Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Fall VON 2005 Day 0
On Sunday morning I was sitting in my room at Copley Square Hotel trying to finish finally my presentation for the BoF: Public an Private ENUM Issues on Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 3:00pm to 4:15pm, Room 104 (to be precise, so that nobody has an excuse not to show up to this outstanding session ;-), when Willi Wimmreuter skyped me proudly to announce that he also a member from the Mile High Skype Club, just cruising above Greenland with Lufthansa from Munich to Boston.
The quality was execellent as usual. Since he was scheduled to arive at 2pm, we agreed that he will give me a call when he has checked in at the Hilton nearby.
At 5:30pm I was starting to wonder, so I called him and he told my he is just on the way from the airport, because Lufthansa (or the relevant airports) managed to loose the luggage of half of the passengers (on a direct flight!), so it took two hours until everybody has filled the forms.
Side remark: Since they managed to loose my luggage on a direct flight from Vienna to Stockholm in Arlanda, I am now travelling with hand luggage only whenever possible. I did this also now from Vienna to Boston with a stopover in Frankfurt, which is a very dangerous place, luggagewise. The weather was also fine, no major delays, so I felt safe and thought there could be no troubles. Ha, Lufthansa found a way to provide me with some hazzles. Maybe they do this to frequent travellers to keep them alert and not bored, or as we say in Vienna, to give you cold-warm:
It started in Frankfurt with a nice surprise: the LH-Lady at the gate in Frankfurt exchanged my cattle class boarding pass with an upgrade to business class. Nice surprise. Curious was only the question if I am willing accept this. Who says no to such an offer? Be careful! I got seat 16G in business class and when I entered the plane, business class ended with row 15 and the next row was economy row 20. Since there where approx. 10 other people seated in rows 16 to 19, a mild panic broke out in the crew. They had changed plane last miunte, but obviously did not tell ground staff. Luckily after 15 minutes of hectic they had everybody of the overflow passengers seated (in business class). For us passengers the 15 minutes were not so funny, because there where no seats in ecomomy at all, standing 8 hours is no fun and also not possible and the slight hope to get into first was killed immediatly by the purser who said that the first is also full.
Back to Willi. He finally arrived and I went over to the Hilton. Willi was already in the lobby chatting with Henry Sinnreich. Henry was waiting for some relatives, so we decided to take a taxi to the BCEC to have a look at the Poker game. We first said hello to Diana and got our VON passes and then went up to the game to say hello to Jeff. There was just a break in the game and Jeff proudly showed us his new HDTV Cam.
After saying hello to some other friends and a drink we decided to leave. At the reception we bumped into the Jasionowskies (Timothy and Joanna) and decided to go back with them on the Metro. This was quite an experience, especially the surprise that the Silver Line from the airport to downtown is a trolley bus with a max speed of 15 mph. But the tunnel where the bus is going is impressive. In Europe they would use such a nice tunnel for a highspeed train with at leat 100 mph.
Back at the Sheraton we met the Austrian gang Michael Haberler, Robert Schischka, Axel Mayrhofer and Klaus Darilion (you can meet them at the VON Exhibit at booth #745, they will explain to you whatever you want to know about ENUM in Austria and this is a lot). We then moved over to a steak restaurant, where we were joined later by Dr. Georg Serentschy, the Austrian Regulator.
The evening discussions started with eBay/Skype and ended with the weird results of the German election.
The quality was execellent as usual. Since he was scheduled to arive at 2pm, we agreed that he will give me a call when he has checked in at the Hilton nearby.
At 5:30pm I was starting to wonder, so I called him and he told my he is just on the way from the airport, because Lufthansa (or the relevant airports) managed to loose the luggage of half of the passengers (on a direct flight!), so it took two hours until everybody has filled the forms.
Side remark: Since they managed to loose my luggage on a direct flight from Vienna to Stockholm in Arlanda, I am now travelling with hand luggage only whenever possible. I did this also now from Vienna to Boston with a stopover in Frankfurt, which is a very dangerous place, luggagewise. The weather was also fine, no major delays, so I felt safe and thought there could be no troubles. Ha, Lufthansa found a way to provide me with some hazzles. Maybe they do this to frequent travellers to keep them alert and not bored, or as we say in Vienna, to give you cold-warm:
It started in Frankfurt with a nice surprise: the LH-Lady at the gate in Frankfurt exchanged my cattle class boarding pass with an upgrade to business class. Nice surprise. Curious was only the question if I am willing accept this. Who says no to such an offer? Be careful! I got seat 16G in business class and when I entered the plane, business class ended with row 15 and the next row was economy row 20. Since there where approx. 10 other people seated in rows 16 to 19, a mild panic broke out in the crew. They had changed plane last miunte, but obviously did not tell ground staff. Luckily after 15 minutes of hectic they had everybody of the overflow passengers seated (in business class). For us passengers the 15 minutes were not so funny, because there where no seats in ecomomy at all, standing 8 hours is no fun and also not possible and the slight hope to get into first was killed immediatly by the purser who said that the first is also full.
Back to Willi. He finally arrived and I went over to the Hilton. Willi was already in the lobby chatting with Henry Sinnreich. Henry was waiting for some relatives, so we decided to take a taxi to the BCEC to have a look at the Poker game. We first said hello to Diana and got our VON passes and then went up to the game to say hello to Jeff. There was just a break in the game and Jeff proudly showed us his new HDTV Cam.
After saying hello to some other friends and a drink we decided to leave. At the reception we bumped into the Jasionowskies (Timothy and Joanna) and decided to go back with them on the Metro. This was quite an experience, especially the surprise that the Silver Line from the airport to downtown is a trolley bus with a max speed of 15 mph. But the tunnel where the bus is going is impressive. In Europe they would use such a nice tunnel for a highspeed train with at leat 100 mph.
Back at the Sheraton we met the Austrian gang Michael Haberler, Robert Schischka, Axel Mayrhofer and Klaus Darilion (you can meet them at the VON Exhibit at booth #745, they will explain to you whatever you want to know about ENUM in Austria and this is a lot). We then moved over to a steak restaurant, where we were joined later by Dr. Georg Serentschy, the Austrian Regulator.
The evening discussions started with eBay/Skype and ended with the weird results of the German election.
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