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[edit] Chernobyl

Jan,

I saw your comments on the Chernobyl talk page. Is it really possible to spend the night in the nearby town? Have you ever been there, because I'd like to ask you a couple questions? Thanks. Sapphire 04:13, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

I have never been to Chernobyl but I have seen several articles from high reputation newspapers and magazines (e.g. Die Zeit) in Germany that wrote travel reports about visits in Pripyat. Maintenance crews stay in Pripyat for 15 consecutive days. If you want to do a tour and stay overnight I suggest you contact a specialised travel agencies like Hamalia in Kiev (make "eco tours" to Chernobyl) or contact the travel desk of "Die Zeit". Two journalists (Erwin Koch and Hans Schuh) visited the area and this weekly German newspaper has a very high standard. If you have any further questions just ask. Others are maybe interested as well so i will bring in informations on the kiev and chernobyl pages. jan 04:53 (EST)

The one thing that I'm really curious about is which cities outside the Area of Alienation are still inhabitated and could provide services to travellers. I'd be a little weary of spending the night, though, visiting the area does appeal to me. I think it would be quite amazing to see the ghost towns and would hopefully inspire politicians to ratify the Kyoto Treaty and possibly save our enviroments. Sapphire 05:05, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

There is an amazing article about the people still living in the exclusion area of Chernobyl. It's all in German but as you lived in Germany you might get the context. Names of towns and people are in the text. So if you really want to visit it, you just need to contact the author. Hopefully everybody really make up their mind and at least recognise the damage to the people and nature such an incident has... I wish the Kyoto Treaty would work but I assume for that some politicians in your home country need to change their mind. jan 05:17 (EDT)

Unfortunately, my German isn't up to par. I used to be able to understand spoken German, almost to a point of semi-fluency, and written German to an intermediate level, however, as I haven't used German since November '04 it seems I've almost completely forgotten German. I'll have to enroll in the Goethe Institut. I'll use one of these web based translators to help me out with the phrases and sentences I have difficulty on. Last year, while I was travelling to Poland, I read a story in the International Herald Tribune about the people that refused to leave and how Chernobyl is becoming a tourist destination. I was watching CNN around 3 in the morning (EDT) and they had a story about the 20th anniversary and that's what sparked my interest today. I'll be spending the latter half of this year in Germany and Poland so I was thinking that I might want to venture in to Chernobyl. As for the American politicians don't get me started. If it were up to me I'd impeach everyone from mayors to the president and and declare myself president. I'd work to decommission dangerous nuclear plants and prohibit anyone living in major cities like New York from driving their cars to cut down on smog and pollution. Grrr. I hate politicans. Sapphire 05:36, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

I read your page and really liked your straight forward attitude. If you really run for president you got my support. Back to the chernobyl page. I saw you changed a lot and when you use the breadcrumb link on top of the chernobyl page the kiev link is wrong. Could you redirect and delete the template in between? At the moment the link goes to Kiev_(Oblast) instead of Kiev Thanks,jan 05:46 (EDT)

I've changed the breadcrumb link to list Ukraine instad. The Oblast (Ukrainian version of a state or region) is called the Kiev Oblast, but for whatever reason it wouldn't display the correct link. I've just reverted it to earlier version because I was becoming quite upset trying to figure out why it wasn't working correctly. Check it out and tell me if that works for you. Sapphire 06:10, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

Thanks mate now it works perfect. I think it is good that you linked it to the main Ukraine page because Chernobyl is a national symbol/tragedy. Majoona suggested in the Chernobyl talk to make Chernobyl part of a Get out section. I would like -contrary to that- to bring it forward to a kind of memorial (like Hiroshima/Nagasaki is in Japan). Do you agree? jan 07:17 (EDT)

I do and I think that it would be such a unique experience that the great majority of people visiting Ukraine or Belarus, Russia would have to travel a significant distance out of the way that it probably should have it's own article. I see where she is coming from, but I believe that it is such a unusual travel destination that it is seared into history and I think it may be best to leave this as an article, which, I will update as soon as I go there. I'll take some photos and find out more about the area outside the Area of Alienation, which will be possibly make this article more useful. FYI: The radioactive pollution from Chernobyl was 400 times greater than that of Hiroshima (Fact from Wikipedia). Sapphire 07:27, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

Hi Jan, FYI I replied on the Talk:Chernobyl that I am now in agreement that Chernobyl should be its own article... thanks for all the great info on this interesting topic! Majnoona 11:31, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Just realized something

Did you live in East or West Berlin during the Cold War? What was life like? Would you prefer the Wall still seperated Berlin? I heard that most West Germans secretly wish the country was divided beacuse of the social strain on Germany after the Wall fell. Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 01:16, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

I was born and raised in the political autonomous unit West Berlin (governed by the three western allies). Politically West Berlin was until 1990 mandated territory (recognised by most Western Countries but not Eastern Germany) and not part of West Germany (no German passports). Therefore when you lived in West Berlin you where legally not a German citizen and you only got a West Berlin identification card issued by the Western Allies. Practically as soon you as you registered yourself in West Germany (at friends or relatives homes) you got a German passport. Migration to East Germany happened but very seldom.

If you grew up with the wall, you get used to american tanks in the streets with marching GI's behind, stiff border controls and constant intelligence surveillance (during the peak of Cold War in West Berlin for every 300 citizens one police officer/agent was in charge plus allied and German intelligence). You could leave West Berlin only within three transit Autobahn's/train route or by plane (no West German carriers were allowed, so mostly PanAm). My parents hated the situation and moving was a constant discussion. I was only twice in Eastern Germany (before it ceased) because as West Berliner you had to do an annoying and bureaucratic visa application process (like today for North Corea) in the Eastern German representation in West Berlin (just a bunch of "Stasi" intelligence agents). My family had relatives in East Germany but communication and support was difficult because my parents argued against the Eastern German system. Therefore they were barred to travel to Eastern Germany for allmost a decade. Just for the 70. birthday of my grandma my Eastern German aunt where allowed to visit us for one day in West Berlin (her daugther and husband had to stay as a security that she returns). The only thing I remember is that everyboday was very nervous and more than relieved that she made it over the border and back safe.

I'm very happy about the reunification and the end of West Berlin being the fuze of the Cold War powder keg but defintely there are some mistakes done through the process of uniting Germany. The biggest point is that we West Germans and especially West Berliners neglected and mocked the socialisation and way of living in Eastern Germany. All Eastern Germans had to adapt to a total unkown systems for them. Today the German culture is mainly the Western one and as a protest the Eastern Germans had retreated to their private live (and regular vote for left or right extreme parties). The new Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel is the first Eastern German as a political leader since reunification and she only got the job because all other competitors lost before. The economical depression in Eastern Germany made the division bigger. I wish that Germany would find a way to bring up a generation where democracy, liberty and wealth would be equal shared between the parts. Today it is more a disappointment on both sides but nobody wants to make the first step and jealously looks on the distribution of offical funds. Eastern Germany ages very fast because the young generation moves to West Germany (or other European countries) and only the pensioners, welfare receipients and immobile ones stays. That's a mixture that is going to explode one day and therefore many West Germans would like to build a wall again, to protect against these "losers". Let's see if Mrs. Merkel brings the change but I doubt it so far because at the moment she is more focussed on George W. Bush (he visits her electoral district in June) and less uniting the country. As long as this doesn't happen, money always be the only topic between the parts because as long as we don't succeed in building up a social and economical structure in the East they will depend on West Germany. See it took me more than 1.5 hrs to write this and that's were the emotions just start to rise. Jan 04:05, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

Wow! See I had no idea that West Berlin wasn't even a part of Germany! I always believed that West Berlin was a part of West Germany, but governed by the Americans, Brits, and French. So if you lived in West Berlin you weren't allowed to vote for the West German Kanzler?

West German had a couple of "representatives" in the West German parliament, officially it was called the West German parliament including the delegation from West Berlin.

Speaking of Merkel I'm completely surprised that she won the election, especially because when I lived in Munich she would say something to upset one group of voters. I'm not fond of Schroeder either. Hopefully, she will be able to actually unite Germany socially not just geopolitically. I'm weary of this too. Seems to me politicans tell us one thing and as soon as they're in office they really don't push for the reforms they initall fought for. The only exception of this that I've seen is Viktor Yuschenko in Ukraine, unfortunately the pro-Russian forces have gained power in the parliament and his allies are now too greedy to help him make the significant changes needed to help impliment the major reforms. - Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 03:31, 22 May 2006 (EDT)

It was more a surprise that Merkel didn't do much better in the election. Schroeder was very polarising and most projections were much more negative for him. I guess she was seen as the new hope but at the moment it is not really clear how she socially wants to develop Germany. Let's see... Jan 13:23, 27 May 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Ross

Hello! Please take a look at Wikitravel:Article naming conventions and Wikitravel:Disambiguation. I can go ahead and fix the Ross issue if you'd like, or feel free to plunge forward and make the change yourself. Let me know if you have any more questions! Majnoona 11:13, 3 July 2006 (EDT)

I made some updates to the disambiguation of Ross. It's not very obvious from the policies, but US cities usually use the state as the disambiguator, such as San Jose (California). I've updated the two Ross's in the US to use California and North Dakota for disambiguation and updated the links to those pages.

And thanks for updating the COTW - guess we all kind of forgot, but I suppose it's appropriate to have Washington D.C. appear on the 4th. -- Ryan 04:39, 4 July 2006 (EDT)

I had problems to bring the result for Budapest in the pcotw? Could you do the statistics and let me know how to do it.. Although the banner on the DC side is not 100% correct, what i did wrong? Jan 04:42, 04 July 2006

[edit] COTW

Hi, Jan! I read your comment on User talk:Sapphire about my edit of Wikitravel:Collaboration of the week and I thought I'd respond.

I haven't done a lot of CotW work before. I originally had put Cambridge and Odense in the "Unscheduled" section, but then I re-read the Wikitravel:Collaboration of the week#Nominating section, which said this:

If an article meets the criteria above, add it to the "Upcoming" queue. There is no need for a discussion to select an article just for a week. Displace another article only if your nominee has to get into shape for something that can't wait. In that case, move everything in the queue down by one place. If it does not meet the other two criteria, feel free to simply replace the article.

Cambridge (Massachusetts) is the site of the upcoming Wikimania 2006 conference (Aug 4-6). Odense is the site of Wikisym 2006 (Aug 23-26), the official wiki conference of the ACM. I thought it would be cool if people at those conferences could use Open Content wiki guidebooks for their trips. Conferences aren't "can't wait" items like, I dunno, broken legs or women having a baby, but getting the guides into shape in November or December won't be as useful.

If you think that those two articles should be later in the queue, or just put back in the "unscheduled" pile, please plunge forward and move them, or if you don't feel comfortable with that, let me know and I'll move them myself. Actually, if you think that, just remove them -- they're not really important to work on specifically if they're not done in time for the conferences. --Evan 22:32, 12 July 2006 (EDT)

Hi Evan! Thanks for your comment, I appreciate it. You gave good reasons for fast tracking the two destinations but I was a bit surprised to see this destination in the line up. Usually I (and the others) follow a chronically line up of the nominations. Jumping the queue is seen normally quite rude to me.

I think if you would like to make Cambridge and Odense a "show piece" to present the core strengh of Wikitravel we might use a different approach. In the Wikitravel_talk:Collaboration_of_the_week#Suggestion:_Article_Improvment_Drive user Worldtraveller suggested to bring up an Article Improvement Drive for special interest articles or create a site like World Cup 2006 for Wikimedia conferences. This will have a much better attention because destinations like Odense are not really touristic destinations... but others will share your interest in that conferences and contribute. This might even be better because the other guys participating in that conference can drop their knowledge. With Cotw it's gone after a week and like Dili few addons will be done. I will let your destinations stay in the line up but maybe you nevertheless bring up a special page. Jan 03:09, 13 July 2006 (EDT)

[edit] COTW

Since the COTW is now also on the main page it was easier to just have one template with the COTW on it that would appear in all places need - so we now have Template:Current COTW. I updated the steps to change the COTW that were listed on Wikitravel_talk:Collaboration_of_the_week#Volunteers_needed_to_update. Let me know if you have any questions. -- Ryan 03:22, 15 August 2006 (EDT)

Thanks Ryan, I was updating/changing the cotw in the last 5 weeks and didn't noticed that you installed the new template. From next week on I know how and keep doing it. ---Jan

The main page layout was updated earlier today, and I was worried that since the COTW appeared there AND on the project page that people might forget to update the COTW in one of the two places. I guess in trying to make things easier by adding a new template I actually made them harder - sorry! And thanks for updating the COTW in recent weeks, it is much appreciated! -- Ryan 03:57, 15 August 2006 (EDT)

If you ever have trouble refreshing the Project page all you should have to do is follow this link- http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Wikitravel:Project&action=purge This link clears the cache. Otherwise you may have to go to the template's page, click history, in the address bar replace "history" with "purge". That should take care of everything, however, should both of those solutions fail... run like hell because the world is ending. -- Sapphire 14:43, 15 September 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Barnstar

In appreciation of your exceptional work and dedication to keeping the Collaboration of the week project going, I hereby award you the Barnstar. Thank you for your organizational effort! --Evan 11:49, 10 October 2006 (EDT)

Thank you for the barnstar. I will try to keep the work running even if the year end rally at my office started a bit earlier. Jc8136 16:39, 18 October 2006 (EDT)