Germany, Switzerland & Austria

I started on a new project 2 weeks ago in Grenzach, Germany. It is on the border with Switzerland and France. I fly into Basel, exit out of the French side of the airport, work in Grenzach, stay in Rheinfelden (on the German side), have had dinner on the Swiss side of Rheinfelden (by walking across the bridge over the Rhine) and leave via Zurich. Phew! It is a beautiful area, with mountains (or at least large hills) very close to the river. We drive along the side of the river to and from work.
The town of Rheinfelden is split into 2, one half in Germany and one half in Switzerland. The Swiss side contains the old town and so has much more charm with its cobbled streets and old buildings. I had to laugh when bells chimed 10 o'clock and then a minute later another set of bells chimed. So much for Swiss clocks!
The first night I was there we went to a Chinese restaurant. I ended up ordering in Cantonese as that was the language that the waitress and I had in common. With a large sample of 1, I can confidently say that German Chinese restaurants are just as bad as English Chinese restaurants. : )
On the second night, we went to an Indian/Tibetan place. We have now been there twice. On our second visit it was festooned with political statements about freeing Tibet and boycotting the Olympics. Taffy reckons I sound like a pro-Chinese person when I talk about this topic (which I'm not) because I get annoyed with the very pro-Tibetan stance of the media. Yes, the Chinese are nuts and extremely heavy-handed but why is the violence perpetrated by the Tibetans (including monks!) on ethnic Chinese largely ignored?
Anyway, enough on politics. The third night we went over the river to the Swiss side and had local food (schnitzel for me) and then played darts in a local pub. The last time I played was years ago at Fiona's place where we managed to hit the bricks of the wall more than the board itself. Surprisingly, I managed to do very well. Beginner's luck. : )
In this past week we have had dinner at the hotel, where I had some local pork dish (can't remember the name) and a really yummy, crunchy rosti, the Indian/Tibetan place and an Argentinian steakhouse.
The Germans, I would have to say, are more considerate than the French. There is much less physical contact (a handshake at most) but they revert to speaking in English whenever I am in the room. I was taken on a tour of one of the plants and afterwards was taken back to the manager's office, where he and my colleague were talking in German on the phone with someone. I was particularly touched that they changed to English after the phone call so that I could understand, even though I was not involved in the conversation.
My colleagues are a very interesting bunch of people. One speaks some Mandarin; he went to the Chinese restaurant under duress because he knows German Chinese food is no good. Another is married to an Indonesian lady. He speaks to his children in Bahasa Indonesian (to which the younger ones respond in German - isn't it good to see that kids around the world with second languages at home are all the same), she speaks to them in German and his mother-in-law speaks to him in Dutch (because she grew up in an Indonesia where Dutch was the national language), to which he responds in Bahasa Indonesian.
For Easter, Taffy and I went to Salzburg. We flew BA to Munich (indulging in a huge amount of snacks in the BA lounge at Heathrow to get the full benefits of the last vestiges of my Qantas Gold status) and then caught a train to Salzburg. The plane was delayed for an hour, which mad us miss the train we wanted to catch by 5 mins. By the time we got to the hotel in Salzburg, Taffy just wanted to collapse on his bed, only to find that there was only one double bed! I have now been banned from booking any more hotels as the previous one I booked for us turned out to be a hellhole of a student accommodation block in Bath. : )
Salzburg is a very beautiful town. The windy streets are very charming with their narrow old buildings squashed together, the markets with lots of food to try and the horsedrawn carriages for tourists (with a poo-guy riding around behind them scooping up the droppings - what a job!).
The key To-Do for us was the Sound of Music Tour, which we did on Saturday afternoon. The tour guide was very dry and funny, telling us about all the mistakes in the movie (for example, at the end of the film they hike through the mountains to get to Switzerland. Only problem? They were hiking on the Untersberg, which is a mountain between Austria and Germany so they were going the wrong way! : ) We took lots of photos of us at the various film locations re-enacting the scenes (photos posted).
To balance things, we visited some more historical and classically cultural places on Sunday. Mozart's birthplace was a huge disappointment. They have employed some artist to decorate the interior in themes. The freakiest were 1. the closet/baby room where Mozart was born and first slept - it had a cradle in the middle of it with a doll made up to look like a baby and an old man (with a grey wig) to somehow represent Mozart being timeless and 2. the living room with 2D wooden figures (a man with a gun, a child and a dog) that moved when you entered the room, which were to represent the favourite pastime of the era - target practice indoors. How bizarre.
Mozart's Residence, where he lived as a teenager was much better. There were more artifacts and explanations of key people and events in Mozart's life.
Other weird places we visited were: the Salzburg Museum, which had a strange, eclectic mix of collections to do with Salzburg (we did it in 20 mins including a toilet break), the Residenz, home of the prince archbishops of old, which had a small art gallery with classical paintings as well as modern (including a square of red wax) (done in 15 mins), the Hohensalzburg Fortress, also a home for the prince archbishops, also with a very poor setup for tourists (~45 mins), the Mönchsberg Museum of Modern Art (20 mins plus afternoon tea at their restaurant overlooking the town) and the Festival Halls, of which the old one (the one featured in the Sound of Music where they sing So Long, Farewell and Edelweiss at the competition) was closed. The girl doing the tour of the Festival Halls did it both in German and in English. However, as a non-German speaker, it seemed like she was doing a translation rather like the Miss Universe interpreters, that is, speak for ages in German and then say a couple of lines in English.
All in all, a lovely, if at times bizarre, visit to a beautiful part of the world.

Tower of London

All finished on the Gueugnon project - no more white cows, saucisson, driving lessons and French countryside. Very interesting experience and has made me realise how much I like training people on Six Sigma (how nerdy!).
Managed to chat to many people this week including Michael & Rachel, Lye Seng, Steve & Sandra, Fiona, Fiona, Vicki, Jacqui, Eppie & Jean and Koufu & Ye Leong. It's great to find out how everyone else is going.
I visited the Tower of London this weekend. It is the last place in London that I had been meaning to visit and hadn't yet done. The English Crown Jewels are very impressive but the exhibition is not done as well as the Scottish one. There is very little information on the designs & history of each piece. The Yeoman Warder tour was very entertaining. I think they get chosen as much for their personalities as for their service in the armed forces. The site of the Scaffold (the private execution place for the royals and other important people) is quite strange - there is a sculpture there with a glass pillow/cushion in memory of the people who had their heads hacked off (including Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard). There was a hands-on display in the White Tower where you could feel some of the types of weapons they used to use. There was one display where you could draw a bow and depending on how hard you pulled back, it would tell you if you hit the enemy. I watched several boys pull as hard as they could and they all overshot the target. So, when I had a go, I pulled it to the middle and got to 'You're a Natural', just short of the target. Brains over brawn every time. ; )
On a side note, this is the first year in memory that I have missed the Oscars. What is more, I didn't even find out the results until just recently, not that I have seen any of the films (except such high brow winners as Ratatouille and Bourne Ultimatum, both of which I loved). Not sure that I missed a lot, what happy films 'No Country for Old Men' and 'There Will Be Blood' sound like, but I did miss bitching about how beautiful people can make themselves so ugly in prime time.
I anticipate a very large entry next time...Stay tuned.

Paintball and Driving

I went paintballing for the first time a couple of weeks ago. We went into the hills near Autun (a town in the middle of Burgundy). I was hit only 4 times as I hung back, snipered off the opposition and then ran for the flags. I got my team the flag twice. Also got 3 bruises (one of which is still there). I can see why this sort of game appeals to guys so much. They all went crazy, wriggling through the undergrowth, firing randomly, throwing themselves into trenches. A couple did kamikaze runs because they couldn't be bothered waiting around.
A comment about mealtimes. For a person who loves to eat, mealtimes have been a time that I both look forward to and dread. Look forward to because the food is fantastic with all manner of beef, lamb, chicken, duck and fish dishes, cheese platters and yummy desserts (I even enjoy the salads!). I dread them because people tend to lapse into French for the majority of the time and I don't know what anyone is saying. They tell me I should say 'speak in English' but this is difficult to do when people are in a full blown, heated conversation. Plus their English is not that good so it is a struggle for most of them to participate.
I have become a translator of Arabic to French, neither of which I understand much at all. One of the guys paid huge amounts of money to an official translator to translate his birth certificate etc from Arabic to French and got such a crappy file in return that he had to check the whole thing over and do it again himself. As I was watching him, I noticed an inconsistency in the information (a whole line missing), hence my new job as a translator from Arabic to French!
After numerous promises to teach me to drive a manual car (yes, I mean you Jean, Kuhn, Shannon, Rosey etc.!), I had to go all the way to the other side of the world (and the other side of the road) for someone to make good on his promise. I had 2 lessons last week in the car park of a sports stadium and on the country roads of Burgundy. I was pooh-poohed for the speed I was driving at (60-80km/hr as opposed to 100-130km/hr as the boys usually do) and not knowing where the high beam was (get confused because the indicators and wipers are on the opposite side in European cars). After a couple of hair-raising instances, we finally got back to the hotel only to have one of the other guys catch up to us. Knowing it was me driving, he zoomed past us as I was going into park, almost sideswiping us, causing me to slam on the brakes and stall the car. Stupid idiot.