Portland & Brisbane

Since I haven't blogged here in ages, I decided to make a new post. I doubt anyone reads it, but at least a nice vehicle to write travelcards for my friends and family while on the road.

This time I'm on a 2-week trip to US and Australia. That's right, around the world baby! That's when you realize how small the marble actually is. Nevertheless, travelling is a painful experience - at least when you're covering as much ground as I'm doing on this trip.

I never learn how early you actually have to get up when booking flights. 8.30 sounds like a very reasonable time.. but you don't

realize you have to get up at 5 am to get to the airport and check in. Ungh.. Thank god for Flytoget! Without that option I'd just as well stay over at

Gardermoen.

Having a frequent flyer card is vital. VITAL I tell you. With that you eventually get lounge access, and once you've been in the warm and quiet embrace of the airline lounges, you don't want to go back. And, you can actually find power plugs to charge your hardware..

Going to the US I didn't sleep diddely-squat. ~26 hours awake, bed to bed - makes you sleep well. You'd think. You wake up local time 02.00 because your stomach tells you it's time for breakfast. Time to crack open the minibar and eat one of those $3 chocolate bars! On the plus side, I saw mount he

len flying into Portland.

Portland was cool, went there for work stuff - thumbs up! Well, I didn't actually see

_Portland_, since our conference was ~40 minutes outside of Portland - but the scenery was great and it felt quite homy and relaxed. A picture can't justfy how nice the mountains are in this area, but a picture speaks more than a thousand words (or so I hear). The professional side of the trip was good, lots of fantastic people - my presentation was a

big hit, and lots of followups and positive steam after. But,

is drinking beers and geeking out to the late hours while being jetlagged exhausting? Oh yes.

After Portland I left early-ish to the airport, for the next leg of my trip. Thiago was leaving at the same time, so we joined forces and headed to the Airport lounge. The United Airlines lounge was a disappointing disaster. Not only was there no food, but you had to pay for drinks and I wasn't allowed to leave Thiago there when going to my flight which was 1h prior to his. He had to find a spot in the terminal to sit.

From Portland I went to Vancouver - only remainder of Olymipic paraphernalia was to be seen - to board the 14 hour (!!!) flight to A

uckland. This was with New Zealand air, and was a very nice flight despite being in Economy. Great entertainment system, and the flight crew was really something. The Flight Manager kept telling jokes over the PA system, and jabbing the rest of the crew with sarcastic remarks. (Did you know that the reason why stewardesses need to sit securely in their seat w

hen the plane is landing, is because it hurts their pretty bums if

the plane crashes..).

In Auckland I met with Volker, another colleague and good friend - for a day out and about. We took a boat-cruise to one of the nearby islands - Waiheke, well known for their wine production. As we arrived early, we headed to Onetangi Bay.

As it

happened, they had a festival day with a lot of activities.

We saw horse races, tug of war, tractor racing - you name it! After a few beers we headed back to the dock to join the wine-tasting tour. Three stops with ~5 glasses of wine each. On top of beer. Oh boy.

The next mornign we're up bright and early to go to Brisbane for a week of work. Had a great stay there with good friends and colleagues - and now it's back home after a week ɹǝpun uʍop. Will be great to come back home!!

Germany, November 2006

On the road again. This time to Germany for a trip from Berlin to Düsseldorf. Yesterday I met up with my buddy Espen, who lives in Berlin. We had some pasta at an Italian place called Petrocelli, drank some nice Weißbeer and chatted about this and that. According to Espen, Berlin is the best thing since sliced bread. Except for the lack of bankccard terminals us Norwegians have grown accustomed to.

Right now I'm in Köln, which seems to be undergoing heavy refurbishment. The streets are a mishmash of barrier mazes and traffic lights, and we nearly crashed our BMW X3 rental in one of the more Escher-like intersections.

Oh, and I found the most geeky hat by a long-shot. Snowboard beanie featuring our dear Albert. This was sold in a roadside gas-station of all places. I simply could not resist

Halfway

So I'm halfway through my UK stay. I've had the <irony>pleasure</
irony> of using the London subway system. It's extremely stressful,
and oh my is it ever polluted. Standing at the end of a stop looking
down, you'll actually see smog - almost like fog in the subway. A
couple of days ago my nose was particularly stuffy, and it turns out
it was due to the rancid air here. Black snot... imagine that. Well,
I'll stop my attempts at disgusting the casual reader. London is of
course beautiful, with it's old houses, parks and monuments. I would
love to be able to take this in but unfortunately this gets quite
hard when you're on business. I do however get to see a number of
hotels, airports and meeting rooms :-)

Here we go again

Soon there will be more travels! Next week I go to the UK for a week
on business, with three colleagues. That'll be a blast I'm sure -
lets hope it doesn't rain cats and dogs. If it rains beer I will be
fine ;)

The week after I'll go hunting in the deep woods of Østerdalen in
Norway. I'm so looking forward to getting off my tired bum and get
out in the woods! Two weeks of not being in front of the computer...
how will I manage??? I think I need to bring a picture of dexter (my
MacBook pro) to keep me company :-P

bye bye Holland

Yesterday was a blast, we went to cafe Americain and had a nice dinner, and walked around a bit ending up in the Rembrandt square. In Rembrandt square there's a lot of pubs and clubs. We sat in a cozy, small pub which seemed to be filled with locals (dutch people at least). They had some good music, but mostly cooky dutch songs. We tried as best we could to hymn along, to at least give the impression we were Good Party People

Today which was supposed to have a more cultural content with the Anne Frank and van Gogh museums, but unfortunately the weather was rainy. This prompted us to have another long and elaborate breakfast. After we had finished eating we went downtown to buy some cheezy souvenirs before checking out of the hotel and head toward the airport.

It's been a kick-ass trip, with lots of nice things to see, nice driving, nice music, good company and everything I could hope for in a vacation. A shame I couldn't stay on with Victor longer, but alas - I need to go home. Victor has another week of driving through Europe before he ships the car back to LA and continues his vacation in Chania, Greece.

Lucky bastard :-)

Amsterdam

We left Frankfurt around noon, and headed out of town in the general direction of Holland. The weather was nice and we drove once again with the top down getting some sun on our pale skin. Having the wind ruffle your hair and hear the roar of the V8 engine is an experience I won't easily forget.. Neither will Victor. He got the car up to 125 mph. That means 200 km/h for us metric people ;-)

Once again it started raining about half way to Amsterdam, this time while we were still driving with the top down. Even though it was refreshing with some raidrops protecting the interior of the car is essential and hence we put the top back up. After putting the top back up, we switched seats, and I drove the rest of the way to Amsterdam (about 200 km both legs).

Finally in Amsterdam, we checked into our Hotel. After a little rest it was time to go out and check the night-life. We wandered a few blocks from the hotel and found a decent restaurant where we got some nice food and some beers. Not quite sure how many for some strange reason.. Amsterdam is a really nice city with all of its nice canals and small bars and cafés. The night life is really vibrant, but they close at 01, which is unusual for me coming from Norway where the closing time is 03 in the morning. We'll just have to compensate for that tonight :-)

We'll try to do some sights today, but as we got up fairly late today and spent the better part of two hours walking downtown and getting some breakfast, we might have to postpone the cultural aspect of our Amsterdam visit until tomorrow..

Frankfurt

Longer post today, better with one-day summaries ;-)

Touring Munich was a no-go, we got too caught up in driving and quickly headed for Stuttgart. The weather was amazing, we drove with the top down and in T-shirts almost all the way. When we were getting close to Stuttgart, some dark clouds formed on the horizon, providing the cue to stop at the first rest-stop and put up the top. Five minutes after we got back on the road, it started pouring down. Still, we were doing about 90 mph (145 km/h) on the autobahn.

When we arrived in Stuttgart, the weather cleared up significantly, and blue patches started appearing in the sky. From Stuttgart, Victor took a break from driving, and I got a chance to man-handle this beautiful machine... it was all bliss. Although I'm not a big fan of automatic transmission, this was well done. The car is extremely responsive and a true pleasure to drive. The controls are designed around the driver, so everything has it's place and is easy to operate. The HUD is a very nice feature, which means you don't have to take your eyes off the road to see the next exit (GPS input in the HUD), your speed, gas meter, or your cruise control target.

Frankfurt is a very nice city, it has a nice sky-line, and the city is very clean. It actually seems brand spankin' new.. We went to the Adolf Wagner restaurant which specializes in their own apple-wine. The food was very good, but the wine was a bit rancid.Perhaps our palettes aren't used to this traditional brew, but I must admint that I like the German beer better. After the restaurant, we went down town to have a couple of beers. On the way we met two friendly (drunk) guys who wanted to show us the hotspots of Frankfurt. We ended up in a traditional (shady) pub and bought them a couple of beers before heading back. Now we need a good nights sleep, and a good breakfast before hitting the road once more.