The World According to Alan

Time to head home for Christmas, except with Portland having the most snow in 40 years, it’s a little more interesting this year. The Columbia Gorge was closed all weekend, and looked like it was going to be closed through Christmas, but they opened it up Tuesday morning. With another storm scheduled for Wednesday, I decided to get out while the getting was good. I’d decided to head over Santiam Pass (the road over the Cascades from Corvallis to Bend), but with the gorge open, decided to brave all of Portland doing the same thing at once so I could get some pictures of my old place in Beaverton in the snow. Bzzzt. Traffic was backed up to Salem, and traffic.com said ODOT was going to close I5 for plowing. Quickly (well, as quickly as I could at 5mph ;-) ) I took the next exit, turned around and went back to my original plan of going over Santiam. This turned out to be an excellent idea, as I saw on the news that that plowing plan made a real mess of things, though the roads were so bad, it would have been as much of a mess if they hadn’t…

The road was nice packed snow, with pretty much no traffic, save from Sisters to north of Redmond a ways and was quite a nice trip, save for it adding several hours to the normal time for the trip. I’d probably still be getting through Portland if I’d stayed that route though… Here are pix from the trip…

Up at some gawd-awful early hour; Joel went down to fix himself some breakfast, while I stayed in bed for another half hour, to about 6:15, then got up and showered, etc, and did the final packing, bed making, and some room cleaning. Joel came back and did the same. The instructions said to “call for room review” so we did like good little boys and they gave a cursory glance and passed us on.

We said our goodbyes at the train station; we got there with perfect timing, only about 5 minutes before the train to the airport left (though it runs about every 15 minutes), though Joel’s train back to Skovde wasn’t for another hour.

At the airport, there were two stops, Terminal 4 and Terminal 5. I though it was 2/3 and 4/5 so waited to the second stop, but on looking at the wall chart, I wanted either one, so thought it would work out, though they were a ways apart. I went up and looked around, but the only SAS terminal I saw closed down just before I got there, so I decided it must be T4 after all and hiked all the way over there, where there were a number of SAS counters. I tried to check in, but it said to “see counter staff”, so I found someone and they said, “no, international flights are in Terminal 5.” Uggggh. OK, hike all the way back.

At the edge of Terminal 5 was a security line, which was quite backed up, which I wasn’t looking forward to, but continued on and eventually, a ways past where the train entrance was, found the SAS counters, which also had a long line. I got in line, and it took over half an hour to get through it. I was almost to the counter when I noticed the checkin terminals off to the side, and thought, “Oh great, this says ‘document control’, and they’re going to make me go use one of them and get back in line!” but fortunately, no, they just printed out my boarding pass and all was well. With less than an hour left to the flight, and about 15 minutes until boarding time. And still security to get through!

But, again things turned out: it was a different wing for my gate, and there was no line at all at security. In fact, it seemed rather deserted, with some construction going on. After getting through security, I grabbed a quick apple juice and carrot cake at a snack bar as the best I was going to get for breakfast, scarfed it down and headed over to the gate, where I had to present my passport for a *third* time just at this one airport! Finally we boarded and the A330 ended up being only about half full.

SAS has an interesting setup where they have forward and down looking video cameras in the nose of the plane so you get a cockpit view from your seat. That was kinda fun, but the moving map display kept switching to commercials for sky shopping, which was pretty annoying.

I was kinda tired, getting up so early, and intended to watch a movie or two to help stay awake, but in economy on SAS, you don’t get video on demand, and they’d already started the movie, without much warning, by the time I got around to it, so I just read for a bit. I was pretty tired though, and decided that since it was midnight at home anyhow, I should try to sleep until 6-7am home time, and then stay awake the rest of the time. Since the flight got into Portland at 6:30pm, that should leave plenty of awake time for me to be tired enough to sleep when I got home. Though I can only catnap/daydream on a plane, I proceeded with that plan.

I had 3 hours in Chicago, and thought that would be plenty of time to pull out a laptop and write up the last couple of days, but c’mon. This is O’Hare! Yup, I had to go from one end of the airport all the way to the other, which actually isn’t so bad with their rail system, which as I recall, was the first automated train in regular use. But I had to go through customs first, which took forever, then get to the other side of the airport, and then go through security yet again. I think I did that 6-8 times over the course of the trip! And security was slower than slow. It did work out though, with an hour for customs and an hour for security, I had a half hour for lunch and then onto the 757 for PDX.

757’s used to be the latest and greatest. This must have been one of the first for United. It was the only regular sized plane to not have the seat back video system, but had actual crts in the aisle ceiling. They had “Economy Plus” you could upgrade to for $44, but all it got you was more legroom. After the other carriers, I found that it might have been a good idea to get it, as I could barely get in and out of the seat. The plane was packed full though — the only completely full flight on the trip.

Note to self: remember to avoid Chicago, Frankfurt and United!

Back in Portland, there was a rather longish wait for luggage, then off to Corvallis. I wasn’t feeling too tired even, but on the way back, I did have to work to stay awake. I made it without incident however, and uploaded some pix, checked some email and what have you until going to bed around 11. By which time I wasn’t really tired any more ;-) But I did get to sleep ok. The next morning was pretty normal, though my eyes did feel like sleeping from about noon on, but otherwise wasn’t really tired. I think Friday will be pretty normal.

And that was the Ottawa/Sweden trip of 2008!

We got up, checked email, then headed off to breakfast. There were three options: There was a full restaurant by the lobby, or off to the side of the lobby, there was a “hostel breakfast buffet”, which had fare rather like the typical hotel “continental breakfast” (juice and cereal) or you could cook your own back in the hostel common area. Since the full restaurant had bacon and eggs, I opted for that, while Joel went back to cook up his rabbit food. I scarfed it down, then went back to join him — he’d planned on joining me in the hostel breakfast area, but I ended up not going there. As it turned out, he was still far from being done cooking though, so hung out there while he finished up and ate.

First on the agenda was to visit the Pionen Data Center (you may want to install the google toolbar and turn on swedish translations). I’d heard about this on Digg a few weeks ago: there used to be a nuclear bunker dug into the rock under Stockholm, and a couple years ago, Bahnhof, a European ISP, bought it and reburbished it into a very nice data center. I don’t think they’ve been there too long. Anyhow, I had emailed their “tour request” address a couple days before, but hadn’t heard anything, so called them and got an individual email address to send a request to. It didn’t take too long to get a reply, and he pointed me at someone else, whom I also emailed. I didn’t hear anything right away, and we wanted to make a more thorough visit of Gamla Stan and the Royal Palace, so I tried calling Rickard, but it was busy, so I sent email with my local phone number and headed off.

When we got to Gamla Stan, first we went to the side of the station that came out on the edge of the water to get a better view than the one we’d gotten the night before. There was a helicopter there preparing to take off, so we watched it go and took in the view, then headed back out the other side, where the real stuff was. Last night, there’d been a hideous guitar player busking in the passageway (well, he may have been good, but it we metal and not my thing), but today, there was a cello player playing some very nice stuff, so we tossed coins in the hat. Outside, I tried calling Rickard again, but got no answer, so we looked around a sidewalk crafts purveyor who actually had some interesting items. In particular, small teddy bears, and since I know someone who likes such things, I picked up one for him. There were some santa gnomes that I was tempted to get also, but I’ve got too much crap already and didn’t really have a good place for such things, so passed.

Somewhere in there, Rickard called back and we agreed to meet at 1pm and he told us where the place was and said “just tell a taxi driver it’s the entrance into the mountain”. Joel and I wandered into the main part of Gamla Stan, where he found a comic store and I nearly lost him into its clutches. I was tempted myself; they had some of Joss’s Buffy graphic novels, and if they’d had Swedish versions, I’d have gotten a couple for some friends who are really into Buffy. I was also tempted by some Swedish versions of Mad Magazine, but again, I’m tired of moving the crap I have and didn’t want to add more stuff I’d never read to it.

I asked the clerk if she knew where the 600 year old restaurant was, but she’d never heard of it. She asked someone else, and he said everything in the area was probably that old ;-) (probably not the same shop for the entire time though!) A bit later, I asked what she would recommend for one of the local eateries that would provide a good sample of Swedish food, and she said a colleague used to eat at the place across the street and had reported it to be good, so we headed over there. Joel had been saying that if I wanted Swedish, I should have Pytt I Panna, so I gave in and ordered that instead of the meatballs ;-) $pparently, the real stuff is whatever leftovers there are stir fried, but this was diced potatoes and ham, fried and topped with an egg or two with diced beets on the side. I’d liked the bright purple stuff (which I confirmed was beets by asking the waiter at breakfast, as it was one of the things in the breakfast buffet), so I tried a couple of the regular beet cubes to see if my tastes had changed. Nope, these were as awful as I remembered. Oh well. The rest was good…

It was time to make our way to the data center. We thought about taking the taxi, but the bus maps were good and it looked like we could get there that way, so we gave it a go. There was an attendant or security or something at the bus stop, and we asked him, who talked to the bus driver who was at the stop at the time. They hadn’t heard of the address, but that bus, though not going all the way down the street, could take us to it, where we could walk down it to find it, so we hopped on.

The address was “37″; we got off at 12 or 17, so “I thought it must be here”, though I didn’t see any mountain, or rock, though there was some back the way we’d come. We started walking and discovered that they don’t number things the same way. Joel thinks they number the buildings sequentially, so rather than being in this block, where we were headed was 20 buildings away. When you alternate sides though, that’s only about 10, and with each building being about half a block, that worked out to about 5 blocks. And lo! Rock face with vents and a door in it.

We buzzed the buzzer and said Rickard was expecting us, so they let us in Rickard met us in the entrance hall. It’s pretty impressive, a downsloping passage through bare rock, with a couple of very large generators bathed in purple light on the left, followed by a wall of ferns and other plants. He took us up to their main conference room, which is above the data center and all glass — even the floor! Not for the acrophobic ;-) There wasn’t a lot to see there; we talked a bit about Peak and Bahnhof, and then he led us around through another passageway on the level with the conference room, which led to an overlook over the office area with the support people. That room had lots of plants in it also, along with a white painted ceiling and daylight flourescents, making it very un-cavelike. Back along the passage was the lunchroom, complete with a large aquarium and an overlook to the main entry hall’s wall of plants.

The arrangement was very like a 3 pronged Y: the entrance passage being the bottom of the Y, the datacenter racks in the two left prongs, and the office in the right prong.

On the way out, I noticed that the blast doors were still in place, ready to really lock the place down if need be ;-) I also noticed that there were buckets catching drips from the ceiling. Rickard later said in email that rain had blown in the ventilation shafts, but they had sealed the ceiling in the data center area, as well as putting in permanent drains in a couple places (see tomorrow and the trip home for more of that!).

After we went out, I went across the street to get a better picture of the entrance, and got to thinking, “that’s not all that deep!”, but later realized that the entry hall goes down another 10meters or so, so it might do. I don’t think I’d want to be in it under a direct hit even so!

The tour didn’t take all that long, so we headed back to see if we could get a tour of the Royal Palace, but detoured on the way back as we’d printed up some more money in the ATM and Joel wanted to get a couple more things from the craft stand. I had been eyeing the elevator across the street, so went over there and rode it up to get a better view. Then we wandered through Gamla Stan to find the palace, which was on the back side of the island from us. Along the way, we found a square in the middle that had something very like Saturday Market in Portland — a bunch of stands selling crafts of various sorts. We took a quick gander, then moved on and eventually found the palace…only to find that we’d missed the last tour, at 2pm, by 12 minutes. Ugggh! If only I’d skipped the elevator ride! We perused the gift shop and got a few souvenirs, then headed for the parts that were still open: the Treasury (which holds the “royal regalia” — crowns, scepter, orbs, etc) and the Armory.

The Treasury was closing in 15 minutes, at 3pm but it only took about 5 minutes to see it — there wasn’t a lot, though it was interesting. One thing though: though it must take a lot of skill to do the intricate work on the crowns and things, I haven’t yet seen one I thought was actually good looking. All the ones I’ve seen look tarnished and uneven, if not dented.

The Armory was rather more interesting, but for some reason was merged with the Royal Wardrobe, and thus over half of it was old clothing the previous generations of royals had worn. Most of that wasn’t too interesting to me, though someone into clothes would find it fascinating. What did interest me was at the end: the Carriages. Learned a bit about them too, like the difference between a Berlin and a Carriage (the latter has just a single pole holding the front axle to the rear, whereas the former has two, apparently leading to better stability and lighter weight), and how rather than sitting on top of said pole(s), they riding compartment is suspended from fore/aft risers. At the end, we perused the gift shop there, and I found a cute little hooded t-shirt thing with a plastic outer layer that looked sorta like chain mail for little kids to play “knight” in, so I got one for one of my nephews’ son, who turns 6 early next year, though I’d already gotten him a “Sverige moose” t-shirt (”Sverige” is “Sweden” in swedish). Oddly enough, “Small” was listed as “4-5yrs”, while “Medium” was listed as “8-10yrs”. Not sure where 6-7 fits, but figured either he’d grow into the medium or it would shrink…

After that, it was getting dark and we started heading back, but decided to spend more time looking around the craft fair, and I ended up getting souvenirs for most, and even a Christmas present. We stopped by the place we’d eaten at last night, which was a combination restaurant and bar, for a drink. Last night we’d eaten late, and the crowd was mostly bar crowd; tonight we hit the dinner scene, but only wanted a drink. Oh well ;-) I had a “Cinnamon Apple”: Apple and Vanilla Vodka, with some cinnamon in it. You could taste the flavors, but it was mostly alcohol. I’m going to have to find the corresponding liqeurs and see if I can’t concoct something closer to what I was expecting…

We went back to the hostel and packed up what we could and did some last email. I figured that with the walk to the station and train time, I needed to get up around 6:15 or so to get to the airport by 8:30 for my 10:20 flight. Uggh. The entire time here consisted of getting up at times like that, which added to the 9 hour time difference and my usual rising time, made for an effective 12hr time shift… I decided that since I wasn’t going to have time for breakfast in the morning until the airport, thought I ought to eat something for dinner, so went to the restaurant and had some pasta/meat sauce — italian again, and again, pretty good.

Monday was time to start wrapping things up — Joel spent the morning doing laundry before heading into his office at school; I caught up on email and some blogging and pictures, then packed up and headed into meet him for lunch before turning in the car and catching the train to Stockholm. He’d left his sheets in the dryer for me to take out before I left because it was a shared dryer and he’d be gone for a couple days, but they weren’t dry yet. As a result, we ran back out after I picked him up to take them out, then we went to the school cafeteria for lunch. I had pasta with meat sauce — Italian food seems to be quite big in Sweden — just about everywhere has pizza as an offering, and pasta and lasagna are common. And it’s good too…

The trains, like most in Europe, are fast, quiet and smooth. I think I could even sleep on one on a long enough trip.

Joel had the directions to the hostel we had reservations to stay at, but they basically said “get off at the Zinkeldamm stop on the T-bahn”. There weren’t any obvious signs, so he went into a shop and got more detailed directions: past the stadium and turn right. Sure enough, across the street was an ice hockey stadium (presumably soccer (”football”) in the summer), where a practice was going on, and past that, the little tree/building icon for hostels, with an arrow to the right. After a while, the road turned down and sure enough, ended right at the hostel.

We checked in, and while it looked like a normal hotel, it started off being different in that I had to rent sheets (Joel likes to hostel a lot, and came with his own travel sheets). We also got a checklist of the cleaning we were to do before we checked out. For $100/night (though “inexpensive” hotels in Stockholm go for $150…). Apparently dorm style rooms are more like $20-30, which is why they’re the choice for cheap travel.

I looked through a couple of the local info booklets I’d found in the lobby to see what there was to see and eat and found a couple likely looking places. It was hard to decide, partly because I wanted Swedish and Joel noticed an African cuisine place, and having spent a lot of time in Ghana, wanted to see what they had. That place turned out to be hard to get to though, and actually, so did the Swedish place (”oldest restaurant in Stockholm, est 1412!). So we ended up at another interesting place that was right next to the Gamla Stan T-stop. Gamla Stan (”Old Town”) is an interesting place, if clearly aimed at tourists: it’s old buildings are full of shops and eateries, more than you could sample in a month of eating, certain the 1-2 weeks of typical vacations. The restaurant was nice, if small and slow. By the time we got done, it was nearly 10pm, so we headed back to the hostel and crashed.

First, though Joel wanted to pick up some stuff to make his own breakfast — being vegetarian, restaurant fare is rarely suitable. It turns out that hostels have a common kitchen area where you can do your own cooking, also conducive to travel on the cheap. The refrigerators are compartmentalized into individual lockboxes you can rent, and there are several stoves and work areas, with an eating area adjacent with about a half dozen tables. There were a dozen or two people there, mostly college age by the looks of them and it was bustling. I could see how it could be a fun way to go.

Another slow start, catching up on email; the plan for the day was mainly to visit the Hjo Linux User’s Group this afternoon, however, first we decided to head over to Mariestad for lunch. The restaurant I picked, however, isn’t open for lunch on weekends, so we thought about heading over into “old town” to see what we could find. However, a couple of older ladies were getting into the car next to ours, so I asked them if they could recommend one. They suggested “Buffalos”, which was one of the ones I’d seen on the gps when picking a place (I’d chosen this one as being on the waterfront, though it turned out to not really have much of a view). We headed up to Buffalos, but when we got there, had a choice between it and another one across the street. After looking at the menu, it looked more like a steakhouse, not too suited to Joel’s vegitarianism, so we tried the other place. It was a pizzaria/italian place, which seems to be quite common here. Since I’d already had pizza twice, though you can’t really have too much pizza ;-), I decided to have lasagne. It was a nice place, and the lasagne was good.

After we got back to the car, I punched in Hjo, and discovered we were going to be a bit late, though there wasn’t a formal start time — the lug was more of an afternoon hangout deal, but I’d thought it would take a half hour to get to Hjo, and it ended up over an hour.

We did make it, and found Jakob and Tomas there. Jakob gave a bit of a tour and we talked shop for a bit, then Joel went up with him to get an old Dec Alpha to haul downstairs. He wants to set up a demo area of old computers to show that they’re still quite useful and that the latest and greatest aren’t necessary at all. Intel won’t like him for that! ;-)

The Hjo LUG has an interesting setup — the local power company bought some land for a new office, and it came with a house. I’m not sure if the older resident was still alive then or they bought it after he was no longer, but they don’t really have any use for it, so the LUG gets a really good deal on the rent, and share the 5mpbs net connection from the power company.

Speaking of high speed connections, I’m very jealous: Jakob was saying that in the cities, if there’s fiber, you can get 10 or even 100mbps connections, and 24 (theoretical) is typical for normal dsl, which you can get just about everywhere (though not quite that fast in rural, but even there, it’s better than the 1.5mpbs we get).

Eventually, we closed up and headed back home for a dinner of leftovers and a game of Scrabble in English ;-)

Today was a lazy day, mostly catching up the blog and pix, then we went in to Tony’s English Christmas party. Tony is someone who was finishing up his doctorate in Sussex when Joel was starting and who invited and helped him come to Skovde. It was a very international party, with several English people, a Luxemburgian (where apparently they’re having their own political controversy over euthanasia right now), and even a few Swedes. We had mulled wine, christmas pudding, mince pies and pepparkrakor (thin gingersnaps, a swedish addition ;-) ). I confess to not being overly fond of mulled wine or christmas pudding, I like mince pies a little better, but I love pepparkrakors :-) I guess I’m just not a very good englishman, despite that being my ancestry. They did have a very friendly cat who did seem some interested, or at least curious about, the goodies on the table ;-)

We had to leave a little early, having invited the neighbors Micke and Jimmy over for dinner. I had decided to try making the ginger glazed salmon I’ve been making occasionally back home. We stopped by the coop and I picked up some “Lax” (salmon) and good old Grey Poupon; Joel said he had brown sugar and ginger.

We got back home and I started prepping it. First off, Joel had dark brown sugar, which has a much stronger molasses flavor, which was going to be interesting. Then, I opened the salmon, which had all been in vacuum sealed plastic bags. As soon as I opened it, I realized a terrible mistake had been made: it was smoked salmon. Joel goes, yes, I thought you knew what you were getting. Well, this will be *interesting*. As it turned out, it wasn’t too bad, though it was definitely a good thing I didn’t add any salt to it, but it would have been better had it been unsmoked…

After we finished dinner, we played Swedish Scrabble. I tried for a little bit with the aid of a Swedish English dictionary I’d put on my Treo, but it was pathetic little dictionary (I’d already figured that out from trying to use it for real) and as you could really only search for the beginnings of words, I was too handicapped and dropped out to just watch.

During the game I asked about swedish traditions and some holidays. Apparently Halloween isn’t really done here, but they go visit cemeteries on All Saint’s Day (Nov 1). And May 1 is a big party day, though “Mid Summer’s Night” (first day of summer) is the real party day. From the sounds of things, it’s almost Mardi Gras.

Up at a more reasonable time ;-) and being caught up, it doesn’t take too long to get through work email this morning, then run Jimmy and Joel into school. Come back to finish up a couple last emails and look at where I want to go today. It looks like Hjo (”you”) is the agenda for today. Joel wants to do lunch, so head back in and get a salami pizza that actually ends up being pretty good, for having a paper thin crust and not-quite-pepperoni.

Off to Hjo, which according to what I read is one of the few towns dating back to medieval times here, being a wood building village that didn’t burn like most. When I get there though, it’s right on the edge of a lake you can’t see the far side of. Which means when it’s cold and rainy like it was, it’s bloody cold! It did look interesting, but left it to be a short trip and headed back to school to pick up Joel.

On the way back, I saw a modern power generating windmill, as I’d seen several around yesterday. Rather than being in windfarms like in the US, they seem to be individually placed around. I decided to see if I could get a better look and surprisingly ended up on a road going to a farmhouse with the windmill out in the field for a great view. While I was looking at it, a gal rode up on a horse, and after a couple attempts got that the query was if I was going to stay put so she could ride behind the car ;-) Sure, no problem. I turned off the car as well, and noticed that you could actually hear the windmill, though not nearly so loud as I’d been lead to believe by stories. In fact, the mic on the camera ended up not picking it up over the wind noise…

Pick up Joel and head home for awhile, before heading to pizza and poker night…

The pizza/poker night is back over in Hjo; Joel doesn’t trust the TomTom, and takes me along a “shortcut” — a road narrower and slower than the one I’d been on earlier ;-) Though, to be fair, it was foggy and night, which slowed things down, particularly on a narrow country road, dramatically. Still, it was pretty much 1 lane a lot of the time, whereas the other roads were at least 1.5 lanes…

We managed to get to the pizza place though and ordered, though no one else was there. Shortly, Joel gets a “where are you?” call, and it turns out they told him “same as last week”, only it wasn’t. While we’re eating, a couple of others show up to pick up a togo order, and we end up leaving at the same time, so I just follow them.

The place was a very nice house, owned by the parents of a friend of one of the people Joel works with at school and got to be friends with (Jakob). There were about 8-10 people around the table eating, including what looked like about a 1-year old, then the family left and there were 7 of us playing Texas Hold’em. I kept getting crap cards and though I wasn’t the first to buy back in, it wasn’t too long, but then things got better and I ended up taking them all out after a couple strokes of really good luck to get me turned around. A whole 120SEK ($15) ;-) It was a cool group, and though they spoke Swedish most of the time, it was a chance to try to get used to the language sounds. Jakob did make a bit of an effort to talk a bit to me, and the others joined in occasionally, but all were friendly and fun. They inquired about our going to the linux user group meeting on Sunday, saying it was basically the same people and essentially inviting us, so we’re planning on it. That should give me more of a chance to talk to them, as we didn’t really have much time to have a conversation with the game going on.

By then, it was 12:30am, but we were to meet another friend of Joel’s at the campus bar, so we headed over there though it would close at 2am. Surprisingly, I wasn’t tired at all, though I’d been getting tired early in the evening until now. I guess I’m getting adjusted just in time to switch back next week ;-) We ran into another friend of Joel’s first and chatted a bit, then he moved on, and Mac, the friend we were to meet joined us and we chatted a bit as well. For some reason, we’d gone up to the dance floor, which was “dancing” by having people in a small area stand and wiggle a little, some with arms on each other ;-) I’m sure some of them were enjoying it though.

The bar had two floors and several rooms; the dance floor was upstairs. I moved off to a side room where it was a little quieter and had windows looking out, and someone noticed my “sudo” t-shirt and being a fellow geek stopped to read it. We chatted a while, it turned out he was yet another computer gaming student. This sounds like a really good school, as apparently Jakob teach system administration, and neither of these programs is particularly common… This guy, “Lusse”? was apologizing all over himself for his drunk english and was the first instance I’d seen of what Joel called “Swedish self confidence issues with English”. After a bit, we let him go and went back into the dance floor area, where I ended up talking to Christopher, who apparently I was able to disabuse of some American stereotypes about gas guzzling cars with my hybrid and ev. He got particularly excited about Oregon, the home of Nike ;-)

His girlfriend wasn’t quite as excited and seemed rather possessive as if she thought I was trying to steal him or something ;-) Like she has anything to worry about from an overweight 50 year old vs a slender, energetic, 28 year old (he volunteered the info, asking my age), even if he *did* swing both ways! And we weren’t flirting at all, just talking. He did ask if could sleep on a bed at my place if he came to Oregon, and I said “sure!” She said “I’ll be with him!” ;-) He asked for an email address, so I gave him my card. He got excited because it says “engineer” on it, which he aims to be and we talked about that some. Finally his girlfriend breaks in and says “I don’t know how you impressed him so much!” ;-) Shortly after they take off. I doubt I’ll ever see him again, but it was an interesting experience.

After that, a friend of Christopher’s who’d been silently listening started talking to Joel and I. Apparently he’s Finnish, but born in Sweden. He maintains his Finnish citizenship and so had done his military service a couple years ago. He told of the winter marches in the cold with people getting sick from being too cold, but thought it worthwhile. At this point, 2am arrived and they turned on the lights and shut down the music, calling it a night. We chatted for a little more, then he introduced himself and we in exchange. I hadn’t gotten Christopher’s name, so asked him about it. I think I offended him a bit in the “you’re more interested in him than me” kind of way, which I hadn’t really intended — he was interesting to talk to as well, but wanted to know who to look out for email from in case he actually did keep in contact. Unfortunately, I actually did forget his name now. Christopher was one of those energetic people that tends to hold your attention though…

After a quick check of email, we finally got to bed around 3am, and surprisingly, I still wasn’t really tired, but it didn’t take too long to get to sleep. Finally, back on a normal schedule :-) But it won’t last, though it would make it easier to adjust going back home. Because of the early schedule, it makes the effective time zone difference more like 12 hours than 9…

Joel got up at some wee hour of the morning in order to make the 45 minute walk to the bus to get to an 8am class. Ugggh. I slept in, then made the same trek to catch the 11:39 bus and meet him for lunch. By the time I got to the bus stop after 45 minutes in the cold and rain, I had decided it was definitely car rental time ;-) We had a nice lunch at a place across the street from the university, though I forget what I got now. We went back to his office, to check it out, then I went back to the train station (which is just a couple blocks away, and where the bus line ends), and the guy in the train station office called Hertz. They were going to look for cars as there weren’t any handy, and I didn’t have a local cell phone yet, so gave them Joel’s cell phone and went back to his office to read while he was working on stuff. By 4pm and no call, I called them and they said they’d have a car tomorrow at 1pm at the train station. Uggh, but ok, better than nothing.

We went over to a nearby shopping district/pedestrian mall and I got a local cell phone, unfortunately European frequencies only, so I can’t use it back home, but I should be able to use it on future trips — a nice little simple Nokia 1650. I also picked up a power strip to get more charging outlets. After that, we went to a thai place and I got what I thought was a satay appetizer and curry chicken. It turned out the “appetizer” was a main dish not at all like what we usually think of as satay: this was chunks of chicken in a slightly peanuty sauce, but both dishes had a more chinese feel than thai. They were good though, and as it was way more than I wanted to eat then, we took the remains home.

Not feeling like a 45 minute walk back home, I splurged for a taxi (nearly $40), and it was the end of another day. Between jet lag and joel getting up early, we were going to bed rather early.

Goodbye Perth! Sleep in a bit, breakfast, pack, checkout at 11 and settle in to wait for Bill and Ann. Visited a bit with a couple of Andy’s relatives at breakfast, Andy stopped briefly in the lobby while I was waiting there when he and Pat were collecting people going to a brunch.

Bill and Ann show up and it’s off to the airport. They’re flying United, so was next to Air Canada; Ann said “see you on the other side of security!”, but it turned out those checkins were for those going to the US and I had to go to the ones at the other end of the building. They had already gone through by then, so I didn’t see them again unfortunately.

Get checked in and have several hours to kill catching up on email etc, so go find a restaurant for lunch, only to find Rob and Eric there. We visit while they finish lunch and go off to their flight and then I get an hour or so of email polished off.

The flight to Montreal was supposed to be on a Dash 8 turboprop as was the flight to Vancouver, but instead, it was a small jet, a Bombardier C100/200(?). Nice enough, but somehow I got a window seat. That was the second time I’d gotten window when I specifically picked aisle seats when booking the tickets. Rather annoying.

I write this a couple days later, and find I’ve forgotten what the Montreal airport was like, save I found my self with a window seat again, which, as this was the long transatlantic flight, really didn’t want. I asked when boarding, and they gave me an aisle seat, though nearly at the back of the 777. Those are nice planes. They even have lighting that changes colors fading from white to blue to purple and back when adjusting to “night” for sleeping and back at the end. They also had a unique first class seating setup — these funky curved wall things, with fully reclining seats set an angles to the aisles. Kinda cool looking… Unfortunately, even on the 777, the “in flight entertainment” system did not have the moving map operational.

Frankfurt. I’ve found an airport that ranks with Chicago as my least favorite. When you get off the plane, the flight displays only have a few of the flights, and there’s very little that tells you what’s where. It does have plenty of shopping, no end to shopping, but finding what you actually need, good luck! I finally found an info terminal that had what I needed and headed off. To get there, I went through “customs”, but they don’t make you get your luggage as usual, just minimal usual customs things. Then, I had to go through security yet again. Nextt time I’m paying a few hundred more to get more direct flights that mean less “security” hassle… There was a line a couple dozen deep at the one security line to get out to the terminal I needed to be in, and it wasn’t moving. At all. I finally joined many others in trying the other terminal entrance, and lo! Turned out this one was the real one, with a number of security stations and proper queueing.

Finally made it to the gate, where I had a window seat assigned yet again, but there was no clerk to deal with it. At around boarding time, he finally showed up, but then had computer problems. So with a long line of people and everything running late, including the arriving plane, I felt guilty about asking to change seats, but did. He said there weren’t any, which I half believe, but accepted it, and as it turned out, with only one other person and a relatively short flight to stockholm, it wasn’t a problem.

I wasn’t certain if Joel was going to meet me in stockholm or not, as before I’d left, he said he’d gotten the chills/nausea thing in a bigger way, and with the attempt to get a new seat in Frankfurt and the miles of hiking from one end of the airport to the other, I hadn’t been able to check the latest email, but there he was. Not even any customs hassle, apparently that was done in Frankfurt, so on arrival in stockholm it was collect your bags and go. Except we had about 4 hours to kill until the train, so found a table and got lunch.

As Joel lives 12km out in the country and doesn’t have a car, and didn’t think I needed one, we got a taxi to take us home. For about 280 SEK (about $40). Ouch, but it got us there. By this time, it was pretty late, so off to bed it was…

Wedding day! Nothing really planned for the day, fortunately, as in the wee hours, I woke up with severe chills and mild naseua. It felt very much like the onset of a flu, which would have been disastrous timing. I got up and turned up the heat in the room a couple degrees and went back to bed, and when I woke up again a few hours later, it was pretty much over, just a very slight queasiness that remained off and on over the day.

I slept in until nearly noon, then went off to the Goodwood Stone(?) which was getting high marks. On the way, I checked out the park behind the inn, and found Codes Mill just across the street. I small mill turned into a half dozen small shops. Today was the start of the Perth Christmas Festival, and there were choirs singing carols in the small common area inside. They were quite good too. Plus, there was music playing from the town hall bell tower, and a horse drawn wagon full of people. With the couple of inches of snow on the ground, the small town and all, it made me feel “christmasy” for the first time in at least a decade…

First, I found a pharmacy to get a decongestant in case my nose started running again, and lo! They have Drixoral, my allergy pill of choice, which you can’t get in Oregon any more because of the war on pseudofed. I got three boxes, figuring that will stock me up a little without making it look like I’m a meth maker. Unfortunately, they didn’t have pocket knives, and I didn’t see any other likely locations to get one, so the plastic packaging will just have to go to Sweden…

Finally, I made it to the Goodwood, and found it to be a place with foofy pizzas and sandwiches. I actually wanted to try the pepperoni pizza, but was still a little queasy and sometimes pepperoni doesn’t agree with me, so decided on the burger. I’m not sure it was a better choice. I’m not sure why, but Canadian hamburgers are pretty bad. They look and taste like they’ve been boiled. Oh well, the agenda invited us to go hang out with Pat and Andy in their room before the wedding, so I headed over, only to find that no one was actually taking them up on that. There was a little sitting area just outside their room, and since they were busy getting ready, I just pulled up there and read for a bit.

After a while, others showed up, and then it was time to go down to the wedding area. Oooops! Everyone else was wearing a suit, whereas I just had on my nice silk shirt. I’d have sworn Andy said the only formality would be them in their kilts, but I may have confused that with Dan and Jen’s wedding. Oh well, no one seemed to care at least.

The wedding was nice, though I was surprised at how much the priest stumbled over his lines. He led off with an introduction about how he was from a spinoff of the Catholic Church, apparently accepted by the vatican, but they don’t have a problem with gay marriage, or priestly marriage, for that matter. I tried to video the ceremony, but video just gobbles up memory and my 2G card filled up partway through. Unfortunately, I’d left my bag in the coat rack, with the spare memory cards in it. Fortunately though, I’d hit stop a couple times to break up the video clips, and could delete a couple to make room for the “I do’s”. After the wedding, there was a reception and dinner. I changed memory cards and was able to video Rob’s speech, and later Pat’s speech…ok, most of it. Ran out of room again. I guess I’m going to have to upgrade to a camera that supports sdhc…

Chatted with people until nearly midnight, and then headed back to bed, but not before checking with people and finding that Bill and Ann were the best matches for a ride to the airport. Talked to them and made arrangements to leave Codes Mill at noon (their flight was leaving rather earlier than mine: 1:30 vs 4:30).