Today we flew to Vienna! It's the closest major airport to our Czech offices (though it's still a 3 hour taxi ride away). Kara's staying there while I'm traveling so she can go to some of the museums. The security process at CDG was interesting as while you can keep on your shoes, they made me take out not only my laptop, but all my other electronics as well. And I carry a lot of electronics (laptop, kindle, tablet, DSLR, pocket camera, chargers, it adds up!). So that was a bit of a hassle.
The taxi ride was also interesting, as I got to enter/drive through a new country, Slovakia. The taxi driver was also kind of insane and incredibly fast, passing everything in sight on two lane roads. But I made it in one piece! The hotel was pretty straight forward, though the internet access was really really terrible. Constant timeouts and DNS names not resolving. I had planned on posting all this while there, but that didn't end up happening.
I also finally got to meet in person some of my fellow engineers I've worked with over the years. I'm a big believer in having face to face communication and meetings, since I've found it can make a really big difference in later interactions. And so I was glad to put some faces to names.
They also took me out to eat, and I have to say, I do really like Czech food. It's very hearty but not that healthy, so that's probably not that good of a thing, but when a meal is mostly meat, sauce, and bread dumplings, I'm happy. The beer is also very very good, and they introduced me to plum brandy. That is not so good, though they kept telling me that it's recommended by doctors to do a shot every morning for good health. Though you can't drive afterwards, as the drunk driving laws are extremely strict (nothing above 0.00 allowed) so there's no such thing as "just a beer" if you're going to drive. And people complain about the ones in the US.
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