Antisocial

Sitting in the lounge in a set of recliners that are all facing each other around a coffee table. There are two Americans and one African guy educated in the US and they are all chatty chat chatting and I have decided to remain silent and let everyone assume I don’t understand English. I have a scarf on so I think it’s plausible. I’m just drained and too tired to make friends in the lounge. I will hide in my culturally ambiguous outfit and excuse myself from this conversation.

Taximan!

Taximan is what everyone calls taxi drivers. I like it because in this french-speaking country, their word for him consists of two words in English put together to create a word that is not used ever in English.

Hotel wildlife

Here's what lives at my hotel:

Mosquitoes

Lizards

Bats

I'm not even going to bother complaining about the omni-present mosquitoes who bite me through my clothes.

The lizards are awesome, they are always just chilling on the wall or on the patio- they are all different colors and generally just run away when I get close. We live a peaceful co-existence and I'm not sure if they eat mosquitoes but I'm going to assume they do.

But then there are the bats. Big, white, swooping bats. They come out at night (obvi) and are really into swooping not that far from me. I'll admit to being a little terrified. I waited for three full minutes for one to stop swooping down to try to drink from the pool before I dared to walk to the restaurant. Feel sorta bad about saying this but I sorta hope that chlorinated water kills them.

FYI- if you're picturing a Hilton with bats and lizards, you've got the wrong idea. The rooms all surround various open patios and the restaurant is en pleine aire, so it's not that weird that there are so many creatures. I just sorta wish the lizards would take over and kill the mosquitoes and bats.

Meetings meetings meetings

The format of meetings here makes me insane but I have slowly learned its benefit. The structure is set- there is no back and forth. You know how sometimes on television when the sitcom family has their little “family meeting” there is a banana or a candlestick that they pass around in order to give someone the right to speak? That is exactly how these meetings are run. Only one person has the right to speak and it is formally given to them by a meeting master. If you speak out of turn, you’re disdained.

So the presenter is allowed to present, with no elements of interaction at all with the audience. Then those with something to say (notice I didn’t say questions, rarely are the things they say questions) will raise their hand and their names will be written down in a list and then in that exact order they will be allowed to speak. If they do ask a direct question to the presenter (again rare, it’s mostly “commentary”) the presenter is not allowed to answer, but rather must write down the question so that when it becomes time for the designated “response time” they can answer it… or not, as it turns out.

So this “let’s have a conversation” and “Stop me at any time if there is something you don’t understand” stuff is just ridiculous here. I know, I tried it and it failed pitifully. Once you relinquish your imaginary banana, you can’t get it back until it is formally given to you. I tried to present one step of our procedures and then a list of questions to the audience specifically relating to that step and it just spiraled out of control—I couldn’t get the microphone back to finish my presentation. No words that followed my presentation related at all to the step I presented, or to the questions I specifically asked. You have to really say everything before you give up that imaginary banana or it’s all over.

Now here’s the silver lining. People respond to your presentation and it takes so long to get back to you that you really only have to reply to stuff you want to reply to. They will not get another chance to remind you to respond to their point- their banana time is over. So when someone has a particularly difficult comment or question, you can really just ignore it. And weirdly, everyone seems okay with this. As long as something is said, it’s over. Even if there isn’t really resolution. This kills me.

The wind began to switch, the house to pitch

Apparently I have never truly experienced wind until today. I was in a meeting, in a fully enclosed room, but the wind outside was so violent that the haze of dust inside the room, seeping between the windows, was as thick as fog. The meeting was over but everyone decided we should wait out the wind before trying to leave the building. It’s really incredible, the force. Imagine a tornado in a place covered in sand--- that is what it feels like.

Poor Mopti

I arrived in Mopti today and have never been greeted in such a welcoming fashion. When I settled in and then went to the hotel restaurant for lunch, it became clear why… there is nobody here. I talked to the waiter who sadly shared that due to the “insecurities” there are no tourists anymore. However, the hotel is fully staffed. I guess it’s nice that they haven’t let anyone go despite the fact that there is no work, but it is off-putting when there are so many people standing around, waiting to do something. There are about 50 rooms in this hotel and my colleague and I are the only two guests. There are six waiters, and they all hang around while we eat. When we got back to the hotel, the receptionist had our keys in his hand, ready to hand to us. He was clearly waiting for us to come back and I’m not sure what else he could possibly do while his only two guests were away at a meeting. It’s really, really sad.

In fact, our partner, a woman from another agency based in New York was supposed to accompany us here to Mopti and backed out due to security concerns. I’m always so conflicted about these security reports. They can be terrifying with the language they use but it all needs to be contextualized. They paint areas with broad strokes as “safe” or “dangerous” without taking into consideration the geographical differences and it seems like once some place gets labeled dangerous, it can never return to safe again. If I ever get nervous, I just read what they write about Morocco, a place where I lived and felt totally safe, and I use it as a comparison.

The AQIM kidnapping in Niamey, Niger in 2010 was real and it was scary. I’m not sure it was a random thing, I’m not sure the full story will ever come out, but either way, it was a game changer in the region. But here’s the thing- Mopti feels safe. It is a city. It is not in the middle of nowhere. It relies heavily on tourists. I feel even safer in villages where I am so openly welcomed.

I’m of course angry at AQIM for f’ing it up for so many people’s livelihood by doing the kidnappings, but I’m also frustrated at the governments who ban entire areas of a country without considering the nuances of safety. I get that they want to be conservative and never want something to happen that they could have prevented, but these warnings cripple economies. It’s not clear to me that these actions don’t produce the opposite effect—strengthening terrorist organizations as there are more and more out of work people due to the lack of tourism. I know that’s a bold statement and possibly a big leap, but that’s all I can think of when I’m at dinner being served b y six men as one of two guests in a hotel.

90 degrees at 10pm... does not bode well

Successfully executed the last-minute rendez-vous in Paris for lunch, less successful on the choice of restaurant but we can't win them all.

The plane from Paris took off ONE HOUR LATE because we were waiting for a passenger. There must have been some high-rollers on that plane. New life goal: be important enough for a plane to wait for you for one hour.

Got off the plane and stepped out into 90 degree weather at 10 pm. Bad sign.

Giant sign at the baggage claim that said "List of missing bags for Air France" under which there was a list of about 100 names, printed too small to actually read. It was also on the inside of the baggage conveyor belt necessitating leaning over the moving part to get a closer look. Stared at it in a precarious overhanging position for about 10 minutes until I noticed that the date was for last week... and then my bag came.

Driver wasn't there to meet me so I had to play the fun game of being swarmed by potential drivers, porters, and guides outside the airport. Thankfully everyone was super helpful if not needed. Got phone credit, a ride home, and an offer to take a tour with "Moussa le Magnifique" within the span of 10 minutes.

Too exhausted to do anything other than crank up the AC and crawl under the mosquito net at the hotel and slept a solid 8 hours :) All better now.

No Internet?

As some of you astute readers may have noticed, all my blog entries from my 10 day trip to Ethiopia all were posted at the same time. This is because internet was crap the whole time I was there. Apparently the national telecom company has changed and that combined with the rainy season wiping out electricity every afternoon meant that connections were hard to come by.

Sometimes I find the lack of internet when I travel relaxing. It's an 'ignorance is bliss' sort of thing with regard to work. Can't be stressed out about stuff I don't know is happening.

However, in this particular case it got a bit sticky-- namely when I went to go pay for my hotel.

Now it never occurred to me before, but you can't pay with credit cards when there is no internet... no way to validate the card. And of course this paying-of-hotel-bills tends to fall at the end of a trip when all your cash is spent. The receptionist suggested I take money from the ATM to pay but I'm not sure she realized 1) I don't keep over a thousand dollars in my personal checking 2) The highest amount you are allowed to take out of an Ethiopian ATM is the equivalent of $200- and that's after you click the "other amount" button because the given options only go up to $100.

It was about noon at the hotel which meant it was 5am in New York so getting money wired from my office was not going to happen. I started wondering if they had a room full of dishes I could wash before my flight and we could call it even?

Thankfully, the manager thought to go the bank and have me take out a cash advance against my credit card which apparently you can do with no internet. So I got a giant, embarrassing stack of small bills from the bank to pay the hotel, and an enormous service fee to pay when I got home...

MOVIE

Last night was a rare occasion when the rabbit ears on the TV in my room seemed to get a signal so while I ate dinner I watched a Turkish movie, dubbed in Arabic. I understood about 10% but here’s the synopsis according to my understanding: A mute mentally retarded person who likes to dance gets a girl pregnant which upsets the town so he and the girl and baby go to live in a mineshaft.

Paid Friends

So as I’m sure I have mentioned in the past, when I travel, my only friends are people who are paid to be around me, namely my drivers, hotel receptionists, and waiters. However, since security guards of hotels I am not staying in are not technically paid to be around me, I’m going to consider them a special kind of friend. I love the security guards at the Sheraton. The Sheraton is a castle. It is where all the African Union stuff goes down. And the security guards are the most informed dudes on earth. They see every VIP who goes by and knows what’s going on. I hung out with them for half an hour while I waited for my driver (paid friend) and they caught me up on the situation in Sudan. Also Hillary had just been to Addis so I got the usual outpouring of love that the Clintons inspire in all people in every country (except for half of the people in the US).

Road Trip

Yesterday was a bad day for dogs and 16 wheelers in Ethiopia.

The guesthouse manager arranged a driver to take me to a site about 2 hours outside of Addis. He specifically prided himself on telling me that he found an old man to drive me. My first thought, how is his vision? But now I get it. He got me a seasoned man instead of a hotshot driver and for that I was thankful. There was still the occasional game of chicken when passing giant caravans but I felt confident that my driver was actually considering whether or not he would win. It was also the first time in Ethiopia that I had been in a car capable of breaking 30 mph.

Anyway, on the way there we passed two different overturned 16 wheelers. We stopped to ask if anyone had been killed because apparently that’s what you do. No deaths, and in fact the guys who owned the trucks were sleeping on a blanket next to them, ostensibly waiting for a giant tow truck (note: passed them 8 hours later on the way home, still waiting). As for the dogs, I saw one splattered on the way to the site and then on the way back, saw it again and mentioned “I’m surprised no one has cleaned that off the road yet” to which the driver replied “nope, that’s a different dead dog on this road”. Yikes.

Accident and Accident Prime.

On our way back from another site visit, we hit a wall of traffic. Now instead of waiting in line with the traffic, we started to try to figure out how to beat the crowd. And we weren’t the only ones. We actually got beeped at for not going full speed on the shoulder and then we were passed ON THE RIGHT by a car that was totally off-roading. I wonder how many accidents occur because people are trying to get around other accidents?

Isthmus

The shampoo at my guesthouse is the color and consistency of DEP hair gel which I last used as ocean water in a diorama of an isthmus in 6^th grade.

Museums are better with signs

While the laminated world maps in Addis are plentiful, the general every day signs are totally absent. This was particularly fun in the ethnographic museum I visited. The lack of signage began with trying to find the museum. It was deep into the far reaches of the University campus, yet appeared to be totally unlabeled. I just had to ask someone at every intersection which way to the museum. Now it’s possible there were signs in Amharic that I couldn’t read, but honestly, I didn’t see any.

Once inside, there were all these unlabeled artifacts screaming “I look interesting, guess what I am and why I’m significant”, but then would never tell you. There were signs later on with long descriptions of various ethnic groups. They would all start super boring with an explanation of exactly how many people are in this group, the boundaries of where they are… but then once in a while, squished in the middle of the page would be this fantastic fact like “[insert awesome fact that is breathtaking but apparently not memorable enough to retain long enough to write in a blog]”. Anyway, it made me feel like I needed to read every word written to watch out for those little gems.

At the top floor of the museum, I met Marvin. He proved himself super useful in explaining a painting on farmers to me (I really don’t know anything about farming) so I didn’t shoo him off when he asked if he could join me as I strolled through (unlabeled) exhibits. He started by asking me my name and what it meant: nothing, it’s just a name. He didn’t believe me. Then he proceeded to explain to me that his name was Marvin which meant Marvelous, Astute, Responsible, Victorious, Innovative, and Noble. Apparently he has a motivational name that was given to him in an English class (now do I thank the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons for this?). Then he wanted to get down to business, how exactly did I feel about the book “the Laws of Attraction”? He was baffled that I’d never read it – he gave me the kind of look you’d give someone who had been living a full life without ever bothering to try sleeping lying down. In fact, it’s probably how I look at people who have never kept a personal budget. It got worse when he summarized the book for me and I shared that I didn’t buy the basic premise. Devastation! Sometimes I try to entertain people when traveling and fake common interest “I love Angelina too!” or “Yes Bryan Adams is a genius” but frankly I didn’t feel compelled to do this for my motivated friend since this conversation meant I couldn’t actually look at anything in the museum for which I’d paid 30 cents entry.

I must revise my earlier statement, there are signs. There are a few street signs. They, however, do not correspond at all to what the streets are actually called so aren’t really that useful. My hotel is on “meskel flower road” because the oldest building on it is the Meskel Flower Hotel (which is tiny and not otherwise notable). Most of my appointments are on “Bole Road” (so named because it runs through the neighborhood of Bole) or “Fake Bole Road” which runs parallel to Bole road. I had an awesome ‘dumb foreigner’ moment when I asked “what is the name of the road that goes to Ambo?” Answer: Ambo road. On the way home, I’m assuming it turns into Addis road. Brilliant.

The national museum was the next stop. Again, lack of signage. We walked in what looked like the main entrance and ended up being an art gallery. We figured if we just kept walking through it, we’d get to the museum entrance but eventually hit a dead end and tried again. The real entrance was on the side of the building. This museum was better funded and had a little movie playing on repeat about how all people come from Africa with an explanation of the latest skull discoveries. It was pretty sweet except that the volume was so loud that the rest of the visit was punctuated by glorious music and a resounding voice declaring “LIFE BEGAN IN AFRICA”.

I did the first floor with old pottery and then the second floor with artwork and hit the souvenir shop without having yet seen the actual main attraction… a little skeleton called Lucy. Turns out, she is in the basement, and not just the basement, the farthest depths of the basement. I bet 90% of museum visitors never find her. The entire basement has collections of skeletons and I kept reading all the labels (provided by Japan) and wondering “wait, so is this her?” I bet what happened is that a Japanese person came to an unlabeled museum and went nuts and then donated all his money to have it remedied

Questions for Addis

How lucrative, really, is the market for laminated world maps? Is there anyone who owns more than one? Do they wear out? Are they collectors’ items? Why is every teenage boy selling them? Chinese surplus?

We All Look The Same

After an insane-o flight I walked like a zombie through customs into an unmarked line that seemed as good as any other. As I passed, some young West African guy asked if he could borrow my pen to fill out his customs form. He was taking a really long time and I was watching this unlabeled line get longer and longer so I told him to keep it and walked away. About ten minutes later I watched the kid scope the line and then hand my pen to the only other white lady around. She happened to be 50 years old, blond, and wearing a trench coat.

Are you here for tourism or adoption?

Those were the two options a guy on the street gave me. Neither?

What I love about conference in sub-saharan Africa

Disclaimer: n=2

· Ladies in Fancy Matching Dresses: Typically they are young and beautiful and the matching dresses change every day. They are ostensibly present to provide directions to the bathroom or hand out revised schedules however sometimes their duties include standing beautifully in full view of all participants.

· The first-timers. Another staple of conferences is the random participant who has never attended a conference before and is THRILLED to be involved, if not totally cognizant of the conference do’s and don’ts. My favorite moves beyond the classic talking at full volume and letting your cell phone ring (“when I get older I will be stronger…”), are the really loud snorer and the new-to-me, person who scrolls through all their photos with the little beeping noise on for every button they press. I think these people serve a vital role; they keep people like me awake and give all the angry people staring at them some common ground in an otherwise potentially divisive environment. Maybe they are plants…

· Formal McFormalson. The formality at these conferences is really quite impressive and never fails to remind me how incredibly American I am. I’m looking at my watch after thirty seconds and wondering how many more VIPs need to be welcomed by name, title, and full biography. Honorable chairperson, Distinguished panelists, Madame the [some high role] of [some important thing], Assorted Dignitaries… At a conference in Ghana there was this sneaky trick that I wrote down where the 8^th person to speak skipped all the formality and said “all protocols observed”. No one at this conference took the short cut until the second day when an American dude (surprise) said “I hope you’ll forgive me if I skip formalities and jump right to content”. Laura: YES!! Everyone else: WHAT???

Literally 1.5 hours into the conference some dignitary actually formally declared the conference “opened”. I guess I didn’t realize the similarities between a conference on supply chains and the freaking Olympics! Both require extensive opening ceremonies.

· The mike-hogs. Now these are not unique to SSA conferences, they are found the world over. I think it’s just that people are actually polite enough to tolerate them in SSA. Now I was jazzed about the UN microphones too, but sadly had nothing useful to contribute. That didn’t stop others. They would turn on their mike and then agree with every point, one by one, that the speaker made. There’s always also that person who takes a general conversation about big ideas and makes it about their particular situation. “We should be vigilant about the product quality of reproductive health supplies” “I have a friend who got pregnant on the pill”. What??

Okay I’m done generalizing, now I’ll talk about this conference in particular.

· UN Badass. So one thing that was sorta awesome was that we were in the UN conference center which means we had those sweet individual microphones and simultaneous translation. When I hit the post lunch sleepy time I decided to amuse myself by trying to simultaneously listen to the English speaker and the French translation. I am always amazed that people are able to literally hear in one language and speak in another at the same time. I am still amazed, but a little less so when I noticed how often the French translation contained “et cetera” and “et d’autres choses” in place of the actual information spoken.

· No signs rule. I was pretty excited to arrive at the UN Conference center and only slightly less jazzed when I arrived at the third entrance and was actually allowed to enter. I did the metal detector, the passport check, all feeling quite important. Then once I had my little badge, I thought, what next? Apparently my conference was a ten-minute, un-marked, windy walk from the registration barracks. The whole group of us had to walk into each building and ask “is this the conference” and then be shooed forward. Could have used a fancy lady in a dress (with knowledge) then.

· Djiboutians. At this conference there was a group of three guys and their mother who were from that sweet little country that still makes me smirk due to the word “booty”. This was a conference largely of ministry of health officials and OBGYNS but these guys were street outreach workers who may or may not have actually been part of a formal organization, their mother spoke only a local dialect so mostly sat there bored for three days. They sat behind me the first day and we became besties once they realized that I speak French. First move, the group photo, clearly. In the afternoon they came up to me to say “other people didn’t understand the picture?!” I understand it perfectly. Must document all interactions with weird other people, makes perfect sense.

· THERE WERE M-FING ASHTRAYS IN THE BATHROOM STALLS! Yeah, think about how addicted to cigarettes you’d have to be to want to smoke while taking a dump in a public restroom at the UN?

· Talking heads. It really depletes the gravitas of the super fancy speech when it is being made from a set of panelists with chairs that are so low that only their foreheads really show above the podium.

Sleeping with Strangers

I’m not sure there is anything socially weirder than sleeping in a room of strangers. Yeah, we did it at summer camp and even at youth hostels but in those situations, the fact that you were technically strangers was tempered by a common interest and age. Not so with the business class sleeping lounge. Here a random bunch of adults whose only commonality is tiredness, join together to fall fast asleep on top of a chaise longue which typically has a built-in pillow that is at just the wrong angle and height.

When you are asleep, you are at your most vulnerable. What if I talk in my sleep? Snore? Flip flop around and end up in a compromising position? These are my fears. I suppose other rational ones include being murdered or having all your stuff stolen but you are annoying supposed to buy into the idea that murderers and crooks don’t fly business class… All fears aside, it’s more that the whole situation is supremely awkward.

In Frankfurt, a man across from me was snoring like I have never heard outside of cartoons. I used earplugs for the first time in my life. But dude’s asleep, what can ya do? Well the lady next to me got out of bed and woke him up. WHAT?? Waking up a sleeping stranger is the worst! What method do you use? Noise or movement? Given the proximity of other sleeping strangers, movement is the only option. But then where do you touch? What do you say when they awaken? In what language? Yikes. This woman didn’t seem to wrestle with any of these questions. She bounded over to the man and shook his shoulder until he woke up and told him in English that he was snoring. Turns out they were both ‘Mericun so it worked out… and the snoring stopped for about 20 minutes.

My turn came. The alarm clock of a man in the corner of the room went off and woke me up but apparently not anyone else. My first instinct was to roll-over and reinsert my earplugs but then I remembered that we are in an airport. If there’s one place where oversleeping can be catastrophic, it’s here (okay, also on the battlefield, before a wedding/final exam/surgical procedure… but catastrophic none the less). Plus the reason that I kept waking up every half hour despite my trusty alarm clock set next to me was that I was paranoid of befalling the same fate. Flight missing is a level of stress I never intend to experience. So I got up, took a deep breath, and gave the guy’s hand a shake. No luck. And then the worst thing happened—his alarm timed out and shut off and I honestly thought “he’s not going to believe me!” but it was too late and I’d already committed. If I backed out now and he randomly woke up I’d be a creepy lady standing over him while he was sleeping… essentially creating for myself the worst (g-rated) case scenario in a room of sleeping adult strangers. I went for his shoulder and shook him and he startled and I told him his alarm went off and because he was also ‘Mericun and could tell time he both understood and believed me. I bounced back to my recliner, emotionally exhausted and fell asleep. Mitzvah for the day, check.

Side note: why are all the people sleeping in the Frankfurt Lounge American? Is there something we don’t know? Did news of a business-class lounge bedbug outbreak spread all over Europe but since we don’t watch the BBC we are ignorant and just asking for infestation?

Anyway, sleeping in a room with strangers is creepy and having to wake one up is worse.

Business Class Imposter

I am a bit of a business class imposter. I am simply not bougie enough. I can dress the part and I’ve been doing it for long enough now that I don’t have to ask dumb questions (“is this free?” “what’s this towel for?”) but the area where it really becomes evident that I am a fraud comes with my pathological strategizing to maximize the consumption of free stuff.

You know how in college, in reaction to suddenly being far from your parents who magically took care of life’s subtle costs (toilet paper, ketchup, laundry detergent) the sticker shock of real life sends you into a mode wherein you quest for (often to comical extents) “free stuff”? The pursuit of “free stuff” was a huge driving force in my undergraduate years – esoteric lecture on something I’ve never heard of? Will there be free pizza? I wasn’t really planning on going into town but someone else is driving so it won’t cost me T fare? I’m in. I think this behavior, if not terribly refined, is pretty socially acceptable in college. The problem is, I never grew out of it. In fact it has morphed into a stage where I literally feel guilty not taking advantage of something free. (this is disastrous at an open bar).

This behavior is probably exacerbated by the fact that I live in the most expensive city in the world (okay, 27th, picky!) and I have a partner who literally sets a timer when he gets off the subway so he can get back in time to get a free transfer by bus.

The way I see it, there are different levels of severity when it comes to free-stuff-consumption. The most mild cases consist of the attitude “wow, I appreciate this free thing that I actually needed anyway”. The next level down seems to be “didn’t really need this but I guess I’ll take it, since it’s free”. My situation is more like “how can I rearrange my life to maximally take advantage of all free things, needed, wanted, or never heard of”. I am not a passive appreciator of free things; I am a strategic and proactive consumer. When I’m traveling business class, I feel like I owe it to Laura-One-Year-Ago-Who-Travelled-Economy to really take advantage of every courtesy. Some forms of this behavior are benign, like how I always accept a hot towel or take home the goody bag despite my lifetime supply of earplugs and grippy socks at home. However, I am not beyond depriving myself of sleep so I can see as many free movies as possible.

I’m currently in the Lufthansa business class lounge. I’ve had a decaf latte, a diet coke, a tonic with lime (I mean, the limes were already sliced, it would be criminal not to find some beverage with which to consume them). I’ve tried each of the three types of finger sandwiches and am contemplating a glass of white wine (which unlike the wine I normally drink, does not come in a box). In front of me is an absurd selection of empty dishes, glasses, mugs, and bowls. You see, I’m far too classy to reuse my plate or glass at this type of buffet, just not classy enough to not feel like it is my personal duty to eat and drink every free thing on the buffet (albeit little by little so I don’t blow my cover).

Now a little pre-take-off gluttony would not be so bad if it didn’t continue and even get worse on the plane. There I have two compounding neuroses 1) an inability to turn down something free and 2) a deep-seated but admittedly-insane belief that it hurts people’s feelings if I do not partake in what they are offering. I mean, the flight attendant already poured the champagne into flutes! I would be rude not to acknowledge her effort by having one! Plus it’s free champagne! Importantly, I’m not saving myself money because I would never have bought champagne on a plane nor paid to see a Vin Diesel movie. I am not a poor person. I am not 18. I do, presumably, have will power. WTF?

To be clear, I am never as gauche as to pocket consumables for later; there are no little jelly packets in my pockets nor rolls wrapped up in napkins in my bag. Also, I once stopped myself from having a Carlsburg on tap in the lounge in Frankfurt because it was 5:30am. Small victories.