Friday, December 5, 2008 – What a Day

I wake up around 3 am local time and couldn’t fall back asleep. I looked at times in the states, and decide to call mom as it was only 9:30pm on the east coast. After chatting with mom for a while I get up and go check my email. I mess around on the internet for a bit a notice I am getting tired around 5:30am, so I decide to nap since I don’t have an appointment until 8:30.

About 7:15 I crawl out of bed and head to shower. My relocation guy met me in lobby of hotel at 8:30 as we had an appointment at 9am to open a bank account. This lasted about 45 minutes. This is where my day gets sort of interesting.

After bank account is set up, I ask my relocation guy how I get to the Nokia office via public transportation. He tells me I need to take the number 5 bus and shows me where to wait and that it will cost 1.80 Euro. GREAT!! But here’s where my first adventure begins…

Having never taken public transportation without purchasing a ticket in advance, I was clueless on how to pay once bus #5 arrived. I just follow the locals onto the bus and most just sit down, except one who inserts a card into this device and punches a couple of buttons…crap…I don’t have a card…I’m now a bus going somewhere and haven’t paid. Then we make another stop and I notice at the front of the bus right beside the driver there are two different lanes where the one lane has toll bars which won’t allow you thru until you pay. “OH NO!!!! That’s how I pay,” I thought. Geez, I’m in a foreign country on public transportation which I haven’t paid to ride. What a way to make a first impression. At this point now, I’m trying to figure out how to let the driver know I didn’t pay knowing he most likely didn’t speak English. So we keep tooling thru the route and I’m not sure where I need to get off. We keep on going making several stops. Finally after one stop I look up and see the Nokia office fading away in the distance. Dammit…first I didn’t pay; now I just missed my stop. At this point I am completely lost. I just keep riding the bus hoping that we’ll make the route again. Well, after about an hour riding the bus, we make what seems to be a final stop. The only people on the bus at this point were the bus driver and me. Here is where I decided to make my confession and ask the bus driver what bus I now need to get on to get to Nokia. As suspected he spoke no English, but he did recognize “Nokia” and told me what bus to take and what stop to get off. I offered him 2 Euro for my bus fare, but being a nice guy he refused to take it and told me to get on other bus. Lessons learned:

a) public transportation does you no good if you’re not fully aware of where you’re going

b) ask how to pay ahead of time when you’re not sure…lol

So finally after hopping on the next bus AND paying my toll, I finally make it to the Nokia office just before noon. I head up to the receptionist and show her my Irving badge and ask for my new boss. He is unavailable at the time, so I ask for the HR rep with whom I’ve been dealing. She meets me at reception and I hand over my bank account information along with other things needed for me to get paid for the month of December. After meeting with her for a moment, my new boss comes in and intercepts me to go meet my new team. One of the guys gives me a tour around the facility. I finally settle into my new desk and suddenly I feel relaxed. There’s nothing like the Nokia culture to make you feel at home. I mess around a bit and answer a few emails.

Since almost everyone on my new team is new, there are some folks who are from out of town like me. One is Cindy who is from Beijing. She has been here in Ulm for only two months. And lucky for me she is in the same hotel as I am, but she is moving out soon now that she has found an apt. So she helps me with the whole bus thing and tells me where I need to get off in downtown Ulm. She also showed me where to go shopping for groceries and other things. So HUGE thanks to her.

After dropping my things off at the hotel, I step out to get some dinner. I find this Spanish joint called Tapas y Mas. It was on ok place. After a couple beers and dinner, I head back to the hotel where I call it night around 9:30 pm local time.