Beer, bratwurst, and pretzels!!!

Life is good!!! We left in the morning from Madrid and headed to Munich.  For the first time in our journey we are staying in a hotel, and its nice to be here.  There's some of the creature comforts of home and there's a gym, which quite honestly, we all need to visit.

As you can see, we were all quite giddy upon arrival! 

We are pretty much in the downtown area, and we found a fantastic pizza place for lunch then headed to the English garden, Munich's version of Central Park. While wandering we found the most amazing beer garden.  Picture this: large wooden tables, huge mugs of beer, pretzels and pretty much anything else you could want, AND a playground.  Just sitting around drinking-with your kids totally occupied, GENIUS!!  Maybe I don't get out enough, but do places like this exist at home?

After our stroll, we headed downtown and had dinner at the famous Hofbrauhaus brewery.  It was worth a visit!  Music, great beer, coloring for kids and tons of people watching.  We had a great time!

The size of the beers is impressive...

And yes, I finished it!

And this was dinner, now you see why we need a gym!

Tomorrow is a free day for me, so we are headed to Neuschwanstein Castle, the castle Walt Disney used as inspiration.  It's an all day excursion, so it should be fun!

Technical difficulties...

Can't live with technology, can't live without it.  Today was a day where we just couldn't win.  My new phone, to replace my stolen one came late, so the family had to wait around the apartment most of the day. When it came, the driver demanded 50 dollars cash and would not give a receipt?? Strange!  The WIFI went down in the apartment, I couldn't connect either while out at meetings and both my credit cards started getting rejected for some strange reason.  Poor Eric had to run to an ATM to pay my cab fare coming back tonight, as I spent my last Euro on an itsy bitsy tuna empanada for lunch.  

We did see a movie, Despicable Me 2, this evening and both my meetings, Johnson and Johnson and BMS, went very well today. J & J was super excited about our anti-fee model and are very interested in trying it sometime this month. 

We leave in the morning for Munich and I am confident our luck will turn around tomorrow! We are actually checking into a hotel, so that will be a nice change of pace for a few days.

No pictures from today...except for this one.  Drying our clothes old school style! 

 They smelled great!

Churros con chocolate.....

Whatever walking we are doing is nullified by the food we are eating.  We stopped at a famous Churros bar, San Gines, for what is basically fried dough sticks that you dip in a cup of delicious hot pudding.  

Worth every calorie!  I did not have any meetings today, so we visited the Reina Sofia Museum of modern art (we saw some Miro and Picasso) and then spent the afternoon in Retiro park.  Retiro is Madrid's version of Central Park.  There was again a LOT of walking, but the kids have pretty much stopped complaining.  It appears they ate getting used to it. :)

Also funny is the weather. Same temps as in Basel, but dry so absolutely lovely and although we have AC, we don't even need it.  Here are some photos from today. 

Modern art installations at Reina

:

Retiro

In the park, we fed the fish and they swarmed and were HUGE!!!!

Churro bar

Madrid, ahhh it's great to be back!

I was very excited to have been booked for meetings here in Madrid.  I studied here in college for a semester and this is my fist time back since 1995.  Spain is amazing and it's exciting to have the potential to work with pharma companies headquartered here.  It's also nice to be in a place where I can speak the language for a change!!

We flew from Paris, only about a 2 hour flight, and all went smoothly.  Our apartment is on Calle Toledo, very close to Plaza Mayor. We had dinner in the square and then headed up to puerto del sol where we saw a great magic show.  It was ice cream and then bed.  We are currently sitting on our deck enjoying the views; here we are now and other pictures from today below.

View from our apt

Magic show

Puerto del sol

Plaza Mayor

Our street

BMS, and GSK and Paris sightseeing!

Friday was a crazy day.  I met up with Trevor Eckert, a colleague who in the next year or so, will relocate to Basel to work out of our office there.  His girlfriend lives in Paris and his vacation to visit her coincided with my trip.  It was a good chance for him to be introduced to the folks he will eventually be working with.

Our meetings were about a half hour outside the city, but they both went quite well and we got to have a nice lunch while out.  

While I was in meetings, the family visited the Eiffel Tower and actually went all the way up.  Here are a few pictures:

Trevor's girlfriend arranged for us to have a sitter, so we four went out to my favorite bistro in Paris, Au Passage in the 11th.  It lived up to every one of my expectations this second visit, even though it was probably 90 degrees inside and I was sweating the whole night. 

Trevor and Camille

Eric and I

This is the burrata, mozzerella and cream in olive oil.  You simply can not eat too much of this, it's amazing, albeit, Italian in origin.

Today, Saturday, was busy.  We went to the Louvre, lunch in St Germaine, shopping, then to a really fun playground behind Luxembourg palace.  Kids to bed early tonight, as we have Camille's sister sitting tonight.  Can't wait for another amazing meal!  Here's some pictures of today. 

With the Mona Lisa 

With the Egyptian Mummies:

At the lovers lock bridge:

At the playground:

I love Paris!!!

Even having my iPhone stolen at the train station couldn't damper our first day in Paris.  The apartment we rented via airbnb.com is fantastic.  We arrived and got settled, had a late lunch and then walked to Notre Dame.  Tomorrow is crazy, the family is headed to the Eiffel Tower and I am headed to BMS, GSK, and Roche.  I'll also be meeting up with Trevor, a colleague who will be joining me for the day.  He will likely work in our Basel office next year.  And no worries on the phone, my awesome office manager, Heather, is getting me a new one! Thank God for Heather, and that is certainly not the first or last time I will say that.

Here are a few pics from our day:

Lunch 

Break from walking

Crossing the Seine

Lighting prayer candles at Notre Dame

In front of Notre Dame

Nobody wanted to walk back, so we got peddled by this young Finnish man, probably should have asked him to turn around!!

Can I live here?

Tonight, on my way home I walked past this house, right on the Rhine.......ahhh beautiful!

Baxter and Zurich

Off to Zurich I went this morning.  Zurich is to Basel as Boston is to Providence. The trains run every hour between Basel and Zurich, so heading there for a meeting is no different than driving into Cambridge from the North or South shore.  

I met with global staffing leads to introduce them to our model.  We currently partner with Baxter US, but this was our first introduction to their EU counterparts.  They really like our model, and like Lonza, once we establish our office here, i think they'll try us out.  It's looking like 2014 is going to be busier than ever!

Baxter was about 20 minutes outside Zurich City center by tram.  I took a $30 cab out there and a $3 tram ride back to the train station.  I thought maybe the cabs were less expensive here.  All in all, you just can't justify taking a cab in Switzerland.  Certainly not your best option when the public transit it so great and affordable.  

I had a blast from the past too this morning in transit:

Gone are the days of freely passing from country to country with your only care being what pension to select.....but those were the days.  Michelle, if your reading this, we must plan an adult version of our trip some day.....  50th bday year maybe?

I also have to keep reminding myself that most food here, although delicious, can be deceiving, especially when you can't speak or read German.  Here I was thinking that I was buying a healthy lunch: turkey on a pretzel.  

Looks like turkey, right?  Wrong.  It's bologna and the pretzel has been smeared with butter, applied like you'd add hummus.  Dissecting it was messy, but in the end I got pretzel and probably only 1 pad of butter.  Not too bad.

I'm headed back to Basel now.  Tomorrow we leave the apartment for 10 days.  I have meetings in Paris, Madrid and Munich so I have a lot of packing and organizing to do tonight!  Our adventure continues!!