Impressions of a travellin' woman...

I finished (hooray!) my degree in December and now I'm on to new things. I received my 2-year post-study-work visa and have formed my own company here in England as a freelance contractor. This will allow me to stay in my field of clinical trial research as well as still live here in beautiful Norwich, England by contracting with to companies who want to run trials in Europe. So far things are off to a good start with a couple of clients whose work will take me to a few countries in Europe about 2-3 times per month. This past week I travelled for one job in particular -- to The Netherlands and Germany.

I think the upcoming travel may afford me opportunities to noodle on the differences between countries and cultures -- which I expect may find its way here to the blog. This first trip was a very jam-packed blur, so my impressions are quite haphazard, but I wanted to share them nonetheless:

English businessmen, unlike US businessmen, wear cufflinks. And I don't mean just sometimes. The business lounge at Stansted or London City Airport is awash in cufflinks. And not unlike a woman's necklace, earrings, or handbag, these cufflinks highly reflect the individual. One particular man next to me came across as supremely organized -- with a very boring blue suit, very boring shoes, the boring black Tumi carryon laptop bag. Overall -- just another wallflower in the corporate collage of black, blue, and grey. But then I noticed his cufflinks. They were silver-rimmed with neon pink and orange inlays. For some reason I thought immediately of peacocks and how their plummage still lives on evolutionarily on this man's wrists.The tube in London is the fifth ring of hell and should be avoided at all costs during rush-hour times. I have absolutely no idea how they plan on accomodating Olympics tourists in 2012 with the amount of station closures there currently are due to overcrowding. Sigh.

European train links rock. It is so easy to get around Europe by train and -- at least in The Netherlands and Germany -- the schedule is more than the mere "suggestion" it is here in England. One of the days there, I was on a train from Koln to Mainz, which takes the train down the Rein river through German wine country. It was truly beautiful. The actual inside of the trains, however, were not the same beasts I remember from previous travel in the area. To be fair, the last time I was in Germany was 1996, so it has been a while. I remember the trains being clean and modern. My impression this time was that they were ancient and very dirty. I'm going to assume perhaps I had bad luck and wait to make a formal opinion until I've travelled around a bit more. Perhaps I just had bad train luck.

While there is a lot of bread in England, there is a lot MORE bread in Germany. Those Germans LOVE their bread. And after tasting it, I can see why. It's a far cry from the bread in France, but there is something to be said about a homemade breakfast pretzel.
Dinner roulette is a fun game that can be played by anyone travelling in a country where they do not speak a lick of the language. This is how you play: Go to a restaurant and even if they have a menu in English -- just keep the one in the local language. Look for fun words like putenbrustsnitzel or wildeswein and have fun guessing what it might be. Order the longest or most interesting worded item and enjoy the surprise! Or...you can play the less adventurous version and learn one to two words like "plizen" (means mushrooms) that you like and figure that whatever else it is -- it will be mushroomy and delicious.