Travel Tips

I don't believe I have ever seen so many police cars in such an empty street before. Before the day was done, we'd counted 18 "six-packs", the German riot vans named after the number of flak-jacketed cops they carry, and numerous police cars, and the unmarked cars of the detectives, technical specialists, and at least TWO chiefs of police. I thought that there must have been a bomb scare somewhere on the street, and approached with caution. As I got near the offices, one of the polizei asked "Crytek?", and I responded "yes", eagerly, thinking that this would mean a quick ticket into work. That's not quite how it worked out.

The flak-jacketed riot officer walked me into the building, where I found my downstairs office filled with all of the staff of Crytek, all looking confused and on edge. All the computers had stickers attached, and guys with notepads and video cameras were purposefully walking from one computer to another. Everyone was fervently gossiping about what was going on, and the mixed stories that everyone had to tell only confused everyone further. It seemed as if they were looking for pirated software, and later this would turn out to be the case, but nobody could believe that they send the entire police forces of northern Bavaria to a small developer's studios in the quiet and tiny town of Coburg.

The whole event had organised in such a heavy handed manner that made the stormtrooping police officers look a little embarrassed. The office was populated with about 70 gamer geeks, developing the Far Cry game, and yet over twice that many cops turned up, to kick down doors, and force people's faces into the ground while they ransacked people's bedrooms looking for god know's what. One of the funniest elements of the whole affair was how the bust was timed to ensure the maximum people in the office, at 9.05am. I think it must be unconscionable for many Germans not to be in work by 8am, but when the polizei turned up, there was only the secretary, and a bleary eyed Finn making his first coffee of the day. Everyone else was still in bed, or on the way to work. Well, it is a game studio after all!

The event caused a real stir in the town. Coburg doesn't have a lot happening, and everyone knows about Crytek and the game they were developing; it was the biggest gaming event in Germany. Everyone who worked at the company was a minor celebrity in the town, and the raid only raised the profile further. Everyone wanted to know what had happened, and anyone who spoke a few words of English was asking. One guy I spoke to said it was by far the most newsworthy event to have happened in the town in his living memory, which isn't saying all that much, as I swear the most exciting event the police of Coburg had while I was there, was to send every fire engine, ambulance and police car to rescue some old woman's cat.

In the end the police disappeared, and no charges were made, and it proved to be a complete over-reaction. The reasons for the over-reaction remain a mystery, although one German friend of mine believed that it was due to the self-styled president of Bavaria. Apparently he is a typically conservative Bavarian, fond of the police, and not keen on anything seen as the slightest bit subversive. He's been on record as saying that shooter games, like Far Cry, are the preserve of gun-toting Columbine weirdoes. It's possible he sent the riot squad in, because he thought we'd all be packing sawn-off shotguns under the desks, and screaming "you'll never take us alive copper!"

A Carpet of Diamonds

As you get older, you start to become a bit jaded about life, believing that there is little left to amaze you that you haven't already seen. I was certain that there was nothing that I could experience in a small Bavarian town that would leave me in wonder, agog like a small child seeing something uncommonly beautiful for the first time. I was wrong. I thought snow only had a few qualities: slushy mess or frozen pile of grey ooze. The idea of the innuit having hundreds of words to describe snow was just one of those boring anecdotes people tell you. Last night, however, I was in awe of nature for the first time in years.

I walked out last night to go to the bar with a couple of the Canadian guys here, and it was snowing. Nothing unusual there, as it has snowed most days since I have been here. It was snowing pretty heavily too, with big flakes filling up my view. As I stepped out into the street, I noticed that the ground, which was a perfect untouched carpet of snow, was glistening just as if someone had sprinkled thousands of tiny diamonds across the floor. It was amazing. The Canadians were non-plussed, and couldn't understand my astonishment. Obviously they've seen this thing many times before, but for me it was like nothing else I had seen before. I stared up at the night sky, but there were no stars, and when I stared at the ground, it was like the missing night sky was reflected in the snow itself. Truly incredible.

The Joys of Foreign Living

Sometimes its the simplest things that can prove the most difficult to deal with in foreign countries, especially when faced with a legion of "false friends". False friends are those things that seem familiar, and fool you into believing they are the same as what you already know. For example, in the French language, false friends refers to those words that look like English words, but mean something completely different. Here in Germany I've been trying to buy butter, for the occasional sandwich I make of an evening. The first attempt at buying butter, and a quick trip to the store resulted in me buying a chunk of what I thought was President butter. President butter had been a mainstay of mine in my travels in France. I didn't notice that it was, in fact, a very smelly cheese, avec rind.

The next attempt took me to a bigger supermarket, and there was just a baffling array of butters to choose from, including the bizarre delights of yoghurt butter, whatever the *** that is. In the end I settled for "Butaris", which from the ingredients I could see was 98% butter. Surely I couldn't go wrong with that. On the side it stated it was "zum braten", which I took to mean it was for "brot", i.e. bread. Stupidly. It tasted odd, and didn't spread very well, but I assumed it was just some German way of making butter. Tonight, however, after the thought of yet another greasy, fatty, sandwich made my stomach turn, I decided to look up what the word "butterschmalz" meant, as I had assumed it meant butter spread. Turned out that it meant "ghee", which is a cooking fat made from butter. Yuck!

Braten turned out to mean "roasting", not bread. What a dumbass I am.

I returned to England last week, after my contract with Ubisoft/Crytek finished. I also need to get back to complete my paperwork before the end of the financial year. The journey home was torturous, so outrageously bad that I could actually start to see the funny side of it, despite my misery. Of course, the misery was all self induced, and so before I can tell you the tale of it all, I have to set the scene by explaining the causes of my misfortune.

I had been scheduled to leave on the Monday, but when Cevat, the CEO of Crytek, announced the release party was on that same day, and invited me, I asked my producer at Ubisoft to extend my stay for another day. On the day of the party I was still busy adding the finishing touches to my work, and was practically the last one out of the office, a minute after everyone was supposed to meet up at Maccaronis, a nice Italian restaurant in the town center. I caught a lift in the back of Avni's Mercedes, another of the directors and brother of Cevat.

I was in the back with Andy, the Australian, and we walked into the restaurant together. Andy grabbed a seat at the first table he saw, and suddenly I realised that there was nowhere for me to sit, other than starting a new table and looking miserable on my own. As I knew I was quite possibly the last person in, I didn't particular want to start a new table, and so I stood around like a lost sheep for a few minutes. There was space at the head table, where the directors and their family were sitting, but as a lowly contractor I didn't feel it was appropriate to dump myself on the best table in the house. I mean I felt nervous enough just walking past Cevat's office when I made my coffee of a morning, him being the big man and all, so to just walk up to their table and plonk myself down in the middle of their family conversation was just too much.

It was an awkward sitution that reminded me of when I was a child, on my first day at school. That day I had walked hand in hand with my friend, Ian Wilson with a nose that never stopped running, and entered the cavernous old village hall. This was a place of fear, run by the old witch of a headmistress, who some years later would be quietly shuffled out of school due to the fact that her insanity could no longer be disguised. We were ordered to place our chairs against the wall, but as I was at the end of the line, my snotty nosed friend took the last space between the row of chairs and the piano. I turned to the witch of a headmistress, and asked, as meekly as a four and a half year old can, where I should place my chair. "ON THE CEILING!!!" she bellowed at me furiously. I lifted the chair above my head and confounded her by replying, "I can't reach." She never forgave me.

This time it was different, as I was rescued by Avni, who called me over to sit with the Yerli family at the head table. It felt like such an honour, and as I sat between Avni and their wives, and one of the producers even shouted over about how I looked like a king, sitting on my throne. I guess it was because of my position on the biggest table in the restaurant, looking like I was surrounded by my advisors and concubines. Being taller than everyone else always makes you look more important, even when you are the lowliest of the low.

Apart from being an honour, it was also a great opportunity for me. I'd been approached by Cevat and Faruk a couple of days previously, about the possibility of me coming back and working another contract, this time directly for Crytek. I was hoping I might get the opportunity to speak with them about it that night, and so to be sitting at the table with all of the directors was fantastic. Avni immediately started to discuss the idea again with me, and I was able to lay out my strengths much more clearly and confidently. I also had the opportunity to talk with some of the most important guys in European game development right now, about game design, films, books and storytelling in general. Game design and story writing for games are two fields that I would love to involve myself in one day, so to discuss this with the Yerli's was a great education, as well as allowing me to be able to express my understanding of the subject.

I have to say, for directors of a company releasing such a big game, the Yerli's are really down to earth, and extremely nice guys to talk to. There were no airs and graces, no acting as if they were superior, or any kind of patronising or condescencion at all. After a couple of beers, and through the open and friendly nature of the Yerli brothers and their wives, I felt completely relaxed and at home. I was in danger of being too relaxed, and at one point I thought I'd offended one of the guys at the table, a Ukrainian AI programmer who'd later sat down with us, when I said he looked like Steve Buscemi. He went silent, and didn't say anything again for about an hour, before finally responding, "I remember now who Steve Buscemi is!". I swear he'd been thinking about this the whole time.

The first few beers were the start of my downfall. After the beers I was persuaded to indulge myself in an after dinner drink, some 30% alcholol Italian liquor. I was then persuaded to drink another. We then convinced Cevat to come to the bar with us, a not so small feat considering his protestations at a bad hangover from the night before. There we were encouraged to drink cocktails, of which I had two. I hate cocktails, and these tasted particularly nasty. There was whisky in mine for sure, along with lime juice and what tasted like granules of sea salt that didn't disolve, but it could have been anything. The thing about cocktails is they don't taste too bad, until you can still taste them the next day, and that is where my problems started on the journey home.

I didn't feel too bad the next morning, despite a fairly poor night sleep, which I always suffer from just before long journeys. I walked into the offices, and sat at my desk with a bottle of lemon and grapefruit isotonic sports drink. One thing I've noticed about German drinks, is how much they love everything to be "säure", or very acidic. Many German drinks are so sharp they make me wince, they even seem to pick the oranges for concentrate from the sharpest most acidic crop, so you can imagine what the effects of this can be on a sensitive post-alcholic binge stomach. After just one swig from the bottle, my stomach felt as if under attack, and there was a very obvious constriction. From that moment I felt nausea, and it was a feeling that was going to stay with me the entire day.

After a while, Mehmet came to take me to the airport. I got into the car gingerly, praying that Mehmet was not going to drive down the autobahn like it was a formula one race track. Mehmet wanted to talk, but it was taking all my concentration to not paint the dashboard of the Mercedes with my breakfast. I opened the window and tried to sleep, saying that I felt a bit rough from the night before. After we left Coburg, the journey became more bearable, although it started to stretch out uncomfortably after we got stuck behind a tractor. Eventually we arrived at Nuremburg airport, and I grabbed a bottle of ice cold water to try and stave off the stomach spasms. I thought the worst of the journey was over.

I get a little bit nervous on planes, but nothing serious, and the flight to Frankfurt was incredibly smooth and free from turbulence. As the plane landed, I was feeling quite happy about the journey, worrying only about if I had enough time to get from the plane that was arriving to the plane that was leaving for Heathrow. On the way over I'd had to run from one end of Frankfurt airport to the other, with full backpack, and considering that Frankfurt is one of the biggest airports in the world, that is a long way. The plane started taxiing up the runway, and all of a sudden I felt like I was in the car again, and my stomach started spinning and sloshing like a washing machine just before it spin dries, and I got that unmistakeable salty taste in the back of my mouth. When I could hold it back no longer, I rushed out of my seat, pushing past the Chinese guy next to me, and bursting into the toilet to fill it with all the undigested remains of my breakfast and probably much of what I ate and drank the night before.

I apologised for getting out of my seat and making a mess to the camp looking steward that was sitting by the toilet as I puked. The good thing about not being sick until the end of the flight was that I didn't have to ever see these guys again, who no doubt thought I was such a little girl to be scared of flying. The bad thing was that I had nowhere to brush my teeth, and nothing to drink, so had to sit there and wait until I got off the plane with a mouth tasting of sick. Not a problem, I thought to myself, as Frankfurt is an enormous airport, and so will have shops that sell bottles of water and air freshening chewing gum. The most important thing, however, was making sure I got to the next gate for my plane to England. Amazingly, the trip from my arrival gate to the departure gate was quick and simple, just up in a lift, through customs, and then down a flight of stairs, so there was plenty of time to browse the shops.

Frankfurt Airport has to have the suckiest shops on the planet. Rows of duty free stores, useless to me as I was travelling entirely within the EU, selling enormous bottles of vodka and whisky. Just what I wanted. In England every shop pushes air freshening gum in your face every time you try and buy anything, in multiple formats. Microthin strips, soft chunky lumps, crispy coated menthol, anything your heart desires, and more. At Frankfurt airport there was nothing. I searched up and down, until I eventually spied something tucked away by the counter in one of the booze shops. Here there were gigantic tubes of Mentos, and doorstep slabs of chewing gum, but no menthol breath fresheners. I opted for a slab of Wrigley's chewing gum, enough to last me a year, which they sold me duty free for three euros; they tasted like ***. I couldn't find any water - it was a pretty desperate situation.

I sat on my own in Lufthansa's exit lounge, chewing gobfulls of Wrigley's gum, hoping to take away the taste of the sick that I had projected into the aircraft's toilet bowl minutes earlier. I stared vacantly out of the window, at the tall office block and taxi rank below, wondering how the Germans managed to make everything look so damn German. There was no way I could be anywhere on earth, except perhaps Austria or Switzerland. Eventually I was ushered onto the plane, where I found the free newspapers on offer were, as seems to be disturbingly coincidental on my travels these days, showing pictures of suicide bombers, plastered all over the front. I declined my copy. The plane itself was also disturbingly familiar. I had hoped for an Airbus on the journey to London, as had been advertised, as the 737 is a rattling bucket of a plane. Instead it was a 737, just like the one from Nuremburg.

Then the horror hit me. "Did this plane just come from Nuremburg", I asked the familiar looking stewardess. "Yes! How did you know!". I stumbled down the aisle to my seat, past the camp steward and his patronising face; "feeling better now sir?". They served me a cheese sandwich on the flight, and some deliciously cold water, which finally took the taste of vomit from my mouth. I watched the stewards walk up the aisle and back like a hawk, and pounced on them upon return for my empty glass. "Water! Pleeeease! Water!" It wasn't enough, but it made a difference, and with yet another remarkably smooth flight, I was starting to feel better again, knowing that soon I would be in England, and the journey would be nearly over. However, the nightmare was only just beginning.

The plane landed smoothly again, and within minutes of the plane taxiing towards Heathrow terminal four, I was out of my seat like a greyhound from its trap, and racing down the aisle towards the toilet. This time I didn't even have time to close the door, before I emptied the partially digested cheese roll and water into the bowl for a second barf. The camp steward was smirking now; "don't like landings much, sir?" I denied this, and explained my manly alcoholic exploits from the night before, but I don't think he was convinced. I shuffled back to my seat, and struck up a conversation with the guy sitting next to me. He was obviously Russian, and from the looks of things on his first visit to England, judging by the way he avidly recorded every aspect of the landing on his video recorder. He had been so intent on capturing every last grey speck of concrete at Heathrow that he'd not even noticed my vomiting adventure.

He was a nice guy, from St. Petersburg, and when he handed over to me my Archos multimedia jukebox, the harddrive of which contained all my work from Crytek from the past two months, after I had empty-headedly left it tucked into the back of the seat in front of me, we immediately bonded. In return for rescuing my expensive gadget, I answered all his questions about England. We split up at customs, where he had to go line up to be scrutinised with a fine tooth comb, while I escaped into the relatively painless EC line. Before he left I regaled him with horror stories about British customs, and my experience with them in particular.

Heathrow customs staff are probably the least pleasant I have had to deal with in the world. They aren't nasty, just cold and horribly officious. My first experience with them was as a teenager, returning from my first holiday abroad on my own, to Australia. I'd had some troubles with customs on my previous journey to Germany, where my mother had been pulled over at East Midland airport and forced to empty every last item from our luggage, as the officer searched for cadavers infected with ebola, and cartons of Sentex plastic explosive. This first time at Heathrow, I'd wanted to play it safe, and so I went to the red "something to declare" channel. I had something to declare, because a generous Japanese doctor who'd been sitting next to me on the flight to Singapore had given me a few packets of his charcoal filtered cigarettes that I had found so fascinating. By the time I'd got to Heathrow, I was one packet over my limit.

The customs officer at the red channel was a woman who looked as if she had escaped from a 50s government advisory film. She had a medium length black bob cut, tied back brutally to expose an emotionless face, painted with clown white foundation, black mascara and blood red lips. She even spoke in that stilted "plum in one's mouth" manner so deeply associated with wartime propaganda films. She couldn't believe that I had only one packet of cigarettes to declare, so she decided to go through all of my luggage anyway. Amongst my luggage was a small grey bag, in which I had stored all of my dirty underwear, because I'd forgotten to wash it before leaving Australia. I'd also squeezed in my toiletries, wrapped in a small towel. Evidently during the long haul flight from the other side of the world, the toiletries had become loose in the bag, and the depressurised atmosphere of the luggage compartment of the plane had caused the tube of toothpaste to explode inside the bag.

I'd advise anyone thinking of smuggling weapons, crack cocaine, or other contraband into the country to take their dirty underwear and cover it in toothpaste before putting it into a bag on top of whatever it is you are trying to smuggle through. This cold faced woman, who'd likely witnessed plenty of gloved hands up asses in her time, visibly flinched at putting her hand within the contents of this bag, and quickly decided that I wasn't worth the effort. Getting through Heathrow today, even in the green channel of nothing to declare, is not a lot easier. As I passed through, I saw that the officers were concerning themselves with two very odd looking guys, both dressed in black, with priest's collars and deeply tanned faces. They also had effeminate Spanish accents, bleached blonde hair and goatees, and looked the most unlikely clerics of the church you could imagine. I suspect that Heathrow customs thought that too.

Again things started to look up, as I realised the plane had landed early, and the journey was looking shorter. I walked out of Heathrow, and got the coach to Reading in order to catch my connecting train, and even that just turned up the very second I left the terminal. I was, at this point, only an hour and a half away from home. Then disaster struck again. The bus driver was awful - he drove like a spastic, constantly pressing the accelerator and loosing it again rapidly , making the coach jerk backwards and forwards. This got worse as we entered a traffic jam near the M25, London's motorway ring, and Europe's busiest road. Not only was it a traffic jam, but it was the mother of all traffic jams. The section of the M25 nearby had been shut down, and all the traffic from that stretch of tarmac known as the world's biggest carpark, because of its miles of motionless traffic, was forced onto the smaller regional roads.

The driver jerked through the dense, slow moving traffic, but instead of the slow occasional jerks of earlier, it was a constant back and forth jerking motion. I felt like a bottle of of fizzy cola bouncing around in someone's back pack, ready to explode at any moment. Each gulp of the orange energy drink I had bought at the airport, just made me feel like I would have more to expel the moment the bile rose. I looked around the coach, and to my despair there was no toilet. The vomit spewed, but I caught it in my mouth. I jumped out of my seat in a panic, my mind racing to figure out what I could do with it. It came up again, and though I caught that, a little spilled out onto my clothes. I was now standing in the aisle, cheeks puffed with sick, staring insanely at the back of the driver's head, thinking about how I could get off this hell on wheels.

I could have just spilled it all over the floor, but my social mores go the better of me. The idea of travelling an indefinite period of time, possibly hours, stuck on a coach watching my vomit slosh backwards and forwards down the aisle, trickling past people's feet as the spastic driver jerked us from one gap in the traffic to another, was more than I could bear. I swallowed the sick back down. Unsurprisingly a few minutes later it came back again, and I fought for what seemed like an eternity to keep the watery contents within my stomach. To my extreme surprise, I succeeded, and my stomach submitted to my will. I couldn't avoid the embarrassment, however, as nobody on the coach could have failed to hear or see my colvusions, and probably saw the streaks of vomit spilled on my trousers. I really couldn't care by this point, and so lay down on my two seats and slept the sleep of pure exhaustion.

I awoke at Reading station, and feeling very wobbly, exited the bus last, and sheepishly. Reading brought Britain back to me like a slap in the face, first the toothless vagrant asking me for money, then the drunken teenagers, jumping over the turnstyles again and again, shouting at the station officers, displaying an unhealthy disrespect for authority, borne of knowing that there is nothing anyone could do about them. The train was late, as per British tradition, but as is the way with late trains, if you don't plan to get there on time, you can often find the late train is just in time for you. I felt fine all the way home, and was reminded of just why I love travelling by train over any other form of transport: it's just so damned comfortable.