Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Thanksgiving week in Paris and Luxemburg

Last week I was on business trip to Paris and while there went to meet a potential IBM customer in Luxemburg. Since this was my 4th time in Paris I decided to not go for a city walk and just stayed in my hotel room finishing up a couple of projects for work. I stayed in Hilton Airport - a bit expensive, but overall a very nice hotel (with a nice fitness center). Hence all of the Paris pictures are from the window of my hotel room (click on the image below to view all pictures).


Boy, do I love this job - it's nice to be able to travel, meet smart people, learn new cultures, see places, try different foods, and get paid to do all that :-).

I took TGV train to Luxemburg. TGV is very popular high speed train in France. According to wikipedia its *average* speed is 279.3 km/h (173.5 mph). Took me 2h 15 min to get from the center of Paris to Luxemburg. Very comfy ride - no bumps, etc. Beats airplane any day. Luxemburg is one of the smallest countries in the world and only has half a million population - that is less than what we have in Pittsburgh! Luxemburg is also smaller in size than Pittsburgh and its suburbs (sorry for using Pittsburgh - my favorite measuring stick :-). Luxemburg is roughly 30 miles by 30 miles in size, which makes it 179th smallest country in the world!

Regarldless of its size, it seems to me people who live there are quite happy - all smiling, well dressed, driving nice cars, etc. In fact, IBM provides BMW 5 series cars to its sales folks in Luxemburg. Something I really miss in US :-). After my customer meeting I had two hours before my train back and took a walk around the city, despite light drizzling rain (click on the image below to view all pictures).


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