Minnemelvichportscow – BS!

So I assume most people have seen the ATT commercials with the people that travel a lot around the world and have ATT cell phones. I thought they were amusing because I feel like I don’t just live in one city either. One guy is an actor and you see a bunch of stages change behind him, another guy is a real-estate mogul who gets into a helicopter. I currently have an ATT smart phone so I thought I would try to come up with the city I live in like in the commercials: Minnemelvichportscow, for Minneapolis, Melville (NY), Munich (DE), Portsmouth (UK), and Moscow (RU). I’m not sure what my commercial would look like, either me sitting in meetings with different backdrops, or me typing on computers with different back drops. Probably not as interesting as a Real-estate Mogul or an actor though.

Now these commercials didn’t have any influence on me moving my phone from T-Mobile to ATT, I would have rather kept T-Mobile as their signal is the strongest of the providers in my house, but to get work e-mail on my phone I had to go with a provider supported by our IT guys. It works ok in the states and I do get signal in all of the countries I have traveled to so far. But that said it certainly isn’t as flexible and easy as they seem to point out. In fact a lot of the time my phone, though it technically works, is useless. The weirdest problem I only seem to have in the UK. When I leave the phone on it works great right away, if I leave it on for days however it starts to require different dialing criteria. For instance I when first turned on I can use my phone book just by selecting the name, a couple days later I have to modify the number to dial out of the UK, and even then this only works half the time. The solution is to reboot the phone. This is really annoying and at first kept me from using the phone abroad.

The next thing that is really crazy is that I have different rates where ever I go. So really my bill is normally a surprise for me. As it is expensed it doesn’t cost me, but it makes it hard to plan around when you do have a telecom budget. Also the dialing requirements change from country to county. So sometimes I can use the phone book and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I can call local and sometimes I can only call back to the US. It is quite a lot of effort to figure out the rules for each country actually. So I find it amusing that the guys in the phone seem to use their phones seamlessly from place to place. I guess I am just traveling to the wrong assortment of countries.

Visitors

Before and after our wedding anniversary in Paris, my apartment was over run by visitors. So along with work those two weeks were very busy. MQ and SL were the first to come. They came in on a Saturday night, SL left midweek, and MQ left Saturday (after we had flown to France). It was quite a good time and it was fun to see faces from back home over here. The first night of course we went pubbing a little. The pubs weren’t that great but we had a decent time anyway. The next day we went up to London and did the super whirlwind tour. I was able to park the car in the second Zone of the mass transit area so we could use a $10 day pass to go anywhere in the core of the city we wanted to go. I won’t list all of the places that we saw but in a single day we saw as many places as I had in ½ a week back in January.

That Monday also happened to be a bank holiday. Of which they have a ton of over here. While SL went to go visit an old friend from when he was a kid in Italy out in Bath MQ, along with a friend from work BMc (someone I have traveled a lot with in the UK) drove up to Oxford. You know the town with the ridiculously old school college. We did not actually go and see the college or the town. Instead we went to Blenhiem Palace, the traditional home of the Duke of Marlborough. A place I had never heard of but MQ really wanted to see. This is the family of Winston Churchill, but because he was the 2nd born did not become a Duke. I guess Prime Minister worked ok though. It was pretty nice. It is a large country estate, a pretty fancy, though not quite as fancy as Versailles in France. They were having Jousting and Falconry on the grounds and had several tours to see. The funniest was a “Hi-tech” exhibit with holograms, robots, and videos. It was actually pretty lame. After that we drove to Windsor to see that palace, but arrived too late to get in, though strolling through the town was nice.

The following day we stayed local, where MQ got himself thrown out of the historic dockyards. Then Thursday I had him ride the train up to where my client is located, I left early, and we drove out to see Stonehenge, my second trip there while living in the UK. After that we drove over to Salisbury a town with in a couple miles of Stonehenge. We needed to kill sometime because I was too pick up the wife that night and there was no point to back track all the way back to Portsmouth. Salisbury is a nice town with a lot more to see than I expected. A small river runs through the town with shops and cafes along it, and there is a huge cathedral on the south side of town. We walked around for easily an hour to see everything we could. We stopped at a pub had a burger and a beer then headed to the airport. It is quite a nice town to say the least. That night we picked up RG and the next morning RG and I left for Paris. At the end of the trip in Paris I flew to Munich for meetings and RG went back to the UK for the week where her sister met up with her.

So when I got back to town after a couple days in Munich the girls were living it up in Portsmouth. Relaxing, sleeping late, and watching my videos of the Soprano’s. Oh and of course they went into London and did some shopping. RG’s sister KB recently got engaged and she was looking for a wedding dress. So I think they had a crazy nice time. On Friday I had them come up and meet me at work for lunch, so some RG could meet some of the people I work with, on Saturday we just kicked around town. Then Sunday I drove RG to the Airport early in the morning while KB left in the afternoon via train. So with all the travelers and going to Paris and Munich I had a very busy week. So of course I took the next weekend easy!..... Yeah – Right the next weekend I headed to Cornwall and Wales, but that is another story I suppose.

Do do doo dooo do… I wonder if anyone else thinks of Doggie Hauser When Blogging

Ok so it is a weird title that takes up to much room on the screen. But I was watching How I met your mother the other night, as pretty funny show staring none other the Neil Patrick Harris. You know he is star due to the use of three names. Maybe I should start having people call me by my full name all then time, and not just when I pissed them off. Anyway I was thinking how different his character in this new show is to the character he played as a kid, Doogie Houser MD. You should remember the show about a kid struggling to grow up normal when he is so smart that he is a licensed doctor at only 14 years old. At the time it was pretty cutting edge to be using a computer for anything besides work and he used it to keep a journal. At the end of every show we would get a glimpse of his thoughts on an outdated text editor while some corny one note at a time music played. Well when I got to thinking about this I thought, you know that was basically blogging. Not quite in the form it is in today, and the character in show didn’t publish to the world knowingly but would a modern Doogie, most likely.

So I was wonder if anyone ever blogged while trying to mimic that tune in their head? I also wonder how many people actually kept journals on their computers. Seems like a hassle. I like to post to the web because I get random responses from people to my posts, and it allows my family and friends to keep up with what I am doing, or at least what craziness I have been thinking. I know a lot of people that still keep paper journals and write in them semi regularly. Do they ever hear the Doogie music while putting pen to paper? Doesn’t anyone out there even know what the heck I am talking about? I know the tv shows from the nineties are weird, but I always thought this one was an extra step into the ridiculous. Anyway that was just a random rant.

Now on to NPH’s latest gigs: I actually thought his roles in the Harrold and Kumar movies where hilarious. You didn’t see Fred Savage making those kind of moves to change his imagine. And this new role on How I Met Your Mother is absolutely hilarious. I am sure that it is classic because I already saw a Family Guy spoof of it. To bad the show has been on for a few seasons and I have only gotten to see it maybe a half dozen times. Interestingly enough they play it for like 2 hours a day on SkyTV in the UK. So I guess I will be able to catch up on NPH’s antics. Well I know it was an odd post so I just end it with – and that’s all I gotta say about that.

First Wedding Anniversary - Paris

Well it has been a year now that we RG and I have been married. And what a year it has been. We have traveled with in 5 different counties on well over a dozen trips. We have both worked in foreign countries, though Russia is foreign more to me that RG. But though it has been marked with constant change and movement for us it has also been marked by those things that constant. No matter what countries we are in, the same or different from each other, our days start out with emails from each other and typically end with a phone call. We may only miss talking to each other two or three days a month. We still have our constant barrage of friendly arguments that each of us relishes and our attitudes to life are left unchanged. And while we have spent most of the year living apart from each other, I am amazed that I think our respect, affection, dedication, and love for one another has only grown. Though I can really only speak for myself. Hopefully this year with the exception of being separated by government policies will be the model or norm of our relationship for years to come. I am sure life has not even begun to start throwing the curveballs but I think this year has shown we have the timing to knock them out of the park.

Now as for our anniversary celebration, that should also get some attention. While we are living apart, living in Europe does offer us some interesting opportunities. One of these was to celebrate our one year of matrimony in the City of Lights – Paris France. I used my Marriott points to reserve us a room for three nights at the Rive Gauche Hotel and Conference center on the south side of town. I had planned to try to sweet talk our way into a free upgrade as it was our anniversary but I didn’t have too. They gave us an upgrade based on my status. All I can say about this is SCORE! The hotel was fabulous and probably the nicest I have stayed in to date, thought eh Marquee in New York is a very close second. We had a suite on the top floor with some complimentary wine and snack plus all of the amenities. It was nice. It was also within a block of the local metro trains so it was easy to access to anywhere we wanted to go.

And we went everywhere. In the short time we had I think we hit all the major sites in Paris. A bit of a whirlwind tour that killed a pair of RG’s shoes; which then had the affect of adding to my expenses for the weekend a new pair of French sandals. The first night we saw Jardins du Luxembourg, walked the streets of Paris, had 5 dollar cokes and 12 dollar ham sandwiches, and went up to the top of the Eiffel tower around ten at night. The Eiffel Tower and the view of the city at that time of night was absolutely amazing, even magical. The next day we headed to the north end of the city and saw the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre which sits on top of hill overlooking the city providing view almost as spectacular as those the night before. Then we walked along the Av Des Champs Elysees and saw the Arc de Triomphe, the grand palace, some fountains, some statues, and all the trendy stores that make Paris famous. We also took a break to hit a Starbucks, our only dealing with US franchises! That night we took a dinner, cruise, show tour package which I’ll describe later. On Sunday we went to see Versailles and spent most of the day lazily wandering the gardens and taking a nap by a large pool the people were boating in. Finished with a nice meal at an out door café. The final day of the trip we went through Notre Dame, looked at souvenirs, and finished our trip by eating at an outdoor café, though this time in the heart of the city.

Even after spending the day walking around Paris the big event Satuday was at night. Finally using the generous gift of Cruise on the Seine from my parents as a wedding present we scheduled a complete night with a tour group. This started with a great dinner at La Coupole what is a large and somewhat well known restaurant. Dinner was very good and the service was even better. Our Italian waiter was very funny and great fun to interact with. Then we were driven to take a river cruise and by past all the lines to get right on the boat. The river cruise was very relaxing and a great way to see Paris and learn about many of the buildings. Though the best part of the cruise was being there holding my wife. When we returned to port we were again picked up by the tour company and driven to Moulin Rouge for a great show. Again we by past a line that went around the block and were seated 10 feet from the stage. The show was great, and not just because of the dancer’s outfits. We were seated by some nice people from Alabama and drank a bottle of Champaign while being entertained by dancing, singing, and other theatrics. It was certainly something I would recommend doing. Though to be honest Moulin Rouge was not exactly like it was in the movie, no one lived in the windmill and it was a bit smaller, but it was still very impressive.

The weekend really was easily one of the best trips I have taken and was even more special because it marked our 1st Wedding Anniversary. The only mistake and possible problem I may have is figuring out how to top it for next year!

Babies

No I am not having one, well I will never have one – I actually think that is my wife’s job at some point. But even though we are not having any babies anytime soon that doesn’t seem to be slowing the rest of the world down any. In fact now that I think about it I may have reached the point where more of my old friends, at least from high school, have babies than don’t. The total number of babies that I know of now stands at least at 11 babies in the last five years. That is more babies than the people that had them too, as some people have actually accomplished this feet twice already. WOW. But I have to say that it doesn’t really freak me out that much. I figure it happens to most people at some point or another. To be honest I get a little pressure from time to time from my better half.

Just a while ago I went to see one of these new people. I actually wanted to see both of the latest additions but as I am only home maybe for 50 hours at a time the windows of opportunity aren’t always that big and I am not always that coordinated. So next time I get home I will have to make a trip and try to see the other spring baby. It is wild that I can actually see minute features of my friends, and their spouses, in these little people. Even when they are only a few days old they not only look but in some cases act like their parents. This makes sense of course, but is still quite astounding to see in flesh. I guess with age your wonder at different parts of the universe changes from time to time.

Now to continue to be honest I must also say that babies aren’t that much fun. Really they just sit there eat, poop, sleep and cry. I guess they are cute, but that doesn’t make them any more entertaining. Once they can crawl and do things though I do think they get to be a little more fun. And besides all the freaking trouble they create they are fun to watch and play with from that point on. I kinda wonder what kind of dad this will make me, but I guess I only have to get through the first 8 months and the kids will be fun so I can probably do that. Plus people say it is different with your kids. I suppose this too will be true. However it is still amazing to see my friends with kids. Though it does make it less likely that they can leave the house to play themselves!

Surfing Munich

I’ve never really known any surfers. I was a kid in California but in the dessert not on the beach. When we did go to the beach the closest I got was boogie boarding (seriously what it is called, or at least was called) or body surfing. In Minnesota I guess you can windsurf, but I don’t really think it is the same thing. My sister while traveling to California with my dad took lessons but I don’t think she has done it since. So what little I know about the sport and sub-culture comes from movies, books, and magazines. You know real reliable fair. So what do I know then about surfing? Not much. Surfers talk funny and use funny phrases. They are all hippies I think. They can’t hold down a real job, and they are adrenaline junkies. Most of this I got from Kenue Reeves movies. Oh yeah and they will surf anything any time and are always looking for the next wave.

So it came as no surprise to me that surfers had found a way to surf in Munich Germany. Which you know has great sea side beaches with huge was – er maybe it doesn’t. But yet her in the middle of a landlocked city in a mountainous region of Europe people were surfing. In fact they were latterly surfing in the down town. And no to answer your question they are not using a surfing machine, wave machine, or virtual reality. They are literally hoping on a board and riding the waves. These waves though are in the middle of a river in what is known as the English Garden, a park twice the size of central park that also contains the largest beirgarten in Munich.

What people have found is that the river is forced into a man made underground tunnel to be routed in part of the city. The tunnel must be larger at it’s mouth then at the outlet because the pressure of the water escaping is quit high. The second part of the set up is that the river dramatically changes depths with in 20 feet of this outlet so that it gets wide and shallow right after being narrow and deep. This creates basically a rapid that is consistent from bank to bank as some of the water stalls when it hits the edge of the shallow area and the rest of the water floods forward. This happens also in nature when there is a large rock just under the water in a river. In fact I have been on rafting trips where we let some air out of the tubes of the raft and surfed the river. But that was 5 people in a raft.

In Munich we actually saw people with different size surf boards jump in the river, land on their surf board and surf for anywhere from a couple of seconds to a few minutes. The only kind of board I didn’t see was a long board, but I think the rest were probably represented. It was insane to watch. In fact from what I am told there always a crowd there watching these river surfers. The best by far was actually a kid about 15 years old he could easily stay in there for 10 or minutes. Most surfers lost it on entry, the rest generally could only do it for a few minutes, but the best actually did tricks as they surfed. I can honestly say that I was amazed and totally surprised to see this in the middle of Germany. And there was no Kenue Reeves, though now I know he didn’t show us everything about surfing.

3 Days and 5 Biergartens

So I have to say right away that Munich and Bavaria in Southern Germany have to be on the short list of my favorite places to travel. After two trips there I can not find a bad thing to say about the region. The people the, the sites, the food, the beer, and the whole atmosphere is extremely enveloping. Everything is very well maintained, clean, and orderly. All of the people are friendly in the extreme, and proud, they are more then willing to tell you the best places to go, how to get there, and the history behind it. I think is due to the fantastic history of the region. This is the place of dreams. The Kings for several generations build fantastic castles and explored nature and culture. The most famous of these is of course Neuschwanstein, the very castle that Disney land was modeled after. So it should come as no surprise that RG and I thoroughly enjoyed our weekend there.

We both arrived Thursday night at the airport north of Munich. After a bit of a struggle trying to figure out how to purchase a S-Bahn (light rail basically) ticket – my German isn’t so good and the English signs weren’t very instructive – we headed into town. We stayed at the Marriott Courtyard two blocks south of the main train station. As our flights were later in the evening and the train ride is 45 min we didn’t get into the room until around midnight so we pretty much crashed right way. Then next day I worked the first part of the morning then we went out to see the town. We got lunch at a great little café in the middle of a park. We couldn’t read the menu, and even though the waitress could speak English, we just ordered blind and wished for the best! It turned out well though. The meal was great. The amusing thing though was that this was a café frequented by local business professionals and as this is Germany they all ordered beer with their lunches. I was un-phased by this but RG was in utter and complete shock. It took her several minutes for the idea to settle (mostly because it was still prior to noon and people were drinking). I tried to explain that this was Bavaria and people start having beer for morning snack.

The rest of the day we saw the sites Glockenspiel, the twin domes of the Frauenkirche, the Königsplatz, and Beirgarten(1) in the main market along with a couple hour break in the afternoon so I could take some conference calls and RG could take a nap (we both liked this arrangement). After the napping/working was finished we decided to walk to the English Gardens, find the China Tower, and have a beer at the biggest biergarten(2) in town (4000+ seating). This part of the plan went well through dinner. I tried to order beer in German, miserably, even though the sever knew English just fine and we ate sausage, pretzels, and kraut. However around 9 in the evening mother nature decided to have little fun with us and the dark storm clouds rolled in. We were probably 3 ½ miles from the hotel and the park have very confusing paths. So without umbrellas and in the dark we tried to find our way out of the park. After 40 minutes we did emerge from the park, soaking wet, not really knowing where we were. But lucky for us there was a Hilton close by with a line of taxis (tip: when lost find a major hotel there are always taxis, bath rooms, and a dry place to wait out the rain).

The next day our plan was to meet up with some family friends at the end of the train line to the south. RDtl had flown in Arizona with my dad and lives just outside of Munich, he and his family were very nice and took us out for the day. We arrived at the train station about 10 in the morning. RDtl stop by his house to pick up his daughter and he drove us out to Neuschwanstein. RG and I did the tour while RDtl and daughter went to a Roman bath nearby to soak in some salt water. He doesn’t like to go into castles as his parents had drug him through so many when he was young. This was my second trip to the Castle and it was just as amazing as the first. I thin that RG was totally amazed. It is too bad that it was never finished. After this tour we drove through the mountains stopping at another castle briefly and then taking a walk through a town famous for creating wood carvings and crafts. Most of the stores were closed and biergarten(3) we were told was not a true biergarten so after ½ hour of stretching our legs and taking in the beauty of the town and the Alps we were off again. We then visited at RDtl’s house for a while then went to dinner at a great restaurant, which if it was summer also had another good biergarten(4) we could have enjoyed.

The next day we met up with RDtl’s son LDtl. He is a student at one of the universities in Munich studying engineering. He went with us to see the newly opened BMW world, next to the BMW factory and world headquarters. It is a large strangely shaped aluminum building that houses exhibitions of BMW technology, concept cars, and current line up. It was worth the walk through, especially since it is free. We didn’t due the museum because it is closed on Sunday. Adjacent to the BMW campus is the site of the Munich Olympics. A wonderful park that is open to the public and were people still play sports in the pavilions or swim in the pool. There are tall hills with views of the whole city, and walks for miles. At the top of one of these hills is one of LDtl’s favorite biergartens(5). So of course we spent an hour soaking in the warm spring sun, listening to some strange, semi-German/Austrian music, and drinking tall beers. It was a great relaxing, lazy afternoon. Later we did go to see one more site before collecting our luggage and heading to the airport but that is a story that must wait for a post of its own.