One of the oddest “war-torn country has better technology than we do in Canada” moments of our trip was when we checked into the thoroughly modern Hotel Ana in Gospić and found a television with over 300 channels on it.

Being western-o-centric as I am, I assumed this would necessarily include the U.S. networks, the U.S. cable channels, and perhaps some of the BBC and other English-language networks.

I was wrong.

There was CNN International. And BBC World. And the international service of an Egyptian network. And that was it for English language television.

Everything else — the balance of the 300-odd channels — was in Croatian, Italian, German, French, Arabic, Russian, or one of untold other languages. There was incredible variety, and with the exception of a couple of subtitled episodes of Mad About You, it was all original non-U.S. television.

Now of course you can only watch so much television in Arabic, as a non-Arabic speaker, before you get overwhelmed by a lack of ability to understand. So I can’t say as though we watched a lot of television that night (although we did get sucked into watching the Italian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire).

But I did come to understand just how much my view of television is biased towards thinking of it as an American invention with primarily American content. Something that is only reinforced by our short-sighted Canadian policy of forcing Canadians to only watch Canadian television (or American television with a Canadian veneer). By working to buttress our own culture against the elephant of America, we have, perhaps inadvertently, filtered out the rest of the world too.

On this note: I swear that I came across an ad, perhaps in Ljubljana, for a paperback-sized device that allowed one to receive digital television, anywhere in the world, over broadband. But I’ve had no luck in finding references to such a device now that I’m home. If anyone knows what I saw, I’d welcome a pointer.

I’ve posted the first round of photos from our trip to Europe earlier in the month: Ljubljana and Zagreb. More soon.

Note that these are mostly just “raw” photos, not colour-corrected, cropped, or culled.

If you use Firefox on a Mac, and use the Command + ~ key sequence to cycle through brower windows, you’ll know that since the beginning there has been an invisible window that intrudes in the sequence. This was due to a known bug in Firefox, and you could see evidence of it more obviously if you pressed F9 to activate the OS X “Exposé” feature: the small invisible window would become visible.

I’m happy to report that in the latest nightly builds of Firefox for the Mac, this bug has been fixed:

Now all I have to do is unlearn the skill of ignoring the newly-missing phantom window.

Before our recent trip to Croatia, the last time my Dad and I had travelled alone together had been in 1980, when we took a bus trip around the continental United States together. I was 14 at the time, just on the cusp of teenage rebellion. That was a good trip; a sort of last hurrah before the need to differentiate kicked in and necessarily drove a wedge between us for a while.

I think Dad and I went into this recent trip wondering what it would be like to travel with each other, now that we are both (at least in name) adults. Travelling is hard, and travelling with other people is harder because happinesses and stresses aren’t always in sync.

I’m happy to report that this trip exceeded my expectations. Once we got going in ernest, it was a true joy travelling with Dad; I think we both agree that the trip would have been much poorer without the other, and we found that our skills and tendencies were, by and large, complementary rather than competitive. There were several times on the trip that I was struck with the notion that there was no place I’d rather be, and no person I’d rather be there with, at that moment.

Far too often, after we leave our parents’ homes and strike out on our own, our experiences with them are limited to a Thanksgiving here and a Christmas there. We come together in times of celebration, like weddings, and times of sadness, like funerals. But our experience of each other as day-to-day people is limited.

I consider it a great gift that Dad and I were able to head out on our own for two weeks and see a bit of the world together, and learn more about who we’ve become. Not only did I learn a lot about his strengths — he is fearless, more social than I ever imagined, always game for adventure, and cares a lot about people — but I also came to realize, again, that a lot of the ways that I am — good and bad both — are echoes of who he is.

If you have the chance to travel with a parent, take it. You will come back, if nothing else, knowing a lot more about each other.

Thanks, Dad, for a good trip.

Almost every travel book you read, especially those of the “traveler” rather than “tourist” bent, will have a section on packing. And the collective message of those sections is “pack light.”

Chapter 4 of Rick Steeve’s Europe Through the Back Door is titled, for example, “Pack Light Pack Light Pack Light” and begins:

The importance of packing light cannot be overemphasized, but, for your own good, I’ll try. You’ll never meet a traveler who, after five trips, brags “Every year I pack heavier.” The measure of a good traveler is how light she travels. You can’t travel heavy, happy and cheap. Pick two.

As detailed in this space before, this was my year to experiment with “Extreme Packing” — that is, packing light, packing light, packing light.

And after three trips — San Francisco in the spring, Boston in the summer, and Europe in the fall — I am ever more the “pack light” zealot.

In my kit for the 10-day European trip were:

• Two changes of clothes (two shirts, two pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear). Plus the set of clothes on my back.
• One pair of North Face Journey Pants. Light, warm, and impervious to dirt. Zipped pocket on front.
• One REI-brand Polarfleece jacket with zip-pockets.
• One black T-shirt, one pair of light pyjama bottoms.
• Toothbrush, toothpaste, electric shaver, small bottle of shampoo, small travel deodorant. All stored in Ziploc bag.
• iPod, earphones and charger.
• Cell phone and charger.
• Canon PowerShot S100 digital camera and charger.
• European travel plug (shaver, iPod and cell phone were all dual-voltage, so only needed a plug converter).
• One Moleskin notebook, two ballpoint pens.
• Printout of travel plans on one sheet of paper.
• Rough Guide to Croatia and Paul Theroux paperback.
• Neck wallet for passport, credit cards, plane tickets, etc.

I packed all of this in Kelty Redwing 2500 backpack.

If I was packing again, I would have left the Rough Guide (it was heavy, and mostly useless because it didn’t cover the areas of Croatia we were visting at all) and the paperback (never opened it). I might also leave the iPod at home, although it was nice to have a couple of times on long air or train travel legs.

Otherwise, I had what felt like the perfect amount of stuff on my back.

Dad and I washed out our clothes in hotel sinks three times: I had lightweight clothing that always dried overnight (indeed my cheap Zellers socks dried better than Dad’s high-tech Tilley travel socks). I did end up wearing the same shirt a couple of times, which didn’t seem to be a problem (for me, or for others).

Truth be told, I can’t imagine what else I would bring with me. And watching my fellow travelers check their giant rolling suitcases in at the airport, both Dad and I wondered what on earth they could be carrying in them: television sets? hair dryers? curling irons? Unless you’re moving to India for six months, or need to dress in formal business attire, I can’t see how filling up more than the roughly 2000 cubic inches that I did will make your trip any better.

The advantages of packing light are numerous:

• You can carry your bag right on the plane and train with you: no lost luggage, no wait at the airport (you clear customs first).
• You don’t have to worry about finding a place to store luggage when you arrive early or leave late from a city (I did end up storing my pack several times, because Dad stored his luggage, but I would have been comfortable with it on my back).
• Everything is with you, all the time. You can always brush your teeth, jot down some notes, make a phone call, change a shirt, without worrying whether you have the right suitcase with you at the time.
• Trip psychology is improved: when you’re packing light, you feel more mobile, more nimble, more flexible, more spontaneous.

When Catherine and Oliver and I went to Spain last year, we packed light. But there’s only so much you can pare down when you travel with a young child: car seat, strollers, backup diaper and outfit supply, etc. make for quite a pile of stuff to drag around. We had it down to an art (car seat on Catherine’s back, Oliver in stroller, small pack in back of stroller, large pack on my back, day pack in my hands), and we were pretty nimble, all things considered. But we still felt like a small army moving around. Next time we go, Oliver will be toilet trained (touch wood) and we might even be able to leave the car seat and stoller behind. Three small packs, and we’ll be ready to fly.

The problem with trying to pack light is that what “light” works out to in the pleasure of your bedroom is drastically different than what “light” will feel like out on the moors. Slinging a backpack on and walking around the house is not a reasonable test for determining whether there’s too much in the pack or not. Better to take a 2 mile hike. Or a 5 mile hike. In the sun.

The best trick I’ve found is to pack so that your backpack seems absurdly empty — say half to 2/3 empty in the large main compartment. If you can get things down that light, then the inevitable expansion that will occur — dirty clothes larger than clean, neat clothes, souvenirs gathers en route, etc. — will have lots of room to grow into.

The other technique is to pack what you think you need, then remove half of it. If you get things down to where you’re thinking “there’s no way in hell I can travel with that little” then you’re getting close.

When talking about Extreme Packing in San Francisco this spring, Bart, one of “the Mozilla guys,” claimed to have travelled to Belgium with only a toothbrush and a paperback book. I’m not there yet, but at least I have something to aspire to.

Need inspiration? Here’s a photo of Kevin Kelly’s backpack, about which he says “In the 1970s my possessions fit into this backpack and included a change of clothes, a toothbrush, mosquito netting and 300 rolls of film.”

Pack on.

Curiouser and curiouser. Hallowe’en is back to Sunday in Charlottetown.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are many parallel universes, all running at the same time, in difference languages.

By virtue of having been born on U.S. soil, I have the odd privilege of being able to cast a ballot in this fall’s U.S general election in the 28th Congressional District, Monroe County, New York.

The procedure for obtaining a ballot is fairly straightforward: about a month ago I sent in a Federal Post Card Application to the Board of Elections. All I needed, in addition to my personal information, was my last address in the U.S.

While I was away in Croatia, my ballot arrived in the mail:

The ballot is a 8-3/4” by 11” piece of white paper (which makes it not a standard letter-sized piece of paper by 1/4”). It says, in the corner, “Copyright (c) 2004 Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment Inc.” and my instructions are to mark the circles beside my candidates of choice in blue or black pen or pencil. I assume, from the look and layout, that my ballot will be optically scanned.

For President, I have the choice of Bush/Cheney (Republican and Conservative), Kerry/Edwards (Democratic and Working Families), Nader/Camejo (Independence, Peace and Justice), Calero/Hawkins (Socialist Workers) or Badnarik/Campagna (Libertarian). I’m most intrigued by Calero/Hawkins, mostly because Calero is ineligible to be President (he was born in Nicaragua and is a convicted felon) as is Hawkins (she’s only 24 years old; you need to be 35). This intrigue doesn’t mean I’ll vote for them, though.

For United States Senator, I have the choice of Howard Mills (Republican), Charles Schumer (Democratic, Independence and Working Families), Marilyn O’Grady (Conservative), Abe Hirschfeld (Builders), Martin Koppel (Socialist Workers), Donald Silberger (Libertarian) and David McReynolds (Green).

And for Representative in Congress for the 28th District, I can choose between Michael Laba (Republican and Conservative), Louise Slaughter (Democratic and Working Families), Francina Cartonia (Independence).

It’s interesting that several candidates are representing more than one party; Kerry/Edwards, for example, are endorsed by the Working Families Party, a New York-based party that describes itself as follows:

The Working Families Party was launched in June 1998 by a coalition of community organizations, unions, and individuals. We saw the need and the opportunity for a political party that would tell the truth about what is going on in our society. And we believe our initial hunch has paid off, with hundreds of thousands of working people, seniors and the unemployed agreeing with our emphasis on living wage jobs, education, affordable housing, health care, and campaign finance reform.

I’ve made up my mind on the Presidential race; I’m still up in the air about Senator and Representative.

Ljubljana is a beautiful city, and our 24 hours there two weeks ago was too short. One of the most compelling aspects of the city is the degree to which its residents move about by bicycle: to accommodate this, there are bicycle lanes on almost every street downtown, and special bicycle stoplights at each intersection.

And the city makes it easy for travelers to join in: just off the main square is a cycle rental stand. Show a piece of ID, and leave a 1000 tolar (about $6) deposit, and you can take out a bicycle of your own. The first two hours of the rental are free, and after that it’s 100 tolars (about 65 cents) an hour.

Within easy cycling of the downtown is Tivoli Park, which is also laced with cycle trails. That’s a picture of me on my rental bike in the park.

This is something Charlottetown should consider: giving tourists easy access to bicycles in downtown Charlottetown (and upgrading the road infrastructure to accommodate them) would help mitigate against our lack of public transit, and would broaden the geographic area tourists without cars could cover.

My reading of the God situation is not particularly well-informed. But it would seem to me that, although God is all around everywhere all the time, on Sundays, given the strong focused prayer of hundreds of thousands of believers all around the world, he would be particularly close to the fore, and particularly attuned to the needs of his flock.

The problem identified by those who would seek to move Hallowe’en from Sunday seems to be the comingling of the sacred with the profane, or, in the minds of the most extreme believers, the veneration of evil spirits on a sacred day. Would it not be, however, that a Sunday would be the best time to have Hallowe’en, what with God extra-especially present and ready to do battle with evil at the drop of a hat?