switzerland

My first two stints out of the country were flawless as far as packing my luggage went. This time, however, I left three key components. Money, belt, ties, I remembered the money while I was still in the parking lot of my place, but I didn’t remember the ties or belt until I was half way to Tucson. My boss would later apologize for taking me to the only country where they don’t sell belts. Getting back to the travel, my flight plan was pretty shitty. Tucson, DFW, JFK, Zurich. Going home, Zurich, London, DFW, and Tucson. But like you all know, everything seems to come up Jacob. I slept the entire flight from Tucson to DFW because we left at 550 am, which meant I got up at 330 am. On the flight from DFW to JFK we were on a 2 X 3 and I was in the two section and no one was next to me. I was thinking it was going to be pretty sweet to have the extra leg room for the 3 hour flight. Well at the last second some big tall women gets on the plane. I saw her out of my periph bent over, and thought to myself, I am really attracted to panty-hose. Then I saw her face and was sad because she was old. Well she was putting her stuff in the overhead compartment up by row 7 and was in 11. Then she started to walk towards the back and I was thinking, shit shit shit. She stops at row 12 and then moves back up to 11 and says to me I’m sitting next to you, grumble grumble grumble. I casually look at her boarding pass and it says 12a, damn woman sit where you are assigned. Well it turns out she is a flight attendant and she gets hooked up during the flight. I get half of her lunch and she lends me the departed to watch. That was nice of her. We eventually start talking and she says she’s from Sao Paulo and her name is Dulce. And it true charming fashion, I say Sweet. She says hables espanol, I say nein. She says sprechen sie deutsch, I say no and we continue our conversation in English. Well it turns out she is the flight attendant for my flight between JFK and Zurich, but she’s working business class not cattle class. Well during the flight a couple of the flight attendants come by with the drink cart and offer me alcohol courtesy of Dulce. Sweet I say again, but they didn’t find it amusing. Then they come back with more and again say courtesy of Dulce. One of them gets curious and asks how long she and I have been friends, I say since Dallas. And he’s taken a back. Then another one comes up and asks how long she and I go back, I say about 4,000 miles west of here. “Well who’s the smooth talker?”, “I guess both of us” As I’m waking up Dulce comes and give me a package and wishes me a safe trip. In the bag is a bottle of pinot noir and a bottle of champagne and a first class amenity kit. Way to go me! My seat partner asks to see what’s in the bag and I show him and he says wow, that’s nice. Yeah, as I’m de-boarding the plane the flight attendants from my class give me goodbye snooty comments. Well maybe they should take a lesson from Dulce. I say goodbye to my seat partner who turns out to be from Turkey and he’s a wanted felon because he refused to serve in the army and emigrated here. Hmm, the things you’ll learn if you ask. As a platinum member of American I get to use the lounge for overseas flights. JFK lounge is pretty nice. Couple free drinks, quiet clean lounge. We landed in Zurich at 7am Saturday morning and had to wait about an hour for our transportation to pick us up. We had a two hour trip to Interlaken, which equals sleepy bye bye time for Jacob. Sadly, I slept through the only time I would have been able to take pictures of the lakes that make up the laken part of Interlaken. Oh well, I was sleepy. When we arrived at hotel, the Hotel du Nord, conveniently located next to a XXX shop, we weren’t allowed to check in until 2 pm. So what did my stupid American teammates want to do? Go to Hooters. I don’t even like going to Hooters in the states, why would I got there overseas. Well our waitress was of average good looks and there is where I had sticker shock and got a glimpse of how expensive eating out would be. Beer and chicken fingers were 20. 10 chicken wings were 25. About 2 we were allowed to check in and I immediately jumped in the shower to try and stay awake. It’s key to stay up as late as possible, that way you can shock your system in sleeping in the new time zone. Which is 8 hours ahead of my current one. Got up Sunday morning to a lovely European breakfast. Which is just cold cuts and hard boiled eggs. Europeans are thinner because then eat no refined white flour. Just pure protein, breakfast lunch and dinner, there’s always meat. Hardly ever any vegetables or fruit. Sunday was kind of a lax day, just set up the network; unfortunately I couldn’t get skiing into the schedule. Sunday night we went to a pizzeria where I had a 28 dollar pizza and I was still hungry. Monday was the pre-conference and it went fairly smooth. Monday night we went to some German restaurant. There is a dish called Rosti, which translates to the best mother fucking hash browns you will ever eat. If you are ever looking upon a menu that you have no idea how to translate and you see Rosti, trust in me that that dish will be tasty. I didn’t learn this until I got my plate of food which translated in to grilled turkey with cauliflower and brussel sprouts. I really need to buy Rosetta stone. Tuesday was the start of the conference and is always by far my favorite day because they do roll call of nations. I think there were 39 countries this time. It’s just really interesting to see the contingencies from these countries, their uniforms and ranks. Some only have 1 or 2 delegates. Some have 4 or 5, others 7 or 8. The mighty US and A has about 47. Well we host the thing and we are the primary financial backers of this, so we might at as well send any and everybody. Tuesday night was the ice-breaker, free food and liquor. This was being held in the Kasino Kursall, which is a very old casino in Interlaken, beautifully gilded chandeliers and banisters and molding. The Swiss army band played for us, the highlight of the night was them playing eye of the tiger and the entire Dutch delegation singing along. I was fairly inebriated and thusly slept like a charm. Tuesday afternoon our network went to hell in a hand basket and it went quickly. We tried everything from checking cables, ports, switches, interfaces, web servers, database servers, access points, ad hoc networks, P2P networks and just couldn’t find the culprit. There is a saying we have in IT, PFM, what fixed the issue? Answer, PFM. Pure Fucking Magic. It’s kind of my mantra and once you have exhausted yourself, usually PFM will rear its ugly head and you can say it’s working again because of that. And everyone goes on loving the Jacob; see everything always comes up Jacob. Wednesday, however, PFM took a leave of absence and we had problems throughout the day and everyone was getting pissed off. I had the fine duty of telling majors and lieutenant colonels they could not work and that they would just have to be patient and wait. Something I’m sure they don’t hear very often. We cut the wireless and ran cables and it seemed to work out okay. One of the problems with attending a giant communications planning conference is everyone is technically inclined and of course has their own opinion and they want to work on the problem too. So I had to puff out my USA chest and say listen Finland, Germany, Uzbekistan, Fuck off, you’re not helping. Whatever, were all friends afterwards in the bar, but its hard 10 hours with everyone scowling at you and generally pissed off in my general direction. Thursday was a short day because we had our cultural tour in the afternoon. We took an hour bus ride to the Gruyere Chateau and to the Gruyere cheese factory. The chateau was nice, cobble stones and small shops and inns. Very Swiss miss if you ask me. The cheese at the cheese factory was really good, very stinky, but it makes your tummy happy. The tour was guided by audio controllers and it was late in the day so when the guide was talking about people stirring the curds and whey, everyone had gone home for the day and there wasn’t anything to look at in the kitchen. Kind of a weak cultural tour but better than being in the office. Friday was kind of a high tension day between my boss and I, we had to break down the network and save all of our work earlier than we are accustom too. So voices were raised in both directions. We got everything packed up and into its travel case just in time for the out briefing. Our cultural dinner was held at the top of a mountain. This meant we were driven up to a ski resort and I got to see what I was missing. We had a 30 minute gondola ride up to the top and had an outstanding dinner, vegetable soup with pancake strips, tomato and mozzarella salad, veal and Rosti, and some kind of ice cream puff chocolate liquor dessert. Too make matter worse we had an open bar. Oh yeah, wine rum and beer all went into me and I had seconds on all. Had a lovely night with my friends. My closest friends are two Germans, two Finnish guys, one Slovenian, and one Canadian. A motley crew, but we enjoy each other immensely. Friday morning I forgot to set my alarm and everyone was giving me a hard time for showing up 45 minutes late. Friday night I woke up everyone hour to make sure I didn’t miss my bus which was leaving at 7 am. Didn’t get much sleep on the bus or on the flight from Zurich to Gatwick. The flight attendant was the most polite inconvenient person I ever had to deal with. I didn’t like any of his requests, but with a British accent you really want to oblige. Sir please don’t slouch, put your feet down, buckle your seat belt, bring your seat upright, store your tray table, put your bags back up into overhead compartment. Jeez, it didn’t bother me at all. Gatwick was pretty busy, but we had access to the British Airways lounge, which in Europe means all the alcohol I can digest and food. Two beers, two bags of chips and 8 quarter sandwiches I got on my flight to America. I had an entire row to myself, but just couldn’t sleep. Of course the people sitting at the windows were sleeping with the shades open. Luckily I had my trusty sleep mask. American just recently unveiled their new 777 entertainment system. All movies are on demand. So I got to see Rush Hour 3, no need for that movie to exist, Transformers, awesome, and documentary on the Apollo missions. I fell asleep during, does anyone know the outcome? 6 hours into the flight I was getting a little stir crazy, usually the 10 hour flight doesn’t bother me, but it was taking forever. When we finally landed in DFW I got stuck in the longest line for customs and immigration. During luggage declaration I was a tad bit nervous about the dogs sniffing luggage because I brought back a big stinking stinking wedge of cheese. It was vacuumed sealed but dogs are super strong like that. I guess this was just a drug dog because he didn’t bother me. On the way home to Tucson I was upgraded to first. Nothing like warm salted nuts in my mouth. It’s an appetizer, and then they gave me bbq brisket for my entrée. How did they know that was my favorite dish? Then warm chocolate chip cookies for dessert. And the BBW next woman didn’t want to eat hers, probably because she saw my two pack and felt inferior. So I ended up getting seconds. Hoo wahh‼ Arrived in Tucson 25 hours later after I first got up, showered and went to bed. And that was my trip; it was really enjoyable, I’m leaving small stuff out like always but if you have any questions, feel free. Hash already berated me for not laying down with a 6’ blonde and eating chocolates afterwards, sorry I’m a letdown.

Cheers,

Jacob