The reason I am packing for a business trip on Sunday morning is that to get it all in, that is two days travel two days auditing, before my holiday begins on Wednesday evening, it all has to be done at the start of the week, travel on Sunday, audit Monday and Tuesday and travel back on Wednesday. And relax for 17 days on the bounce. As you do.
So, we have breakfast, I get ready and at ten we drive down into town and I am dropped off at the station. Here I am again. I get a ticket, and board the train and slump in my seat waiting for departure time.
And away we go, through Kent on a gloriously sunny day. And much to my surprise the train fills up and its standing room only after Ashford.
At the airport I realize I am with KLM, which means their ticket machine will not print tickets until two hours before departure, and not a second before. So I wait for eight minutes, until the machine agrees that it is half twelve and my ticket is printed. There are no queues in the departure lounge, and head to the Italian restaurant for some pasta and a glass of wine for lunch. Although, if I’m honest I don’t think the meal was cooked by Italians, they just pretended.
Whatever the case, the food was tasty enough and I am happy enough, doubly so as my company picked up the tab. Yay. I wait for the flight to be called, and then join the rush for the gate to we can all sit on the compfy seats and wait some more as we all have allocated seats. Its madness. But then I realize that inside the flight, there are only six overhead bins big enough for a business case, and me being a businessman these days, although one dressed in a holey t shirt, mine does not fit. But as the flight was not full, I put it on the seat beside me, until I am told off. It must go on the floor.
The plane then breaks down, and so we sit there for an hour as a guy in a day glo tabard brings modules in until the aircraft decides which one it likes and agrees to start.
And off we go, squashed in our three-quarter sized seats all jammed in with our cabin luggage; who said the golden age of travel was over? No me.
I try to snooze as we fly over Essex and head out over the sea at Felixstowe. The sea is lost to clouds, so I close my eyes. I open them to see Belgium and Holland passing below through gaps in the clouds.
I can reveal that far east Germany is very similar to far western Germany; all forest, fields and the such. Oh the lure of business travel.
I get the keys to the hire car and wait for my colleague to arrive, which she does in about ten minutes. After the chaos with the German sat nav on our last German trip.
I brought my own this time, and had already programmed it for the half hour trip to the hotel in the wonderfully named town of Shwarzheide.
Up the autobahn at 120kmh, something like half the speed of the fastest car on the road, which was an ancient Passat which went by at warp factor 9.8.
The hotel was easy to find, and there was a parking space, but the luxury coach brought the promise of old people, who would no doubt be complaining all through dinner and breakfast. The hotel is nice enough , and we have a nice local meal, which included, at least for me, a huge plate of pickles for a starter. And even I was pickled out after eating three quarters of them. But they must count as several of my five a day; right?
Finally I quality check the beer, and it passed. Which was good.
Monday.
The day of work. Or the first day of work.
I needed more sleep, but six hours would have to do after watching the Germany v Scotland game until half eleven the previous night. Oh well.
Work goes OK, I stay awake which is always good. And in the evening we are invited to a local restaurant for a meal with people from the factory. It is 1.4 km from the hotel. We walk. After about 1.3km there is doubt cast by the other three that I do not know where I am going, and we are going in the wrong direction. A check of Google maps proves me correct, but I get no apologies, which is about normal.
Food is good, decent local food, plenty of vegetables and lots of local beer, which is very nice.
We walk back to the hotel and we end up talking about work until midnight, some beer may also have been drunk. Anything is always possible.
So begun just five hours sleep. So it goes
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