Some 2000 kilometers (about 1300 miles), about 31 hours on 5 different trains and about 10 battery charges later, we arrived in Prague today. Well… Actually, I’m writing this on the train from Warsaw to Prague so we’re not actually there yet and we still have about 5 hours left on this train but I can’t actually post this until we do arrive in Prague. But anyway, I thought this would be a great time to look back at last week.
We started this leg of the tour in Stockholm (A). I really love Stockholm. Everyone is so nice there and the city is beautiful. Oh and cinnamon rolls are a national speciality and as some of you know I really like cinnamon things ;-) Jag alskar Stockholm! The event was in an old brewery right by the river. I really like these old buildings with exposed structures etc. After the event, Enrique, Melissa (from the event company taking care of all the logistics for the tour) and I went to a really nice fish restaurant right around the corner from our hotel. The concierge of our hotel actually suggested this restaurant and I have to say, he has great taste! If you ever find yourself in Stockholm, go check out Wedholms fisk restaurant.
The next morning… oh wait… I think it was still officially night ’cause our train left at 6am so we met in the lobby at around 5:30. That kinda hurt… and we all knew this was going to be the longest trip from the tour. A train from Stockholm to Berlin via Copenhagen (B) and Hamburg (C). It should have ‘only’ taken us 12 hours to get to Berlin but because the first train had a 30 minute delay, we actually missed our connection in Copenhagen. We spent 3 hours in Copenhagen Central station. Actually… We spent it at the O’Reillys sports bar in the station ;-)
At the coast in Denmark, the train drove on to a ferry and we crossed the Baltic sea enjoying a breeze of fresh air op the top deck of this ferry. Really nice to get out for a while. I think we finally arrived in our hotel in Berlin (D) at almost midnight… 18 hours after we left Stockholm. I guess I don’t need to explain that everyone was dead tired…
Next morning was yet another early morning wakeup call to go to the venue. Actually, I should be honest and tell you that Mike Chambers (our road-manager ;-)) did tell me that I could sleep a little longer since my session was in the afternoon but I knew that Benjamin Dobler and Marco Kaiser were joining us in Berlin and I wanted to welcome them early. Benjamin showed us some new stuff he’s currently working on for parleys.com. He’s actually building a complete publishing solution for Parleys where you can just add videos, slides etc and it even does PPT conversion. Amazing work! It was great to meet Marco for the first time and it was even better that I could ask him about some feature requests for the next version of Twhirl. Looking forward to that next version Marco! Now let’s hope that Twitter becomes a bit more stable and useable again. That evening, Kevin Hoyt, Lee Brimelow, Danny Dura and I went to a typical German restaurant American diner right on Potsdammer Platz. Great burgers and great steak. Some of us would go right back although that may also be because of the pretty waitress ;-)
Thursday morning, we took the train to Warsaw. A few minutes after we crossed the Polish border, the train stopped and when we looked outside, we could actually see our locomotive taking off without the train. Just a little bit strange but luckily a few minutes later, a new locomotive pulled up and we were back on route.
The event in Warsaw (E) was at the Olympic Center. The Olympic committee did a great job here. As in Stockholm and Berlin there were only a few empty seats in the room and the crowds were really great and responsive. In the evening all of us went the old town for dinner. While we waited for our food (which took a bit longer than it should have), Danny told us that the square we were on is actually a Unesco protected site. But it felt kinda fake to me and that’s completely normal since they had it completely rebuilt based on sketches and original plans. Some of us ordered boar for dinner. I never had boar so I ordered it too. Sadly it was way overcooked and apparently not really how it should be. Guess I’ll have to try it again somewhere else.
So here we are sitting on a train to our next destination, Prague (F). I’ve never been there but I hear it’s really nice. Tomorrow (Sunday), we actually have a day off so you can bet I will be in tourist mode tomorrow and take lots of pictures.
Polish food was not so good, but girls… :)