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Well, I am back from my long trip to Dortmund, Germany where I spoke at the DNUG Conference. The conference was great - enthusiastic attendess, good food, nice hotel. There wasn't an easy way to fly to Dortmund directly, so I simply flew to Dusseldorf and then took a train to Dortmund. As a side note, Germany has an exceptional train/subway network. You can get to anywhere, from anywhere, using their abundant, realtively inexpensive, and comfortable rail network. My flight and train/subway ride to Dortmund was easy; however my return trip was anything but easy.

Delta didn't have a direct flight from Dusseldorf to Atlanta on Thursday, so I needed to fly from Dusseldorf to Prague, and then from Prague to Atlanta. On paper this sounds fine - but the reality was anything but fine. I got up early on Thursday to make sure I got to the Dortmund train station, and subsequently to Dusseldorf, with ample time to make my flight to Prague. My flight to Prague was a little delayed, but I didn't think it would be too late to make my connection.

Boy was I wrong.

First, let me comment a bit on the Czech Airlines plane in which I flew. The airplane itself was an old one- I believe it was a DC-10, an old airframe. The seats were CRAMMED in there - everyone knows that I am "vertically challenged" at a towering 5'5" (about 1.65m), and MY knees were hitting the seat in front of me. Some of our larger friends, such as Ben Langhinrichs, would be miserable or may not be able to fly in this plane at all.

My flight took FOREVER to get off the ground - so long, in fact, that I missed my connecting flight to Atlanta (and my layover was about 2.5 hours - and I still missed it). Instead they decided to have my fly to the airport I HATE - Charles deGaulle (CDG) airport in Paris, France. Let me give you a quick impression of my disdain for CDG airport...

I have had the unfortunate opportunity to fly through CDG on multiple occasions - and I rarely made a connection when flying through that airport. I have, in fact, scheduled my connections as far as 4 hours between flights, and I STILL missed my connection. But instead of really going off on a rant, here is a post I made about my hatred of CDG airport.

Well, this connection was no different. Once again I was delayed while waiting for a bus to arrive to carry us to the terminal. The bus was late, so a nice person decided to put a few of us in a VAN and drive us to the terminal. And once again I had to get out of the van, go through passport control, get BACK on a bus, drive to a different location, go through customs, then get BACK on a bus - AGAIN - to go to my gate. Well, you know the rest - missed my flight again.

I was given a voucher to go to the nearby Holiday Inn Express for the night. The voucher included dinner and breakfast at the hotel. The room was very basic - bed, shower, teeny TV. At this point I didn't care, I just wanted to end that day and hope for better experiences the next day. I tried to eat dinner, but the food was - well, gross. I ate the soup so I didn't starve, then went to my room and went to sleep.

I woke up early the next morning, and went to CDG. Something must have happened overnight, because security was MUCH more arduous. To summarize I went through FOUR checkpoints for my passport and boarding pass, and when going through the security checkpoint I had to empty my ENTIRE computer bag - routers, wires, and even ballpoint pens! after going through all of that, the final 2 checkpoints were actually at the gate, where I showed my passport, was thoroughly interrigated about my trip, all stops, etc., and then I went through one more passport/boarding pass check to get on the plane (and these last two checkpoints were 15 feet apart). I think something must have happened overnight to cause them to increase security, but I guess I could be wrong. I doubt we'll ever know...

So, my flight home was fairly uneventful. There was the requisite screaming toddler a couple of rows up from me - this kid SCREAMED every two hours, like clockwork. Luckily I had a couple of movies to watch, and I simply had the volume a bit higher to drown out the screaming - for the most part.

Well, that's my travel woes. As I said earlier, the DNUG conference itself was great. For those of you who are looking for the files I used in my session, the session I gave is the same one I gave at Lotusphere 2008 about XML and DXL, and you can download those files here.

I have some other posts I need to make today, including my thoughts on the election and its results. Stay tuned.

Rock