Back home recovering

We returned back home on Monday already. I felt the flu coming on Sunday and by Monday the coughing was constant. So, sorry about the radio silence.

On Friday I went on an excursion to the Audi factory in Ingolstadt in southern Germany. It was extremely interesting to see this one line of cars slowly creeping and winding through the factory floor. There really was just one line and each car was different! They made a couple of different models, each with various possible variants like the amount of doors, what kind of motor and gearbox they would have, what color and on which side the steering wheel would be mounted. All that configuration information was stored on a databox fixed to the chassis of the car-to-be. The assembly-line robots would wirelessly read the configuration info from the boxes and know exactly where to fasten the screws on this models, or whatever.
The guide mentioned how the chassis would be painted with its doors, although the doors would be mounted later. This was to achieve the same shade of color in the whole car. He also mentioned that just painting the car adds about 35kg to the overall weight of the car.
Another interesting fact about the painting was how they would atomize the paint (or maybe ionize) into a mist of paint having a negative charge. Then they would positively charge the painted surface which would attract the paint atoms and thus create a really smooth surface. You can't use this procedure with metallic paints where you have flakes of metal. You actually want the flakes to be completely randomly distributed so that the paint looks brilliant no matter from which angle you'd look at it. If you'd use electric charge, all the metallic flakes would align themselves and the brilliance effect would vanish. I wonder if the car would be blindingly brilliant from one angle and completely ordinary from every other one...

In the evening we went to the Hofbräuhaus. It is a massive brewery restaurant in the middle of Munich city. Every night there is special program for tourists and that's what we had booked. We (me and my wife Virpi) were seated in an empty table for ten people (you know, the Finns tend to be prompt, contrary to the myth about German punctionality). Later eight or nine lovely ladies from Ruhr Area (where we come also) were seated in our table. Lines and lines of Japanese tourists started flowing in to the other tables. We noticed also a few Russian tables and behind us were sitting employees of Rentokil from the UK, Norway and Denmark. The evening was a lot of fun with strange, probably very traditional southern German program. I'll post a few pictures once I learn how to.
The band greets each nationality of guests in the house one by one with a flag that's brought on stage by a dancer. I guess we were the only Finns there that night but we got quite a nice cheering from the Englishmen in the next table, the German ladies in our table and I'd guess, the Scandinavians nearby. Everybody loves a Finn. And we're proud of being Finnish.

On Saturday we almost got stuck in the centre of Munich. We left our car at a Park-and-Ride place on an underground station and went sight-seeing and shopping in the centre. We wanted to come back in the afternoon and start for Schwangau (which was about 2 hours away). We were supposed to be at our hotel at the latest 18:00. So it is about two in the afternoon, we are in the centre and go to an underground station with the goal of stepping into a train and riding to our car and continuing from there. We arrive at the platform and there are already hundreds of people there all waiting for the next train. Suddenly it dawned on us, today Bayern München must have a home game at the stadium, which just happens to be located one stop before the station, where our car is parked. It looks really bad and tight and sweaty and hot and not at all nice. We find an alternate route eventually but it still took us for this normally half-an-hour long underground trip probably one-and-a-half hours with underground, a few busses and another underground. So close to four o'clock we start for Schwangau and our hotel.

We arrive a little late, about 20 minutes, which is quite a good timing taking into account how we tend to follow the speed limits even when there are 'just' roadworks there. Most don't. The mountains grew slowly during this south-westernly trip and in our destination they were so mist covered that it was hard to tell how high they were. We had a nice supper with a view to two castles. The staff in this restaurant were apparently trying to make the ceiling black with their huge flambéing activities. Especially the main courses used to make huge flames.

On Sunday we spent in the rain checking out the Neuschwanstein Castle, of which I hope Virpi will tell more about. And I hope to publish a few photos, too. We drove then to Ulm and had a look. This birth-town of Einstein's was celebrating the 100th anniversary of Einstein's "miracle year" when he published three major papers on physics. One of which earned him later the Nobel prize.

On Monday, we drove home and rested.
On Tuesday, I went to Nokia for the last time to return all company property. The colleagues had arranged a card and a huge amount of merchandise so there was a small farewell gathering. I want to thank all my former colleagues for the years we got to work together. Let's keep in touch one way or another.

Yesterday, we experienced German bureaucracy up close and personal. We were helping a former colleague, Simo, deal with all the issues related to moving back to Finnland. It took 2 hours to take care of everything, but now his address is changed, the post will be forwarded, electricity bill is sorted and he even managed to transfer some money to Finnland.
In the evening, we went to see the movie L.A.Crash (original title: Crash). What a GREAT movie! Go see it!

Today we rest and recover from flu.