Dorothy Was Right - There's No Place Like Home!

I can't tell you how happy I am to be home, with a functioning laptop, with an American English keyboard, sleeping in my own bed, etc.

Wonderful to have the dogs around, be able to call people on my cell phone, have my favorite TV shows on the right channels at the right time, and not deal with currency conversions in my head to figure out how much something really costs.

Oh yeah - it's nice to be with Mitch again too.

NOTICE - - This blog will be in temporary hiatus until the next trip, which as of now is not until Mitch and I go to Canada for a week June 17.

Bye for now!

A.

Another Day Another City

Bonjour mes amis!

Je suis arrive a Strasbourg cet matin - - - whooops! Need to start talking English again. Not too many people in Colmar spoke English, which was pretty cool.

Took the train to Strasbourg this morning. It was uneventful enough (since I'll numb to all the schlepping) but when I arrived it was pouring! Had to wait about 30 minutes before I could even leave the station to get a taxi.

I'm actually in a very nice French hotel - the first nice hotel of the trip. Too bad it's only for 1 night. I walked around the city for a while. Mitch and I were here a few years ago and really explored it in depth then. I just roamed around for a few hours. Not much is open in France on Sundays except some museums and souvenir shops. All the shops are locked up tight:

The cathedral here is magnificent - from the 1200's - and the city is really pretty.

Have I mentioned that I'm really looking forward to getting home?- - - if for nothing else than to use an American keyboard! I'll never take that for granted again.

I expect that it will be a very chaotic zeek at work; I'm going to focus on getting back my laptop and getting it running again. So ironic that Jamie Diamond's (CEO of the Bank) whole strategy for the bank's success is based on technology and all the wonderful things it can do! I should send him an e-mail about these last 2 weeks. If it ever got to him he'd plotz when he saw what his techno-wizards did to me.

Looking forward to my last French dinner for a while.

My next posting should be from home.........assuming I can get to the internet.

Saturday in Colmar

Bonjour -

The best thing about today is that nothing unplanned or unpleasant has happened.

Colmar is a very quaint Alsacian town - like a mini Strasbourg. Very nice to walk around, lots of cute shops, timber framed old German style houses, cobblestone streets, etc.

The patisseries are amazing - like food museums where everything is for sale! Have probably gained 5 pounds on sweets and bread already!

Great food and wine. Lots of sausages, meats, and cheeses. Wonderful Alsacian wines {Rieslings, Gewertstrumieners], and endless desserts: ice cream, fruit tarts, cheeses, etc.

Getting a haircut this afternoon to treat myself. Let's see what the French can do with the little hair I have left.

The weather is sunny and hot - glad I brought short sleeve shirts and my baseball cap. I purposely brought my Sydney Operahouse cap so I wouldn't be identified as an American.

Love trying to talk French to the people here; many don't speak any English at all.

Looking forward to coming home; fixing the laptop so I can get on the internet is job 1 and that could take 1 day or 1 week.

Hard to believe I've been in Europe for a week already!

Looking forward to a nice quiet dinner tonight (unfortunately by myself), then tomorrow I'll take the train to Strasbourg, overnight there and then fly home on Monday! Yippeeeee!

A.

Thank god this week is over!!!

Egads - is it Friday alreqdy? I feel like I've aged 10 years.

Guess what? We couldn't do the demo today - - - - - the main reason I came to Europe. Despite numerous e-mails, phone calls, etc., to confirm that everything worked from the conference room where the demo would be from, we couldn't connect to our software from their conference room. They assured us they had tested it all out - - - LIARS!!!!

INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING - - - - - and they weren't very nice about it either. Heads should roll over this, but I'm sure nothing will happen.

Just finished my 3rd glass of wine and it's only a little after 6.

Looking forward to exploring Colmar tomorrow; it seems very quaint.

The weather is fabulous - sunny and warm by day and cool at night.

Found out my laptop had the "blackmail" virus that had been caught by my anti-virus software, but the anti-virus software was knocked out by the Bank's encryption software I was reauired to download before I left for this trip! So typical. Looks like my data can be saved, however, with some minor exceptions [like my DSL software). How am I going to get to the internet from home? All I can do is laugh at all this.

Going to find a nice restaurant for dinner with a colleague. Last night's was fabulous - sausages and sauerkraut - very typical local cuisine. Great onion tart to start, great wine, and ice cream with amazing whipped cream (really thick and creamy and sweet) for dessert. Bread to die for too.

Can't wait to come home already. This trip has been an ordeal - - and these French keyboards are driving me nuts!!!!!!!

I found a Stabucks!!!!! Highlight of trip!!!!!

Bonjour! I'm in Colmar, France, really struggling with a French keyboard. I apologize in advance for all the typos. This is how the French get their revenge on the rest of the world.

Last night we watched the final episode of the British version of The Apprentice. I found have fired both the final candidates. I thought they were awful.

We had takeout Indian food for dinner - fabulous.

This morning Scott took me to the train station, and took the train to Gatwick Airport. It was an hour trip - very easy. Gatwick is so much more managable than Heathrow. But boy, is England expensive!!! I had a lousy breakfast of watery eggs, soggy toast, salty/fatty bacon, lukewarm coffee and diluted orange juice, and with tip it cost $30!!! It was inedible. And then, like lirage appearing to a lan dying of thirst in the desert, lo and behold, there rose a Starbucks. I was SO HAPPY!!!

I'm sure the latte was the same as the lattes in the US, but it was the best latte I ever had!!! Like manna from heaven. And the raisin scone was devine. This treat only cost about $9.

My flight to Strasbourg was delayed 1 hour - no reason given. Took a cab from the airport to the train station, which is under construction. What a mess!!! Dust, noise..... Could have been anywhere.

Bought a ticket and ran to catch the train or the wait for the next one would have been an hour. Escalator was broken so had to run up 2 flights of stairs shlepping tons of luggage. Oy.

Ran onto the train, accidentally into the first class car. This is really a nice train, I thought, until the conductor looked at my ticket and told me to move. He pretended to not speak any English so I pretended not to speak any French.

The countryside seemed nice, but I was so hot all I wanted to do was get off the train. Was dying of heat and thirst!

Two stops later we arrived. Guess what? There were no escalators to be broken!!! Down a huge flight of stairs, and up another. Torture.

Then - - - a cab driver refused to take me to my hotel. He was very rude; but not sure what it was all about. I thought he said I could just walk there, which I thought meant it was close by. So I asked someone for directions and began walking. No hotel. Asked another person - pointed and ran on in French. Asked a 3rd person - same thing, pointing and talking. Got to the hotel - it was lovely, but it was the wrong one!!! There are 2 hotels in Colmar owned by Mercure, and I was at the wrong one.

Sigh.......

Took a cab to the right one and checked in. Had to keep asking the receptionist/operator for the Sprint 800 number. Long story but finally got the right one.

Then unpacked and came straight to this internet cafe. Relelber, I have no laptop.

Looking forward to having a nice dinner with my colleagues; they should be arriving by now.

Big meeting all day tomorrow; if the client's keyboard is like this, I'm a dead man. It's taken me over 30 minutes to type this.

Gotta run

Ode to Allan Sherman - Man, Did He Have it Right!

As I packed my bags (yet again) to check out of my hotel (yet again) this morning, all I could think of was Allan Sherman's song "Shake Hands with your Uncle Max" - especially the beginning words:

I sell a line of plastics
And I travel on the road
And I have a case of samples
Which believe me is a load

Every night a strange cafe
A strange hotel and then
Early in the morning
I am on the road again

When the season's over
And my lonesome journey ends
That's the only time I see
My family and my friends

I drive up Ocean Parkway
And before I stop the car
My ma leans out the window
And she hollers, "Here we are!"

For all you Allan Sherman fans out there, check out this website - it's good for lots of laughs:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/allansherman/index.html

A.

Checked out the Queen's Place at Windsor

Went to Windsor tonight, about a 10 minute cab ride from my hotel, with 2 colleagues. The palace looked very nice, but it was too late for a tour. I went to the tacky gift shop and bought a few post cards.

Then we had drinks and dinner at a large pub called Ha! Ha!. It was very nice - no joke. We just sat around eating and drinking. I fell in love with a strawberry flavored Belgian beer - tasted like a strawberry dacqueri. It was a lovely evening.

Time for bed.

Tomorrow am it's time to pack (again) since I'll be staying at Scott's house again tomorrow night as it's right near a train stop that is direct to Gatwick airport, vs. taking 3 trains from this hotel, for my flight to Strasbourg on Thursday.

A.

First Day Without a Technology Disaster

Wrapping another workday in the UK. Spent the day training my colleagues, which was very enjoyable. They really kept me on my toes, and I didn't have any technical snafus - the borrowed laptop still works!

Went to Marks and Spencer (a Whole-Foods UK equivalent) for lunch. It was delicious.

Tonight 3 of us (myself, a woman from Belfast, and another guy from York) are going to cab it to Windsor to see the palace and have a nice dinner. Should be fun. They are VERY NICE people. Of course I would be too if I lived in this country. It's so beautiful here - green and just nice. And all the towns have some character to them - not like our suburbs which all look alike.

Just ask them what they think of America, though! We are undoubtedly the laughing stocks of the world.

The weather is cool and cloudy.

Tomorrow will hopefully be a quiet day in the office here preparing for Friday's demo in France. Of course, the French have still not confirmed back to us that the room the demo's going to be in is adequately set up for the presentation, despite numerous e-mail and voice mail requests going back a month. Oh well....

My laptop is somewhere between here and the US - hope it makes it OK and the data can be recovered!

More later......

A.

OK - I hate technology a lot!

It's a pretty sad day when the most constructive thing you've done in the last 13 hours is rinse out your underwear in the bathroom sink.

So the new laptop that was shipped to me from Germany? Took so long to configure it that I wasted most of the day.

Well, I'll just work in the hotel, I thought. Well, that was based on the (false) assumption that the laptop they gave me had a wireless card. Silly me - the bank's technology is stuck in 1990. No luck.

So I'm in the hotel lobby on a pay-by-the minute computer, and the computer is set to run as slow as possible. They are devouring my money.

Think it's time for a nice dinner and some reading in bed.

As Scarlett said, tomorrow is another day.

PS - I realize where I am supposed to use quotation marks, but these damn European keyboards have all the special characters in the wrong place and it will take too much of the very expensive time I'm paying for to find them. I also don't have time for spell check.

A.

Sometimes I Hate technology

I'm in our office in Slough, outside of London.

We got in very late due to the horrible weather (rain storms) and horrendous traffic. Shortly after we left home we turned around due to the traffic, and worked from home for a few hours, then tried it again. Much better this time.

The countryside here is beautiful - very green. Lots of open spaces. Much different from the "suburbs" at home.

This trip is turning into a technical disaster. I have mentioned that my laptop, which has everything I've worked on for the last 10 years, crashed, and no one can figure out what to do with it. I have to send it back to the US to be rebuilt, and hopefully they can recover the data, but who knows? All thanks to the Bank's wonderful software I had to download. Ugh.

But how can I live without a laptop? So, I was FedEx'd a laptop from our office in Germany since none of the offices in the whole UK had a spare one. Well, that was nice, except it has a German keyboard, which took me forever to figure out how to convert to an English one. I don't have much use for umlats, but really need underscores; not much use for euro symbols, but quotes and at signs come in handy. Don't ask.....

Then I can't even begin to explain what I had to do to get onto the internet from this office. It's like waking up 15 years ago. Incredible. This is one of the world's biggest banks?!

Still trying to figure out how to put together all these moving pieces so I can prepare for the demo, do the training tomorrow that they've asked me to do, and travel to France and the demo there. Oh well, if it were easy anyone could do it.

Time to look for a job in another industry maybe? Something not so reliant on technology, or one in which there is at least bare-bones technical support.

Oh well.....

Time for lunch - ham and cheese on a baguette.

A.

England Day 2 - Part 2

Time for bed here - almost 930! Had a delightful day with the Landers. A traditional Sunday English supper (or "tea") as they call it, of roast beef, youkshire pudding, roasted potatoes, mixed veggies, and wine. Tea and wonderful pastries (almond and raspberry) for dessert.

Then we watched Desperate Housewives, and then sat in the hot tub for a while. It was DELIGHTFUL!!!

Today sure made up for the last few days in terms of personal pleasure. It is very cool staying at a read English home.

Tomorrow it's off to work. I'll probably have to send my laptop back to the US - there is no point in my schlepping it around Europe when I can't even boot it up. I hope they can recover the data! If not, well, I have a backup drive at home. I'll just have to hope for the best!

Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - I've worked on for the last 9 years is on that machine. Ugh. Technology.

Anyway, time for bed. Hope you all have a good Sunday!

A.

England - Day 2 (I think!)

Well, here I am in the suburbs of London - about an hour out of the city in a town called Sandhurst. It's very British - lots of flowers and gardens and houses that look like they belong in the English countryside. It's very nice.

My stay in London was pretty much a waste of time since I spent most of it sleeping - 5 hours Sat. afternoon, and then 11 hours last night. My headache finally went away; I'm sure it was due to sleep deprivation.

My hotel was across the street from the Tower of London, which is where I think the workers at American Airlines should be imprisoned. I walked around the area for a few minutes yesterday afternoon, but it was cold and raining, and I was exhausted.

I ate in the hotel - pretty bad, really. The usual English stuff: meats and potatoes, and lots of unidentifiable stuff on the buffet. I'm sure there were better restaurants around, but I was so tired I didn't care. And for those of you who know me, that means I was REALLY tired.

Then to add salt to the wound my laptop crashed. All thanks to the new, great encryption software the bank made us install. It totally trashed my machine; not sure what I am going to do this week. I'm on Scott's laptop now, at his wireless house.

I was going to take a train (actually 2) out here this morning, but decided to treat myself to a cab. It was worth it.

When I got here we (Scott, his wife Wendy, 2 teenage girls, and Fluke the old dog) went to a local park and hit a baseball around for a while. They call everything by a different name here: baseball is "rounders," the catcher is the "back stop," the pitcher is the "bowler," etc. It was fun though and a good workout.

Now we're just sitting around watching TV, reading the paper, etc. Scott is cooking a roast for dinner - smells great already.

Much better to be here than a hotel!

Tomorrow it's off to the office. It's going to be an adventure!

Cheers!

Finally in London!

Well, it almost took me as long to get here as it took Lindbergh to cross the Atlantic!

My 910 am flight was delayed for mechanical reasons, and re-scheduled until 430. Instead of standing in a long line for 2 $5 meal vouchers I decided to go home, and then back to the airport.

The flight finally left about 5 pm, and it was fine, but I developed a terrible headache along the way - suspect it was due to sleep deprivation.

When I finally got to the hotel around 10 am I slept (badly) for about 5 hours, then showered and took a walk. The hotel is right next to the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, so it's a very historic area - - and very cool. To think of all the history those stones have seen!

I just had dinner in the hotel (not very good, but the food in general in England is not very good), and am in my room - dealing with my laptop that crashes about every hour thanks to the great new encryption software the bank made us all download. It couldn't have happened at a worse time.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going over to my friend Scott's house and staying there for the night; he'll drive me into the office on Monday. I really like him and his wife and it will be fun to spend time with them.

Hope the weather improves - it's cold and raining.

That's all for today.

A.