a piece of news
Feb. 7th, 2019 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howsmyenglishJust got an email (two identical emails, actually) saying that my flights to Germany and back are cancelled with no refund as the company has filed for insolvency. That's around 200 Euros out the window. Plus train tickets in Germany - I already got both for the journey after I was supposed to arrive and to go back. The last ticket was bought an hour before the insolvency mail.
So, I'm sitting here, trying to process the news, counting the losses, thinking what to do now... And the only stupid thought that comes to mind is: good that I decided not to buy the "City mobil" ticket for Berlin, when I was booking the train. 7 Euros saved. Yay!
PS: still, this should be considered a "small bad thing", small bad things always make me feel better - like, there, I paid my bill, now I am entitled to some happiness and do not have to be afraid that something bad is just around the corner.
So, I'm sitting here, trying to process the news, counting the losses, thinking what to do now... And the only stupid thought that comes to mind is: good that I decided not to buy the "City mobil" ticket for Berlin, when I was booking the train. 7 Euros saved. Yay!
PS: still, this should be considered a "small bad thing", small bad things always make me feel better - like, there, I paid my bill, now I am entitled to some happiness and do not have to be afraid that something bad is just around the corner.
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Date: 2019-02-07 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-07 08:56 pm (UTC)Yes, it was Germania. We booked with credit card, though, and it looks like there's a chance to get back the money. I hope it'll work out.
I am flying to FRA in the end - funnily enough. Where do you work there? We might meet and never know we did :)
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Date: 2019-02-08 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-09 01:25 pm (UTC)Anyhow, I'm thinking of adding something funny to my headgear on my flight out - to, you know, mark myself. Then you might see it and laugh and say hi :) Or not :) Still, someone might laugh. Need to find an idea as to what it might be... A frog hat?
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Date: 2019-02-07 07:16 pm (UTC)I was going to send you some Yelp reviews for some of the better places (restaurants, chocolateers, and a wonderful mainly English-language used book store) that we saw in Berlin, but I guess there's no real rush for that now.
We screwed up using the U-Bahn: I thought I was buying day pass tickets, turned out they were good for three hours. Fortunately we were never caught.
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Date: 2019-02-07 09:57 pm (UTC)I'm not going to be even near Berlin in the end. I'd love to visit that book store, though.
Thanks for the sympathies! :)
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Date: 2019-02-07 10:04 pm (UTC)One of my favorite authors, Charles Stross, released a book while we were in Europe and I really wanted a European edition, and he told me of two book stores in Berlin where I could get it: he does visits and signings at them. One never got back in contact with me, the other was very helpful, I believe it's owned by a Brit and a Yank. The only problem we had was a strike by the French post, but it was resolved and I was able to get the book a couple of days before we left, and I was VERY happy! Marvelous neighborhood, I believe there was a gellatto or ice cream shop nearby IIRC. We also found this really nice women's clothing store nearby, my wife bought a top and we bought another top for a dear friend of ours.
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Date: 2019-02-09 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-09 07:36 pm (UTC)That series is The Merchant Prince series.
I absolutely love the second series, known as the Laundry Files. It posits a secret British spy agency tasked with keeping Cthulhu at bay. Literal, actual Cthonian monsters. They were discovered before WW II accidentally by Turing when he was working on higher order math and found that other dimensions were permeable and that they did, indeed, contain madness and entropy, and they wanted through, and if they got through, would destroy our world. And pretty much every other country discovered them at about the same time, including Hitler's buds. The Laundry and its agents go around trying to stop magic conspiracies that are trying to break through while shoring up England for the inevitable mass breakthrough.
So it's a battle against entropy and horrible things that want to eat our brains.
Magic has been weaponized through technology and the casting has been aided through smartphones, starting with Palm Pilots. People who are caught practicing are given an option: work for The Laundry or you'll never work again, or do anything else again. It's rather a final offer.
The first book of the Laundry Files is The Atrocity Archives. It largely follows Bob, working his way up from the IT help desk into a top technomage, his bitch of a girlfriend getting turned into a vampire, his new amazing girlfriend and the difficulty of their relationship because of her being bound to a violin being built at Auschwitz, lots of diverse alarums. I absolutely love these books yet I haven't bought the latest that came out late last year!
He's a Brit living in Scotland, he's on an extended hiatus as his father passed last year (or '17?) and his mother is not long for this world and he's toing and froing between Scotland and the London area. But there's lots of books in the Laundry series to enjoy. And he has lots of other books aside from these two series, he's been a pretty prolific author.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross
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Date: 2019-02-13 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-13 03:51 pm (UTC)It's quite interesting to see how Bob and his relationships have grown over the years. It's also scarily fascinating seeing what UK government management is like! I've worked in state and local government almost all of my working career and I can't conceive such an environment.
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Date: 2019-02-07 11:26 pm (UTC)We took the train from Berlin to Prague, and I took it. I think it was at the border stop between the two countries a whole bunch of people got on, and we endured a huge number of people asking if there were open seats in our carriage, which there were not - we'd all bought reserved seats. LOTS of people sitting on the floor in the aisle or standing.
This is the bookstore that I mentioned:
https://www.yelp.com/biz/otherland-bookshop-berlin
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Date: 2019-02-09 01:16 pm (UTC)I once took that train myself - from Prague to Cologne even. On such long journeys one really needs to have reserved seats. I actually think, I never realized it was possible not to reserve seats on an overnight journey. But when it's a matter of a couple of hours - in all my train travels across Germany (and there have been lots and lots of them) I only had to sit on my bag three times. And one of them was when Eyjafjallajökull had erupted and I had to go from Sweden to Germany on 7 trains and one ferry without any reservations, as none were available :D
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Date: 2019-02-09 07:39 pm (UTC)It's a marvelous shop in a very nice neighborhood. Definitely a working class neighborhood, but very pleasant and comfortable, well off the beaten path. I remember that eruption, when all the broadcasters were struggling and failing to pronounce it and all that air traffic was grounded. The USA would have been so screwed as our passenger rail service is in such poor shape from decades of neglect.
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Date: 2019-02-07 08:41 pm (UTC)I know what you mean though about the bad things.
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Date: 2019-02-07 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-07 09:15 pm (UTC)(Taking your username at face-value: it's "paid", not "payed".)
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Date: 2019-02-07 09:58 pm (UTC)face value is correct, please continue to take it this way! thanks! :D
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Date: 2019-02-13 12:36 am (UTC)Ugh. I'm sorry.
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Date: 2019-02-13 10:53 am (UTC)