The Yeagers’ Experiences

So we just got back from Copenhagen, and for those that don’t know about the city, here’s a quick gist. Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, which is on Germany’s northern border. It is considered a Scandanavian nation, and is part of the EU although they are not on the Euro (but rather on the Danish krone — which the dollar is quite strong against!). A study not too long ago rated the Danish (the people of Denmark) as the happiest people in the World.

And Stacey and I thought Copenhagen (København) was awesome. The entire city was built for bicycles with bike lanes just as large as car lanes on either side of the street with bike racks everywhere. It was a very clean city too, and massive parks fill the city. The best part about Copenhagen? The ice cream. Everywhere you look there is ice cream and man do I love ice cream. At least 1 in 10 people is walking down the street eating it, and every corner place sells it from pubs to chinese places, to shwarma (arab) places, to museums and even hotels. It’s the best place on earth.

Somehow they also fit a full-scale amusement park in the center of town called “Tivoli”. It only takes up about 4 city blocks but it has everything a normal amusement park has. Stacey and I were very impressed with how well they used the space, by crunching things under the roller coasters and having just enough walking room. There was even a full-scale stage, stupid money-grabbing games, and a fun-house! We also rode the oldest *working* roller coaster in the world twice. No, parents, we didn’t die. It was pretty fun and felt much safer than the cyclone and half the other rides at Six Flags.

Pictures: http://www.joeyeager.com/copenhagen

Joe

Ok, so its not actually painful, but I do have a major complaint about living here. Almost from the very day we landed here, I have either been overcome by allergies, or had a serious cold. In one month (in the middle of summer no less!!), I have had 2 terrible colds. The current one is bad enough to keep me home from work. Yesterday I went through 7 of those tissue packs!

I’m not sure what it is about the air here, but I am getting very annoyed about this. Perhaps it is the soot that coats the Underground tunnels. Perhaps it is the germs that cover every inch of the disgusting tube carriages. Maybe there are weird allergens in the air here that I have never been exposed to before, so it is taking a larger than expected toll on my health (but why then is Joey not affected??). Perhaps this city is just so polluted that I am already developing lung cancer! I just don’t know.

Thankfully, a cold and some allergies isn’t that serious…but still! We are going on a trip to Copenhagen on Thursday, so that only gives me 2 days to recover…

If anyone has any other ideas of what it might be, please, do tell.

Sorry this has taken so long, but we finally have our phone working and pictures of our flat up

Phone: Call either of our cell phones and it will redirect to our London phone
Pictures: http://www.joeyeager.com/londonflat

Cheers!
Joe

So since we have been living in the GMT timezone, we figured an actual visit to the Greenwich Royal Observatory was in order. This is the place of standard time and zero longitude. I thought it would just be a cool photo-op of us standing on the Prime Meridian, but it was actually very interesting in other ways as well. For one, it is a very unique building, stationed on top of a large (for English standards) hill with lots of domes and a neat weathervane. Secondly, we learned all about how important finding longitude was at sea, and how the problem was finally solved. The issue is that you can calculate it by a clock, but the clocks of that day had pendulums that swung back and forth (think grandfather clock here). This posed no problem on land, but when you are in a boat that is rocking back and forth the movement throws off the pendulum. Hence, inaccurate time = inaccurate longitude. This caused many shipwrecks and made map making very difficult. Eventually someone came up with a chronometer that could keep accurate time and solved the problem. There was also a really cool octagonal observatory used to entertain important figures of the 17th century. It was very beautiful.

Anyway, it probably all sounds very boring, but it really was fun. The observatory overlooked this really big park and the Queen’s House (but no queen ever lived there). Nevertheless, the whole complex was architecturally stunning.

Pictures: http://www.joeyeager.com/greenwich

The first work trip I had to take was to Stuttgart, Germany. My company has been working with Daimler Chrysler for quite some time now and we wanted to check up on how they were doing so I headed out there. Let me tell you, it was not what I expected!

First of all, I thought renting a car would be an awesome idea… you know, autobahn and all? And assuming that I would just figure out the road signs on the fly, I would have no problems. Well, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I was excited though to find out that my rental car was not a 2-seater with a 1.0 liter engine like I expected, rather a Mercedes C210. It was a station wagon though, but come to find out everyone drives station wagons over there. Strange, I know! A quick glance over the “Guide to Road Signs in Germany” that the rental car place kindly provided, and I was off. Now, I was told everyone spoke English very well, so I would have no problems — but that wasn’t the problem. None of the directional road signs were in English! For instance, my map said to get on the A4 or something… but all I could find were road signs that said “Echterdinger Strβe” and “Flughafenrandstrβe”. Yeah, I have no idea what the B-looking symbol is either. To make a long story short, somehow I just took turns where I felt like it (where the road curved like the map did) and then saw the Daimler Chrysler sign, and I knew my hotel was near that. On the way back to the airport later it was easier, I just followed signs with the little airplane symbol on them.

I was there a total of 2 nights and was meeting with DC all day long, so I didn’t have time to see the city or anything. Not a biggie, I’ll be back again someday.

The real issue was the problem with flights. My return flight was scheduled to fly into Heathrow airport, on the day that the sting went down. I called at noon and asked if my flight was still OK. The woman assured me everything was OK and my flight was still going out on time. I showed up at 3:00 and was told that no flights were going to Heathrow that day, and the best they could do was put me on something out the next day. I quickly got a hotel and planned to be in for another night. I had Stacey on the phone though looking up airline and train schedules and trying to get me out that night. See, London has 4 airports and so I knew one of them had to have a flight from Stuttgart that I could jump on. Thankfully, she found something and I booked it at the desk — an hour and a half before the flight was scheduled for takeoff. Strangely enough, no one searched my bags besides the metal detectors, and I even carried a bottle of coke onto the plane! If there were tougher security measures, they were definitely not where I was.

Oh well, I got home safe that night (walked in at 10:30pm GMT) and was very happy to be home.

Marsha (Joey’s mom) just left us yesterday. She had been staying with us for the last week after she finished up her tour or Wales and Northern England. I must say it was very refreshing to see a familiar face and to pass the time with someone we are comfortable with. Unfortunately, Joe got called away to Germany (his first business trip!) while she was here. I know that was disappointing for both of them to not be able to spend as much time together as they each wanted.

During her trip, we tried out many new restaurants, rode the London Eye (the universe’s biggest ferris wheel) did some shopping at Harrod’s, and went out to see a West End play - the London run of The Producers. The play was hilarious; I would highly recommend it for anyone who has not yet seen it. As for Harrod’s…what can you really say about a place like that? It was fantastically interesting - 6 floors of luxury items and over priced goods, and a creepy memorial to Princess Di and Dodi al-Fayed. I actually found a Christmas decoration that I bought at TJMaxx last year for about $4 selling at Harrod’s for £30 (that’s about $55)!

All in all, I think it was a successful trip, and we all had a good cry when she left for the airport. Seeing her leave made it really hit home that we will not be seeing friends and family very often, and when we do see them it will be very short lived. We miss you all very, very much.

So Joey will tell you all about our visit to the British Motor Show, but I thought this story was particularly funny so I have to share it now. We were looking at a cool looking Renault sports-car (a French manufacturer). A British boy, no more than 10 years of age, said in perfect Queen’s english “This is a nice car Mum, but we cahn’t buy it because it’s French.” Makes me feel right at home!

Pictures Up: http://www.joeyeager.com/motorshow

We finally have Internet!! It took quite some time fighting with the phone company but we’re all setup now. We connected our Vonage telephone and can make outbound calls but we are still having problems receiving inbound calls. I think I figured out why and fixed it, but it might be awhile till it takes effect. Will keep you guys updated on the status of that…

Since we now have Internet, we can finally blog everyday like normal people :). I’m in the process of upgrading my website (joeyeager.com) so expect some changes there. Afterwards I will load up every picture I have so you guys can check out all the cool places we’ve been to.

Until then… Cheers!