Greetings from Freiburg!

Finally! Took me 2 days to figure out what happen and to get myself on the hotel wireless and be connected!

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11 Feb 2006

What a way to start a trip... Upgraded myself on to the Business class for the flight from Singapore to Frankfurt - it was on a 747-400 plane and I took a seat on the upper deck. However, this upgrade almost did not happen - was informed to call back once I received the SMS by the day shown in teh SMS before 6pm, but was not informed I had to ask them to issue an upgrade voucher before it could happen! So I called back, the person who attended to my call did not also inform me that I had to issue a voucher for it as well!!! So I thot fine, I called back, and it was confirmed, so done. Well, it's a good thing that I tried to check in on Friday night when I could not figure what happen to my upgrade as the confirmation number for that disappeared (check it on Thursday and it was still there). After a few calls and finally sorted that out and good thing there were still seats available! The lady who took my call was kind enough to pick a nice seat, which apparently is one of the best/popular seat on the deck - 17A, a window seat next to the emergency exit.

Anyway, I have to say this - after this flight, I think I will be treating myself to 1 upgrade per year for my trips. Will have to pick out which one though. I guess to maximised the miles exchanged, I guess it will have to be a long haul flight except for the direct flights to US - that I think the seats are good enough to stay at economy (think they call it deluxe economy). And if this year's travel is as much as last, I will have that opportunity to upgrade again in 2007. But I seriously doubt I will be travelling that much this year, not unless new stuff is coming out and it's a must to attend the training overseas!

Let me get back to the topic again... So what's the difference... Well, of course the seats are different (let me digress further on this later), I guess the significant thing would be, they do make the effort to remember your surname and call you by that, instead of just madam/sir. Then again, comparing between 20 (in the upper deck) seats in Raffles class and 313 seats in economy seats, this would be expected. You will have space on the side (for the window seats) to store stuff, which could be anything like a book, magazine, even a camera (I left mine on it while waiting for the sunset... Sad to say was not able to get a good shot of it...)

You get a welcome drink before you fly (and if you want, they do serve champaigne); Another drink to start off the serving of meals (asked along with the main course you will be taking) - can be cocktails, wine (including champaigne), different type of teas, and the usual softdrinks. You get towels as well, before and after meals. Your meals are served individually, such as starters (and a new glass of wine to go with it if you want), then followed by mains and finally dessert, along with coffee and tea - you could have some port or liquer to finish. There are also space to place a permanent cup of water (which they refill whenever the level is low or empty) throughout the whole flight.

The seat. Well, the seat is spacious and comfortable. You can extend it just enough to enjoy the movie that is screening (and yes, the screen is slightly larger), or you can extend it to the max and sleep like you would do on a bed. Only thing is that it's not totally a flat level, so you may feel that you might just slide to the ground... Of course there is a flap that your soles will be against to stop that slide.

So, on that flight, I watched Pride and Prejudice which I have to say, the Darcy character was good, infact far better than Colin Firth. However, I still prefer Elizabeth Ehle's Lizzy than Kiera Knightley's. I guess because it's a movie, they had to cut short a lot of different scenes and thus not having the story developed as it would have as a mini-series.

Watched another 2 movies, The Greatest Game Ever Played (on golf) and a dutch movie 'In Orange' it's about this boy's ambition to be in the Dutch under 14 national team, and the trials that he went through before he got there... I think I watched another movie but I cannot remember it.

One thing that I did not find it good was the noise cancellation phones that they had. It was by this Nasaco company and I don't really find it effective. The only time where it was effective was when you extend your seat further such that the pillow became a cushion the side of your head where suddenly you can't really hear the usual plane noise.

Sigh... It was quite enjoyable that it was a sad thing when we landed. Of course by then, I think because of being inactive for 11 hours other than going to the toliet, I seems to have developed seat sore!!!

So there... My boss wondered why I did not do it for the return flight instead, but since it will be a night flight, I will be too tired to bother about anything else... I am certain I will be sleeping most of the journey (except when they wake you up for meals!!!), so I see no point of doing the upgrade then.

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12 Feb 2006

Woke up very early this morning. Had only about 5 hours of sleep as I slept at 12 midnight last night. Looked at the clock, went to toliet and then lay on the bed again and then had broken sleep till 7 am. Took shower and packed my bags again and went for breakfast.

I have to say I find the method of finding a table at the breakfast area of the Sheraton Frankfurt is quite amusing but yet a bit stressful. They do not have assigned seats, so you go there, and you find seats for yourself. Why is it stressful? Well, for one, if you are alone, and you are taking your food from the buffet table, how would you know if someone else will take your seat while you are away? So it's quite amusing to be sitting there, having your breakfast and seeing people try to cope with this system and find some seat to have their breakfast. Some ended up sharing the tables.

After that small drama at the breakfast area, I checked out and went to Mannheim to walkl around. Dn't ask me why I chose Mannheim. I am still wondering about that myself. It seems that most of the cities closes on SUnday (Sonntige). The only places that are open are the churches, restaurants and shops at the train stations (Hauptbahnhof). So I walked, and walked, and walked, to different areas like the churches, the different platzes, the Mannheim University and had my lunched at a restuarant that specialises in pork knuckles and roast chicken. Nope, I did not have the pork knuckles thinking that it will be too much but half a chicken, that's quite a lot as well...

So decided to head back to Frankfurt. Turns out that I was wrong in remembering the even number timing for direct connection to Freiburg. It seems that it's the odd number timing. It's a good thing that I checked the board and found that the next direct connection to Freiburg was at 3.54pm instead of 4 plus as I originally had in mind. Then I check the timing on the printout I got from the ticketing office was a 5.57pm timing and had a mad scramble to get my luggage from the baggage storage in Sheraton and run back to the train tracks. Managed to hop onto it and now heading toward Freiburg as I am typing this. By now, I'm just 30 mins away from Freiburg. The sun has seems to have set, and now the place seems to be covered with snow as compared to areas near Frankfurt and even Mannheim where there were no snow. It's pity that the sun had set for it would have made some nice photos to keep with all the snow... I kind of wonder how Freiburg will be like? Snowing as well???

Oh well, time to keep the laptop. Arriving soon at the train station, 20 mins more to go...

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13 Feb 2006

Wow... It's cold in the morning like 8 am while walking to the tram station to get the office. Even with the new warmest glove that I have, seems to be not enough. Wonder if that can hold for the skiing (happening on wednesday). Anyway, it was a slow start with introduction to the new stuff in the product... Skiping thru it... No work to be discussed here...

Went into the city square area to have dinner... And out of the cusines that you can chose, we had dinner at this sushi bar (not surprising as I always find no matter where Japanese goes, they tend to try to find their type of cusine in the city they visit... not sure if this is a generalisation, but so far, even in Melbourne or Brisbane, I usually find them in Japanese restaurants). I can only say - try not to do that in smaller towns/cities. Somehow the rice seems different, they had, like in Singapore, done some modification to the sushi and localised it a little, so it's not really "Jap" food in that sense.

Anyway, was back in hotel and tried to get on to their wireless. Well, not successful - there were a few wireless access point around and I just could not get online. Gave up after 30 mins - could not believe that it's so difficult to get on wireless...