Tuesday, April 11, 2006

A pretzel for breakfast and schnitzel for lunch

The last two weeks have been flat tack at work. The usual story that the guys on the project realise that you'll be dropping tools and heading for greener pastures in a couple of weeks, so decide that they need to extract the maximum waking hours from you as possible. After strenuous extraction, they'll give you a further wrinigng out and send you on your way with a big smirk on their face. Nonetheless, luckily with all this extra "free" time that I don't have, the techie book writing is dispropotionaly taking up plenty of its own time too. 2006 shall go own in the blog annals as the year of the inexorable working bee.

Having stayed in Frankfurt for the last few months, I've built up a bit of a social calendar so the weekend was pretty busy. Don't get the wrong impression though, it exactly cocktails and caviar, hob knobbing with the hoi polloi of Frankfurt. Saturday was lunch with a friend I knew from my last stay here. Then in the afternoon I headed to a concert in a small town about 100 kilometres out of the city with a bunch of people I met a few weeks ago. It's a common theme, albeit a disconcerting one that the majority of concerts I go to these days are all attended by people half my height, the girls wearing ug boots, glitter and fairy costumes. The dudes are wearing the equally garish fashion of the day. This case was certiainly no exception

"I'm sure the fad will pass" I think to myself.

The best way to pass the 7 or so hours at such a hoe-down is to head straight to the bar and food area. This area didn't dissapoint and many others my age and older seemed to have the same idea. I took these people to be the "responsible guardians" who been dragged along to look after their vulnerable youngsters and had better things to do than be killjoys to their kids; "Prost" I say to them.

Then concert finished at around midnight and I was looking forward to the more salubrious event of the evening - a penthouse party back in Frankfurt. We made good time cruising back on the autobahn, averaging 170Km/hr in a tiny VW and even at that time of night, Porches and Mercedes were zipping past at a great rate of knots. I don't think the old Datsun 120Y that the family used to own in Kerikeri would have stood a chance. Although under current German legislation, it would be classed as an antique and the road levies are significantly lower with such cars. It's a wonder why, since the Antipodean law makers seem to see them as a menace and tax the hell out of them. Probably for the best though - I can think of things that age better than the 120Y anyway.

The party was in full swing, although a couple of hundred people less than intended. For those of you who've been to Germany and need reminding that it's one of the most tolerant countries around, here's another anecdote. It was 1:30 in the morning and I could clearly hear the party music in the street from five floors down. As long as a poster was up in the building that informed other tenants that they were going to find their precious china rattling all night from the music, all was well. I don't think the birds bothered with their chirping the next morning - they were clearly up against some competition.

As per usual, I got home with a loaf of bread purchased on en route and fell asleep on the couch. The anticipated beginning of the Sunday Squash Ritual (or SSR) never eventuated. Had a bit of book writing and some gym work to get done before a quick trip down to a small town called Heppenhiem in Hessen that afternoon. On arriving at the train station with 6 minutes to spare before the train left, 5.5 of those were spent trying to get a travel ticket out of the machine. One of the "features" of the German railway system is the trains close and lock their doors when they leave. Fair enough. What they then do is taunt any late-comers and just sit there for a good half minute while the conductor gets their jollies seeing everyone try and fail to open the door. So, sure enough it happened to me. The same happens in the underground - they see you running toward the train. It's a race between your Jesus Wheels and the vindictive finger of the conductor. Guess who loses? There is one exception and that is if you happen to be blond, blue-eyed and cleavage large enough to be small moons. I guess if you're a train driver on the underground, you have to do something to get your kicks.

Most of the work I have to do this week and next can be done from anywhere with an internet connection, so I'll probably head down to the Rome office and work from there for a week and ponce around the city in the evenings.