First, an apology to my faithful readers for not getting an update online yesterday. I decided to sleep instead of write, which is a perfectly good excuse in my book. With some luck I'll finish writing this and get it up today!

So, now to bring you up to date! Monday was a touchup day. Some of the rooms we did not have access to, so our efforts focused on getting our equipment online and as checked out as possible. We also set up the unilateral work area for Fox News, taped down cables, and planned for today. Then we went out looking for a Japanese restaurant that was supposed to be very good. We finally found it, and it was closed. So we ate at a nice Italian place down the street. Feeling bold, we then went to the disco. Peter had found it while he was on the survey. We got there early and it was a little slow, but quickly picked up as the day went on. I was a little disappointed that most of their tunes were American dance and quasi R&B slow dance shit. I had hoped for hard driving German electronic style music, which they played one or two tunes.

The bar had an interesting set up. You received a punch card as you walked in the door. Then at the bar, you paid for drinks with punches on the card. Then when it was time to be carried out the door, you gave the card to the cashier who figured out the tab.

So that made for a short night on Monday. Which was OK because Tuesday was devoted to running cables, checking cables, and doing as much as possible without access to all of our rooms. We also kept cleaning up and making things look good - unilateral staff for the networks start arriving tomorrow. And while the pool will not be "hot" until Thursday night, we still need to be sure the unilateral crews have everything they need.

We tried to do the Japanese restaurant again last night, but had a two hour wait for reservations. So we had a nice dinner in an out of the way place. It is the white asparagus (spargel) season here, and it is absolutely fabulous! Three days into the trip and I am starting to catch on to the German language a little bit.

I should have gotten a good rest Tuesday night, but the Accor chain (which runs the Mondial hotel that we are at) apparently does not know much about the hotelier business. Twice now the maid has ignored my "do not disturb) sign and tried to clean the room early in the morning. There is air conditioning in only two rooms of the hotel. Last nights complaint was the lack of density in the walls. Just as I was drifting to my dreams, Mr. Slappy and Ms. Screamer the Love Goddess start going at it. They finish up about forty five minutes later. They apparently took a little break, though, because they were back at it fifteen minutes later. They finally got tired after the third round. The walls are so thin I could here the crack of the whip!

Enough about that.

So, that brings us to today. We finally got access to the rest of the rooms, and got cable run into them. All the network unilateral teams are here now and getting set up. We have been making our finishing touches and adding a few "wow" things to the system. Another day in pool land. We finally made it to the Japanese restaurant tonight. It was good, but I wasn't very hungry and left dinner before desert to come back here and write a little for the page.

The Dom (the Cathedral) has been drawing me in every time I've gone past it. I guess it was designed to do that, but I think a part of it is the personal connection to the place. I've been looking at it from different angles, and really am hoping for some time to look at all the details. I noticed tonight how all of the minute details of every saint, statue, and stone came from the mind of man. And that the symmetry of the design of all these thousands of elements were coordinated. I don't know how they were coordinated, but they ad to have been. I thought about the same level of design, and intricacy, and specialization there is in the electronics we take for granted every day. Maybe this would make an interesting study - to look at the similarity in architecture between a grand cathedral and a modern piece of electronics.

And this is one of the special things that connects the cathedral of 800 years ago to us today. The concept of the human mind being able to not only envision all these details and designs, but to be able to put them into such flawless an installation that it works exactly as it is meant to. It plays music for you. It cooks a meal. It draws you to it with an invisible energy multiplied by countless generations of tradesmen, laymen, faithful and infidel, burgher and soldier and young kid lucky enough to be here right now.