Backlog of Updates

Well, so I see it has been a while since I have written anything. A few people have been nice enough to notice, and even nicer to kindly remind me that they enjoy reading what I have to write. So thanks!

And some of them were even Swiss and didn't take the line about how I sometimes feel like it is a nation of noise-sensitive accountants. I am sorry about that. I was very frustrated when I wrote that. But you should know that some Swiss even agreed with me.

America! Heck Ya!
It has been a year since I have been to the land of WalMart and Cheeseburgers... I mean the land of the free and the home of the brave. I arrived in Dulles airport, and was greeted with a wave of unpleasant humidity and heat, as I exited the aircraft. The moist wall of oven heat smacked me in the face haunting me with the unwelcome reminder of why one should never book travel to the nation's Capital during the summer.

When I first sat in my seat on the way to America, I soon found that the window seat next to me was to be occupied by a college girl headed back home to Virginia. She was one of these sorts of people who like to have the window shade closed (these people should not be wasted on window seats), and was also the sort of person to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes (strike two! You should not be gifted with a window seat), and was, in her words , "Very Prone To Air Sickness!"

Great.

Now that I look back, my first experience with the heat of landing in America was the nausea that my seat-neighbor suddenly felt as she was nearly ready to return her meal to her lap. An approach into Dulles on a very good soaring day, with lots of turbulence from 9000 feet down to the surface. I wanted to look out the window and look for good soaring clouds. She could not tolerate that. With the turbulence, along with her closed window, along with the sudden rush of heat as we touched down, this was nearly all that she could tolerate. Of course, I had the air sickness bag ready to deploy in hair-trigger mode. Thankfully, there was no spewage.

Always in the Wrong Line
This was a full flight. And half of the flight has someplace else to be; Dulles was not their final destination. There were other flights also arriving at the same time. And they must have all been Jumbo Jets packed with weary stinky international travelers. Dulles International Airport was very clearly designed before the 9/11 revisions of security policy.

As these two jet-loads of passengers off-loaded, they were shoved into a very narrow hallway. There was barely enough room for two people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. We moved along like cattle. I was reminded of the expression, "Unless you're the lead Husky at the Iditarod, the view never changes."

I had no need to rush, but I could see the frustration of the faces of those who were making connecting flights. They were bumping into me from behind, nearly stepping on my heels. It was crowded, and the pressure of making the connection was pushing me from behind. There was a fork in the path; some people went that way, I went to the left. I could not see the sign past the sea of people, and I could not go that way even if I wanted to; for fear of getting trampled.

We go down a flight of stairs, and I we are all funneled into a room. I stand in a large room with two lines. One for MURICANS! and one for dirty foreigners^[*], who are all treated like suspected terrorists. These suspected terrorists, also known politely as "foreign nationals visiting the United States" get to stand in a much longer line with much fewer homeland security personnel, carefully scrutinizing all foreigners who wish to enter the country. Their biometrics are carefully recorded, including a hand-scan. Our country is safe, I know it. I am glad that I am in the line of people with their proud US passports.

I am bringing food into the United States. Going through customs is going to be fun. I declare it. When asked, I answered "Seven jars of preserves."

"Preserves? Like life preservers"

"No, like Jelly. You know. Jam." The border patrol guy doesn't seem to care much, and stamps my paper, and I'm on my way to baggage claim.

My old luggage used to have this big yellow stripe painted through the middle. It was a really crappy paint job too. I did it with a can of furniture spray paint, and it leaked, dripped. It looked rather like the white stripe on the back of a skunk. Clearly, no luggage thief would ever think of stealing this "skunk bag" And not even a blind man would mistake this horribly clashy ugly piece of luggage as his. This time there was no skunk bag. I did not have much time to even look at the luggage I was packing, much less paint a stripe on it. The original skunk bag got smooshed too many times, and had to be retired. This new monster bag is as easy to identify in a sea of identical luggage bags.

With the skunk bag, finding my baggage is usually pretty easy. I normally have a horrible track record with having my luggage sucked out from the luggage compartment and lost at sea somewhere over the Atlantic. Maybe the jet liner flies into a mini black hole, and my bag is the only thing sucked into it. I do not know. But I do know that nobody has as bad a luck with luggage as I do. With the skunk bag, if that bag is showing up on this carousel, I will surely find it. I will not ever confuse it with the zillion other bags circling around, unclaimed.

I stand a bit back from the luggage carousel. Everybody else stands right next to it, and when somebody else needs to get their luggage off in a hurry, the person standing directly next to the conveyor belt doesn't move, and gives a dirty look when the luggage being removed hits them in the knee.

I stand.

I wait.

I watch all the people I saw on my flight show up.

They get their bags.

They leave.

I wait some more.

The conveyor stops.

I wish I had the skunk bag.

I rummage through the several hundred other bags just to make sure that my bag is not among them. Without the powers of skunk-bag, this is not as easy as the task usually is. I finally give up, and am resigned to another episode of wearing the same clothes for several days while my luggage's contents are gathered from the bottom of the Atlantic.

I stand in the long line of lost luggage-ers, one Indian family with a screamy baby, one family headed off to Atlanta. One adult among a large group of children who were all traveling together with some sort of cheer-leading camp or band camp or some sort of school event overseas. I show my baggage claim check, and the lady behind the counter doesn't even type the number into the computer.

"Are you a connecting to another flight?" Wow. It is really nice of her to figure out that I might have a short connection and that she might rush a bit more.

"Why, no. This is where I am stopping" I reply.

"Sir, you got in the wrong line. You need to take a shuttle bus to the other terminal, then go through the other Customs line"

Oh. That is what that other line that I couldn't fork off to was going. I do a facepalm so hard, you might have heard the smacking sound from wherever you were at the time. She escorted me back through customs, where I sneered at the dirty foreigners^[*] trying to enter my country. (ok, not really). Back up the flight of stairs, past even more people waiting in line. I finally get to the fork in the path on the too-narrow hallway, and find myself waiting for a shuttle bus. The last shuttle just left, and I am forced to wait another 20 minutes for the next one. It was an uncomfortable wait, considering that there was no air conditioning in this part of Dulles, or at the very least inadequate air conditioning.

I get to the "correct" line at Customs, and present my already stamped customs form, which immediately raised suspicions with the customs guard. I had to admit, again, that "stupid me got into the wrong line and came here once I realized my baggage was coming to this terminal." Facepalm again. He actually was a customs agent with a sense of humor. There was nobody behind me, so there was no pressure for him to get me through the line as quickly as possible. When he asked me about the "bringing drugs in the country", he quickly rattled off the list of all of the nicknames for any drug you had ever imagined.

"No Weed? No smack? No Crack? No Strips? No blips? No needles? No vines? No snuff-snuff? No Puff-Puff?" He said these all in rapid succession that I was rather stunned.

"Nope I'm clean!" He let me on, and stamped my customs form AGAIN. That is the funniest guy in customs I have ever seen. I thought these guys were not supposed to have a sense of humor. Maybe it was some sort of mind game they played trying to get me off guard to admit to something un-American. A clever strategy! I would not be fooled!

I am sure some customs agent reviewing all the submitted forms wondered how one of these could get two stamps. It could only take an idiot....

Driving Adventures
I have no idea what happened to my Virginia Drivers License. Good thing I have my Swiss license. I got my rental car at Hertz, and started the drive to my hotel in Sterling. The first thing I noticed was a three way stop sign just before exiting to the north of the airport. I realized then why traffic circles were so excellent. If there was a traffic circle here, nobody would have to stop. Since nobody is coming from the right side (EVER), all parties just swoop around the traffic circle, and are on their way, without an expensive stop. Do you realize how much gas is wasted by just stopping and starting a car? Clearly the US could use more traffic circles. Maybe I shook my fist in anger at this traffic engineer.

I get on to Route 28 to find myself in a traffic jam. This is typical. In Northern Virginia, this area west of the Capital Beltway expanded very rapidly in the late 1990s and early 2000's, and is still expanding. Of course, the Representative government of Virginia loves the extra income of the explosion of population. And they love taking that tax revenue and sharing it with the rest of the state. This means that there is a disproportionate amount of wealth put into the rest of the much less affluent state; and it shows in the choked traffic patterns of Northern Virginia. It is enough of an issue for some people to propose seceding Northern Virginia from the rest of the state. I, for one, am all for it. For one, I am tired of living in a state that always votes Republican in the Presidential elections. If you were witness to this traffic, you might even vote with me.

The List of Nine
While sitting on the plane, next to the easily-stricken with airsickness college girl, I wrote down a list of all the places I needed to eat while I was in Virginia. This list would have come so easily while I was in Switzerland around October of last year, when I was feeling kind of homesick. But now that I have gotten rather used to life in Europe, I don't miss those things so much any more. Here was my list, to the best of my recollection, in no particular order:

• Los Tol Tecos
• Five Guys
• Red Robin
• Chipotlé
• The Main Street Mill (Front Royal)
  
• Taco Bell
• Baja Fresh
• JP's Deli
  
• El Pollo Rico

I had a coworker take me out to "anything on my list", a friend from the company drove me to Los Tol Tecos, where we enjoyed an excellent Mexican food dinner. Switzerland does not have many Mexicans, so the Mexican food there is.. well ... very French, and not very Mexican.

I found a way to get to everything else on the list, with the exception of the Main Street Mill, in Front Royal. I went to the gliderport to meet everybody and do some flying. Some friends suggested we meet at the Mill after flying, and they left early. By the time I had gotten there, they all had left. So no Mill for me. For the most part, people were so happy to see me, that they paid for my meals for me. So even though I was travelling on the company's bill, I still did not have many items to place on my expense report.

The food at all of these places was not as wonderful as I remember it. The nostalgia was more important than the actual lunch quality. I did really enjoy the Mexican food at Los Tol Tecos, and the burger at 5 guys was pretty good; but I could do just fine without these for another year.

Wandering Around the Office
As I arrived to work, my main focus was to meet up with the people I haven't seen in a year. I went floor-by-floor, office by office, meeting people that I really like, and having the same conversation over and over again.

"Hi! Are you back for good? Or just visiting?"

"Just visiting"

"I heard you were coming back [permanently]. "

"It's complicated. But for now, I'll be back in August 2009. "

"How is it over there? "

"(Sigh) Have you read my blog?"

"You have a blog?"

"Yes. "

"What is the name of the blog? "

"I am the only Piet Barber in the world, it's not that hard to find. " (There are some advantages to having that weird Dutch name).

"How is the family doing?"

"It's a pendulum. They hate it one week, and the next week they love it. Jake never has loved it though. "

Imagine this conversation about 30 times over a week. I should have just brought along queue card for the script. Or maybe a FAQ for the person before we have to talk.

Other Adventures and Notes in America
I'll just list these in brief:

• The family and I took a day trip to King's Dominion
• The family got taken out to dinner to Red Robin by my father (on the last possible day)
• The family got invited to my sister's house, but only I went, since some of the family was sick.
• I worked a lot, there was about 4 weeks of work that everybody tried to cram into my 6 days at the office. Not to mention all the personal time I needed with the various co-workers with whom I never see, and don't get to talk to.
• Five Guys Burgers are as awesome as I remember them.
  
• Virginia is hot in July and August.
  
• Driving sucks in Virginia
  
• Being forced to drive everywhere sucks. No wonder kids always want a driver's license immediately when they are 16.
  
• Traffic circles would be a really excellent enhancement to traffic management in Virginia, but nobody in America knows the rules of the traffic circle, and there would be driving fatalities for the first few years, at least.
  

* I don't really feel that way about foreigners, it just seems that the Homeland Security Parade looks at the visitors to America in this way.

Two Days Until Departure, Passport Saga

You would not believe how busy these last few days are. We are preparing the final aspects of our departure on Wednesday, the 25th of July. In case you haven't been paying attention to my life, (or I've been too busy to say anything to you), I'll give you the quick run-down.

The four kids, wife, and two rabbits will accompany me on a two year jouney to Switzerland. The company is paying for the relocation costs, paying part of the rent, and giving me a transportation allowance. It's quite an opportunity for the kids, who will be going to school at The International School of Bern.

The two rabbits are being shipped by a shipping company. We originally wanted to bring them along with us in carrier cases, but that would involve seriously difficult logistics issues. The airport at Bern can only handle little aircraft, and not any aircraft large enough to handle an animal cargo hold. The only other alternative is to fly into Geneva or Zurich, and that would require a long drive in a foreign country the first time. Air Animals Inc. will do a good job in shipping in the animals, we hope.

In June, I took a trip to Switzerland, and a side trip to the Netherlands. The Swiss journey was to find a place to live, and to get generally acquainted with the country. I found Fribourg to be a little more difficult to get used to. I don't speak French, and everybody there expected me to speak French. In Bern, I felt much more at home, and had engaging conversations in German with the locals.

I visited the gliderport, and enjoyed flying their very handsome two seat glider, the Duo Discus. They have lots of excellent gliders, and a very nice club, and I don't know how they can afford to fly with such low prices. they were very happy to know that I'm a flight instructor in the United States for gliders, and tended to be a lot more friendly after learning that fact. Teaching an American with poor shabby German skills is more difficult than accommodating an already (presumably) expert glider pilot with shabby German skills, I suppose.

Stacy will probably not be able to work, while in Switzerland. She is a nurse by training, but does not know German or French, and won't be allowed to practice nursing without those language skills.

People all wonder how difficult it is to relocate a family. Often I hear stories of how the military relocated a family with ease. To respond, I would say that this is much different. It seems pretty clear that VeriSign doesn't do this very often, and there were very many challenges along the way. Some of these challenges weren't even VeriSign's or our relocation company's fault, but the fault of the US government.

This subject leads me to passports. In the post-911 hysteria that is sweeping America, some smart things are being done, and more dumb things are being done to make us feel safer. (Thanks Captain Obvious). One of these is requiring that American citizens coming in from Canada and Mexico now need passports. The sudden requirement of passports put a burden on the State Department, who apparently didn't grow their capacity to generate these new passports. Also to make the matters more difficult, the passports contain special RFID electronic chips in them, and delay their production.

This has led to a serious back-log in the passport acquisition of normal citizens. Despite the fact that the passport restriction has been temporarily lifted to enter the US, there still is a huge backlog, and the time to get passports is causing much pain among American tourists wishing to visit nations abroad.

This, of course, made our relocation even more difficult.

In order to get to move to Switzerland, we need a work Visa. We need a residency permit, too. In order for these to be applied for, we need passports. The application process in the Swiss Embassy takes six weeks. We applied for our passports in late April, and they still hadn't shown up by July. Time to escalate. We managed to find that our congressman, Frank Wolf (whom I had always voted against) had a special office for his constituents to escalate passport requests.

This did some good! The passports were found in the system, and shipped to us via FedEx. They were received the next day. Stacy excitedly opened the package to find the passport for Joseph, Cecilia, Josh, Jake...

"Where's my Passport!?!?!" Stacy cried.

Which leads me into a whole new story...

The Passport Saga...

This required ANOTHER trip. This time to the passport issuing agency office in downtown D.C. We had a 0900 appointment, and managed to show up on time. We saw the long line of other citizens waiting for entry. Because we had an appointment, we cut in line (that was cool) to get inside to wait in yet another line. Ugh.

We waited 90 minutes in the first line, and the congressman's assistant finally called. We were told that we would never get our passport that day, and that we could go upstairs to suite 200 to get a new passport, with the congressman's letter faxed to the office.

All of the kids were with us, and did not wait patiently. While waiting upstairs, we would not even fit into the waiting room, and were forced to sit outside, in the hallway. The quantity of waiters was definitely a deterrent to getting us access inside the waiting room. I elected to whisk the children away, but was met with whiny response from the younger children, "No! I want mommy!"

I dragged the unwilling children out of the boring hallway to be met with further complaints. "I want mommy!" "Where is mommy!" "When will we see mommy?!?!" I dragged them, still unwilling, to the local corner bakery, where I ate a sandwich, and the kids ate a cookie and some chips. It's impossible to find those kids anything to eat that doesn't resemble junk food. (This is Stacy's fault for not exposing them to tasty food at an early age).

Josh had a melt-down when I gave him one (big) cookie, while he was expecting two. A total meltdown. Curious onlookers in the restaurant observed, and reached for their cell phones, ready to call child protective services for what was most certainly the cries of a child who was abused. I dragged Joshie to an unoccupied booth, and calmly scolded him, warning that he would get zero cookies for his behavior.

His behavior improved, and was granted the cookie of redemption. The children's behavior improved, and I decided to take them to the White House. The office of the State Department wasn't far from where I used to work, so I figured it would just be a few blocks.

The kids were surprisingly nice, at that point, and we took our time in front of the White House. Jake saw two squirrels "fighting" and was freaked out about it for the rest of the day. Jake, with recent "life studies" education, was well aware that the squirrels weren't fighting, but the little kids didn't know any better. When he and I realized there was no confrontation between the squirrels, but the "tussle of love", Jake and I looked at each other with the look of "We know what is up, the kids don't. "

"Those squirrels were scary!" the eleven year old remarked over and over.

We moved on to the Washington Monument. We found a nice little ice cream stand near a homeless guy who rested in the shade near a public bathroom. I had to escort Joey into the public restrooms, and watch very carefully, as he tried to grab the urinals and reach in for those tasty-looking hockey-pucks. Yuck.

We hung out at the base of the monument for a while, and I taught Jake a little something about sun-dials. It was a pretty sunny day, and the shadow that was cast upon the ground was sharp and contrasted well against the sky. We were patient enough to sit around and watch the shadow crawl across the benches. We checked to see if we could get into the monument to look around, but by that time, all of the tickets for the day were given out.

We continued our journey, the ultimate destination was the Library of Congress (all the way across town.) I didn't tell the kids that "you see that little green dome next to the Capitol building waaaaaay over there?! We're walking toward that, kids!" Nope. Just moving along one block at a time.

We stopped at the Smithsonian building's Enid A. Haupt Garden and visited the nice cool fountains in the back. They had a very nice outdoor garden, with entertaining fountains. We stopped at the fountains at the Hirshhorn Museum, and found an excellent set of fountains in front of the National Museum of the Native Indian.

The stops at each fountain entertained the kids long enough to move on to the next destination. By the end of the day, Stacy was still in line (good thing we went for a walk), and increasingly irritated from boredom, lack of food, lack of companionship. By the time we got to the Library of Congress, Stacy had finally gotten some food, and the promise that this passport would be available by 4:30.

I hung around my mother's office, until we could meet up with Stacy. Mother introduced us to many people I hadn't met since I was the height of an outstretched hand from the waist, followed by the quote of, "I haven't seen you since you were this tall!"

We have our passports. We're still in that scary position of not having our visas. We'll be in the country as tourists until we can gather our work permit and residency visas. I won't be allowed to work for the first few weeks. We've even arranged to pick up our visas in Lyon, France.