[Vms.sig-hu] FW: Technical Update Days - Trip report Germany, Italy, Switzerland (part 1) (fwd)

[Fodor Zsuzsa]

---------- Továbbított levél ----------
Dátum: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 15:40:47 -0400
Feladó: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Címzett: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Tárgy: FW: Technical Update Days - Trip report Germany, Italy, 
Switzerland (part 1)



-----Original Message-----
From: Skonetski, Susan 
Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2005 3:14 PM
To: Skonetski, Susan
Subject: Technical Update Days - Trip report Germany, Italy, 
Switzerland (part 1)


Dear Folks, 

Well I am back from the European portion of the OpenVMS Technical 
Update Days.  It was really wonderful to be with so many friends that I 
have not seen in awhile and in some cases never even met before.  I 
have broken this in two parts for your sake and mine.  This is a general 
trip report on the European OpenVMS Technical Update Days this is 
Part one (Germany, Italy, Switzerland)

Some things that may interest you. There is now an Italian and French 
openvms.org and a German one is coming.  This is all being done on a 
volunteer basis.  Every location the agenda was changed and the team 
was of course flexible as they always are.  We had one on one 
meetings and one on many customer visits.

Team was Guy Peleg, Andy Goldstein, Richard Bishop, Doug Gordon, 
Norm Lastovica (Oracle Rdb), Brad McCusker, Sunil Kumaran, Philippe 
Vigier (Oracle Rdb), Yanick Pouffary.  And for the first time we had VMS 
management representation Paul LaCombe, Jim Lancianni, Jim Janetos, 
MaryJane Vazquez.

We started in Germany (Sept 26-27 Mon-Tues)We stay at the 
Steineberger hotel, it is a lovely location with a park across the street 
and this year for some reason there is a Mazda in the lobby.  When 
Andy G. arrived the first thing he did was get under the car and 
say "now I feel at home".  This is the third or fourth year in this location 
and you know how there is a sterotype that Germans are reserved and 
not friendly.  Its just not true, they are warm, kind with a great sense 
of humor.  The room was packed and on the second day one of the 
customers said that he was sorry the his friend could not be there but 
they needed to sign a PO for over 4M (VMS of course).  I was ok with 
that.  The room that we use is right above a micro brew place and our 
hosts were Guenter Krieble (VMS Ambassadover) and Thomas Siebold 
(VMS Ambassador).  Every time we visit we meet new folks and they 
are so excited about VMS, its a buzz.  

Tuesday (27th) night after reviewing the feedback forms we flew to 
Rome Italy. Wed  (28) was supposed to be the travel day but I have 
never been to Italy before and wanted to see Rome.  If you have never 
been to Italy it is a not to be missed experience.  The taxi ride from the 
airport to the hotel with a driver and Guy Peleg was an experience in 
itself, the entire goal was to keep two tires on the road at one time 
while traveling at 100 miles an hour, any more than that is not 
permitted.  Arrive Holiday Inn somewhere 50 or so Euro's from the 
Airport.

Wednesday (28th) The hotel has a free shuttle to down town Rome.  
On the way we notice a lot of soldiers with automatic weapons (this 
comes into play later). The bus drops us (Doug, Norm, Guy and myself) 
off in front of a café.  They need coffee and I need a diet coke (bad, its 
an addiction).  So we walk around the block, its beautiful little alleys 
with sculptures.  We find a place, I have no idea what to order so I get 
a coffee (I hate coffee) its in a little cup and looks like 10w40 motor oil 
then one of them mention that there is a cooler with coke lite and I am 
gone.  We walk out the door and see groups of people walking up this 
huge staircase so we follow them.  At the top a panorama unfolds, 
acres of ancient ruins, it's the Pantheon, there is the Arch of Constine, I 
even saw where Julius Caesar was buried.  We walked around the 
outside of the Coliseum.  Then we are off to see the Trevi Fountain with 
lunch on the way.  We do not want to eat at some tourist trap the 
problem with that is that none of us speak any Italian except Guido 
Pelago knows a few words (that would be Guy).  So we end up in a 
small very crowded resturant and I still do not know what we had but it 
was good, and there were two very nice men and the table next to us 
that helped me order.  The Trevi Fountain is huge and is built on the 
site of the earliest fountian in Rome, the water travels 20KM there 
were probably 2 thousand people here half of them selling something.  
Next stop is the Spanish steps of all the sights this was the least 
exciting, they are a set of stairs surrounded by designer shops.  The 
truth is I do not know the story behind them so there is probably 
something very cool about them.  Its time to head back for the bus and 
dinner at the hotel and get ready for the TUD.

Thursday (29th) Rome TUD HP office in Rome, the team hosting us here 
is so wonderful Emanualla (half of the marketing team coordinating the 
event) is here she is very competent very nice and beautiful too. We 
have the Ambassadors as well and they have arranged to show a 
mixed architecture cluster which the customer love.  Now you 
remember I mentioned about the soldiers with the automatic weapons, 
well it seems that there is some sort of terrorist activity in Rome and 
they have shut down the subway so most of the audience can not get 
to the event. This is sad for us but some folks make it and we do the 
event for them.  When the day is done, we leave for the airport and 
head to Milan for the Friday TUD.

Friday (30th) Milan Italy HP Office.  Now all the Ambassadors Emanualla 
and Leila the Marketing team and a large audience are here.  And 
Mauro who has volunteered to do the Italian vms.org is there as well 
as our friends from the Polytechnic who were also speaking I have a 
great picture of this group at the end of the day. This evening I went 
out to dinner with Doug, Andy and Margie Goldstein to a wonderful 
restaurant probably one of the best on the entire trip.  No one spoke 
English which was a good start, the hostess maybe owner was 
wonderful and kind and I had what ever she recommended..  This was 
the first time we had done the Tad's in Italy and I hope it will not be 
the last.

Weekend: Oct1-2
When we knew we were going to be in Milan on Friday Guy and I had 
talked about driving to Zurich our next stop.  This is one of the 
highlights of the entire 3 weeks.

Saturday Oct 1

Guy and Norm pick up the rental car from the airport, we were not sure 
of the size and if it would fit four people so the plan b was to take a 
train.  Fortunately the car was a station wagon so we could all go 
together.  We start our road trip and it is a beautiful warm sunny day.  
Our first stop is the very lovely village called Sirmone which is on Lake 
Garda.  It is a walled village and the lake is beautiful and obviously very 
wealthy, we stay about an hour and all go our separate ways and I 
take about 50 photographs. The air has changed from city air to 
mountain air since the lake is surrounded by mountains. I should 
probably add here that the guys are great to travel with, and did not 
mind when I had to stop to take pictures which I have hundreds of.  
After Simrione we travel for another hour or so before we stop for lunch 
at yet another perfect place on the lake with the mountains on the 
other side.  Our goal for the day is to make the town of Araba for a 
hotel that night which is in the Dolamites.  As we drive the mountains 
get steeper and above the tree line it so amazing it takes your breath 
away, we stop at this lake where there are so many greens and blues 
you can not count them and the air is like champagne.  The sky is a 
dark clear blue and we get to share it with friends.  This is pretty 
fortunate and the day gets even better.  Probably the best picture I 
took was on a portion of road where that are 36 hairpin turns the sun 
is going down and I ask Guy to stop and the sun is shining on one 
snow covered mountain.  It is getting dark as we roll into the town of 
Araba.  We find out that the hotel (SportHotel in Araba) is closing the 
next day for the season and that they will give us a room but has to 
charge us for breakfast and for 55 Euros we get the best room of the 
entire trip.  Barbara speaks English and is a sweetheart.  Her mother is 
turning 60 the next day and I get to meet this very nice man who owns 
a restaurant just down the road.  Guy and his wife have stayed in this 
hotel before, my room was a girl room and had a whirlpool tub with a 
window that could look out the bedroom out the balcony, king-size 
bed, couch, table pretty much everything.  Very much a ski lodge place.  
Anyway we go out to dinner and everyone was so nice one of the 
waiters Kiki has been working there for 32 years and Marie Theresa 
was actually born on Staten Island NY but moved back to Italy when 
she was 2.  Anyway the owner came over with some Grappa (liquor 
made from the skin of grapes, normally is horrible but this was good) 
then I got a tour of the kitchen and took pictures, I also got a job offer 
to work at the restaurant.  But I told them I love what I do.

Sunday Oct 2

After a wonderful nights sleep it's a rainy day and we have to make it 
to Zurich today because we have customer visits on Monday.  What we 
did not know is that there was construction on the roads.  I have a 
beautiful picture of a castle ruin on the side of the road.  We also had 
to go through part of Austria before we got to Switzerland.  We also 
got behind some sort of parade.  It is amazing how little border control 
there is now between countries.  We dropped the car at the Zurich 
Airport with about 500 miles on it, and then took a cab to the hotel, we 
had been on the road for about 10 hours and it was good to not be 
moving.

Monday Oct 3

8am Raymond Frepple OpenVMS Ambassador meeting Norm, Guy and 
myself in the hotel lobby we have two customer visits today, we take a 
bus and two trains at one of the train stations we get a wireless 
PCMCIA card for my laptop I am having some problems (I am the 
problem) Guy and Norm do an excellent job with the customer its very 
different to be at a site where you are the stranger, what I also 
noticed was the security, its nice to have customers that you know in 
the room.  At about noon we leave that customer site and catch the 
train for an hour trip to Bern for another customer visit and we have 
lunch on the train with Raymond.  The customer visit goes excellent and 
is very interactive. We need to get back to the hotel where I have to 
meet the TUD host for a group dinner at 8 we actually make it back to 
the hotel as they are walking out. Rene Hanselmann our host for the 
event took us to this casual place where we had cheese fondue, wine 
and lots of laughter.  

Tuesday Oct 4

The technical update in Switzerland is excellent, the room is full there 
are walk-ins and there is even a new person (hobbyiest)who is very 
young.  One thing that always amazes me is how many interesting 
places where VMS is being used, just when I think that I have heard all 
the possible places where we are at, then I find another interesting 
customer, that happened in Switzerland.  The team did an excellent job 
coordinating the event and the TUD team did a great job delivering.  
Three countries done three to go.


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