Ok, so admittedly its taken me a little while to get my Jamaica post up and running. Now to a few of you this might be a little disconcerting, given that Jamaica was in fact my first port of call. Except for a random two line email post sent on a weak stolen Wi-Fi signal from the beach, which for some reason that I can’t fathom has the largest number of comments to date, I’ve only managed to talk about Pelican Bar and the villa experience. What, you might ask, was I doing for the rest of the five days? And what about details from the rest of my trip? Am I going to be as tardy all the way through? Do you, the few readers who come by and check this space regularly, have to wait until 2007 and the culmination of the cricket world cup before you get to read my posts from June 2006?
No, my dear friends, I assure you that order and regularity shall make their way onto these blogs. We shall start by catching up on my first day here in Berlin, and then shall fill in Amsterdam and Jamaica in a few days. I am currently sitting at a desk in my room on the 21st floor of the Park Inn, a four star business hotel in Alexanderplatz. The room is about as big as my studio in New York, and has the sleek ergonomic european design that I quite enjoy. True, I am not really “roughing it” as a backpacker should, but then again, I never said I was backpacking, and more importantly, there was a great deal on Expedia, and this place cost about half of its normal price! Long live the Internet!
Berlin
Berlin is a really interesting place, and I will do more justice to it in my next post as I have another day here. However, a few initial observations after my first day here:
1) Berliners love public transport: You have the U-bahn (underground subway), the S-bahn (overground train), the H-bahn (tram, which threatens to kill you everytime you attempt to cross the street) and buses
2) There are helluva lot of monuments and government buildings- almost two at every corner
3) Hugo Boss suits are cheaper here than anywhere else, including Toronto and Vancouver. Now why would someone who is not going to wear a suit for another six months buy one? Just put it down to craziness, and we should be fine.
4) Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan:
Friendly competitors to the venerable House of Morgan, Deutsche Bank have gone one step ahead in the world of corporate sponsorships by actually naming a museum the “Deutsche Guggenheim”, and putting a massive poster just outside the building. At first you might say that it is fine, after all, Deutsche could also just mean “German Guggenheim”. True, except then the marketing geniuses at my friendly competitor decided to add their logo of the square with the slash on it, and on every other reference to the Deutsche Guggenheim. To add insult to injury, this massive sign was on a massive building right opposite a tiny building with a tiny sign that announced the offices of JPMorgan
4) Einstein Kaffe: This chain of well appointed coffee shops will give Starbucks a run for their Euros any day. Can’t wait for them to make an entry into the New York market
Confession: I can’t escape my past. Here I am, on my way around the world, “away from it all”, and yet I try and read the FT when I can, I find humor in investment bank sponsorships, I try and think about business strategies of coffee shops. Maybe it isn’t my past. Maybe its the present and these six months are just one long commercial break!