write.as/jonbeckett

This is a story about cost cutting gone mad. I arrived at Frankfurt Airport this morning, expecting to follow the usual routine of baggage check-in, and security. Nope. Not going to happen. Instead of quietly wandering up to a desk and having a staff member check my bags in I joined a huge crowd of people in the departure hall, fighting with new “self check-in” machines.

You stand in front of the baggage check-in machine, scan your boarding card (or work phone screen in my case), put your bag on the conveyor belt, and then attach the sticky luggage tag the machine spits out. It should be simple – and yet it is not. In London it worked well – the luggage labels were clearly marked with a peel-off section. In Frankfurt not so great – nowhere did it say that the luggage label had a special adhesive that was not sticky to touch, but would stick to itself. It caught absolutely everybody out – I wondered why everybody was taking so long to attach their tags, and then couldn’t figure it out myself – until a member of staff wandered up and showed me.

Here’s the thing – I’m not stupid – and I’m guessing neither is everybody else. Of course we will all get used to doing everything ourselves in the airport, as in every other walk of life. Robots, artificial intelligence, and process automation are coming if we like it or not – but you can’t ask a machine a quick question if you’re not sure what to do.

Anyway. I’m now sitting at the gate in the airport, and have spent my remaining Euro coins on a ludicrously expensive cup of coffee. It’s twenty minutes past nine at time of writing – the flight doesn’t start boarding for an hour and half.

While waiting at Frankfurt railway station this morning I wandered around a bookstore, and spotted “The Circle” – the book the movie is based upon starring Emma Watson, about the invasive nature of social networks. I made a mental note, and bought the book from Amazon while travelling to the airport – it’s already arrived on the Fire Tablet, so I might start reading it after posting this.

This is all becoming very routine (apart from the check-in adventure). Oh – somehow I managed to leave my mobile phone in my work backpack as it went through the security scanners – I’m amazed I didn’t get pulled to one side – I did it once before and had to empty my entire bag while the security staff swabbed everything for explosives. I’m thinking I need to wear cargo trousers instead of jeans when I fly – because then at least I have the extra pockets for phones, wallet, passport, and so on.

I finally got around to watching the final few episodes of Mr Robot last night. It’s become noticeable that US made TV shows craft the final episode of each season in such a way that they could end right there, but they could also continue (you know – in case they get renewed for another season). I guess I’m hoping that the show returns to it’s roots, and gives Elliot a chance to bring down the Dark Army.

Ok – an hour until boarding. I’m going to go read my book.

My work in Germany has come to an end – for now. The only clothes left out in the hotel room are clean clothes for the morning. After breakfast in the hotel I will walk to the railway station, and catch the train to the airport. I’m half watching weather reports to find out if the elements might scupper my carefully prepared plans.

The last few days have been markedly different than previous visits. Rather than wander into the city to eat, I have chosen to stay in the hotel and bought food from a nearby supermarket. My diet has therefore been healthier than it might have been – subsisting on a diet of sushi, salad, fruit, and various fruit juices. I bought a bottle of wine two days ago, and haven’t really touched it – the hotel staff will luck into two thirds of a bottle of cheap white wine when they turn my room over in the morning.

We’ll ignore the 250g bar of alpine milk chocolate I bought on my first night here.

My next visit will be at the tail-end of February, then March, April, May, and so on – following the same pattern throughout much of the year. I fear all of the magic may be removed from flying before the year is out.

My plans for the rest of the evening are remarkably pedestrian – I have a couple of unwatched episodes of Mr Robot on the Fire Tablet. I plan to switch the computer off, and lay across the bed watching them. I know how to live.

I’ve become quite the expert – at this hotel at least – at making bacon and egg sandwiches for breakfast. My creations are nowhere near as neat and tidy as the stock photo accompanying this post, but I imagine they look exactly the same after the first bite.

During a fitful night’s sleep, I had several dreams, and woke several times. The final dream was something of a masterpiece, which leads me to wonder just how powerful our brains are. I found myself in some kind of video game world where gravity was weak – you could make enormous leaps over things. While leaping, I visited several places that I can only imagine existed in other dreams – because I don’t recall them existing in the real world, or movies. One particularly detailed location was a small house that somebody had apparently chosen to live in – going from room to room was familiar, and the people present were somehow famous – alas I don’t remember who they were now.

I woke for the final time at 6:20, and stared at the ceiling for a while, before scraping myself out of bed and climbing into the shower. After a shave, throwing some clothes on, and making the bed, I wandered down to the breakfast area, poured myself a cappuccino, and assembled the afore-mentioned bacon and egg sandwich. Two chinese girls sat adjacent to me, talking in musical tones about something or other. Although I didn’t understand a word of their conversation, the tone interested me – the inflection of each word – so alien to our pattern of speech.

It’s now an hour later. I’m sitting in the hotel room at the curved plank of wood that substitutes as a desk. It probably looks very nice in an IKEA photo shoot. It is still dark outside. Through the open window I can hear the quiet rumble of traffic passing over the nearby bridge over the river Main. Across the river a vast office building stretches along the riverside – the lights of the offices are winking on, one by one.

I’m not due in the office until 9am today. An extra half an hour to post this, catch up on other’s blog posts, and write a few emails before heading to the supermarket to buy lunch. The office building looms above me, across the road from my hotel window. I can see into the offices I worked in yesterday – one man sits among the many computer workstations. I wonder why he is in so early?

I learned something new this evening. After work I had a splitting headache, so thought “it’s fine – I’ll buy something to eat from the supermarket, and have a quiet night in the hotel room”. I presumed that I would be able to buy headache tablets at the supermarket, just like at home. I was wrong. I left the supermarket with a bottle of multi-vitamin juice drink (read: all the leftovers poured into a huge bottle), pre-packed salad, some fruit, and a box of sushi.

It turns out in Germany you have to visit an Apotheker to buy any form of drugs – even some herbal remedies. You know the ridiculous “Rescue Remedy” bottles you sometimes see elsewhere – always with German names like “Dr Bach”, or something similar – you know, the ones that don’t actually do anything… you can buy those in the supermarket. If you want paracetamol or nurofen, you have to visit an Apotheker.

What’s an “Apotheker”, I hear you cry – or at least, I did – or rather, I searched on Google “where can I buy paracetamol in Germany”. It responded with “at at Apotheker”. The most direct translation is “Pharmacist” – the direct translation is the store house for the drugs.

Google Maps is your friend. A few moments later I had located an Apotheker only a few minutes away – and set out on foot. The heavens chose that moment to begin dumping several days worth of rainfall directly on my head – Truman Show style. I splodged into the clinically clean Apotheker store, my shoes squelching with each step.

“Hallo!”, a bright lady said as she swept past with somebody’s prescription in hand.

“Hello!”, I replied.

I approached the counter, where a portly man in his 60s surveyed me through glasses balanced on the end of his nose. He looked very serious indeed – like an operation had been performed many years previously to remove his sense of humour.

“Erm… Paracetamol?”

He looked me in the eye, and repeated the word back to me in a much lower register, before turning and reaching for a small orange and white box on the shelf behind him.

I suppose the funny thing was while standing in the Apotheker panicking, the headache had gone away.

While trudging back towards the hotel with my bag of shopping and a box of paracetamol safely tucked inside my coat pocket, I came upon a rather strange individual standing outside the main entrance of the Irish bar I visited last night. He was dressed smartly, rocking back and forth – from one leg to the other, with a furrowed brow, and pursed lips – like he was having a violent conversation with himself in his own imagination. I walked quickly past, trying not to tip him over the edge.

I’m back in the room now. I’ve taken the paracetamol, and eaten all the food. I did my usual trick of sharing out the sachet of wasabi across all the sushi rolls, and nearly blowing my nose clean off my face. At least if the headache had been anything to do with a cold, I’ve probably already incinerated it at source. Good stuff, that wasabi.

My plans for the evening are rather simple – watch German television, catch up with blogs, email friends, and not much else. One more day of meetings, one more night of similar fun filled activities, and then I catch the plane home. Well – plane, then underground train, then mainline train, then another mainline train, then one more final mainline train, followed by a twenty minute walk.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some nothing to be getting on with.

I’m supposed to be in the office at 8:30 this morning – not a huge problem, seeing as the hotel is directly across the road from the office. This is why I like travelling on my own – I get to choose where I stay, and will always choose location over comfort. Yes, the hotel is very basic, but IT’S NEXT F*CKING DOOR!

I got up at 6:30am, had a shower, got dressed, and was down for breakfast for 7. Note to self – eating early means you get to the breakfast area before the masses have arrived – meaning you get to choose, rather than eat their scraps. I even got to stand in relative peace while the coffee machine made a cappuccino – usually there is a queue of disgruntled business people, fidgeting behind you.

I didn’t sleep well last night – I went to bed with a monster headache, and woke up with it in the early hours. It has gone this morning, but I’m still wondering where it came from, and when it might come back. I’ll have a look in the supermarket for headache tablets when I buy lunch in a bit.

I’m watching the clock while writing this – 7:54am. I want to be out of here by 8:10 at least to give me time to walk down the road to the supermarket.

Oh – I forgot to write about something last night – something that has stayed in my mind throughout. While walking back from the city to my hotel last night, I approached a footpath from the road, and a lady was cycling towards me. I hunched my shoulders in the cold, and waited behind the crossing sign for her to pass before continuing on. She braked to a halt with the biggest smile, and beckoned me out from behind the sign – I couldn’t help grinning in return. She was the double of somebody I know on the internet, which pretty much tore down all my defences, even though I knew it wasn’t really her.

Anyway.

I need to get on. If the posts this week turn into a live-stream of sorts, I make no apologies for that – this is kind of what I do while travelling.

The flight from Heathrow to Frankfurt was remarkably routine. Although officially recorded as “delayed”, the flight crew did everything in their power to rush us onto the aircraft, and begin taxiing out to the runway. I would love to have heard the conversation between the aircraft and the control tower – it became evident that we were short-cutting the route to the runway – leapfrogging a number of waiting aircraft in the queue to takeoff.

While climbing away from Heathrow I heard the plaintive meows of a pet cat somewhere in the rear of the cabin. I wasn’t aware that animals could be brought into the cabin of passenger jets, but apparently I don’t know very much (either that, or it was a person performing rather odd cat impersonations).

The plane was only half full this morning. I had a group of three seats to myself, and busied myself with taking photos and giving myself a stiff neck as we rose further and further into the sky. After a few minutes the cabin crew came along with their trolley full of pastries and sandwiches. The girl that served me looked like a model from a magazine cover. Is it just me, or do airlines still get away with only hiring pretty girls as cabin crew ? I remember working in the city of London ten years ago, where it was very much the case that the banks only hired the most attractive women – you only had to sit outside at lunchtime to realise as much.

After an hour and a bit in the air, we descended towards Frankfurt – dipping through the rain clouds to slither onto the runway. While taxiing the crew mentioned something over the public address system about being close to the terminal building – prompting the lady behind me to start talking non stop about british airports where you have to walk from the aircraft. Five minutes later she found herself walking from the aircraft to a shuttle bus, and I couldn’t help grinning to myself.

After hurtling through the automated arrivals stalls (where your biometric passport is scanned, and you are then momentarily imprisoned in order to compare your photo with your passport), I found myself at an empty baggage carousel. After standing around and daydreaming quite spectacularly for a few minutes the luggage finally began arriving, and I got to watch the fun spectacle of strangers trying to identify their bags on a moving carousel. It’s never not funny. After a few moments my bag heaved into view, and I wisely waited for the bag to come to me, unlike everybody else who seemed to do a strange lurch/run/scramble as their bag appeared.

After leaving the airport, I had all the intentions of buying a train ticket for Frankfurt. Correct that – I actually bought a ticket. I bought a ticket before I looked at the train times, and realised that there would be no train for an hour and a half. Idiot! I backtracked through the airport, and found the taxi stand outside, where a taxi awaited – driven by the Turkish version of Nigel Mansell. Who knew Nigel Mansell could swear and cuss so wonderfully in German ?

I think we broke all records for getting from the airport to down-town Frankfurt, which was amazing to me because the taxi driver spent much of his time either playing with Google Maps, or texting his friends. After deciding that life was more important than being wrapped around a lamp-post somewhere in Frankfurt, I asked to be let out within walking distance of the hotel, and paid him to leave me alone.

While checking me into the hotel, the guy on reception mentioned something about electrical work, and I didn’t really understand what he was getting at. I paid a deposit by credit card, and made my way up to my room. Ah – so the electrical thing will be why the hotel corridors have no lighting then? Oh – and neither does my room – or working powerpoints.

I unpacked my clothes, pulled my coat back on, and then wandered back down to reception, where a young woman smiled at my approach.

“Any idea what time the electricity might be back on upstairs?”

“The electricians said maybe two hours?”

She smiled a very “please don’t give me any shit over it” kind of smile, and I smiled back, said everything was fine, and went on my way. Of course everything wasn’t fine – my work phone was nearly flat. I did have a camera though, and remembered that I was supposed to not be posting every damn thing over social media anyway. While wandering up the road from the hotel, it crossed my mind that although the camera will last all week, I have no wire to download anything from it until I go home. Unless I buy another one.

I ended up wandering around Frankfurt for the better part of two hours – eventualy wandering into O'Reillys – a fake Irish bar opposite the railway station. No sooner had I walked in when a friendly German guy wandered up, and offered me a table. No sooner had I taken my coat and scarf off, then I discovered it was somebody else’s table, because a swarthy faced guy wearing thick glasses re-appeared from the toilets and stood over me, frowning. I don’t think he anticipated that when I stood up, I would be a good ten inches taller. The waiter apologised non-stop for quite some time.

While sitting with a pint of Guinness, and eating a steak and ale pie, I earwigged the conversation two pretty german girls were having next to me. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but I knew they were talking about me after the server addressed me in English. I’m pretty sure they mentioned the Hufflepuff scarf too (it was draped over the back of the chair). I was too scared to try and talk to them, so examined my drink really very closely indeed for a number of minutes.

Half an hour later – after a diversion to the local grocery store – I arrived back at the hotel, and guess what – the electricity had been restored. I’m sitting at the desk in the room right now, typing this into the work laptop. The phone is back on charge, and the USB battery that point-blank refused to work earlier has miraculously started reporting that it’s fully charged. Go figure.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and have 40 winks. I’ve been struggling to stay awake while writing this – so god only knows how you’ve stayed awake reading it.

It’s heading towards 10am – I arrived at the airport a little before 8:30am and strolled straight through security. I’m getting too good at it – while removing my belt and emptying my pockets the scene in “Up in the Air” came to mind, where George Clooney is picking a queue based on the nationality of the people ahead.

My flight is delayed. I suppose it’s slightly annoying that there are only three delays across the entire departures board, and my flight is one of them – I imagine it’s because of the weather.

Everything seems remarkably calm around the airport – people are quietly milling around, doing their own thing. The quiet clinking of coffee cups from the various restaurants surrounds me, along with the various duty free shops. An advertising hoarding across the way tells me that Matt Smith (of Doctor Who fame) is GQ’s “best dressed man” – accompanied by an obviously photoshopped studio shot for the magazine cover.

I have no actual work to get on with today – that begins tomorrow at an office in Frankfurt. Today is all about getting there – which entails security checks, baggage halls, check-in, and so forth. I imagine the aircraft will be an A320 of some description – they usually are. I’m still undecided about getting either the train, or a taxi to my final destination – I know the day rate is much better than usual, so taxis can more easily be absorbed into the costs. I need to remember to get currency when we arrive – enough for sundry purchases during my stay.

Ten minutes until the gate is supposedly announced. I suppose I should shut this laptop down now. Catch you later.

A variety of clothes have been washed, ironed, folded, and packed. My work backpack has been emptied of it’s usual ephemera, and re-filled with the bare essentials associated with a work trip, various devices are on charge, and I’ve already performed a “remote check-in” with the airport ahead of the journey tomorrow.

I just spent the last half an hour looking for the charger for my camera. I finally discovered it in my other half’s camera bag – this is true to form. She currently has my USB C cable, and my work backup-battery, because she left hers at work – the three I ordered for her from Amazon, and the one from home. This kind of thing happens all the time, and is always blamed on not having enough time to do anything.

While the rest of the family have gone to London for the day – a trip to the theatre for the newly crowned Miss 14’s birthday – I have been busy washing clothes, tidying the house up, grocery shopping – the usual chores.

With a little luck I’ll get around to reading a book or two while away. I have several to choose from – no doubt I’ll write about them if and when I get around to them.

The only thing left to remember is a wash bag in the morning. Given the zero-maintenance haircut, it’s not going to have much in it besides a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, disposable razors, and shaving gel. After trying out one of the hipster razor subscription things (Harry’s, Cornerstone, etc) in recent months, I cancelled it last autumn, and went back to disposables. They are a quarter of the price, and do exactly the same job.

Anyway! I feel a cup of tea coming on.

We took the newly crowned (as of this morning) Miss 14 out to the cinema last night to watch “Jumanji : Welcome to the Jungle”. She had no clue the tickets were booked – only that we were going out to dinner at the restaurant next-door to the cinema. I sprung the surprise on her halfway through dinner by way of a question:

“Ok, math genius – how long does it take us to get home?”

“About fifteen minutes?”

“So what time will we get home after dinner?”

“Well, if we leave here at about 8pm, we’ll be home by 8:15?”

“Hmm… I was thinking more along the lines of 10:45pm”

“But that doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if you’re going to see a movie after dinner.”

The look on her face was priceless. A grin crept across her cheeks shortly before she started asking what we were going to see. I think I got halfway through “Juman…” when both of our younger children did fist pumps, and starting telling us everything they knew about it from the trailer. Youtube has a lot to answer for.

I have to say at this point that I was not the biggest fan of the first Jumanji movie. If you take off your rose-tinted Robin Williams spectacles, it’s pretty much a travelling Robin Williams stand-up show, much like many of his other comedies. Jack Black suffers from the same problem – he’s almost a stereotype of himself, so the movie becomes about him rather than any plot he finds himself in the middle of.

Anyway – what did we think?

I can’t remember enjoying a movie as much in years. None of us can. I’m not going to laboriously describe the plot, or pretend to be some bookish movie-nerd doing a hatchet job on the finer points of cinematography. I’m just going to say that our faces hurt from laughing, and that I’ve never heard our kids (or myself and my other half, along with the other grown-ups in the theater) laugh out loud so often during a movie.

If you get the chance to go see it – here’s the trailer :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_TJKwJwN0E

I walked into town with our eldest this morning – moral support for her first job interview – at a local coffee shop. I coached her with the kinds of question an employer would typically ask on our way into town – and pre-armed her with the kinds of things they would be expecting to hear in response.

“Why do you want to work here?”

“Because I want money?”

“Good answer, but they probably want to hear about it looking like a great place to work, or that you like the idea of working as part of a team as your first job in order to learn quickly – or that you know you won’t get bored because there will always be a variety of things to do”.

“Oh.”

“Why should they employ you?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about because you are a hard worker, and you’re reliable? You can bet service jobs turn over staff at a frightening rate – particularly younger people – so being reliable is a huge thing.”

We arrived outside after a few minutes – I shouted “speak up, and be enthusiastic!” as she waved goodbye.

I sat in a cafe in the high-street while she went to the interview, and noodled around with my work phone. After the better part of three quarters of an hour she re-appeared, and claimed it had been awful – dreadful – terrible – and that they would be in touch in the week.

“You can’t say it’s your first interview now though, can you?”

She shrugged, and asked if she could have an ice tea. I looked around, and saw the queue stretching the length of the coffee shop, so looked back at her.

“Really?”

She smiled, and I rolled my eyes in that way all parents do. Ten minutes later I arrived back at the table with an ice tea, and another cappuccino for myself.

“So have you calmed down yet?”

Another shrug.