It’s Friday. It’s a Friday going in to a three day Labor Day weekend so today is pretty slow at work. It’s great. Not only is today a relatively slow day but I actually have the weekend basically off – I am still doing some work tomorrow and covering on Sunday and unable to travel on Monday because I am the on-call for the team but that’s okay because there is going to be hardly any work this weekend and then on Tuesday I get to hop on a plane and leave North America behind for a week!
After a full day of work Dominica and I ordered in some Italian for dinner and relaxed for a little bit while I worked on and off throughout the night as I often do on Fridays. While we watched The Suite Life with Zak and Cody via Netflix I did some work on finding a hotel in Osnabruck, Germany which I desperately need for my upcoming trip.
It took several hours of looking but I finally came up with a hotel that appears to meet my needs as best as anything can when I am booking in a country in which I have never been before and only have a vague idea of what I am going to be doing on this trip. I found a place that seemed modern and nice, has Internet access and is not going to break the bank. In fact the price really turned out to be quite great.
So I am all set for the days that I am staying in Germany now. Now I am only in need of a single night hotel for my final night in Amsterdam. That and I need to figure out exactly what I have to do with trains to get from the Amsterdam airport to the train station and then out to Osnabruck’s train station and then to the hotel.
I am really amazed by how inexpensively this trip is turning out to be. The flights are $535 round trip after taxes and fees and the hotel is just $360 for the week. That’s about $900 and all I need is one more hotel night. So the “trip infrastructure” is going to be roughly $1,000 USD which is pretty amazing for six full days in some of the most expensive countries around (Germany and The Netherlands.) Just need to pay for trains and food beyond that.
I was somewhat surprised that there appears to be nothing going on while I am there around the two thousandth anniversary of the Battle of Teutoburger Wald. Given the importance globally of this battle it seems strange to me that there just seems to be nothing going on. I’m not aware of a single event being planned. I guess I will find out when I get there.