France, Royan (being there)

Well,all the rumours are true, Ali is definitely pregnant (see photo). France was a great time of relaxing and laying around - it was mid 30s every day and with no air conditioning people just did not feel like being very active. Ali,though pregnant, seems to be coping with the heat better than half of the locals.

We went to the beach on two occasions and the last time we had a picnic on the beach after the sun had gone down. It was beautiful and I had a great time.

Highlight of the trip was being in a place where almost noone spoke my language and so there was a lot of pointing and trying to explain ourselves with hand movements. A good example of this was when I went shopping with Bastien and even though he knows some English we had to do a fair bit of explaining individual ingredients before I knew what I was getting.

But all good things must come to an end and so I got back on to a plane to head back to England for the last 2 days of meetings and then doing the whole repack thing to come home (which I am really looking forward to I might add).

Yup, pregnant Ali


French beach picnic

France, Royan (getting there!!)

Now my lovely time with Ralf and Jacqui was over I was meant to get on a train to Paris and then exchange for a train to Angouleme and then on to Royan. That all sounded OK except that I was supposed to pick up my tickets at the train station from the ticket counter. While talking to Ralf he mentioned that he wasn't sure that there even was a ticket (fahrkarte, billet) machine on the French side of the Basel SBB (trainstation).

Guess what, after a bunch of Internet queries and phone calls (mainly in French by Ralf) we found out that he was right. So we got the tickets reembursed and decided that I would stay in Germany for 1 more night and get the tickets again the next day at the train station.

I got dropped at the train station by Ralf the next morning and asked the guy at the counter to book me through to Royan (it took 3 tries and me spelling it out before he got it). He booked me on a train that was to take me to Noirt and then on to Royan. This was good except that I needed to change trains at Paris and also change stations (Paris Est -> Paris Montepanasse). I managed to quite quickyl get between the stations using the Metro (underground trains) but still missed my connection. I used all of the words I knew in French to talk to a guy at a ticket counter to get my tickets reissued and he also pointed out that the other guys in Basel had booked me to Noirt and then the connecting train actually was more than 50 km away and so would have been pressty useless to me. So he sorted that out.

I finally made it to Royan at 12 midnight on the day I had meant to arrive at 12 midday. But was picked up by Ali, Bastien and Alice (another Aussie) at the station.

Germany

Well, what a week off. Two (or technically three) countries and lots of fun.

The week started with me heading off from Luton airport to Basel, Switzerland from where I walked across the French border to of the sights and not meet Sarah and Ralf. Ralf took my bags and we headed into Basel for a while to check out some surprisingly cuisine.

The first thing you need to know about Basel is that the people there speak either German or French and as such most people speak both and some English. What was amusing was trying to guess before the end what was their first language so that when you said goodbye you did it in the right language. I don't know how many times I said "Danke, tschüß" and they replied "Merci, beaucoup".

We wandered around for a few hours but eventually the heat (35 degrees) overcame us and we got on a train for the half hour trip back to Schopheim where Sarah's host family live. The countryside is extemely beautiful here and as we travelled on the train we crossed yet another border (no one even checks passports here most of the time).

When we got to Schopfheim I got a short tour of the town and then we went for a walk up to the house where Jacqui and Ralf live. What a hill, thank goodness Ralf had already taken my bags for me.

Me with a big German beer

Schopfheim street

The castle we saw:

Olton Rd Visit

Well, we had our first meeting with Severn Trent Water and it went pretty well. We had arrived around 30 minutes early and so went for a drive to find the Olton Boulevard DMA. We got very close but in the end did not find the DMA before the meeting.

Following the meeting with Matt Foster, we had a nother shot at finding the DMA. Now armed with a map and some directions from Matt, this became a far more achievable task.

We went for a bit of a drive and drove around most of the DMA. I have taken pictures and these will only mean something to Ruth and some of the others at Optimatics who have seen the area. I will include a few more interesting ones.

While we were there, we also found a location where they were doing some works and had dug up whatmust have been the location of the Olton DMA district meter. Around this was a whole bunch of either decomissioned or damaged/not used pipe parts. Again see pictures.

Sorry for those who are not engineers, this was probably quite a boring entry but it was nice to actually see the places that we are designing. It all seems a little more real.

After this we went to a pub for a meal. This pub was actually on Olton Boulevard and it was a little bit rougher than either Keith or I had expected. I almost felt that I should have taken off my tie and undone the first 4 or so buttons of my shirt to "fit in", but decided against it.

Overall it was fun but I'm glad we don't eat at pubs everytime where you arrive and turn the table cloth over to try to find a clean spot.

Some spare parts left lying around


Hydrant

Arriving and the world cup

Well, there is a slight difference between the length of the days last time I was here and now.
Also the temperature is a little better - last time I gotoff the plane in Heathrow it was -2 degrees, this time, 30 degrees.

Anyway, enough small talk. The flight was good and we actually took off, on time, first try. Yay for Qantas. The flight was completely full and so there was no room to move around much but all of the people were fairly quiet and so I got a little bit of sleep.

When I got off the plane and caught a taxi back to the hotel there was only one place to be - in front of a TV. England vs Portugal was on and the place stopped. It was a weird sensation to be watching soccer, err, sorry football while it was light. Anyway, after lots of yelling at the referees and the players, it was all over and the pub became quite a grumpy place and I was happy to leave it to go for bed. For those that missed the result England are out of the world cup after losing in penalties with lots of bad efforts from the spot.

The next morning I got up and went to the gym for a quick work out and then breakfast before Keith picked me up to go to OXford. Stay tuned ...