Last fall I happened to notice that a conference I've gone to once before was being held this time in Germany. Knowing that my company wouldn't send me to an overseas conference unless I had a paper in it, I pulled out some work I'd done a while back, dusted it off a bit, and submitted an abstract. The paper got accepted. Somehow, I managed to find the time to write the actual paper and get it through our clearance process, which is always more stressful than I think it should be. For example, when somebody tells me they're going to send the approval notice right away, I don't think I should have to call them back 5 working days later to follow up. But, anyway, it all worked and I got to go.
Since I was already going to Europe and the sexiest man in the known universe is in Europe and you can buy tickets from Frankfurt to just about anywhere on the planet ... well, you know where this is heading. Time to continue the world's longest running brief meaningless fling. A bit of net surfing found me quite a good fare to Stockholm. One peculiarity is that the fare on SAS was about a fifth what the fare on Lufthansa was - for a code share flight operated by Lufthansa. That is, you could pay over $1200 or about $250 to be on the same plane at the same time. Weird, but I wasn't complaining about finding the better price.
I got in a minor panic over the weather on Thursday, since I was traveling on two separate tickets (one company paid to Frankfurt and one I bought). The earlier flight to Frankfurt was delayed by several hours and ended up leaving after mine, which was scheduled for some four odd hours later. My flight was pretty close to on time. I even had an empty seat next to me, which is fairly rare these days. I watched one movie (Million Dollar Baby which was reasonably good but somewhat too brutal and not really believable) and dozed a bit. During the layover in Frankfurt, I changed money, browsed shops, checked out where the bus I'd need later left from, and read. My flight to Stockholm was also more or less on-time. One peculiarity was that they had everyone put their luggage through the x-ray on arrival at Stockholm. I never really figured out why, but it wasn't a big deal. Robert was waiting right outside the exit, as promised and we headed off to his apartment via train and subway.
We had a surprisingly good dinner at a local Cypriot restaurant and then pretty much collapsed. It's not like we had to be anywhere particularly early. In fact, we didn't really surface until after noon either Saturday or Sunday. We did manage some sightseeing, walking through much of the central city. I had printed out a walking tour of Gamla Stan, which is the old part of Stockholm, and that was nice to follow, even if Robert wimped out and wouldn't go into the Ice Gallery. One mildly amusing observation had to do with our differing preferences in church architecture. He likes spires, while I like domes. Partly that makes sense, but it also could be seen as exactly backwards.
Sunday, we went to the Vasa Museum, which is one of the most visited tourist sites in Stockholm. The Vasa was a warship which sank in Stockholm Harbor on its maiden voyage. Essentially, the design was too top heavy. After the film discussing why the ship sank, I told Robert that it was clearly a lack of systems engineering. The shipbuilders were clearly a lot better at art than at engineering and the carvings that decorate the ship are quite something to see.
Overall, I had a good time. Our relationship is better and I had only fairly brief moments of annoyance with him, which we actually managed to talk about. Sometimes it feels that we're just barely starting to know each other after roughly 20 years. But the main thing is that we are managing to communicate and work things out. And it's not like I'm exactly the easiest person on the planet to be around either.
Robert had to work on Monday, so I was on my own. I left my luggage in a locker at the train station, had coffee, checked email, and then went over to the City Hall, where I took the guided tour. The most famous room is the Blue Room, which is where the Nobel banquet takes place. I should mention that it isn't actually blue, since the architect changed his mind after seeing it. The Gold Room, which is covered with gold mosaics, is the really spectacular site, though. After the tour, I did more general meandering around the center of town. Overall, Stockholm is nice enough but is not especially distinctive. Because it burned down and was rebuilt several times, there's not a lot that's truly old. So, overall, it comes across as pretty much generic Euro-city. Then I retrieved my luggage and got the train to the airport. My flight to Frankfurt was fine and suggested a possible reason why SAS is so much cheaper than Lufthansa. Namely, they don't give you anything for free - not even water. Still, it was a two hour flight, so who cares?
I got to the airport just in time to catch the bus to Darmstadt. The hotel was right next to the train station, where the bus gets in, so it was all quite easy. (You could, of course, also take the train, but then you have to go into central Frankfurt and back out again, so it takes longer.) I settled into my room, then walked into the center of town to find somewhere to eat. My first impression was that Darmstadt is not a particularly attractive city, though the central area is reasonably nicely restored. But it's not as if I was there for any touristic purpose.
The conference went well and I should note that it was particularly well-organized. That is, things all ran on time, everybody had all the information they needed, etc.. Those sound like minor points, but I've experienced a lot of bad organization over the years, so it does help. My presentation also went reasonably well, by the way.
Anyway, the conference also included a tour of Darmstadt, which does turn out to have a couple of tourist attractions. We stopped briefly at the center of town, but that wasn't the main point. There's a rather spectacular apartment building, officially called the Wald Spiral but locally known as the Hundertwasser Haus, after the architect who designed it. It's all spirals and colors and, generally, quite something to see. The guide claimed that the apartments sell for EUR 10 per square meter, but she can't possibly be correct, as that would make an average 2 bedroom apartment something like USD 2000. We continued on to the other tourist attraction, the Matildenhoehe, which was an artist's colony from the art deco era. There's also a Russian church there (lots of domes to satisfy me) and a gazebo decorated with swans and so on. But the main thing to see are the artists' houses. All in all, it was quite nice and, while it's not like Darmstadt is ever going to be a major tourist attraction of Germany, it is worth a quick look around should you happen to be there.
The bigger tourist attraction is the site where we had the symposium banquet on Thursday night - Burg Frankenstein. The actual Frankenstein was kicked out of theological school for daring to suggest that women had souls and became an alchemist. He allegedly did create a monster. The Brothers Grimm recorded the story in a letter, which Mary Shelley read, inspiring her novel. The castle is notable largely for its views, though it was a bit too hazy to see all that much. The dinner, served in their restaurant, was very good, too.
The final touristic note is that, after the closing session on Friday, there was a short tour of the European Space Operations Center. I was interested in seeing that the European theory is that people need to have lots of light and windows to work well, which is directly counter to the way we design ops centers.
After the tour and lunch, I took the bus back to the airport. It's semi-obligatory to buy chocolate for the office if you get a European business trip, so I took care of that chore. My flight home was okay, though tedious. There were a large number of small Russian children, presumably part of some sport-related tour, on the plane. In the interests of minimizing jet lag, I forced myself to keep awake, mostly by reading. I did watch two movies, also. Robots was very cute, with lots of clever little bits to keep adults interested. The denouement was, however, predictable. The second Bridget Jones movie was not as good, though it was entertaining enough for airplane fare. I still fail to see what anybody sees in Colin Firth, though.
As for the weekend, I've been shoveling through the mail and doing various chores and so on. I'm sort of dreading work tomorrow, as I know I'll have a ton of stuff to take care of. Oh, well, that's the price I pay for being a world traveler.
Copyright 2005 Miriam H. Nadel