Mark's Travels

10 years of travel blogging from 35+ countries around the world

13-Hour days, meetings in German and high-speed train rides 8th November 2002 in Bremen, Germany


I worked 13 hours today. I"m sooo tired. It"s friday and I"ve done 45 hours in the last 5 days. Last night I got to talk to my friend Matt and Twilla back home for about 2 hours so I didn"t get to bed until 2 in the morning. I got woken up at 6am, by 6:50 I was running for the trainstation so I could make my train to Hannover. I arrived in Hannover on time for the company meeting. I never know quite what to expect in these meetings. I understand German more and more everyday but not at a fluent level yet.

At one point I was demonstrating the software I"m developing and a heated debate began over one of the rules in the code. I ended up modifying source code mid-presentation in order to get everyone to calm down.

In the end they all banged their hands on the desk as a sign of delightment at the software I wrote, either that or they were demanding my notebook back ;-)

At the train station I got a chance to look into the engineers compartment of an I C E train, it looked kind of like a space shuttle control centre, the train it self looks like a 20-car space craft.

On the train ride home there were a bunch of 14 year olds on the train blasting trance music on a ghetto blaster and chugging down smirnoff ice"s.

This evening I got a chance to talk to my friends in Norway for a bit. It"s always nice to catch up with old mates ;-)


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