Some things are so powerful merely as concepts that the fact that they physically exist is really superfluous. Possibly even somewhat offensive. The Eiffel Tower, for instance. I was in Paris a few months ago, and was somewhat unsettled by the fact that the Eiffel Tower was in fact just over there, clearly visible on the skyline, wherever you went. Everyone has such a clear concept of the Eiffel Tower that it is real enough already, without it needing to actually physically exist. Yet you go to Paris, and there it is. Creepy.

Similarly, Silicon Valley doesn’t actually need a physical manifestation. Just the concept is enough. And yet, here I am, going to an organic coffee bar hearing a live acoustic band with lots of long-haired laid back californians … who are wearing eBay t-shirts and texting on their Blackberry. Or checking email on their macbook. Or playing with their new iPhone. The biggest peril I face every morning is getting on the right employee shuttle bus. A mistake might accidentally result in me ending up not at Google, but at Yahoo!, or eBay, or Microsoft, or LinkedIn, or… you get the idea. Inicidentally, these companies are also things that don’t need to exist. I mean, we all use Google, or eBay, or LinkedIn, but the thought of them having massive office buildings, all near each other, with busloads of brilliant college graduates commuting every day to work there … well, why can’t I just stick to my nice fantasy that eBay is “just a website”?

Speaking of iPhones, there’s yet another thing that really doesn’t need a physical manifestation. The concept is so powerful that even had Apple never brought a single iPhone to market, people would be queueing to buy them. We all somehow *know* this thing is cool. (Just like we *know* that Apple’s marketing guys deserve an award. Or a long and painful death, depending on which angle you’re coming from. Regardless, they’re all geniuses, whoever they are.) And yet it exists, as if to insult you by saying “I don’t trust you to believe all our marketing, why don’t you just *try me* and see?”. And just because it is so very cool, and does in fact turn out to exist, I now own one.

It’s amazing how quickly a place becomes home. I thought I’d feel relieved to visit Germany again, and not have to work quite so hard to understand what people are saying to me; and I was, don’t get me wrong. But whatever you say about the Swiss (and there’s a lot to say!), the broad smile and “Grüezi!” of the Air Berlin flight attendants, and the “uff wiedelueke” and “ade mitenand” after landing in Zürich was most pleasant. I like this place.

Of course, good things can’t last: as I write this I am packing my second suitcase in preparation for a flight to the USA in a few hours. Meanwhile, after having survived Siberian winds and ice in Berlin, the radio now reports of large storms in California, causing traffic delays and power outages around the Bay Area. Nothing is every easy!