Heinous in Germany - 09 Jan 2001
Upon waking, I washed some clothes in the sink, and decided to take a shower in the scary bathroom. I panicked. There were no towels. Finally, I discovered the towels. I hope they were clean. One was pink, and the other was blue. I wondered if the pink one was for girls and the blue one for boys, but I used them both. The pink towel was really too small.
I decided to leave for the office, as I was very scared of the possibility that I would have to eat fruhstuck in the hotel. I managed to avoid the fruhstuck, and struck out for the office. Daniel had told me the previous night to simply take three left turns and I should find the office. I didn't. I wandered around lost for a good deal of time, really wanting fruhstuck. I considered going back to the "hotel" and eating fruhstuck there, and starting over. I tried to call the SuSE office from a payphone, but they didn't seem to know where I was either. Eventually, I found the office.
When I got to the office, Edith helped me to find the cantina. I now completely understand Josh's quandry with the kaffe machine. I figured out which spout to use in much the same manner. (This is referring to some writing by my co-worker Josh
about his trip to the German office. He couldn't figure out which spout to use on the coffee machine in the cantina. He tried to get some help from a nice German lady, who seemed intent on explaining the types of coffee, but not wich spout. He finally just pushed a button, and she rushed to shove his cup under the appropriate spout.)
I am beginning to wonder if I need some special kind of
proxy[ here. I can't seem to connect to
slashdot for the life of me. (
Insert growling noise here.) Ah, Olaf just informed me of the
proxy.
I had already written some things here, but somehow lost all of my changes. I ended up going to a nice lunch with Marc Ruehrschneck, Stefan Fent, and Michael Radziej. These are a bunch of guys who had been in my company's office in Oakland at one time or another. I ran into Michael first, as I was sitting outside typing up the previous section of this node. (God bless power adaptors and the airport network.) He hollered "Leah!" and was very happy to see me. I found out that he was mostly happy because he was planning to send a package to Oakland, and now that I was there, he didn't need to worry about the custom's forms. I take it that I get to be the Post Office ;-) As we were talking, Marc came up, as we had planned to go to lunch. We ended up stopping by and picking up Stefan as well. We dropped in to see Bernhard Hölcker, but he did not come to lunch with us. I had some nice bier and chile con carne at something like a "Porno Cafe." (There is this deli next to a big porno warehouse in Oakland that we eat at all of the time. It is horrible, but we are regulars there for some reason. We call it the Porno Deli.) It was pretty good actually.
Later I also met Daniel Bischof (yet another person whom I knew from Oakland). We talked for a while. He gave me his number so I can go have some bier with him some evening. By the time I get back, I will be a raving alcoholic. Seems I have promised to go have bier with half of the company.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I spent some time translating a few PPC SDB articles and some other stuff. I ended up having a nice dinner at McDonald's. Don't ask me why.
When I got back to my hotel, I was trying to read a little bit, but it was very cold. I then discovered something that made me feel very stupid. The radiator's had little dials on the sides of them that you could use to make them get warm. I know it sounds strange, but I had not noticed them before. I noticed I am getting some kind of infection in one of my fingers. Probably from a hangnail that I had. I tried to draw out some of the infection with some toothpaste (I know it sounds strange, but it works.) I decided to go to the Apotheke and get some antibiotic cream in the morning.
I reflected upon a few things that are strange to me about Nuremberg . . no one asks me for money on the street. In short, I don't think I have seen a single homeless person. I don't know why, but it doesn't feel like a city with homeless people. If just one person would come up to me and try to bum a cigarette, I think I would feel better. Hell, I might give him the entire pack. Also, I have noticed that Germany seems to be very insistant on having the most modern telephones of anywhere that I have ever been (except for maybe Switzerland). Everyone has those really nice cordless phones that look more like cell phones to me. All of the payphones require prepaid Telefonkartes to operate. It is a mystery to me where one is to acquire such a karte, but Marc was so kind as to let me use his for the time being.