Oh, yes, that glamorous job of working in Europe. For example, take today:

[DFW]

5 AM: Time to get up in my small town outside of Düsseldorf.

6 AM: My wife brings me to the local train station for the 6:14 down to Düsseldorf. A couple of minutes late, but no problem.

6:40 AM: the local train down to Köln )Cologne) is a couple of minutes late, but again, I allow for this. It is due in Köln at 7:12, and my train to Brussels isn't until 7:42

7:30 AM The German train system announces that my 7:42 train to Brussels is canceled. No reason, just canceled and tough shit. I ask how about the Thalys at 8:44? It goes to Paris but stops in Brussels. No, that is canceled, too. The next train is at 9:42.

7:30 to 9:35: vegetating in the Köln train station with a salmon sandwich and some bottled water. My daughter texts from New York--oh, by the way, you became a grandfather again!

9:42: the train to Brussels shows up. It leaves between 5 and 10 minutes late, but I have a 25 minute window to get the noon commuter train to the small town outside Brussels where I have my appointment (for which I am already two hours late). But the German train stops several times along the way in the middle of nowhere, and I arrive in Brussels just in time to miss the noon commuter train.

12:25 PM I get the next commuter train, which is only 5 minutes late. A Belgian colleague has driven out to the station to get me. The station is less than ten minutes from their office. I start working like crazy on the task they have for me, but can't get it done in 45 minutes. I should have had two hours. I take some extra time to post in DU about the new mamber of the family.

The next train back to Köln from Brussels leaves at 4:22 PM. There is a commuter train back to Brussels at 3:45 PM and it takes 16 minutes. Even if it is 15 minutes late, I still make the train to Germany, and it is almost never late.

3:45 PM The station in the small town outside of Brussels announced that my commuter train back to Brussels is nearly half an hour late. I arrive in town just in time to miss the 4:22 PM train back to Germany.

4:25 PM:I call a colleague in Brussels, and he invites me to come over to his office instead of vegetating in the Bruxelles Midi train station for two hours. I accept, get on the Métro (subway) and ride to the nearest stop to where he is. His office is already closed and security is on, but he overrides it, opens the garage door, and lets me in. Water, coffee, we kill an hour, and it is time to get the Métro back to the Brussels Midi train station for the last train out that night to Köln. I have called over to the train agent in Düsseldorf and they reserved me a seat on the train, no mean feat on a Friday afternoon!

6:25 PM The train back to Germany is late. It is announced for track 9. At 6:25, it is announced over that loudspeaker that the train has been changed to track 4. About three hundred people rush the stairs, elevators and escalators to get to track 4. Just as I am abouit to fight 300 weary Germans to get up to Track 4, ANOTHER announcement comes over that loudspeaker. changing it to Track 8. I have been there often enough. If they bother to announce it, they mean it. About half the Germans didn't think so, and stayed on track 4. I rushed over to Track 8, where the train indeed came in. I think 50-100 people missed the train because they stayed on Track 4. It is due into Cologne at 8:10 PM. At 8:35, there is a train that makes the 28 minute trip to Düsseldorf. I'm almost home. Or so I thought. THIS train stops along the way, with the train manager saying it has "technical difficulties." That can mean anything from a wiring fault to a wheel having fallen off. They never tell you. We get into Köln shortly before 9 PM. A connection to Düsseldorf with a train going to Amsterdam was supposed to leave before we got there, but it was delayed, too, and was still on the track opposite the train from Brussels. I jumped over to the other side of the platform, very pleased with myself. If it left in the next 15 minutes, I would make the 9:30 commuter train back to my town. But THIS train was 25 minutes late, too, and got in to Düsseldorf 90 seconds too late for me to get the commuter train.

10:00 PM I am on the track for the next commuter train to my town. It comes 15 minutes late, but at least it comes. I call my wife. FINALLY!!!

Oops, no NOT finally. After the second station (my town is the sixth), the train driver announces that due to technical problems, the train will not stop in my town, the town before it or the nexrt seven towns after it. I get off at the next stop, and check what's coming. There is a local train to the airport terminal coming in 5 minutes. I call my wife and tell her. I make sure to tell her to pick me up where she always lets me off at the airport. She says "got it." I suddenly thought, uh-oh. she said that too quickly. The airport also has a train station that is far from the terminal, and I wonder if she thought the airport train station? I text her saying remember--the airport itself, NOT the train station. I get to the airport at 10:45, and sure enough, she has texted back, oh, no I drove to the airport train station. But I will drive over to the airport itself. She did, and we finally got home at 11:15 PM, where I should have been here seven hours earlier. Instead, I had NINE waits out in the cold at outdoor train stations and more wasted hours in broken down German trains than I usually spend in a week.

Keep in mind that I am familiar with every locale along the way, and speak the languages of every place I was.

If THAT sounds glamorous to anybody, I have an ocean view condo in Iowa to sell you, cheap.

[Diamond_Dog]

1. What an exercise in frustration, DFW!

So should I give up having any dream of passenger rail service here in the US? If Germany cannot provide reliable rail service, then it seems impossible to expect anything in the US. We can’t even keep our trains on the tracks!!

And, Congratulations on your new grandchild!

[DFW]

3. Train travel in Germany SUCKS these days

There are delays due to poor maintenance, poor personnel management, poor logistics, and strikes galore (this is relatively new).

You can depend on nothing except for advertising telling you how great it is to travel green and leave the car home. Next Monday, all services in Germany, including trains, local public transportation and air service will be crippled due to a national strike. Bring attention to the plight of the workers by screwing over the working man, that's the way you do it. At least some people get a long weekend out of it.

The new grandson was a ray of light in an otherwise grim day.

[2naSalit]

2. With the exception of...

The actual mode, train vs bus, that sounds like my typical day in San Diego back in the 1970s, trying to get to and from east county to Kearney Mesa, 15 miles away. on commuter buses. I was so thankful when one of my colleagues offered to give me a ride home at night or I would never even get to eat.

[DFW]

4. Be thankful it was only 15 miles!

Sprout City is a couple of hundred miles from here, and the traffic between eastern Belgium and western Germany is already bad enough without it being a Friday. Most Autobahns here only have two lanes in each direction and resemble long parking lots at rush hour.

[2naSalit]

7. Well, you've got me on that one...

The distance is different, however, to travel that fifteen miles I had to catch the bus that took me to El Cajon to catch a bus that went to DowntownSD to catch another that went up the canyon to the mesa to meet the one that went around the mesa to get off at a stop 1/2 mile from the office. Not to mention all the stops along the way. Their bus system was a disaster. At least they built a light-rail system about twenty five years ago and added a few more freeways since then. But it still isn't the same distance.

[DFW]

10. Get a helicopter!!

That's what I would have done (well, if I were $100 million richer, too!)

[2naSalit]

11. Right?

I hadn't won the lottery at that point.

[alwaysinasnit]

5. Oh my, what a day! Fortunately, you had the comfort of knowing you have a new grandchild

to welcome.

[DFW]

8. Yeah, but he's warm in New York!!

I was out there in the cold busting my ass here in Sprout City and the Rheinland!

[TdeV]

6. I know you don't think so, DFW, but I think you had a romantic day.

[DFW]

9. Well, my answer to that has two parts.

I am probably too close to all that happened to me today to say for sure if it was romantic or not, but.........
I sure as hell do NOT think so, you're right about that!!!

[TdeV]

13. Here's why

If you lived in San Francisco Bay Area (for example), it would take almost the same amount of time to travel from north to south (and back) where you'd be sitting in the same car, frustrated with traffic, frustrated with the rear bumper of the car in front, frustrated with the radio, and bored spitless.

Here you've had endless variety, plenty of exercise (running for the train), many people to see (and lives to imagine), lots of scenery, and great tales to tell. A delight!

And, by the way, thank you for your large supply of gorgeous photos. I follow your posts assiduously.

[lambchopp59]

15. Oh, the MUNI/Fast Pass days indeed.

I credit long BART excursions to Concord bound east bay in the late afternoon to break out into the sunshine seldom seen in the city. Jump off at a center platform station, catch some rays and time it to ride back within the 2 hour excursion window. I got good grades all through my college days thanks to the extra bits of study time on low commute time BART trains.
We'd rent a car from rent-a-wreck for weekend trips!

[DFW]

19. What little I've seen of Marin County looked very scenic, too

Maybe we’re both victims of “familiarity breeds contempt.”

I’m in Brussels and Paris usually once a week, strikes permitting. I’m totally used to communicating in both French and Flemish (really, just southern Dutch, nowhere near as challenging as Afrikaans), so I don’t even notice the linguistic change. One of the offices I work with has a new top guy who is from southern Italy, but his French is good, and my Italian is decent, too, so we get along fine. I usually work with the same guys, anyway. One is the grandson of a guy I worked with when I first started working with them in 1979!

The scenery in Brussels is pretty much the Grande Place and the Sablon. The food, of course, is something else. Next week, I have to be in Holland, which is pretty, and I LOVE the people I work with there, but the food sucks. I also have to be back in Spain, where I used to live, but just for a few hours. Then, Paris, Holland again, and then the weekend in southern Germany. I guess it sounds exotic, but it’s all routine for me by now. I haven’t been back to South America or East Asia in 20 years, and Australia never. I will grant you that being stuck in traffic ANYWHERE sucks royally. It’s the same whether it’s in the Bay Area, north Dallas, the New Jersey Turnpike, or the Autobahn between Düsseldorf and Köln.

I don’t get much exercise running for trains. I usually either get there in time, or miss them altogether. Where I DO get my exercise is in “walking” cities, where the easiest way to get from one appointment to another is on foot. Those include Paris, Brussels, Zürich and Barcelona. It helps that I never have to ask anyone to speak English. It’s a plus knowing the Zürich dialect of Schwyzerdüütsch and Catalan for Barcelona, but remember, I’ve been doing this for over 45 years now. I’d have to be some kind of idiot, not to mention a very arrogant American, if I hadn’t learned the languages of the people I have worked with for decades. Checking out at the hotel in Paris Wednesday morning, the guy was speaking adequate (I think!) French, but his accent was so thick, I literally could not understand what he was saying. Recognizing his accent, I asked if we could continue in Spanish. Ha! Guessed right. He was from Spain, and very relieved. Keep in mind, I’m no walking UN, but I’m in these places so often, I just switch languages like most people switch tv channels with a remote control. It really does become second nature after a while.

Other than a change in scenery—and North America has plenty to offer, too!—and what Stan Lee called my “fabulous females,” I don’t recall much of note in the photos I’ve posted, but if they have found favor, I do appreciate the sentiment!

[Ptah]

12. A Day In The Life

[questionseverything]

14. I think your life is fascinating

[FakeNoose]

16. This is why Americans drive everywhere

... But you already knew that.

[DFW]

23. Germans do, too! With gas at twice the price, no less.

Maybe it's because they build good cars, but they are really nuts here. They drive all the way down to Greece or the Dalmatian coast for vacations--two or more days on the road through traffic jams dozens of miles long, over bad roads and organized thieves in the Balkans, just to get to their vacation spots. But no, I'm the one who travels SUCH a long way to Cape Cod, where most of the trip is 8 hours of sitting back, getting served lunch and watching a couple of movies on a flight from Paris/Amsterdam/Frankfurt to Boston.

[orleans]

17. omg! sounds like an absolute nightmare & headache to me

i'm wondering what the heck do you do or what your job is that you go through all this crap?

(i feel like you might've mentioned that in a recent post, but if you did then i forgot)

anyway -- what a crazy day you had.

congratulations on the new grand baby.

[DFW]

22. I get days like that sometimes

But it‘s rare that I get days where absolutely EVERYTHING goes wrong.

Part of what I do involves counterfeit money detection, and I’m not talking about just phony $20 bills. Also fake $20 gold coins we made 100 years ago. It can‘t be done remotely, and it‘s not a skill that you can learn in college.

It‘s well-paid, and I get as much vacation as I can afford to take. But anyone who thinks it‘s all leisurely days of sitting in Paris cafés or bistros on the shore of Lake Zürich is most definitely without a clue.

[orleans]

27. sounds like fascinating work

and a little dangerous

but those trains! ugh!

i thought there was an expression about something running as perfectly as a german train schedule (an old expression and the big bang theory had sheldon saying something to that effect). at any rate, it certainly doesn't sound like an accurate expression considering the day you described.

take care.

[DFW]

28. There used to be an expression

“Swiss trains always run on time.”

They don’t always, but they do usually. Small countries have less territory to cover, of course. Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, they can usually maintain their schedules. The French try, and the few routes I travel in Spain, usually just between Barcelona and Madrid, are pretty reliable. But the Germans spend little on upkeep of their train system, and it shows. Their management sucks, too, and coordination of personnel to where they are most needed is amateurish.

The work is only occasionally dangerous, and for such occasions, we work with a Netherlands-based team composed of ex-Mossad agents, off-duty Dutch anti-terrorist unit members, and a few Balkan natives for translation, as the bad guys usually come from that area. We’ve worked with them for twenty years now, and they’re really great to work with. Their chief is an amiable, joke-cracking, Holland-based ex-Israeli military intelligence guy. If he’s relaxed, he’ll speak Dutch. If the situation gets serious, he switches to English, or, with his core group, Hebrew, which I don’t speak at all. I suppose that’s all routine to him, but to me? Now THAT’s exotic. I guess the unknown usually is.

[Beastly Boy]

18. Sounds so exotic!

Traveling through two European countries, visiting THREE cities that go back to Roman times, one of which has the tallest cathedral in Europe, and another housing NATO headquarters and the administrative center of EU (not to mention the best damn Godiva chocolate store in the world), participating in a flash mob between Platforms 4 and 8 at Gare du Midi, all in less than 24 hours!

Not to mention getting a brand spanking new grandchild, no time wasted.

Yet you find reasons to complain... WTF? I think you have gotten spoiled by your fancy European living.

BTW, when are you showing your condo in Iowa? Sounds exactly like what I am looking for, ocean view and all.

[DFW]

24. Exotic is in the eye of the beholder only, NOT the one to whom it is routine.

To people here, if they have never been to North America, someone traveling from Chicago to Indianapolis sounds exotic. We only laugh. To the people here in Europe, that some of their cities go back to Roman times is of mild historical interest, but what ruins there are, are just "local stuff" if they walk past them every day. I was once in Croatia, telling some local students how I thought their traditional Balkan folk music was so fabulous. They thought I was completely crazy to like their "old" stuff when we had Jimi Hendrix. I wanted to learn to play the tambouritsa. They wanted to learn to play a Stratocaster.

The Köln cathedral is usually covered in scaffolding for repairs, and since it is next to the train station and the local radio station (I am sometimes asked to be a guest political commentator), I see it a couple of times a week. Yeah, it's there. So what? The only time I've ever been inside it is when California Peggy and her husband were here a couple of years ago.

NATO HQ in Sprout City? Yeah, it's there. But once inside, it's just a bunch of office buildings with armed guards outside. Big deal. It does still have that rusty iron NATO logo at the entrance. A Brussels fish restaurant is more interesting, I promise you, and Corné, Leonidas or Wittamer are cooler chocolate shops than Godiva--if you ask a local anyway. The Dandoy cookies are pretty amazing, too, if you're in the neighborhood. The crowd at the Gare du Midi, aside from being a pickpocket's paradise (they have recorded announcements in four languages warning about them every few minutes or so), was about as exotic as the New York subway at rush hour.

Having to get up at 5 AM, getting home at after 11 PM, being caught in delays, having to wait outside for trains in the cold and rain NINE times in one day, seeing the "exotic" insides of secure office buildings, lucky if I have time to grab a sandwich along the way--THAT'S "fancy European living?" If you think that, I think we have irreconcilable differences on just what constitutes "fancy."

The grandchild was the consolation prize, although we relied on our daughter's doctors in NYC for an accurate assessment of the due date (two weeks from now), and made our travel plans accordingly. Last time, we JUST made it (12 hours). This time,she'll already be home by the time my wife gets there on Wednesday (IF she gets there--she is going Air France via Paris). I will come ASAP after I have completed appointments I'd already promised to keep. If my wife had been disabled, I would have demanded that Dallas send someone in my stead, but she is strong and in good health, and told me she'd manage fine, and that I should keep the appointments I had promised to attend. So, I will. I may blow off Zürich and tell them to contact my man in Geneva. He is Swiss, but he is a French-speaking Swiss. In Zürich, that makes him more than a foreigner than I am. Plus, I can speak the Zürich dialect, which makes me less of a foreigner to them than another Swiss if he doesn't speak that dialect. The Swiss are weird that way. They all speak good English, of course, but only if they have to. I learned their languages, which does give me an edge there. Americans usually don't think they have to bother, and they are right, of course--they don't. But to those Swiss who work for a living, it doesn't make us appreciated for the attitude.

[malthaussen]

20. Where's Mussolini when you need him? n/t

[DFW]

21. I think there were less trains back then

Besides, even if they didn‘t really run on time, it wasn‘t very safe to say so out loud in those days.

[panader0]

25. Congrats on the new grandchild.

[DFW]

26. Thanks!

My wife leaves Wednesday for NYC (France willing!) to help out, and I'll get over there for a few days as soon as I can wrap thing up over here, and parcel out what I need done for the rest of April to my European colleagues. We have 500 or so people in Dallas, but no one who can take up my position. Viva the flip side of job security.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

29. Viewing your adventure from somewhere in the USA, how long ...

... would it take to drive from your house near Dusseldorf to the office in Brussels? It just seems quicker and simpler to drive. What am I missing?

Hopefully most of your commutes are more routine and boring than this day.

[DFW]

30. You are missing several things

First, the drive from Düsseldorf to Brussels takes a little over two hours at 3 AM on a Wednesday with no one on the road. There is no straight line Autobahn. You have to drive via Köln and Aachen, and the Belgian portion has speed limits. On a Friday morning during morning or evening rush hour, the trip takes at least twice as long, sometimes more, and as you surely know from your own experience driving in Brussels, just finding a parking space in downtown Brussels, or any nearby suburbs, at that hour is a time-consuming challenge.

Second, I suffer from a mild narcolepsy, which shows up after a few hours of sitting and doing nothing, such as driving in stop and go traffic for four hours after a too short night or a too long day, or both. I never make a trip like that by car unaccompanied for reasons of self-preservation. Environmental considerations come into play, as well, and I try to take public transportation, such as trains, on general principle anyway. A wife who votes solidly Green is always a good reminder (I still vote in the USA).

Put all that together, and a realistic estimate of my time on the road is more like nine hours if I go by car, where on a “normal” day, that would be reduced to six hours when the trains are running more or less on time. Nine to twelve hours on the road in one day CAN can be normal for me, but that’s when I have to make the run to Paris or Munich and back on the same day. Brussels is much closer, and I never plan five hours each way for Belgium or the Netherlands—or a relatively close-by German city, such as Frankfurt or even Osnabrück.

Fortunately, as you mentioned, most of my workdays, while nearly always involving such commuting distances, do not involve things going wrong every single step of the way. The expression, “fancy European lifestyle” is still a far-fetched, made-up notion where I’m concerned. Some people take their James Bond films far too seriously, it seems. If you don’t believe Tucker Carlson, then you shouldn’t be believing in 007, either.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

32. I wasn't thinking "007". Bond rarely mentioned his grandkids.

And I was thinking of Volkswagens, not Aston Martins. Bond never had difficulty finding a parking spot.

My "fancy European lifestyle" involved olive-drab uniforms, sleeping in barracks, and eating in the mess hall. Commuting to work was a fifteen-minute walk.

I see your rationale for taking the trains.

With regards,

Bus. JustABosoOnThisBus.

[DFW]

33. The Autobahns here are often clogged parking lots

Sure, when there are free stretches, you see semi-suicidal Germans zipping merrily past you at 220 Kph. That's not for me in any make. Get caught in a crash at that speed, and it's likely to be the last thing you ever do, especially in a VW. Actually, the closest either of us came to being killed was when some semi was stopped at the entrance to an Autobahn in the left lane because he had to make a wide turn to the right to get onto the ramp. My wife was in the right lane, but the truck driver was so high up, he didn't see her. He didn't even hear her screams when he started crushing her car. While she was scrambling to crawl out of the passenger side, he finally stopped, when he noticed he wasn't making his turn very smoothly. If she had been in a VW, she would have died on the spot. I have always insisted she drive a sturdily made car for that reason, no matter what it cost me.

And you will remember that Bond, in all his films, never had to try to find a parking space in Brussels, EVER. If he had, it would have increased the running time of the film by half an hour at least.

The "fancy European lifestyle" was someone else's post, not yours, sorry. I checked.

The trains here, for all their maddening frustrations (as designated in my OP), are like democracy--the worst choice except for all the rest.

[NNadir]

31. I had lots of similar adventures with French colleagues traveling to the US.

I always told them that they would need two weeks to see all the people they wanted to see, but there was always some reason that they could only stay one week, this based on the assumption that the United States was roughly the size of France, something they knew not to be true intellectually, but not emotionally.

This led to lots of sprints across major airports; Chicago being the worst. When we made the flights, often breathlessly, they would complain that I had not organized the trip well, although they, not I, had insisted on ten or twelve meetings in a single week in places all over the US.

Morning in New Jersey, then off to Chicago, followed by a late flight to Denver, drive up to Boulder, meeting from 9 to 11, lunch, sprint back to DIA for a flight out to San Francisco, AM meeting, two meetings near the end of the day in San Diego, then off to Florida...so on and so on and so on...

This is not an actual itinerary, to be sure, but it sure feels like one.

Once in a while we'd throw in Montreal or New Orleans.

(And there was also a lot of shopping involved, to beat the VAT. It's no fun to sit with a French guy trying out ten pairs of Cowboy boots and five or six Stetson hats.)

Then there were five or six trips per year to France, sometimes other countries, and I'd wake up and not know what country I was in.

I was younger then and could take it, but I had to balance my son's surgeries and the need to cram in a whole bunch of technical information just to keep up with all the topics in which I was involved, long nights in databases and libraries.

I thought it would be romantic and interesting when I took that job; even though I hadn't spent a night away from my wife for many years when I was a lab rat.

I was quickly disabused of the excitement of travel.

I flew on the Concorde three times while doing this; it sucked to be an insomniac arriving in Paris after all the restaurants closed, and in the other direction, arriving before you left and rushing right into meetings after finally having adjusted to the Parisian time zone and then whizzing back to the US.

It got old; I got old. I lived that life for about ten or twelve years, and when I woke up in my own bed and didn't know where I was, I realized it was time for a change.

I travel far more rarely now, which makes me happy, and although face to face is often better, there is definitely something to be said for Zoom, MS Teams, etc...etc...etc...

I go to a few scientific conferences a year, and skip the crazy travel. It would kill me to do it now.

[DFW]

34. Ah, the French and their obsession with cowboy boots

One of the guys from my Paris offices is crazy for those things. Last time he was in Dallas, he spent $3300 on a pair of those things. I don't think I spend $3300 on clothes/shoes in three years, maybe five.

I tried the desk job for a few days when I first was recruited. I went stir-crazy, and volunteered for almost every road trip there was. We were only about 12 guys and a secretary, and the oldest among us was maybe 25. A different world then. I knew a married French couple who came to study in Boston for a year in the seventies. They went to the phone company to order a phone for their apartment. They got asked the usual questions--how many phones, what kind of service, etc. Then the last question--when do you want it installed. They carefully asked if they could get it in six weeks. Only because they were foreigners were they not kicked out on their ears. The clerk at the phone company patiently told them to please com back one or two days before they wanted their phone installed. In those days, in most of Europe, you were lucky to get a phone installed in two months. They heard America was more advanced, so they "risked" ordering it six weeks out.

I couldn't handle a desk job, even at age 71. I've been doing this too long, and my wife, a very independent soul, even in retirement, is always on the go as well. She has friends she sees, meetings of the save the children society, the save the environment club, gives free tutoring to disadvantaged/immigrant elementary schoolkids, drives up to take care of her mom, drives down to help our daughter with her kids, etc. etc. You can force a social worker to retire from her paid job, but you can't retire the social worker in her. In 2 days, she's off to the USA to help our daughter with her new-born son. At 22, she turned down a modeling suggestion. "Standing around having guys take pictures of me all day, how boring is THAT?" So, for both of us, it's like Ry Cooder said, bop til you drop.

I'll get over to New York as soon as I can, but I need a few more days to wrap things up here. Maybe on the 8th if I'm lucky. The airfare will probably cost me a fortune, as I will only be able to book a last-minute trip. If I know two days before I leave, I'll be lucky. I hope the only options are not routes involving changing in Rabat or Reykjavik. Oh, well, my children don't give birth every day, either.

I will admit, that after a few hectic weeks, I sometimes wake up in a hotel room, and try to remember what language I'm supposed to speaking that day. Wherever I am, I try to make it home at night, but sometimes, it's just not possible.

Tomorrow, I will try to make up two of the three appointments in the Netherlands that the German strike killed for me today. I'm already booked out for the rest of the week through Sunday. Wednesday, I will bring my wife to the airport and get her off to the USA, and then get a flight down to Spain an hour or two later. I HOPE I can get back in time to make Paris for Thursday. If there are no delays, I should be fine, and my two meetings in Barcelona are already prepared.

And so it goes, and so it goes.

[Chakaconcarne]

35. Isn't there a massive transportation strike happening at the moment?

[DFW]

36. Right here in Germany today, as a matter of fact.

I had three important appointments in Holland today. I refuse to hire a taxi for €400 each way to get there, so I have to wait until tomorrow. It fucks up my week royally, as I had things to do in five different countries, and am working every day thru Sunday to make all my work dates. Tomorrow, it's France again, but I don't have to be there until Thursday.