Taiwan, China and Korea Over Thirteen Days or So

Hello everyone...I’m sitting in the international terminal of Shanghai Pudong airport on a hazy Saturday morning awaiting Korean Air flight 894 to board in an hour or so. I’m about halfway through a thirteen day jaunt over to this part of the world to assess what’s going on in the company’s Taiwan, China and South Korea offices from a trade compliance perspective, my first visit over here for the company and my first since November 2009. From a professional standpoint it’s good to be back but from a personal standpoint, I miss my wife, son, psycho pooch and garden.

I count the beginning of the trip on the day before Thanksgiving when the fam and I packed up the car and drove to my in-laws in Dallas. After a nice peaceful Thanksgiving holiday, I woke up early Saturday morning to catch a 10:50am flight from Dallas-Ft. Worth Int’l Airport to Seoul, South Korea. For the first time ever I was sick to my stomach the night before the flight; something I ate I suppose. I had visions of a fifteen hour flight with the air sickness bag inches from my face. Thankfully in the morning I was feeling a lot better and thus not faced with the decision of whether to get on the flight or not.

I’d never flown with Korean Air before and was looking forward to it (yes, I’m now an airline dork). Air travel can be a bit monotonous, particularly with US carriers like American, United and Delta that I’m so familiar with, so it’s nice to see some fresh faces and aircraft livery. And Korean Air paints their planes with a light shade of blue that I don’t know how to describe but is pretty unique. As is my preference, I had a window seat near the wing that offered me a view of the ground. There was an empty seat next to me which was quite nice and my other seatmate, an American who does training for Hilton Hotels and was on her way to Manila, Philippines, seemed to be of the same mind of getting up every couple of hours to stretch your legs (which seems to become more important the older you get, eh).

Korean airlines had the plane decked out with a TV screen in every seat and on-demand movies, tv shows, video games and, my favorite, the in-flight map to show where you are. Problem was the map would always label the place names in Korean, requiring me to make a good guess as to what small town in northeastern New Mexico we were flying over, eh. The flight was going to be about fifteen hours, flying through daylight the whole way and arriving in Seoul in the late afternoon. I was going to attempt to stay awake the entire trip. Actually, staying awake wouldn’t be a problem as I can’t sleep on planes unless I’m a) lying down or b) take strong sleeping pills (Ambien is the only one I’ve found to work). I figured if I stayed awake the whole flight and for the following flight to Taipei, Taiwan, I’d easily fall asleep that night and avoid jet lag.

Well, the first thirteen hours went just fine. The skies were mostly clear until we hit Washington state so I had a good view of north Texas, Colorado and southern Idaho as we cruised along. I read the Hunger Games, the popular teen book which will soon be in a movie theater near you; I heartily recommend it though in a way you feel guilty being entertained by kids killing each other (though the political overtones are always lurking in the background which I love). Jennifer said I had to read it since she wants me to go see the movie with her when it comes out but I was interested in reading it anyway. I also spent a lot of time gazing out the window while listening to music on the iPod. As for movies, the only one that interested me was Captain America which, while a bit cheesy, was fairly decent as superhero movies go. Instead of other movies, I watched the first four episodes of the only scripted TV show I’ve ever watched much over the past fifteen years, Firefly (I’d treated myself to the 14-episode DVD set on Amazon for $25 in anticipation of this trip).

I’m definitely getting older. I tweaked my knee sitting down in the plane’s bathroom about two hours into the flight and it hurt on and off until I boarded my next plane in Taiwan. Ouch!

At some point we were supposed to completely close our window shades so that there was no glare on peoples’ TV screens. I couldn’t quite abide by that as I wanted to continue looking out the window so I only closed mine halfway. My seatmate said she didn’t mind though she may have just been polite :) Anyway, it paid off when we flew over parts of southern Alaska. Seeing snow-covered islands in the middle of what is undoubtedly a freezing cold sea was awesome. I love flying over the north. We even turned west a bit over a city which I’m pretty sure was Fairbanks, Alaska. I could almost see Sarah Palin shooting wolves from a helicopter below (but not quite within sight of Russia yet).

Later we flew over parts of eastern Russia, which was absolutely buried in snow. The cloud cover came back as we flew over northern Japan and turned directly west towards Seoul. By this point I was starting to feel horribly tired, seeing as it was around two in the morning Austin time. In fact, the last two hours of the flight were a bit miserable as I was not tired enough to sleep, too tired to concentrate on a book, lacking sufficient battery power on the laptop to watch another Firefly episode, too close to Seoul to watch a full movie and too much of a snob to watch anything else. Thankfully after a while we touched down in Seoul after cruising in over the ocean (I love those landings where the runway is right next to the ocean so that it looks like you’re going to crash into the sea until the runway appears at the last minute...going into Washington D.C.’s Dulles airport is great for that because as a bonus there are people sculling in the Potomac). Leg 1: complete!

I wandered through the Seoul (actually called Incheon because that’s where it’s located) airport to my next gate for my flight with Eva Air to Taiwan. Eva Air is, I believe, Taiwan’s national carrier. Most small countries have just one airline, sometimes (or maybe all the time) owned by the government. In the US of course we’re big enough for multiple airlines as is China (China Airlines, China Eastern, China Southern and Shanghai Airlines) but most countries are not. Therefore you have Korean Air, Eva Airlines, Thai, Malev Hungarian, Air France, British Airways, Finnish Airways, Lot (Poland), Iran Air and, still my favorite, Uzbekistan Airways (www.uzairways.com). I get a kick out of flying these new airlines so I was thrilled (in my jet-laggedness) to be flying with Eva. Plus their logo has green in it and darn it, I like green.

The last time I flew in this part of the world I had extremely bumpy flights from Shanghai to Beijing and back so I wasn’t surprised when our plane was rocked pretty good flying over the Pacific to Taiwan. The pilot came on the intercom and apologized though which was nice. I would have been more worked up over the turbulence, which lasted probably twenty minutes total, but I was much too tired to care. I just was imagining arriving in the Taipei airport, passing through Customs, collecting my roller bag and finding my new best friend, the driver holding up a card with my name on it just outside the baggage claim. And so it came to pass. His name was Jimmy.

As I wrote about in 2009 when I was last in Asia, I’m fascinated by the English names Chinese people choose because most foreigners can’t pronounce Chinese worth a lick, myself included. I learned the term for why it’s so difficult: tonal. Chinese is a tonal language where there are four different ways to pronounce ‘ma’, each meaning something completely different. So I may think I’m saying ‘thank you’ when really I’m saying something completely different or gibberish. We think to ourselves ‘how can they misunderstand me’ but really it’s all about your tone, inflection, etc. I realize that’s one of the reasons that China and Taiwan are not among my favorite places to visit: it’s too difficult to learn the language. In southern Belgium, I can reasonably pronounce ‘boulangerie’ either after somebody tells it to me or I read it on a sign. In Japan, it’s impossible to mispronounce ‘hai’. But in China, if I ask Leslie at the hotel front desk how to say ‘good morning’, I’m going to totally butcher it. It makes me feel like there’s a part of the culture I can’t take part in, even though I’ll only ever learn a handful of words. But the gap between knowing nothing of the language and knowing even four words is enormous. It bothers me. What I need to do is to make really good friends with someone in either the Taiwan or China office who can tutor me. Oh, and take the time to really sit down and try to learn. On the plus side, I learned one Chinese character: da! 大 Of course, I have no idea what ‘da’ means though or how to properly say it.

Doh, plane’s boarding.

And that reminds me, here’s my favorite article about Chinese people why so many of them in international business choose English names:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2009/04/the_names_du_xiao_hua_but_call_me_steve.html

Alright, now I’m in the Ibis Hotel in Suwon, Korea. For those who haven’t stayed in an Ibis, it’s like the Motel 6 of international travel: everywhere, relatively cheap (though not that cheap) and always feels like something important is lacking.
Anyway, Jimmy the driver drove me about 30 minutes in the dark to my hotel in Hsin-Chu, a large industrial center outside of Taipei. My hotel was on the 12th-18th floors of an 18 story tall building with a shopping mall on the first seven floors. I checked in and within a half hour was out like a light.
The next morning I was up sometime around 6. I went down to eat breakfast at the hotel buffet at which point I realized I was in a luxury hotel for business travelers. How could I tell? Let’s see:

- The waitstaff and reception desk staff spoke excellent English
- The breakfast buffet was full of mostly non-Taiwanese who were dressed at least business casual if not more so
- The breakfast buffet was extensive and had a healthy selection of (YES!) Western food such as scrambled eggs and bread (including croissants)
- All of the staff were outgoing and friendly, wishing you good morning
- There was someone at the front entrance of the hotel to open your car door for you when you got in

I realize that the company I now work for puts everybody in these types of hotels but it’s really a statement of where I am these days as a professional. I’ve got the word ‘Director’ in my title which means, at least to me, that I need to act more like the typical business traveler. When I got this job I spent $130 on a professional laptop/document bag and another $100 on a heavy long black coat (at Burlington Coat Factory, but still), replacing the L.L. Bean liner that I’d been wearing since high school. I find it harder to make friends with people whose positions are closer to entry level; am I imagining things or is it because of my job title? Should my days of staying in off-the-beaten path hotels lacking certain amenities like air conditioning but meeting my needs and avoiding other foreigners be over? I don’t know but regardless I need to be more cognizant of the consequences of my sometimes non-professional actions where my fun-loving and sometimes offbeat and sunny personality pokes through.

Anyway, I was picked up by my co-worker, Richard, in Environmental, Health and Safety (a different type of compliance) who would be my chaperone for this whole Asia trip and driven to the office. This was my chance to really see Hsin-Chu and, well, it’s not very visitor-friendly. Lots and lots of tall buildings, industrial areas and crowded tenement buildings along with innumerable buzzing mopeds on the streets. Just a crazy place, even as a pedestrian. This brings me back to another theme of mine in travel: it’s difficult not to stereotype a country based upon the experience in an urban area. I can’t base my opinion of the entire country off of my experience in Hsin-Chu. I told Richard about this and he agreed; he’s not overly fond of Hsin-Chu either :)

One other issue I have with Chinese culture: I just can’t get into the food. Everything tastes a bit off, even something standard like beef and broccoli. I can eat most everything but it just isn’t appetizing. And occasionally there is something extremely interesting to eat like the Taiwanese hot dog: a steamed rice ‘bun’ that is more tasteless than tofu, something resembling a sausage in the middle and various stewed vegetables as a topping. Chinese food we get in the States is oh so totally different. On the plus side, I’ve probably lost weight since I’ve been here since the food I’ve been eating has been healthier and in smaller quantities than normal.

I was in Taiwan for only two days and then hoofed it out, with Richard, on a Wednesday mid-morning flight to Shanghai. I was thrilled, and yes, I’m a dork, to be flying for what I was pretty sure was the first time on a Boeing 747, the double decker planes that have been around for decades. Even though Taipei and Shanghai are only separated by a 1.5 hour flight the number of people flying back and forth merits a large plane. Now that I think of it, in every Asian airport I’ve been in so far all I’ve seen have been big planes, very much unlike all of the small and mid-size planes in US airports. Anyway, I had a window seat on the 747 on the first desk and neglected to take a quick peek at the second floor (though I’ll bet it looked the same).

The weather in Shanghai as we descended was rather interesting. Not really rainy or smoggy near as I could tell but there was crazy fog-like clouds until about two minutes before we landed. I’m still impressed with pilots and their ability, with the help of technology, to land in such adverse conditions. At least the ride was smooth.

So I was back in Shanghai, a place I hadn’t been in two years. It felt like a homecoming of sorts since I had half-decent memories of the last trip when I was awed by Shanghai’s size (but immune to its craziness as my hotel and work were in the suburbs). It became even weirder when I took a cab to the office that afternoon to find that it is located next door to the hotel I stayed in in 2009 and within walking distance of the Shanghai office of my previous employer (and where I was working in 2009 during that visit).

While in Taiwan I was never taken out to eat. This suited me ok because I was going to bed at 7 or 8pm anyway and waking up at 4 or 5 in the morning. By the time I reached Shanghai though I’d fully acclimated to the local time and thus was happy to be taken out to eat. The first night I chose a pizza joint because, well, I felt I had nothing to prove eating-wise. In retrospect, I should have chosen Chinese food to better show appreciation for Chinese culture with my new co-workers. Oh well. The second night found a group of us in a Thai restaurant but we had had Chinese food for lunch. I’m not too bad with chopsticks but at both places I avoided dishes that required a lot of deft chopsticking such as fish with bones in them. The following day we had pizza for lunch (not my choice, actually) and then Taiwanese food for dinner. That dinner was interesting actually in that three of us with ATMI had dinner with two of my old colleagues at National Instruments. It’s weird when you leave a company and then interact with your former co-workers. I found very quickly that I didn’t care too much about how NI is doing and really, after that sometimes there’s not as much to talk about. Thankfully my new co-workers hit it off quite well with the old so the dinner was a success, even if 80% of the time they were speaking in Chinese among themselves.

During the trip I’d been pretty good about staying in touch with Jennifer and the Kid over Skype. With Taiwan and Shanghai being 14 hours ahead, 7am my time was 5pm theirs. This made Skyping quite conducive to my rising early in the morning. Now I’m in Korea which is 15 hours ahead, making Skype still doable. I love Skype.

So yesterday, Saturday, Richard and I flew with my new friend Korean Air to Seoul, South Korea. I hadn’t been in South Korea since a two-day, all-work, no-play stop in 2005. Richard and I arrived in the mid-afternoon, enough time for me to head out from the hotel and walk around the million citizen city of Suwon, about a forty-five minute drive southeast of Seoul. I had a good time wandering around the back alleys of the city trying to find the Hwaseong Fortress, a stone wall built around 1796 to defend the country. Richard told me I had to go see it for myself and I enjoyed walking along the entire 3.5 mile length of it, checking out the different main gates, hidden gates and view towers. I was joined by many Koreans out for a stroll or a power walk as well as teenagers looking for a place to get away, in at least one case to make out as I walked by. That made me realize that one thing we take for granted as adults is having a private space to ourselves, namely our apartment or house (although the older the kid gets the less private I have a feeling the house will feel like, eh). All in all, I walked about 8 miles that night, and successfully purchased two bottles of carbonated apple juice (didn’t realize they were carbonated but they tasted good) and an apple.

The next day Richard and I hired a van to take us out to the coast and into Seoul. I really, really wanted to get to the ocean and wander around. We ended up on a little island called Jebudo (do, pronounced ‘dough’, means island) and actually walked around most of it, maybe a two mile walk. It was mostly beach with a bit of rock cliffs thrown in. It was in the 30s temperature-wise but my new wool jacket and my Peruvian stocking cap (it pays to have a stepmother from Peru, eh!) kept me nice and warm. In the cold though, it was interesting to see how many Korean women still wore shorts or skirts. Oh, and heels. On the beach. Whatever works.

Richard highly recommended also going into the heart of Seoul to walk up the biggest hill in town: Nam-san. It was a nice brisk walk up, accompanied by a bunch of other locals and tourists, though most tourists took a bus 9/10 of the way up and walked the rest, especially the women in high heels. The view up top was pretty neat, particularly as I thought about other cities where I’d visited the high point of such as Athens, Santiago, Tokyo and Budapest. I’m of the opinion that all cities are exponentially more interesting if they have hills in them, including Austin. There were two interesting things at the top besides the view. The first was the wall of locks where couples in love would leave a lock with their names and a note on it signifying their undying love for each other, ha! The second were five signal fire ovens used for communication of an enemy invasion at the border. One fire was lit if all was normal, two if the enemy was at the border, three if the enemy was across the border, four if the enemy was being fought at the border and five for the enemy marching well past the border (I think). You could even see the mountain in the distance where the next signal fire oven was. Just like that scene in ‘The Two Towers’ where Pippen lights the fire in Minas Tirith to ask Rohan to send their army to help break the siege of the city!

Here’s the scene from the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZbJrn7L_X4

I like Korea a bit more than Taiwan and Shanghai because a) the language is much easier to learn and b) the food is a bit better, though still not anything I crave when I get back to the States. Eating in Korea is fun though as many restaurants have you sit on the floor, Indian style, leaving your shoes at the door. The poor waitresses have to bend over a lot (bad ergonomics). Usually your meal consists of something actually cooking in the middle of your table, either meat over coals or a soup/stew over a gas burner. The most interesting stew was military-style stew consisting of hot dogs, spam and various vegetables (the story is that starving Koreans during the Korean War made the stew out of leftovers from the various armies in the country, including the US one).

After six days, it was time for me to go home. I hopped on another Korean Air flight, this time for LA (and only ten hours, yay!) and unfortunately stayed awake most of the time despite popping a sleeping pill (I may have slept one hour). And now, here I am, probably somewhere over southern New Mexico waiting to walk out to the pick-up area in Austin-Bergstrom, dressed up in my khakis, Doc Martens (oops, probably still unprofessional), polo shirt and wool jacket and do the professional thing: take a cab. And then home to see Jennifer, the Kid and Maisy Insaisy. Time to be home!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this travelogue (those of you who made it this far, eh). I hope each and every one of you is doing great and appreciating everything you have in life.

A Brief Note about Connecticut because, well, I said I would

Well, I said I was going to write about Connecticut so I will. I’m in the Jet Blue terminal at New York’s JFK airport about 36 hours before Hurricane Irene is projected to hit New York City so that’s kind of dominating things. I moved my flight from 9am Saturday to 8:25pm Friday night just to avoid any unforeseen chaos here. The subway will shut down at noon Saturday and people are being told to evacuate low-lying areas. All of the people at the ATMI office seem fairly nonchalant about it but I hope they’re all ok. The lawyer who I work with, who lives on the coast in Greenwich, Connecticut, is talking about having a football game with friends during the hurricane.
So anyway, I’m outta here.
Now about Connecticut. It’s a nice-looking green state with lots of high hills. The weather is quite fantastic as the highs are in the mid-80s. Of course they pay for it with the winters but still. I didn’t take much time to tool around Danbury, the city where ATMI’s HQ is located but I did notice a few things:
- If you want Italian food, you can do worse than be in Danbury. Within a mile of my hotel there were four pizza joints, three Italian-style delis selling sandwiches and an Italian-style chain called, I believe, Banucci’s.
- Danbury is very pedestrian unfriendly. Sidewalks are a rarity as are crosswalks. I tried to walk to the Banucci’s last night, which isn’t even 1/3 of a mile from the hotel, and had to cross a four lane road in the dark twice each way because to stay on my side of the road I would have had to walk on top of the guardrail over the Still River. Though I guess if you’re under snow for 1/3 of the year there’s not too much walking going on.
Um, that’s about it for Danbury. So since this post seems kind of short, here are some things I’m looking forward to about being home:
- Seeing my own wife and kid. I’m tired of seeing everybody else’s though seeing the antics of well-behaved kid four and under never fails to make me smile.
- Not having to pack up my stuff in my suitcase every day before I leave. I don’t like to leave a mess out for the cleaning lady and also would like to make it difficult for her to steal my prized Porco Rosso DVD if she were so inclined.
- Home-cooked food. Italian food and grinders are nice but it’s time for some of Jennifer’s cooking (I can cook too but she’s taken over that job full-time).
- The Texas triple digit heat. Oh wait, wrong list.
- Turning on the radio and knowing which station NPR is.
OK, my flight’s going to board soon and I need to go buy me some dinner to take on the 3.5 hour flight home. I’m looking forward to being back. My next trip will be probably be a two week jaunt to East Asia but at least I’ll get 3-4 weeks or more at home. Texas ho!
POST-SCRIPT: That was one of the bumpiest flights I’ve been on in a long time. It’s like the pilots were going out of their way to get close to the hurricane. When you’re having trouble seeing the wing at 38,000 feet you’re in something weird. Boy was I glad to be on the ground.

Brief Work Trip to Belgium

Goede morgen/bonjour from Belgium! Yes, the country I only knew as a) associated with waffles and b) the route for Germany’s invasion of France during World War II, is now graced with my presence, holy smokes. Why am I here? Because ATMI, the new company I’m drawing a paycheck from, has not one but two facilities here! And, since it’s my job to see what’s going on at every facility and meet and train the key contacts, I get a trip over here. I’m not thrilled to be away from Jennifer, the kid and the dog for two weeks (I’ll also be spending some time at our HQ in Danbury, Connecticut) but it’s nice to get away from the Texas drought and see a country that I’ve never visited.

I got here via two Delta flights: first from Austin to Atlanta and then on to Brussels. The only items of note on the trip were a) seeing the Milwaukee Brewers’ team plane in Hartsfield-Jackson airport (at least, I hope it was theirs since someone who wasn’t the team owning a plane painted in Brewers colors and covered with their logo would be pretty scary) and b) being bumped to the rear of the plane for the Brussels flight since there’d been a plane change and my seat, 20C, didn’t exist on the new one. I hate, repeat, hate, the back of the plane since it shakes so much more than the middle and front. Thankfully the flight was for the most part pretty stable. I was sitting next to two twenty-something French guys who were frustrating by the plane’s lack of working overhead lights, thus preventing them from playing cards during the eight hour flight.

So, about Belgium. The first thing to know about Belgium is that culturally it really should be divided in two and annexed by the Netherlands and France. I thought Flemish was the official language of Belgium but I was wrong on two counts. First, Flemish is only a dialect of Dutch (and thus extremely similar) and second both Flemish and French are the official languages. In fact, there is a set dividing line between the Flemish and French-speaking regions based on governmental regions (like states or counties). Brussels and the Walloon region in the south speak French while the Flemish region in the north speaks, well, Flemish. Our office in Brussels speaks French but the office in Hoegaarden (pronounced pretty much like hoo-garden), located only 20 miles to the east, speaks Flemish. Weird. All things considered I prefer being around French speakers since it’s easier to understand, being similar to Spanish, but I much prefer driving to the Hoegaarden office since it’s located in a bucolic town the size of Buda.

I’ve got a rental car. And it’s a friggin’ beamer, the first I’ve ever driven, though of the station wagon variety. This is also the first time I’ve ever had a rental car for a business trip outside of the US and the first time I’ve ever tried to drive in Europe, even though this is like my tenth trip in the past seven years. Thank God they drive on the right side of the road or otherwise I’d really have trouble. You see, driving in Belgium isn’t that much different than in the States but it’s just different enough to cause problems. Let me count the ways:

- Roundabouts. Four way intersections made seamless. I actually kind of like them now that I’m used to them but they were a bit disconcerting at first.
- My sideview mirrors. BMW thinks it’s a hoot to make the sideview mirrors concave (or is it convex) so that you can see your blind spot in them and thus don’t have to look over your shoulder. That’s nice except that it’s difficult to perceive how far that car in the next lane is. Is it in my blind spot or further back? I have to look over my shoulder to find out, eh. One good thing though is that if I don’t see anyone in the sideview mirror I can change lanes.
- Road layouts. Roads have arrows to show you which lane to be in but the intersections can sometimes be a bit confusing based on where the median is, dotted-white lines are, the presence of pedestrians and cyclists, and such. It’s like they’re a degree or two off of normal, just enough for me to hate being the first car to go through an intersection when the light turns green (better to follow someone else, eh).
- Drivers are a bit more aggressive here. In a way it makes it easier for me to compensate for my screw-ups but it’s disconcerting when people cut you off, ride your tail or drive about 60 mph faster than you on the freeway.
- Narrow streets. This is especially true in older parts of cities built before cars. I hate it. Especially because...
- One lane streets aren’t necessarily one-way. Yes, in Belgium you can go the wrong way down a one-way street in certain circumstances known only to Belgians. I’ve been told that there is a difference between Northern and Southern Europe in terms of driving craziness with Southern being much worse. Let’s just say that Belgium tries to ignore its geography.
- Pedestrian crossing. You’re supposed to yield to pedestrians when you’re driving. This makes little sense to me but I’m working on it. I stop for them while I’m driving but when I’m a pedestrian I still try to hang back until a big gap appears.
- Parking. Parallel parking is the norm. Luckily I haven’t had to do it yet where I had to back in. Parking garages usually have very tight spaces as well. Why’d the rental car company have to rent me a friggin’ boat?
- And last, motorcyclists. They don’t respect traffic lanes, thus making Belgium a Level 2 driving country. See, I have a system of measuring a country’s driving craziness based on the behavior of its motorcyclists. I call it the Motorcyclist Lunacy Index. Here are the levels:
o Level 1 – Motorcyclists usually respect the traffic rules and drive like cars do, i.e. staying in their lanes and respecting the speed limit. Ex. United States
o Level 2 – Motorcyclists drive in between car lanes as if they own the joint. This can be either on regular roads or traffic-clogged freeways. Ex. Belgium
o Level 3 – Motorcyclists not only disrespect lanes but they also run red lights if nobody’s coming. Ex. Mexico
o Level 4 – Motorcyclists drive on the sidewalk. Ex. South Korea
o Level 5 – Motorcyclists drive like they’re suicidal but then again so does everybody else. Ex. India (where the safest place to be when you’re on the road is on top of a cow)

Of course, as I mentioned before this is the country that also thinks it’s ok to go both ways down a one-way street in certain circumstances.

Now let’s talk about GPS. See, the BMW has built-in GPS which I’ve figured out how to use. I hate the idea of GPS. I think everybody should be able to read a map and practice that skill as often as possible. I consider it an essential life skill and Graham’s going to have to learn it once he’s got this whole reading thing down.

But...I’m going to give a pass to a person driving by themselves in a foreign country. See, right after I landed at 8:40am on Wednesday, I had to drive from the airport into Brussels. I hadn’t slept on the plane. I was driving an unfamiliar car in an unfamiliar city with roads that were confusing as all getout (the guy at the rental counter couldn’t even adequately explain how to leave the airport while drawing a map). Without GPS, I would have spent double the time to get there and greatly increased my likelihood of getting in an accident. In short, the GPS was a good investment by ATMI in that it saved me stress and time. The system has a comforting female voice that seems to soothe a bit, even when she tells me to u-turn (because I ignored her instructions and missed a turn). And she ALWAYS knows where I am and how to get me to my destination. Once I learned how to interpret her commands and her sense of timing (oh, ‘turn right now’ means NOW?) I’ve become quite comfortable with her. And yes, it’s eerie saying her but seriously it sometimes feels like I have a navigator popping up whenever I have to make a turn.

I’ll talk more about GPS lady later. We had fun together on Saturday.

So what else about Belgium? It’s very green here and quite overcast. They’ve been getting a ton of rain lately. In fact, on Thursday when I was in Brussels, the Hoegaarden office got 50cm of rain in a half hour. That’s about 20 inches!!!! Peoples’ houses had a foot of water in them and it even flooded the back part of our factory. The worst though were the winds that knocked over a stage at an outdoor rock festival, killing three people. For ATMI employees who had kids or spouses attending, it was a nightmare to ensure they were ok since cell phone service was knocked out.

http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/272478/28/Belgium-storm-hits-music-fair-leaving-five-dead

The food is fairly decent though I’ve only had one solid meal where I had real Belgian food (it was chunks of beef in some broth and it tasted good), the other meals being my normal staples of pizza, sandwiches and gyros and the like. The pizza is the normal Italian-style with thin crust and not much sauce but I found a mostly empty restaurant run by a guy who speaks Italian. I went back once and will probably go back on Monday just because he likes to speak to me in Italian with me responding in Spanish. Much easier than being in a Flemish-speaking joint trying to make myself understood though I have learned some words:

- Dank u wel – thank you
- Altublieft – please
- Ja – yes
- Ik spreek geen Nederlands – I don’t speak Dutch
- Goede morgen – good morning
- Goed – good

Um, and that’s about it. Mostly I try to get by without speaking or use French (not that I know much more French but I know enough more to feel safer and plus I do a fairly decent French accent). Je ne parles pas Francais, indeed!

Thursday was spent in Brussels, where I had a fun 45-minute commute due to traffic (and I probably could have found the office without the GPS lady but I didn’t want to chance it). Friday was spent in Hoegaarden where apparently everyone brings their lunch so I had to drive by myself down to the Shell gas station to get a very-pressed ham and cheese panini.

Music on the radio is interesting here. No rock or country, but lots of pop and dance music. And they don’t bleep out the cuss words either so Cee-Lo Green’s love ballad F--- You doesn’t insert the word ‘Forget’. The pop queen is Katy Perry, particularly her ‘This Friday Night’ song but I’ve also heard Jennifer and my old fave, ‘Vamos a la Playa’ twice. Oh yeah, and that annoying Bruno Mars song about doing nothing all day long. Regardless, it’s always fun to hear the DJ cut speak in French or Flemish and then throw in the English band and song name (“goeden woerd voordje kleine sterren ‘Franky Valli and the Four Seasons – Oh What A Night!’”).

Here are some good songs I’ve heard though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC_dclLci6g (a French/English duet)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td5RJ2uBSbo&feature=related (a good dance song that happens to have a lot of yelling)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRsxpoAc5w Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5

My hotel is located in the center of Leuven, a university town with a quite old town center (that is heck to drive in, at least at first). Cute little cobblestone streets, lots of old buildings including big churches, many of which were reconstructed after World War II and a fair number of tourists (but no Americans near as I can tell, yay). The hotel has an underground parking garage which is quite difficult to navigate my BMW boat through but it beats parallel parking on the street. The showerhead sticks to the wall, thank goodness, and for the first time ever the maid doesn’t put those useless throw pillows I never use back on the bed when she cleans. She put them on top of the wardrobe the first day, saving both her and I effort. Awesome. Oh, and lastly Belgium is on the euro if you were wondering but I don’t know what their economic problems are (though apparently they’ve been without a fully-functioning federal gov’t, i.e. no prime minister, for like the last year and a half).

Part of the reason I’m here is that there’s a work emergency I’m working to take care of and thus I didn’t give any thought to what I was going to do with my free weekend in Belgium until Friday night. The Americans working for ATMI in Belgium had some good suggestions. Ghent and Bruges are both great old cities to wander around in. Brussels is the capital of Europe with the EU HQ there. Ostend is a nice town on the North Sea. Or if I wanted to hop a train, I could be in Amsterdam, Paris or even London in about two hours. Whoa. Well, I’ve been to those latter three (though didn’t have enough time to explore each properly) and besides I don’t want to go to super-cool places that Jennifer would like to go to as well without her if I can help it (Jennifer, forget the Kid and come to Europe with me, eh!!!!!). Belgian cities didn’t appeal to me because they’re too stressful and there were bound to be tons of tourists. I thought about what I love most about Europe: old buildings of course! And, as it turns out, Belgium has a ton of old forts, called citadels here. Awesome!

Now, I should have just bought a travel guide to Belgium before I left. I didn’t think about it so I was left with the trusty internets. I found a list of the best ones and using Google Maps figured out where some of them were clustered together. I wanted to be in the hilly regions which meant going south to the French-speaking Walloon region, another bonus. I knew the towns the citadels were in were Namur, Dinant and Bouillon (pronounced, I believe, Boo-yone) but I didn’t know where they would be. And I couldn’t get that shifty GPS lady to tell me so I was reduced to driving to the towns and hoping for proper signage (something you’d think the local authorities would ensure is adequate but half the time is not the case) or for the citadel to be easily visible (and with them always being on the high ground, this was likely).

I told the GPS lady I wanted to go to Namur. It was at this point she and I had our first fight. See, GPS Lady likes it if I take the freeway. But I don’t like the freeway except on the way back when I’m tired. When I’m driving somewhere new, I want to SEE the places I’m in and that means taking the two-lane backroads. Armed with a map that I had purchased at the first gas station I passed in Leuven (where I also confirmed I could use my American-style, not European-style, credit card to buy gas), I knew which road I wanted to take to get there. And I knew she wouldn’t like it. The interaction went something like this:
- GPS Lady (about ½ mile before the turn): “Prepare to turn right.”
- GPS Lady: “Turn right in 300 meters.”
- GPS Lady: “Now turn right.” I continue straight ahead on the road I want.
- GPS Lady (after five second period of silence): “Please u-turn if possible.” I continue straight ahead.
- GPS Lady (after about fifteen seconds as she’s realized I’m not u-turning and figures a new route to get me back to where she wants me to go): “Turn right in 300 meters.”
- GPS Lady: “Now turn right.”
- GPS Lady: “Please u-turn if possible.”

This cycle continues at least once more. Then she gives up and reroutes me to the route I wanted the whole time. Since there are no instructions to give since I’m going straight I don’t hear from her again for a while. It’s as if she’s sulking. Poor GPS Lady.

When we reached Namur, I turned the GPS Lady off because as far as I was concerned she’d done her job and it would be up to old-fashioned navigating and searching to get me where I needed to be. Namur was a bigger town than I thought, probably New Braunfels-sized. I didn’t see the fort when I drove in so, when I got to a point where I knew I didn’t know where to go, I stopped the car and consulted the GPS Lady’s map. I figured the citadel was on the other side of the river but I didn’t know how to get to the other side without consulting GPS. Armed with this new info, I saw the fort as I was about to turn across the bridge. Score one for old-fashioned navigating (sort of).

Now there are two things a guide book would really have helped me on. First, it probably would have had a detailed map of the city with the location of the fort on it. Second, it would have told me that I didn’t have to find a parallel parking spot at the base of the hill but rather that I could drive up to the middle of it and park. It actually worked out for the best because the fort was rather lame, being a bunch of walls on the side of the hill but no meat inside. Or maybe it would have been better if I had signed up for the Segway tour but I figured that, well, I had two more forts to get to and it was already 11am. I did get some great views of the Meuse and Samois river valleys with Namur splayed out across them. I also found out, after getting a map of the fort, that there was a chateau at the back end. I walked back down to the base, got in my car and drove up to the parking lot at the chateau. I had to because Jennifer and I had been watching BBC period mini-series like ‘The Way We Were’ and ‘Downton Abbey’ so I needed to see if it was a building like that. No such luck; it was just a nice looking big house with a hotel and restaurant inside. I got in the Beamer, turned on the GPS Lady and got on my way to Dinant.

I had to pull another change of route on GPS Lady but how the heck could I miss out on following the Meuse River for the 30 or so miles? GPS Lady don’t know nothin’ ‘bout travelin’. She wasn’t silent for long though as there were a bunch of roundabouts on the road and she never lets a roundabout go by without giving me instructions: ‘Turn right at the first/second/third turning of the roundabout’. I was glad to give her something to do so she’d feel useful.

The signage for the citadel of Dinant was quite good and I easily found the parking at the top of the cliff where the citadel was situated. Whereas the citadel of Namur was free to wander around in, this one required 7 euro (about $11 or so) to get in. I soon found out why: you had to have a guided tour to wander the grounds. Bleh. Not only did I have to hang around for 15 minutes waiting for the next tour but the tour would be given in two languages, neither of which I knew: French and Dutch. I did get a little pamphlet in English but its descriptions were quite paltry. Whereas the French and Dutch speakers got five minutes of speaking at each spot, I got maybe three sentences. Way to go Dinant tourist authorities. There was at least one Spanish speaker with us and two people from Great Britain and maybe a handful of others, likely Germans. Well, the fort was fairly good so the overall experience was quite positive. We had good views of the Meuse River valley and the inner workings of the fort.

The history of these forts is quite interesting. They were set up beginning in maybe the 900s (or later, depending on which one you’re talking about) as a common line of defense. The thing is though that today’s countries didn’t exist. Sure, you had the kingdom of France but there was the Holy Roman Empire for a while and tons of little principalities and fiefdoms. By the 1600s the region was owned by either France or Holland (Belgium didn’t come into being until 1830), seemingly switching back and forth with each successive war. And that’s not counting all of the random fiefdom invasions and attacks. The worst was when Charles the Bold ransacked the town, tying 800 townspeople in pairs and throwing them into the river to drown. As civilized as we always think Europe is/was, there sure were a lot of stupid little wars and lots of action like that. The forts were sometimes even fought over in World Wars I and II (there was one story about 12 French soldiers who were trapped in a tunnel in citadel of Dinant killing 58 German soldiers while fighting to the last man).

And speaking of World War II, it’s weird to think that if I were living in Belgium in 1939 I would be going to war to fight the Germans (or be working in the underground to try to make the occupiers’ lives miserable). War is such an abstract concept to us younger Americans because the last one fought on our soil was fought 150 years ago and the last draft we had was in the early 70s. But here they lived it. They fought. They were bombed. They starved. They were beaten. They endured and survived. It’s amazing. I think most of us Americans have really no idea of war (not that the average young Belgian knows anything about it either but still). Watching Band of Brothers was the closest I’ve come to it but perhaps next visit I’ll drive over to Bastogne where the American army was besieged during the Battle of the Bulge.

It was during the tour of the citadel of Dinant that I really missed home, specifically Jennifer and the Kid. It may seem strange to you that I would miss home while being in such a cool place but seeing husbands and wives together and little kids running around reminds me strongly of my family back home (if I saw a dog jumping up and scratching people I’d assuredly miss Maisy too). I’m happy for them that they are traveling together and slightly sad that I don’t have Jennifer to enjoy this with me (and an older version of Graham though he probably wouldn’t really enjoy something like this until he’s 11 or 12). Still, I’m quite fortunate to have a job that allows me the opportunities to do stuff like this, on the company’s dime no less. It doesn’t always make up for the time spent away from family but it helps sometimes.

After the hour-long tour I took the cable car down into the town of Dinant right on the river. I found what I was looking for, one of the reasons I wanted to come down into the French-speaking region: a French sandwich shop! I had a croque monseiur that tasted awesome even though the bread looked it came from H-E-B. For some reason the waitress brought me ketchup which couldn’t have been to go with my salad because it already had dressing on it. Was it because I looked American or was it normal? I never found out but that’s ok.

I took the cable car back up and got back in the car for the drive down to Bouillon. This would be about fifty miles or so, still on backroads (sorry GPS Lady) through small towns but unfortunately over farm fields and not following rivers. It was about 3pm when I made it into Bouillon, a place that let you know through the signage that a citadel was there but giving you absolutely no signs to tell you how to get to it. It did have an awesome little riverfront with shops and restaurants all along both stone-lined banks which, while I was cruising saw the citadel up high above it. I found a place to park way back at the edge of town but since Bouillon is a really small place it wasn’t far to walk. There were a bunch of tourists there, it being a Saturday and all, and the place really felt like the Belgian/French version of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. In short, really cute and touristy without being too tacky. And Eureka Springs has nothing quite as cool as a citadel (though the monster statue of Jesus is pretty impressive).

I hiked up to the citadel and paid my €7,50 (they reverse the use of commas and periods in numbers here) to enter. No guides this time, yay, it was all self-guided with a very detailed guidebook in English! The citadel was originally owned by Geoffrey of Bouillon, the guy who started and financed the first Crusade back in 1095 (he went over, conquered Jerusalem and died there). Note: watch Kingdom of Heaven for a decent movie about the first Crusade. It had a succession of owners afterward including Louis XVI, who sent this awesome engineer named Vauban to make a bunch of improvements (which I won’t go into detail on here but they were cool). The citadel of Bouillon was pretty awesome and definitely the best of the bunch (actually, they each was better than the previous).

After my visit to the citadel, I wandered down by the wild side of the Samois river where there was a big open grassy area to chill out in with woods on the other side. People were fishing, swimming in the river, sitting on parkbenches or lazing about on picnic blankets. It was like San Gabriel Park in Georgetown but ten times better (and without the soul-sucking heat). It was at that point I wished I’d had the foresight to book a night in a hotel in Bouillon instead of having to get back to my hotel in Leuven that night. Or at least bought a guidebook so I would have known where to park and to bring my swimsuit. I wanted to sit in that river so bad but oh well. Perhaps when I bring Jennifer and family. Anyway, Bouillon is now included on my list of totally awesome towns to visit and spend some downtime in.
On the walk back to my car I found two more establishments I was looking for: a boulangerie (boo-lahnge-air-ee) and a chocolate shop! The word boulangerie not only sounds good but is also associated with awesome bread, croissants and quiches. Well, actually the bread is usually awesome, the croissants don’t taste much different from croissants made here and I actually don’t like quiches but feel compelled to eat them because a) I’m in France or a French-speaking region and b) they’re a good source of healthy food I have a tough time finding on the road like broccoli or salmon. I got a bunch of miscellaneous chocolates for Jennifer which hopefully won’t melt before I get them back to Austin.

I let GPS Lady have her way and direct me to the expressway to return to Leuven. I stopped at a grocery store outside of Bouillon to get some apples, bananas and bottled water to have for dinner (along with the bread, croissant and quiche) as well as stash for later days. I haven’t found a good granola bar equivalent in Belgium but it appears that my stash of granola bars and trail mix from the US will last me through Connecticut so I’m ok.

I hate the expressway in Belgium. Too many people driving like bats out of hell for me and too boring scenery. Still, it was already six when I left Bouillon and it would take at least 1.5 hours to get back so it was better to at least not have to think as much. Belgian freeways are pretty much like ours so there’s nothing interesting to report about the journey back. It wasn’t like GPS Lady even sounded happy or anything to have gotten her way.

Today I slept in until 10:36 which may be the latest I’ve slept in since I was in college ten years ago. I’m not sure I’ve slept in past 7am since Graham was born. Since I went to bed around 11:30, that was a whole eleven hours of sleep. Wow. Guess I needed it. The good thing was that I wasn’t driving anywhere today, only spending the day wandering around Leuven on foot. I set out at noon and there were still hardly anybody on the street or any shops open.

I had one place I needed to find and that was the cemetery with several British soldiers killed during the early years of World War II. I found them along with a bunch of soldiers from other British territories like Australia, New Zealand and Canada (well, Canada wasn’t anymore but the guy was in the Royal something-or-other), Belgium, the Netherlands and even, near as I can tell, Germany. There was a big section for Belgian veterans who died after the war. And there was even a section for those who died in concentration camps and those who survived them (I’m not 100% certain I’m right but the inscription at the entrance to the area had ‘Buchenwald’ written in it). Read ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ for a really sad children’s story about the Holocaust.

I ended up walking 10.5 miles, a good distance but not quite as far as the 15.5 I did a month ago in Minnesota. Highlights included getting out into the countryside (cow poop smells the same here as it does in Texas), seeing an automated machine selling loaves of bread in a gas station parking lot (it was called ‘broodautomaat’), seeing a basketball backboard with the mid-90s Houston Rockets logo on it, seeing several women wearing outfits which were combination halter top dresses and MC Hammer balloon pants and finding an all-ages track meet by following the sound of the PA announcer’s voice. The track meet was interesting in its banality: it was exactly like a track meet might be in the US except for the language difference. I stuck around to watch two 3x600 relays run by girls who looked to be between 9 and 10 and then left.

I’m sitting on my hotel bed finishing this after doing my own laundry at Nemo’s Laundromat just down the street (for only €4, less than the cost of having the hotel clean a t-shirt). Well, it’s almost done in that all of the clothes are hanging on towel racks and chairs drying off (Europeans aren’t big on dryers). Tomorrow I take the train into Brussels for a meeting with the export authorities for the Belgium-Capital and Walloon regions though I’ll be somewhat of a bit player as the meeting will be in either French or Flemish. I’m not nervous about taking the train or the meeting but together I’m slightly nervous (I shouldn’t be). Hope it goes well. In the afternoon I’ll be back in the Hoegaarden office and on Tuesday I’ll be on a nonstop Delta flight to New York’s JFK in order to reach ATMI’s HQ in Danbury, Connecticut. Yep, I’ll be renting another car but I don’t know if it will have GPS. In a way, I secretly hope it does :)

I’ll write more about Connecticut after I experience it a bit. I’m planning on being back in scorched Austin on Saturday, hopefully bringing some of this Belgian rain on my tail.

Current Bike Commute To Work

So for those who haven’t heard my last day at NI will be June 24. I’m moving on to a different company, ATMI, in a different space, chemicals, in a different location, Round Rock. I will find out more about what I’ll miss about NI once I start but the one thing I know for certain I’ll miss is the commute to work by bike (ATMI is about ten miles away and regardless there is no good bike route to get there as I’m not suicidal). So, to commemorate my current ride for posterity, let’s do a blog post on it.

Actually, this is the third route I’ve used to bike to work as two of my previous houses were both within biking distance. One of them involved riding 400 yards through weeds and crossing a railroad track, ha!

Right now I live about 6.75 miles away from work which is definitely close enough to bike. These days, since I’m trying to get back down to my pre-Graham weight of 185 pounds (I’d jumped up to 195 due to increased soda consumption and decreased sleep) I try to bike in as often as possible, usually making it three days a week. My ride of choice is a hybrid bike I bought for $375 in 2004 from Buck’s Bikes in North Austin. I had no idea what different types of bikes were at the time, my last experience with a bike having been with my old Schwinn with no gears and blue tires, endless amusement being provided by riding hard then skidding on the concrete to leave a little blue tire streak. This new bike has 21 gears and hand brakes, both of which were entirely new concepts to me but of course I now have a handle on. And for those who don’t know what a hybrid bike is, it’s a cross between a road bike (ultra-thin and smooth tires, very light, no shocks) and a mountain bike (thick and knobby tires, very heavy and big shocks, even for the seat). The Buck’s guy told me my bike was what people in China used to commute. Sounded good to me!

Of course, I had to make some modifications to make the bike commute-worthy. I used to carry my stuff in a backpack but a couple of years ago added a little luggage rack to the back of it upon which hang two panniers, a fancy word for saddlebags. I need them to haul my laptop, lunch/snack food, my electric razor, keys, wallet, NI badge, cell phone and wedding ring (I take it off when I ride so as not to worry about it falling off). The panniers are a lot better than a backpack because there is no weight on your back (though some people claim you are less maneuverable). Of course, bikes aren’t designed to have so much weight on the back tire so I use a thicker thorn-resistant tube on it which seems to help prevent tube blowouts. The panniers also have a pouch for a fluorescent green rain cover should it ever rain again here in Central Texas.

During the winter my early morning ride begins in darkness so I take some steps to make myself visible. First of all, I have a blinking red light on each pannier. They don’t blink synchronously which must seem weird to drivers on the road but if it makes me more noticeable that’s good. I also wear a reflective jogging vest and have a little xenon light on the front, more to be seen by cars turning out onto the road than for seeing objects since I ride on some well-lit streets (and now in summer ride in early morning light). The more visible I am, the better.

So even though I’m a serious cycling commuter at this point I still don’t do the spandex thing. I used to when I first started out, wearing tight spandex shorts, a tight cycling jersey with the pouches on the backside to hold your stuff and shoes that would clip you into the pedals. A few years ago I gave it all up because I decided that I wanted to keep cycling a somewhat fun activity, not a serious one. Therefore, my riding outfit is usually a white t-shirt, basketball shorts, old tennis shoes and, in the afternoons, sunglasses. Oh, and a bike helmet. Gosh I thought those were dorky when I was a kid (never wore one until 2004 actually) but now that I’m an adult, well, they still look a little dorky but they may just save my life. I’ve worn the same one these last seven years and though the plastic housing is severely cracked the styrofoam core is solid. Still has my number from the 2004 MS150 on it too, eh (riding that first 100 miles was probably my life’s ultimate physical accomplishment).

My commute begins with a mile or so ride through my neighborhood. There is no bike lane and the road is fairly narrow but there’s also very little traffic at any time of day and particularly not at 6:30am. I do have to watch out for the occasional stray dog or limb but otherwise there are no obstacles to worry about. There is a sidewalk so I also don’t have to worry about joggers or walkers, all of whom I try to wave at in a friendly manner. It’s my opinion that cyclists are too standoffish, looking like we all want to be Lance Armstrong and that we own the road. Therefore, I try to do the little things to make people feel more comfortable around me. This includes following most traffic laws (more on that later), waving at pedestrians (or sometimes just nodding), smiling when I know people are looking at me like when I go through an intersection, giving drivers a thumbs up if I know they’re hanging back on purpose to give me some space and telling other cyclists hello when we’re sitting together at an intersection or I pass them (unless they’re doing something stupid like riding on the 183 feeder with no helmet or lights at an abysmally slow pace).

I do encounter three stop signs before getting out of the neighborhood, bringing up the issue of cyclist behavior. Should you act like a car or not? I try to act like a car as much as possible but I won’t come to a complete stop at stop signs if there is not a car that is arriving before me or around the same time. After all, it’s best for everybody if I get off the road as quickly as possible and besides, it takes me quite a bit longer to get up to full speed than a car does. So of course at 6:30am I just roll right on through the stop signs, sometimes halting my pedaling just to show any cars following me that I am paying attention. Not sure if they notice but what the heck. If there are cars arriving ahead of me at an intersection, I’ll take my legs off of the pedals and come to a complete stop. Most of the time it seems like the drivers think I’m going to roll through so they’re surprised when I come to a stop. I like to think that the more I do it the more people will become used to it and thus we’ll reduce accidents. Of course, there will always be morons like the guy Jennifer and I saw yesterday on Lamar pass everybody on the right and roll through the red light without even looking. That’s another thing about intersections. Most cyclists seem to roll right up to the front at a red light. Why would you do that? All of the cars just have to pass you again, increasing your risk of getting hit. I hang back in my spot in the queue, sometimes even getting out into traffic to do it. The exception is if there’s a bike lane but I’ll still hang back a little bit if it’s prudent such as when people are turning right.

Anyway, I cross Anderson Mill at a traffic light that is usually frequented by enough cars I don’t have to run it. Why would I run it? You try sitting at a pressure-sensored light waiting for a car to show up so you can cross. I could walk over to the pedestrian crossing light and hit the button there but that’s too much trouble. Anyway, I rarely have to run that light. I just hang to the right as far as possible and let cars turning right go around me. When the light turns green, I go straight across, staring at anybody coming the opposite way making a left hand turn to hopefully make sure they see me, not that I could do much if they didn’t.

After Anderson Mill I pass a middle school and then follow the road to the right, pointing me almost due west as I roll through a neighborhood of duplexes. This is the spot where the wind is most likely to hit me hard if it’s blowing in in the morning. Riding into the wind on a bike can be a major effort, particularly when you’re riding a hybrid bike with a larger-than-normal rear tube and about twenty pounds of extra weight on the back end (laptop and lunch in glass containers). It’s funny too how, while you definitely notice when the wind is against you, you don’t notice as much when it’s at your back (though it definitely helps you go faster).

After another third of a mile I’m at the intersection of Turtle Rock and Pond Springs (Broadmeade turned into Turtle Rock at Anderson Mill). This is also a traffic light and it takes an ungodly amount of time to turn green even though traffic on Pond Springs is quite light. My old rule for this intersection was ‘wait for the green if there is a car there’. After one too many four minute waits, the rule changed to ‘wait ten seconds for the green if there is a car there but after that get outta there’. I don’t like disobeying the traffic rules but I think everybody sitting in their cars would do the same thing and are envious :)

Pond Springs is two-lane with a nice bike lane on the side. The pavement is also quite smooth so it’s a rather pleasurable part of the ride except for the occasional road debris from an accident. You never know what will puncture your tires but you also can only do so much to avoid things without getting into traffic. I err on the side of staying in the bike lane. I also have to watch out for people pulling out of apartment complexes. If I see someone who is on a pace to intersect my path, I always slow down until I know they see me. Better to stop and let them go through then getting hit.

After ascending a small hill, Pond Springs crosses Hunter’s Chase at a traffic light that is quite reasonably timed. After that it’s a nice downhill slope to a dogleg into US Highway 183. I don’t like crossing 183 but I have no choice. It’s a funky intersection where I cross under 183 at a traffic light at Pond Springs, take a left turn onto the feeder road, immediately go through the light at Spicewood Springs/McNeil, pedal fifty yards uphill on the feeder, take a right turn onto a side street and then almost immediately turn left onto the four-lane Jollyville Road. The part on the feeder is definitely the most harrowing part of the commute but the good thing about having people sitting behind me at the Pond Springs/183 light is that I know they see me and they’re going reasonably slowly. Once I’m on the feeder they all pass me and then there is a gap before the next set of cars coming down the feeder road rolls through. I ride like heck on that part. Occasionally there is someone riding in front of me who is not wearing a helmet or not trying to ride fast which makes me angry. Get a move on, moron!

Jollyville is the third major segment of the ride and it’s interesting too. For starters, it’s a major four-lane road that is used as an alternative to 183 which it parallels. People can go 40 or faster down it. It also winds and is slightly hilly. It has a lot of businesses and side streets that open onto it. But at least it has a bike lane. This is where I’ll usually see a cyclist or two. I try to stay in the middle of the bike lane as it’s very narrow and sometimes cars get quite close (as well as buses). My guess is that Jollyville was originally built without bike lanes but then added them without widening the road, narrowing the lanes instead. It’s not the most comforting but at least there are more cyclists on the road so hopefully the drivers are used to them.

I stay on Jollyville for a mile or so then take a left onto another major road with a bike lane, Duval. Taking that left is interesting as I have to cut across two lanes of traffic to get into the left hand turn lane for cars. I’ll usually steal a glance over my shoulder when I’m getting close and dart across if I don’t see anyone. If there’s a car coming, I’ll usually stop and turn to get a good look, waiting for an open time to cross. At 6:50am I don’t have to wait very long. It’s fun being in the left-hand turn lane because then you really do feel like a car. I turn onto Duval and roll down a quick hill (past the Chuy’s where sometimes I can smell what I think is the frying of tortilla chips) to my old nemesis, 183. This time it’s a straight shot through an intersection with very few people behind me and then into a bike lane as Duval turns east and into a one-lane road.

Near 183 on Duval is an elementary school with an elderly crossing guard. I make a point of saying hi to him every morning and every morning I think he’s surprised to hear a cyclist talking to him. He composes himself enough to say something back like ‘good morning’ or ‘how are you doing?’, the latter being useless because by that time I’m rolling right past him and unable to answer. I also like that spot in the ride when the school zone is in effect and I can ride at almost the same speed as the cars on the road.

I continue down Duval for a mile or so, watching all the while for people pulling out of their driveways or out from side streets. At the bottom of a small hill it turns abruptly left and crosses the railroad track that runs behind NI. This is a little difficult as I have to make sure I’ve slowed down enough to negotiate the curve and not be going so fast I can’t signal that I’m turning right after the railroad track into NI’s back entrance. Sometimes also there is a train coming through which is fun to pass up the long line of cars and go right to the front. One time I even went under the guard arms but only because they were just coming down, the train was very far off and, well, because I could. Graham and unnamed kid #2 (no, you don’t even exist yet), if you’re reading this don’t do that.

The back entrance to NI is tight and windy and there is usually no room for anyone to pass. Luckily enough there’s usually not anyone to do so. I go up one last small incline, turn left into the Building B parking lot, turn right towards Building A and wham, I’m there. Another ride down!

Going home is a bit different as of course it’s always hotter, particularly during May-September when it’s in the mid-70s in the morning and the high-90s in the afternoon. On those afternoons the turn onto Duval makes you feel like you’re breathing in fire from the black asphalt. I have to do some tricky maneuvers on the ride home. The first is turning left out of NI’s back drive onto the sidewalk, then riding it for a minute or so across the railroad to the first side street. At that street I do a quick 270 so I’m like a car wanting to turn left onto Duval. I can’t take a left out of NI’s back entrance because cars are only supposed to go to the right and there’s a big median anyway. And also it’s quite un-carlike (is that a word?). At the side street I’ll usually cross into the middle of the road, stand there and wait as Duval has a lot of cars on it in the afternoon. When there’s a gap, sometimes after more than two minutes of waiting, I cross over into the bike lane and continue on my way.

Getting to 183 is also tricky. The problem is that Duval turns into two lanes and then three for the right-hand turn lane. But I want to be in the middle lane so I can go through under the overpass. What I have to do is hug the right-hand side until a gap opens up, sometimes by a friendly driver who recognizes my predicament, and then roll into the middle lane up to the light. Most people are taking a right so once I get into that middle lane I’m ok.

I go under 183 but then have to scale a little hill with no bike lane on it, forcing me to get onto the sidewalk in front of a car dealership. Luckily there are usually no pedestrians and regardless I don’t want to be on a four-lane road with no bike lane while riding uphill (which of course causes me to ride considerably more slowly, particularly if I’m riding against the wind). I get to Jollyville on the sidewalk, take a right and then immediately get into the bike lane.

A note about wind. It seems it’s always either out of the southeast or the northwest, the predominant directions I travel on my commute. That can make it a bear but hey, it’s good exercise. I prefer having the wind in my face in the morning since it’s cooler then but also because there’s less traffic and thus I’m not in as much of a hurry to get off the road.

Jollyville abruptly ends at the side street whose name I forget right next to 183. To get up to Spicewood Springs/McNeil, I take a left on this side street (while being in the left lane, usually in a line of cars inching forward) and then an immediate right into an older shopping center dominated by a Big Lots. I always figure this shopping center is not a great place to ride as you have to watch out for cars from several directions, your view sometimes being obscured by other cars.

I get up to Spicewood Springs at the end of the shopping center. At that point the road is three lanes. The two on the right go straight through (there is no dedicated right-hand turn lane) and the one on the left is left turn only. The middle lane is where I want to be because you can also turn left on it, putting me on the right side of the feeder road and able to easily turn right onto Pong Springs. There is always a lot of traffic at this intersection and I usually have to wait for the light to turn green to be able to ease out into traffic and sit at the red light. It’s interesting as I’m literally in the middle of the traffic, surrounded by cars and heat and enveloped in the noise and gas smell from them and the traffic on 183. I like it though when there is a car sitting behind me because I know they know I’m there. When the light turns green, I accelerate as fast as I can (which isn’t abysmally slow but the gap I create is probably 2-3 car lengths), get up to the feeder, throw out my left hand to indicate I’m turning and make a hard left. It’s not the easiest turn, particularly at full speed, but I haven’t wiped out yet. And I smile for the benefit of all of the people sitting on McNeil staring at me, eh!

Then it’s back on nice smooth Pond Springs where, if the wind is from the south, I can really move. I go through Hunter’s Chase and make an easy right onto Turtle Rock at the light. The hill leading down to Turtle Rock is one of the steepest on the ride and I have to pump my brakes sometimes if someone who is coming the opposite way and is turning left doesn’t look like they might see me.

I continue down Turtle Rock and then veer north towards my neighborhood. It was at that veer that I got, out of nowhere, stung by a bee on the side of my head. I thought I’d been shot with a BB gun or something. Also around there was where I was chased by a stupid golden retriever that thankfully I was able, with some furious pedaling, to outrun.

I cross Anderson Mill at the light (also getting into the left lane to avoid the right-hand turn lane) and am back into my neighborhood, Forest North. An easy ride on the two lane road through three stop signs, a right turn and then a left, a short ride up a little rise and wham, I’m at home, all sopping wet with sweat and ready to be attacked by the Kid and the Dog (well, mostly the Dog).

That’s about it for my commute. Thanks for reading and we’ll see what exercise I’m able to whip up at ATMI to make up for its absence.

Milan, Hungary Trip: Part Two

We landed in Budapest without incident and Eszter and I separated. Even though she would be meeting me the next morning at the Budaörs office just west of Budapest, she was going back to Debrecen by train and driving out the next morning with her boss, my Hungarian counterpart Donat. Deprived of a rare traveling companion, I caught a cab over to the west side of Budapest, crossing the Danube (called the Duna in Hungary) and getting to the little suburb known as Budaörs (pronounced bew-dah-uhrsh but you say the uhrsh real quickly). That reminds me, it’s time for a quick lesson in all fourteen Hungarian vowels which I kind of managed to finally, in what I think was my ninth trip there, to learn. Follow along:

á – ah as in ‘pahk the cah in Hahrvahd yahrd’
a – au as in Paul (this one is realllll difficult)
e – eh as in egg
é – ay as in may. Yeah, that throws me too but at least it’s easy to pronounce
i – ee as in fee
í – shoot, I forget how to pronounce this
o – oh as in oreo
ó – oh but not you have to somehow say it faster than just ‘o’
ő - I can’t even write this because the sound doesn’t exist in English. It’s like a cross between ‘ew’ and - ‘ugh’.
ö – like ő but shorter. Somehow I can pronounce all of the ‘o’s properly though
u – ooh
ú – u but shorter. Tough but at least it’s easy to remember the rule
ű - very much like ȍ except that your mouth is open more but more narrowly. Really weird, I know
ü – you guessed it...like ű but shorter

So a word like köszönjük drives me insane but I can at least make a good attempt at pronouncing it. I feel so accomplished. Next up: two word sentences!!

I checked into my little panzió (which you guys might remember means pension), the Vargaház (or Varga House). I love staying in little hotels and this one, basically an extension of someone’s two story house, didn’t disappoint. It really felt like staying in someone’s house which I love.

I didn’t have a map of Budaörs but luckily it is surrounded by hills so I felt confident of being able to walk around for a while and find my way back. The temperature was in the low 30s all day and the sun was nowhere to be seen: perfect conditions for a walk! I immediately set out for a tall hill just above the town that had for some reason a little church on top. I still don’t know why there’s a little church on top because the sign up there was only written in Hungarian and German (apparently there are a lot of Germans living there).

I found my way back down the hill, wandered through a lot of nice little neighborhoods and, after three hours, got back to the hotel. I checked e-mail for a couple of hours and even had a videoconference with someone at work in Austin using Skype, then headed out to find dinner, specifically pizza. I actually knew where I was going, having seen the restaurant earlier in my wanderings. And lo and behold, it was lightly snowing!!!! I cannot tell you how fantastic it felt walking around in it as it was falling and accumulating on the ground. Budaörs is a quiet little suburb so there was very little traffic out, neither foot nor automobile. It was like I had the whole snowfall to myself. I loved every minute of it. Thankfully it was still cold enough for the snow to accumulate a little, maybe to about an inch. That was enough for me.

The next morning I walked about a mile and a half with my luggage to the Budaörs office. I was going to do it anyway but the snow on the ground, some of which was starting to melt, heightened my resolve. I met Eszter and Donat at the office, had a good visit and then drove back with them to Debrecen, where our factory and distribution center in the eastern part of the country is. It has snowed there too but it was almost all melted there as well. Too bad. Of course, the Hungarians were more than ready for spring to come. I had told Donat in December when Austin was getting its massive cold fronts that I wanted to experience a really cold winter in Hungary. His response: “Matt, go to a freezer, crawl inside and close the door. You’re crazy.” This was Thursday.
I had a good day at work on Friday then on Saturday Eszter and her boyfriend Imi, short for Imré (that’s ‘eem-ray’), drove me in a company car out to the caves at Aggtelek. It’s in the northern part of Hungary near the Slovakian border, about a three hour drive away from Debrecen. NI has several cars that employees can use for company business or for the use of visitors like me. I knew this but never considered actually using one myself before. I’m still not sure I would go drive one on my own. Not that I’m scared of Hungarian roads and drivers but that I’d have some problems in the event of an accident.
Anyway, Imi was driving and he did a good job though the GPS kept telling him to slow down in Hungarian. On the way we passed by a memorial to the fallen in the battle of Muhi (moo-hee) back in 1241 (1241!) when the Mongols overran the Hungarian forces. It wasn’t a memorial like a building but rather was a large mound of dirt covered with weeds and quite large wooden crosses. The mound was about 20-25 feet tall and had a pathway winding around it to the top. At the top was a large wooden cross with a wooden angel nailed to it. The angel was actually flying but facing the ground: a ‘fallen’ angel. It was a bit disturbing actually especially since it was near freezing outside and quite gray all around (I hadn’t seen the sun since the plane descended below the clouds into Budapest). Definitely the strangest battle monument I’d ever seen.

If you like military history, you can read about the battle here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mohi
By the time we got to Aggtelek the sun was out, yay! We were part of a rather small tour group consisting of us, our guide and a Hungarian couple in their 40s. I suppose the cold weather kept everyone away although in the cave the temperature would be a constant fifty degrees or so. Guess if I had a choice in scheduling I’d wait until summer to visit but I was thrilled to be anywhere outside of Debrecen that day. Even better was that instead of having to navigate my way through train stations and negotiate with disgruntled taxi drivers I was being taken care of by Eszter and Imi. It just makes being somewhere so much more enjoyable to be shown around by locals. This is why I make such a concerted effort to do the same thing for non-US visitors I work with when they come to Austin (it’s also an excuse to go do some things I enjoy and eat some good food, eh).

The caves at Aggtelek had something I hadn’t encountered before: an underground river, appropriately named the River Styx. The whole Aggtelek complex, designated a World Heritage Sight, actually runs for 25 miles along the river, beginning in Slovakia and crossing into Hungary. We would be walking for about two hours in the Hungarian section; I never found out the distance. The guide spoke in Hungarian and Eszter translated for me as she felt necessary. The guide was quite nice in that she sometimes waited until Eszter was finished translating before she continued on.
The cave had a concrete pathway along its length which made the walking pretty easy. The river was more of a little stream but occasionally the whole tunnel floods pretty badly during heavy rainstorms. You could see where stalactites had been knocked off the ceiling by floods and were now laying at weird angles like crushed matches.

After exiting the cave, we walked back to our car over the hill and through the woods, eh. It was nice to do a little hiking, the first time I’d done that in Hungary, and I was especially thrilled to encounter a frozen pond. Up until that point the largest body of water I’d ever seen frozen up close was my birdbath out back (I once saw the frozen St. Lawrence River but that was from an airplane). I wanted to run out on the ice so badly but figured that might be an easy way to see something else new: the inside of a Hungarian hospital. Still, I was excited just to walk out on the edges. It’s times like that when I pause to think whether it would be great to live someplace further north (nah).

We drove back to Debrecen only to continue on to the small town of Barand about 25 miles southwest of Debrecen to have a late dinner with Imi’s family at their house. We arrived at their house around 8pm and I was introduced to his mother, father and two brothers. The menu included fish soup from the mother’s hometown, fried fish with bones in it (I had a lot of fun picking them out...the family was very worried I was going to swallow one), some sort of mayonnaise slaw and some other things I don’t remember (I’m now writing this three weeks later, give me a break). After dinner, Imi and Eszter dropped me off at my hotel around 10:30 (poor Imi had to then drop off the car at NI, then drop off Eszter and then drive back home). It was a great Saturday though.
The next day I slept in then woke up to find that my internet, which hadn’t worked since Thursday night, was still not working. Sorry Péterfia Panzió, I love you and all but I can’t function without internet, particularly since I need it for work purposes and to skype with Jennifer. I checked out with the intention of staying at the Divinus, the 5-Star hotel just a ten minute walk up the road which all NI employees seem to stay at and that Donat thought I was crazy for not staying at. The ladies at the Péterfia seemed genuinely sad I was leaving but I explained to them in my atrocious Hungarian that I’d told them about the internet on Saturday morning and it still wasn’t fixed. I felt a little sad myself for leaving but oh well.
The Divinus is a very nice hotel but there’s nothing in the rooms that makes you think it’s 5-Stars. Maybe the fact that there is intentionally no shower curtain on the shower though the vent fan is running so well that when you finish the shower you don’t feel cold. I think the 5-Stars comes from the all amenities like the good breakfast buffet, spa and other stuff I didn’t use. In my opinion, you can’t be 5-Stars unless you have one of those Japanese toilets that does special stuff like talk to you.
At 11:30 I was in the little suburb of Józsa (yo-ja...the ‘j’ being like ‘g’ in Gillette) practicing with my buddy Misi’s Under-20 soccer team. It was in the mid-30s outside but they were still practicing. Misi let me borrow his cleats which made running around possible on the incredibly muddy field. I only participated in one drill (in which they played ultimate frisbee with the soccer ball and could only score with their heads) and then in a practice game (that worked out well because they needed a tenth person for the teams to be even). After that Misi and I played a game of pick-up basketball in the gym of his old school (I beat him 24-22 behind some miracle two-point shooting). Then we had an early dinner of ghoulash (called gulyás by the Hungarians) with his girlfriend. I watched the first half of a soccer game on TV with them and then caught a cab back to the hotel. I felt like I had been a real Hungarian that weekend; what a fabulous weekend! Maybe next time I’ll go to Romania, eh.
I worked at the office from Monday through Thursday. The only social highlights were playing volleyball with a bunch of NI employees in a high school gymnasium one evening and getting taken out to dinner by Donat, Eszter and Ildikó (the other person I indirectly supervise in Hungary) on Thursday night. The next morning I rode with Donat and two other NI employees to visit the Institute of Chemical Analysis in Budapest.
After the ICA visit Donat and the other two guys (Zsolt and Tibor) dropped me off at another panzió in Budapest as I was going to fly home in the morning. This panzió was one I’d been meaning to stay in for the past year and a half but never had the opportunity until then. It was called the Passzió Panzió and no I don’t know what Passzió means. I wanted to stay there because it seemed to be located in a nice residential neighborhood. My room was quite small, smelled a little like smoke and had no curtains on the window (allowing for someone in the building across the way to peek in if they wanted) but otherwise it served my purposes just fine.

I took a three hour stroll around the neighborhood and to the periphery of the Budapest city center before returning. I’d been to the city center several times before and had no desire to put up with the hustle and bustle; I wanted quiet. I was especially proud of finding the panzió on the return trip because my map only covered the city center, not the neighborhood where I was. I like challenges like that though.

The next morning it was off to the airport to fly home! First Frankfurt, then Philadelphia and then ending in Dallas. I had window seats the whole way, yay! I didn’t sleep the whole way but it’s usually easier not to sleep on the return trip since it’s daylight most of the way. I left Budapest around 9:30 in the morning and arrived in Dallas around 9:30 at night, making it about 22 hours of travel from door to door. The plane to Dallas had three soldiers on it, two of whom were welcomed by family members with large banners in the baggage claim. Made my reunion with Jennifer seem much tamer; I felt like clapping for the soldiers and was actually kind of moved.
The next day Jennifer, Graham, Maisy and I bid adieu to my in-laws and set out for home. It felt good to be back but there’s also a small part of you that misses the co-workers and friends you have overseas.
The next trip on the agenda is a four day jaunt to Phoenix for a conference; I’m working on that write-up now as well.

Milan, Hungary Trip: Part One

Holy crap I’m cramped. I’m sitting in seat 21A of US Airways flight 701 from Frankfurt to Philadelphia trying to finally type out a trip e-mail after fourteen days on the other side of the Atlantic. I had never really put much thought into how small a space you have in Economy Class on an airplane until my flight this morning from Budapest to Frankfort where I’d somehow scammed an exit row seat on Lufthansa. I measured the distance between the edge of my seat and the beginning of the next guy’s and it came about to the distance from my elbow to just past my wrist. I thought that was pretty good for planes until my seatmate, an American working for a metals factory somewhere in Northern Hungary, reminded me we were in an exit row and thus subject to extra room needed for evacuations. Now I’m not in an exit row and my knees look to be about three inches from the next seat. Do people taller than 6’2” get first dibs on the exit rows? Oh well, at least I’m pretty good about sitting still in a plane for long stretches.
Where to start? Well, it had been over seven months since I’d visited our manufacturing facility and distribution center in Debrecen, Hungary and I needed to visit the sales branch office in Italy to complete my super trifecta of the four largest European branches (UK, France, Germany and Italy being the final one). My counterpart in Hungary was able to finangle sending Eszter, one of the two Corporate Trade Compliance people there, to the Italian branch as well to learn the ropes of a sales branch visit, particularly for Europe. I was self-taught and didn’t want to make her go through that and plus in the long run I should be delegating those visits as well. I would say I’m the old salt passing on my infinite wisdom except that a) I’m only 32 and b) there’s not that much wisdom to pass down.
Speaking of age, I’m now old enough to realize that I’m not going to be able to do things forever. For example, I won’t always be able to carry a heavy backpack as my carry-on. At some point I’ll need to have a roller carry-on instead. Oh the mortality! And I won’t be able to wander around at will in random foreign cities for hours on end. Instead of finding my way around on foot I’ll have to start taking taxis! Hard beds will feel even worse on my back. The key though is whether I’ll still get to have my fairly carefree, ‘hey I’m going to try to learn X language and fit in’ attitude. I sometimes worry I’m going to be too high up the career ladder to keep my current travel attitude of staying in middle-brow hotels instead of the high end, of walking as much as possible, of eating cheap food (although I DID NOT eat any gyros on this trip) and trying really hard to learn at least how to pronounce words properly (it seems most visitors don’t try much, even the long-term visitors...and that’s their prerogative). I’m also getting to the age where my friends abroad are more likely to have families of their own and thus may be less likely to do things in the evening or on the weekend like out-of-town trips or soccer practice. Whatever. I WILL NOT LET OLD AGE STOP ME!!!!!
That also reminds me, I’m tired of seeing everyone else’s wife, kid and dog on the streets. I want to see my own. I’m coming Jennifer, Graham and Maisy!!! Though of course I can’t complain about it really since I’m not on, say, a one year deployment to Afghanistan or something.
So anyway, I was off to Italia! For the second time, Jennifer would be packing up our brood and heading on up I-35 to Dallas to spend the fifteen days (Saturday -> Saturday) with the grandparents. So really they’re the ones who come out like bandits from my foreign travel, eh. Thanks B and L!!!! You’re both szuper!! Plus with Jennifer being a stay-at-home mom I can call her in early evenings instead of waiting until 11 at night (Hungary and Italy are seven hours ahead). And through the magic of Skype, not only can I talk to her for free but I can videoconference! We’ve certainly come a long way from the days of my maternal grandfather spending six straight weeks on the road selling watches and having hardly any communication. Thanks Skype people!
Jennifer thought she had a commitment in Austin on the Saturday I was going to fly out (though it fell through) so I flew out of Austin that morning while she packed everybody up and drove to Dallas later in the day. My itinerary was Austin – Dallas (AUS-DFW) on American, then DFW to Philadelphia and then to Frankfurt on US Airways, finishing up with a jaunt over the Alps on Lufthansa to Milan. I was quite excited to be flying over the Alps but not excited to be flying through Frankfurt, the site of my saga of missed flights while trying to get back from a not-good business trip (for those who don’t remember, my flight from Budapest made me miss the first flight, I was on standby for a second flight to DFW but couldn’t get on and finally, just to get the heck out of Europe, flew to Boston and spent the night there...and oh yeah, I almost cried when I didn’t make the second DFW flight). American has a direct flight from DFW to Frankfurt but I was going to save the company $300 by flying through Philly via US Airways. It almost turned out to be a bad decision because our flight from DFW was quite late and I had a very short layover scheduled in Philly. Best part is that US Airways NEVER ANNOUNCED MY PLANE WAS LATE OR WHEN IT WAS GOING TO ARRIVE!!!!! Why does this peeve me so much? If I had known that it was going to be so late, I could maybe have made other arrangements to get to Milan with American, US Airways, Lufthansa or perhaps other Star Alliance partners. Instead, realizing about twenty minutes before the flight was supposed to leave that we hadn’t started boarding, I walked over to the window and saw there wasn’t even a plane at the gate. Great. I walked over to the desk and explained the situation. The lady told me the plane would arrive soon and I didn’t need to worry. I think her quote was “You’re only going from Terminal A to Terminal B. You’ll make it.” I had to press her for alternatives. Turned out if I missed the flight in Philly I’d be stuck there overnight. If I took a different flight out of Dallas, such as a direct to Frankfurt, I’d be stuck there too. Great. I decided to take my chances with the DFW-Philadelphia flight. The flight left maybe forty minutes late but I was able to make the Frankfurt flight in Philly, as the not-that-helpful US Airways lady had predicted.
The flight from Philadelphia to Frankfurt was uneventful though I was sad not to have an opportunity to grab a Philly cheesesteak in the airport. I intend to rectify that situation today though (unless I can somehow scam an earlier flight to Big D). The flight was only seven hours so I didn’t pop an Ambien. It worked out as I was only briefly super tired for maybe a half hour during the flight, then got my second wind. The flight from Frankfurt to Milan went right over the Alps which are simply magnificent. I so want to visit them at ground level.

Got into Milan needing to exchange my dollars for euros and find the Malpensa Express train (Malpensa is the name of the airport which I think in Spanish means ‘bad thought’). I got a bunch of Italian words from my mom and practiced some of them with an environmental engineer from Florence on the flight from Philadelphia including the following:

non parlo Italiano – I don’t speak Italian
si – yes
non (sounds like no) – no
buon giorno – good morning
buon pomeriggio – good afternoon
buona sera – good evening
buona note – good night
prego – you’re welcome
grazie – thank you
per favore – please

I was really looking forward to seeing how similar Italian and Spanish really are, having heard about the similiarities all these years. The answer is that they are but not quite enough for me to pretend to speak Italian. The good news though is that all the vowels sound the same though there are slight differences in some consonant pronunciation. It’s a cool-sounding language though.
Anyway, I took a train (the Malpensa Express) from the airport to Cadorna Station in Milan, then caught a cab to the hotel. I got a kick out of my cab driver, who spoke decent enough English, found out I spoke Spanish and asked me if I was from Spain. Ha! I’d never been mistaken for a Spaniard before. Usually I try to make people think I’m German or something by refusing to speak English though on this trip I’ve actually softened my stance on that a bit, preferring to converse in English if the alternative is not conversing at all.
The hotel was a converted Holiday Inn (the phones still said Holiday Inn on them) and was within a five minute walk of the NI office. I can’t say this enough: I love walking to work. I wish I could do it everyday. Of course, if I had to do it everyday maybe I’d get tired of it but I love doing it on trips. Despite the fact that the temperature hovered in the 30s and 40s the entire time I was there.
I threw down my stuff in the hotel, took a two hour nap until 1:00 and by 1:30 was out the door with a map of the city center in hand. I figured I had maybe a couple of miles to walk before getting there and actually I was so far out of the city center the area my hotel was wasn’t on the tourist map. I love walking challenges though and reveled in the fact I still got to the city center with no problems and was confident of finding my way back.
The part of Milan I started in didn’t feel that special but the city center was quite nice. It didn’t feel decrepit like parts of Budapest but it didn’t feel all nice and homey like Paris or Munich. You’ll see the photos. I knew I was close to the city center when the streets turned to cobblestones in places and I started seeing old churches. I found a war memorial for Italy’s war dead in World Wars I and II. Actually, it was more than a memorial, it was a round building built like a mauseleoum with three underground floors with the names of I suppose all of Milan’s war dead written on the walls. I was the only person there and it was really kind of awe-inspiring and thought-provoking. I know in the first war Italy was on the Allies side but in the second one they were the instigator; they even invaded Ethiopia! How do you reconcile that especially when such a huge percentage of your country’s population died?
A bit further on I ran into a bunch of people carrying signs and marching down the street. Oh boy, a political protest! Sadly, it was only a bunch of people marking Rare Diseases Day. I was definitely disappointed though I suppose rare diseases deserve attention to by blocking the streets.
I can’t say too much about the places I saw in Milan; I’ll have to let the photos speak for me and not least because I’m now typing this on a plane coming back from a conference in Phoenix, Arizona, three weeks after I was in Milan. Obviously my memory isn’t quite as clear.

Anyway, I saw a bunch of churches, an old castle, some statues, a part of the medieval city wall, a monumental church with a huge open square in front of it, another large war memorial and an old sports stadium. In the sports stadium, I had another one of those random moments that make me love wandering around when I got to watch a penalty shootout in a soccer game played by a bunch of guys in their 30s and 40s. It went down to the seventh guy I think and I just got to stand there at the field level and watch. I love that type of stuff.

Oh, and somewhere along the way I saw a bunch, like maybe fifteen, of old men playing bocce. There’s a game I need to learn since I already know how to play shuffleboard.
And yeah, it was really cold outside but I was bundled up very well and actually enjoyed it. If it weren’t for snow, ice and mush, I’d probably enjoy living someplace where it got much colder but maybe that’s what everybody says.

After wandering around for maybe four hours, I started back for the hotel. It was also getting dark and I was in no mood to be out super late. I had two goals: find a grocery store to stock up on groceries and find a decent place to eat (no gyros!). There was a 24 hour supermarket just down the road from the hotel so I knew I was covered there (24 hours in Europe is shown apparently as ‘0-24’) but it being Sunday finding anyplace that was open was a bit tougher. I made it even more difficult for myself by trying to find, you guessed it, a pizza joint. Well, I finally found one that was open but, true to form on my European jaunts, it was also a gyro joint, ha! I stood firm and ordered a pizza which consisted of 75% thin crust, 15% cheese, 10% a topping I don’t remember, maybe salami and 0.01% sauce. That bothered me but I’d heard that’s how Italian pizza is. Still tasted decent and to top it off I got to watch the end of the Carling Cup final (English Premiership soccer) where Birmingham upset Arsenal.
I met up with Eszter the next morning and we spent a productive two days at the branch office, getting work done and eating good Italian food. Everybody loves Italian food anyway but it seemed to taste especially good in Milan. We even got to wander around the downtown area at night on the Tuesday.
Wednesday morning came and it was time to head for Budapest via Malev Hungarian Airlines, one of my favorite airlines ever for the sole reason that they pass out hot rolls on their flights in a big bowl.
The flight was quite nice not only because of the hot rolls but because we got to fly over the Alps again, this time heading northeast over Slovenia, that little country that had the gall to tie the US 2-2 in the last World Cup (the game where the refs disallowed the perfectly legal goal that would have put us up 3-2). I forgive you Slovenia because your mountains look so beautiful from the air, all covered in snow and everything.