Train-ing in Europe

I’ve been training in Europe this week with my coworkers, Kelly and Jonathan. While delivering a class at the Autodesk office outside of London, we had the pleasure of meeting the fantastic technical support staff as well as some top consultants from across Europe. We concluded our training session with a couple pints at a British pub and headed to the Autodesk office in Neuchatel, Switzerland the following morning.

Our “training” in Switzerland began with an adventure aboard a Swiss train. Sitting in the dining car on our way from Genève to Neuchatel, Jonathan and I ordered our $20 entrees from the gourmet menu. As we awaited our lunch, we occasionally glanced out the window to admire the snow falling on the beautiful lakes and mountains. During one fortunate glance out the window, I thought “this town looks a lot like Neuchatel”. You should have seen the look on the server’s face when we said “Neuchatel?!? That’s our stop!”  I’m sure he was impressed with the intelligence of American travelers! If you are familiar with the trains in Switzerland, you know they stay on schedule and don’t stop for long.

As Jonathan, tried to pay for the food we had yet to see, I ran back to the car where Kelly and our luggage were waiting. I got there just in time to see Kelly, who was rudely awoken from a nap, jumping from the train and undoubtedly wondering where the heck we were! I grabbed as much as I could carry and jumped off the train. Unfortunately in my haste, I lost my purse! Where did it go?! Oh, there it is! Under the train! Here’s a travel tip: If you want to delay the departure of a train, cause a scene that implies you might be crazy enough to crawl underneath the train to retrieve a lost item. The conductor instantly came to the rescue and you can trust (I hope!) that the train wouldn’t go anywhere while the conductor is risking life and limb!

By the way, the server insisted that we take our food to go. You know that $20 gourmet meal? It comes in a bag! I’m convinced that it takes 1 minute to “make” those gourmet dinners. However, to justify the price, customers are led to believe that a chef is slaving away in the back of the restaurant. In reality, the server simply wastes a sufficient amount of time before nuking the bag and creatively arranging its contents on a china plate.

But, to be fair, my gourmet bag of gnocchi and mushrooms in cream sauce was surprisingly good… certainly better than it looked!

Fortunately, the “train”ing day ended happily as we devoured a large pot of traditional Swiss cheese fondue during our dinner in Neuchatel! As my kids would say… “ummmalicious!”