Good Morning, Guten Tag, Guten Abend

After 9 hours to Copenhagen, the first leg of my journey is complete. I was lucky, as this was a direct flight from Seattle to Copenhagen. From there I transferred to Frankfurt then on to Liepzig. I am writing this at gate A2 in Frankfurt, as I wait for my plane to board. The trip so far has been pretty uneventful. I ran into a couple of guys from the Xbox ATG group (Advanced Technologu Group) on the Seattle->Copenhagen leg of the trip. ATG is the team that assists developers in creating games for Xbox and Xbox. These two guys were on their way to see some of our publishers, and see some new Xox 360 games. I tried to find out what titles they were going to see, but they would not talk.and the would not tell me. Did I mention they were flying business class (read: the nice part of the plane) while I was crammed in ‘economy’, which is a nice European way of saying the cheap seats. To make up for the lack of information the ATG guys could share with me, they raided the business class ‘all you can eat snack bar’ and brought me an armful of candy, cookies, chocolates and more – while I was in the middle of getting some sleep. It’s pretty disorienting getting rousted out of a sound sleep when you are 37,0000 feet in the air, crammed in tiny airplane seat, with your limbs in positions that resemble s pretzel, at god knows what time my body clock thinks it is, and having 5-7 pounds of junk food dropped in your lap. How’s THAT for a wake up call! Was this a dream? Are these the kind of dreams you have after you ate marginal airplane food? In any event, it was the perfect thing for a midnight snack (even though I have no idea is was.) So I munched some Swiss chocolate, washed it down with some fizzy water and drifted off to sleep again. Once we landed in Copenhagen, it was a mad dash to the other side of the airport to catch my connecting flight to Frankfurt. I hope my luggage (1 piece) will make it….to many connections and two different airlines sounds like a receipe for lost luggage….but time will tell. As I sit here in the terminal, here are some quick and random observations:

*If you have to travel more then 4-5 hours, get a window seat.
*Before you travel, it seatguru.com to scope out the best seat.
*Learn the basic, cordial phrases in the language of the country you are visiting. You’ll get bonus points from the locals for at least trying.
*If you travel outside of the US, make sure you have a GSM phone (Cingular or T-Mobile)
*Diet Coke is known as ‘Coke Light’
*The Copenhagen airport is a nice place for a lay over, even if it does look like one big Ikea.
*You have to travel to Europe at least once in your life.
*You can usually tell foreigners by their footwear. I for one, stand out with my New Balance sneakers. This time I am the foreigner.

Time to go.

Nachste stop Leipzig.