Little Big Adventure, Day 1

08:10 GMT+1
I’ve made it to my first station of my three-week trip to Boston, San Francisco and New York, the airport in Düsseldorf. Both check-in and security check were very relaxed, with no waiting line at all.
I’m writing this while waiting for my flight to Amsterdam. There I’ll have another three hours of waiting time.
If you are planning to fly somewhere: Düsseldorf Airport is very easy to reach both via car and public transportation – the train was only five minutes late.
The terminal is very clean and shiny, and the noise-level is extremely low beyond the security check.
That may be different though on another day – be it the noise bit or the shiny bit. Definitely the train bit…

11:50 GMT+1
A few hours later, after the flight to Amsterdam with a Fokker 50, a small propeller machine with 50 passengers: Darn, no free wireless internet here either. Guess I have to post this later…

12:30 GMT+1
Amsterdam airport is much busier then Düsseldorf, and not nearly as shiny. There are much more shops here, and I nearly bought a Sony Cybershot DSCW80 in a gadget shop. I’ll wait with that some more, but I really need a camera when I get to San Francisco. Recommendations for small digital cameras below $250 are welcome.

The flight to Boston is scheduled for 14:55, I should be there at about 17:00 local time.

13:20 GMT+1
Oh well, the security check for the Boston flight at Amsterdam was a bit weird. I was asked about number of luggages, who packed it, where it was packed, where it was while I traveled to the airport and so on. The answers were obvious, but I had trouble understanding the questions. It took me three attempts to understand “Are you traveling alone?”. I hope its just the dutch english that I didn’t get and not my bad english skills.

16:30 EST
It felt great to be able to replace the nervousness and fear of the unknown to come with exitement, while landing in Boston at the Logan airport.

The flight itself was fine: enough drinks and food an an entertaining system that I used to watch Sunshine and 1408, both movies you propably shoudln’t watch on a plane that is going through some turbulences once in a while. Otherwise, I can recommend both!

18:20 EST
The checkout wasn’t that pleasant: I had to answer a few questions that were pretty successful at making me feel like a gangster. I guess they made me quite nervous, resulting in a few more questions at a later point. After all, everything was okay and I got by Taxi to my hotel quite quick. The checkin there was easy and the staff very friendly.
I wasn’t so happy to see that my power adpater didn’t fit…

20:54 EST
Got one! I asked at the the reception and they gave me directions for a near CircuitCity store at the South Bay mall. Well, they hadn’t what I was looking for, but I got the hint to give Best Buy a try – and the third seller I asked found what I needed, for a mere $20. Doh. I could’ve saved those if I had checked that my adapter I brought here really fitted to the power supply for my laptop. Stupid me.

On the way back I stopped at “Victoria’s Diner”, one of those restaurants you know only from movies (if you are from Europe). There is a bar with a soda machine and some other stuff, and tables along the front wall with windows to the street. And they offer, among other stuff, burgers. Not the crap I knew from McDonalds or Burger King, real burgers. There were about 12 to choose from, have them well or medium and choose between three variations of fries.
I also ordered a coke (actually I tried ordering a pepsi, but they had only coka cola) and got half a litre with a lot of ice. Good to know what you can expect, and actually a good fit for the burger and the fries. I managed to spoil some coke over the table at first, and the waitress topped that a few minutes later by spoiling a whole glass over the bar. Icky.

Usually the McDonalds/Burger King menu is hardly enough to get fed for more then a few minutes. In this case it was a bit too much.
In the end I learned something quite useful: “All set” is the equivalent to “stimmt so”, meaning that you don’t want the change back, the rest is the tip.

The clock here says 09:14, while my laptop is still set to GMT+1, resulting in 03:14. I hope I get used to that soon.
Lets see how the bed is, and then on to day two – the first tutorial session of the AJAX experience starts at 1pm. Stay tuned!

PS: It was shockingly warm when I came out of the airport and kept that way over the evening (I walked about 10 minutes to the South Bay mall where the CircuitCity was). According to John Resig, “it is abnormally warm”. Would be great to have such nice whether next week in SF.

-Jörn

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  1. Ein interessanter erster Bericht. Freut mich, dass du ohne wirkliche Probleme angekommen bist. 🙂

    Wegen der Digicam wäre vielleicht eine so genannte Bridgekamera interessant, die Vorteile von Spiegelreflex und Kompaktkameras vereint. Siehe z.b. Testübersicht auf http://www.etest-digitalkamera.de/Digitale-Bridge-Kameras.Testsieger.html
    (wobei die dann nicht mehr wirklich “klein” sind)

  2. Hallo,

    spannend zu lesen. Ich war erst vor 6 Wochen in den USA (Westküste) und habe nur zu dem Zweck mir eine Canon Ixus 860 zugelegt. In den USA heißt die gleiche Kamera Canon SD870 und ein sehr guter Test ist aktuell auf dpreview.com zu finden ( http://www.dpreview.com/news/0710/07101901canonsd870isreview.asp ).

    Die Kamera kann ich sehr empfehlen. Sie hat Weitwinkel (28mm – 105mm) und macht sehr gute Fotos. Ein paar Fotos, die ich mit der Kamera gemacht habe, kannst Du hier sehen: http://www.citybeat.de/media/pages.html?what=news&id=2075484
    oder hier (Bilder aus San Francisco): http://www.citybeat.de/media/pages.html?what=news&id=2075540

    Die Kamera hat vor allen Dingen etwas, was ich erst im Urlaub zu schätzen gelernt habe: Einen sehr guten Video-Modus. Die Qualität ist exzellent, wirklich. Jetzt nach dem Urlaub freue ich mich über die Videos mehr als über die Bilder.

    Wenn die 870 zu teuer ist, würde ich ein Auslaufmodell von Canon nehmen. Die haben meist nur weniger MegaPixel aber auch schon den sehr guten Video-Modus.

    Viel Spaß noch in den USA,
    Hermi

  3. Tomasz, da hab ich auch drüber nachgedacht, aber im Moment ist mir die Größe noch wichtiger. Wenn ich die Kamera nicht mitnehme, weil sie zu groß ist, wäre das relativ wertlos.

    Hermann, danke für den Tipp. Das Vorgängemodell, die SD800, ist ein gutes Stück günstiger zu haben und nicht wirklich schlechter, wie es aussieht. Zwar kleineres Display, dafür aber einen optischen Sucher, was ja bei viel Sonnenlicht ganz gut sein soll. Der Video-Modus ist auch nicht unattraktiv.