Observations from blogging while on an international business trip...

Hi everybody! I just got back from Germany last night after 23 hours awake. I slept pretty well, but woke up at 6am...1pm in Germany (7 hour difference). Not too much of a problem compared to the experience.

One of my first observations is that it is good to connect through a server that uses English. When I blogged through the hotel network, all the instructions and information this site came up in German. Fortunately, I kinda remembered which commands were where on the pages.

Shannon did ask why I didn't post anything after those first couple...well here was my typical day after we got started:

6:45am - wake up

7:45ish - meet to walk to breakfast and make it back for meetings

9:00am - meetings

noon...break (read walk) for lunch with people we were meeting with

1:30pm - back to meetings

5:00ish - back to the hotel room to check email back at work in Wichita

7:00pm - walk to dinner with new friends from the day

9:30pm - back to the hotel to work on email from Wichita

Around midnight...wrap up with colleagues to plan the next day...especially where we would eat!!

Don't mistake this for complaining...just an explanation for why I'm just getting to the blog.

So, here are some observations:

- I finally got a hang for the language. Let me illustrate just a few words:

--Headache...knogginthumpin

-- Firemen...hosemdown

-- Hernia...gutensplitter

-- You're coming to the end of the moving sidewalk...mindurstep

- The Dom remained a major point of interest for me.

-- I've attached some more photos...some I played with.

-- We looked at the cathedral's treasury and learned that the most significant relic from church history they have are the bones of the three Maji. They are contained in the gold with precious stone encrusted chest you can see at the front of the main sanctuary

From the view in the spire, I was able to see a lot of the city. This was very intriguing because a lot of the city had been bombed flat...literally...during World War II. One of the buildings that survived the war was the large building to the left of the road/rail going across the Rhine to the Dom. You get the big view in the first picture and can see it better in the second. This building was built in 1933, if I remember correctly, as an exposition hall. During the war, it was used as the final staging area for shipping out the Jew to the concentration camps run by the Nazis. It has been gutted, but the exterior was retained because of its status as a historical building, and is now being rebuilt as the country's largest network television center.

This account was related to me by a German and Brit with the European Aviation Safety Agency that I work with.

Food was also a great thing we shared with each other, our European colleagues and several new friends. Laura liked to have her meals documented, that's why I'm sharing this next picture...

This is Laura after finishing the dinner AND a desert of apple struedel and ice cream

- It happened that we were in Cologne the week before their biggest tourist week of the year...Carnival! We got many stories for why the week was celebrated but one story about the celebration. It is when the typically reserved and straight-laced Germans let go for one week of partying. One person said it was like Mardi Gras for the week. Many of the people leave town for the week, only to return to walking through all the "remains" of the party for the next couple days.

Every where we went you would see the decorations and the clown mascot...even in the pictures above. Here's a close up of one of them...and the next picture is of one of the many groups getting an early start!

Generally, the people we met were very friendly, even if we were imposing on their time and personal routine.

Everywhere you looked in the city was an amazing mixture of today and yesterday. Many buildings were a mixture of both...because of the wars destruction...with what remained being incorporated into the new designs. But you would still find complete examples of the historic architecture, such as this church.

Thus ends this blog. Thanks for dropping in...oh, the globe? Yours for only 11,999 euros!