Messin' with Texas

Current Mood: Happy

There are two reasons I haven’t written in a while. One, I am on a business trip through Germany, and then next week Poland. The other reason is that until about one minute ago, I had not finished watching all three seasons of the TV show Lost. Now that that is done, I can have free time again. A ward of caution to anyone reading this, do not ever start watching that show; I wanted so badly to stop watching it but my curiosity wouldn’t let me.

I am not going to complain about my love/hate relationship with Lost. Instead I would like to tell you about how my trip has been going. My first two meetings went fine. I spent my first day in Oberhausen with one of our suppliers. It was “Turkish Accounts Day,” something organized by the company for all of its Turkish customers. Not much interesting happened except at dinner. We had two big tables (there were a lot of us and a lot of them) in a nice Spanish restaurant. Since everyone was standing around waiting for someone to do something, I decided to quickly grab a spot. Within a minute or two everyone else was seated. One table was seven Germans and an American. The other table was eight or nine Turks and a Romanian. It was like no one even thought about it. Just instinctively, everyone sat down, perfectly divided. Once seated, the mistake was quickly realized, but no one said anything.

I left my bag in Oberhausen thinking I would travel east for my two Tuesday meetings, and then come back through Oberhausen before heading south to Dusseldorf. It was along the line, so it wouldn’t be too much of a problem to pick up my bag. Unfortunately, my third meeting, Tuesday afternoon, was cancelled because of a big fire in a factory, and everyone at the company I was working at was on site, trying to get things up and running again. I decided to stay in Bielefeld, and rescheduled my meeting for Wednesday morning, and moved Wednesday’s to Thursday. Unfortunately, after deciding to do that, I discovered that there was not one single available hotel room in Bielefeld.

Without any real aim, I wandered a bit upon arriving in Bielefeld until I happened upon a hotel that did not look too fancy. I went in and inquired about a room and was told there were none. Some big fair was going on and the hotel manager said it would be difficult to find a room anywhere. At first he seemed reluctant to help me. As I began making call after call to hotels I had in the list I had picked up in the train station, he eventually decided to help me. He said to come back in one hour.

After a bit of walking around, I came back. He said he had asked everyone he knew that could have a room and there were none. The Internet had yielded the same results. Luckily, he had two guests that had not arrived, and their reservation was guaranteed only until six. They called to confirm they were on their way within a few minutes of the deadline. Finally, after a few more tries, he said I could rent one of the unused, un-renovated rooms on the top floor. The room had no heating, so it was cold. The TV in it used an old fashion antenna. The only bathroom was a shared bathroom at the end of the hall, which also had no heating. No mini soaps or shampoos in the shower (remember I didn’t have my luggage). At least I got a room though, and at a 25% discount too!

My stay in Bielefeld was interesting, but not like my return to Oberhausen. I inquired at the train station in Oberhuasen – before fetching my bag from the previous hotel – about a hotel in Dusseldorf. A quick check online showed that the international furniture fair had taken all of the rooms. It also showed that nearly all the rooms in Oberhausen were also taken, except for one. I remember thinking to myself at least it will be a proper room in a proper hotel. The man at the train station explained to me that in order to get in the hotel I must go first to a butcher’s shop and inquire there about the hotel. Apparently – I am not joking at all – the family that owns and runs the hotel, also owns and runs the local butcher. Because they don’t have enough manpower, the hotel is locked during the day, with no one in reception. In fact I did not see the hotel open once in the evening, despite the fact that they advertise there is a restaurant there. I found this a bit odd. What was even more odd was that they simply handed me a key with my room number on it. Didn’t take a credit card, didn’t take my passport, didn’t even ask me my name.

The rooms were fine. Clean, had heating, had TV. They even had a free wireless LAN you could use from the first floor and the ground floor. I did notice two other oddities however. There did not seem to be a way to call an outside line from the hotel room, and pushing the button for reception did nothing because there was never anyone in reception. The second thing I realized while writing an email to someone who was going to meet me at my hotel. Nowhere in the hotel, not on any papers, not on the napkins, not on anything in the rooms or downstairs, was the name of the hotel. I had no idea where I was actually staying. Only on the front of the hotel, which was a small door that looked like a walkup apartment building, was the name of the hotel. To top it all of, their breakfast sucked.