A Hop, Skip & Jump through NAFTA*

I’ve been collecting frequent flyer miles. I just got back today from my very first business trip back to the continent of my birth. I didn’t visit Canada at all on this trip, but since Detroit is north of Canada (check it on the map!), I consider it covered.

Guadalajara

First destination was Guadalajara, Mexico (where I picked up some swell mustaches in anticipation of Mexican Independence Day festivities). I’ve been to Puerto Vallarta many times (as faithful readers know), but this was my first trip to the capital of the state of Jalisco. I stayed at the Hotel Presidente Intercontinental, which was very nice. My company’s corporate rate there seemed very reasonable, considering the amenities, generous room, location, friendly staff, and the outstanding breakfast buffet. I can’t say “¡no!” to chilaquiles rojos o verdes and frijoles fritos for breakfast. Ever. I found my colleagues in Guadalajara to be charmingly energetic, engaging, and — above all — alarmingly young. My host took me out on my last night for dinner, and I requested a restaurante típico of the city. We tried a place he recommended for pozole, but they were closed. So, we scooted over to Las Vías for a couple of tortas cubanas y aguas frescas — my jamaica was excellent. I’m hard-pressed to find a website for Las Vías, but I’d like to throw more business their way. Our sandwiches and drinks were cheap and delicious.

Chicago

Next stop was Chicago, where Yelli graciously picked me up from the airport and showed me how Chicagolanders eat not once, but twice while I was there for two days. (It’s really good to have friends spread around the world.) I am so pleased to have caught up with her (and to have been the excuse she needed to drop her kids with their grandparents), but I would have liked to have seen them and her husband, too (particularly to see the mustache effect on their elder son). On the first night, she took me to Portillo’s to get a true Chicago diner experience. After a long second day at the office, she picked me up again and I sampled Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. Note to Detroiters: it was like Pizza Papalis, but better, in terms of crust and cheese.

Detroit/Michigan

After a full work week, I landed in Detroit, where my sister scooped me up at the airport. We rendezvous’d with my parents, ate dinner with my grandparents, and headed up to the house on the lake for the remainder of the weekend. It was nice to get sort of a spontaneous visit with my family, but I really wish I’d had Sarah with me. It generally feels weird traveling without her, but even more so in places where we’ve lived or at least visited together. I got the chance to meet up with some old work colleagues, dear old Michigan friends, and recent transplants from Regensburg to the Detroit area outside of my work commitments.

Writing it up in restrospect, after arriving today (according to my Michigan-based bodily clock, but that was actually yesterday according to local time), it doesn’t seem quite so intense. Visiting three offices over a span of 10 days doesn’t sound like much now, but I can assure you — it took a lot out of me. Still, I’m so pleased everything worked out as well as it did.

P.S. — My thanks go to joolsstone over at trainsonthebrain.com for the inspiration to use tripline.net for this nifty animated mapping thing. The Indiana Jones theme plays through my head when I watch this.

* — NAFTA stands for “North American Free Trade Agreement.” It’s shorthand, for my company, for our U.S./Canadian/Mexican locations. Does anyone else call it that? I wonder if German companies are more likely to use a term like that, since they can compress all that meaning down to just two syllables this way.

Rödelheim / Eschborn

I’ve been on business trips to the Frankfurt area before, but this week was the first time I’ve stayed there over night since December 2003 (and back then, I was city-hopping from Regensburg to Würzburg to Babenhausen to Toulouse and back to Detroit).

It was kind of weird, being on the edge of the city, out in those fields, separating Eschborn from Rödelheim. I don’t know what kinds of crops these were — wheat? Some other kind of grass? Either way, it was nice to be able to walk from the hotel to the factory those two days for the training sessions I gave. I get the impression there was not very much else to walk around and do in that area, which is just as well, since the training sessions completely wore me out. That happens to me a lot on overnight business trips; I put in 10 or 12 hour days, always trying to catch up on stuff that would otherwise fill up my inbox…especially if I’m traveling alone.

Here are some pictures of the area:

Rödelheim Rödelheim Rödelheim Rödelheim Rödelheim Rödelheim

Zwei Tage im Frankfurter Raum

I’m spending the next two days in Frankfurt (am Main, natürlich, and more precisely Rödelheim and Eschborn) on a business trip, getting there sometime this evening via a carpool from Regensburg with a big long layover at a workshop in Pommersfelden.


View Larger Map

Anyone wanting to meet up, show/tell me where to eat, etc. please comment here with your email address and hopefully Sarah won’t mind relaying your info to me via my mobile phone (not sure what my connectivity to email — work or otherwise — is going to be). I’ve been there more than a few times before, but never overnight, which has always meant a big long day with early morning train travel, too much coffee to get me through the middle, and a drowsy, throbbing return trip the same evening.

I don’t expect anything particularly exciting about Rödelheim or Eschborn, but I would appreciate some general tips about the Frankfurt downtown area. I figure I ought to be able to S-Bahn it into the city and explore, if only those in the know could tell me which lines and stations to use.

I’m headed back Thursday afternoon on an ICE.