Paris: fin, a US stopover and Germany: week one
The days are just blending together now. I was in Paris for a while, then back in the US and now I'm in Germany. The days themselves haven't changed much. Even while I was in the US I was working like I was still on a deploy. But besides some excitement about whether we were going to connections to the outside world from our data center this has gone a lot smoother than Paris. That being said, there's still a lot of time for things to explode before Wednesday's maintenance.
I think I left off on the day before the Paris maintenance. That was fun. Since we were going to be working at midnight that night, we went into the city to walk around and just hang out. We did some shopping and someone spent way too much money on Louis Vitton bags at the LV store on Champs-Elysees and another store down another street. We took some random side streets and ended up on embassy row with lots of armed national police and flags of representative countries on the buildings. I managed to get a picture of the US embassy without getting shot but the guard was very unhappy with me. After that we walked by a sidewalk crepe vendor and I finally got my Nutella and bannana crepe. It was quite delicious. We also passed by a Starbucks and I was able to get my Paris travel mug.
The maintenance itself went fine from my perspective. There was a lot of unexpected stuff that came up but it wasn't anything I had to resolve. I spent most of the maintenance working on stuff completely unrelated to the deploy that people had decided needed to be done by the time I got back. But eventually it finished and we were done.
Since we were leaving early on Friday, the plan was to stay up all night on Thursday and drink so we would be tired and drunk when we got on the plane and sleep well. This plan went better for some than others. Being only an occasional drinker, I'm not very good at pacing myself and neither was our deploy lead. We ended up completely trashed before the afternoon had even passed. Perhaps stopping at that second supermarket for another round of wine bottles wasn't such a good idea. We ended up literally carrying our lead back to the hotel from Sacré Cœur. I didn't last much longer and crashed on my bed after we dropped him off in his room. I spent the rest of the day contemplating the floor of the bathroom. The other two had quite an adventure the rest of the night and showed up for the plane tired and drunk and did sleep quite well.
The week back in the US was nothing exciting other than having a lot of work to do to get ready for the next trip to Germany and finishing the things I'd started while in Paris. I'm still not sure whether it was such a good idea to go back to the States or if I should have just stayed in Paris another week and gone straight to Germany. But I did enjoy getting my clothes washed and sleeping in my own bed for a few days.
Germany, on the other hand, has been a lot of fun. I really wish our EU HQ was in Germany instead of France. I'd be more interested in visiting or perhaps transferring there. We arrived just barely in time to watch some of the Germany/England game in the hotel bar and had heard the US had already been ousted by Ghana. I crashed after the game but the other guys went to the public viewing area downtown to watch the other game that night. The rest of the week was mostly working and occasionally going places to eat in the evening. We did go down to the public viewing area again to watch the Spain/Portugal game but our Portugese team members came away disappointed. We had dinner one night at an apfelwein bar across the river. The place was neat and the trip was fun but the apfelwein didn't agree with me and I again contemplated the bathroom floor for a while when we got back. It's not a deploy these days unless I end up puking in my room. Later the guys said it hadn't been very good apfelwein and the food hadn't been that great, either, so it's tough to say whether I got sick because it was bad or I got sick because I ruined my ability to drink alcoholic apple products back in college.
We finished up our work during the week and were able to take off Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we devoted the day to going downtown to watch the Germany/Argentina game in the public viewing area. It was completely nuts. The area was packed with German youth and completely exploded after every German goal. The fact there was a lot of scoring helped at least break up the fact that we'd been standing in the direct sun for about four hours. After the game we walked around downtown while cars drove in circles with people hanging out of them waving German flags. It was really cool. Unfortunately, after standing for a long time walking around for an hour wasn't so much fun and it looked like a thunderstorm was brewing. We split up and some people went back to the hotel while some others went shopping and I went to an Irish pub with the EU manager. We stuck out the rest of the evening there and watched the Spain/Paraguay game. One advantage of watching the game from an Irish pub: they played the BBC feed of the game which had English speaking commentators. It was a pretty forgettable game beyond setting up who Germany will play on Wednesday.
Sunday (today) we celebrated the birth of our nation by going to a small German town where the EU manager with us grew up. There was at least a festival going on there! Apparently there's a festival on the first weekend of the month but we could pretend that the German music was being played for America. Okay, maybe not. We still had a great time walking around a small, Bavarian town with a little castle (that was under construction so we couldn't go inside). We walked around, enjoyed the river, drank some beer (yes, even me) and then headed back to the hotel. We ended up eating dinner at this little German restaurant down the street from the hotel we'd eaten at last week. The food is really good and the owner is quite friendly. It's in this little garden community so it feels like you're walking through peoples' backyards to get to it. We also saw the old wheelbarrow guy we saw last time as well. He must be a handyman around the place. He surprised us last time by sitting on the bench behind us and suddenly berating the EU manager for describing Vienna style schnitzel as pork when "Vienna style" has to be veal. He further pwned us by speaking perfect, nearly unaccented, English when he walked out later and wished us a good evening.
Tomorrow we're hoping to just wrap up what little there is left to do before Wednesday's maintenance. Then Tuesday we'll probably head downtown for shopping or whatever. Wednesday is the all-day maintenance. Hopefully, it goes smoothly and we finish early so we can go downtown an watch the Germany/Spain game. That will be the semi-finals and should be exciting. I'm mostly hoping that we can be done on Wednesday and freed up for the rest of the week. I've got two friends in Germany and I'd like to spend some time with them while I'm here. One is coming down to spend the afternoon with me tomorrow because it's the only day that fits in her scedule. The other I'm either going to visit towards the end of the week or maybe he'll be able to come to me for a bit. I feel bad making people get on trains to come see me but even though there's nothing necessarily for me to do, I need to stay nearby in case something comes up that requires my attention. I am technically here, after all, for work. I'll definitely have to return to Germany on my own another time.
I think I left off on the day before the Paris maintenance. That was fun. Since we were going to be working at midnight that night, we went into the city to walk around and just hang out. We did some shopping and someone spent way too much money on Louis Vitton bags at the LV store on Champs-Elysees and another store down another street. We took some random side streets and ended up on embassy row with lots of armed national police and flags of representative countries on the buildings. I managed to get a picture of the US embassy without getting shot but the guard was very unhappy with me. After that we walked by a sidewalk crepe vendor and I finally got my Nutella and bannana crepe. It was quite delicious. We also passed by a Starbucks and I was able to get my Paris travel mug.
The maintenance itself went fine from my perspective. There was a lot of unexpected stuff that came up but it wasn't anything I had to resolve. I spent most of the maintenance working on stuff completely unrelated to the deploy that people had decided needed to be done by the time I got back. But eventually it finished and we were done.
Since we were leaving early on Friday, the plan was to stay up all night on Thursday and drink so we would be tired and drunk when we got on the plane and sleep well. This plan went better for some than others. Being only an occasional drinker, I'm not very good at pacing myself and neither was our deploy lead. We ended up completely trashed before the afternoon had even passed. Perhaps stopping at that second supermarket for another round of wine bottles wasn't such a good idea. We ended up literally carrying our lead back to the hotel from Sacré Cœur. I didn't last much longer and crashed on my bed after we dropped him off in his room. I spent the rest of the day contemplating the floor of the bathroom. The other two had quite an adventure the rest of the night and showed up for the plane tired and drunk and did sleep quite well.
The week back in the US was nothing exciting other than having a lot of work to do to get ready for the next trip to Germany and finishing the things I'd started while in Paris. I'm still not sure whether it was such a good idea to go back to the States or if I should have just stayed in Paris another week and gone straight to Germany. But I did enjoy getting my clothes washed and sleeping in my own bed for a few days.
Germany, on the other hand, has been a lot of fun. I really wish our EU HQ was in Germany instead of France. I'd be more interested in visiting or perhaps transferring there. We arrived just barely in time to watch some of the Germany/England game in the hotel bar and had heard the US had already been ousted by Ghana. I crashed after the game but the other guys went to the public viewing area downtown to watch the other game that night. The rest of the week was mostly working and occasionally going places to eat in the evening. We did go down to the public viewing area again to watch the Spain/Portugal game but our Portugese team members came away disappointed. We had dinner one night at an apfelwein bar across the river. The place was neat and the trip was fun but the apfelwein didn't agree with me and I again contemplated the bathroom floor for a while when we got back. It's not a deploy these days unless I end up puking in my room. Later the guys said it hadn't been very good apfelwein and the food hadn't been that great, either, so it's tough to say whether I got sick because it was bad or I got sick because I ruined my ability to drink alcoholic apple products back in college.
We finished up our work during the week and were able to take off Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we devoted the day to going downtown to watch the Germany/Argentina game in the public viewing area. It was completely nuts. The area was packed with German youth and completely exploded after every German goal. The fact there was a lot of scoring helped at least break up the fact that we'd been standing in the direct sun for about four hours. After the game we walked around downtown while cars drove in circles with people hanging out of them waving German flags. It was really cool. Unfortunately, after standing for a long time walking around for an hour wasn't so much fun and it looked like a thunderstorm was brewing. We split up and some people went back to the hotel while some others went shopping and I went to an Irish pub with the EU manager. We stuck out the rest of the evening there and watched the Spain/Paraguay game. One advantage of watching the game from an Irish pub: they played the BBC feed of the game which had English speaking commentators. It was a pretty forgettable game beyond setting up who Germany will play on Wednesday.
Sunday (today) we celebrated the birth of our nation by going to a small German town where the EU manager with us grew up. There was at least a festival going on there! Apparently there's a festival on the first weekend of the month but we could pretend that the German music was being played for America. Okay, maybe not. We still had a great time walking around a small, Bavarian town with a little castle (that was under construction so we couldn't go inside). We walked around, enjoyed the river, drank some beer (yes, even me) and then headed back to the hotel. We ended up eating dinner at this little German restaurant down the street from the hotel we'd eaten at last week. The food is really good and the owner is quite friendly. It's in this little garden community so it feels like you're walking through peoples' backyards to get to it. We also saw the old wheelbarrow guy we saw last time as well. He must be a handyman around the place. He surprised us last time by sitting on the bench behind us and suddenly berating the EU manager for describing Vienna style schnitzel as pork when "Vienna style" has to be veal. He further pwned us by speaking perfect, nearly unaccented, English when he walked out later and wished us a good evening.
Tomorrow we're hoping to just wrap up what little there is left to do before Wednesday's maintenance. Then Tuesday we'll probably head downtown for shopping or whatever. Wednesday is the all-day maintenance. Hopefully, it goes smoothly and we finish early so we can go downtown an watch the Germany/Spain game. That will be the semi-finals and should be exciting. I'm mostly hoping that we can be done on Wednesday and freed up for the rest of the week. I've got two friends in Germany and I'd like to spend some time with them while I'm here. One is coming down to spend the afternoon with me tomorrow because it's the only day that fits in her scedule. The other I'm either going to visit towards the end of the week or maybe he'll be able to come to me for a bit. I feel bad making people get on trains to come see me but even though there's nothing necessarily for me to do, I need to stay nearby in case something comes up that requires my attention. I am technically here, after all, for work. I'll definitely have to return to Germany on my own another time.