Here are a few of my favorites.

From Vienna.

From Budepest.

From Germany.

From Switzerland.

My trip to Europe got off relatively incident free – my wife took me and my colleague up to SLC Intl airport where we literally breezed through security. Our flight was severely over-booked – something about a plane headed to Lima, Peru that was cancelled and then joined with this one and blah blah… anyway, it made for a tight flight. We were 20 minutes late leaving SLC and with a connection to Zurich from Atlanta only an hour after we were to land, I was somewhat nervous. “Don’t worry, you’ll make it” quaffed a fellow cabin companion who was already taking full advantage of the in-flight beverage service.  I was secretly trying to re-configure meetings in Zurich for the next day, seeing if I could in fact miss the flight – but having missed the opportunity to gobble up some free round trips for waiting, I just decided to be positive and hope for the best.

My row mates were a couple of unacquainted, recently widowed ladies who proceeded to drown out the pre-flight safety message given by that hot redhead on all the Delta flights – you know the one – the Angelina Jolie lips and the high cheek bones – so anyway – I felt like I was interrupting a senior version of “anything you can do I can do better”. The one lady just got back from Patagonia and the Galapagos – the other the Grand Canyon and before that Alaska; She was on her way to Turkey next – and then Nepal and a “hike to basecamp” which she nostalgically referred to as her last hurrah. They asked me where I was heading… and like the kid who gets all the toys after the fad is over and the other boys have moved on to the next big thing, I just replied “Europe”.

We  indeed were late getting into Atlanta, which from what I have heard you can be 2 hours early and still either miss your flight or not have your bags show up – And regardless of the flight crew request to have people remain seated while we deplaned – needing to run to our next gate – we spent another 15 minutes on the plane trying to get out. I so wish I had access to some type of automatic ejection seat button that would split the top of the plane in half and spew the passengers inside all over the tarmac… at least the thought of the lady in front of me being hurled – screaming 50 feet into the air brought a smile to my impatient lips.

We rushed down the terminal, hopped on the transfer tube and made it to the E concourse… I thought to myself, oh no problem – we are leaving out of E-6 – it should be right… wtf? why do the numbers get smaller as you move AWAY from the center of the hub? 31, 30, 29 – 16… holy shit, what NASA flunky designed this terminal? We finally rounded the corner to gate 6 and the agent at the desk cocked his eyebrow up and said “Mr Bekechethetold?” “Close Enough” I replied. Seeing the eyebrows, I was actually expecting a lisp filled, high pitched, “Mithter Bethtold”?

“You almost miithed this one sport”.

I hate the patronization, and restrained from replying in kind – I just whipped out my… passport and showed it to the guy. He seemed impressed – I almost thought I was going to get an upgrade.

The joys of a tough economy.

I was relieved to see an empty row when I got back to 25B – and I quickly started the pillow and blanket land grab. Not being a toothpick, I don’t really like flying coach, but my company is too cheap to fly us Business Class, and I don’t have enough miles to upgrade yet – those miles have already been reserved by my wife for a trip to Hawaii. I scrunched and squirmed through Star Trek, 17 again, and then all the half hour shows that aren’t good enough to be on real TV anymore – they now show them as “in-flight entertainment” – shit – no wonder people blow up airplanes!

The sun finally cracked the horizon and I knew we were close. Cardboard muffins and mystery egg and cheese biscuits made the rounds to the dismay of all the snobby Euro-trash surrounding me. Yea yea I thought to myself – we all know you guys have the best cheese and the best bread and the best chocolate – but you know what? We have Lance Armstrong – so suck it. It is airplane food – it is designed to be nasty, stop you up so you don’t crowd the bathrooms, and withstand a crash landing in the pacific so you have something else to eat besides coconuts.

Switzerland.

I love Switzerland. I love everything about the country – especially immigration. What a breeze. The fact that I didn’t have any luggage probably helped – but regardless – no rubber gloves. No accusing looks – just a simple stroll down the Nothing to Declare hall. Thanks Delta… I am going to bend you over the sky miles counter for this one.

After a long taxi ride to our hotel, Ben and I headed out to the Data Center – in shorts and flip flops. No worries – these are IT guys – some of them haven’t seen the sun in weeks. This place is the bomb. From the outside, it looks like the entrance to some underworld chinese gambling establishment but without the ducks hanging in the windows.

The security is very good – and redundant, and a pain in the butt unless you are awesome like me and get it all on the first go – even our former German military security guard had problems. (If he had been US military like me he probably would have been okay, but the instructions weren’t written in crayon so I think he got confused)

I am not going to bore you with the details of the DC, other than to drop a few names… like Google. Like UBS. Like Credit Suisse. Yea, this place is the shinznit.

After a few hours at the DC I was starving and the only thing that could quench my hunger and jet lag was a Kebap from Ali.

Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali ababua… sorry – Aladdin flashback. The wonder that is the Turkish Kebap deserves a blog post, nay, a Wiki all to itself, but let me just say it is heaven wrapped up in fry bread. When Christ came out of the tomb after three days – he went straight to Ali and got a Kebap!

After lunch, Ben and I had more appointments and people to see, but of course the camera and the iPhone were with us – here are a few final shots of the day. I just love my iPhone and the camerabag app.

Tomorrow (today actually, but tomorrow when most of you in the US will actually read this) we are heading down to meet a consultant in Lucerne. He is visiting family in Switzerland and has been gracious enough to give us a few hours, and it gives me a good excuse to go back to Lucerne!