Tag Archives: travel

Boarding NZ and U.S. style

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Waiting is an annoying activity that travellers have to deal with. It seems that especially air travel is plaqued by long unwelcome waits. Some people have the necessary money or status miles to travel in style and avoid queues. Mere mortals, however, can conduct a study on how boarding for example is being conducted in different countries.

Here I only focus on my observations from New Zealand and the U.S.A. I have the impression that boarding an airplane takes longer in the U.S.A. than it does in New Zealand. Are the NZ travellers just faster or more disciplined? Seeing that there are many international travellers in both countries, I doubt that there is a special national traveller mentality.

I think the main reason is the way boarding takes place. In the U.S.A. passengers are boarded according to priority groups. First class and priority access can always board and then there are groups 1 to 4 with 4 being the lowest priority.

Coming from New Zealand, you would think that the groups were formed according to where people sit. But far from it. It is strictly according to priority and that means that you can sit anywhere in the airplane. It can easily be that group 1 are passengers primarily in the first rows and a few in the back rows. Having to wait until the ones at the front are seated before the ones in the back can proceed does take time. On one flight I was in group 4 but sat in a third row window seat behind the business class. As my fellow row neighbors had a higher priority they were already seated and had to let me in which held up everybody else.

In New Zealand the general system is the following: Passengers in business class (on international flights) and with priority access as well as those that need assistance board first. They are followed by the travellers in a window seat. That’s very smart because then 2 others don’t have to get up later. On bigger flights, the rest of the passengers are asked to board according to their row number starting with the higher numbers thus filling the plane from the rear to the front.

This system seems to work well and the boarding of planes takes place swiftly and is faster than in L.A. and San Francisco in my opinion where I observed the U.S. style of boarding. Though that is just a very unscientific observation from observing a few flights.

Recap of ULearn10

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ULearn10 (6-8 October 2010) is “New Zealand’s premier education conference” according to CORE Education, the organizer. It is a huge teacher conference with approximately 1,800 participants from all over New Zealand. Some Aussies could also be spotted.

Everybody congregated in Christchurch and I guess hoped that there wouldn’t be any major aftershocks. We were lucky. Though there were plenty of minor quakes that couldn’t be felt, only 4 bigger ones (above 4.2) happened during the week. Early arrivals felt the 5.0 (10th biggest earthquake since September 4, 2010) Monday night. The other three were Tuesday night and 2 on Friday early morning. I was happy to be in a safe hotel that was fitted with earthquake plates.

But back to the conference. Together with Open Systems Specialists and TechnologyWise, Catalyst IT had the Open Source Schools stand in the exhibitor hall. We were one of the few exhibitors who did not sell smartboards / projectors that turned ordinary whiteboards into smartboards. At least that’s what it looked like in our area of the exhibitor hall.

Our aim was to let participants know about open source software and its use in school. I particularly talked about the e-portfolio software Mahara, but also Moodle and Koha when I had a chance to do so. Mark Osborne from Albany Senior High School spent some time at our stand to show conference participants how his school uses these three online systems for learning and teaching.

It was great to hear the accounts of conference participants who came to our stand and proudly told us they are already using Linux / Ubuntu at their school and also introduced or are introducing other open source software to their school community. Others did not know (much) about open source and wanted to learn more more.

We also had two breakout sessions in which Mahara featured: Mine was on October 6. Louise Bray-Burns (Hampton Hill School) and Helen Moran (Tawa Intermediate School) talked about their experiences with Mahara using the hosted service MyPortfolio on October 7. Being in their session, I got a glimpse of student portfolios as well as Helen’s teacher portfolio. Furthermore, the three of us assisted the participants when they took their first steps in MyPortfolio.

Our booth was well-visited throughout the conference. Being in direct line of view during morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea didn’t hurt because people had time to look at our banners while in the queue. :-)

Thanks to my fellow stand colleagues, I could go to Steve Wheeler‘s keynote “Transformation and inspiration through social media: Meeting the needs of the 21st Century Learner”. I had not seen or heard him speak live since December 2007 when we first met. His presentation was very lively and I particularly liked the storytelling style that he had adopted to bring across his message. A recording of the keynotes will be posted to the ULearn web site. We also had a brief chat on the last day of the conference. It was not easy to spot him among the hundreds of participants. Eventually a tweet helped us to get together.

ULearn10 was a success in my eyes because we could interest conference participants in open source software and talk about its possibilities. We did not do that only in general terms, but sometimes discussions went very specific and we gave short demonstrations on some of the software that is already used in schools.

The organization during the conference was exceptional. A big thank you to the organizers, the set up, catering and tech teams. And also to the student assistants who made sure that presenters had everything they needed in their rooms. Thus, a special shoutout to Rory from Christ’s College who was on duty during my breakout session in ICT1.

My daily dose of luxury

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Today I realized that I did not know half about the Luxembourgish transport system. As I went to the airport early enough for students to be on their way to school, I encountered tens of bus lines that I had never seen before. It seemed like the regular city and cross-country busses are only about half of the entire bus traffic that traverses Luxembourg each day. The busses seemed to dance around each other on the streets taking on board or dropping off children, merging with traffic, and driving towards their final destination.

Children were taken from their homes to sometimes school far away as Luxembourg only slowly starts to require that students should preferably go to a high school closest to their hometown. Some students have a regular 45-minute if not even longer commute to school each morning and each afternoon. On top of that comes time spent in traffic jam in rush hour.

I can count myself lucky that I don’t belong to the 100,000 commuters from Belgium, France, and Germany who flock to the city each day. I have never had a commute longer than 15 minutes by bike in my entire life to school, university or work. Exception to the rule: two months during an internship. I appreciate this luxury very much because I do not want to be stuck in traffic twice a day if I can avoid it. Furthermore, I do not have to depend on bus or train schedules, but can decide almost instantly whether I would like to leave now, in five minutes or at another time instead of fretting about the last bus I need to catch, waiting in the cold for a delayed train or being squashed between strangers.

Meeting Emma

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Coming back from a conference in Passau, I had two sensations of déjà vu. The winter storm “Emma” that swept over large parts of Germany on Friday, February 29 (and Saturday) reminded me of “Kyrill” last January. As in 2007, I was caught up in it and had to struggle to get from Passau to Luxembourg via train.

The last day of the conference in Passau had actually started out nicely: I did not have to worry about my presentation anymore as I had nailed it the evening before, the rain had stopped before I left the hotel, and it was going to be a nice day. I did not worry about the weather too much as I only read the news on the TV briefly where it said that there were high speeds in the mountains, but that the storm did not grow to expectations of the evening before.

However, when we wanted to go to the train station, one of the conference attendees said that there were no trains and no rental cars available. What to do now? Well, we went to the train station to get the latest information and were told that busses were on their way to take us to Nueremberg as the train tracks could not be used for at least two hours due to fallen trees. So we waited in the cold and somewhat windy weather outside of the train station for the busses to arrive.

An hour after our arrival at the station, the first bus showed up and I was lucky to be able to board it right away. However, despite a three-hour bus ride ahead of us, we could not leave immediately as we had to wait for the other two busses because the drivers did not know the way as they were regular city bus drivers. At least we did not have to wait in the cold outside anymore. Finally, we set off, did not have any traffic jam on our way and even made it to Nueremberg in 2.5 hours arriving there at 5 p.m. That was way too late to catch my train to Koblenz. However, it was right on time for the regular train schedule to kick in with only a few delays and changes.

(To better understand the individual stops, you might want to look at a map of Germany, e.g. via Google, while reading this.)

The next train going to Koblenz came at 5:30 p.m., but it was not the regular ICE. It was an IC that usually goes a bit slower. All went well up to Wuerzburg. There we were told that we could not go straight to Frankfurt, but had to head into a slightly different direction that would lead us further north: to Fulda. That would cost us about 40 minutes. In the end, this was a detour of approx. 80 minutes. The locomotive had to be switched because we needed to change directions. This would have been much easier and quicker in an ICE as they are designed to have one on both ends. Anyway, on our way to Frankfurt, I already realized that I would not make the train that a kind gentleman next to me had looked up on the internet when he could access it because the conductor was not able to give me any details as he said he did not have the schedule for trains crossing the border. What a liar, but I come to that later on. He even had the nerve to ask me why I had not looked up the trains beforehand. I wondered why I should have done that when I had booked specific trains that I had to stick to before setting out for Passau. In Nueremberg I did not have the time to check with the service staff as the lines were very long and I would have missed the train.

Once we arrived in Frankfurt, we had to switch locomotives again because Frankfurt has a dead-end station. Lucky for me, we also picked up new conductors and I tried again to find out whether I would be able to make it home that night. I went to the conductor and she had clearly not been informed by her colleague that I was headed to Luxembourg. However, she had all necessary means to help me: train schedule, electronic organizer with all train information, direct telephone connection to the dispatcher in her moving office. She called the dispatcher immediately and we learned that on top of everything there was a scheduled construction site between Mainz and Koblenz that weekend and that would cost us a detour of about 40 minutes. The last train to Luxembourg would have left about one hour before we would arrive in Koblenz. Nevertheless, she said she would try to find a solution for me.

When we were ready to leave Mainz, the conductor told us that we could not do so due to the lack of train schedule information. We thought we were in a bad movie or that April Fool’s Day had been moved one month ahead. What did we need a train schedule for when there was relative chaos everywhere?

We arrived in Koblenz at 11:10 p.m. and the last train for the night left for Trier (note: not Luxembourg) at 11:18 p.m. That was the slowest train you can imagine. It stopped every three to five minutes in every tiny village (in German we say that the train stopped at every “Milchkanne” [milk can]) and thus took two hours to reach Trier. Usually, you can make it to Luxembourg from Koblenz in about 1.5 hours (and Trier is about 45 minutes by train from Luxembourg away). Thus I was stranded in Trier at 1:16 a.m. today. I could take a hotel room that will be paid by the train service because there was no way of me getting to Luxembourg that night. Thus, I continued my journey home this morning.

All in all, it was not horribly bad because I could have also been stranded in the train in the middle of nowhere, but still, it took 12 hours trying to get back home and then being stopped 45 minutes before the final destination was not so appealing.

Let’s see what will happen to me in 13 months. I hope, I do not have to travel because then chances are high to be caught in yet another storm. ;-)

In the beginning I wrote about two sensations of déjà vu. The second one was also in Passau. When I went to Passau for the first time, we were tremendously delayed and going back to Munich we also had to wait at the train station to board a bus (again in the cold and when it was windy) as the tracks between Passau and the next station could not be taken due to a bomb alarm if I remember correctly. So far, I only reached and left Passau without problems once out of three times. What may happen the next time I will be there? Will everything be alright or will hell break loose entirely? I will keep you updated. ;-)

Photos / Fotos

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Since I moved to Luxembourg, I could have written a few items in this blog. However, I still need a bit more time to write longer posts and an update. Nevertheless, I would like to show you a few pictures I took in the last weeks. Most of them are still from Bavaria.

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Seit ich nach Luxembourg gezogen bin, hätte ich schon ein paar Einträge in dieses Blog machen können. Ich brauche aber noch etwas Zeit, bis ich etwas längeres schreiben kann. Jedoch wollte ich euch die folgenden Bilder, die ich in den letzten Wochen gemacht habe, nicht vorenthalten. Die meisten sind noch aus Bayern.


If you have an accident at Munich train station, but don’t have your first aid kit with you, don’t worry. There is this dispender from which you can get all essentials.

Solltet ihr mal einen Unfall am Hauptbahnhof von München haben, aber nicht eure Erste Hilfe-Ausstattung parat, kein Grund zur Sorge. Es gibt dort diese Maschine, aus der man alles Nötige herausholen kann.


Do you have a wedding to plan but no clue of what you have to take care of and what you need or don’t need? The wedding helper can assist you (at least in Munich and maybe its surroundings). Cute moving ad and perfect Denglish: Weddinghelfer.

Müsst ihr eine Hochzeit planen, wisst aber nicht, was man alles braucht oder auch nicht? Der Hochzeitshelfer kann euch zumindest in München (und vielleicht Umgebung) behilflich sein. Nette fahrende Werbung und tolles Denglish: Weddinghelfer.


You probably know Bed and Breakfast. Well, there is another B&B around in Germany: Bett and Bike (Denglish for Bed and Bike). I saw this sign at a guesthouse cum restaurant near Bad Toelz in Bavaria (The “Moarwirt”).

Ihr kennt wahrscheinlich Bed and Breakfast. Es gibt aber auch noch ein anderes B&B in Deutschland: Bett and Bike (in perfektem Denglish). Ich sah dieses Schild an einem Gasthof in der Nähe von Bad Tölz (Der Moarwirt).


Norway is also a good resource for language curiosities. In this picture, the word “ledig” next to “Plan 2″ is especially interesting, but you can only laugh when you know German. In German “ledig” is used to describe a marital status and it means “single”. In Norwegian it simply means free / vacant, which is true for a person who is “single”, but in Norway “ledig” is not connected to the marital status.

Norwegen ist auch eine gute Ressource für Sprachauffälligkeiten. In diesem Bild geht es mir um das “ledig”. Im Norwegischen bedeutet es einfach “frei”, was eine ledige Person auch ist, aber die Verbindung zum Ehestand wird mit diesem Wort im Norwegischen nicht gezogen.