Northern hemisphere

Guten tag from southwestern Germany! Yes, I'm on another glamorous international road trip, to attend my .org's week of staff meetings (like last year in Paris). This year's meetings are in my old stomping ground Oxford, but given the distance I was already coming, I decided to tack on a few extra days at my team's home base in Freiburg (in Australian terms, just down the road from Oxford). I arrived on Tuesday after 3 planes, 1 train, and 33 hours of traveling - and, luckily for me, about 5 hours before Frankfurt airport was closed by a late-winter snowstorm. The jet lag has been manageable, I'm having a great time being in an office for a few days (working by yourself gets really old after a while), and of course there have been plenty of opportunities to sample regional food and wines, from the savory breakfast pastries available in the ground-floor bakery at our office building, to last night's dinner - a DIY toasted cheese extravaganza known as 'raclette' that I thought far superior to its better-known culinary cousin fondue. I've even been enjoying the blast of unseasonably cold and snowy weather; I haven't seen snow for more than a year, and after all this is much more what I'm used to experiencing in March. I've got one more day here, and then head off to Oxford tomorrow by train, with a stopover in Paris for lunch. (I know, tough life, but what can I do? My boss insisted.) More updates to follow as the RL European Tour 2013 continues!