Every once in a blue moon, it’s a good idea for an Oil & Gas Journal editor to take a trip abroad, to get into the world to see what it’s like outside the US. One might call it an opportunity to gain perspective. In the best of cases, one gets the chance and privilege of calling it a vacation.
But “vacation” can sometimes be a hard word for an OGJ editor to use and really mean. We might be away from the desk, out and about on adventures to take in the sights and sounds of another land, but it’s difficult to truly get away from the mechanisms of our brains and how they work. We’re entrenched in the business of energy, and getting to see it from a foreign land, through foreign eyes, is simply an open invitation to keep working.
At best, this editor is thankful enough to recently have shut down the constant dinging of e-mail alerts to enjoy a cruise up the Danube River, from Hungary to Germany. On the way, though, one couldn’t help the temptation of observing the differences between the US and European energy complexes.
Taking a breath
Growing up along and still living in the US Gulf Coast, one gets accustomed to a skyline of smokestacks and soaring towers of industrial plants. It’s a way of life when you’re raised here, and the billowing plumes of smoke that shade the skies in pinks and purples may as well be the sky itself.
This isn’t so in Europe, at least not along the Danube, where the shock sea-blue skies above were peppered only occasionally with bruise-black clouds as a result of a passing rainstorm. For this editor, the sight was something to which he had to adjust over the course of a few days. No billowing towers of steam and smoke. No strange palette of beautifully deceiving colors hovering above.
A fellow passenger from Scotland watching me went so far as to ask why one would stare up in the sky with such wonder.
“From Houston,” was my reply.
“Ahhh,” she whispered and winked. “Been there. I get it.”
In terms of sights, however, this was only part of the wonderment. From the top deck of the river ship, one also stared out through the beautiful hills and mountainsides to see miles of roofs of homes, buildings, and even ancient castles covered completely in solar panels shimmering under the warm rays of sun. These weren’t one-off instances; they were everywhere. In fact, from Vienna to Regensburg, there were multiple coffeehouses and restaurants running on traditionally generated electricity only as a backup source.
Back home, one sees solar panels here and there, taking notice only because of the anomaly. In Europe, it seemed, the cities were aflame with the sun’s power long after he’d disappeared for the day, as if the land and Nature herself were in tune in a way the concrete jungle of home simply isn’t.
The bee’s needs
Keep in mind, these were only a smattering of the visual wonderments. One could pen a novel, and perhaps a research study, on the drastic physical changes that occurred during the 10-day journey. For the first time in years, this editor was able to wake up without constant fits of sneezing and an accompanying pounding pressure in his head. Persistently dry patches of skin on his elbows, knees, and face also disappeared in a matter of days. Something was markedly different about the atmosphere, and while one may have nothing to do with the other, it was unavoidably evident.
The most notable difference of all, however? The ever-constant buzzing, humming, and swirling of bees. They were everywhere, from the ship to the shore, from the marketplaces to the river locks. This isn’t something you see in the US anymore. And as the US Environmental Protection Agency in July said it will now permit the use of the pesticide sulfoxaflor on some crops despite its own finding that the substance is harmful to bees, it may be a sight we see even less.
After 10 days abroad, this editor may have been happy to reunite with family and friends…but also home sick in an entirely new, unexpected way.
