The Travelling Forumite

['J']

sounds exciting. make sure you do your homework though, they've got a whole different system of astrology over there. pro tip: it's not based on constellations like you're used to, but on a lunar yearly calendar.

personally, i quire liked the food in china. one tip i got from a local guide when i was over there is that if you're gonna be eating meat, look for muslim restaurants. they're generally cleaner, and if they're keeping halal it ensures the animal was slaughtered, as opposed to dying of sickness or old age.

[midgetshrimp]

DA: That's awesome!

J: Interesting tidbits...

[Don Alexander]

Well, here I am, sitting in an Emirates A380 about to take off for Dubai.

Peak Travel Luxury achieved. (For my budget, that is.)

[midgetshrimp]

Safe travels DA!

[Don Alexander]

Well, I made it. God, what a journey!

I left at 5:30 in the morning on Saturday to drive to the local airport. Short flight to Madrid, then wait like seven hours for my flight to Dubai. That was already about 7 hours. Then a reasonably short layover and onward to Shanghai!

That was the easy part... well the next step turned out to be not so complicated either. I took the metro from Pudong airport to the Hongqiao train station. Only one line from the airport, no changes needed. But that took two hours!!

Then the train station... that was a bitch. The ticket machines were only in Chinese, I finally found a counter, and then nearly despaired in actually finding my train...

Then another 30 minute taxi ride to the conference centre. I arrived at like 10 in the evening on Sunday - and there wasn't any food anymore. So big breakfast this morning.

[Azrael]

Glad to hear you made it safely, Alex.

[Don Alexander]

Now I need to make it back...

[Don Alexander]

I have safely returned!!!

Wow, what a trip! Luckily everything worked out perfectly. But the duration... I had gotten up at 7 in the morning local on Saturday, after catching a lot of sleep (like 10 hours) which was really life-saving. I left the hotel at noon, which is 6 in the morning central European time. My first flight did not leave from Shanghai until shortly after midnight. What followed were nine-hour and seven-hour flights to Madrid, where I arrived at, um, something like 2 in the afternoon (now central European time) on Sunday. And then I had to wait until nine in the evening for my next flight!!

I finally hit home at 10:30 in the evening, and fell into bed and slept nearly seventeen hours.

[Azrael]

Welcome home, Alex.

[midgetshrimp]

Damn DA! Glad all the travel was safe and you made it there and back alright.

I got back from Vegas alright, then had to drive up to MA the next day for my uncle's celebration of life, then drive back to PA the following day. Our apartment lease ended and we hadn't found a new apartment, so my housemate and I stayed at a home the company owns (a place for experts to stay since most live out of state) and finally got a new apartment about a week later. I helped my housemate move his stuff in and then had to leave for my current trip throughout the southeast US on Sunday (I'll have to move my stuff in when I get back). I've done pick-ups in Georgia and Alabama, tomorrow I'm doing a pickup in South Carolina, then I have to drive down to just north of Miami. After that, I'm going to try to visit a friend who lives outside of Tampa before I head back up to Georgia for my last pickup. From there I'll hopefully have time to visit a friend outside of Knoxville on my way back to PA, and then I have time to do some laundry before driving up to MA to celebrate my brother's 33rd and my grandfather's 98th birthday on the 6th.

After I get back from that, I might potentially be able to acclimate to the new apartment for a couple weeks before hitting the road again.

[Azrael]

Has Tenjen gone to India again? Haven't seen him around lately.

[Don Alexander]

So, completely out of the blue... I mean, no one's really travelling much these days anyway, a bit of a blast from the not too distant past.

In September 2019, I went to a place I'd never thought I'd return to: the Rodina!! The Russian motherland. specifically the least Russian part of it, namely St. Petersburg. which is an absolutely ridiculous city. I've never seen so much architectural pomp & circumstance... Just magnificent. I did not make it to the Lakhta Center, however, which is a wholly different kind of ridiculous.

In February 2020, when people were already walking around in masks in airport and flights into Iran had already been cancelled, I flew to a country that does not like Russians at all: Georgia. For a group meeting of a Gravitational-Wave follow-up collaboration I'm in. On our afternoon off, we took a trip past the Russian front line...

And that's been it except for a visit home in August. There was another meeting planned in Iceland for November but of course it happened in Zoomspace... And I did not travel home for Christmas, the first time in my life. Mostly because I'm really, really busy right now, but also because the pandemic situation in Germany is bad these days.

[Azrael]

What is this "travel" of which you speak?

[Dirty n Evil]

Just a quick update (I'm kinda procrastinating on a few things, checking a few places I haven't been in ages, hence my reappearance)... but, I'm on the opposite side of the states! A couple of years ago I met a wonderful partner, and we've been together for over three years. At first, she moved in with me back in Florida... but, she was miserable there. I never liked the place too much myself. So, a couple of months ago we made a cross-country trip and moved permanently to where she grew up in Oregon. It's SO much greener here, and not nearly as crowded.

[Azrael]

Welcome to the West Coast, DnE! So happy to hear you found someone to spend your life with.