I’ve arrived uneventfully in London and at the Holiday Inn Heathrow Ariel.
I’m not having much luck with Holiday Inn’s on this trip. This one has a
*very* small room — one of the smallest I’ve ever stayed at. Internet
turns out to be a couple of decepit computers in the “business center”.
This hotel is going on my Never-Again list.

The siege of a Russian school where several hundred children were being
held hostage has ended very badly. Several hundred people are dead. What a
sad, horrible situation.

Tomorrow I’ll be back in the USA!

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

This trip to Europe is coming to an end. I’m in the Brussels airport
waiting for a flight to London Heathrow airport. I’ll spend the night there
and continue the trip home tomorrow (Saturday). It’s been an interesting
trip. The first stop was in Sofia, Bulgaria for two days. I’ve got a lot of
pictures to sort through and some will get posted on the web page. Then I
was in a hotel in the southern outskirts of Gent for the next seven nights.
While there I commuted to our office in Oudenaarde, Belgium about 25
minutes away. I would not choose to stay at the Gent Holiday Inn Expo
again. There’s nothing around so taking a walk is not interesting. I spent
one night in a very small hotel in Oudenaarde. It was downtown in an
interesting area (see the Pictures! page), but I also wouldn’t stay there
again, either. The room was Very Small and Spartan. Somewhere there must be
a good hotel downtown with reasonable Internet access!

The past two nights have been at a hotel near Antwerp for a company
off-site meeting. The hotel is in an old castle with very nicely appointed
rooms and accomodations. We were never able to get Internet working at the
hotel. So other than this Blackberry, I’ve been out of the loop
electronically. I’m looking forward to getting to London and to a wired
hotel!

This Blackberry device is a very good invention, particularly here in
Europe. E-mail and phone access is pretty much available anywhere in
western Europe. It’s very nice to be able to call Nina directly and have
her able to call me at any time she wants without having to know where I
am. Coverage and availability will get better in the US over time, as well.
I like being connected.

Next stop is security and then the long walk to the gate. Soon I’ll be in
London!

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

I spent the night last night in Oudenaarde, Belgium rather than in Gent. My original trip plan was to travel to Bulgaria on Monday and Tuesday of this week. When those plans changed to go to Bulgaria last week instead, I wasn’t able to spend Tuesday night in the hotel in Gent. So, I had a chance to walk around the downtown area in Gent and take some pictures. Click on the Pictures! link on the right and then select the "Oudenaarde August 2004" link.

This is an interesting town. Very much a city oriented to the sea. A lovely
walkway extends along the seashore on two sides of the town. There has been
some kind of a festival here this weekend which ended in the later
afternoon. There are thousands of people here walking the streets and
window shopping. I’ve head French, English, German, Dutch (of course) and
several other unidentified languages. There are still several roving street
bands making music, but most folks now seem intent on heading home, and I
shall do so as well.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

I’m on an express train from Gent to the East Sea — just across the
channel from England. It’s a double-decker train. I bought a First Class
ticket but haven’t found the First Class car on the train. Time to do some
more looking. Hmmmm… It is at the end of the train and looks exactly like
2nd class.

I’ve got a weekend fare. 1st class is 12.20 Euros (about $15). The 2nd
class ticket was 8.80 Euros. Not very expensive at all. There is a bicycle
car as well, with quite a few occupants. The fee to take a bicycle along
must be also very inexpensive.

The train is moving right along and the next stop will be Oostende. I don’t
really have a plan once I get there. We’ll see what is available. It looks
to be cool and I didn’t bring a jacket. If so, my stay there will be quite
short.

Church today was interesting. The building is very close to the hotel.
Meetings started at 9:30 am with Priesthood / Relief Society first and
Sacrament Meeting last. They had a combined RS – Psthd meeting with a
counselor in the Branch Presidency teaching. Earphones with translation
were provided during Sacrament Meeting. There were about 80 people in
attendance. About 10 of us were using headsets. It was a very friendly
branch. According to the missionaries, they broke ground recently for a new
Chapel. They are currently meeting on the second floor of an office
building.

Tomorrow all of the hectic continues. I have put some new pictures on the
Pictures! page. Click on the link at the right and select “GentAtNight”.

The flight from Salt Lake City to San Francisco was a fairly nice flight.
For some lovely reason I was upgraded to first class. The flight left on
time and arrived about ten minutes early. As usual, the airplane was quite
full…. If Delta has to declare bankruptcy (which they’re threatening to
do), it isn’t because of insufficient traffic.

After arrival I went to the international terminal to check into my Virgin
Atlantic flight to London. The checkin was very slow and the woman at the
counter was unhappy because my carryon weighed more than 13 pounds. She
wanted to have me check the bag, which wouldn’t work, either as there isn’t
room in my computer bag to carry anything else. So I told here that the bag
had to go with me since it had my nasal CPAP machine inside. Of course she
didn’t know what that was, so she had me open the small suitcase to show
her. Then she decided it was a medical device (which it is) and that I was
a risk to fly on the plane without competent medical people accompanying
me. I told her to go get her supervisor. A bunch of people then showed up.
The guy in charge knew what the machine was and really chewed out the
checkin counter girl for making such a fuss. I felt sorry for her! But it
still wasn’t enough to snag a pass into the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class
Lounge. So far my impressions of Virgin Atlantic aren’t very favorable.
Without paying Upper Class fare (much like First Class on the other
airlines), there aren’t any amenities, even though I’m flying what they call
“premium economy”. I think that I’ll go back to normal Business Class on
Delta. It’s much more what I’m expecting.

Some lady in a uniform has just moved everyone here at the gate to another
part of the waiting area and is roping off about half of the waiting area.
It looks like they’re setting up to herd us like sheep. Ugh.

I’ve actually been home a couple of days now and have pretty much gotten back onto the Pocatello time schedule. I’ve also had time to load up some of the pictures from the trip. Click on the "Pictures" link on the right and then select "Belgium — May 2004". The picture management program on this computer is pretty poor (Microsoft Photo Editor) and consequently, many of the pictures are too dark, skewed, and pixelated. Next week when I get a better program, I’ll redo many of these pictures and they’ll get better.

The trip was very interesting and far too short. There was a lot to do and not much time available to do it in. I had some opportunity to look around and take pictures on Sunday, early Monday morning, and then again on Monday everning. Otherwise, my time was completely occupied. I spent Sunday through Tuesday night in Gent at the Sofitel Hotel right in the middle of downtown Gent. Most travellers spend their last night in Belgium at an airport hotel at the Brussels Airport. This is because the traffic around Brussels in the mornings is very intense and the checkin times at the airport is quite early. So, I was scheduled to spend Wednesday night at the Crowne Plaza Hotel at the Brussels Airport. The problem was, Thursday was a holiday (Ascension Day) in most of Europe and many people were taking Friday off as well to make a 4-day weekend. It seemed that literally all of Holland was going southeast to the mountains and everyone in the southeast was headed northwest to the seashore and most of them were travelling on Wednesday evening.

The folks at the office suggested that I take a round about route to the east side of Brussels so that I would only be in the heavy traffic for a couple of hours. The route took me through a part of French-speaking Belgium and was a very pleasant drive until I met up with the traffic. I then spent a couple of hours moving at about 3 to 5 miles an hour in massive traffic — and each direction looked exactly the same. It was quite reminiscent of some trips in Japan on holidays!

The move schedule has changed somewhat. The folks in the house we’re buying in Pocatello haven’t yet been to Plano, Texas, to do their own househunting. Consequently, they’ve asked for a closing date after they have found a place to move into, or August 21st, whichever comes first. As a result, our furnishings will go into storage and we’ll move into temporary housing here when we get back on June 18th.

We’ll go to Church at our new Ward on Sunday (they meet at 9 a.m.) and then we’ll drive to Soda Springs to spend a few hours with my folks. Nina will leave on Monday morning early to drive back to Colorado Springs. She’ll then be Home Again as well!

I’ve been in Belgium on a business trip for the past several days. I flew out of Salt Lake City on Saturday, May 15th through Kennedy Airport in New York City, arriving in Brussels the next morning at about 9 a.m. The flight was completely uneventful and everything happened right on time. It has been a delightful trip both personally and for business.

I’m staying in a reasonable hotel right in the heart of Gent (aka Ghent). The AMIS facility is located in the small city of Oudenaarde, about a half-hour south of Gent. Close to the hotel this river runs through the town on its way to the sea in Antwerp. I woke up early on Monday morning and got several pictures of this river with lovely reflections. It is an old European town with delightful architecture, intriguing shops, and great restaurants.

On of my engineers responsible for factory automation was here on business as well, so he met me at the airport and guided me to the hotel. After a couple hours of sleep, we walked around a little part of downtown Gent before having dinner and retiring for the night.

Did I mention that there was good food in Gent?? All of the meals have been quite delicious, including breakfast in the hotel. Our breakfasts in the U.S. should have so much variety of food. Fortunately, the portion sizes in the restaurants are much smaller than at home so perhaps I’m not gaining too much weight!

I have taken many, many pictures with my digital camera. Internet connections, however, are very difficult to come by, let alone having enough time at night to do something like this. I’m going to have the admin over here check around to see if there’s a hotel with a fast internet connection. It took some work to get this dial-up connection working, and it still won’t download e-mail correctly. I’ve probably got something setup incorrectly.

But, here I am, enjoying life (as well as work once again). The weather has been very cooperative and I’m quite happy with that. Life is good in Belgium!