There is no truth to the rumor that the way my wife and I figured out the itinerary for our next vacation was that we consulted TripAdvisor’s recent survey to figure out which are the dirtiest cities in Europe. It is true however that both London (#1) and Athens (tied with Rome for #3) which we plan to visit are on that list. To make matter’s worse Athens, since being voted #3, is having a garbage strike.

According to World Hum:

If the survey had been done this week, however, Greece’s capital might have made first place. Garbage collectors have been on strike for days, as part of a nationwide union protest against government pension reforms.

The garbage hills are not quite mountain-sized yet, as they were last year when the city landfill was overflowing. But the rot is stinking up the early spring air and prompting breathless television reports declaring the streets “apocalyptic”, a la Naples. Striking workers are even pelting police with the garbage during demonstrations.

It sort of the ruins the mood when youre out for a $10 (and climbing) fancy coffee at an outdoor cafe.

Sadly, Athens didn’t make any good TripAdvisor lists, i.e. best cuisine or most romantic. The cleanest city was apparently Zurich, though it was also voted one of the most boring. But clean doesn’t always mean boring: London was voted the dirtiest city, but also the city with the best nightlife.

Zurich being the cleanest city I can easily imagine. Those of you who listen to the Amateur Traveler may remember that in episode 100 I talked about going to Zurifast. The huge crowd had scattered garbage, broken bottles etc everywhere by 5 AM. Magically by 10 AM the city was already Swiss clean. Those guys are efficient.

TravelMole reports that :

An AAP report says that a strike by more than 1,500 Qantas engineers will remain in the wings until the new year, with the airline today offering an olive branch to the technicians’ union.

More than 1,700 aircraft engineers will walk off the job on January 9 in protest against growing casualisation of the workforce and erosion of working conditions.

Almost 90 per cent of members from the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA) voted for the action following the breakdown of enterprise negotiations with the airline.

As someone who wears blue jeans to work in a Silicon Valley company “casualization” sounds like a good thing, but in Australia casualization means something else entirely:

What is casualisation?

Casualisation has two main meanings. It is often used loosely in the international
literature to refer to the spread of bad conditions of work such as employment
insecurity, irregular hours, intermittent employment, low wages and an absence of
standard employment benefits (eg Basso, 2003). In Australia, it has a slightly
narrower but more solid meaning. Because our labour markets contain a prominent
form of employment that has been given a label of �casual�, casualisation in the
Australian literature usually refers to a process whereby more and more of the
workforce is employed in these �casual� jobs.