Albania is not the easiest country to travel through, but perhaps that is part of its appeal. Beyond the erratic driving and uneven infrastructure are dramatic mountains, clear seas, excellent food, surprisingly good wine and, above all, remarkable warmth. We went for a wedding and came home with a much broader affection for the country itself.
Category: Lifestyle
Travel Broadens the Mind. Getting Home Tests It.
A magnificent wedding in Albania was followed by a journey home seemingly designed to test patience, infrastructure, border control, traffic planning and basic faith in humanity. From Tirana queue warfare to Zürich bureaucracy, cancelled Ubers and supermarket inspections, the day became an escalating comedy of inconvenience, until someone else’s travel disaster made mine look almost civilised.
Hi-Fi Has Put the Screen in the Wrong Place
Touchscreens have become the fashionable face of modern hi-fi, yet most sit metres away where nobody can comfortably read or use them. Smartphones solve part of the problem but remain personal devices. A better answer is a shared, dedicated remote: tactile controls for everyday functions, a screen for browsing, and access anyone in the room can use.
Zurich’s Quiet War on the Car
Zurich’s Rämistrasse and Universitätstrasse have become a lesson in how to discourage cars without formally banning them. Poorly coordinated lights, repeated zebra crossings, permanent stop-and-go traffic and cyclists treating tram tracks as an overtaking lane turn a major route into a daily exercise in frustration, all while motorists face the strictest enforcement.
Dear Google, Make It Turn Before You Make It Glow
Google’s next Pixel may arrive with more artificial intelligence, more clever tricks and perhaps even Pixel Glow. Wonderful. Meanwhile, the phone still struggles with the primitive task of rotating its screen when turned. After years of Pixels, stuck apps, failed auto-rotation and dubious water resistance, the basics remain embarrassingly unfinished.
Euro 2028 may be the Tournament that Saves Football’s Soul
The 2026 World Cup already feels like a tournament drowning in bureaucracy, border politics and institutional cowardice. Euro 2028 could be the antidote: close, reachable, fan-centred and rooted in football cultures that still understand the game as a public ritual, not a corporate asset. If UEFA keeps its promises, the tournament may remind Europe that football belongs to supporters before it belongs to executives, sponsors or airport officials. Quite rightly.
How Premium Manufacturers can Survive the Age of Disposable Software
Modern cars are no longer merely machines. They are software platforms with wheels, batteries, cameras, processors and update cycles. That changes the economics of premium ownership. If a car’s digital core becomes obsolete long before its body, engine or chassis, permanence becomes theatre. The premium car of the future must therefore be designed not only to endure, but to be upgraded.
The unfair Beauty of Summer in Zurich
In Switzerland, spring does not gently become summer. It switches. Suddenly the lake is no longer scenery, the Limmat becomes part of the day, and Zurich turns into something almost unfair: international yet intimate, efficient yet relaxed, urban yet surrounded by water, hills and colour. In early summer, beauty is not a destination here. It becomes part of ordinary life.
The Annual Green Bay Super Bowl Prophecy
Every spring, the NFL performs its little theatre of hope, and I perform my part with great dignity and no measurable restraint. The Green Bay Packers draft someone promising, sign someone intriguing, or merely produce a training-camp clip of mild beauty, and I enter the WhatsApp group with the only reasonable conclusion: Super Bowl. It is not delusion. The trophy is named after Vince Lombardi. We are simply asking for the family silver to be returned.
Tesla FSD Supervised and the Dinosaur thinking around it
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Supervised is still dismissed as “just driver assistance” by many critics. But that misses the point entirely. While others debate labels, Tesla is solving the far harder problem: real-world driving across complex environments, powered by a software-first approach that improves at relentless speed. This is not about Level 3 badges or sensor checklists. It is about who is building the smarter, scalable, and ultimately more relevant model for the future of mobility.
alexreusch 