Prior to going on this cruise, I had all kinds of reservations about spending my vacation time this way. I was envisioning a week-long outing with people elder to my grandfather, buffet style food and hours of mandatory bingo every day. But that wasn't the case at all. Here are the top ten reasons of why I thought this cruise was great. It should be noted that we traveled with Royal Caribbean on the Adventures of the Sea which might be a completely different experience than other ships or cruise lines.

1. The food was ridiculously good, with lots of choices and no shortage there of it. I particularly loved the formal dining room dinners. Unfortunately the great food also resulted in my mother not being able to button her pants for the latter half of the trip which was an avid topic of discussions amongst a number of anonymous cruisers. Leave it to my mum to ruin the family's reputation.
2. The service was terrific. I couldn't believe how nice and accomodating the staff was. They always went out of their way to please the customer. Going back to cleaning my apartment on a monthly basis will be quite the change to them cleaning my stateroom three times a day. On our boat, there were 3500 guests and 12oo crew members. That says it all about the level of service offered.
3. There was plenty to do. We were on a big boat, mind you, but there was no shortage of activities. Ping pong, gym, sauna, steam room, pools, and yes....bingo.
4. Cruises are a great way to meet people. You start running across the same people and everybody (happy and well fed) seems to be excited to strike up a conversation.
5. You do get to see a lot of different places. I think we visited six different islands on our cruise which was really neat. I would have to say that the one big negative of going on a cruise is that wherever you arrive people look at you as a dollar bill. That was no fun, and I don't enjoy being labeled as a cruise tourist. But you don't have to be. On Barbados, we simply jumped in a cab, had them drive us to a great beach and spent the day snorkeling there.
6. They don't make money on everybody. If you enjoy gambling and expensive mixed drinks then I am sure every cruise line would love to have you as their customer. If you're a frugal German who can eat seven meals a day, then ...not so much. I ate like crazy, went to all the shows and didn't spend a dollar in the casino. It was a complete luxury hotel experience without the luxury price tag. True, camping is cheaper. But if you want a luxury vacation, I don't think there's a better way to do it than cruising.
7. The entertainment was short and sweet. Every night there was a new show - jugglers, dancers, ice skaters, comedians, singers, etc. The shows were highly entertaining and short so I tried them all.
8. It's a fun activity to do with your friends. I was lucky to do this with Jen, my family and my host family. We had a great time together – all while being pampered by 1200 cruise staffers.
9. Cruise employees are interesting people. Most folks working on a cruise are young and from all over the world. On our boat, they came from 67 different nations. I got to meet many of them and found their stories to be very interesting. There also was the rather uncomfortable Sauna encounter with a gay dancer from Argentina. Jen won't shut about that one.

Ps. If you ever do want to go on a cruise, then my host mother Diane at Cruises Inc. can set everything up for you. She does that for a living and spent her entire career in the travel business. She'll make sure that your experience will be as great as mine.

I am off to spend the weekend with my friend Jerry and his family in Dallas, Texas. Right now I am sitting at the Seattle airport watching it rain. Next week, I promise to blog more and maybe even post some pictures from this trip.

While in Rome Plettenberg, I was fortunate enough to run a marathon with both Jen and my parents. Well sadly, Jen and I only competed in the half marathon while my parents completed the full one. A few things about marathons in Plettenberg. During the race, bystanders will try to give you various kinds of hard liquor. Avoid if at all possible. There were just over a couple of thousand participants, and about 1800 volunteers. I have never seen such enthusiasm. My mother took fourth in the city championship, which she'll surely tell you the next time you see her. They serve beer to everybody who crosses the finish line. Prost. Here are some impressions from the race.

After an excruciating flight back from Germany (I am never flying Lufthansa again - joke), sitting in the midst of German snorer and a Russian elbower, I am back in the US. And after sleeping for a few hours, I've been catching up on email and sipping espressos since about 4am, with Otto on  my lab. Life is good. So was my trip back to Europe. I am so thankful for all the friends and family I got to see, and all the other people who made this such a great trip. Most notably, thank you Jefferson Farfan, for scoring a goal against Frankfurt and letting me see a Schalke win after all. Whenever you return from a trip like this, there are always a ton of impressions on my mind. Here are a few, more coming later, complete with some pictures of our journey.

• Jen loves gelato. If we lived in Europe, we'd have a problem.
• I greatly missed Otto who is about half the size of my parents' cat
• Thank you Adam for staying with Otto while I was gone. I hope you like the new roommate I brought you from Amsterdam.
• Schalke is awesome. When I am old, I am going to fully devote my life to watch them play.
• Germany is an interesting country. Actually I think it's the greatest country in the world, but many people there are too negative to ever recognize it.
• Jen and I got along great while in Europe. We also get along great in the US, which is nice.
• My family rocks. I wish I could spend more time with everybody, such as my little sisters who are growing up to be beautiful young women. And by spending time, I mean making sure that pubertal German boys don't.
• My parents both ran a marathon. I hope I am that cool when nearing 50.
• Both my cousins are married now, with Stefan breaking the golden rule of dating a woman for 10 years before getting engaged.
• Dominik and Sebastian win the "friends of the trip" award for getting me into all kinds of sporting events while in Germany. Christian gets the same award for driving all the way from Austria in his luxurious Dacia Logan to come and visit me.
• I love German food and beer, but look forward to once again eat something green now.
• Amsterdam is one my favorite places in the world. Jen and I must have walked around for 12 hours one day, all the while we were eating Dutch French Fries. I love Dutch French Fries.
• Otto just managed to get stuck under my couch. Got to go.

My time in Germany is starting to come to an end. Only a few more days and then I am back on a plane to America. This has been a great trip and I will be sad to leave everything behind again. But I am excited to see Jen, Otto and all my friends (7) in the US. Anyways, Christian came up from Bavaria and we spend the evening with my cousin Frank,  Henrike and Jens.  And tomorrow I will be going to one more Schalke game. It's not quite the end yet.

It was marathon weekend in Plettenberg. Jen walked the half marathon (2:45), I ran it (1:41) and my parents both ran the full marathon (mum: 4:31, dad 4:45). It should be noted that my father ran the last ten miles with cramps and my mother was doped to the gills. Jen also got interviewed on stage after finishing her half marathon, and they even called me out as she was having troubles locating me after her run. I was having troubles showering at my grandma's house (why would anyone not have a shower curtain?), which is why unfortunately how I missed Jen crossing the finish line. We then both left right after the race to see the most incredible derby ever (Dortmund vs. Schalke - 3:3) and came back just in time to see my mother up on stage at the townsquare to receive an award for her 4th place finish in the city championship. She was supposed to pick us up at the train station.  In between, Jen got to see what it's like to be the only Schalke fans in a block of Dortmund fans, how I got three of those fans to leave the game early due to my beautiful chants and finally how a little discussion on a train ended with a Schalke fan dimming his cigarette on a Dortmund fan's forehead. Not your average Saturday.

I just wanted to send a quick update from Deutschland. All is good. We have finally adjusted to the time change, and survived my cousin's wedding. Barely that is. I had almost forgotten how much alcohol Germans are able to consume. I saw family  members and close friends consume 20-30 alcoholic beverages and still stay up longer than I did.  Jen and my mother are off looking at castles today. Tomorrow, we're heading out to Amsterdam for a couple of days. On Thursday, we're off to a professional hockey game before running a marathon this weekend directly followed by watching the biggest derby of the year. Then another party, another day of family and then Jen is off back to the States.

As I am typing this blog entry, I am arguably sitting on the best flight ever – flying from Portland direct to Frankfurt on Lufthansa. Since Lufthansa is a German company, there might be a slight bias in play here but that’s ok.  I am constantly flying for work, and other than flying on a private jet, this has been the best flight experience in a long time. It’s refreshing to see an airline do some things right, especially from the perspective of a guy who publishes a book on how to write complaint letters. Here’s what Lufthansa did right today:

• When checking in at the gate, there counter was well staffed and we got checked in to our flight within a matter of 5 minutes. This is unusually fast for an international flight.
• At the counter, I asked if there was any chance that Jen and I could get a window/aisle seat rather than the “bathroom watch” row we were assigned in the back of the plane. The guy told me that he wasn’t able to make any changes right now, but to find him once we got to the counter.
• I, of course, forgot to find him at the counter. Instead, he found me. While walking on to the airplane, he pulled us aside (I was assuming they had opened my luggage and were wondering why I was bringing 37 brand new soccer jerseys) and asked whether we’d still like to change seats.  2 minutes later, we had graduated from the bathroom watch row and were sitting in a window/isle in an exit row. As you can see in the picture above, the leg room was incredible.
• Before walking onto the plane, we grabbed a half dozen magazines (GQ, Mens Health, Cosmopolitan, Nudists News) from their free magazine counter and boarded the plane.
• Once on the plane, we enjoyed excellent food, great service and lots of sleep induced by French wine and a couple of blue pills – the sleeping kind.

Lufthansa really didn’t do anything crazy here, but unlike most airlines, they upheld the promise of the kind of service that one should be able to expect. Nothing crazy, just basic stuff. Now, some might say that international flights are always more pleasant than domestic ones. But I disagree. I paid $900 a piece for this tickets, which isn’t that much more than a number of domestic routes are going for these days. Anyways, we are about to land in Frankfurt. Who knows what will go wrong there, but this is was an awesome flight. Thank you Lufthansa. Ps. It should be noted that the on-board entertainment was broken for the duration of the flight, as the system’s hard drive somehow got corrupted. While this was certainly a bummer, I won’t remember it as a negative. Rather than keeping us in the airport for hours and hours, the captain made the right choice in departing Portland rather than trying to fix a problem that wouldn’t have been fixed anyways.

Ok, this is my second bad flight experience in just a couple of weeks. Last week I was unhappy because Horizon Air ran out of beer on my flight from Portland to Santa Barbara. This week, I am writing because I got stuck at the Philly airport for ten hours - thanks to the friendly folks at US Airways. Horizon's Ginger Ale doesn't sound so bad after all. Here's what happened. After three days of late-nights, little sleep, flights across the country, preparing, scrambling and then delivering a major presentation; I was ready to head back to the West Coast for a weekend of sunshine and a wedding in Las Vegas. So after checking my bags and getting checked at security, I sat down at the gate, Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich in-hand, to relax for a couple of hours prior to my 6pm flight. Just as I took the last bite out of my sandwich, my flight departure got pushed to 8pm. Two hours of relaxation turned into four. Then we boarded. Then we de-boarded an hour later because the intercom between the pilot's cabin and the main cabin didn't work so well. In the process of such, the guy next to me got picked up by airport security as he decided to de-board the plane rather quickly and ran over a flight attendant. Then the flight crew timed out and went home. So we had to wait another five hours before boarding the plane again. I guess US Airways did what they could do. At some point, they even gave us $10 food vouchers to feed us while waiting. The only problem was that by the the time they finally decided to give out food vouchers, all stores and restaurants were closed. What a cost-savings initiative. Give people vouchers they can't redeem. We finally left the airport at 1am. I want to take a moment to thank my "almost" seatmate, who's arrest (or ban) allowed me to stretch out and sleep the whole way back to Vegas.

It's 11:30pm and I am about to lay my head to rest on a soft pillow here at a fine Holiday Inn in Pittsburgh. We had a great first day on our book tour with two book signings and some important consignment deals. I am a little bummed that I am flying back tomorrow, which has created a rather hectic schedule for me.

Sunday
6:30am: Leave Portland
5pm: Land in Cleveland
6pm: Arrive at Patrick's House
Note: Don't leave on a business trip at 6am on a Sunday morning.

Monday
7am: Go on Run
9am: Book signing at Cleveland bakery
3pm: Book signing at Youngstown grocery store
9pm: Arrive at Holiday Inn
11:30pm: Bedtime
Note: Three meals of pasta and Italian sandwiches can't be healthy.

Tuesday
4:30am: Wake up and go to gym
5:45am: Leave hotel and start five hour drive to Philadelphia
noon: Book signing in Philadelphia
5pm: Fly home
11pm: Arrive in Portland
Note: Fifteen hours of combined car and air travel is too much for a Tuesday.