Passing Through Holland

I just spent a couple of days in The Netherlands, not much to say about that. I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Leiden. Leiden is a nice medium size town with a windmill museum and some wonderful restaurants. However this is a working trip and every night my colleague and I stop in the Hotel Bar and ate a cheese burger, the best I’ve ever had on the continent, went to our rooms and promptly began writing reports until about 18:00 then went to bed, got up and started over.

The last day we were there we were in Delft , NL. At the end of the session, about 15:00, we raced back to the hotel in Leiden to pick up our luggage and then on to Schiphol Airport. We confused the cab driver a bit when he asked, “Which airline” and we told “none, drop us off at the train station.”

Did you know that they actually have a special lounge for first class train customers to wait on the train in? I didn’t either.

At 18:45 we boarded a bullet train for Paris. I was a very nice experience, lots of room and it had a WiFi internet connection on the train that was free.

The trip was about 4 hours long. I think it would have been better in the daylight. The only bad part of the train trip was a group of 5 drunken Americans who were very obnoxious. The term “Ugly American” came to have a real meaning for me. On top of that their train tickets were all messed up. After the very good train staff helped them with their tickets they had to move to another car. One French woman comment to me, “I know all Americans are not like that.” I thanked her for that observation and apologized for my fellow Americans. Soon my car was full because everyone was move out of the car with the drunks moved into my car.

We arrived at the Paris Nord Station about 23:45. As I was loading my bags into a cab one of the Drunks spotted me yelled as if he knew me, “We made it!”

Ignorance is bliss and 1 Euro is worth $1.47.

The Greening of Aberdeen

Tuesday evening in Aberdeen I had a little walk about. That’s when I found the neighborhood store to get my junk food dinner (see below).

I saw a lot of other stuff too. One of the more interesting things about Aberdeen are the houses. Most private residents are constructed with granite. There are even streets paved with granite. Why? Because It is readily available and very strong. I’ve been told by the locals that the gray color on most of the buildings and some streets around town with only a few hours of sunlight in winter and what sunshine is available reflecting off gray, gray and more gray is somewhat depressing.

Aberdeen and the rest of the United Kingdom are also getting very green. They already have small uncomfortable fuel efficient cars but now you see solar panels, water saving bathroom fixtures, and passive heating systems. The office building we visited was new and had many energy efficient aspects designed into the building. The building has room for 900 workers and only 300 space in the parking lot. Most workers ride the bus.

As an outsider looking in I think I discovered a energy source that the Aberdeenians are missing. I think that in each of those granite houses there is enough NORM* in the granite blocks to light up the house and it's inhabitants.

* Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material.

My last meal in Aberdeen, UK

Anyone can eat the local fare and I have tried a few things. Last night I had a British staple, Fish & Chips with mushy peas. I’ve passed on the haggis and blood pudding. I have discovered that there is a much larger selection of “chips” or crisps as they call them here. They have plain potato “crisp” although they are not too easy to find but for lunch I had broasted chicken flavored crisps. They also have Doritos with all kinds of pepper flavoring.

I went for a walk just before sundown and came upon a small neighborhood market and decided to select local junk food for dinner. Here are my selections. 1) Diet Coke, bottle in Scotland, 2) a snicker bar, packaged in Edinburgh,3) a chicken salad sandwich, made by the in store staff, but my greatest find was 4) Kettle chips with Sea Salt and Crushed Peppercorns. Mmmmmmmmmmm---Good

Tree Top Hilton – Aberdeen, UK

I like the people that work at this hotel, there nice and attentive to your needs and always smile but if I ever come back I think I’ll stay somewhere else. I stayed here about three years ago and it was my first trip to Aberdeen and it was a charming place but now it’s just old. I think it must have been a private mansion at one time and then it was converted to a hotel and rooms were added and added and added. There are long dark halls, fire doors and fire extinguishers everywhere.

On Monday afternoon they have fire drills. Do they know something I don’t? Yes I think it is a fire trap. I’ll be leaving in the morning. Yes, I’ll miss Clara the desk clerk, Edwardo, the bellman and Anyah the Russian waitress in the restaurant, but I shall not return. I look forward a few modern conveniences like a shower bigger than my travel trailer shower. There are two things that I will not be able to find in hotel this side of the Atlantic and it’s a common problem. That is ice and A/C. The A/C is not necessary in Aberdeen and ice? I guess when you have two seasons, winter and July ice is the last thing you want to see.

Lament of a Business Traveler

I always arrive early at the airport. I don’t want a 9 car pileup on the Katy freeway ruin a trip that took months just to plan the logistics alone. Upon arrival I learn that my flight to London Heathrow airport had been delayed by 40 minutes. That’s OK, I have a two hour layover before my plane leaves leaves London for Aberdeen and a 10 hour flight can easily make up an hour. We finally get a board and we wait, and wait, and wait. Then the captain comes on and says, “Houston, we have a problem”. We have a hydraulic pump not running and normally with multiple redundancies that would be OK, but one of the backup pumps is not running either. So we wait some more. Later comes on and says “we’re ready to go”. Then we get in the 9 plane traffic jam getting to a suitable runway.

On many flights there is a video screen that tracks the plane progress, altitude, speed, and estimated time of arrival. As woke up from my 3 hours nap that is supposed to represent my Saturday night’s sleep and it's was obvious that we have made up little or no time. I checked the itinerary and deduced that we had 1 hour from touchdown to takeoff on the next flight. Sounds like a lot of time but as aliens entering a foreign country we had to go through the British Passport control and another security check.

Surprisingly at this major international airport the plane stopped and they drove a stairway up to this jumbo jet and off loaded us onto busses.

To rush through customs, immigration and security has its own peril. Last month when I was is Singapore I was in a rush trying to catch up with my group and got hung up because I could not remember the Hotel I was staying in. My secret weapon, smile a lot. We made it to a Aberdeen plane just before they shut the door, sat down and waited for a half an hour on the tarmac.
We did make to the Aberdeen Hilton just in time to find out our rooms were not ready.

So if anyone wants to know what I saw in London, it wasn’t Big Ben or Buckingham Palace. All I saw was the inside of this bus.