Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 13:15:04 +0100
Subject: "The Periodic Adventures and the Adventurous Periodical of Marleigh," Issue 6

Hi All!

The week of travelling is half over.

First there was Munich.  The travel was uneventful, Ted, Gabriel and
Nick met me at the train station on Friday.  We went to dinner and
looked around a bit, checked out this old mansion, a World War I and II
memorial, and saw Odeonsplatz (had a cathedral and a monument to the war
which unified Germany), which I thought was way cool.  Then we went back
to the youth hostel, where I beat them all soundly at a game of
Bohnanza.  It was my first time playing, but I suspect the fact that
they had a total of five hours of sleep between them over the last two
days more than made up for that.

Saturday we did lots of sightseeing, saw the clockwork show in
Marienplatz, went to a toy museum, went to lunch in an old beer hall,
and ended the evening at the theater, watching a production of "Hamlet"
in German.  None of us could follow the words very well (Gabriel doesn't
know any German) but we knew the play well enough to follow the action. 
It was a wierd modern version, the stage was littered with trash and
body parts by the end of the show.  It certainly was interesting,
though.

Sunday was spent at the Deutsches Museum, a huge museum devoted to
technology.  We got there at 9:30 and left around 4 and still didn't see
all of it.  There was a V2 rocket and a bunch of neat old boats.  The
others tolerated a picture to be taken of them in front of an airplane. 
The airplane was Nick's choice, on the theory that I'd have to zoom out
to get the whole thing.  I compromised and got about half the airplane. 
Then Ted took a picture of us by the boats, so those pictures will be
getting developed next week sometime, one hopes.

We all went back to Ulm Sunday night, and Monday I went to work.  The
Three Thetans were supposed to meet me for lunch, but ended up sleeping
until one instead.  Sightseeing on Monday, and I prepared to go to CeBIT
on Tuesday.  Also Monday heralded the Return of the Roommates!  Sabine
and Michael were sighted briefly in the vacinity of the kitchen, though
I haven't seen them since.

Tuesday I went to CeBIT, this huge computer fair, in Hannover with
Richard.  It was 4-5 hours by train, there Tuesday morning and back
Wednesday night.  CeBIT was a bit disappointing.  There was nothing I
felt was especially new, just things smaller, faster, and doing things I
thought were rather obvious.  One of the better products I saw was
called a Toughbook.  It's a laptop by Panasonic that has a touchscreen
as well as a mouse, which I've been waiting for some computer company to
do.  There was also this interesting demo where they repeatedly threw
one of these down some stairs and ran water over it for several hours
while it was running.  It got a bit scratched, but still ran.  I was
impressed.

I was also amused by the massive amounts of money going into it.  There
were wet bars at every stand, as well as dancing girls, free demos and
samples of stuff, people in wierd costumes, mimes, all sorts of wierd
stuff.  It made me wish I'd worn a suit, as it was, they didn't take me
seriously enough in my t-shirt and jeans to give me the good stuff.  I
hung out alot with the research groups and universities.  In general,
they were friendlier and didn't care who they were talking to, since
they didn't have any products they were selling.  They also often had
copies of their research available as freeware, so next week I intend to
play with this new 3D rendering library I picked up.

Hannover was CeBIT crazy too.  Any restaraunt you went into was double
the price and hotels were impossible to find.  We stayed with this woman
in her private home, who rents out to DaimlerChrysler people just for
CeBIT (she works for debis, a DaimlerChrysler subsidiary).  I stayed in
her daughter's room full of teddy bears and felt quite at home.  She was
also able to direct us to an out of the way cafe where the prices were
more sane.

German Word of the Week:
der Hauptbahnhof = central station (train or subway)

If Gabriel remembers one German word from his stay in Germany, I bet you
this is it.  One transfers from one subway line to the next at the
Munich Hauptbahnhof, then we took a train from the Munich Hauptbahnhof
to the Ulm Hauptbahnhof, then the three of them went to Salzburg, where
they arrived at the Hauptbahnhof, and then today I suspect they got to
see the Vienna Hauptbahnhof, before returning to the Munich Hauptbahnhof
to get to the airport on Sunday.  A subway or bus ride is not complete
without stopping by the Hauptbahnhof.  If you aren't getting out there,
which is rare, you at least have to wave to it.  So if you ever hear
Ted, Gabriel, Nick or I saying "Wave to the Hauptbahnhof!" and giggling,
that's why.

Honor and Glory...
	to free orange juice at large computer conferences
	to huge, gratuitous cathedrals
Dishonor and Notoriety to...
	one's boss forgetting to tell one that the hotel and such is not
	      paid for (and there I was, at the ATM, thinking to myself,
	      "I can't possibly need more than 200DM in two days."  No
	      worries, Richard paid for my things and DaimlerChrysler is
	      reembursing us.)
	to noisy youth hostel roommates	

Now I need to go to the train station to catch a train to Munich, so I
can take a bus to the airport, a plane to Vienna, and the subway to the
hotel.  

Tscheuss!
Marleigh