Have I ever told you about that one time I went to Europe for work?
During the spring of 2007 the working group, which I represented Boeing at with a co-worker, decided that they wanted to have meetings in Germany. Our program manager was only allowed to send one of us over for the meeting (boondoggle). At this point I was 2 years on this particular job and had never been to Europe before so I was selected to go.
Our office assistant set up all my travel arrangements to Germany and after a lot of deliberation I decided to extent my trip beyond the week in Germany and take a stroll around the entire continent. Of course the company wasn’t going to pay for anything other than my trip there, my expenses while on the clock and the trip back, so the rest was on me.
I purchased a train ticket from Frankfurt to Paris, then airline tickets from Paris to Barcelona, Barcelona to Rome and finally from Rome back to Frankfurt where I was back in business class on the company dime for my return trip. Each leg of my little journey was to be 2-3 days. I didn’t book any hotels rooms, preferring to figure it out when I got there. Yeah, like it or not, that’s what I do…
The beginning of my trip was as planned out as our assistant could have made it. I had a flight overseas, a hotel and a rental car. So here I was, some guy who’d never gone to Europe before, about to fly to Germany by myself, rent a car and drive 2 hours to my hotel, which I wasn’t completely sure the location of, but I knew once I met up with all the other contractors I’d be in with familiar faces again, so I wasn’t worried. Luckily I ran into one in Detroit, who was on my flight to Germany. Did I mention that I wasn’t really sure where the town the meetings were to be held in was? HA! Yeah, no idea…
I told him while we were waiting for our flight to leave from D-town that I didn’t know where I was going. He said that it was okay because he’d been there and knew exactly where we were meeting… I was on his tail from Detroit, MI all the way to Kaiserslautern, Germany.
In my Opel (Ford) I had the pedal down to the floor trying to keep up with his BMW 5 Series… But this was life or lost, so I redlined that little 4 cylinder until, I’m sure, it was about to explode. When we got to Kaiserslautern he took me passed the base we were meeting so that I’d know where to go the next day. Then I followed him to his hotel. This is where the problem reared its ugly head, my hotel was nowhere near his, nor did he have a clue where it was at. We asked the front desk at his hotel and got a bunch of Deutsch and some scribbles in response. So I told him that I’d find it, and I was fairly confident that I would. It might just take me a while… A long while…
I must have driven around for 2 hours, with no particular logic or any idea where I was at. I’m not smart but I’m diligent… Something possessed me to follow a random car, which had proven to work in the past. He took me down some narrow streets with no curbs and people eating within inches of my rearview mirror. I followed him down an alley and… whoops, right into his driveway. I threw that little compact into reverse faster than Kobayashi at an eating contest. The man got out of his car and started waving at me.
“OH CRAP!” I thought.
He was smiling, which was a good sign, so I rolled down the window and pointed at the address of the hotel and spouted off some high school German in hopes that he would understand my plight. He gave me the international sign of wait a minute and went to his wife, who by now was standing outside too. When he came back he told me to follow him. Strange, I thought, if this were the US I’d either have the cops on me, I’d have been cussed out or shot by now. But this guy wants me to follow him? Well what do I have to lose besides another hour or two?
Sure enough, 15 minutes later I was driving to the front of my hotel. He pointed at it, waved and then sped off without even stopping to let me thank him. You always hear about relying on the kindness of strangers, but I never really experienced it until then. I threw the car into park, went in and didn’t leave for the rest of the night…
Minus the first day the remainder of the trip was rather uneventful. If you don’t include the five hours I spent walking around downtown Kaiserslautern trying to find my car or when I accidentally found the restaurant that everyone was meeting at without directions. And this was just the first part of my trip, somehow I managed to survive Paris and Rome too…
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