Month: October 2011

German Unity Day

Posted on by tarus

Today is German Unity Day, commemorating the day that East and West Germany, created after the end of World War II, were reunified into one country. I have friends who grew up in Germany before 1990 who remember a divided country, and while the process hasn’t been easy, it has made Germany one of the dominant countries in Europe. While our similarities bring us together, it is our differences that make us strong.

I, however, don’t get a holiday as I am in Vipiteno, Italy, working with a customer. To get here, Antonio and I drove down Autobahn 7, south through Austria. It is my first time in serious alpine country as well as my first long ride on an Autobahn. Here is Antonio in our noble chariot for the week, a rented Mercedes A160.

In the US, the Autobahn is this mythic highway without speed limits. While I don’t think it would work well in the US (our fierce independent streak seems to include a desire to ignore good driving practices, such as staying right unless to pass), it is pretty efficient in Germany. According to the GPS, our top speed was 169 km/hour , which I believe is close to 105 mph, and on several occasions we were passed as if we were standing still.

We also saw solar panels and windmills in abundance. Quite often several of the towering giants would stand sentinel over the highway.

As I mentioned above, the whole process is pretty efficient … up to a point. About halfway through our trip we saw the dreaded line of brake lights, and our progress slowed to a crawl. As there was no accident, the only thing I can figure is that with the holiday there were a large number of people heading toward the Alps, and it was a good ol’ traffic jam.

We took a slight detour through the country (where I paid 80€ for 50 liters of gasoline) and eventually the traffic let up, which was about the time we saw the mountains in the distance.

I’ve been in the Alps before, specifically in France, but this was my first time approaching them from Germany. It is impressive, since they rise from the ground like a forbidding wall. We entered a 1km tunnel and when we emerged, we were in Austria.

I’m glad Antonio was driving, because this is beautiful country and I got to watch it. I live in the Eastern half of the United States, and while we have mountains, they are relatively old. The highest mountain east of the Mississippi river is Mount Mitchell, and it is only 6685 feet (2037 meters) high.

These mountains are young, rocky and sharp, and a lot of people were out enjoying their beauty. Since there is almost no snow, the main attraction at the moment seems to be hiking, and I can only imagine the workout one would get.

We had missed lunch, so we decided to visit Innsbruck. Of course we brought Ulf, who seemed to be happy to be out of the car and in the mountains.

Innsbruck is a nice town – with a cold, fast moving river and brightly colored houses surrounded by the ever present ring of mountains. We found a nice outdoor cafe for a light meal, and as usual, Ulf was up to his old tricks.

This is Johanna, our waitress, who was kind enough to stop for a picture even though the cafe was very busy.

Ulf then introduced us to two young ladies sitting at the next table, Carina and Varina. They grew up together across the border in Germany, but are attending school in Innsbruck to study pharmacology. When I mentioned that my sunglasses were older than they were, Carina brought out her own pair of Wayfarers. They seemed excited to be in school, and we talked a lot about travel.

After lunch we hopped in the car for the drive through the Brenner pass into Italy. Vipiteno (Sterzing) is an interesting place, since it is a Germanic town in Italy. It kind of reminds me of Canada, as most of the signs are in both languages.

We got checked in to the hotel, which is lovely with the exception of the Internet connection. It is both 5€ an hour and limited to HTTP and HTTPS (sigh). The night ended with dinner, which was at a Thai/Japanese/Chinese/PIzzeria Restaurant. We thought the combination was so funny we had to try it, and I had hot and sour soup with a pizza.

More on Vipiteno and Italy to come.

A Wedding in Fulda

Posted on by tarus

I have been working with open source software for over a decade now, and I do hate it when people describe it as some sort of utopia, where wandering bands of freedom loving coders roam the countryside handing out gifts of free applications.

The fact of the matter is that most of my business transactions are simply that – business transactions. The client gives us money in exchange for services and we try very hard to deliver those services.

But there is something about open source that makes the whole experience much more personal. I consider almost all of my clients as friends, and a few of them very good friends. I never really got that when I worked in commercial software.

So it was with a feeling of honor that I was invited to the wedding of Daniela Barbaro and Uwe Bergmann.

As you may be aware, Uwe is an OpenNMS services partner in Germany through his company Nethinks, and he is the main sponsor of the annual OpenNMS Users Conference – Europe.

It was nice to be invited to an event that usually only includes family and close friends, and so we scheduled training in Germany the week before in order to make sure we would be in the country on the big day. Both David and I were invited, along with Antonio who came up from Naples.

I had never been to a German wedding before, especially one where the bride’s family was Italian, so while most of the service was in the German language, when the hymns were sung each verse would alternate between the two languages. Not being very fluent in either, I was pretty much equally lost, but I could easily understand the love and admiration that was in the room.

After the service there was a reception outside the church, complete with Italian sweets, German bread, champagne and gelato. When I got to the bride and groom they looked very happy.

I also ran into a few people from Nethinks.

The two gentlemen on the left are Michael Batz and René Kleffel. The are Nethinks OpenNMS consultants who helped out with the class this week.

The cute couple on the right are Jeri Ryan and Justin Timberlake.

Actually, it’s Christoph Seipp and his girlfriend Caroline. Christoph used to work at Nethinks but now he is working to get Cloud services like Google Apps adopted in Germany.

After the reception there was also an evening party. It was outside of Fulda in a town called Grebenhain-Bermuthshain. David wasn’t feeling well (he’s been on the road non-stop for some time) so he stayed back while Antonio and I drove out through the beautiful German countryside with Ulf, our Kiwi mascot.

Ulf wasn’t able to make it to the wedding, but he did have fun giving his best wishes to the bride and groom.

Antonio and I wandered around and met a lot of amazing people. Christoph introduced me to Kümmel, and I returned the favor by reintroducing him to the North American exports tequila and Jack Daniels.

Ulf seemed to have his own agenda.

I had a wonderful time, and the only thing that could have made it better was if my own bride had been able to join us. I used to travel a lot for business before working with OpenNMS, and I found it kind of lonely. Now am I always come back home richer for it, not just in money but in friendships, and I have a feeling I know which will last longer.