Please boycott Ryanair and tell them why you're not flying them. It's great if you could send them a receipt showing the tickets you've purchased from someone else.

A guy named "Jason Roe" blogged about a minor technical issue with Ryanair's Web site. An anonymous respondent, claiming to be a Ryanair employee, responded by calling the blogger and idiot, a liar, and pathetic (amongst many other things). Tracking down the IP address revealed that this probably was a Ryanair employee.

According to this Telegraph article, Ryanair took swift, decisive action and released a statement (or at least made this comment to the Times):

Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won't be happening again.

Ryanair further went on to say "Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel".

Needless to say, if you're thinking about flying Ryanair, please don't. And let them know why you won't. Oh, can't figure out how to contact them? Ryanair is well-known for its apparent lack of concern for the public and goes to great lengths to hide contact information, but fortunately www.ryanaircampaign.org collects the email addresses they can find and publishes them. Here's the email I sent:

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Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:02:52 -0800 (PST)
From: publiustemp-ryanair@yahoo.com
Subject: telegraph.co.uk Article
To: penstonm@ryanair.com, walshg@ryanair.com, greenc@ryanair.com, 
    oneills@ryanair.com, WiniarkskaA@ryanair.com, KellyG@ryanair.com

I apologize for sending this email to so many of you at once, but since Ryanair apparently makes it a policy to not let customers contact it, I felt this was the best way of possibly making contact.

In a recent article in the Telegraph, there was discussion about a blog entry about a minor technical issue with your Web site. One of your staffers was extremely unprofessional in responding. Horrifyingly, after Ryanair was alerted to this fact, rather than apologize for your employee's behaviour, Ryanair apparently released a statement referring to the "idiot blogger":

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/4801505/Ryanair-calls-blogger-lunatic.html

I routinely fly all over Europe and like to save money, but I won't be using Ryanair. I'll also be urging my family, friends and blog (yes, "blog") readers to also not fly Ryanair. Not only is this behavior unprofessional, it's immature and the individual responsible for that "idiot blogger" statement should be ashamed of themselves for acting in such a juvenile manner.

Sincerely,
Curtis "Ovid" Poe
--
Buy the book        - http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlhks/
Tech blog            - http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/
Twitter              - http://twitter.com/OvidPerl
Official Perl 6 Wiki - http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6

I just printed out my DS-82 form. This is the form I need to renew my passport. It's also the form which will lead to me being legally required to carry two passports when I leave the country. That's because my UK residence permit will be in my old, expired passport, not my new one. I'll need to present my new one to prove who I am and the old one to prove I can live here.

In a year and a half, I can apply for my permanent residence and work permits and those will go in my new passport, thus allowing me to only carry one passport again. However, a year after that, I'll be applying for UK citizenship and, when granted, I'll have to carry both US and UK passports for when I visit the US. The US requires US citizens to use US passports in the US, regardless of their other citizenships, but I'll have to carry my UK passport for when I return home.

This raises an interesting question, though. As a US citizen, it's illegal for me to travel to Cuba without State Department approval (Iran and North Korea are no problem. Go figure). As a UK citizen, it's quite legal. If I only have a US passport, Cuba stamps a separate page to slide into my passport which I can remove when I go back to the US, but otherwise, it's still illegal. So presumably I'd want to avoid those legal shenanigans and hand the Cuban officials my UK passport, but what happens if I visit the US later? If they see my British passport, they would presumably want to thumb through it. Could I be charged with a crime for something that it would be legal for me to do as a UK citizen, but not a US one? Presumably I should beg the Cuban officials to just give me the paper visa to slip into my passport rather than stamping the UK one.

However, this minor annoyance also means interesting possibilities. For example, if I visit Israel, other middle east countries might bar me for having an Israeli visa in my passport, but I can just switch passports!

Two and a half years down and two and a half years to go.

When I entered the 9th grade, I was only 14 years old. I had a choice between learning Spanish or French. Even though Spanish is spoken in Europe, to my mind, French seemed so much more associated with Europe (to be fair, they were teaching "Mexican" Spanish), so I chose it instantly. There was no hesitation because even three decades ago I knew I wanted to be in Europe. It wasn't a well-thought out thing, it was just part of my sense of adventure.

Now that I'm here, it's lovely. I don't sit down laboring over health care plans, trying to figure out which one to accept -- assuming an employer offers one. I'm not trying to figure out how to make the most of my one week off a year.¹ Health care and being allowed to enjoy life are not "perks" here. And I never imagined being able to enjoy my three daily meals in three separate countries, as I did a couple of months ago (breakfast in Germany, lunch in Switzerland and dinner in Italy). Over 200 languages are spoken in London alone, there's fascinating history everywhere, Paris is a couple of hours away by train and recently, it took me longer to get to the airport than it did to fly to Frankfurt.

Why the hell would anyone pass up the chance to live over here? Life is good, there's a great safety net and there's so much to constantly see and do, plus people understand that the world is round, something many Americans don't get. Despite all of this, when I've had American friends who qualify for various positions over here, every single one of them has said "no". Every. Single. One.

So, if you're an American and you would turn down an opportunity to live and work in Europe (or overseas in general), why?

1. For people outside the US: large companies in the US often start you at two weeks vacation, but they're not legally required to offer you any. I worked at one Web company for around 3 or so years, with only one week's holiday a year. I also turned down a job from a database consultancy partly because they offered no holiday a year.

Because I've had a couple of people comment that they want to see more people in my photos, I'm trying to add some to my photo sets, but frankly, taking pictures of crowds invariably seems to be crowds of tourists (who cares?) and taking pictures of individuals makes me feel awkward.

Another photo of people in Pisa trying to "hold up" the tower.



( One of the following photos is NOT SAFE FOR WORK! )

As usual, you can go directly to the photo set, if you prefer.

This cat keeps coming to the manor and begging for food. It's a bit skittish and won't come too close to us, but it begs loudly.



( A few more )

Update: Seems the lady in the photo is Romanian, not Italian. Later when she spoke to me (in English), she asked if I could email the photos I took of her. I gave her my card and she dropped me an email today, which is how I know her nationality.

We've finally arrived at the manor. Once we got to Olmi-Cappella, despite it being a town with only a few streets, it still took us two hours to follow the instructions to the manor. Once we found it, it took us another 20 minutes or so to find the safe which hid the key to the manor.

( Photos! )

I only have time for a quick update as we're leaving the hotel soon. These are just rough notes.

On Friday, Paul and I headed to Dover, took the ferry to Dunkirk (northern France) and because he doesn't like toll roads, the route he chose took us through Belgium and Luxembourg. I was checking the map and that's when our plans went to hell. I noticed, to my surprise, that we were close to Perl, Germany. Only being a half hour away, we traveled there and stayed in a lovely hotel. I must say that the internals of Perl as far lovelier than I imagined (if that made no sense, it's because it's an awful geek joke).

The next morning, Paul had reprogrammed our trip on his GPS unit for our new route and we had breakfast in Germany, lunch in Switzerland, and dinner in Pisa, Italy. Yes, there will be photos (much later!). Switzerland charged us 30 euro highway tax just to enter the country, even though we'd only be there a couple of hours.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is incredible. We climbed to the top on the next day and as I took photos, a young woman walked into view. Taking photos of crowds is one thing, but if I focus on someone, it's nice to ask. So I did, but she didn't answer. She merely struck a rather provocative pose. She loved the camera and I have a few shots of her and many of Pisa.

We then drove to Livorno, Italy, only to find that we had missed the ferry to Corsica. Annoyed, we said "screw it" and drove straight to Nice, France, where I'm typing this update.

We'll be on the ferry to Corsica at 2:30 pm (local time) in a few hours.

At this point I need to offer a blanket apology to all Parisians. After having visited Paris once, I proclaimed the Parisians the worst drivers in the world. They're not. The Italians are. Paul would often be driving at 130 kph and Italian drivers would race past us. In fact, speed limits were routinely ignored, red lights constantly run and at one point, a woman pushed her car through a pedestrian crossing full of people and they just jumped out of the way. No cussing or anger. It all seemed to be expected.

The trip from Livorno to Nice was quick, though. Paul hit 190 kph more (about 120 mph) than once -- and he was keeping up with traffic.

So basically, we covered seven countries in our first two days. Not bad. Not bad at all. I am, however, looking forward to relaxing in our villa. It even has a heated pool.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Copenhagen. The photos aren't as well organized as they could be, but hey, this is a lot of work :)



( Full Set )

And for those who've forgotten where I live :)

As you may know, I took a trip to Idstein, Germany in July. I went with my brother, Greg, and our friend Tom to visit Jim, the father of Greg and myself. Below are a few photos from my Flickr stream. Clicking on any photo will take you to Flickr and once there, you can click on the 'all sizes' link to see the large size of the photo. Going to the Flickr stream directly will let you view all of the almost 200 photos.

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One of the lovely ladies to wait on us at the Brauhaus.



( Many more photos of Germany behind the cut )

Off to Copenhagen for a week to attend YAPC::EU. My brother Greg (of Vimeo fame) will be there on Friday and staying for the weekend. This should be a blast.

Getting ready for my trip to Germany tomorrow and will be staying in the little town of Idstein. I'll only be there over the weekend. I'll be watching my brother Greg make a fool out himself at a log sawing contest and seeing my father again. It was supposed to be a a surprise, but someone let the Katze out of the bag. Damn.

Hopefully I'll remember to take pictures. I'm disappointed to be missing OSCON, but this will be a nice consolation prize.

Looks like I might get flown out to Israel for a short trip next year. I hope it works out, but I'll try not to get my hopes up. If I can make it, I'll try to extend my time to see a bit of the country, if I can.

I couldn't get the flight to Germany I wanted. I'd have to get to Stanstead airport at 5 in the morning instead of 9. Thus, instead of a 99 pence flight, I'm paying £9.99. If I were flying by myself, I'd take the earlier trip and, with taxes, the cost of my round-trip ticket to Frankfurt would be £25 :)

Actually, because it's Ryan Air (wow, that's an ugly site) and due to a couple of other restrictions that I ordinarily would not have, the flight's costing me £84. Still, not too bad. Take that, Americans! :)

Maybe next week I'll fly to Pisa for ten quid.

I often choose my music as a play on the post, but every once in a while, a happy coincidence occurs, like today's music.

It's strange pulling a receipt out of a jacket pocket and realizing that I can't tell what country I earned the receipt in. I think it was Austria, I'm not sure.

My last trip to the US was fabulous. I didn't make a big deal out of the fact that I was travelling there because when friends find out, I invariably get an inbox full of email from folks I haven't seen in a couple of years. They want to do lunch, dinner, whatever. I want to see all of them, but I never have enough time and vacations back to Portland stop being vacations.

Later hoping to do a road trip through Europe. My housemate Armgard said I should go to Italy. Others have suggested Spain. My part time housemate, rabbleuk, just burped. What to do, what to do ...

Packing and getting ready to fly to Portland tomorrow. While I'm doing this, I'm listening to the new NIN album. You know, the album that Trent Reznor is letting you download free of charge to protest CD prices? It's pretty damned impressive.

If you live in London, you're pretty much dependent on the Tube map.



(Original Here}

However, recently I found myself at BlackFriars Station (southeast Circle (yellow) Line) and discovered it was closed. Knowing there are Tube stations scattered all over the city, I started walking north, only to find myself at Farringdons Station (northeast Circle Line). They don't to look to me to be that close on the Tube map, but a fried pointed me a geographically accurate Tube map. Those stations, despite being on opposite sides of the Circle Line, are actually quite close together.



(Original here)

What a fun city.

Instead, hate me because one of my next holidays will probably be at this manor house in Corsica. We'll probably just drive through France to get there.

Damn. Need to find my camera.

I should be landing in Oslo tomorrow at 13:30, local time. I'll be staying at the Best Western Anker Hotel, right in the heart of Oslo. Later I'll meet up with friends at The Shamrock, an "authentic" Irish pub whose Web site is in Norwegian. Why is it that no matter which country I'm in, their large cities always boast one or more Irish pubs? None of which, of course, sport any Irish people. What's worse, why is it that whenever I show up anywhere, someone wants to take me to one?

There are also English pubs scattered over the world, but never as many as their are Irish pubs, it seems. However, you can always tell you're not in an authentic English pub if they refer to the restrooms as anything other than "toilets", as they do here in the UK. I still hate saying that word, but I'm getting over it.

I'll be back from the conference on Tuesday and, if I get off my lazy butt, I'll post pictures. Regrettably, I'll be rather busy and doubt I'll have much time for sightseeing.

Update: Apparently I am the hardest working Portland expat in London.

As some of you know, I recently took a cruise to Bermuda with 150 of my closest friends. What you probably didn't know is that a Goth Cruise documentary was being filmed at the same time. It made for a fascinating trip.

And the gang waits for a taxi to take them to the ship. From left to right, Joe, Lil, Annabelle and Sean.



( HUGE number of photos follow. Click at your peril! )