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Saturday, July 21, 2007

Life Carrying a Laptop Thru Europe

It is good to be home.

We just got back from spending 18 days on the road - mostly in planes - trains - buses - boats - automobiles.

The ibook G3 that we bought for our trip worked flawlessly. We had it completely passworded - set up with two accounts for Lulu and me. If someone would steal it - all our info was safe - and the ibook would have been useless to them. We only paid $300 for the ibook from Greg - so if we lost it - not a big deal. Most of our hotels did not have free wireless - it seems they charge for everything over there - maybe it was just the tourist areas we visited. I was able to walk the streets and find free wi-fi in most cases - unfortunately - then I was limited by the power in my battery.

We spent hotel nights in Brussels - Amsterdam - Salzburg - Fussen - Nordhausen. Nancy had a 3 day conference in Brussels - so we spent 3 nights in that hotel.

The battery worked fine in th elaptop except the battery gauge was way off. It would show 4 hours of time left and then quit instantly around 3 hours left. When I set the gauge to percentages - it would start at 99% and quit around 70%. It was hard to plan your use with this gauge. After a while - I took a cheap white american extension cord - clipped off the end - and put a Europe 220 volt plug on the end. Since the ibook and all my other toys ran on 220 - I did not need a converter - just the plug. Then whenever I found a signal - I looked for a 220 outlet to plug into - and I was set. All the countries we visited - Belgium - Netherlands - Germany - Austria - used the same plug that had two rounded prongs. We planned to stop in Switzerland - Luxembourg - France - but ran out of time.

We had a 15 day rail pass - you could go on any train - first class - anywhere - just walk on the train - sit down - the conductor would come to look at your pass. All trains had 220 volt outlets. I was able to run - the ibook - charge my shaver - charge my camera batteries - use my CPAP. We had a sleeper with shower on 2 overnight trains to Vienna and Brussels. Most of the time we had first class compartments that sat 6 - all to ourselves.

I learned to type my blog and email on the trains while we were moving - sometimes at 180 mph - and had full power. Sometimes - when you stopped at train stations - you could find a free wi-fi signal - and zip off your blog - pictures - and mail.

You can see many of the pictures on my blog at - www.harry.everhart.com.

Even behind the "iron curtain" in Nordhausen - we walked to an obscure hotel about a mile form the train station at 11 PM - to our surprise - we were able to find wi-fi out of our hotel window for free. Free wi-fi makes any hotel room great.

We could use our slingbox - although sometimes it was a bit choppy running on the ibook G3 - I am not sure if it was the ibook or the signal. There were very few TV stations over there in English - and CNN World got very tiresome quickly.

We had no mishaps with the cameras. We carried 2 - Lulu and I - and immediately downloaded all the pictures to the ibook. To send the pictures home - we had to step them down form 10 megapixels to 1200 x 800.

The only problems we had on the trip - both of us got the flu - a train broke down on the way to Amsterdam - they sent another train for us and we lost 1 hour - and our plane home got delayed on the runway for 1 hour by thunderstorms. We sat in number 1 in line waiting for a hole to open up so we could fly to Tallahassee. We finally got up - and burst through the weather front at Albany, Georgia. Joel Dawson had the van waiting at the airport for us.

Thank goodness for the lockers in the train stations - we would get into a town - put our 4 bags in 1 locker - and go touring with nothing but a camera and cash. Also it is nice going from country to country using Euros - instead of having to exchange money at each country. A Euro was worth $1.35. You could use you bank card to get Euros out of any ATM machine - at a rate much better than the money changers charged.

Doing it again - we would have carried less stuff - and probably would have tried the marijuana and/or call girls in Amsterdam. :-)

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