difficult to impossible if you’ve only got a mobile device for input. Having to navigate through complicated low-usability web pages is a nightmare under stress.
  Suggestion: Allow scalable input such as SMS and email. Promote SMS input numbers and email addresses clearly and prominently. Fixing spam must be a solvable issue for you; putting the burden on the customer is simply inacceptable. Also, make it dead easy for me to identify which phone number to use. And, dear AmEx, it’s very frustrating to try to call your German +49-xxx phone number from abroad and get an American phone error message saying the number is invalid.
• Seventh: Don’t be afraid of social media. Facebook and Twitter aren’t mere channels for press releases. @Lufthansa_DE did start subscribing to me after a while into the Eyjafjalla crisis, but replied only with one private note despite me addressing @Lufthansa_DE with several comments, most of which were quite pro-LH.
  Suggestion: Use Facebook and Twitter for semi-informal communication. Reply to people who mention your @handle (or even just your company name) in tweets. Don’t expect to please the always-complaining, unsatisfiable 5%. Do expect to calm down the rest of us; we constitute 95%. Expect us to talk good about you if you communicate well. We know it’s not your volcano.

I do value the warm touch of individual human interaction face-to-face at a check-in counter or voice-based on a phone. But those are scarce and expensive resources for you, and involve long queues for me (as measured both in metres and in minutes), representing huge frustration. So please, do spend the time until Katla erupts by improving your communication processes!

Redwood Shores 18.4.2010

Dear Lufthansa,

My Day Three of being stranded on the wrong continent is starting. I want home!

As I wrote to you earlier, it’s not your volcano. And now, I have to add, it’s not your politicians nor your scientists either. So you have my full support in questioning the sensibility of a complete flight ban.

We may witness a Security Theatre (”security  countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually improve security”) in a more dramatic implementation than ever before in aviation history.

Hence, I have two requests for you, especially related to long-distance flights:

1. Convince the scientists that you should be allowed to start flying at all.
2. Convince the politicians that you should be allowed to choose routing more flexibly.

The prevalent conclusion of the volcanic eruption seems to be “faced with the forces of nature, passengers have to be flexible and expect delays”. I can tell you, we do.

The missing conclusion is “faced with the forces of nature, airlines, politicians and regulatory bodies have to be flexible when working off the backlog“. I can tell you, that flexibility doesn’t seem to be happening.

The equation is complicated enough without the added constraints of processes tuned to business-as-usual. Lufthansa has an unchanged amount of airplanes and airplane seats. The backlog of stranded passengers is piling up. How does anyone expect the situation to normalise if available airplanes are not being used to fly stranded passengers closer to home, relieving the constraints of the existing flight slots and landing permits handed out on mere commercial grounds tuned for “peace time”?

Moreover, last time the thing erupted 1821-23, it took one and a half years. This eruption may not be a matter of days, either. I may be flexible, but I’m not happy to wait on a geological time scale.

So let me tell you how far my flexibility extends. Usually, flying SFO to MUC with LH459 meets my needs perfectly as I live in MUC and I couldn’t imagine any better way of flying than in your Business Class (sure, “flattery can take you anywhere”, but I honestly cannot think of much that would make the SFO-MUC flight more endurable and more enjoyable than it already is in LH459, starting 21:00 and arriving 17:15+1). But now, I just want home. I can downgrade. I can travel at a different time of day. I can travel a different route. In fact, I’m happy to just get home to my own dear ash-infested continent, in time to attend my daughter’s confirmation next Sunday in Munich. I am willing to take the train from anywhere in continental Europe to Munich. My only constraint is that I don’t have a valid Russian visa, so I cannot travel through Russia. Lisbon is fine, so is Madrid, Rome, Barcelona, Toulouse, anything North, East, South, West (but not really Reykjavik). And the fellow stranded passengers I’ve talked to share my, how shall I put it, certain degree of flexibility.

So start flying! You’ve got airplanes, you’ve got passengers, and there are ash-free parts of the skies. Use them! Don’t expect to fix issues caused by extreme situations using normal means.

Kaj Arnö

Lufthansa Senator member
EU citizen (of Finland)
German resident (in Munich)

The Baltic Sea is frozen by several tens of centimetres of ice. But in the guest harbour of Nagu, there is a pump that keeps the water flowing in order to create a “vak”, Swedish for a hole in the ice. The purpose of this particular “vak” is to allow the Nagu inhabitants to go swimming. This happens mostly during two sauna events in the week, Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. I had the good fortune of being in Nagu now this Saturday morning, so I decided to go for my first winter bath of this season.

In basking sunlight and without any wind, the conditions were near perfect. It’s not far from the Sauna to the ice hole, so one didn’t even get noticeably cooled down on the way to the hole.

I don’t recommend to spend too much time on second thoughts before going into the hole.

Afterwards, the only really cold body parts are the feet.

My diving shoes are, as one can expect, filled with water. The water is cold and wet; I prefer to empty the shoes of the water, rather than warming it up with my feet.

Having got rid of the water, I can devote myself to the endorphine high.

There was no need to consciously change my facial expression. The smile was automatic.

This is how it feels like after winter bathing!

When I came, there only two other bathers on the men’s side. The pictures were taken during the first round. The second and third round, I went in alone. The fourth time, I went with Larry Lindroos, the gentleman who introduced me to the concept of winter bathing a few years ago.

A year ago, I wrote a blog entry with the title “Kaj’s Ten New Year Resolutions: On the Irrationality of the Human Mind”. Resolutions that aren’t evaluated don’t amount to much, so here’s my commentary to how things turned out:

Kaj’s Ten New Year Resolutions

1. The power of habit is immense: Regularly start a new good habit! Consciously define a desirable new habit. Figure out how you best can convince yourself of going through the pains of starting the habit. Can’t claim I would have established any truly new habits 2009. Needs attention 2010. Verdict: Miss.

2. Self confidence breeds self confidence: Behave with full confidence! But dare make potential mistakes. You don’t learn without taking risks. Well, I started to proclaim a new World Religion, which does need self confidence but also is a minefield of potential mistakes. Verdict: Hit.

3. Identify and live out your personal priorities! How important are friends? Marriage? Children? Family? Relatives? Health? Work? Money? Give consequent priority to the more important over the less important, when it comes to using time, attention and money. Here I made clear progress. Will be continued this year. Verdict: Hit.

4. Draw the consequences of your priorities: Set quarterly goals also in private life! A quarter is long enough to make long term goals achievable, and short enough for wishful thinking to surface quickly. Yes, I set private quarterly goals. Yes, it feels right. Verdict: Hit.

5. Focus consciously: Create rituals for rough follow-up of personal quarterly goals each week, and thorough follow-up at the start of next quarter! Yes, I did follow up the goals on several levels. Verdict: Hit.

6. Make the boring or uncomfortable work bearable or even fun! Make the work into something social (and share the burden). Reward yourself for completed hard phases. Concentrate the most uncomfortable work to one “brave” hour of the day. Too few steps forward, too slowly. Verdict: Miss.

7. Ask experts for help! Already the phrasing of the wish gets you started. And incoming answers keep the wheels in motion. Oh yes! I just need to continue. Verdict: Hit.

8. Make important matters appear urgent! Create impulses that make you focus on the important: Help delivered by others, promises of partial delivery, meetings, scheduled discussion topics. This one, I didn’t pursue with enough persistence. Verdict: Miss.

9. Aesthetic values are appealing: Surround yourself with beauty, simplicity and order! Disorder, unnecessary items and gadgets (whether old or newly bought) are burdens for the soul. Order your belongings! Throw away! If you buy, then only if it’s functional, useful and beautiful. Absolutely, did do. Of course, the thought can still be purified. Verdict: Hit.

10. Manage your own mood: Don’t let petty details take over your agenda! Consciously break negative thought patters, through raised blood sugar, breaks, fresh air. Running helps. Breathing deeply, too. Verdict: Hit.

Seven hits and three misses. Whatever that indicates.

For 2010, I will continue on the same path. Here are some halfway new ideas for this year, related to the items 134578:

• Written annual activity plans for important areas of life (at least my country house Furuvik and for Runnism). This simplifies setting quarterly goals (which become free of many goals I won’t reach within the quarter anyway), and enables asking for help from those In The Know.
• Support groups, well defined semi-teams of people In The Know, with whom I discuss frequently in real life and over the web. For the same important areas of life.
• Systematic use of Social Media, meaning Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Xing. It’s fun to interact on them, to help and to be helped. But like with email, the distraction needs to be minimised.
• Establishing and keeping order in the house, in the laptop, in life in general. Order is not just a matter of aesthetics, but about resting the soul, saving time and avoiding waste.

Let’s see how the year develops!

Photo: Julian Cash

With a bit of a bad conscience, I went for Block A yesterday. Block A was for runners with a goal time of below 3:45, Block B for the rest. My personal record was 3:52:20 and my target time that I had entered into the Munich Marathon website was 3:55. Thanks to perfect weather, less drinking and a relaxed running attitude, I fulfilled my “promise” to my fellow runners and finished at 3:43:42.

The topic of the blog entry isn’t PRs but a comparison between my last two marathon runs: Helsinki 15 August 2009 and Munich 11 October 2009. Which city was more fun? Which run is better organised? What makes the atmosphere different?

Let’s start with the objective facts.

1. Tradition: The marathons are more or less equally old, Helsinki a bit older. This year saw the 29th Helsinki City Marathon and the 24th Munich Marathon. Hence, both will have celebrations in 2010.

2. Size: The marathon runs are about equally popular, Munich slightly bigger. The press releases talk about 6472 (Munich) and 6041 (Helsinki) starters.

3. Elite: Helsinki had the clearly faster winner this year, with 2:22:32 over five minutes faster than Munich (2:28:11). Neither Munich nor Helsinki had any bigger rush of Kenyans this year.

4. International flair: Munich had participants from 61 countries, Helsinki from 46.

5. Finisher: Both races saw the ratio of finishers at slightly above 80%. In Munich 5397 of 6472 registered reached the finish line (83,4%), proportionally a bit more than in Helsinki (4939 of 6041 makes 81,8%).

6. Pace: The Munich runners clearly have much higher ambitions or at least a faster pace than those in Helsinki. In Munich, I finished at 1956th place (the 1811th male, with 145 ladies finishing before me). This means that 36 % were faster than me. With an 8 minutes slower time, I had just 25 % before me in Helsinki (finisher 1228 of 4939).

Let’s now proceed to the more subjective perceptions.

7. Start: Munich is separated into two blocks, A for the faster ones, B for the slower ones. It appears as if the participants indulge in more wishful thinking in Munich than in Helsinki, when estimating their finishing time. In Helsinki I stood behind the pacemakers for 3:45 (in Finland we call them hares), and in only 35 seconds, I had passed the starting line. In Munich I was (with a bad conscience, as I already confessed) next to the 3:30 hares, yet got past the starting line only after 1 minute 31 seconds. To a large degree, this is due to point 6 above, i.e. faster runners in Munich.

8. Weather: Perfect in both cities. Not too hot, not too cold. Luckily, it was cloudy in Helsinki (as it would otherwise have been too hot in August) and sunny in Munich (as it would otherwise have been too cold in October).

9. Olympics: Helsinki 1952, Munich 1972. Hence both cities can offer the opportunity to finish at an Olympic stadium. This shouldn’t be underestimated. The feeling is fantastic! I felt the difference clearly in Helsinki this year, as the Olympic stadium was closed for repairs.

10. Route: Both are great. In both cities, you can see the sights of the inner city; even if I’m patriotic, I have to confess that Munich is the winner on this account. In both cities, you run through nature; as I like water, Helsinki is the clear winner here, in spite of Europe’s biggest inner-city park, Englischer Garten, in Munich. In Helsinki you see the elite runners at a later point in time and hence better, which is great. In Munich, the route is flatter — about at km. 38 one runs into a bit of uphill in Helsinki (Tilkka), which leads many (including myself) to swap running for walking.

11. Music: Munich is the uncontested winner. Lots more music, hence also better atmosphere. The run through the Big Marathon Gate in the Olympic stadium is emotionally unbeatable, largely due to the music.

12. Transport: Helsinki was easier on local transport, at least for me. Public transport in Munich is generally near perfect, but the distances from the venue to trams or U-Bahn seem large especially after the run. Helsinki feels more intimate.

13. Provision: Both are very good. Munich still is the undisputed winner, because of the Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen. As a non-German, it’s hard to imagine, but between km 37 and 38, not just water, bananas and energy drinks are on offer, but beer! Sure, alcohol free, but still. My stomach being very sensitive during long runs, I had my doubts in advance. Still, the beer tasted great and didn’t cause any issues. Felt good!

14. Chip return: Helsinki is the clear winner. The chips are returned immediately after the goal. In Munich, you have to walk for what easily feels like another five km on tired legs, to return the chip somewhere far, far away. This was for me the single biggest disadvantage for Munich.

15. Showers and sauna: Helsinki is the winner. Both races offer showers in an Olympic swimming stadium. Due to cultural differences, this automatically includes a sauna visit in Finland. And what an atmosphere in the sauna! Satisfied faces, comparison of finishing times, encouragement. Pure joy in the chock full saunas. In Munich, I also went for the sauna (at an extra cost of 12,80 €). What a contrast! A place filled with silence. A majority of non-runners. Perfect for regeneration, but not necessarily as part of the marathon experience.

16. Gifts: Munich is the winner. Directly after the finish, you don’t only get a medal (like in Helsinki), but you get your name and finishing time engraved on the medal. Not bad. Still, that’s nowhere near the Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen as an unforgettable memory.

17. Finally: The time. If I’d only focus on the finishing time, the winner would be Munich, by 8 minutes 20 seconds. I hadn’t trained any more, and the external conditions were similar. I believe the trick was drinking less. In Munich, I didn’t feel sick at the end, but could just be happy about the whole marathon experience.

For me, as an avowed Runnist, it isn’t about the time. It’s about enjoying the run. And the fun was equally big in both Helsinki and Munich. Both races are worth a trip!

Links:

• Munich: http://www.muenchenmarathon.de/
• Helsinki: http://www.helsinkicitymarathon.fi/
• Photos from yesterday’s Munich Marathon (taken during the trip, with my Flip Mino): http://picasaweb.google.com/runnismus/MunchenMarathon11102009

For a long while I’ve thought about how I best share my mother’s passing away with my friends and acquaintainces over the net. I didn’t feel it was appropriate to publish such matters in a blog entry; it felt too “private”.

Then I saw her obituary notice in Hufvudstadsbladet (getting the paper takes a while when you live in exile, like I do). “Husis” is the Finland Swedish newspaper par excellence, and for generations, it’s been used also for announcements in the deaths column. However, in the current global generation, not every friend subscribes to Husis. Hence, I decided to write a counterpart of the obituary notice for the web. But let me start with the one in Husis:

My mother was 84 years when she passed away. She was completely present, intellectually and emotionally, still on her death bed. I had the fortune, together with Alexander, to be able to discuss with her for nearly two hours in the same night that she passed away at 3:15.

The funeral was one week later in Lovisa, and we will place the urn into the grave in Nagu on Saturday this week. By coincidence we were in Nagu when everything happened, and prolonged our stay by a week. Since the funeral, Kirsten and I have spent a good half week in Croatia (Krk, Porec); slowly, life is returning to normal.

Here is an excerpt from my commemorative speech at the funeral, translating from Swedish to English. I’ve retained the word “famo” which literally means “paternal grandmother” and comes from the words for “father’s mother”:

—

Dear funeral guests
Alexander and Sophia

Famo wants us to be happy. Her character was such that it was very easy to please her when she was still alive. Now that she’s no longer with us, this particular wish feels hard to fulfil.

Yet we have so much to be happy about.

We can start with Famo’s words on hear death bed: “I am satisfied with my life“. Not everyone is satisfied with their lives. I’m happy she was. I am also happy that she was given a long and very prosperous marriage, with Fafa.

Alexander and I could personally say our goodbyes to her, while she still listened and answered. In the car on our way to the hospital, when we still didn’t know whether we would make it in time, we had plenty of time to think about what we wanted to say to her — so that it wouldn’t have to wait until we spoke to completely deaf ears. But we made it, and we could say what we had on our minds, so that she could hear it, and answer.

Even though I don’t sound very happy right now, I feel that our possibility to properly say goodbye is something to be very happy about. Famo prepared us in the best possible way for the time after her death. We had the time to speak about everything that needs speaking about. That we should think “now Famo is happy” when we let down her urn into the grave, next to Fafa. Which funeral undertaker she wanted. And especially, that we are very happy and deeply grateful for her contribution, her life, her character, her inspiration, her judgement.

I am happy she got her will, that her suffering ended.

I am happy she could live at home her whole life. I am happy and proud that she bravely endured becoming nearly blind and deaf. I am happy she took most things in life in good mood and with humour. A few weeks before she died, when she visited us in her own old house in Nagu, Alexander said “You do hear better than you can see, don’t you?”. Her reply was “What?”. But a second later, she realised what Alexander had asked, whereupon Famo, Alexander and Sophia laughed heartily together.

I am glad she remained mentally agile all her life. She was a bit worried to become senile, but perhaps that is exactly what is needed, in order not to become senile.

I am glad she was so positive. “I am an incurable optimist”, she used to say. She was an expert at giving whatever happened a positive interpretation, in seeing light in darkness. Without that ability, I’m sure she wouldn’t have lived as long as she did.

I am happy she kept up to date with modern life. She played computer games since the early 1980s, first on my ABC80 and ABC800. Then, she bought Monty’s Commodore. After that, a few Windows computers followed suite, and soon enough, there was Internet and surfing and email and Skype. She kept surfing and skyping until the last days of her life, even if it took ages for her to read headers and find the keys on the keyboard, using a magnifying glass. With stoic patience, she noted that she could have spent an eternity in Wikipedia, as she had browsed through everything interesting on the DVDs of the Nationalencyklopedin already, “but I can’t see”.

She put others before herself, and didn’t even understand how much influence she gained by doing so. “The people of Finland shall be lead from the front”, General Adolf Ehrnrooth used to say, and my mother lived by that exact thought. Her leadership was based on humbleness, respect, consideration, helpfulness, and empathy. I explained to her that, to the degree I am a good father, it’s because of her being my role model. Her reaction wasn’t primarily one of pride, but a certain heaviness of heart, that I hadn’t properly considered my father in my thought.

—

This was a longish excerpt from my commemorative speech. I tried to pick such items that are descriptive of my mother as a person, without giving away what is too private. To begin with, I didn’t want to say anything at all on the web, because of respect for her perhaps seeing it as self-assertion incompatible with her humbleness. I decided to write what I’ve written because I want my friends and acquaintances to know, to realise, to understand something that has characterised me so deeply as a person.

I want to conclude by thanking everyone that has given us their condolences. It hurts to lose one’s primary role model in life.

In a blog entry I’ve explained why I consider running a religion and why I want to spread this religion with social media. Still, what’s the point with doing it worldwide? Isn’t enough to do it close to my own front door, either at home in Munich, Germany or in my native Finland?

The reason relates to my interest for other countries, cultures and languages. Through my work, I’ve travelled a lot especially last year, as Ambassador of the product of my former employer. As I got the assignment, I had decided for the duration of my ambassadorial travels to give the first five minutes of my presentation in (one of) the local language(s). And that’s what I ended up doing. It all started with Italian; of all languages that I don’t speak, I speak Italian the best. Thereafter I presented in Japanese (Swedish sounds, Finnish Staccato). And after I could make myself reasonably understood by an audience in Chinese, I lost the respect for the difficulty of other languages; since then, I’ve added Russian, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Estonian, Latvian und Lithuanian to the list. My respect for the value of other languages, on the contrary, grew immensely. The world doesn’t become a better place through everyone speaking Bad English with each other.

Clearly, additional languages also represent an extra cost. I cannot present all aspects of Runnism in all languages. Hence I will mostly use the languages that I know best and that I have the most contact with. On that list, Swedish comes first, as my native language and connector to relatives, friends and acquaintances in Finland (and Sweden). On second place, there’s German, as I live in Munich since three years and have a German wife (since 17 years). On third place, there’s English, as a lingua franca for all friends and acquaintance that neither understand Swedish nor German.

As a next step I contemplated what Runnism should be called in other languages. I concentrated on languages of European origin, and added Chinese (蘭主义) and Japanese (ラニズム) for good measure and for global credibility. I ended up with a list of twenty languages, in which I might write a tweet or two. When translating Runnism I used the analogy to Buddhism. For example, Runnism is called Runnilaisuus in Finnish (analogously to Buddhalaisuus), Runizam in Croat (Budizam), Руннизм in Russian (Буддизм), Runnismo in Italian (Buddhismo) and Runizmas in Lithuanian (Budizmas).

Hence: A world religion, since running is good for all of us and since running connects us beyond the borders of countries and languages. And twenty languages, as I see it as a sign of respect to use the language of one’s counterpart.

Islam builds on Five Pillars. In Buddhism, there are Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. For Judaism and Christianity, the Ten Commandments form a moral foundation.

Runnism has legs, seven of them.

The Seven Legs of Runnism form the Creed of the Religion of Running.

A true Runnist

1. lives life to the fullest
2. values long-term health
3. understands well-being doesn’t come without sacrifice
4. competes only against his or her earlier self
5. improves gradually, not overnight
6. may occasionally feel pain but seldom suffers
7. sees running as a gift, not a burden

Runnism worships physical well-being.