Another year comes to an end, and what an end. Copenhagen came down in utter failure, but who cares, as long as we can go to the cinema and enjoy the escapist visions of Avatar and 2012. I look back at the year an try to remember. The beginning of the year marked with hope. No, not just hope… it was HOPE, the HOPE of the Obamania. But as the OED tells us, mania is nothing more than a mental illness marked by periods of great excitement, euphoria and delusions. And so it seems with great hope we welcomed a new era which turned out to be nothing more than the presidency of a lame duck. Ma3lesh, as the Arabs say. Bukra insha’allah. Tomorrow maybe. Or to quote Samuel Beckett:

“All of old.
Nothing else ever.
Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.”

But let me not grieve the politics, which as I have been told is a hobby and luxury of the upper middle-class. How was my year? Since I have been extremely lazy when it comes to writing blog posts, I probably need to catch up now. I started the year in Switzerland, then visited Bulgaria, went back to Oxford, went to Bergen in Norway for my research, back to Oxford and then during my break to see my brother in Thailand and travelled with him to Cambodia. In the following four months I was twice in Egypt, three times in Germany, once in Durham and usually in Oxford. Then I went to Switzerland, Bergen, Oxford, Egypt and finally arrived in the Sudan. Wow. One year, ten countries and twenty-seven flights later I sit here in Sudan complaining about Copenhagen. So much about the duplicity of Europeans.

But it is not only a year coming to an end, but even a whole decade – which in English I am told is called the “Noughties”. Ten years ago I finished high school and then in the beginning of this decade I left to go backpacking in Africa. Eventually I started to study in the end of 2000, which brought me to Zurich, where I stayed with interruptions until 2007. Hey, what a decade, especially regarding technology. In February or March 2000 I was here in Khartoum and one of the only places to get internet was the defunct Goethe institute, at the time known as German Sudanese friendship centre. Now I surf the internet with an mDSL connection which allows me to watch Youtube and live TV. Basically every major website or service I use on a regular basis was created in the last 10 years; such as Wikipedia, Skype, Facebook and YouTube – with Amazon and Google being the only major exceptions. In the same period many technologies became popular, be it mobile phones, smart phones, iPods and iPhones, GPS, RSS, Blogs, IPTV, etc.

Also politically it was a tumultuous period, with September 11th, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the global economic crisis just to name a few of the disasters. But on the other hand 12 new countries joined the European Union and the Euro was adopted as currency – truly interesting times. The shocking realisation of course is, that I have spent all of that decade in university in some way – and of course I still am in university for a couple of years to come. But I guess this is a good thing. While the world economy is in shambles, one really gets to appreciate the tradition and stability of an institution like Oxford. What is the plan for the next decade? To travel to another 39 countries, live in at least 3 of them; to meet new people but even more importantly, to keep in touch with old friends all around the world; to finish my DPhil I guess, and to figure out what I could do next; to go sky diving once and to eat Fugu in Japan and chocolate in São Tomé and Príncipe.

I look forward to seeing as many as possible of you in 2010, especially on my birthday. It’s going to be a big one: 20. 10. 2010.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

Moritz

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PS: What better way to end this, than with three pictures of me; in 2002, 2005 and 2009… yes it was a truly hairy decade.