Saturday, January 9, 2010

Berlin (Days 3-5)

Day 3 & 4 - Berlin

The workaday drudgery is here. Thursday and Friday were just
long work days with nothing special in between to write about.
I get up at 6am to eat breakfast at 6:30, then off to catch
the bus at 7:05 which deposits me a couple of blocks from
work at 7:30. Then it's a trudge through the cold and snow
and dark to the office/lab building. After fighting with the
ultra-slow network connection to the US and frustration with
testing washers that don't want to perform as well as I think
they should it's back to the hotel in the evening to drop off
my stuff and go find something to eat. That last bit is
usually pretty good so no complaints there. I don't have a
car this time around - my choice due to the relatively short
stay and limited utility in the city - so I am quickly
learning the bus and train routes to find the places I like
to go when I'm here. It takes longer using public
transportation but I don't have to worry about driving
on slick roads and trying to find a parking place when I
get where I'm going. Like most cities you end up parking
3 or 4 blocks from where you want to be and then walking
and then having the same thing all over again
when I get back to the hotel. With public transportation
I end up walking a couple of blocks or so but don't have
to deal directly with the traffic and roads. The hotel
I am staying at is 1 block from one of the major train
and bus stations so it is pretty easy to get to just
about anywhere from here.

Day 5 - still Berlin

I keep seeing guys carrying newly-purchased sleds past
the hotel so there must be someplace close by where
you can buy them. They were predicting on all the
news channels a huge snow storm last night and today
with up to 50cm of new snow and high winds as well.
Somehow neither one has materialized yet - maybe a
couple cm of snow fell during the night and it
is lightly snowing right now but this is what it's
been doing since I got here. I guess they aren't
any better at predicting the weather here than we are.

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