Achtung! Sprechen sie Deutsch?

And then there was Germany! I made it in one piece, having about three hours sleep on the plane. Business Class in Lufthansa was great, as was the A330 we flew on. If you have the need to burn a lot of cash and get to Germany, Lufthansa Business is the way to do it. They had lie-flat beds which were about 6 feet long, so space and comfort wasn't a problem. The service was excellent, and the food was great. I even slept so well (once I finally got to sleep), that I missed the breakfast service. I asked them if they wouldn't mind grabbing a bite for me (knowing I had a long day ahead), and they put on the whole show, just for me. I had a choice of what I wanted, and they specially served it for me. Sometimes, flying Economy just doesn't cut it. Had I done this trip in Economy with the notice and timeframes I had, I wouldn't have gotten through the day.

And what a day it was. I met the client people at the hotel we were staying at at 8am to go to the meeting site for a 9 o'clock start. Apparently, all the European Ministers of Defense were meeting at the hotel that day, so I went through a metal detector and my bags through an x-ray just to get into the hotel itself. The meeting itself started at 9am (3am New York time) and was still going after 7pm. I can't go into detail, but it's fair to say that I'm no clearer now as to why I was there than I was before I left Chicago.

When I got back to the hotel, exhausted, they'd already checked me in and taken my bags up to the room - fantastic. I met up with the client people who were staying at the same hotel and we found a place called Paulaner, which is the name of a beer brewed in Munich (or München as us locals call it). They brought out these enormous steins of beer, which would have easily been bigger than a litre each. I guess that when you ask for a really big beer in Germany, you get a really big beer!

The beer was great - who could have known that the Germans make good beer? Actually, as a side note, the beer all trip was fantastic; I hope to get back to that later. I ordered schnitzel (as you do), and out came the best schnitzel I'd ever had. Who could have known that the Germans do German food so well? After that, we called it a night. Tomorrow would be Saturday and we had a meeting teed up with at the site for Saturday afternoon to go through some things. Yuk.

To cut a long story short, the meeting got cancelled, but I only found out at about lunchtime, so there wasn't much opportunity to get out and do things. It didn't turn out too bad anyway, because I'd only slept about 10 hours in the last 50, so I had a great sleep. Once I knew my day was free, I jumped in the hire car and hit the road. My target was Cologne (Köln to the locals). I was still pretty tired though, so after about 100km, I had a look at my travel guide and settled on Bonn, which was closer.

Bonn used to be the capital of Western Germany and was where Mozart was born. It was quite a nice city, but I didn't venture too far. I parked the car, but didn't know what the name of the street was, or even the general direction in reference to the centre of the city. It was raining and quite cold, about 4 degrees, and very windy; not pleasant at all. I wandered around the middle of Bonn for a while, which was very pleasant and certainly very European, with the cobbled plaza blocked off to traffic. I made a mental note of which shops were where and which turns I made so I could get back to the car. Even if I found somebody who spoke English, I wouldn't have been able to ask them how to get back to it. After about an hour of wandering, the camera was getting wet (so was I), so I headed back in the direction I'd figured out. As it turns out, I was out by 90 degrees and only luckily picked it up because I looked down a side street and saw the same series of shops I had walked past earlier. Lucky I saw it, because I'd still be there looking for my car now if I hadn't.

Driving in Germany's every bit as good as anyone ever said it was. The roads are wide, open and easy to drive. Contrary to popular belief, there are sections of the autobahn with speed limits, but these are usually 130, and only in the areas where there are on- or off-ramps. Apart from that, all bets are off. There's no speed limit, so I was sitting on about 140. That seemed to be about the average speed of the slower lanes. In the left hand lanes (they drive on the other side to Australia), the speed's a lot higher. On plenty of occasions, I was cruising along and the faster cars would pass by at least another 60 kph. There are a few things the Germans do well. Two of those things are making fast cars and fast roads. It was incredible to see the traffic flowing so smoothly, both forwards and between lanes. All the drivers were quite courteous and very aware of the other cars around them. I've done some reading since, and apparently the German autobahn is no less safe than regular highways. Having seen how well they're built, I can understand why. I think we need the autobahn in Australia.

Saturday night was spent doing some work with a guy from the client. Believe it - working on Saturday night is no fun. We did some on Sunday as well. We managed to catch up for lunch on Sunday and he went back to finish some things he had going while I had a little time to check out Wiesbaden. I went for a bit of a drive and found a small village about 50km away and took a few photos. Germany is such a nice place, at least the bit I saw was. The people from the client site we were at were mainly expat Americans and Brits, some of whom had been there for a long time (like 15 years). They seemed to think that life in Wiesbaden was pretty nice. I can see how it would be.

We were due back at the client site on Monday, but due to a series of errors and misunderstandings, we didn't go. However, we didn't actually confirm this until about 1pm. In the meantime, I was sitting in the hotel room waiting for some direction on what we were supposed to be doing. Once I knew I had some free time, I decided I'd have another shot at Köln, except I wasnt' up for another 200km each way trip on the autobahn. You want a fast trip in Germany? I give you the ICE. The Inter City Express is one of the fastest trains in the world, hitting 300 kph on some sections of track. Fortunately for me, those sections of track were between Wiesbaden and Köln. I walked down to the station and finally found a ticket machine (all self-service), but it was all in German. There was a very helpful man who worked for Deutsche Bahn (the German rail company), but he didn't speak any English. I got to the machine 3 minutes before the train was scheduled to leave. All he could do was shake his head, point at the clock and point at the train. Something must have changed because all of a sudden he decided to start madly punching buttons on the machine which looked like a ticket to Köln. He motioned for me to pay for it (29.00 Euro), so I got out the Amex and put it in. It didn't seem to be doing anything, but after what seemed to be an eternity, it finally spat out a ticket. I then looked around to find that my new friend had disappeared. That wasn't good. So I got my ticket and receipt and ran to the train; it was right on departure time. As I got to the train, I found that my German friend had actually held the train for me. These trains are like the Japanese Shinkansen. They're never late, no matter what. Well, this one was late - for me. I jumped onto the closest carriage as the conductors' whistles were going and my friend was madly explaining something to me and pointing to the ticket. I'll never know what he said, but it seemed pretty important.

When I got to Köln, I went to the information booth and they explained that I had a return ticket back to Wiesbaden, and they even gave me a list of the times the trains left. Very handy. I wandered around for a while and had the chance to take some nice photos. The light wasn't very good, so I'm not entirely sure they'll turn out too well, but I tried. I also managed to convince the US team that I was wasting my time in Germany and should go back to Chicago a day early. From Köln, I changed my flights (or at least my great PA did) and I was set to head back 'home'.

The train ride back was uneventful, and we arrived back into Wiesbaden exactly on time at around 8pm. I had some Chinese for dinner and went back to the hotel. From there, it was a pretty easy matter of having a good sleep, checking out, filling up the car and getting back to Chicago. I managed that without too much drama. I ordered a hire car with GPS which was a godsend. What on earth did people do before satellite navigation? Oh yeah, memories of driving in Holland come flooding back now. That's another story, and totally pre-dates this blog.


I flew with American Airlines to Chicago (again in Business). They also had the lie-flat beds, although it didn't quite have the finesse that the Lufthansa flight did. Unfortunately, I'm kind of stuck with American because I get Qantas points which will come in handy some day. Also, it was a 767-300 which just wasn't quite as nice as the A330. It was a daytime flight, so we were over northern Canada for quite a while. Wow - there's a lot of snow and not a lot of people up that way. So, here I am in Chicago absolutely exhausted. I'll just have a feed and collapse in bed.

I'm dreading tomorrow - back to work. A long, crazy day, I'm sure.