Wine, women and song

Here I am, sitting on a bed of "London's best hostel", having a slight cold and not much to do, so I decided I would sum up my last week...

I guess the first day I did not cover was last Thurday - on this day I went out to see a real British gig :) (Which just reminded me that I wanted to do the same today... :) )
So I headed out to find King's College, or a bar in King's College, because the whereabout of the venue was not quite evident from the websites I've visited to check on the concert. Eventually I've found it, it was the "Tutu", named after Desmond Tutu, and it was on the 4th floor of a sidestreet building... :) The bar was quite fine, a band was already playing when I go there, so I went to find a beer and waited to see what happens. It turned out that the band originally playing was only the support of the support band, so when the place started to get full, the first one on the stage were The Blizzards, an Irish (and proud of it!) band, who rocked the hell out of us! Technology is a pain in the arse, that's how they commented on the heat of the lights. And how right they were. But the main dish was just yet to come - Captain! They're a new, up-and-coming English band, they have one album out and play quite good rockish music - so I had loads of fun listening to them as well. The club was full of young people, probably from the college :) It was a very nice evening, and I even caught the Tube to get me home.

On Friday my friend, P. arrived for a 5 days visit, so we headed out to meet up with another friend, V., who tends to live in London with various English girls :) We had a nice dinner at my place, I tried to make some really British ham&eggs, we hada few Guinnesses, and the we left to meet V. at his working place, the National Theatre, where he gave us a short tour backstage, but sadly we had to skip the main actresses's dressing rooms :) So we just headed south for V.'s place to a have a few beers in a nearby pub and a night of Texas Hold'em afterwards :) We were quite tired and wasted when we started for my apartment (where I hosted P. for a few days), and especially because the night buses are unknown to me and they have weird and slow routes anyhow we got home at around 4. So it was about time to call it a day :)

Saturday... Time to meet another friend :) T., a girl, was doing some work-related things in the city for a few days, so we decided to hook up near the Tower and visit the said building. The queues for tickets were soooo long despite the horrendous ticket prices! But eventually we got the tickets and entered the gates of the Tower - where we waited for the free guided tour led by an original Beefeater, or Yeoman Warder. He was an older chap, with very, very good sense of humour and a great presentation style. He gave us a short summary of the history of the area (so mostly of the people executed there), and I guess he was one of the best guides I've ever met - including myself ;) He had a really funny comment about just about everything, and even with the visitors he took the chance to talk a few words and generally be a good guy :) After this short tour, during which T. already left (work, work, work), we went to see the treasury - various British crowns, that is, and of course the Coronation Spoon, which is basically a golden spoon. This item made me finally understand where Monty Python's style and jokes come from :) All the other stuff was really flashy, there was the First and the Second Star of Africa, two of the biggest diamonds ever (the biggest one is like a medium egg...), the Koh-i-Noor diamond, huge rubies, and just everything shiny that ever got near England. It was pretty amazing, all these jewels fitted in various random objects, and the grandiosity of it all. There was a short video of the coronation of Elizabeth II., or EIIR (R for Regina, Queen), which made me realize again how fun it is to be in a real monarchy. In some ways, this monarchy lives around people, and gives a certain flair to everything, changes the way how you look at buildings and history. England/Britain is so proud of it's traditions anyway, so this just adds a little bit to this :)
After the jewels and stuff we rushed through the central building, the White Tower, to check out a few of the weapons kept there - they have a vast amount of historic weapons, armor, whatever, it's just amazing! The only problem was that we did not have the time to check it out properly - we had musical tickets for a matinee! What musical, you might ask - well We Will Rock You, of yourse! A musical, based on Queen's biggest hits, already in it's 6th smash hit year, standing ovation each and every night... It started with the bass of Innuendo, giving that ever tingling feeling of hearing the best ever sounds again! And for almost 3 hours we were flooded with this amazing music, presented by quite capable artists, singers, dancers, and of course a live rock band supplying the tunes! The story of the musical is less interesting, it's about how the lost rock music will return in the not-so-far future and free our minds, but the feeling of it all ... now that's what leads to a standing ovation :) It was a very, very good show, I'm glad I decided to go and watch it, and P. liked it even more :)
We wanted to get something to eat after the musical, and we had a nice dinner in an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant. The tastes were pretty much taken away from the food to make eat more eadible for English, but still there were some good moments in it. To round up the evening, P. & I wanted to find a good party in the Soho, but well, we sucked at that :) When we headed to find a pub, they were all closing (11pm... British, bah!), and all teh clubs we saw were a lot less appealing than they were full. In the end, we just took the Tube to have a good night's sleep - now that's a programme rarely advertised in Soho...

Sunday! Changing of the Guards, again, but this time, almost on time :) It was a good show again, I even managed to shoot a short video of the previous set of guards leaving Buckingham Palace :) I made a few pictures of the various critters of the St. James's Park again, squirrels can never get un-cute :) We strolled through St. James's and Hyde Park, to the Speakers' Corner, to see and hear a set of Britain's madmen share their views. This part of town is traditionally the place of protests, and on quiet days anyone can come out here with his or her soapbox and share whatever he or she feels important. This time, there was and old woman sharing her views about how useless life is and how we will end up in a very unpleasant afterlife no matter what we do. There was also a Nigerian guy who explained his views on immigration and how immigrants are handled in various places. There was also a Muslim person who really stood out for... well I don't think even he understood :) But the overall feeling of the place is nice, that random people can go out and share their random thoughts, and noone gets punched in the face :) V. met us here, and we went to have a British meal - me an Aberdeen Angus Burger, P. fish&chips, V. some barbecue chicken. The beers we tried were also quite good, one of them was even Madonna's favourite :) This was all in a pub near James Street, W, and a few streets N of the Bond Street Tube station, if anyone would ever want to find a place I did not give the name of :) We had an Italian macchiato nearby, then V. went home, and P. and I continued our quest for British beer and rock music. Which eventually lead to finding almost every remotely good place closed and heading home with the first night bus again as the Tube closes earlier on Sundays. Well, bugger.

Monday... I hardly even got to work when I heard how badly things turned out with the last piece of work we've done, but that got fixed very quickly - we have neglected a few things we shouldn't have, so I learnt a bit about how some of our processes should be done properly ;) Then I met up with P., who slept at my place again but refused to wake up at dawn, like I did :) He moved out, over to V.'s for his last night and he just gave me my keys - he was quite wasted even having slept a lot more than I did :) The day just crept away, and in the evening I headed to V.'s as well - we were cooking a nice Hungarian dinner for the current English girl :) She's a very nice person, and was glad to have us, and especially, she enjoyed the meal a lot :) As a dessert, we had vannila-cinnamon-apple-honey pancakes with some of the best Tokaj wine I've ever tasted - 17 years old, with a colour even red vines would envy! All in all, it was a great evening, and as it ended at around 2, I did not head back home, but stayed for the night - which led to having to wake up earlier, get home, get dressed and head to work... not the best start :)

And from then on, I basically spent my nights at home, fighting this minor cold, and yesterday evening packing - which was the hardest part so far :) My suitcase is huge, heavy and huge and mostly heavy :) Even though I managed to send my coursebooks to the home office with internal mail, I figure I'll still be carrying a lot more weight than I'd love best :)

So in the evenings I did some basic shopping, said my farewells to the Canary Wharf towersm that's about it. This good bye is a lot less painful than the Berlin one was, for several reasons. For once, this was just 3 weeks, and no matter how I got used to all this, how much I tried to be local, it was still just a longer business trip. Also, London is just not Berlin :) It's great, lovely, wonderful, but too crowded for my taste - here an average day sees the streets about as crowded as Christmas in Berlin... That's something I will not miss :)

Now, I had to move out of my apartment on Friday, so I had to take all my stuff with me to work in the morning, and then I had to get them to this hostel, Globetrotters Inn. Approximately on the opposite end of town... It's not that far by Tube, but I would have preferred a bit less rain on the way here :)
The room is okay, I share it with Chris, who works in IT as well, and is in London for a course, and an unknown girl who just got "home" and who has the bunk below me :) I had a great steak for dinner, but they did not have proper beer so I had to settle for a Stella with it...

Anyway, I have to close this for now, as it's late and people are trying to sleep :)
I'll write more later!

Ps. I did not re-read this post yet, it might be full of nonsense and typos...need to sleep first :)
M.

Bring on the night

I'm alive... I just haven't slept enough for 5 days now... Check my pictures, I'll be back later.

M.

Oooooh I have to sum up so much! I'll try to be quick, as I'm tired, as usual :) Tuesday... I had another training session, split up in two parts. The morning part was quite boring, just a replay of my last training with more emphasis on some parts. I wouldn't say it was completely useless, but I could have spent my time better. Luckily, it was over just it time for me to reach the loo :) Free drinks have an effect... :) The afternoon part was a lot better, we were given some useful information, which I'll probably use as well during my work. In the evening I quickly summarized my ideas in an email on how to solve a current problem - this turned out quite well in the end.
Oh, and this day I had my worst lunch so far :) It was turkey, supposedly "rosted with honey, with stuffing", and well, it was really turkey, period. No other tastes, and definitely no stuffing :) Even the potatoes were without a taste. I managed to get some very good horseradish sauce with all this, that took most of my pain away :) In the evening I went out to check out the Oxford Circus, and well, it rained :) The tube ride was strange though - this was the first time I left for the inner city right after work, and well, there were a lot of people! I could only get on the second train, which was full as well as the first, and there were people left on the platform... I can understand now why londoners complain about the tube, but my overall observation would be that the people were a lot more patient than they would be in Hungary in a similar situation. No pushing, shouting or swearing, even though I'm sure most travellers will be a lot happier if and when the Crossrail project gets another traffic line to the Wharf :)
So, the Circus was fine, a lot of shoppers everywhere, it was nice to get back home and have dinner in peace and quiet :)
Wednesday... No rain in the morning! I tried to take a photo of the Reuters building, with all the scrolling stock info on it - I think this photo does not do justice to reality, but I was in a hurry :)
Work was fine, lunch was great with a spicey cod steak in the cantine on the 12th floor of our Bank Street building :) We had a great view on the city, though the Eye definitely beats this :) I tried to find the Costa Coffee in our offices, but eventually I had to settle for Starbucks - they give a lot better latte than the free coffee machine does. It costs a quid, but in the "offical" Starbucks it would be more than 2GBP, so whatever... After work I went grocery shopping, tried out the third food store in the area, and realized that the choice in English food is quite narrow... I mean I would be able to buy a lot of things, but German salami and Spanish chorizos would blend well enough with Danish butter in just any other country... I want to eat British stuff! Even haggis, if I have to! Easier to say than do around here...
So at home, I had crab pate form the Hebrids, and then I left to try out that boat ride on the Thames I received a "Free Ride"-coupon for - and it was definitely worth it's price :) I had to go out to the O2 Dome to get on the boat, and it rained again, of course... The boat was very comfy on the inside, and very, very fast - I was told this is because it's a catamaran design. I got off near Big Ben, and tried to get home - I was quite unlucky with that, as the direct tube line was not running due to some train problems, so I had to go around town, with 2 changes and million kilometres afoot to get home eventually. The only thing to do was to write this entry, have some cheddar with crackers and a beer...And then, sleep!
Zzzzzz,
M.

Rain

Sunday started as slow as possible - Saturday's party was not without aftereffects :) I was just sleeping till noon, mind you, no other problems for me this time :) It took a while to decide what I would do in the afternoon, but eventually I settled for Greenwich - it's quite close, and I was looking forward to see the view of Canary Wharf from there. I took the replacement bus for the DLR (Docklands Light Railways, driverless trains which were undergoing weekend maintenance) to get to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. British people seem to have a lot of stuff dedicated for travelling by foot :) So anyhow, the tunnel runs under the Thames, and it's over 100 years old... It has pretty entry buildings on both sides, and a few years ago they installed elevators for the disabled, elderly and lazy visitors. Even on my side of the Thames the weather started to get exciting, wind was blowing like the world was going down, I guess this is where my photos started to get blurry as I could not stand still :) Also, my pics went even blurrier when the rain started falling and a few drops managed to get on the lens :|
Back to the tunnel for now, though... It was scary :) Not in the "Oh my God the homeless people will eat me" way of scariness, as usual for foot tunnels and subways, because this tunnel was fully lit and more or less clean, but scary because of being narrow and rusty and generally strange :) And it's quite long, too, I'd guess about a kilometre. On the Greenwich side I started exploring as the rain started pouring, pretty soon it was umbrella-time... This part of London is quite amazing, I wandered off the usual tourist path to see a few sidestreets, which was quite fun. I also took some pictures of the view - it's truly spectacular, but I'd need better equipment and weather to show it off properly :) Accidentally I bumped into the Greenwich Market, which was a nice little place - not too big, not too small, and you can buy anything from belts to massage to sushi. It was also a lot less stressy than the Christmas markets and such that I'm more used to. I bought quite a few things (on my scale, a lot!), some smokey Earl Grey tea, a wonderful new wallet, a selection of Italian pastry for half price, some raspberry fudge and a mulled berry drink to get warmed up a bit. It was a nice little trip, but as I was quite tired so I went home. Luckily the replacement buses were not really properly configured for my Oyster card, so I travelled for free :) I guess everyone else did, though. At home, it was sleepy time very soon.
Monday was just another day :) I was at work, solved another important problem, took part in a funny meeting with Budapest (we were drawing on a digital whiteboard to share our diagrams) and a nice sweet chili beef hot wrap lunch. After work, I checked out a bookstore just for the hang of it - it feels good to have that many English books around :) Then, I headed home to taste a very nice dinner based on the Italian bread I bought yesterday. I was told that just by reading me one would think I'm a fat guy... well I might be skinny on the outside, but on the inside, I'm a fat guy who's always hungry :)

The rest of the evening was just peace and quiet, with a small candle burning in remembrance.
Good night, and take care!
M.

Bridges across forever

I guess this weekend is over, and soon I can sleep again :) These two days were quite tiring and touristy, but all in all I had a good time again. On Saturday the plan was to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace and then take a ride on the London Eye - so we met up with a few colleagues near Westminster to walk along Whitehall for the Horse Guards' Parade. It must be quite stressy for the guards' horses to stand completely still during their shifts, and even though a horse standing still is just a horse standing still, when there are 15 of them it looks kind of impressive :) Obviously these are not the more famous guards with the furry hats, so we went to see them to - we had to cross St. James Park for this, which was lovely, full of little animals :) There was a man feeding the squirrels, they were basically eating from his hands, it was nice. Strange how squirrels tend to hang around in castle gardens, I have photographed them in Marbork (Poland), Schönbrunn (Austria), Potsdam (Germany) and now here. There must be an international squirrel conspiracy to overthrow monarchies, and seemingly they already succeded in 3 other places already :)
Anyhow, there were all sorts of critters in the park, but we went for the ones with the furriest heads - just like thousands of others did. Basically we did not see anything of the main part of the CotG show, but the band played very good music :) And we saw some of the guards march out afterwards to their barracks, where they had a nice short finishing parade, now that was something noone knew of - so we had that show for ourselves :)
Then, we headed towards Westminster Bridge, crossed the Thames and arrived to the Eye, where I collected the previously bought tickets - it was like 10 seconds, I just had to insert the credit card which I used for the online purchase in a machine, and it printed out my tickets without any human interaction necessary. So that was quick - the queue, not so much. We queued for the actual attraction for like half an hour, but it was okay, and of course the view would have been worth even more waiting :) The Eye is probably in the best possible place to see the bigger and more known monuments of London, and since it's by far the tallest building in that area, you really can see everything. In clear weather, you can even see Italy, or so we were told ;) Sadly, we had quite foggy weather, so visibility and photographability ( ;) ) were both restricted, nevertheless, this was an amazing experience :) Since the whole project runs under sponsorship by British Airways, the whole thing is arranged like it was an actual "flight", they even call your trip a "flight". You have to "board" before, then you get security checked, etc.
So then we walked northwards by the Thames to cross the Golden Jubilee Footbridge, on the way we could see a lot of mimes and other artists, it was more or less funny... the guitar players are usually quite good, too. On the other side of the Thames we split up, the others heading for the Tower, me heading for the nearest hamburger stall :) After that I went over to the Blackfriars tube station (everybody please read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - the tube experience will never be the same boring thing again), just to check out St. Paul's, and cross the Thames again on the Millenium Footbridge. When this bridge was first built, it was so wobbly, that they had to redesign it to somehow dampen the wobbliness - on some of my pictures you can see the additional equipment installed for this purpose. On the other side of the bridge there was the Tate Modern and Shakespeare's Globe, neither of which is a particularly nice building, but the internals count a lot more I guess - no time for those though. I took a short walk in the surrounding area to the nearest Tube station to get me home, did some shopping, gave directions to 3 different British people, and did my laundry. Also, as I found the door of the dishwasher broken, I sent an email about this to the aparment owners, so they repair it and don't make me pay the costs :) Then, after all this fun I went over to one of my colleague's, where a few of us had a few beers before heading out to Soho! Soho's amazing, everyone's queueing for a pub, everyone's going for a party. We managed to find 2 pretty bad clubs to pay the entry fee of, so it was not the most succesful night money-wise :) Well, the first pub was a blues pub, which I would have fancied but the others did not, and the other was just not so very good. Basically we just had a few drinks and then tried to find our way home - it was not that easy to find the correct night bus, but eventually, past 4am, I finally fell asleep in my bed :)

And this was only Saturday... I guess Sunday deserves a separate post, and a shorter one, I promise :)

M.

Slipped away

Friday evening...normally, two days of rest would follow, but in my case, there'll be only a lot more sightseeing :) Today was the day of the Tower! Or at least the evening of it... We walked around it, crossed the Thames via the Tower Bridge, and then sat in for a beer near the London Bridge tube station. You would not imagine how many girls are dressed like it was summer! You look at them, and even you get cold...But then again, you look at them a little longer, and it's hot again :) Crazy English people...
I promise I will sum these days a up in a little more detail later, but I have a lot of sleeping to do. I'm sure you can understand that part :) Also, tomorrow is party-day, so don't expect a quick entry. Sunday is museum day, we'll see how that goes and how much time I will have awake and doing nothing.
Oh yeah, and today my direct manager commented on one of my observations with the phrase "Great minds think alike" :) If that's not a praise, I don't know what else would be :)
Some new pics are up again, please bear with me on them...I don't have neither the tools, nor the knowledge for proper night photography. Some of the worst pictures are made during some of my best time...Go figure...

Anyhow. Sleep. You too. Well. Bye.
M.

We make the road by walking

I'm tired. Again. Or did I already tell you about that? :)
Today I started off my day with a tasty bagel, as English as I could make it :) Then I went off for my first training, which was about all the homegrown systems MS was using. Most parts were quite interesting, and of course all this information is very important for later work. After the training session I went for grocery shopping to Marks & Spencer :) I know, that's a clothes shop for all you girls out there, but here in London they also sell bread & butter :) I bought some sausages and spicey sauces for dinner - it was quite good, especially knowing my cooking skills :) Then I went out to find the Sherlock Holmes statue at Baker Street, but I've found a nice little pub instead, next to the London Business School :) I had a London Porter, no photo this time, but the beer was the first typical lukewarm British beer I had :) I have no idea if that was on purpose, but it definitely tasted bad :) Then, I took a doubledecker to Piccadilly, to see all the flashing ads, which were not so interesting, then I went over to Trafalgar Square, and then I took a short walk by the Thames to finally get on the tube and get home! It was long and tiring day, and I still have to do the dishes... But hey, there's tomorrow for that! :)
Bah, now I'm off to sleep it all off!
M.

At the end of the day

Today was without any sightseeing - I'm a bit too tired for that, hopefully I will sleep that off by tomorrow. Work was good again, I solved a few important problems and saw a few nice new things about how stuff goes in our team and projects. I'm getting the hang of it, I guess :) We tried out the local cantine for lunch today, which is somewhat special since you can only use your MS ID-card for payments. You have to top it up like a prepaid SIM-card to be able to purchase stuff with it, and after that it's very simple - you just put it in the card reader and it deducts the costs and displays your new balance. Even the chocolate vending machine share this principle in our building. This is quite comfortable, actually, but of course you have to pay attention to have enough money on your card when you plan to use it :)
For lunch I had some kind of fish with some spicy tomato sauce, potatoes and some other thing which I suppose were sweet potatoes, but since that is not at all native to the UK , it could have been something else. It looked like sweet potatoes, anyhow... and it tasted okay :) I also had a pomegranate/thisberry/thatberry smoothie, which was a lot less appealing... it had a lot of banana in it, which spoiled the whole thing for me. But it was funny that the ingredients showed how many pieces of each berry were used :) It was an okay meal, all in all, filling and fine. I also had a banana but that was not particularly good, it was not ripe enough.
Later this afternoon I was asked to look into a few problems which are semi-important but would look very nice when fixed for this weeks release - so with a little help I managed to find the right spots to correct and voilá, my work will go out to the NY traders as soon as they need it :)
After work I went shopping to the local TescoMetro (again). This is a lot smaller than the Tescos we have in Hungary, more like the usual supermarket. They have a lot of cashiers, though, and they have a single queue leading to all of them - in the end a loudspeaker announces which cashier is free, so basically the queue is only split up at the very last step. Seemingly the system works well and it's quite fast. It's not really possible to buy that many things in one go, but I think there are stores for the weekend shopping too nearby. I will have to check them out for more cheese varieties and anything nice and English :)
The main things I bought so far are some roast beef cold cuts (amazing!), cheddar, of course, orange/lemon/grapefruit jam, and of course a small bottle of Marmite :) This last one has a very strange flavour, but I like it... It's like eating creamy gravy :)
I also had to buy some household items to do my laundry and washing up - sadly this is quite costly and of course I won't use a whole box/can/bottle of anything in 3 weeks. I was thinking about buying tabs for the dishwasher machine, but I settled for the usual "manual" dishwashing liquid - it would take weeks to gather enough dirty dishes to justify using the dishwasher :)

Oh well... Wednesday is over, tomorrow's stories shall come tomorrow :) Never forget to check my photos in the Picasa album!

M.

New sensation

Today was the first day at MS here in London. The walk to my working place was quite nice, this business quarter is quite amazing with all these new and tall buildings.
I was the first one getting my ID card, seemingly the others just did not bother enough to ask what they should do to get theirs :) Kevin, my mentor - project manager (or Buddy, in MS lingo) arrived a bit late to get me to my desk. It's in a huge room with a lot of desks, there's place for about 200 people. Kevin was kind enough to help me find the local AmEx office to get some cash, and also he invited me for a tasty muffin and a coffee. He showed me around in the office, introduced me to zillions of people, and told me a few things about his position and how his team works. He's 30 at most, and he is a very friendly guy, and even he himself wants to dismiss any formalities - this seems quite general with the IT staff here. Basically everyone is encouraged to do whatever suits his own professional development best, and the actual project is almost just second in line behind that. This friendly atmosphere is also part of being an "Associate" of the Firm, not just an employee among thousands. So far I like this concept, though I am aware that this probably ain't the Holy Grail either :)
So back to my story ;) Lunch was again on Kevin, he took me and a Hungarian colleague from the MS graduate program to a new restaurant nearby - I had some very tasty pork cutlets, and Kevin also seemed to enjoy his fish meal. After lunch it was work and introductions again, and even though I faced a few problems which make my current seemingly very short assignment a lot longer than I expected, I don't feel uncomfortable with all this. I finished work at 6, went to the Tesco nearby to get something for dinner and breakfast, and then I joined two Hungarian colleagues for a small trip around the city. We took the Jubilee Line Underground to King's Cross & St. Pancras - the latter is an amazing red-brick building, I will have to go back in daylight later. Then we took a walk (and a beer) to Russell Square, and then a bus near the London Eye. I tried to take some pictures, but my camera is not that well suited for night photography. The Eye, the Parliament, the Big Ben - they are all very, very nice, again I will have to visit them in daylight. After this 2-3 hours long trip we took the Jubilee Line again to get home... all in all, it was very nice, I'm sure I will see a lot of beautiful things here :)
The traffic and the people are nothing special, not counting of course the traditional cabs and doubledeckers - which are of course all driving on the wrong side of the road :) Not so easy to get used to it, at each crossing I remind myself that I have to pay attention to this but concentrating on it makes it even more difficult :)
For the travels we used the so-called Oyster Card, which is basically a prepaid travelcard in London. On each trip you have to hold this card next to a proximity sensor - on buses the fare gets deducted immediately, on the underground you have to check out as well at the end of the trip so the fare gets calculated based on the zones you crossed. The system works pretty well, especially because the daily maximized cost is even lower than the price of a normal day ticket, so it's actually worth using it. Season tickets work more or less the same, but I don't think I would travel enough for say, weekly tickets to be worth their price.
Oh okay, I know this post is a bit mixed up, but it's late and I tried to squeeze in everything :)

Thanks for reading me!
M.

London reporting in

It's almost midnight in a slightly different time zone than usual... Today in the morning I had a pair of presentations about how I should go about being a new employee, and at 2:20pm I left for the airport. There, I spent an hour in the business lounge - my first time ever :) It was not that special but they had free drinks and cookies. Afterwards I (and ~10 colleagues) boarded flight MA614 to London - my first business class travel ever :) It was quite nice, they took my coat, served nice wines and an amazingly rich meal - something I will have to make a photo of on my trip home. I had some assorted cheese, chicken with potatoes & stuff, some more spicier chicken and a tiramisu. Oh, and while I also helped the people sitting next to me to open their bag of mixed nuts (it was basically bolted shut...). They were an elderly couple, not my colleagues of course. They were visiting their son and his family in Budapest - they have a family tradition BTW, of marrying at the age of 37 and having the first child at 41 :) That would make the husband of the couple 82, and he was in a remarkably good health for his age ... he told me he learned to fly a plane before WW2 on the very same Gatwick airport we landed in London... :) They were very nice people, we had a good chat, so it was a good flight. On the airport after a loooooong walk on the corridors we got our bags and were awaited by a minibus, which took us to our apartments. It was not a quick process, and not without mistakes - I misread my address and tried to enter No.11 in a completely different building :) But eventually I got to my (really) own apartment, which is HUGE! At least as big as my flat at home... No problems so far, I have an internet connection as well, though it costs a lot of GBP... After settling I went out with 2 guys for a beer... my first pair of Guinesses in the UK! And now it's time for some pictures and a very good nights sleep :) I will get back to you very soon, so come back and read me :)

Pictures
Map


M.

Back in the World of Adventures!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It's that time of year again, I'm going for a training trip with my new employer - this time I'll haunt the streets of London for a few weeks. So fasten your seatbelts, start up your RSS-reader engines, and join me on the joyride! :)

I'll be seeing you all!
M.