I spent last week in Athens, Greece. It was my first time to the country. I didn't have time to make it to the islands, but I did have time to meet many students, NGO leaders, and businesspeople in Athens. Some assorted impressions and lessons.

1. History. Seeing the stadium that hosted the first Olympic games; seeing the place where Socrates was forced to commit suicide; seeing where a stage play was first performed; learning about the numerous English words and images (like the logo/insignia of pharmacies) that have their origin in a Greek god or Greek word…Athens really is the birthplace of western civilization and western democracy. 

The Parthenon and related antiquities are well-kept outside, and an architectural wonder of the world, obviously. Inside, the new Acropolis museum shows off many other sculptures and art. Christopher Hitchen wrote a piece in Vanity Fair a couple years back (which I happened to read in the Best American Travel Writing of 2010 that I brought along on my trip) about the musuem. He covers the dispute over the British Museum holding various Greek art that ought to be in Athens. Hitchens thinks it's an outrage–though, to be fair, issues of national sovereignty over long-ago stolen art is a tricky one. Missing pieces notwithstanding, Hitchens raves about the new Acropolis museum. I generally don't like museums, but I'm with Hitchens on this one — the facility does a splendid job at showing off the millenia-old history of the country.

2. Athens beyond antiquities. Besides the Acropolis, there isn't a ton to do or see in Athens. There's plenty of traffic and pollution, meanwhile. While the Acropolis sitting up high is always a sight to behold from wherever you are in the city (especially at night when it's lit up), I wouldn't say the city built for Athena is especially stunning in the 21st century.

3. Motivated students. I wasn't dealing with a representative sample of the population, that's for sure, but the several hundred students who I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking to seemed driven to take control of their future, innovate, and overcome the massive economic challenges facing their country. With youth employment soaring (40% according to some numbers), the savvy students are aggressively trying to build a career without relying on the usual industries (e.g. government) or strategies. That's the good news.

4. Brain drain risk. But the potentially bad news is that these savvy students might not stay. I gained no great insight into the macroeconomic situation in Greece — and I didn't have much insight to begin with. But an observation I did have is around a long-term risk more significant than the country's debts: the possible population brain drain of the students mentioned in point #3. Many smart young people are thinking about leaving the country; they told me so themselves. There's a self-fulling dynamic here. If the smart people perceive there's no future for them in Greece, then they leave, and when the smart people leave, there really is no future for the country. It needs to find a way to keep them. 

The common approach elders take to keeping talented youth in a country is appealing to notions of civic duty and national pride. That's one approach. But a grittier entrepreneurial approach is to focus on the business opportunities that are the flip side of societal problems. If taxi drivers strike constantly, why not start Ubercab for the businesspeople of Athens? Maybe not a great business idea, but it's an example of emphasizing practical self-interest over high-minded ideals when urging the best and brightest to stay.

5. Labor strikes. There are strikes every day in Athens thanks to the severe government cuts that are part of the austerity measures. Garbage men were on strike–so garbage was piled high on every street corner. Public transit and taxi drivers went on strike–so nobody could get around. Archaeologists and museum security guards went on strike–so nobody could go to museums. Tax collectors and government officials went on strike–so nobody could use basic government services. Apparently, daily strikes have been going on for about two years, and are now a certain occurrence. There's a web site in Greek that each day shows who is striking and for how long–it's become a must-read in Athens. Everyone I spoke to about the strikes agreed that the protesters were against the austerity measures, but were not for any specific alternative approach.

6. U.S. Diplomats and local staff. Once again, I was super impressed with the quality of the U.S. diplomats (who helped host me in Athens). The foreign service officers and the local staff they hire are truly a cut above your average federal government employee. I was also honored to spend some time with the American Ambassador to Greece and participate in a reception at his residence. What a challenging and exciting post right now. Again, just impressive all around.

7. Building entrepreneurial communities. A question we were batting around at dinner one night was how certain places (like Athens) might become hotbeds of entrepreneurship. I've thought a lot about this question over the years, particularly when I wrote an article on how Boulder, CO became a start-up hub. One point I make in the article–it's really Brad Feld's point, as he is a thought leader on the topic–is the need for leadership from individuals within the community. Not government officials, but private citizens who step up and try to galvanize the community to support the entrepreneurial process.

But the leadership or entrepreneurial push can't be momentary in response to a crisis. It has to be enduring. In Boulder, Brad's been there for more than a decade, and it's only in the last couple years that the city has emerged on the national map as a viable place to do a company. Leadership is needed over a long period of time; as Brad says, it's a 20-year journey. Government programs are prone to lose patience with programs that don't produce immediate gain; start-ups rarely produce immediate gain no matter how you measure it. It's another reason why governments cannot provide the long-term leadership necessary to drive entrepreneurial activity. (I'm fascinated to watch for how long the Chilean government funds Start-Up Chile.) In any event, for a local entrepreneur to be a true leader in the entrepreneurial community, it does seem like s/he needs to commit to leading/organizing/rallying the troops for decades, not years.

8. Being abroad. I hadn't traveled outside the U.S. for more than a year. It was great to get back out there. Though I had to camp out in my hotel room for a majority of the time, being out and about for meals, walking through Munich and Frankfurt airports, seeing the International Herald Tribune on Athens newsstands–these little things were enough to trigger the high one gets from being in a new place. And it's an energy that endures even when you return home…

Steven Johnson, author extraordinaire, is moving from New York to the Bay Area (at least for a little while). Here's one of his reasons:

And then there's the passage of time. Another old friend — my oldest, in fact — wrote an email to me after I told him the news of our move. We've both been in New York for two decades, and we are both watching our kids growing up at lightning speed. "Change like this slows down time," he wrote. When you're in your routine, frequenting the same old haunts, time seems to accelerate — was it just four years ago that our youngest son was born? But all the complexities of moving — figuring out where to live, getting there, and then navigating all the new realities of the changed environment — means that the minutes and hours that once passed as a kind of background process, the rote memory of knowing your place, suddenly are thrust into your conscious awareness. You have to figure it out, and figuring things out makes you aware of the passing days and months more acutely. You get disoriented, or at least you have to think for a while before you can be properly oriented again.

So that is why we are moving: for the natural beauty, yes, and the climate, and the Bay Area tech scene, and the many friends out there we haven't seen enough of over the past twenty years. But more than anything, we're moving to slow down time.

I recently spent a long weekend in Las Vegas. The buffets were outstanding, the weather warm and pleasant, and the hotels stunning. (I hadn't been there in probably 10 years — a lot has changed.) But the main reason Las Vegas was a surprisingly relaxing city to spend time in is because it is a city that's authentically unauthentic.

When you visit New York City, you worry about whether you are being a tourist, about whether you are doing as the locals do. Same with visiting Paris, Rome, London. But in Las Vegas, everybody is a tourist. Anybody who's not a tourist works in the tourism/hospitality industry. There is no real thing. It's fake all the way to the bottom. The very idea of a sprawling, water guzzling city that sits in the middle of barren desert is too absurd to take seriously.

There was no sin for me in Sin City, but I still found it a nice place to spend a few days in the winter to overeat, have my photo taken in front of the Effiel Tower, walk the strip, and lie by the pool.

China is building 100 new airports by 2020. By the time that’s all done, 1.5 billion Chinese will live within 90 minutes of an airport.

That's from this review of the forthcoming book Aerotroplis: The Way We'll Live Next, which looks interesting.

The book's premise is that future cities will be built around airports as opposed to the other way around:

What rules in today’s globalized economy is accessibility and speed, and modern airports are its fastest connection points—the physical embodiment of our increasingly e-commerce-driven world. Yes, the vast bulk of trade still goes by sea, but already one-third of its value travels by air. Indeed, the value of air cargo has grown more than four times faster than global trade over the past several decades.

And more:

“Individual companies don’t compete. Supply chains compete. Networks and systems compete.” Soon to join that global competition are planned mega-airports/cities right out of the Kasarda playbook: the “aerotropolis emirates” of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, where ambitious monarchs are “playing SimCity for real”; and South Korea’s stunning New Songdo City, a metropolis built around an airport built on a man-made island—a “pocket Manhattan” designed to rival Hong Kong for the cargo connectivity to mainland China that it offers the world economy.

The co-author is Greg Lindsay, who writes about "the intersection of transportation, urbanization, and globalization." For one article he wrote, Lindsay spent three continuous weeks in airplanes or airports.

As someone who has spent too much time looking up UPS and FedEx cargo routes and international commerical flight routes, and spent too much time perusing the message boards of flyertalk.com to read about airport lounges, mileage programs, and the business prospects of the new SFO-ZRH non-stop — I am looking forward to this book!

(On a related note, I reccomend this USA Today Twitter feed for the latest airline industry news.)

Last year I began writing a novel as part of NanoWrimo. The opening scene: a washed up management consultant walks into LAX and sits crosslegged in front of the international departure board, letting his eyes rest on each exotic destination.

Alain de Botton, in an interview on LATimes.com, talks about how airport departure boards light up our imagnations:

Airport departure boards help to put us in touch with the idea of alternatives. They make us think that right now, somewhere on the other side of the globe, very different things are happening. They do that very basic task of the places of travel: jolt us into remembering that the world is stranger, more exciting, more various than we imagine it when we are in familiar surroundings, and in danger of boredom and routine.

Next time you're in an airport, stop at the departure board and take a minute to contemplate the possibilities. It's my favorite thing to do in airports.

Jay Kirk's good travel essay on Rwanda last year in GQ captured one hard-to-describe benefit of traveling:

…There is no other place on earth where you can visit mountain gorillas one day, discover the true cosmic dimensions of the banana the next, feel haunted and overwhelmed and harrowed to your very brink, and for the same price of admission, feel more awake than you have ever felt.

Maybe it’s the cold bucket of history over the head. Maybe it’s the collective effort of everyone around you to stay conscious, the shocked look of so many people who are still just waking up from the worst nightmare of their lives to realize that, yes, it was all for real. And while it’s true that you may question whether or not you were fully awake before you got here, you will also probably spend an inordinate amount of time trying to lull yourself back to sleep, wherever you can find alcohol, because part of you will realize that being awake, really awake—well, it’s just not in your nature. That is, if you’re like me and you hail from the land of the Xbox, and you’ve become accustomed to—even begun to desire—the substitution of the virtual for the real, you probably prefer the dream to the directly experienced. But no matter how stuck you are in your digital simulator, however “experientially avoidant” you may be (as I was recently diagnosed by a cognitive-behavioral therapist), you will not remain immune to this odd sensation of waking up in Rwanda to discover, however disconcertingly at first, that not only do you have hair growing out of your arms, but your body also appears to possess these extra dimensions you had not taken into account of late. That you have been going around for some time a mere half-awake version of yourself. Just as you now realize that all along you’ve been eating these things that bear only a half-awake resemblance to a banana. And this is because, in Rwanda, a banana possesses at least seven dimensions, whereas in America, like most everything else, you get two at best.

The reason why travel is exhausting is because hyperawareness of surroundings and self is exhausting — and that's the mode you fall into when traversing foreign lands.

I loved the opening of the article:

On our seventh day in Rwanda…on yet another devastated dirt road winding through yet another breathtaking landscape, Darren informed us that the hair on his arms appeared to be growing much more quickly than usual. Not an alarming rate, but still, more growth than he'd ever noticed back in Los Angeles.

He put an arm between the front seats of the Land Rover so we could see for ourselves. Ernest and I agreed: His arms looked ape-y. One expected to be changed by travel; one looked for little symptoms in oneself, signs of alteration, but did this count as a valid transformation?

Ernest had never heard of such a thing. Once, he’d had a client who’d come all the way from Australia just to punch a mountain gorilla in the face, but nothing quite like this.

I recently spent 1.5 weeks in Indonesia. I traveled all over the country (Jakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, Batam, though not Bali) and met some 2,500 students, businesspeople, journalists, and academics. In addition to sharing some of my own views and experiences with local audiences, I learned quite a bit about the country and its people. Below are my key lessons and impressions.

1. Size and scale. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in world (220 million), an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands. It is the third largest democracy in the world behind India and the United States.

2. A moderate Muslim country. It is home to the largest Muslim population in the world (88% of 220 million). The government is secular and the Islam that is practiced is moderate. State law rules, not Islamic law. As just one small but telling example, there are many Muslim women who do not wear headscarves (though the majority do) and I did not see many men wearing a peci.  Religious freedom flourishes: look at Hindu-dominated Bali, the Christian population, and the various interfaith dialogues and groups. I remember noticing two women sitting next to each other in the audience once: one wore a headscarf, the other had a Christian cross draped around her neck. Contrast this to Saudi Arabia. There, women must always wear full body hijabs (covering head to toe with small slits for the eyes); if you’re seen with a person of the opposite sex in public you can be arrested; if you are caught carrying a Bible (or any other non-Muslim religious item) it’s grounds for punishment. So it’s easy to see why the United States, among other nations, holds up Indonesia as a shining beacon of tolerance and diversity in the Muslim world.

3. Optimism of the People. I surveyed many folks and the vast majority ID’d as optimistic. They think Indonesia will be a center of gravity in the future. They believe tomorrow will be better than today. The 21st century is the century of Asia.

4. Heat and Humidity. It’s impossible to walk outside for more than a few minutes without sweating your balls off. I love air conditioning, but I would not want my existence to be defined by it. Plus, humidity is the worst. In Arizona, when I walk outside it takes some time for the oven to heat my body to the point of sweating. In humid climates, when I walk outside I begin sweating almost instantly. While I’m undoubtedly more sensitive to it than locals who grew up there, I’m not that much different: Indonesian social life, I was told, is concentrated in fancy malls, which are safe, full-service, and most of all, air conditioned!

5. Hospitality, Formality, Status. Per my post on being introduced three times, there is a broader culture of hospitality that’s impressive and at times annoying.

6. Big Cities in Developing Countries. A general rule of thumb for poor countries is that the big capital cities are sprawling chaotic messes with traffic, pollution, and overpopulation, while the countryside tends to be calm and more interesting culturally. In Indonesia this is totally true. Jakarta is not very livable. I asked probably 10 people who live(d) in Jakarta whether they liked it, and none said yes. The unpredictable traffic. The humidity. The relative danger. Surabaya, the second largest city in the country, seemed far more livable — still a big city with all the amenities (4 million people) but no traffic and plenty of open space.

7. Politics and Economy. The current president was elected with overwhelming support, despite the huge amounts of corruption that plagues the government. Democracy’s recent introduction to the country seems to have more or less taken hold, though there are still aspects of democracy beyond voting that seem fragile. Discussion of internet censorship by the government is, for example, a topic of discussion, and I encountered some odd web site failures during my time there. The Indonesian economy is the big gorilla of the region. It runs mostly on light manufacturing. Rice is big here, and mostly sold within the country. Apparently this large internal market insulated the country a bit from the global financial crisis. Several American friends do furniture manufacturing in Surabaya; the chairs and TV stands you buy at Crate & Barrel or Cost Plus were probably made in Indonesia. Side point of interest: Chile had the “Chicago Boys,” Indonesia had the “Berkeley Mafia” — economists who studied there and brought back liberal economic reform.

8. Suharto Regime. You cannot understand politics in Indonesia without first realizing that the 65-year Suharto dictatorship ended only 11 years ago. Here is more on Suharto. It makes you appreciate Indonesia’s political progress.

9. Ramadan. My visit coincided with the holy month of Ramadan, a time when Muslims fast from sunup to sundown. In many places in the Middle East, I’m told all restaurants would be closed during the day. In Indonesia, many restaurants remained open, another sign of its religious diversity. It surprised me to see that when my Muslim hosts broke the fast at sundown after 9-10 hours of no food or drink they did so with a small piece of bread and drink, and then gradually amped up to real food. I’ve never fasted; in fact, I’ve never gone more than a few hours without food or drink. Especially given the heat, I was amazed at the restraint and discipline shown by my Muslim hosts.

10. Terrorism. Last year, terrorists released bombs in the Mariott hotel in Jakarta. The more famous 2002 bombing in Bali killed more than 200 people. The size and remoteness of certain parts of the country make it seem likely that radical groups will have the space to band together for some time to come. Nevertheless, the Indonesian government has been effective at capturing radical Islamist terrorist leaders. Just the other week a key radical cleric was arrested for having helped organized terrorist training camps.

I didn’t feel particularly unsafe anywhere in Indonesia. Note, at the big hotels, every time you enter you have to submit to a metal detector and car-search. But like in so many places, if you’re white, you can walk right through and nobody searches you or scans for metal. When will the terrorists figure out that being / appearing white is the way to evade all security in third world countries?

11. Reading. I took three inter-country flights and observed very few people reading either on the planes or in the airport. I tend to use this as a litmus test….for something.

12. Asian Neighbors and Immigrants. They don’t like the Malaysian people. I heard stories about Malaysia’s actively racist government policies that punish non-Malays. Not sure how accurate it is, but the Indonesians I spoke to see themselves as a more enlightened society. On the immigration front, Chinese Indonesians have been there for a long time and though they represent only 1% of the population they are power brokers in business. The nice business hotels in the country are full of Chinese Indonesian businesspeople.

13. Inexpensive. It’s a super cheap country across the board. India is dirt cheap but expensive as far as hotels go. Indonesia is cheap in everything. True 5 star hotels for US $100 night.

14. Israel. At one event the host at the school announced that (paragraphed) “We are to love all people, Jews, Christians, Hindus, everybody.” I was told that it was most unusual to specifically mention, let alone start with, Jews. The anti-Israel sentiment in Indonesia is just political. People don’t think Israelis should have set up a new state in Palestinian territory, and so they resent the state, the people, and of course the country that’s backed Israel since the beginning: America. Before Obama (who spent time in Indonesia growing up), most Indonesians had an unfavorable view of the U.S., mostly because of Israel, I was told.

15. Entrepreneurial Culture.  I did meet many very energetic and talented young entrepreneurs, and there is a big push within the country to seriously amplify the focus on entrepreneurship. The limiting factor, as it is almost everywhere, is culture. Not a huge acceptance of risk-taking or failure, overbearing parents, etc etc. Same old story. BTW, on the broader business culture, I found it cool that a man can wear either a suit and tie for a formal occasion, or a local batik — a brightly colored shirt that looks like a Hawaiian short sleeves shirt. Both are considered equally formal.

Bottom Line: Indonesia is a diverse country of rising geo-political interest with very kind people. For these reasons it’s worth a visit. The weather is a deal breaker for me in terms of longer stays, and that goes for all ultra-humid tropical climates.

(Me on the iconic mosaic promenade next to Copacabana beach on the one rainy day)

I recently spent 10 terrific days in Rio de Janiero and Paraty, Brazil.

It was more vacation than fact-finding so I skipped Sao Paulo and the normal set of meetings I would have arranged to discuss the politics and economics of the place. My impressions, then, are less intellectual and more experiential.

1. City / Beach. The beaches of Rio are stunning. But there are stunning beaches all over the world. Rio is different because a big, bustling city juts up right against the beach. As you lie on white sand, in front of you is ocean, islands, and green trees. Behind you are tall buildings, and hills packed with small homes. There is a certain allure to the remote island beach. But those places usually lack good infrastructure nearby. The Rio beaches are as beautiful as any I've seen, and there are plenty of bathrooms, food markets, showers, wi-fi, etc. nearby.

2. People. The Brazilian people were super energetic, diverse, friendly, and of course, very beautiful. I spent a good hour sitting on a beach chair on Copacabana beach, drinking a fresh coconut, and just watching all the people bustle around me. (And then several more hours reading books.) The racial diversity among beachgoers was striking. The commitment to string bikinis, even among 75 year-old 150-pounds overweight women, was impressive.

3. Safety. I've never traveled to a place where I had heard so many first-hand accounts of people robbed or mugged. Statistically, too, it's supposed to be bad: it is the top-ranked city in the world for "violent international deaths." This reputation probably explains why we saw so few Americans. I didn't feel unsafe at all, though. Granted, I stayed in the nicer neighborhoods and didn't wander around centro at night. But I felt more exposed in Buenos Aires than I did in Rio, and that includes comparing the airports and bus stations.

4. Paraty. This is a small colonial town in-between Rio and Sao Paulo. It is a lovely, sleepy place, with cobble stone streets downtown, beautiful ocean-front views, and rural dirt roads. Boat rides, horse riding, and plain old hiking all easily available.

5. Soccer. Soccer was everywhere. Truly, everywhere. Rich and poor, young and old. On beaches, on grass fields, on cement courts, on dirt paths. It makes sense that Brazil is a soccer power: when the best athletes in a country of 190 million people are funneled into one sport, they're bound to be good.

6. Favelas. We went on a tour of two Rio favelas, the famous shanty towns / slums erected on public land and run primarily by drug lords. There's much poverty. Some live underground and access the above-ground world via a maze of tunnels and ladders. Still, there is quite a functioning society in the favelas. Every store you could imagine. Banks. TVs. Etc. The main story doesn't seem to be jaw-dropping objective poverty (India is far worse) but rather the proximity of poverty to the wealth of Rio. The American School in Rio costs some $30k a year to attend and sits literally three minutes away from a favela. We were told on the tour that different drug cartels run different favelas but since they guarantee safety to the people (so long as they don't report any activity) the drug-run hoods are quite safe to live in. When police catch a kingpin from one cartel they will simply drop him off on the streets of another favela to ensure his swift death. Oh – and my ears may have deceived me, but I thought I heard a kid yell at us on the tour, "They don't even care about us."

7. Kites. Brazilian kids are obsessed with flying kites. Especially in Paraty. This was so memorable that it's worth its own point.

8. Patriotism. The people seemed extraordinarily patriotic. Many donned the national colors. Flags draped buildings and cars. Maybe this was simply leftover World Cup fever. But I felt something more. The Rio Olympics in 2016 may serve for Brazil a similar purpose as the Beijing 2008 games did for China: an announcement to the world that Brazil, pregnant with potential seemingly forever, has at last arrived on the global stage.