As anyone who tries to be a regular reader knows, I haven't been putting much up here lately. That is mainly because I really haven't gone anywhere. I did a quick trip to London last week, more on that in a little bit, and I have quite a few travels coming up soon. But after that, my extensive galavanting of the world will come to a pretty abrupt end as I move into a new job. So, that begs the question, if I am in Bonn 90% of the time, does "Where in the world is Paul?" make sense? If anyone has any ideas, drop a comment.
Getting back to my last trip though... It is one of the cool things about Bonn, you can literally go to London for the day just as if you were living in Trenton NJ and went into Philadelphia for the day. There is a 9 AM flight over and then the option of a 3:15 or 7:20 flight back. The flight over is just an hour and with the time difference you basically arrive the same time as you left giving you a good 5 - 9 hours in town depending on your return.
As this was a Friday, I really wanted to get back as early as possible and only had a 4 hour meeting scheduled, which was just short enough to book the early return. Now the drawback to this plan is you have to fly into Heathrow, one of the worst and busiest airports in the world. It all started to go south when we got into London Airspace and the pilot announced we were going into a holding pattern. After flying around in circles for an hour, we finally landed. At this point I knew it was hopeless to think about catching my flight back so I switched to the later flight. I had my meeting and then went back to the airport early to avoid London traffic. A good plan since the lounge is decent and there are some good bookstores to pick up something to read. The plan was thwarted by the fact that the plane to take me back had been flying between Bonn and Heathrow all day, thus picking up more and more delays as the day went on. After about an hour and a half delay, we finally left at 9:00.
Moral of the story, Avoid Heathrow at all costs!
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Friday, January 4, 2008
iTunes Rocks!
This Christmas was definitely the Christmas of money in terms of gifts. It ships well and travels light, which was important since we stayed in Germany this year and friends and family are 6000 - 9000 miles away. This year I decided to devote some of my gift money to adding to my music collection.
Now I know there are probably a lot of people with larger electronic collections than I have, but I am pretty happy with my 1500+ song library on the iPod. And you never really can have enough, can you?
So, this brings me to why I love iTunes. There have been several individual songs I have wanted to get as well as some artists I wanted to expand my collection on. I spent about 2 hours in the iTunes store searching for album collections and songs and ended up walking away with 71 songs for $31 from 6 different artists!
My favorite find definitely has to be the Huey Lewis and The News Greatest Hits. It actually has all of the songs I used to love (and probably played too loud). The sounds are great too. Huey Lewis never sounded so good as he does playing through the speakers of my car on my way to or from work!
Now I know there are probably a lot of people with larger electronic collections than I have, but I am pretty happy with my 1500+ song library on the iPod. And you never really can have enough, can you?
So, this brings me to why I love iTunes. There have been several individual songs I have wanted to get as well as some artists I wanted to expand my collection on. I spent about 2 hours in the iTunes store searching for album collections and songs and ended up walking away with 71 songs for $31 from 6 different artists!
My favorite find definitely has to be the Huey Lewis and The News Greatest Hits. It actually has all of the songs I used to love (and probably played too loud). The sounds are great too. Huey Lewis never sounded so good as he does playing through the speakers of my car on my way to or from work!
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Happy New Year!
Wow, what an intro to 2008 we had.
A few years ago we were out in Idaho for the Fourth of July where normally it is illegal to light off fireworks privately, but for just that one night, anything goes. For about a week before, there were stands set up in just about every parking lot around selling anything and everything that you can blow up. It was kind of like Christmas Tree Lots. And then on the 4th everyone blew it all up. There were explosions everywhere and the heavy cover of smoke was overwhelming. It was like nothing else I had seen before ... until now.
During my last few trips to the grocery store I had noticed people checking out with some nice packages of fireworks, of course everything being in German I had no idea what they were. I figured it was your usual US styled bottle rockets and noise makers. I was very wrong. When midnight hit last night the entire hill we live on came alive with explosions and the resulting show was amazing. There were fireworks like you would find at a professional show. All kinds of colors, changing colors, sparkly things that twirled. And the haze, well actually smoke, was amazing. It was a very heavy thick fog that enveloped the air. This went on for about 30 minutes straight.
I guess it makes sense, to me fireworks are a 4th of July thing and although in the US we use them for other events, that is the big one. Here, although there is a 4th of July, it just doesn't have the same meaning. Of all of the celebratory holidays New Years makes the most sense of any to blow things up. Christmas and Easter just wouldn't be right.
A few years ago we were out in Idaho for the Fourth of July where normally it is illegal to light off fireworks privately, but for just that one night, anything goes. For about a week before, there were stands set up in just about every parking lot around selling anything and everything that you can blow up. It was kind of like Christmas Tree Lots. And then on the 4th everyone blew it all up. There were explosions everywhere and the heavy cover of smoke was overwhelming. It was like nothing else I had seen before ... until now.
During my last few trips to the grocery store I had noticed people checking out with some nice packages of fireworks, of course everything being in German I had no idea what they were. I figured it was your usual US styled bottle rockets and noise makers. I was very wrong. When midnight hit last night the entire hill we live on came alive with explosions and the resulting show was amazing. There were fireworks like you would find at a professional show. All kinds of colors, changing colors, sparkly things that twirled. And the haze, well actually smoke, was amazing. It was a very heavy thick fog that enveloped the air. This went on for about 30 minutes straight.
I guess it makes sense, to me fireworks are a 4th of July thing and although in the US we use them for other events, that is the big one. Here, although there is a 4th of July, it just doesn't have the same meaning. Of all of the celebratory holidays New Years makes the most sense of any to blow things up. Christmas and Easter just wouldn't be right.
Monday, December 31, 2007
The next two years
Ok, so I skipped the post about Finland... it was cold, very nice, but cold. I should be going back in March and get a chance to see a little more and post a little better about it.
The big news in case you haven't heard is we are staying in Germany another two years. I have been offered a job with another department which is going to give me a great amount of experience and the family decided it isn't all that bad here, so why not.
We will be moving to a new place, a house instead of an apartment. Officially it is the same size as this place, but the floor plan is much better. There isn't a lot of wasted space and the rooms are shaped a little better. There is also a basement for storage and the most important part, a yard to let the kids loose in.
We have also decided that I have done a great job taking public transit for two years and since I sold the motorcycle with the thought of returning to the US, it only makes sense that I should get a set of wheels, in this case a set of 4.
It was a really easy decision for me, since our first trip here I have fallen for the BMW 1-Series, not the sedan that they are now selling in the US, a better one. Fortunately the dealer had a 120i that they had been using as a demo, so it was a done deal really quick. Now the hard part is going to be figuring out how to get it imported to the US in two years!
The big news in case you haven't heard is we are staying in Germany another two years. I have been offered a job with another department which is going to give me a great amount of experience and the family decided it isn't all that bad here, so why not.
We will be moving to a new place, a house instead of an apartment. Officially it is the same size as this place, but the floor plan is much better. There isn't a lot of wasted space and the rooms are shaped a little better. There is also a basement for storage and the most important part, a yard to let the kids loose in.
We have also decided that I have done a great job taking public transit for two years and since I sold the motorcycle with the thought of returning to the US, it only makes sense that I should get a set of wheels, in this case a set of 4.
It was a really easy decision for me, since our first trip here I have fallen for the BMW 1-Series, not the sedan that they are now selling in the US, a better one. Fortunately the dealer had a 120i that they had been using as a demo, so it was a done deal really quick. Now the hard part is going to be figuring out how to get it imported to the US in two years!
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