I got back home around 6 PM after a fairly smooth trip back from Holland. My colleague Al was kind enough to drop me off at the Rotterdam train station early Saturday, where I caught a quick train to the Amsterdam airport. Heading through the Amsterdam airport was practically worry-free. The most time I spent doing anything in the airport was simply walking from the customs counter to the gate: the airport is huge!

At the Amsterdam airport, each gate has its own security screening, probably due to the amazing variety of airlines which serve it. I got all the way to the gate area wondering “hey, am I ever going to get screened for this flight?” Then I saw the metal detector and figured things out. A short hop later and I was in London.

In Gatwick airport I got in a long queue to be re-screened. I was told only when I got to the front of the line that I needed to check in at the airline gate first. D’oh! Add another thirty minutes to my travel. At least the UK hasn’t gone overboard with their security screening. Belts and shoes stay on and laptops stay in bags. It was a pleasant change, actually. Gatwick seems to wait to the last minute to tell you which gate your flight is leaving from, even though the plane at that gate must have been there hours beforehand.

American Airlines’ service to London has slipped a few notches. On any other international flight, you get complimentary drinks. The woman next to me was miffed – and rightly so in my opinion – to have to pony up five bucks for a gin and tonic. That’s just cheesy, especially after you’re already spending a fortune for the privilege to be wedged in a seat for 8 hours.

The flight was smooth for the most part. I’d requested a window seat so I could take some pictures. Instead the sky was a cloudy blanket below us. Bah.

The clouds finally cleared around Henderson, NC. I was admiring the green fields below when I felt the plane make a slight turn to the left. At that very moment I was startled to see a single-engine Piper airplane emerge from the clouds and pass right below my seat perhaps a mere thousand feet below! How ironic it would be to travel safely for 3500 miles only to crash a half-hour from home.

The plane landed on time and we filed slowly off. I got on the escalator to the Customs room but the room was already overflowing with passengers. Some idiot at the airline didn’t do the math: if you have x passengers on a Boeing 777 and the room they’re being stuffed into is built for x-50, maybe it would be wise to stop them at the top of the escalator before they get smushed. Instead people piled up at the bottom of the escalator with nowhere to go. Those people got crushed by the people above them on the escaltor, and so on and so forth. Only after many people fell over did the airline staff stop the escalator. Welcome to America.

In spite of the snafus I was in my car less than an hour after landing. Its good to be back.

Last night’s post made it sound like I was carousing wildly but the truth is I was making it sound better than it was. The fact is I never left the hotel yesterday. In fact, I haven’t held a Euro in my hand since I arrived, but more on that in a moment.

The training went extremely well, as my earlier post indicated. I wasn’t entirely sure how things were going until dinner last night. One of the Irish participants asked me if I’d noticed a difference in how Eurpoean students responded in class. When I asked him about it he told me that most Europeans are very reserved in class, unlike the Americans. In America, he said, a student is more apt to raise his hand when he has a question. Europeans like to keep a lower profile. So that explains why even though I tried to keep things interactive, there were actually fewer questions than I expected. In spite of his theory, he and his colleague proved it wrong by pestering me every ten minutes with questions!

Dinner and the drinks at the bar turned out to be great fun. I really enjoyed sharing stories with the guys from other countries. One of the m, an Irishman, is marrying his German girlfriend in Germany this fall. Thus, we traded wedding stories and listened to the Germans there talk about the wedding traditions in their country. One friendly African flew eleven hours (!) from Cape Town just to attend my training. Incredible! I’m really humbled by that.

One thing that is markedly different about this training session than the one I did in Australia is the obvious camraderie these partners show towards each other. Though Australians seem generally friendly, the partners I met there were not as open with each other. They seemed to view the other partners as competitors much more strongly than this group does.

I’d had two glasses of wine at dinner and was thinking of holding the line there but I couldn’t turn down an invitation to the bar. I was happy to see practically the whole class there, drinking and laughing. I nursed a pint while discussing world affairs, among other topics. My German told stories of how much he loved his visit to Las Vegas, and how he got a little too free with the speed limit in Nebraska. The state trooper pulled him over and then locked and loaded on him when he unknowingly sprang out of the car. As my friend was lying on the ground, the trooper realized he was German. Having been stationed there himself in the Army, the trooper gushed about the fun he had there before happily waving him on. The German had nothing but good things to say about Americans. I was glad to hear it!

Around midnight some of us had slipped out of the bar. That’s when Niall offered to buy me some whiskey. Normally I shy away from whiskey and I almost made it out of there before he ordered it. But not quite. It turned out to be about a shot of triple-blended Irish whiskey. On ice, no less. So I didn’t get quite as crazy as one might have inferred by my previous post.

Today’s training should be over quickly. I hope to have the team go through the set up and configuration all by themselves and make myself available for any questions they may have. Then they’ll take an exam before giving feedback on the course and heading back to their homes. Hopefully we’ll be done by 1PM, which should give me time to finally look around Amsterdam. We’ll see how it goes.

I should know better than to drink whiskey with a bunch of Irishmen. Tomorrow’s class might be a little painful. Or incoherent.

Man, it sure was fun, though!

Twenty-five guys,
crammed into a room fit for 20,
most of which English isn’t their native language,
certainly Southern English isn’t,
even though the room was too warm,
and I’d been talking for four straight hours,
about a geeky network management appliance,
and it was just after lunch,
nobody fell asleep!

Damn, I am good.

Its ten after eleven tonight and up until recently the sky was still lit. The clouds never parted today, though it was just as well. I had lots of inside work to do and still no cash for outside fun. Things are looking up, however.

Soon after my previous posting, I made a stroll up to the nearest bank, located in a mall. After a twenty minute walk in the drizzle, I entered the mall exactly at the opposite end from the bank I wanted to visit. Another ten minutes of walking brought me there, where I was promptly told in stumbling English that I could not withdrawl cash from my credit card there. This was in spite of what Kelly was told by our credit card company, but who am I to argue? Thwarted yet again, I made the long twenty minute walk through drizzle back to the hotel. Moral to this story: when you forget your ATM card, you get a lot of exercise.

My European coworkers had arrived when I returned. Thus I had a server to configure. It was good seeing them again and we had a good time getting everything ready. Niall is an Irishman who lives in London and Ray is a Dutchman from here. We did some work before jumping in Ray’s car to eat at the local burger joint called Bear Burger. The theme of Bear Burger is one where hundreds of stuffed teddy bears line the walls. I was stuffed, too, after eating my cheeseburger! Thank you! Thank you very much!

We talked about sports and driving among other things and headed back to the hotel to finish up. Ray called it a day around 6PM, right after Al arrived from NJ. We worked up until 9PM before the World Cup coverage started, whereas we wandered down to the hotel bar for dinner and beers. I enjoyed tonight’s matchup between the Netherlands and Argentina, even though it was 0-0 the whole time I watched it.

By 10:30 I was doing more yawning than I should’ve and bid everyone good night. I put in a quick VoIP call to Kelly, caught up on some email, and stared at my bed as I wrote this from the chair three feet away. I’m looking forward to another night of good sleep before kicking off tomorrow’s training. Wish me luck!

I’m starting my first full day in Holland (a.k.a the Netherlands). Its rainy and cool this morning with a temperature around 60F (15C). I didn’t bring an umbrella so its fortunate I’ve got lots to do at the hotel this morning.

I got to Amsterdam around noon yesterday. The flight from London was around 40 minutes long. I enjoyed looking out the window at the English Channel, though it was mostly obscured by clouds.

Holland is one of the most laid-back countries I’ve visited. The immigration agent barely looked at my passport before stamping it and sending me on my way. Customs was simply walking through a door. What a refreshing difference from the Nazi police-state security we “enjoy” in America. I suppose the Dutch have been trading so long that nothing fazes them anymore.

Holland has superb train service, so getting around is relatively easy once you get the hang of it. While English is widely spoken here, all the signs at the train stations are in Dutch. Also there are few attendants at the stations to ask about directions. I spent a bit of time studying maps carefully before hopping on a train.

At the airport station, I met a man from California in town for a trade show. He’d been to Amsterdam before so he gave me some pointers about finding a hotel near Amsterdam as well as tips for the train. I got a suggestion for a hotel and hopped a train to find it. Though I only went one stop beyond the airport, I was surprised to find the area was not as urban as I expected. I walked around for 30 or 45 minutes looking for the hotel but never found it. One Crown Plaza hotel I did find had a rate of 285 euros a night, which I thought was a bit high. Later I found that this rate is typical. Sheesh.

I gave up on getting a hotel in Amsterdam for last night and hopped a train to Rotterdam. It took a little over an hour but I got here. There were no public phones near the train station so I used one at a local convenience store to call the hotel. Another 30 minutes later I was at the hotel. (I discovered a shortcut later which makes the walk only 15 minutes).

I somehow was stupid enough not to bring my ATM card with me. Stupid, stupid mistake. Once I got to Rotterdam I did not have enough cash to take the train back to Amsterdam. The banks were closed as well, leaving me few choices for dinner other than the hotel restaurant. I will wander out today to a bank to withdraw cash from my credit card, though I will miss the half day I could have spent looking around Amsterdam.

After dinner at the hotel I wandered back to my hotel room, where I checked email and did some reading. The jet lag caught up to me, however, and I crashed around 9:30 PM, sleeping until about 7 this morning.

Today I’ve got a test network to configure at the hotel for the training. Once that’s done I should be able to do more exploring. With any luck the sky will clear and I can get some walking in. I also hope to take some pictures as I’ve taken zero since arriving.