Germany Trip

Hello,

Wow, skimming through my last blog post made work look like it was fun. Work has been hell since that last post. I think at some point my patience ran out and I just cracked. It's been more than just putting in a lot of hours and weekend work though. Every day for the past few weeks I have been dreading going into work.

The problem is that the project is so mature at this point that people expect there should be no bugs and everything should be perfect. Of course it is not perfect and there have been a lot of last minute changes that have created a whole whack of last minute problems. At this point, when bugs are found in the product people start saying things like "why didn't you find this bug earlier?" or "how was this issue missed?". Even though I am probably doing a great job, I feel like an idiot on a regular basis at work these days. The stress compounds this effect because I do my worst work when stressed. Most of my stress has been coming from one person. I have talked to my boss about this and he said that I need to confront this person soon.

Anyhow, I just got back from Germany and a quick check of my work emails shows that this final stage is nearly over - maybe another 2 weeks of tough times. Hopefully my batteries will be recharged now and I will be full of energy when I go back on tomorrow.

The good news is that the day before I left for my vacation was my annual review. My review was pretty good. I nearly got into the top 20% again this year. I need to work more on self promotion to my colleagues and superiors. I essentially am doing good work but only those in my very inner circle actually know about it. When I do good work I need to shout it out from the rooftop so that everyone is aware and gives me proper recognition. This is advice I've heard before but I'm not very good at implementing - I still need some practice on this. From the good review I was also giving a nice cash & stock bonus which we really needed as we were getting low on funds.

So, once all the above is said... Julie & I actually had a nice (well deserved) vacation to Germany. As planned, we went to Munich, Nurnberg, and Berlin.

Munich was a very beautiful place. It's an old, clean, and wealthy city. The Bavarian culture is very different from the rest of Germany. Oktoberfest, lederhosen, and dirndl dresses are things found mostly in Bavaria and not the rest of Germany.

Julie tried on a few of those dresses and looked very good in them. She didn't end up buying one this time. We met up with a friend in a munich beer hall. The serve beer in massive 1 liter glasses.

The beer halls themselves are an interesting experience. Its just a big barn with row after row of tables. The one we went to the "hofbrauhaus" which is the biggest in Munich.

Also in the "English gardens" park in Munich there is a fast moving stream that runs through it. At some point, someone put something under the water that creates a continuos wave in the water that surfers use for fun. Technically, you're not allowed to be in the water but the police look the other way for surfers. It was really fun to watch these guys and we stayed there for about 20 minutes just watching.

Then we went to a small town outside Nurnberg for Julie's freinds wedding. The wedding was nice and I met a lot of very cool people. At the tea break before dinner I got talking to a German man who knew everything there was to know about renewable energy (a topic I am very interested in). It was very one of the most interesting conversations I've had all year. I learned quite a bit about energy storage, smart grids, super grids, and concentrated solar. At the wedding dinner we met some more Germans at our table. Luckily they all spoke flawless English. The party after the dinner was lots of fun as well and the drinks were free. Julie was teaching people how to line dance. Once they picked it up, she threw in a bit of a turn which is demonstrated nicely in this video:

Then we went onto Nurnberg for a day. We were pretty exausted from all the drinking in Munich that we didn't really get to see as much here as we wanted. Unfortunately it was also jam packed with tourists. I think there was a bike race on that weekend and I'm assuming thats why there were so many tourists. I thought Nurnberg was a nice city to see for a day but it was pretty boring so I'm glad we only spent a day there.

Then finally onto Berlin! We took a high speed train from Nurnberg which still took 4.5 hours to get there. When we got there we were pretty shocked to see how very different it is from the rest of Germany. It's really like a whole different country (which, given its history, is probably not that strange). You could quickly get a sense that this city is much more "artsy" and much less "straight edge" than the rest of Germany. There was graffiti all over the place in Berlin - something that we had not seen in the other cities. Also, the way the people dressed was much less conformist and much more individualistic. The people in Berlin are also much younger.

We did a whirlwind tour of about 10 museums while there. This city has so much history to tell. I especially like the history of West Berlin and East Berlin.

German food is terrible for vegetarians. They specialize in bread, sausages, and pretzels. I got pretty tired of bread after awhile. Luckily Berlin was a breath of fresh air. There was so much good vegetarian food all over.

We got to practice our german a bit more while there but its tricky. Once people here your english accent, they just start speaking english to you. This is mostly for the best because when they do speak german back to me I often don't understand. I'm much better at speaking than I am at listening.

The pictures of the whole trip can be found on facebook here.

I think that's all I'll say for now. I could probably write for hours about Berlin but I'm getting tired. Also, I'm typing this at starbucks right now in Dublin and my battery is about to run out.

Cya