Sunday, October 10, 2010

Europe, Part 2

My second trip to Europe (in three weeks!) didn't go as smoothly as the first. I got off to a bad start when my flight out of Detroit was significantly delayed. It caused me to miss my connection to Europe, so I got rebooked. I ended up flying from Detroit to Atlanta to Paris to Nice. That's a long day... to top it off, my luggage didn't show up when I did!

Once I was actually in Monaco, things were fine. The weather was nice (so much nicer than the cold, rainy day I left in Detroit). I had a good time with my colleagues from Germany in the evenings, although I definitely drank too much beer.

I had more time to poke around Monaco on this trip. I walked around most of the Formula 1 course, spent some more time around the palace area, saw the casino, etc.


Working in Monaco is definitely different. It felt a little odd to walk by a Ferrari / high-end Mercedes dealer on my way to the plant every day. It also seems like the place really clears out at night and on the weekend, at least in the non-touristy spots. I found out that all but a few of the people that work in our plant live farther away in France or Italy.

I stayed there over the weekend. On Saturday, I took the train to Nice and met one of my other colleagues. He took me around the old city; we visited with his sister who sells vegetables at the market. Then we went to the climbing gym his club is working on and spent the rest of the day there. Even though I was working (helping to hang drywall on the ceiling and putting together pieces of the wall), it was still kind of fun. Definitely interesting to see how people live away from the tourist areas.


Since I'd been up late almost every night of the trip, I slept in until noon on Sunday. I walked around Monaco a bit and then went to a soccer match being played at the municipal stadium. It's still not clear to me whether these guys were good amateurs or not-so-good professionals. Anyway, it was fun, but I got pretty cooked in the sun. (The woman selling tickets exposed my nearly non-existent French, "Trois euros". Between having to stop and think about what she said and my unfamiliarity with the currency, it took me a while to buy the ticket. She was nice though.)

On Monday night we left for Paris. My air travel woes continued. The plane we were supposed to take had been hit by lightning on the way to Nice. After some delay, they decided that the damage was too significant and it shouldn't fly again. So, we took a later flight and ended up arriving in Paris very late. At least this time, my hotel room was much nicer.

Tuesday morning was my customer meeting and then I flew back home in the afternoon. To get the later flight out of Paris, I had to connect to Detroit via Montreal. Turns out that connecting through Canada is just like making an international connection through the US (actually worse). You have to get your bags, go through customs, then go back through ticketing and security, and, as I found out the next morning, US customs. So, I had no chance to make my connection, even if I'd carried my bag. I ended up spending the night in Montreal and then I took a 5:30am flight home. Yikes!

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