Live from Austin!

Food turned out to be less of a problem than in Berlin, oddly enough. There seemed to be lots of vegetarian restaurants, and we found a vegetarische imbiss at Schantzenstrasse and Susannenstrasse.

I also got the impression that people were more friendly than in Berlin. Then again, perhaps it was my imagination, a side effect of my becoming more used to Germany.

Josef had an original LP from the first release of Autobahn. The band look like big geeks in the photo, and the sleeve credits Conny Plank. (His name was removed from later editions.)

CD shopping was made more annoying by the fact that nowhere seems to take credit cards, not even big stores. If you don’t have an EC card with a PIN, forget it.

Stereotypes sometimes have an element of truth to them. While we were in Hamburg, Josef and Ute helped rothko to polish the text of her German scrapbooking site. The original text talks about the enthusiasm of TLC scrapbookers for the business. For our hosts, this proved to be the most difficult piece to translate, and it took a long time for them to come up with an acceptable German phrase for “enthusiastic”. Apparently the literal translation of the word would be viewed with great suspicion in a business context, particularly when said by an American.

This reminded me of my two favorite jokes about Germans:

1. Q: How many Germans does it take to change a light bulb?
   A: One, and he does it with ruthless efficiency.

2. Q: Why did the German cross the road?
   A: Because the traffic lights indicated that it was appropriate to do so.

We got to the airport for our return at around 06:30. The queue was very, very long. The airline official checked my passport and visa (permanent resident card). Then he asked for my driver’s license. After that, he wanted proof of employment. Fortunately my medical insurance card has IBM’s logo on it.

This is all the result of the US government decreeing that airlines should pay the cost of deporting people. Ironically, if you don’t have a visa at all then you’re OK as far as the airlines are concerned, because it means they’re not on the hook; it’s if you do have a visa that they have to triple-check everything, just in case the visa is fraudulent or you can’t continue to meet the terms of your residence.

Next, we had to queue for the metal detector. My passport was checked again. Then we walked through to the hallway beyond, and walked to the departure gate…where there was another security checkpoint, with another queue. My passport was checked a third time, and everything went through another round of metal detection, this time using a wand.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get more ridiculous, I realized that they were hand-searching the carry-on luggage of every single passenger. I cooperated with removing every single item from my bag, so they could be checked one by one.

The guard noticed the TRIO DVD and grinned. “Trashy,” he commented. It turned out that he had been a fan back in their early days, before they became famous, when they were playing obscure Hamburg clubs. Somehow this puts a more human feeling to the proceedings, and makes it all seem better.

When we got to Newark, we had to collect our luggage. We re-checked it, and it was scanned again. Then, we had to go through security, for what was my third round of metal detection and fourth round of passport checking.

At immigration, I was handed back my documents with a smile and “Welcome home”. Maybe I was fragile from the 8 hours on the plane and the repeated security screenings, but I felt genuinely touched. And not in a full-body-cavity-search kind of way.

I have to admit that Hamburg had never made it to my shortlist of places I wanted to visit. Apparently I’m not alone in that respect, because research soon revealed that there weren’t any English-language guidebooks about Hamburg in print. I started assembling what information I could from online sources, while rothko purchased 2 German guidebooks and started reading those.

The reason for our choice of destination was simple: both sides of rothko’s family can be traced back to Hamburg. It was to be a visit to the ancestral homeland, and a chance to do some genealogical research. We would be staying with some distant relatives who had visited Minnesota many years before.

The shortest air journey from Austin to Hamburg is two hops via Continental. Unfortunately, the timing is less than ideal; the first flight leaves Austin at 06:30, and on arrival in Newark there’s a 6 hour gap before the connecting flight to Hamburg. Factoring in the recommendation that you arrive 2 hours prior to departure, drive time to the aiport, parking, shuttle buses and so on, I realized I was going to have to wake up around 04:00 at the latest.

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I’ve been away in New York this week, at the IBM Palisades Executive Conference Center. Four days of team meetings with my immediate project team. Four of us are located in Austin, but senior management were in New York, so everyone traveled to New York via New Jersey.

Traveling from Newark airport to Palisades isn’t exactly difficult, but it’s surprisingly easy to end up in Manhattan accidentally. There are two main traps I’ll need to remember if I go there again.

The first trap is that the New Jersey Turnpike splits into two on the way north, and the two halves have entirely different sets of exits and available destinations. Computer-generated routes don’t mention this. The “local” route was the one we wanted; the “express” route has a different set of exits, turns and signposts which bore no resemblance to the ones in the directions.

The second trap is that at some point, you want to transition from the New Jersey Turnpike to the Palisades Interstate Parkway. Doing so apparently involves driving towards the George Washington Bridge, being funneled towards the toll plaza, then cutting across five lanes of traffic to a small left exit labeled Fort Lee. If you fail to make it, or don’t see the left exit, you’re screwed—there’s no way to turn around without going across the bridge to Manhattan, turning left twice, and coming all the way back. To add to the irritation, they’ll charge you $6 for the pleasure of going across the bridge to Manhattan, even though you have zero desire to do so. This trap wasn’t mentioned in any of the directions either, and explains how our route from Newark to Palisades came to include the Bronx.

We opted to take 9N and go back across the river at the next bridge, rather than try again to negotiate the maze of roads near the Washington bridge in the dark. Fortunately I’d had the foresight to bring the GPS, so we were making progress, and not in any real danger of getting totally lost. Our route was sub-optimal and slow, but we’d get there.

Once we could see the Tappan Zee bridge, there was the minor problem of getting onto it. You’d think it would be well signposted from most nearby road junctions, but you’d think wrong. We stopped at one of the few open gas stations to ask for more specific directions than “drive up and down the coast until you see a way on”. The guy behind the counter said “I’m afraid I’m not from around here, I have no idea.”

There was a pause. I turned around and looked at the other gas station employee, standing by the door. “I’m not from around here either,” he said apologetically. “This is a brand new station, they brought us in from somewhere else.”

So on the whole, a farce which has done nothing to improve my general feelings about New York.

Our journey takes us via Newark’s “Freedom International Airport”. Since we’re not expecting more than a snack on the upcoming 6 hour flight to McCarren Airport in Las Vegas, we decide to get some food.

We stop at a place called the Garden Diner. This is no cutesy diner-themed cafeteria; everything seems to come with fries. In fact, I notice that there’s an entire section of the menu devoted just to fries of various kinds. I order a tuna melt, with fries of course. As we’re eating I notice that across the concourse from the diner is a prominent red sign indicating the location of an emergency defibrillator. They think of everything in New Jersey.

A lot of airlines have stopped serving food. Continental Airlines has come up with an even more annoying lark—they allow you to special-order food, but they won’t actually provide anything to order. Of course, they don’t tell you this beforehand; your ticket says Vegetarian or Kosher or whatever, but when you’re on the plane they give you a ham sandwich or a beef sub and say take it or leave it. I left it. Perhaps I should write to Continental and suggest that they save even more money, and just flip off their customers instead of serving a snack.

By the time we arrive at the hotel, it’s dark outside. The concierge asks us if we’d like a high or a low room, and we opt to be near the top of the tower, on the 27th floor. After the usual half-hearted minimal unpacking, we get the elevator back down to the casino level to find food.

We end up in a restaurant which was (according to the hotel guide) a French bistro called “Rouge, Blanc, Bleu”, but which has been hurriedly renamed “Red, White, Blue” and subtitled “Eat American!” Like most other decisions made by the casinos, it’s all about maximizing the amount of money they’ll rake in. I’m not expecting anything different, so it doesn’t bother me.

After some food and a little coffee, I start to take in my surroundings. It’s the first time I’ve ever been inside a casino. It’s strange to see green baize tables, roulette wheels, and other things I’d previously only seen in movies.

There are waitresses wandering the floor, dressed rather like Playboy bunnies minus the ears. They fetch drinks for the card players, many of whom are smoking. It’s like the 90s never happened.

The casinos are actually very useful, if you bear in mind their motivations. For example, there’s no trouble at all getting hold of cash—every casino has ATMs which will take any credit, debit or bank card you’ve ever heard of. There are even notices explaining that they have a simple procedure for allowing you to withdraw money even if you’ve exceeded the daily limit on your ATM card. Generous, huh? This information is presented next to a small print suggestion from the state of Nevada that you be a responsible gambler.

Another nice feature of casinos is that they all have clean, well-lit, usually gently fragranced lavatories and washrooms. Attendants seem to work 24/7 to make sure they stay that way. Again, it makes perfect logical sense—the last thing the casino wants is for people to go back to their hotel rooms to answer a call of nature; if they’re in their hotel rooms, they aren’t gambling.

An unfortunate corollary of casino logic is that the TV channel selection is poor, and the reception fuzzy. There’s the pay-per-view option, of course, but they seem unenthusiastic about it, probably because it’s less than a hundredth as profitable to them as gambling.

Homeland security have declared an orange alert, but there don’t seem to be any problems getting us through security. We’re soon at the departure gate, and discover it has a great view of our hotel in the distance.

McCarren Airport has some cool metal palm trees. There are slot machines in the departure terminals, so addicts can get a final fix before boarding their flights home.

The flight seems uneventful… until the plane gets to Newark. At that point the pilot announces that the airport hasn’t actually assigned a space for the plane to park. Now, maybe I’m missing something, but don’t they know when the planes are due? Don’t they have air traffic control information about exactly where each plane is? Regardless, we sit on the tarmac for half an hour. By the time we get off the plane we have ten minutes to find our next flight, and my stress and irritation level is back at pre-vacation levels. Thank you, Continental Airlines.

We make it. The plane is delayed for our luggage to be loaded, but now we’re on the plane and going home I don’t care. The rest of the trip is uneventful.

My case is opened, but this time it’s done officially and the TSA leave a note and don’t steal anything. sara’s case has one of the handles destroyed somehow, given the solidity of the cases’ construction I can’t imagine how.

It’s not too cold when we get back. As the house warms up, we sit by the Christmas tree and open our presents a day late. We’re tired, but still euphoric from a wonderful vacation.

Coolest gift: sara’s family have sent me a genuine Swiss Army Knife, a limited edition collector’s knife engraved with a river otter!