Collin Condray’s Blog

Today we checked out of our hotel, and I cannot say how happy I am with the ArtHotel Munich. The rooms were modern, spacious, close to the main train station, and inexpensive (for Munich). Most importantly, they had excellent customer service and never laughed at all the stuff the crazy Americans were carrying.

Additionally, they also have an awesome breakfast buffet with a million kinds of rolls, cheeses, meats, and cereals. The coffee is void black and wonderful, and they have Johannisbeer (black currant) and peach-carrot juices on tap. The latter sounds kind of weird, but it is very good.

Free wifi was included at the hotel after getting a PIN from the main office, which brings me to a quirk about Germany: I have yet to come across any free wifi in Germany. It’s very strange when you go from a country like America that has free wifi at lots of places such as coffeehouses and cheap fast food places like Chick-Fil-A to a place where everything is locked down. Because of this, I’ve learned my phone is almost completely useless without the internet. I keep turning it on, flipping through my list of internet aps that I usually use and flipping it off. I actually have to talk to the people who are physically present. It’s a completely bizarre state of affairs that I hope you never have to endure.

T-Mobile has a plan that lets you use any of their hotspots for 29 euros ($45) for 30 days or 7.99 euros ($12) for 60 minutes, which was a very strange deal. The first train we took today had one of those hotspots but the price was way to high for the few hours we were going to be on a train.

Traveling by train was for the most part a pleasure; it’s nice not having to drive. A train has more room, you can move around, get snacks, and this train was a lot more comfortable than a plane. We passed some fantastic scenery even though it was raining. I didn’t manage to get any good shots from the train, though, because I had it set to the wrong setting, but here’s what I took.

The downside of traveling was since we had to take so much stuff with the kids, we had every available hand tasked to carry or pull something. I’m sure all the Germans were staring in wonder at all the junk that we were carrying. Next time the kids will hopefully be older and won’t need as much gear to travel with.

At some point, Uncle Horst and Aunt Gisela picked us up, but the rest of the day is a blur of traveling and trying to wrestle the kids back to bed. They’ve got good instincts, but I’m a pretty tough close-in fighter at this sort of thing.

Tomorrow, Lake Titisee (yes, you read that right).

I take it back; the Germans are not as crazy as I thought. It’s normal hot today, and everybody is wearing shorts, but I don’t see a lot of sandals, which is weird considering we’re in the land of Birkenstock.

Once again we got up early and headed back to Aunt Agnes’ house in Stockdorf. And here are a few pictures of Aunt Agnes’ and her cooking. What’s on the menu? Knoedel (dumplings) with pork gravy. Good eating!

I’m always interested in what people are drinking in other countries. Whenever I’m in Asia, its fun to play vending machine roulette (see my winnings here and here). but other than beer in the vending machines, you can get the same stuff as we have in American vending machines. However, make sure that you grab one of these drinks while you’re over her, I highly recommend them. Be careful of the Apfel cider, its in the same bottle a several other kinds of non-alcoholic drinks and it has a little alcohol in it (only 2.5%). I was a couple of gulps into it before I realized it.

Since our kids are adopted from Korea and we’re not Asian, we’re getting a lot of confused double takes. Only 1% of kids adopted in Germany are from Asia so we’re fairly unusual. It’s been pretty funny to watch the cognitive dissonance when people try to figure out the story of our family. The first look is usually a quick one between us and the kids. Then there’s a longer second look usually with a very puzzled expression but occasionally with a quiet smile (because my children are, of course, the cutest kids in the world).

We spent the rest of the day just hanging around the house, talking, drinking coffee, and watching the kids play. Apparently, the kids don’t really need toys. They’re more than happy to play with a lawn full of rocks of various sizes. Christmas is going to be easy to shop for this year.

Finally, make sure that you check out this trip’s photostream.

Tomorrow, riding on a train!

(and a transparent attempt at SEO bait. Welcome to my blog WWII buffs!)

Today has been a long day getting from NWA to Germany. We’re spending the next week and a half with relatives there. We’re planning two days with Aunt Agnes and Aunt Amalie in Munich and the rest of the time with Aunt Baerbel, Uncle Horst, Cousins Jochen and Daniella and their kids. It will be a wonderful and relaxing time with family. The problem: getting me, my in-laws, two toddlers (3 1/2 years and 22 months), 6 pieces of luggage, 2 car seats, double stroller (with sun umbrella), gifts, laptop, diapers, wipes, sippy cups, birthday cake, a baby panda, flying carpet, the Ark of the Covenant, and well, the list kind of blurs out in my memory at this point. Fortunately, my lovely wife (who’s been at a seminar in Berlin for the past 2 weeks) has planned a fairly direct route for us, XNA to Atlanta to Munich with plenty of time to get to the next flight. The kids were very good considering all the excitement. They snarfed down a ton of snackies, played with the new toys mommy left, napped lots, and only one of them had a brief 5-10 minute meltdown. All in all it was a pretty good trip.

As I mentioned, we brought the car seats along with a couple of contraptions that put some wheels on them. They were the TOTEaTOT Travel accessory for children and the Go-Go Kidz Travelmate. We decided to get get one of each instead of two of both because we didn’t know which one would be more reliable. We figured if the straps fall off of one or the wheels fall off of another, we’d still have one that works. If the end, they were both tough, rugged, not too hard to lock in to plane seats, and completely not worth the effort. If you’re traveling internationally, beg, borrow, or steal a car seat wherever you’re going. The seats were way too unwieldly to take along especially if you have to travel by trains. If you absolutely must travel with a car seat, go with the TOTEaTOT Travel accessory for children. You free up one hand by combining a baby seat and a bag. One of the upsides of taking so much stuff is that I got great workouts every time we traveled. Who needs a gym when you have little kids and their gear?

I guess the main rule for traveling is kind of like the rule for writing on the web. Pack as you would normally, then take half the stuff out. Then do it again. One of these days I’ll take my own advice.

After landing, checking into the hotel, and cleaning up, the first stop was Aunt Agnes’ and Aunt Amalie’s house, which was a good place to deal with jet lag. She mothers you a lot with tons of home cooked German foods as well as strong coffee and great cakes.

Now the first of the wonderful differences between our countries. Does no one here wear shorts? And what’s the deal with everybody toting jackets? I’m pretty warm-natured most of the time, and I’m wearing just a t-shirt and shorts. Its not that cold here.

We took lots of pictures on our trip over and I’ll be adding more with each blog post. You can take a look at them here. There are many more pictures available if you’re one of my Flickr contacts. If you’re one of my friends or family members, email me, fill out the contact form, or Twitter me and I’ll give you access.

Tomorrow, more great German food!

Last Friday I gave a talk to the Northwest Arkansas Social Media Club discussing opportunities for the SuperValu grocery chain on Twitter. The presentation combines a Twitter demographics research study by Pew Research, Nielsen Homescan panel data, and Twitter user accounts by city as compiled by Twellow.com to estimate potential sales from a Twitter campaign. It also makes some recommendations on how SuperValu can use Twitter. Here is the presentation that I gave with simulated panel data.

I have a friend who is interested in trying Twitter out and wanted to get her up and Twittering quickly. Fortunately, I had just helped a coworker get on Twitter and made several suggestions to her on how to get started. Here’s that list of tools and tricks which should help you get started as well as a few resources for the Northwest Arkansas area.

Take two and a half minutes and watch Twitter in Plain English
Twitter Support FAQ -Learn how to use the basic functions of Twitter. Find out what how to add followers, @reply, and direct message.
Twitter Manual – Now that I have this thing what do I do with it? @davidrisley‘s Twitter Manual gives some good suggestions.
#hashtags – Track the conversation around a hashtag (check out the NWA ice storm feed: #nwaicestorm09, #nwark, #540, and Social Media Club NWA #NWASocial)
The Official Twitter Text Commands – Learn the basic Twitter commands.
http://twitter.com/invitations – Find people in your current address books and see if they’re on Twitter. For bonus points, direct message them and invite them to lunch or coffee and meet them in person. I’ve met some very interesting people doing this.
Twellowhood – Increase your list of followers list by navigating to your home town and finding people nearby who are Twittering.
Ten People All Twitter Beginners Should be Following – TwiTip’s Darren Rowse (@twitip) has some good suggestions of people to follow.
Mr. Tweet – Once you are following a few dozen people, use this service to find people who your followers are following and who you should be following as well.
SocialToo – This tool lets you monitor who’s newly following you and who’s stopped following. The service also notes on which tweet you were unfollowed which might suggest you’re writing about a topic that your followers might not be interested in.
Twitter Facebook Widget – Update Twitter and your Facebook status at the same time. Although there’s some overlap, my Facebook friends and Twitter followers tend to be different people. With this tool you can communicate with everyone at the same time. I’ve also found it easier to have a threaded conversation on Facebook than on Twitter.
TwitterVision – Watch Tweets overlaid on a world map (very mesmerizing)
TweetStats – analyze how a particular account uses Twitter. This is a good research tool if you want to see what successful Twitterers are doing.

To get you started, here’s a few local Northwest Arkansas news sources:
@4029news and @4029weather
@NWArkTimes
@fayetteville_ar
@knwanews

You’ll also want to get some tools to help you keep track of Twitter. An excellent desktop Twitter client is TweetDeck. For an excellent mobile client, get an iPhone (like I wish I had).

If these links aren’t enough for you, Mashable has a huge list of interesting tools and tips. Also make sure you follow my friend Eve @emoemo333 and welcome her to Twitter.

I finally got around to organizing an uploading a new batch of photos of everyone:

• Summer With Sophia
• Home With Liam and Sophia
• Family Portraits
• Summertime With Liam and Sophia
• Liam and Sophia with Their Cousins
• Summertime With Liam and Sophia 2
• Liam’s Baby Shower
• Back to School
• Liam’s Birthday
• Liam’s Christening

For some reason, I’ve been a little busy since Liam came home. However, holiday vacation time has given me some time to get some pictures up. Here’s the first group of them with more coming as time permits:

• Seoul 2008 Meeting Liam
• Seoul 2008 Meeting Liam Friday
• Liam In Korea
• Sophia Playing
• Easter 2008
• Sophia in the Kitchen

I’ve also got some password protected videos of the kids as well. Drop me a note if you want to see them. Here’s one to get you going:

Sophia Reading To Liam from Collin Condray on Vimeo.