planes, trains and my mis-adventures...

So where did I leave you last - oh yes - I shared my experience with Hertz and then my visit with the awesome Expat bloggers that I follow.

So last Monday my colleague Demon and myself flew back from the States. We had made the trip home for Thanksgiving. Demon and his roommate came over for dinner with my family.

I served my "martha stewart" turkey (it should be on the cover of a magazine it looks so yummy), bourbon sweat potatoes, green bean casserole, wild mushroom stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, and turkey gravy. Typing this up is making me hungry for more turkey. Oh I can't forget my pumpkin cheesecake - this is my favorite - I make two of these because I want a piece every night from the moment I cut it till it is gone.

I wish I had pictures of all of us crowded around our little table with plates full and giving thanks for friends and family - next year I promise.

Monday morning creeped back around and Demon and I had a driver pick us up and deliver us to the airport. We cracked our standard, how do you tell an american in europe jokes? "take their shoes off, wearing ball caps, etc" as we worked our way through security. The pilot in front of us was laughing and enjoyed our company. We breezed through the airport, bounced through the business lounge and once again longed for the things we have in Europe. I tell you I am getting corrupted living abroad.

Our plane flight was uneventful until somewhere around 5am. Demon had long been asleep. His several drinks had worked mine hadn't - argh! I had finally given up on sleep and had converted from a bed back to a seat. I was looking at the available movies for the 90th time that night and then it happened. A smell so awful, it slinked along the floor, clawing it's way up the seat and then attacked my sinuses. Someone had died on the plane - not literally but something inside of them had ripped it's way free of their internal control and had taken it upon itself to find me and pummel me stupid. Were it possible to identify the owner of this wretched smell I would have woken them with my smiling slightly lunatic face pressed very close, minus my front teeth and asked then politely to find the nearest WC/bathroom and rid themselves of whatever demon had possessed them. Instead I sat in silence and wished a thousand camels fleas upon them.

I have begun to hate flying. I have been doing this constantly for 7 months or so. I don't mind short little hops here and there but these long hauls are going to turn me into crazy man. Some would argue that I am closing in on that status without much help from the airline industry.

It isn't really the airplane or crew - I am flying business class - they serve me enough alcohol and food to put me into a coma - they know what they are doing. What is making me crazy is the time. Once a month I have a 12 hour day. Somewhere in there the other 12 hours just completely disappear. I go from it being Monday to it being Tuesday somewhere over the Atlantic. I am young (shut up peanut gallery) this shouldn't effect me but it does. I lose time, where did it go? Who is taking this time? May I have it back some day? The BDA is bothered by this. Then the reverse happens on the return I get a 27 hour day. Someone throws some time back at me. This kills the nice organized sections of my brain that care about things like that. Time is all relative - I know I know, but this isn't right. Just let me whine alright - I was granted permission to do that by lumping in with Whiney Expats.

Trains - now that's a decent form of transportation. Well decent as long as they aren't on strike. You can book a seat without needing a degree in expedition planning by simply heading by the local train station and talking to the nice people who just want to help you. I know - I was just as surprised - it was amazing (hand wave) customer service. Supposedly I could do all this on the web but after attempting by myself and then procuring the help of a german colleague to book the tickets I just gave up and headed to the train station. It worked out in the end.

So back to trains. They are just cool. You are relaxed, room to walk around, pleasant atmosphere and if you splurge you can even get a cabin by yourself. There is a bar car, restaurant and a guy wandering the aisles bringing hot coffee. I love it. I wish we had more trains available in the states. We have a quick ride between Seattle and Portland that I will probably take a few times in the coming months while I try to accomplish some work in the States. Rumor has it that this is one of the few corridor lines left on the west coast.

I fell in love with trains when I was younger. My father loved them, and by proxy I felt love for them. My son likes them too. I like how that works out. My love affair with trains continued as I grew older - I had a young lady friend (sounds more romantic than girlfriend) living in Delaware and I would catch a train from Georgia or North Carolina up to spend long weekends with her. Of course we slept in separate beds - what kind of guy do you think I am. Alright I was lying about that part but the rest is true. I would leave late on Thursday night 9pm or so out of this little train station and would be in Delaware in the morning. She only had one class and would be done about the time I arrived. The romance lasted for a couple of semesters and I rode the train a lot as a starving college student. So now I find myself in Europe and have the opportunity to ride the train and then I discover that the train is as expensive as a plane sometimes more expensive. Oh well, I will ride them when I can.

Demon and I are headed off to Amsterdam (riding the train!) for a conference on PCI DSS in Europe. I should be an expert of sorts on this - I recently sat on a panel and shared the good and the bad of the practices around protecting credit card data. However my current client is going to need all the help I can get them so I am off to meet the people running PCI in Europe. Should be fun. I doubt I will blog about the conference - the few followers I have bribed to follow me could care less about the scary things I do. Even fewer are interested in the assessment procedures for validating whether a control has been properly implemented safe guarding said credit card information. These people want to know their data is safe and that the bad guys can't get it.

i know i know - you don't post anymore - you don't love me

My schedule has been a little hectic lately. I was in Zaragoza, Spain for a week performing a security assessment and obviously wandering the city. I love Spain - I will be back. The food was amazing (hand motion), the people were friendly (I was labeled a "kissy slut" because I enjoyed the european kiss on both cheeks so much), did I mention the food was amazing.

My Spanish slowly began what we fondly called Sprench by the end of the week. I learned to speak French when I was younger - unfortunately when I have had a round or two and the brain gets slightly twisted I assume that you can use French for Spanish. So when I couldn't think of the word in Spanish and there were several I couldn't think of I used french. Makes for interesting conversation with people - fortunately at one point in my adventures there was a french man with us and he and I stood in the corner speaking a foreign language I can sort of communicate in. Please remember that my French still brings a smile, not quite the laughter that my broken German brings people. The party I was with wouldn't allow me to grab my translator so we stumbled along in my broken Spanish and there english. Red wine and tapas will make everything good. After a wonderful week I headed back to Germany.

Ahh Germany how I had missed you so. I landed in Nuremberg (Nürnberg) a little over an hour late. I had stopped in Frankfurt at the Hertz rental and had them confirm for me that my rental car was waiting for me in Nuremberg airport. Sometimes I worry about silly things like this. The pretty young lady smiled at me, checked the reservation, said things were good and I wandered off to find my plane. I arrive in Nuremberg excited to go jump into the BMW 7 that I had rented previously from Hertz.

Instead here's the conversation I had with the Hertz girl.

me: "Hi I am Ward Spangenberg. here's my confirmation and my Gold Card Number."

her: "You're late."

me: "Well yes I am."

her: "We don't have a car for you."

me: "umm I confirmed in Frankfurt that you had a car for me. I have a confirmation number. I am a Gold member. Where's my car?"

her: "We don't have a car for you. You were late."

me: "I understand I am late. That's part of why we use credit cards and join the Gold service is so that you guarantee the car will be here for me."

her: "We don't have a car for you. You were late."

me: "So what do you suggest I do"

her: "Rent from someone else."

me: "alrightie then - thanks for your help"

her: "danken sie. auf Wiedersehen."

I kid you not. A friend would tell me later that weekend to remember that in Germany, "you are paying for the service, not the customer service." It should be noted that my brain is a bit weak on exact quote that J provided me with but hey you get the idea.

I wandered over to Avis and they had a car I could rent. I ended up with an Audi A3 from Avis. A cute little Audi with enough pep and most importantly a navi system.

I grabbed my friend, who in a week's time had managed to garner one new nickname from our client "demon" and meet a wunderbar Glas washer - no good german translation for that. We jumped in the card and headed off to Dresden for the 3rd Whiney Expat German Meetup. That by the way is not an exact description about this group of people. I don't think we whined at all the whole weekend. Well I may have but I am just a big baby.

Half way to Dresden I gave up the car keys so my buddy could drive on the Autobahn. Somewhere in that I tweeted with worry about "Demon" having that maniacal look in his eyes and the speedometer pegged. On the return I heard him mumble something like, "it won't go any faster - I have had the pedal stuck to the floorboards since we got outside of Dresden." (I took some creative license with his mumbling.)

We arrived safely in Dresden and wandered off to find the other Expats at the ice cream shop. Umm yummy ice cream - so I ordered a cappuccino.

After introductions - meaning I walked right into the middle of the people speaking english and said, "Hi I am Ward". I naturally assume that everyone no matter where I am in the world knows the "Big Dumb American" (need to trademark that - hmm wait did I just trademark that.) Guess what I am not near as famous in reality as I am in "ward's world."

Needless to say we were off and running. I am sure I scared a couple of people - it could have been me talking about all the scary things that "Demon" and I do with security - or it could be that I am a BDA. Everyone was polite and slowly slid away from me.

Our illustrious leader J arrived and the group wandered into the streets. You now have 10-15 (counting has never been my strong suit) americans/canucks wandering the streets of Dresden. We were also graced with two very tolerant germans.

I have several pictures. Here is one of my favorites as wandered along towards the river and our boat trip.

I can't say enough about how wonderful it was to meet everyone. The entire group brought new perspectives, insights and humor to the meetup. I have received several compliments in their posts about the weekend. I thank all of you. There are several memories from the weekend - others have put them to words - I have just cataloged them for reference in my future stories. Literally translated this means Ward really needs to start carrying his Moleskin with him again and taking notes.

It was a blast to meet the people behind the blogs - I get sort of star struck when meeting writers. I consider myself a hack and follow bloggers who write far better than I do. My fond hope is to one day be one of those bloggers people refer to and laugh about. You guys all rock - thanks for letting the BDA and the LDA follow along (little dumb american - he is really a medium - so going forward I will stop with the jokes about his learning disability aardvark.)

So where was I?

Oh so Sunday rolled around and MDA and I jumped in the car - and as stated before barreled down the Autobahn towards Herzo and my apartment. I went to sleep - I wasn't driving what do you expect from me?

Monday morning creeped around and we both caught planes back to the states. Details that should be mentioned here include the fact that we visited the neighborhood mexican restaurant and drank towards stupidity. Hint: don't tell a German bartender his drinks are weak.

We hit the states for T-day, me appearing on television to talk about the scary things called RFID (still waiting for them to put the video up - will link later) and me cutting down a Christmas tree.





I will leave you here. More misadventure on the return trip to Germany to follow.

where you been kid?

So it has been awhile since I have posted, felt like I should get an update in before I head off next weekend to the meetup in Dresden.

I am currently in Zaragoza, Spain. It is a beautiful city - come to think of it I haven't been anywhere in Europe yet that has been ugly. I am staying at the Hotel Palafox. It is a great hotel, super service and centrally located to everything so I can walk around and get lost.

I slept in this morning, had an amazing (hand effects - ask me sometime) breakfast. The breakfast buffet introduced me to so many wonderful things and the variety of fresh fruit will bring me back. I then wandered off the hotel lobby to finish my book. I felt like taking my time today and was rewarded with a beautiful afternoon to wander the streets. The Spanish seem to have had better planners working on the designs for the road layout than most of the German cities I have been getting lost in.

Unfortunately my spanish is as bad as my german, so I spent a long day building up the nerve to enter a restaurant and get something to eat. I eventually chose Pasta Nostra. The food was good and their Tiramisu made me all warm inside.

As for my language skills - I have been in denial for several months now. I am scared to try my limited language skills - well shy - somewhere in my life I decided that unless I can speak the language it is better to keep my mouth shut. I wonder if that was drilled into my head by my french teacher. I pissed her off on a regular basis and have managed to only be able to read and write french - my pronunciation is horrible.

This actually explains a lot to me - I take language much like any of my other skills - if I can't do it perfectly then I practice till I have it well enough that I feel comfortable - and comfortable for me is defined as better than average. I refuse to play the guitar for anyone because I don't feel that I can play it well enough to sit with anyone - I am missing the opportunity to learn from others because I am shy/scared/stupid. The same goes for my language - I won't attempt to use it because I don't feel like I have enough of a grasp to be understood, and I want to be understood. First step is realizing you have a problem.

I read an interesting post the other day about learning a language. His ideas follow a scientific approach that makes sense to me. Suddenly I am filled with new confidence to try things out and see where they go. Wow - all this from wandering around Zaragoza - scared because I don't want to be insulting for not speaking the language.

okay then - guess that's done.

I have some questions now.

Why don't they have instruction manuals on bidets? The BDAB isn't up to date on the proper use of such devices and is curious. Maybe google holds the answer.

Why is Russia Television (RT) in english?

Why do the Spanish rename American things? i.e. New York = Nueva York, Cookie Monster = Monstruo de las galletas

Just wondering...