Up North (& Out There doing it)

Zoolander is off to do an incredible adventure

Just had lunch with Zoolander, along with S, in preperation for her mind blowing adventure moving to India. Yup, India and as she said 'India, Not Indiana.' We sat outside for lunch and joked that the muggy hot NYC summer weather was called 'winter' in Delhi, but what an experience. 

With two little kiddos, close to our boys but one a little older and one a little younger, she and her husband are off to India. 

This is a trip that is not for the faint of heart and one that very few people I know would be up for the challenge.  But Zoolander, who I know is a faithful reader of Up North, is going to make the best of it and is absolutely up for the challenge, despite the fact that I'm sure at times, the whole experience is going to be very challenging.

So, as a send off gift, S and I gave Zoolander her very own blog so that she can write down all of the experiences.  After blogging for a while now, I had some pointers and selfishly, I just wanted to read about th experience, but at the end of the day -- blogging for me is about documenting parts of my life at that point in time.  I know my readership is mininal, but I love going back to reivew what I said for myself and I think Zoolander will appreciate it too.

As I told her, you only can move to India for the 1st time once so better write it down!

When she gets up and running, I'll be sure to post a link here so you can read it too.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong in security

I used to pride myself in getting through security at the airports both quickly and without disruption.  But on the way back from Ann Arbor -- I got flagged and had to go through the full body scan (where you are asked basically if its OK if they take a full picture of your body and invade your privacy -- what happens if you say 'No').  I realized that I'd forgotten to take my liquids out of my bag.

 

And today at JFK -- not only did the woman reject my rollie (there were PLENTY on the flight which really ticks me off). But I got flagged for the full body pat down, etc. And then an extremely detailed walk through and discussion of my bag, etc. The only thing I can think of is that I checked luggage at the last minute, I had a leaking water SIGG water bottle with me.

Regardless -- it was quite a time sink.

 

So far, so good

So far, so good. Dad and I are having a great time in AA. The flights were perfect, we spent a good amount of timing driving around Dearborn and then rolled into town around 4:00. The hotel (which I'll mention later) was totally the right call -- walking distance to everything and we just found out that some special guests are staying in the hotel and might be making some noise around 7:45 in the AM.

We walked around campus, checked out my Dad's burned down fraternity house and simply had a great time.  More details and pictures on all of it, but for now -- its just a great time.

And as we were walking out of dinner, we happened to meet the wife of the high school coach of Michigan's starting quarterback -- only the 3rd true freshman to be the starting quarterback ever.

Stressful

As a couple of you know, I was really stressing about making this trip. There were what seemed like 100 reasons why taking a quick (24 hours) and expensive ($400) side trip to Germany on top of a rather lengthy work trip to Bordeaux was a bad idea. None of which was that I felt that I might not have quite enough time to do the work that needed to be done, after it was casually mentioned two days before I left by a co-worker that things move kind of slow at the office there and don’t expect to have a power packed schedule.

Even immediately after booking the trip, I was so stressed I didn’t sleep a wink (which rarely happens to me and makes me feel sorry for all of the insomniacs out there).  And when the next day I could get a full refund on Orbitz, I thought it was a sign. However, I was nearly paralyzed with indecision.

But, I’m happy to say that it was 100% the right move to go. It was a quick trip but so worth it being able to see AG’s place, being able to see her life a bit and really now understand what she sees and does every day.

Water, there is nothing like it – except the bubbly.

Two times this trip, I just wanted a bottle of water. I really don’t like Naïve, pardon me, I meant Evian (spell it backwards) water. I know it was one of the firsts before bottled water was cool and probably will stick around as bottled water isn’t as cool anymore, but I just don’t like the taste. I really don’t so I try and avoid it. However, when you are buying water in foreign countries in a foreign tongue, sometimes, especially out a vending machine, you can get tripped up. I did, twice.

I ended up with the bubbly water. Not that it is really that bad, in fact, under the right circumstances, I might say that its actually good and perhaps a good alternative to Coke,  etc, but if you want water, its just not the same. No if ands of buts about it.

Traveling, and not sweating the details

In all of the flights that I had since leaving JFK, no one seems to be sweating the details. Oh sure, security was fine and seemed up to snuff. Everyone had a ticket, etc. but in terms of going to the gate, there was no one, up to 20-25 minutes before departure time. So much so, that if you got to your gate early, like an hour, I had to question if I was at the right place. Often, it was on the large Departures board that I was in the right place, but the actual gate didn’t have any information and there was no one (including other passengers) around to ask.
 
I guess they just don’t sweat the small stuff. I have to say, that the flights were smaller, seemed to depart basically on time and without all of the jocking that seems to go on in the US airports. Maybe they should adopt a better, more looser policy in the US. Forget this 1 hour in advance and make this huge cattle call to the gate, etc. Be there 20 minutes before hand, be ready to go when your name is called, don’t ask for 41 different favors from the gate agent and lets get on with it.
 
Could be a good idea in there somewhere.

Dinner in Nuremburg

We decided to immediately go out to grab a bite to eat in the town square when I got there. Of course, as I’m on the way there, I have this realization that Aunt Ginger had mentioned to me several times that nothing is open on Sunday, and she kept saying ‘Nothing’ which is the realization that I have as I’m flying into Nuremburg – oh great, its Sunday –I wonder if anything will be open in this 24 hour trip of mine.

Turns out, the restaurants are mostly all open, so dinner and walking around (which is what we wanted to do anyways) was a OK.

We went to a great dinner spot and had a great Germany meal. Not necessarily traditional Germany food, but a very German looking place with great décor, etc. It was interesting that when we got there, at what I would say is a respectable 6 PM; there was no one in the restaurant. By the time we left, we were one of four tables sitting down.

 

Connecting in Munich

It wasn’t until I was emailing my itinerary out to S and Aunt Ginger, while my car was waiting outside for me to take me to the airport to leave on this trip, that I realized I had about zero time to connect in Munich :: 30 minutes.  I figured I must have been reading my itinerary incorrectly, etc, and trusted Lufthansa.  After flying through the night, having to wait to go through Customs in what seemed like forever in Dublin and then waiting to get checked out in Paris, I really wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of paperwork or process that I was going to face when I touched down in Munich. With 30 minutes, the only thing I knew was that it couldn’t take long.

Of course, I landed at gate G55 (and flying little regional jets where you have to walk out of the plane to the tarmac, and then shuttle over to the terminal) and I was departing out of G5 (thankfully in the same terminal). And of course, of all of the cities that I’d been in today, Munich was the one city that I didn’t need or want to be in that day.(I’m sure its lovely, just not why I was leaving Paris and the work trip for in the first place).  So I quickly scooted through the airport at a light jog, with a quick stop at the ‘had to make’ stop in the restroom and made the gate with about 10 minutes to spare.

What killed me was there was a guy from my first flight already on the bus when I got there. Now, mind you, I did take a quick pit stop, but I ran through nearly the rest of the terminal and it wasn’t that long of a stop.  What secret back door way did that guy know about and I didn’t?

The Music People Play

Music that you hear in the background really makes a difference, IMO, on how you feel when you are in a particular place. That’s why I was really surprised to hear some interesting music coming over the PA system on my Lufthansa flights both into Munich and into Nurnberg.  After landing in Munich and we started to deplane, the PA system was playing what I could only describe as ‘Pop Country.’ Not quite pop music because of the lyrics and not quite County because of the supporting music (Country music reminds me of the joke about what you get when you play Country Music backwards? – You get your house back, you get your girlfriend back, you get your money back – really stupid but makes me chuckle).

The lyric was something to the affect of ‘You say your loving, but you don’t love me’ – Great country line if I do say so myself. I’m wondering what googling that line will bring up. And then on the way into Nuremburg, the PA was playing a Musac’ed form of a Coldplay song. That seemed like a really strange choice but whatever.

Munich Snow

When out of your element, I always wonder if there is a heightened sense of awareness and things that are obvious and you see all of the time in your regular elements either go unnoticed or unregistered. (For example, try and tell your wife how to drive using road names to your best friend in high schools house from where you grew up in high school – nearly impossible right?).

When flying into Munich, I noticed something, that after living in Rochester,  New York, Denver and flying into a bunch of other wintry wonderlands, I’m surprised I had never seen (or perhaps but I think it’s a long shot never noticed.)  As I looked down on the ground from the sky, I was amazed that there was nearly no snow on the ground. I could see the snow in the Alps in the distance (very similar feeling to flying in the Denver – first flight ever into Denver I was sitting on the wrong side of the plane and thought – What the heck? Denver is soooooo flat – where are the mountains – turns out, the other side of the plane).

The only place there was snow near Munich on the ground, was in very distinct cones coming off of clumps of evergreen trees. It was something that I’m fairly certain that I’d never seen anything like that before. It was very cool and very distinct for miles as we flew in. The snow had been whisked away off nearly all of the ground, but the snow clumped like dust bunnies on certain sides of evergreen trees. It was unclear to me if it was because of the wind or because of the sun (I would guess that sun would have similar behavior around other trees besides evergreen trees.