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Travel report: Driving to Sindelfingen

Dec 13

Posted by Vic in Life, Travel

Since I’ve been back home now for almost a month, it seems silly to call these posts “travel updates”.  :)

With the experience of visiting le Viaduc de Millau still buzzing in my head, I pointed my trusty Peugeot back toward Montpellier for the journey to Germany.  The run down the mountain back toward the coast was a really nice drive, but by the time I was back in Montpellier it was back to nasty busy city driving.  I think I made a little bit of an error: instead of following the path that Google found for me to get to the A9 (which was more-or-less back through the middle of town), I followed the first sign I saw that said “A9 NIMES”.  This ended up taking me on a Cooks Tour of bypass roads around the south outskirts of the city, past industrial estates and the consequent heavy workaday traffic.  The city path was very likely to have been quicker and easier.  Oh well.

Once I made it to the A9 for the trip north, I was able to settle in and enjoy the drive again.  The autoroutes in France are excellent, with a great smooth driving surface (in spite of the heavy-vehicle traffic they carry) and plenty of visibility and clearance for cars to be able to carry the 130km/h speed limit (again, in spite of the heavy-vehicle traffic, which is only permitted to do about 90km/h).  Mind you I ended up paying around 50€ in tolls while I was in France!  If it’s a demonstration of how tolling a road can lead to better quality, I don’t mind at all.

The traffic bogged down a bit going through Lyon, but soon opened up again.  I was starting to get a bit worried about the time: I’d left Montpellier three or four hours before, yet seemed to be only a third of the way there!  Night was starting to fall as I turned east onto the A36 — the car was at last actually pointing toward Germany!  A short while after that, I stopped for some dinner before making the last part of the drive.   I was not far from the border by this time, and it looked like I was making good time after all.

I hadn’t planned for my first drive on an autobahn to be at night, but that’s how it worked out.  About the only indication that I’d actually crossed into Germany was the change in the road signage!  The speed limit dropped to 120km/h, but a little while later I saw a sign that showed the 120 crossed-out.  This, I eventually worked out, was the only indication I would get that I was on one of the famous speed-unlimited autobahnen (well, the Mercs and Beemers and Audis rocketing past me were another indication).  Because it took me so long to work out what was going on, I almost didn’t get to go for a rocket myself — I had wound the Peugeot up to about 140-150 and was still getting passed like I was stationary, so I decided to give it a run.  In a few seconds the little Pug was at 195km/h, and seemed like it could have gone a bit higher, but slower traffic ahead meant I had to back off.  As it turned out, I didn’t get another chance to wind it out because we were in and out of roadworks for the last part of the run to Stuttgart.

Eventually I found the last motorway exit I had to take, and I was on the streets of Sindelfingen.  I had made it all the way from Montpellier, without a single wrong turn!  Before congratulating myself too heartily though, I had to find my hotel…  and this was a bigger challenge than I had thought.  I found it, eventually, but not before I’d driven up the same street three times (at least) and done at least one U-turn in front of the place without realising it…

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Travel update: le Viaduc de Millau

Nov 26

Posted by Vic in Life, Travel

Seems like ages ago I watched that episode of Top Gear where they took a Ford GT, a Pagani Zonda and a Ferrari F430 from Paris to the Millau Viaduct.  At the time, I didn’t figure that I’d have any opportunity to see the bridge in the near future, but nonetheless subliminally noted it as one of those things to see, if I got a chance to, sometime in the next forty-or-so years.  As it turns out, the chance came up sooner than I thought: not only that, I somehow remembered about it before the chance went by!

As I was planning my drive from Montpellier to Stuttgart, I suddenly remembered “that stonking-great bridge somewhere in France that those pommie tossers drove those cars over”.  I really had no idea where it was — I couldn’t even remember the name of it.  Somehow, however, I managed to locate it — and found that it was only a bit over an hour’s drive from Montpellier.

So Google Maps told me at least, and my record with that site was not great.  When first I consulted the Googleplex for how to get from Montpellier to Stuttgart, I’m sure it said it would take 3-4 hours.  Just before I’d found le Viaduc de Millau, though, I asked it again and it said more like 8 hours.  More on that later…  but now I was contemplating making my 8-plus hour trip to Stuttgart into at least 11.  I was seriously considering giving up on the tentative plan to see the bridge.  Then I thought: how would I feel if I went home, knowing that I was so close and didn’t bother going?  I made my mind up: I was going to Millau.

I planned my departure the following morning to be a little earlier than originally scheduled, and packed the bags the night before.  The next day I got moving nice and early, right in the middle of Montpellier weekday-peak morning traffic!  It didn’t take long for that to clear, though, and I was on the A750 heading west.  The A750 joined the A75, and then I was heading up into higher altitude.  The diesel Peugeot I was driving ate up the twisting climb with no trouble, and before long the road had levelled- and straightened-out a bit.

I saw a tourist sign saying “Viaduc de Millau”, and realised I was almost there.  Then, I was there!

Darned windscreen wiper! Actually it doesn't matter really, since there's no way a photo from a moving car could do it justice.

Darned windscreen wiper! Actually it doesn't matter really, since there's no way a photo from a moving car could do it justice.

You can see the towers of the bridge pylons in the distance: the seventh (and most distant) one is still over two kilometers away! The sign in this photo is for the tourist stop on the north side of the valley, which is three kilometers down the road, and the bridge starts just past the sign…

I tried to take a couple of photos as I was going over the bridge to get a sense of the height and distance involved, but it was a wasted effort.  Not only was the camera unable to focus on anything but the blurring side barrier of the bridge, but the valley floor below was probably too far away for a camera to be able to convey the scene from a car.  So I concentrated on driving the rest of the way over, and trying to enjoy some of the view.

On the north side (as the signpost said) there is an information kiosk and observation area, so I pulled off the road and stopped there.  The observation point turned out to be the peak of a hill accessed by a very steep climb up a bitumen path… but when I made it to the top, the pain of the climb was soon forgotten.

The bridge actually looked to me like it was from another world: it is so big, so high, so amazing and different, that it just doesn’t seem like it could have been made here.  It was truly an amazing thing to see, and it didn’t matter about the lung-bursting climb up the hill or the finger-numbing-face-freezing wind blowing up the Tarn valley or the drizzle of rain that just refused to go away — I could not bear the thought of having to leave there.

Le Viaduc de Millau. I'm surprised I got these photos, I was beginning to wonder about my chances of frostbite thanks to the wind and rain!

Le Viaduc de Millau. I'm surprised I got these photos, I was beginning to wonder about my chances of frostbite thanks to the wind and rain!

I took a stupid number of photos, and stood for a while and just gazed.  I realised it was still (just) daytime in Australia and phoned home, but must have sounded like an idiot just banging on about a bridge.

Eventually I realised that I would have to leave in order to get to Stuttgart in a reasonable time, so reluctantly I set off back down the hill.  I went through the souvenir shop and picked up a trinket or two, along with a brochure or two that N might take an interest in.  Then, with even more reluctance, I got in the car and departed.  I wasn’t able to avoid the toll plaza — 12 euro (6€ each way) in tolls!  It was a small price to pay though — besides, I got to drive over it again!

The Millau Viaduct is a wonder of the modern world, and I am so glad that I didn’t talk myself out of driving up to see it.

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Travel update: On to Montpellier

Nov 23

Posted by Vic in Life, Travel

There I was, standing in the Paris Gare de Lyon looking like an idiot staring at the trains on the platforms.  I was about to experience my first trip on TGV!

I took a few photos then loaded my gear on the train (big bag in the luggage space at the end of the carriage, smaller stuff in the overhead rack), then went back onto the platform to get a few more photos.  I’m sure I was still acting like a stunned mullet as I wandered around the station!

As departure time drew closer, I headed back to my train and got comfortable.  I faintly heard the sound of the doors closing and then, without a sound, the train started moving.  It picked up speed as it started to snake along the lines heading out of Paris: there were a couple of curves where I could see the front of the train as we went.  Even though we were still in the suburbs and the tracks were eight-wide, the TGV was moving at quite a pace as we headed south.

Some breakfast came by, and the next time I looked out I noticed that the other tracks were gone and we were moving a lot faster now.  At no time had I felt any great acceleration, I suppose for comfort’s sake they let the train wind up gradually.

Then we got faster still.  And faster.  And faster.  And faster.

Again I have to reiterate: if you’re not a train-fan, you probably won’t appreciate how exciting, exhilarating and mildly terrifying it was for me.  I realised that I was actually on the ground at 300+km/h, and that if I was in a plane I’d be airborne by then!  In the dark the night before, I hadn’t been able to appreciate going through tunnels or passing under bridges at that speed.  The line ran near a highway at one stage, and I just couldn’t get my head around seeing the cars that I knew were going in the same direction as I was moving backward!

I could see trackside distance markers, and did a rough timing of our travel over one kilometre: “one-onethousand-two-onethousand … 12-onethousand”.  Math it out: that’s 300km/h.

I expected that the train would stop a couple of times, but there was only one stop (Nimes, about 100km from Montpellier).  The remaining run from Nimes down to Montpellier was fast, but not TGV-fast.  As we pulled into Montpellier, I gathered up my gear and got ready to leave the train.  My first TGV journey was over!

When the train did arrive, it was three minutes late.  I was amazed: over all those hundreds of kilometres, we only accrued a delay of three minutes.

I used a map in the Montpellier railway station to find that my hotel was literally a stone’s throw away.  I hauled my bags up the street and into what seemed like a dingy alley to the hotel and checked in.  My room had a dodgy double doorway onto the dingy alley, and I looked out at the street and watched a few cars go by.  I also got my first spectator view of French contact-parallel-parking!  That evening I met up with my residency colleague and a couple of his workmates over a couple of Belgian beers, and went for a stroll through the city after taking a slightly wrong turn when I was dropped off near the station.

The next day, since the plan to go to IBM didn’t work out, I had a chance to look around.  First order of business was to do some planning for the drive to Germany the next day, so I did some internetting before going to pick up my car.  The car was a diesel Peugeot 308, and I went for a bit of a drive to familiarise myself.  Thankfully the streets of Montpellier are a bit more forgiving than metropolitan Paris!  I managed to get lost a couple of times, but did my usual Zen navigation to get back on track (thank-you, Douglas Adams).

After the car adventure, I went for a bit of a walk around the old part of the city and took a couple of photos along Esplanade Charles de Gaulle.  Once again I saw that although large cities around the world are starting to become more and more alike (town square, shopping mall, etc.), European cities still have the charm of the “old town”.  I really like the narrow cobbled streets with people walking along seemingly day or night, and the food stalls and shops every couple of doors — real food shops, like a patisserie or coffee shop, not your chain-of-the-week like Starbucks or McDonalds.  Yes, I could really get the hang of Europe: I need to put more effort into learning more of the local language though.  I found myself too cautious about my inability to order from those patisseries and coffee shops to be able to enjoy them.  Dinner one night in Montpellier was Subway, and as I walked back to the hotel to eat I found myself looking at the local shops and regretting that I wasn’t confident enough to try.

The time came for me to leave Montpellier though, and start my journey to Sindelfingen in Germany.  My research on the route yielded an interesting fact: the Millau Viaduct is only a little over an hour’s drive from Montpellier…

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Safe, secure, terrifying, VISA

Nov 14

Posted by Vic in Life

I listen to a few netcasts from Leo Laporte’s TWiT network.  For a while about 18-24 months ago a few shows on the network were sponsored by VISA, flogging their fraud protection capabilities.  ”Safe, Secure, VISA” was something I heard ad-nauseum a while ago (and started hearing it again recently, as I listen to old Security Now episodes).

While my Thalys journey to Paris was coming to an end, I got a phone call.  I wasn’t going to answer it for the combined reasons of being in a foreign country, being on a train in a foreign country, and being in a small room not normally associated with telephone communication while on a train in a foreign country.  Something made me answer the damned thing though.

It was someone claiming to be from my bank in Australia, asking me if I’d just used my credit card to buy something from the Apple Store in the US.  Now I did very nearly say yes, and to stop bothering me with such stuff: this was the card that had been associated with my Apple ID, and there was a chance that N had picked up my iPod and stumbled through and found the App Store and bought something.  They’d never contacted me before about App Store purchases however, and then I remembered that card was not on my Apple ID any more.  So I replied non-committally (and very helpfully, in hindsight)…

“Well, maybe.”

“This was only in the last couple of minutes,” said the bank.

“Oh,” said I.  That changed things.  Knowing that the card was not linked to my Apple ID any more, there was very little chance that N might have done something.  It definitely wasn’t me either, given where I had been during the few minutes in question.  ”No, then,” I replied.

At this, the VISA machinery sprang into action.  Within seconds I had been recited the standard dialogue about how my card(s) had now been cancelled and that I would soon receive new card(s) and PIN(s), so on and so on.  Being none too happy about having to re-arrange scheduled charges to the account (the only use that particular card gets, as it turns out) I started to think about how the number had got into the wild.

In spite of knowing that there are card number generators that the bad guys use to generate valid card numbers to try on unsuspecting e-commerce sites, something gave me the thought that it was more likely I had lost the small wallet that card was kept in.  I started thinking about the other cards that were in that case.  Hotel/car loyalty cards: painful, but not a problem.  Unused AMEX: cancellation drama only.  Travel-backup credit card: hmm, that might be a problem.  What else…

Oh, wait a minute…

OH CRAP.

Last I saw that wallet it was wrapped around…

O. M. F. G.

My PASSPORT.

Instantly I understood the feeling described by the term “heart in my mouth”.  There I was, standing on a train pulling into Paris Gare du Nord with my knees buckling contemplating the possibility that my passport was lost.

I started to look through the bags I was carrying, the places where I knew the wallet should have been.  Nothing.  By this time the train had stopped, and I alighted the train with the other passengers and took my frantic search to the Gare du Nord platform.  Still nothing.

My mind was racing.  Do I continue my journey to Montpellier as planned, and sort out the passport later?  Maybe ironically, the thing I was most upset about was having lost all the stamps in my passport!

I decided that I couldn’t think properly standing on a train platform and that I had to get to my hotel and sort it out there.  I managed to find the subway that links the SNCF station to the RER, but halfway through the subway I realised that I couldn’t go any further without having a proper search.  So in the middle of a railway station subway in Paris I started rifling my luggage like a sniffer-dog looking for the stash (and it wasn’t until later that I realised how much trouble that might have got me into).

FOUND.

The wallet, all cards secure and still encasing my passport, had worked its way into the lowest portion of the wheeled laptop bag I use.  I suffered the joyous feeling of my heart returning to its rightful place, combined with the return of my ability to breathe.  As I put stuff back into my bags and resumed my journey, I tried to concentrate on the task of getting the right ticket, the right RER line and the right train to get me to Gare de Lyon (thanks to the signage in the station, this was made very easy).

Once I was on the RER, with other commuters around me and me trying to marshall my luggage, I realised how I could not have done the trip thinking that I had lost my stuff.  I also realised that that was the closest I ever want to come to actually losing my passport while overseas.

Oh, and the credit card?  Like I said, it was in the wallet all along.  The card hasn’t been out of that same wallet for over twelve months, and the regular deductions (and my automatic payment to cover them) have been the only transactions on the account for at least that long, so I guess a card generator just happened to get lucky with my number.

So if you happen to get that phone call from your bank, think seriously about your card’s whereabouts and recent activity… and for heaven’s sake don’t do what I did and jump to the conclusion that the card was lost or stolen — your imagination might just take you someplace you really don’t want to go.

Update: Before I left Australia I had asked the bank to reissue the card for a promotion they were having, but the new one didn’t reach me before I left the country. When I got home, I had a look at the card that had been issued — the one that got hacked.  I think I know now why I got pinged: the CVV number (the three-digit printed number on the back of the card that is supposed to increase security) was the last digit of the card number followed by “00″ — I’d have to think that would be about the weakest CVV number the card could possibly have had! I feel much better now that this was simply a random selection by a card-number generator, facilitated by a stupidly-insecure CVV.

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Travel update: Riding the rails of Europe

Nov 14

Posted by Vic in Life, Travel

When last you heard from me, I had arrived in my Amsterdam hotel.  The weather was a bit rainy, so I postponed the planned orientation walk and caught a bit of a kip, had some dinner, and made sure I was ready for the presentation the next day.

I’m not going to talk about the work stuff in these updates: for one, this is not actually a work blog so I probably shouldn’t anyway.  Secondly, it’s a bit on the boring side of things and I’d rather talk about the travel.  So, with that decided, let’s continue…

So Monday arrived and I did my presentation, then picked up my bags from the hotel and went to Schiphol.  I made use of the NS HiSpeed lounge (a little bit like an airline club lounge, but on a smaller scale) to have a refreshment before heading down to the platform for my train.  My final destination was Montpellier, France, but because of the time I thought I had to be there I had to overnight in Paris: so it was Thalys to Paris on Monday, then TGV to Montpellier on Tuesday morning.

I feel the need here to reiterate what I mentioned in the previous post: I’m a rail-fan.  When TGV was introduced in the 1980s, I made it one of my life’s goals to make a TGV journey one day.  I marked the goal halfway complete when a colleague and I travelled on Thalys in 2006: half-complete because we only went from Amsterdam to Brussels, which is not true high-speed (although I saw that it has been upgraded, and Thalys will run high-speed to Amsterdam from December 2009).

As I boarded Thalys for Paris that Monday night, I realised that my goal was about to become fully-complete.  I settled in as the train departed into the Dutch night, and started to enjoy the comforts of Thalys “Comfort 1″.  I hooked up to the Wi-Fi and made a couple of silly Facebook updates, and saw a nice little map feature they provided on their portal page:

My train was just south of Antwerp at this time... Cool, eh!

My train was just south of Antwerp at this time... Cool, eh!

Due to the dark outside, it was difficult to get a sense of how fast the train was moving: the only way to know for sure was the occasional lit-up building or car that went by.  As I said, having travelled on Thalys before I knew that the best was yet to come (in other words, after we went through Brussels).

Eventually we pulled into Brussels, and my excitement built a little more.  The wait in Brussels-Midi station was almost unbearable!  Finally though, we got moving again.

I read an article by a UK travel reviewer when the TGV first ran.  He described a dramatic surge of acceleration as the 1k5V standard French pantograph was lowered and the 25kV circuit was activated on the high-speed line to Lyon.  I didn’t experience any such hard surge, but as we picked up speed out of Brussels I just knew that something was different.  I guess I was seeing enough points-of-reference outside to know that we were moving much faster than before, but whatever it was I could tell that now we were really moving.

I sat and enjoyed it all for a while: the surreal feeling of approaching the continuous lights of a stream of traffic on a road or highway impossibly fast, and realising that the train was actually going to pass over it…  and then the lights were gone as the train flashed over the highway.  The thrilling hum and vibration of the train itself: not disturbing at all, just the feeling of being on board a piece of machinery that was working hard.  After a while I checked back on the ThalysNet map, and realised that the map was clickable…  I clicked, and was rewarded with an enlarged view, with a speedometer! I refreshed the view a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t something static…

I did see refresh and get one that said 300km/h, but it looked a bit staged ;-)

I did refresh and get one that said 300km/h, but it looked a bit staged ;-)

I refreshed each time I felt a large change in speed (and before anyone asks, no at 300km/h you can’t tell a change of 5km/h), and saw enough change in the display to be confident that it was a real representation of the train’s speed.

Unfortunately the journey had to come to an end.  I’ll write a separate post about the terrible experience I had as I arrived in Paris, but once I got over that I worked on the task of getting myself from Gare du Nord (where Thalys operates from) across town to Gare de Lyon (where the southbound TGVs run from, near which I’d booked my room for the night).  I ended up managing very easily to find the way to the RER station, buy my ticket, find the right train — a direct train, where my research had told me I’d need to change trains — and hop off at Gare de Lyon.  After a little mixed-up street navigation (unbeknownst to me I’d left the station from the back entrance, and ended up walking all the way around to the front) I made it to my hotel, checked in, and negotiated an old-style elevator (with a swinging outer door!) to my floor and my room.

The next morning I went for a little walk.  I realised I was quite close to the River Seine, so thought I couldn’t go home without seeing it.  What can I say: yes, it’s a river.  I thought I’d be able to see perhaps just the top of the Eiffel Tower, but there were too many buildings in the way.  Back to the hotel then, to check out and go to the station.

When I got to the plaza in front of the station, I had to pause.  There I was, actually standing in front of Paris Gare de Lyon!  Okay, a railway station… but which railway station!  This is where TGV basically started it’s first passenger services.  I was having another one of those dream-about-to-come-true moments.  Then I went inside and saw a real TGV! If you’ve seen the movie Cars, you’ll know the scene at the end when the Michael-Schumacher-Ferrari drives into Luigi’s Casa Della Tires and Luigi ends up fainting (“a REAL FERRARI!”).  For me, seeing not one but at least five TGVs was much like that.  Okay, they aren’t the old TGV Orange that I knew when I was a kid, and the design is a bit updated, but they’re TGV and they’re where modern high-speed commuter rail began.

Next update I’ll describe more of my TGV experience, as well as my first European drive!

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Back in the saddle again…

Oct 31

Posted by Vic in Life, Travel, Work

This post comes to you from the Cathay Pacific lounge in Hong Kong airport.  Around 8 weeks have passed since my last post, and I’m pretty disgusted with myself at how little (read: not at all) I blogged when I was in the US and China.  In fact, by the looks of things the site has been down for most of the time anyway, which is also pretty disappointing.

I’d love to break my blogging drought now, as I have about five hours before I board my next flight, but I have a splitting headache which I’m sure you understand is not conducive to effective computer usage (which is a shame, as the Wi-Fi here is excellent).  Maybe later.

By the way, what brings me to Hong Kong?  I’m going to Europe for my remaining ITSO Workshop presentations.  Amsterdam on Monday, then Montpellier (France) on Tuesday.  I make some things up for a few days, then London next Monday followed by Milan on Thursday, then flying home via Rome and HK (again, three fortnights in a row).

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Lifeblog test post (photo fun with Nicholas)

Jul 13

Posted by Vic in Life

A spooky pic of Nicholas playing with an LED toy.

Tue 23/06/2009 08:39 23062009081
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New blog engine

Jul 9

Posted by Vic in Life

Here is the new and improved (well time will tell about that, I suppose) Crossed Wires.  Changing to a more mainstream blog engine will I hope allow me to provide a bit more function.  I’ve adopted the Disqus comment system as the first improvement; I was unhappy about turning off comments on the old system.

I imported all the entries from the old engine (I’m even gradually working through them to categorise and tag them).  I even found some Perl and SQL mojo I never knew I had to make nice redirections from the old blog to the new.

As I said when I first started this blog, none of this coolness is likely to make me write more…  But here’s hoping!  :)

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Time off from work

Mar 15

Posted by Vic in Life, Work

I'm taking a bit of time off. There's a few projects going on around the house, plus I've been letting a few things get to me recently and I think I need a break from work. A couple of weeks off, with a few days on the Sunshine Coast to unwind, could be a good thing.

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We finally meet K (a.k.a. Clinker)

Nov 19

Posted by Vic in Family, Life

To our beautiful baby girl, the warmest and fondest welcome!

The post I made here last night was going to be a comment about how ironic it was that we didn’t want to know our baby’s gender and yet the time of the birth was known. Well as fortune would have it, I would have been wrong on both points!

We were due to arrive at hospital at 1:30pm today for a 2pm induction, but our baby had different plans! S went into labour spontaneously at about 1:30am this morning, so we had the dash to the hospital that we never thought we’d have. By 2:30am we were in the birthing suite, and just over one hour after that our baby girl K arrived!

As for the gender thing, although we were obviously going to be happy to have a healthy baby of either gender we’d both been hoping for a girl. This time, something was telling me that it was in fact a girl–I guess you’d say I was very confident. So confident in fact, that S was quite angry at me about a week ago for not committing to a name for a boy. :-)

N met his baby sister this morning… he has a very proud-looking smile on his face whenever he looks at her! He’s a wakeup to our grownup tricks though–we’d bought him a present to take home with him “from the baby”. When given the present, he reportedly (and in his best “hang-on-a-minute-you-can’t-trick-me” voice) said “that’s not from the baby, babies can’t go shopping!”

PS: What’s Clinker? That’s the nickname that S’s work friends gave to her baby-bump!

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