Archive for 'Living in Germany'
White Truffles & Pasta
Posted on December 3, 2007, under daily life, Living in Germany.
This is quite possibly the best dish ever. Linguini & White truffles. Here is a picture of what truffles look like when they are shaved.
Last weekend I found myself in Frankfurt and there is a great pasta place off the Zeil (main pedestrian shopping street). At this place they serve the best Pasta & Truffles. If you’ve never had fresh truffles, well then you need to find some place that has some. The place we went tosses the pasta in a parmesan bowl, i.e. a big block of parmesan hollowed out, then puts some truffle shavings on it and some truffle oil, and voila , the best thing sliced bread and the can opener !
View from the Office
Posted on November 15, 2007, under Living in Germany, Theories.
Here is a picture from my webcam, facing onto the street near my house in Munich. As you can see we have snow ! I’m off home tomorrow for a sun holiday, where the temperature should be at least 12°C warmer !
Naming People You don’t know
Here is another piece from inside my head. Do you ever find yourself giving names to people you see all the time but you don’t know their real names ? For example, we have two local bums that hang around our area, one guy (Charles) who stands at the S-Bahn ticket area begging and asking for change, and then there is another one (Jasper) who hangs around where our front door and where the newspaper vending machines are. Jasper likes to ask for 20c or 10c. I find that if I can put names on people I see regurally, I feel a little more at ease. There are people who I see probably twice or more a week on the S-Bahn or in work, who I don’t know, but I recognise them from seeing them before. Like there is this one guy (simon) , who is rather small in stature and wears these special shoes that give him an extra inch. I’ve notice this guy many times, and his ‘high heals’, so I gave him a name. Do you mentally baptise people you don’t know ? Or is it just me and my over observance ?
More Coffee Goodness
Posted on September 19, 2007, under Living in Germany.
Yesterday I posted about the different types of brew, and today I am bring you a cool product called “the snail” by Pierre Ittner (via ohgizmo). This wonder can perform up to 19 bar and will deliver a nice smack of espresso. Sadly it does use those nespresso pods (shudder).
Eductaion : 8 Types of Coffee
Posted on September 17, 2007, under Living in Germany.
Here is a great image I came across today. Basically it explains just what goes into different types of coffee. So if you have ever been too afraid to ask, here is a nice diagramical (yes I made up that word) .
Personally I am an espresso type, hmmm espresso.
fast-swing-10 is the new theme
Posted on July 22, 2007, under daily life, irishblogs, Living in Germany, Theories.
Finally I got sometime to fix up the blog and to make it that little bit nicer. It’s called fast-swing-10 and it I must say I like it.
So, back to more important things, myself and L are back in Munich after over almost 4 week long holiday. We hit Boston,NYC ,Athens & the Greek Islands. The flights with BA were much better than with LH the previous year. One the return flight from Boston they even had on demand (which got me hooked on Entourage TV show) !
Heaven knows how far we actually travelled, driving,flying,sailing & walking, we did drive almost 1k miles in the US. The 1 week cruise (with EasyCruise) around the Greek was just fantastic. It’s great to wake up every morning and to have a whole new island (and a few pages of Lonely Planet to read) to discover. Here is a list of the Islands we hit.
- Piraeus (Athens)
- Milos
- Ios
- Amorgos
- Naxos
FolegandrosParos- Serifos
I think that Ios would have to be the nicest place we visited, followed by Naxos. These are the two biggest islands on the trip. EasyCuise was nice for the price we paid, we ended up paying about €200 for the both of us for the week, which was pretty cheap. Or bar & drink (& coke) bill was closer to €350. There was a few situations where the staff didn’t really act so professionally, and didn’t have that polished appearance. Maybe this is due to their lack of training, or maybe it was just a big difference from coming the US to their. One of the strangest things, and most dangerous was on a planned trip organised by the boat staff. There was a mini bus that could hold 18 people. But 19 people had signed up. So these two people were forced to sit on extra chairs brought onto the bus. Once chair was positioned between the driver and the front passenger and the other one was in the gangway in the middle of the bus.
That being said we had a great time, and met some really nice people (hi to Matt & Paula, Chris & Holly, Glen & Lisa). The beaches in Greece were great, and the water was perfect for snorkelling. If you ever get the chance to go to Greece do ! It’s a great place and the people are super friendly. Once on the subway in Athens, L was lugging her baggage down a few steps and a young girl asked her did she need help ! So that’s a few words about the holiday (email me if you want to see the pics).
It’s good to be back in Mucich !
How to annoy a whole office
Posted on June 20, 2007, under daily life, Living in Germany.
Some wise guy has decided to try and send a FAX to a desk phone line in here. And to add to this, the guy getting this FAX via the phone is of course not here to fix his phone, so every 2 minutes, the desk gets a call, and rings for 30 secs. Here is another case of technology really not helping. We tried to leave the phone off the hook, but that didn’t swing it, inface it rang louder ! Anyway I’ve turned on some fancy feature on our IP phones, called “caller protection” (loosely translated, Anrufschutz) so that the phone no longer rings. 
Today’s Complaint letter…. sixt
Posted on May 18, 2007, under irishblogs, Living in Germany.
Here is the latest complaint letter, this time to Sixt Holiday Car rentals, who with an hour and a half before pick up decided to call me and say that I could only have one of the cars I ordered !
On Tuesday this week I booked two 7 seater cars from your office over the phone. The order number is 6xxxxxx. When I called I was told that it was possible to have these two big cars on Friday, and that they were available.Today approximately 90 minutes before I was due to pick up the cars, I received a telephone call from your offices in Munich, on Einsteinstrasse. They were calling to tell me that you no longer had a second car for me. And they couldn’t offer another one anywhere else in Munich today. So with 90 minutes to go I get this news that I would possibly have to cancel my weekend trip. And all your customer service agents could say is that “If someone doesn’t return their car to us, we cannot give it out to you“.
Putting it so simply was nice, but not offering me any alternative or a discount for being put like this really disappointed me. I have used your services over the last few years, and my company has uses you very often indeed. But still Sixt wasn’t able to offer me anything that could have helped me today. I was left in the situation of trying to call other car rentals companies frantically looking for a similar car within the next hour. And on a Friday evening, this was certainly something I would have wanted to avoid.
When I book a car, I would expect that my order would be granted and that you would do everything that you could to provide me with a car that I could use. But the best I could get out of your service agents was that they couldn’t do anything about it, and that it happens sometimes.
I feel very disappointed with the way I have been treated. And I am looking forward to hearing from you to clarify my points.Sincerely,
Paul Savage
EDIT: Today (wednesday 23rd May) I got a reply from them today and they offered me a 30% reduction on the cost of one one of the cars. They always wanted to know if I had to get a replacement car and what was the costs, but seeing as we used two other cars instead I don’t think I will get any other money back. So all in all it pays to complain when you are not happy with the service. At least now the money will help towards a broken light on the rental car (don’t ask !)
on linkedin
on twitter
on facebook