Well, it’s been an unusual day at work.
It started unusually with me being chauffered into work by Nick. This is unusual as it’s normally me driving him in.
Tuesday meetings had been brought forward to Monday so it was straight to the canteen for coffee and then into 90 minutes of conferences. Just before lunch Liam and I jumped into Barry’s Mondeo for the drive to the airport.
We ate lunch in the airport and Mark and I were served what was without doubt the worst Ciabatta sandwich that I’ve ever eaten.
Swiss Air were late leaving Birmingham due to “conditions at Zurich airport”. Hmmm. Not a good sign!
However, once we’d finally been seated on the Avro 100 in the comfortable leather Recaro seats (cool!) we departed for Switzerland.
The flight was calm, and although I don’t enjoy landings – at all – the pilot really greased it onto what is presumably his home runway. Nice job.
A 15km ride in a Toyota Avensis taxi felt unusual and it took a while to realise that it was because it had a petrol engine. I genuinely can’t remember the last time that I was in a petrol engined cab! And this one was also automatic so presumably the fuel consumption isn’t that great.
Finally we arrived at the Hotel Arte in Spreitenbach, which seems modern and functional. It seems almost true that hotels are the same everywhere, but this one has some nice fittings and fixtures and some unusual elements (like a 10-pin bowling alley!)
However, the view from my room window is less than pleasing. Having been brought up on a diet of picturesque Switzerland, full of mountains, snow, greenery (where there isn’t snow) and quaint villages, it’s a bit demoralising to gaze out of the window at the view pictured below…
Nice…
On the plus side, on TV the dubbing of ‘House’ into French is surprisingly good in terms of lip sync. My French isn’t up to understanding what’s going on though. The Simpsons is also well done, with Homer’s voice even sounding like him. Speaking French.
Right. Off for some food in the restaurant and then perhaps a game of bowling.