Big Ol' Jet Airlinah

So my day started at 5:30am in Lechenich and now is winding down in Gainesville. Nearly 24 hours, non-stop with no sleep. I drove out and got a couple of Wendy's burgers for us. It was so good to hear the growl of my Ford's V8 engine.

So my dog is okay, my room is still the shits and I've got a weeks worth of Slashdot to read (screw the email; 90% spam anyway).

The backlog of blogs is coming, as well as the pics.

Went to the German Roman Museum in Köln. Took a buttload of pictures.

19:30 CET
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
started "What Liberal Media?" by Eric Alterman

ground beef with peppers on rice

more reading

23:47 CET
Shrek
Unbreakable
a couple of Futurama episodes

medium rare lamb, hash browns and beans

a couple of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy episodes
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

3

23:30 CET
Minority Report
Ghost in the Shell
Monsters, Inc.

18:53 CET
Roast Beast it isn't
Christmas dinner was meat & vegetable soup leftovers and it ain't gonna get any better. Now, I'm not expecting feasts here, but does anybody over here cook from only one of the food pyramid sections!? Jeebus! At Uncle Helmut's it was lots of meat but nary a vegetable. Here The Cousin rarely cooks for herself, but the soup she made. It's the same bloody thing we got when we arrived here Sunday. Let me repeat, I'm not expecting feasts, but if I had guests, for a week no less, particularly during the holiday season, I would sure as damn well plan for my guests to expect something. That one restaurant in Frankfurt is the only single meal where I had that away from home meal feel. Unfortunately suggesting to go out would raise more hassle than it's worth.

I don't get my Mom. She's the pan-ultimate in planners, but for this her plans extended only to go to Germany, stay at Relative A's house and then stay at Relative B's house. That's it. And now she's not happy and counting the days. Before the trip, I'd be climbing the walls hearing her say that. Now, just stunned numb. What was the point here? Seeing her brother? Check. Seeing The Cousin? Check. Buying some bedding? Check. That's, what, 4 or 5 days worth at the most, including the travel. These people aren't here to entertain us (and vice versa) and more importantly, they are not family, they're relatives, big f-ing difference. With relatives, everything is slightly foreign and removed so you have to explain yourself to them. Change to people doesn't scale smoothly from day to day it leaps by decades. So you get the "I remember when you were this big" bullshit for the eightieth time. You visiting relatives, or relatives visiting you, isn't a family reunion so much as an alien invasion. You're welcome to stay over, but don't stay. Relatives aren't family. Genes and old history delude us into thinking that we still have something in common, something to endear, old film memory looping somewhere in the back of the brain.

It's damn sad. A sister seeing her brother have so many of their father's traits they said they'd never have. A cousin expect that the other cousin improve somehow after a divorce and her almost 90 year old mother waning quickly.

I don't really have a point here. These folks shouldn't be spurned or avoided, but they are closer to strangers than to intimate friends. For me, there wasn't a lot of expectancy to be fulfilled. Mission Accomplished. I'm just wondering how many times am I going to find myself in an under-heated room, catching cold and bitching and moaning that "wah I only had soup" for no other reason than being the one-man moral support squad. Had I been more supportive and forthright I should have asked Mom some hard questions about what she expected from this trip. It certainly wasn't a Vacation.

Short version: I'm not happy, Mom's not happy, hence WTF are we doing here and doing nothing to change it?

It's the cold talking, the real Chris is behaving himself, sitting in the corner watching DVDs and counting.

4, by the way.

15:36 CET
Okay, a new new land speed record for me: 183 kph on the way back to the daughter's place for a second visit.

2:12 CET
Post Game Show
Okay, as you can see the game went waaaaaaay late, ending around 1:30 in the AM. All in all not a bad night. I got back online for while and then there was all that other stuff and people.

Kidding... We met with the daughter of The Cousin and boyfriend at their place which is at a farm where the barn-houses are being converted to two-story living spaces. Really nice place but the road sucks (natch, it was a farm after all). Also attending was the sister of the Cousin (nice, hence not "The Other Cousin") and her, um portly, husband. Despite my previous Thud comment, the boyfriend actually is a really nice guy (G_d save him from the emotional baggage should his status become more permanent).

What did I get out of the night: DSL access, curry shrimp & potato soup, beef salad with sunflower seeds, salmon dill stew over pasta, a new wallet (read: argyle sock category) and another addition to my cool, expensive pen collection that will probably never be used since I do this Internet thing.

Now, back to finishing the "The Bourne Identity" DVD that I started earlier today. Despite the premise of Matt Damon as Action Hero, it kinda of jives. Takes place during the holidays in Europe. (I did mention that I haven't been to a movie theater since'97, right? Air Force One with Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, I think).

BTW, a new land speed record for me: 170 kph The Cousin driving home.

Holy Bizarro World Batman!!
In non-vacation news: Motorola buy Apple? Right now Motorola and Apple are the point of their divorce that Motorola should feel lucky if Steve left a bag of flaming poo (because poop would make it sound childish) on their doorstep, let alone a bag of steaming Sarin.

I don't even think that Apple would interested in the sinking semiconductor division of Motorola now that Steve has a new luvah.

Repeat after me: HellNoMoto

17:15 CET
Woohoo, Internet access! Yes! Although I'm wearing a burial suit, so it's hot as hell. I'm going to cut & paste the last few days.

Please stand by... There. Is. No. Pilot.

12:23 CET
Tonight is the big night. And by big I mean... annoying? cumbersome? freak show? I don't know. We're driving to The Cousin's daughter's place for Christmas Eve all dressed up. Presents will be exchanged and food will be eaten. Blah.

6 days and counting... That's right, I'm already counting down.

18:00 CET
Went outside for a walk with Robbie, with moderate snow.

Went to Köln...

to see the Domkirche (dome church).

In a word, huge. In another couple of words, cold and dark. (No central heating, damn holy misers).

Because it was so dark, a lot of the pictures are sub-par. With flash, the camera only captures the light that immediately bounces back and the church is so big that the flash is useless for the "big wide shots." However, without a flash the camera takes a long time for exposures (as long as five seconds). Hence the bright but blurry shots. What I do like about the long exposure shots is the warm colors they show.

no flash; shutter 1/5

flash; shutter: 1/60

Fun with photostitching software: from where I was, with the one lens I had, I couldn't get the entirety of the church into view so I took a series of shots and threw them into the Canon stitching app. I'll play around with them in Photoshop later to equalize the colors. Medium and large, the "original" is ginormous (2833x8256; 4.2MB).

Afterward we walked through the Köln Weihnachtsmarkt and shopping center street in the snow and sleet... to buy shoes. The museum was closed, so we'll try again later, hopefully.

11:10 CET
Officially a head cold. Blergh. Went to bed again around 1 o'clock and slept until 6. What happened on Mars? I have no idea. The only TV I get to see is in the morning with CNN International. English speaking business news. Whoopee... Paramalat is going under... ooohh. It's a bigger deal for the boxed milk market. Two things that suck: no Internet (even via phone) and apartment living. Every footstep, every faucet, every flush...

23:00 CET
Ugh... Fighting a cold or something. Went shopping this morning and I started to get a throat tickle. By the afternoon, I had dizziness and a runny nose. I just woke up, been sleeping since 7.

10:35 CET
Schnee! (shnay - n. - snow). Well, a little bit on the ground and the roofs from overnight.

16:50 CET
Lechenich
Settled in at The Cousin's place. A newly renovated, three story apartment house in a small burb a few minutes away from Köln. The Cousin owns the house and will rent the second and third floors; she's currently living in the second. I'm down here on the first. Cold and unfurnished, except for a futon. At least the bath is nice.

New place, new dog.

Robbie. (And it is purely a weird coincidence that both German Anka and Robbie were laying the same way).
Big, cute dog. A mix of a black lab and something shaggier (sheppard?). However, do not pet him when he's been given a bone to chew. Do. Not.

Cool (4-6 degrees C) outside but a strong wind and intermittent rain makes it worse. But all this and the rainless, snowless freezes the previous week are par for the course for this region and time of year. The real spirit-killer is the 4:30pm sunsets.

Unlike my Uncle's place, where I figured out that the DSL connection had wireless LAN too and got it to work, this house is Analog City. Only a telephone line and that jack is 15 feet away. Excuse me, 5 meters away. We'll visit the daughter (thump-thump) of The Cousin; she is a freelance architect. She and her boyfriend (thud) gots the hookup. So no updates 'til then.

18:34 CET
Spent the day at the Frankfurt Weinnachtsmarkt (the one in Giessen is two or three blocks long, this was literally a mile long). More food, more wares, more crowds. Lots of tourists, Asians and Americans. In the middle of it, Mom and I rebelled and went to an actual restaurant.



Okay, we didn't rebel but the relatives had "lunch" along the streets and we planned early on to go somewhere with unusual things, like a roof and tables and such...



It was dreary gray but "warm" (6 to 11 degrees C). It made Frankfurt look like it needed a city-wide dose of Prozac. The cityscape is a combination of the very old and very modern.



In the end, it looked Christmasy but didn't feel Christmasy.

Tomorrow we get transferred to somewhere near Köln (Koiln) (nee Cologne) to The Cousin. Joy.

13:32 CET
Walked through the town of Trohe (in Hessen) last night for their neighborhood light display. It was freezing. (No, really, I mean it was 0 to -1 degrees Celsius). Got a few pictures, but because the shutter stayed open so long because of the dark, a lot of them show movement.

Kind of strange, an entire town (suburb really) sets up a ferris wheel, carousel and, again, little sales booths so people walk through your neighborhood until 9 or 10 at night.

1	2
3	4
5	6

Schoeffengrund
16:30 CET

This is the other Anka. (I kid you not. Brother and sister gave their dogs the same name).
Went for a walk with Anka. 2 degrees Celsius at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The sun will set in about an hour or so.

Is it me?
Giessen
Weinnachtsmarkt (Vine-nahhts-markt) n. - during the holiday season in popular marketplaces, people setup booths to sell their wares or food and drink; it's a commerce meets social thing. This is all festive and everything, but it's not dinner. However, the relatives wanted to take us to the Weinnachtsmarkt and have dinner along the street there (two for one). The choices were sausage in bread, chicken in bread or fish in bread (not really a sandwich but meat inserted into a roll). Sorry, but I wasn't buying. And apparently I got into a bit of snit about it. (Not a tantrum or anything, mind you, just said "no thank you" until I was -- and looked -- annoyed).

I think I came across as a snob. It wasn't that. I eat with my hands all the time. It was cold. The fact that this was what the whole trip to Germany was going to be sunk in. So I'm walking amongst a lot of people (I hate crowds) with my camera in my hand (knowing I'm not going to use it much) and the folks (nice people, no doubt) begin giving me that, "What's the matter with him" look. The whole thing started to grate and grate...

We drove home. I went to my room around 8 o'clock, closed the door and slept 'til 8 in the morning. Yeah, I was sulking.

Good God, it's morning
6:19 CET
Went to bed at 8 o'clock. (Not a usual thing for me). I fought jet lag and jet lag won. So I woke up at 5 o'clock this morning (Again, not a usual thing).

I'm updating the blog entries with pictures.

CNET Bandwidth test of Helmut's DSL connection: 569 kps (Remember, we're not exactly close to any major city).

I know officially loathe American telecomm!

12:52 CET
Schoeffengrund
Guten Morgen! We landed at Frankfurt (am Main) airport at 8:45 CET. When we crossed over from England, I started to see white, puffy clouds. Well, actually make that one thick layer of puffy gray clouds blanketing what seemed to be all of western Europe. The morning weather was a windless 4 degree Celsius. My uncle (Mother's brother) and his wife picked us up.

Snow is on the ground here and there. Not so much because it snowed recently or regularly but because the temperature stays so low that it doesn't melt during the day. So the landscape is brown or white with an occasional shock of green from some farmland covered by gray sky. Um, cheery!


Outside window of Helmut's house.

No pictures, sorry. It's kind of difficult to get a good shot doing 130 kph across the German country side.

Hopefully I'll get to connect here. Uncle Helmut has several PCs and a laptop with flat rate DSL plus satellite TV with a widescreen TV (~20in. CRT). (God, U.S. cable and telecomm sucks).


Gravesite of my grandparents.

(Your probably thinking, "Geez, the first thing you go to is where your grandparents are buried?" Trust me I was just being a tag-along).

Just past Nantucket
Dinner: Barbecue Chicken, Caesar Salad and a cup of Black Forest cherry cake. Not bad, but the table made cutting the food practice for Yoga.

Scratch that. I did bring an RJ-45 cable, but it's a phone jack.

Is global, wireless Internet access for a low, low price too much to ask for?

Airborne Sardine
Somewhere over North Carolina
My one word review of the Boeing 777-400: tight. In economy class, the center sections seats five (we're on the right side). Every seat (17" wide) has an LCD built into the back of the headrest. You can use the Compass screen to see where the plane is headed, its altitude and so on plus commercials (captive audience and so forth).
There are eight movie channels and twelve radio channels. They all suck for two reasons. First American pop culture has marketed itself into tapioca and we're sitting just behind the wing, so the engine roar is hhhhhhhorrible. (Note to self: buy noise canceling headphones or a knitting needle to poke your eardrums out.)

Because we're in the first row for this section, the display and table fold out from under the seat. The table bites, worthless for laptops. Back to the lap for the laptop.

Under the remote control/ inflight phone is a jack. Unfortunately, idiot me packed everything except an ethernet cable, so I don't know if it does anything. (Inflight Internet access in coach!?)

At least the empower jack works.

Down in Hotlanta (actually chilly Atlanta)
We left Gainesville on time and landed a bit early at around 4:30pm. The turboprop was LOUD. The last connecting flight I took was 12 or 14 years ago on an Eastern Airlines jet. That flight was LOUDER. No public wireless available. (Come on people! If you build it, they will shop).

Whistled to the tune of "Wild Blue Yonder"

Gainesville Airport

The place is dead. Two people at check-in, ten in the lounge and Fox News on the TV. No public wireless available. At least the tree is pretty.


Gainesville Airport Christmas Tree


Preboarding (Self-Portrait)

Concerning Saddam, blah whatever. Some want to make him out to be some Bond villain. That farm house and that hole pretty much show that they're operating in small cells. However, there will be some door-slamming in Tikrit tonight.

Letting go
Dropped Anka off with a couple way, way, waaaay out in the boonies (a little past Putnam Hall, for the record). Glad we took the truck instead of the '87 Accord. Four miles of rolling, red dirt road would have gutted the Honda.
Ch-chunk!
"What was that?"
"Um, the trunk..."

Finishing to pack. I bought a black Samsonite Oyster. The thing is huge. I could have packed Anka with room to spare. That would be a moment for the inspector opening the case: Sproing! "What the?! Somebody packed a yellow Lab!?"

Mother is vacuuming. Why? I have no idea. Methinks she's seeking busy-work until tomorrow.

Now, in the case that this turns into a relatives gabfest, what DVDs and books do I pack? Hmm...

Packin' it in

Just looked up the weather for Frankfurt:
Mon. - Showers
Tue. - Rain/Snow Showers
Wed. - Rain/Snow Showers
Thu. - AM Cloud/PM Sun
Fri. - Showers
Sat. - Light Rain
Sun. - Showers
And remember all of this while the daytime temperature is in the mid-40s.

Merrying F-ing Christmas

Showed this to Mom. She was not happy. What was she expecting!?

Her Quote of the Day: "Gosh, Germany would be nice if there wasn't so much rain."

My immediate retort was, "Yes, but Florida would be nice too without a lot of rain!"

(Sigh). T- Five days. (Twiddles thumbs).