6/6/05
I got the grand total of 3 hours sleep last night, in fact I’m not even sure I got that much!!!
Went to mum and dad’s first thing this morning, that was sometime before 5am for a bacon sarnie and a lift to Stansted. We got there at stupid o’clock this morning, between 6&7am…wasn’t too impressed, but considering it didn’t take all that long and we didn’t go stupid fast, like I would’ve done in the past, but after the policeman incident I’ve calmed down a little…not much though J Had to wait until 8 before I could check in, and it sometime round then that I realised I’d left the my Euros at home, only 100…but that was enough to get my goat up!
The flight was pretty good all in all, the take off was nice and smooth and the crossing was cool, the landing wasn’t much fun though; I think the mix of a cold, sinus troubles and the changing altitude/pressure was the main cause of the massive headache that I got which nearly had me in tears, it was all around my right eye, throbbing and evil, it was still there at 9 this evening, 9 hours later L
We were met at the airport, I say we because there were 5 people flying over…me and Antonio and 3 clients who are here for some other training…more on Antonio later…anyway like I was saying we were met at the airport by the biggest taxi I’ve ever seen, it was like an MPV mixed with an estate car. And it was driven by a guy with the biggest handlebar moustache I’ve ever seen in the flesh…I’m not kidding the fucker had to be about 2 inches long!
On the drive to Wangen, I had to smile. Out of every window I could see hop fields, it was a wicked sight and I took it as a very good sign J
We got to the offices around 1pm ish and dumped our luggage into one of the company cars, which we have adopted as ours for the first week at least. It’s an omega estate, 2.2tdi and it shifts nicely. I took it out last night and afterwards I found out that there isn’t a speed limit in this country!!! Might have to go out again and see what it can do…maybe! It’ll take a while to get used to having the gearshift on the right though, but it’s a sweet ride.
Spent most of the afternoon and early evening feeling tired, fed-up and lonely…at one point I was ready to pack up and leave. But we went out for dinner with the guy who’s been looking after us a little and doing some of our initial training here, and had a laugh and a beer, so I’m feeling a bit better about it all now, but I’m still missing home.
We’ve got a house to stay in, which in some ways is better than a hotel because we can do what we like and it’s huge, in some ways it’s not so good though because we’re miles out of town and so one of us has to drive if we wanna go out for a drink like we did this evening, but seeing as I took my turn tonight someone else can drive next time if we go out J we’ve got to switch to a hotel for 2 of the 3 weekends we’re here though because the house has been rented out or something…should be ok, and it’ll give us a chance to all get drunk together J
It’s really strange being the only English guy at out here, especially when ALL the training is being delivered in English. There is: Antonio, he’s Spanish, but will be working in the oxford office with me; Nicholas, he’s French so his name is pronounced Nicola, haven’t got the heart to tell him it’s a girls name; and all the training is being delivered by Germans…so there is a veritable plethora of dodgy accents for me to listen to and try to understand.
Right, day 1 is over and although I still want to go home I’m not as desperate as I was earlier, I’m hoping that as the time goes on it’ll fade out and I’ll be sorry to leave when the time comes. We’ll see!
7/6/05
Today is our first day actually working/training and you’ll never believe this, but we were late! Not entirely our fault, the traffic wasn’t good and we only left ourselves 5 minutes to get there, which blatantly didn’t help!
I got a call from Luton lass last night which was cool, only trouble was I was knackered and asleep when she rang so I have no idea what was said, which means I was probably talking bollocks to her…
It’s lunchtime at the moment and we’re waiting for the next training session to start. So far this morning we had a presentation about the company, not actually as boring as I thought it might be, most of the other PowerPoint presentations I’ve seen companies do have been dull, but this was something new to me so I actually found it interesting…shocking I know! We were taken on a tour of the office building where we were introduced to whoever happened to be around at the time, this usually consisted of Andres calling out al the people in the corner of the room and introducing the “3 new colleagues; Pete and Antonio from Waldner Ltd.; Nicholas from Waldner France. They are all calculators…” not sure I really want to be a mathematical aid, but it’s ok I knew what he meant as did they. Although some of them did seem to be fairly miffed at the intrusion into their working day and I think that’s understandable, I was getting a little miffed that I was being introduced to a lot of people who’s names I don’t know because I wasn’t told them.
We had a tour of the factory the offices, this was a little easier as we weren’t really introduced to anyone. It was good to look around, but I was struggling to look interested all the time, the other 2 were looking at things and picking them up, I was thinking ‘it looks like flat-pack Ikea furniture, I‘ve got that at home, I didn’t need to come to Germany to see it’ and as we moved around I was starting to get bored, even when Andres pointed out the obligatory naked woman poster, it’s good to see that no matter where the factory is the men still put up posters of women J but I came to the conclusion that the showroom was the only place that I was really interested in, after all I’m hear to learn how to help sell it, not make it…but I guess it’s good to have some background knowledge of the product, although seeing how it’s made isn’t really what I’d expect.
Right, it’s about 6pm now, we finished at around 3 and after a quick shopping trip so Antonio could get some new clothes, he only brought more formal wear…fool! We got back to the house and I’ve not seen either of the other 2 since. I’m waiting for a call from 2 of the guys from the oxford office who are over here as well today and tomorrow, we’re on about going out for a drink tonight which will be good, think I’ll feel better as I get to know more people in the company…I guess that’s not helping as to why I’m feeling bored/lonely. Went through a phase of thinking that I have done the wrong think this afternoon, that’s while I was trying to stay awake during the last training session of the afternoon, it’s not that it was boring, more that I’m still knackered L but as long as I can sleep well tonight I should be ok and ready for tomorrow, we’re more in depth information regarding the products for the remainder of the week, including a whole day on fume cupboards, these are apparently the company’s “Rolls Royce” I didn’t have the energy to explain that he meant they are the cash-cow, because it I’d told him that I’d have had to spend the next half hour or more trying to explain what a cash-cow is…for those of you who don’t know it’s a company’s best product…it’s from business studies…and although that seems easy to explain to you, think about trying to explain it to a German who gives you a blank look when you use vaguely long words like “majority”…guess I’m going to have to learn some more German…not had to use the phrase book yet, but then most people I’ve spoken to have spoken in English anyway, but I will have said something soon, I promise! Not sure what, or even when yet, but I will!
Chunk called earlier and used the last of my credit, but that was cool, I added some more, didn’t realise how much it costs to accept a phone call, let alone make one! And a text message is 49p…so please don’t call me unless it’s urgent and if I don’t reply to a message it’s not because I’m being rude, it’s more likely that I can’t send something, been having trouble today…I don’t think the German networks like me that much L T-mobile and O2 have been ok, but vodafone has been pants today! Anyway, like I said, chunk called earlier and that’s made me feel a bit better too, I guess I’m just missing everyone at home and all that type of stuff…it’s weird, but I’ve promised myself I’ll cope and I think that writing thinks down every day will help a little, I hope so anyway.
Luton lass has been in contact most of the day with the odd message which is great because it has made me smile, as has lena-poo, add that to chunk calling it’s almost as if I’m still at home J

8/6/05
Bloody ants are pissing me off, they are everywhere in our house, it’s fucking ridiculous!
Anyway, been training again today, and again it wasn’t anything particularly interesting…but I’ve got some more background though of the products, it was better than yesterday…tomorrow it’s fume cupboards, all day!
We went out with Neil and Ingmar last night, had a nice meal and a few drinks with them, it was a real good laugh and I enjoyed last night, suffered a little this morning for it though, really didn’t want to get up as we were out until something like 3, wasn’t paying much attention to the time to be honest, but had to be p at half 7 again to get to work on time…and we were on time today, but someone had changed the room we were training in so it looked like we were half hour late when we finally got in the right room.
Found I hard to stay away in the training today, was looking forward to getting back to the house, nearly fell asleep at one point L
Luton lass is now in Spain for the rest of the week with her work, so at least we’re in the same time zone, she’s still sending me a few text messages, but again I‘ve been having trouble with which network I’m attached to today, same as yesterday…vodafone=pants
We’ve got some computers and internet access now…but it’s a bit pants, and the numbers don’t add up very well, 3 people, 2 computers, 1 password, so we were al waiting to get on the one computer that we could access. And the keyboard was dodgy, with extra letters and accents over some of them and they have different positions for some of the letters and punctuation, which didn’t help!
Going to try and upload all this onto the internet tomorrow and send a couple of emails out to people…had a chance to read mine today, but I didn’t want to hog the computer too much so I only sent 2 emails, one to chunk and one to Luton lass, sorry guys, but the rest of you will have to wait until I get more free time to access them and then I can reply to everyone who’s sent me a message so far.
Feeling a bit pants today, mix of feeling ill, tired, bored and homesick, I think the training is going way too slow for my liking and I’m not enjoying myself at least half the time…I’m sure this training could’ve been done in oxford!
Have decided that I need to do something to either take my mine off things, cheer me up, chill me out or just stop me from being pissed off…there’s not a lot I can do about the situation so I’ve got to lump it, but I wish there was a way to feel better about it, more comfortable…that would be nice. I’ll have to have a think about it all.
Anyway, I’m home now so I’m going to go to bed now to try and catch up with the sleep I’ve been missing since Saturday.
Right we went out for some food this evening…pizza…nice and typically German food ain’t it! It was really nice though, but we were the only people in the whole place, I think there were more staff there than customers…
Haven’t done anything else this evening, going to head to bed in a minute, need to try and get a sensible night’s sleep and be ready for tomorrow…can’t sit there yawning all day again, even if it is boring, don’t really want to look uninterested if I can help it, even if it is going to be a whole day talking about fume cupboards!

9/6/05
right i've managed to copy and paste all the stuff over from the last couple of days, might keep doing this providing i can remember the german for paste!
today hasn't been too bad, managed to get a decent night's sleep and other than that the actual training has been pretty good considering it was all about fume cupboards...not the most interesting topic in the world!
i think we're heading to a swimming pool either tonight or tomorrow, should be ok if we can find it!
and this weekend we've been given directions to a piss up in a brewery which has been organise by a local radio station as a "dancenight"...hmmm...sounds dodgy to me, but i'm sure it'll be a laugh