Coincidental Floss

And Now . . . The Rest of the Story
Heading into Reno, Nevada last September, I was inevitably reminded of a trip I’d taken to the city just about exactly 15 years prior, back in September of 1992. I’d taken off from Geiger International Airport in Spokane, Washington, in a Cessna 172 (grossly over-) loaded with 3 friends and weekend baggage.

There was a girl at the FBO with friendly eyes and a quick laugh that were more interesting to me at the time than the fact that she’d misunderstood my fuel order and given me half as much gas as I’d asked for. The fuel gauges in that airplane were wildly inaccurate and tended to read a half tank high until it had gone down to below about one eighth. I might have seen this when I “dipped” the tank during my preflight, but I was in a hurry – the airplane was about 100 pounds over gross weight, it was getting hot, and my planned route was going to take us across some rough landscape, out of range of any navigational aids, so I wanted as much daylight as possible.

Several hours and at least that many more foolish-young-pilot decisions later, I was lost over desert mountains in the dark, effectively out of gas, and asked to respond to a ghoulish request from Oakland Center to “…state (the number of) souls on board.”  There were four souls on board, though I’d have sold mine in a heartbeat for more gas or the sight of an airport.

That trip ended successfully, and the lessons I learned have helped keep me and my passengers safe ever since. This latest trip ended successfully, for me and mine anyway, as well, but, as I’ve mentioned in a prior post, three pilots were killed at this year’s event.  Fitting, if grim reminders from a city known for its gambling that, sometimes, it just comes down to luck. But, while each of these incidents cast their own shadows over the place, it seems a much better idea to break the spell and talk about the rest of it, the parts where nobody died, or even came close.

The Arrival
As I mentioned about eleventeen years ago in the Prologue,  I’d recruited a team of employees, MVPs, and volunteers to help demo the Flight Simulator X:Acceleration expansion pack at the National Championship Air Races. For anyone to whom it isn’t terribly old news, Acceleration features the Reno course along with other single-and-multiplayer racing missions. The timing was mostly good, since Acceleration RTM’d (Release To Manufacturing – software-speak for the moment when we take our stuff and give it to the people whose job it is to burn DVDs by the zillions and stuff them into boxes for sale) just a few days after the show, making the Air Races our de facto launch event. I say “mostly good”, not because I’m equivocal and like using adverbs as adjectives, but because this also meant that a lot of the team was so busy finishing the product that they couldn’t break away to help show it off. In spite of the aforementioned mostly part of the mostly good timing, however, I had strong support from the team, not to mention a great group of volunteers.

15 Characters in Search of an Exit
The ragtag, fugitive band I brought included my boss, Community and Partner Development Manager Brett Schnepf, and Experience Architect Mike Singer, also from Brett’s team. Test, Design, Development, Program Management, and Art were each represented by Mike Lambert, Paul Lange and Brandon Seltz, Susan Ashlock, Eric Matteson, and Irvin Gee, respectively. Joining us from elsewhere in the recesses of Microsoft was Milen Lazarov, and rounding things out (by which I mean “doing all the work”) were Flight Sim “alums” Roy McMillion and Matt Gamboa, MVPs Brian Gefrich and Norman Blackburn, and homeless drunks pilots and “friends of the team” Dan Sallee and Scott Marshall.

It’s amazing to me to see the number of volunteers we get from outside the team (in Milen’s case) and outside the company to help support us at events like these. While I have to admit that I’d jump at the chance myself if I were still strictly a Flight Sim customer (as opposed to a Flight Sim customer and employee), I still think we’re remarkably lucky to have such a dedicated and passionate group of people willing to come to the rescue. I’ve been reasonably pleased with, say, the Dyson vacuum cleaner I use at home, but I can’t imagine working their booth at a vacuum cleaner convention. Yes, I suppose that it is a terribly unfair comparison, but I’m the one doing the typing so just sit comfortably and leave the awkward analogies to me.

Messrs. K & H Assure the Public, Their Production Will Be Second to None
I’d also be remiss (not that I remember being miss the first time) if I didn’t mention Steve Mallinson.  Steve works for a legitimate-sounding company called The Production Network, and we employ their services on those occasions when A) we have a major event to run and 2) we’re behaving intelligently. Anyone who has read much of anything here or seen us at Oshkosh, AOPA expos, and now Reno knows that we have a large booth property, designed and beautifully realized by our friends at Moto Art. Contrary to my long-held assumptions, this booth doesn’t just magically appear whenever and wherever we need it, like Billy Mumy wishing things into a cornfield in The Twilight Zone. No, the booth actually has to be stored somewhere. And transported. And maintained, and even upgraded.

That’s where Steve and TPN come in. Case in point: When I staggered into an early planning meeting for the Reno  show, unshaven and reeking of Hot Tamales, I blurted something incoherent about decorating the centerpiece “control tower” of our display to look like one of the pylons at Reno. Steve took the idea and ran with it, along with every other random request I had – shelves, coat hooks, improved cooling for the computers, dancing girls, new logo banners, mid-desert wireless Internet – ideas that could only dream of making it to the back of a napkin. You name it (or, actually, I named it) and Steve just made it happen. I only hope we pay him enough.

(Pink and) Blue Meanies in Pepperland
We stayed in a hotel called the Peppermill in downtown Reno. I’m presuming that the place was memorable, since I can still see the subtly understated explosion of pink and blue neon that covered every inch of the decor any time I close my eyes. The rooms were spacious (or at least seemed to be, the mirrors made it difficult to find the edges), and included the wonderfully named Robo-Bar, with a sign right next to the lock that read “no key required”.

Another delightfully anachronistic retro mod con was the Valet-o-Matic, an automated scanner that, through the miracle of an allegedly harmless bombardment of sizzlingly visible laser radiation, summoned guests’ cars from the valet, with a functional success rate approaching 30%. If I concentrate, I can still smell the ozone crackling off the back of my hand. Not to be outdone, the human service was courteous and helpful, though it will take a team of economists another several years to make sense out of the 33-page receipt they gave me for my expense report, including a single unspecified charge for exactly one cent.

The Biggest Little City in the World (and home of the squandered oxymoron)
I’ve found that the overall feel of the hotel matched that of the city itself, in microcosm. Reno is like a high school kid dressed up for homecoming: he cleans up pretty well, but the tux is rented and a bit out-of-date, he fiddles with his tie and cummerbund a little nervously, and hopes that nobody knows that he’s not nearly as sophisticated as he’s trying to act. Once you get past the “Shut up – we are just as good as Vegas!” attitude of some of the casinos, though, you’ll find that the people are nice and approachable, and the city seems to relax quite a bit.

Entschuldigung, bitte, mein Gambling ist nicht so gut
Being an unabashed Ian Fleming aficionado, it was inevitable that I spend at least a short time in a casino, preferably playing James Bond’s card game of choice, baccarat (not Texas Hold-Em, as shown in the otherwise fairly faithful Daniel Craig adaptation of Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale). The fact that I really had no idea how to play ultimately worked in my favor as I threw myself on the mercy of the terribly bored looking dealer sitting ruefully alone at the only baccarat table in the Peppermill. The dealer, a kind and slightly maternal blonde woman called Hyde, was a patient instructor, once she gave up trying to convince me that I shouldn’t play this game, especially at $25 a hand, until I know how.

As I eventually, learned, the baccarat I played that night is not the same as what features so prominently in the Bond novels. The European variant that Fleming describes in such detail is also known as chemin de fer, and lends itself to complex strategies, careful decision making, and alternating alliances and antagonism among players. The variation found in American casinos is known as punto banco, which is French for “no skill or thinking required.” Basically, punto banco is like Blackjack, though the goal is to get to a value of 9, rather than 21, most of the cards aren’t worth anything, and the player has no say in any aspect of it except where on the table to pile up the chips before they’re removed by the nice lady in the red vest.

It goes like this: First, you place your bet by putting your chips in either the box labeled “Player” or the box labeled “Banker”. (It took some time for me to grasp the idea that I wasn’t the player, and the dealer wasn’t the banker, though the complete absence of anything for me to do other than to try to pick a winner helped drive the point home.) Once you’ve bet, the dealer deals hands for the player (who isn’t you) and the banker (who isn’t her) and each hand stands or gets “hit” according to the proscribed rules. One of these two fictional characters wins and the other loses, or sometimes they tie. You, the real player, better described perhaps as an invested observer, win or lose based on who you guessed would win before things got complicated with the introduction of cards and numbers and things. Truly, you don’t so much play this game as watch it, and, because it’s a 50/50 shot, the equivalent of betting on a coin toss, it has some of the lowest “house advantage” of any casino game. Of course, even when you win, the house gets a commission.

Interestingly enough, I did ultimately win. I started with $100, and walked away with $200. I suppose it was only fitting that I won at a game where you only pretend to participate, since the only reason I played was the fact that I was inspired by a fictional character, usually under cover, no less. Not to mention the fact that I spend my life working on … a simulation. Before I follow this to its logical conclusion, one which most likely involves some kind of existential breakdown, I’ll switch gears and head for a more important bit.

On With The Show
Our presence at this show was the most extensive we’ve ever had, a total of 22 computers setup in two different locations. The first was in the general admission area, behind the grandstands, and consisted of the Moto Art booth – 8 PC’s stuffed in airliner galley carts mated to bits of TBM Avengers with a control-tower-turned-race-pylon in the middle – along with an additional 8 PC’s at desks for competition races. The second location was in the racing pit area, only accessible to pilots, crew, event staff, and those members of the general public who either paid an additional fee to get in, or just wandered up when nobody was looking. We took over a substantial portion of a hangar for 6 demo PC’s and a bar, and built a VIP lounge under a tent out front. The lounge and the hangar were decorated with Moto Art bits – a radial engine desk, a DC-9 cowling bar, and chromed propellers. Moto Art also brought a set of first-class airliner seats that reclined in case the heat, lack of oxygen, and free-flowing drinks weren’t enough to induce napping.

Our two spots were quite a ways apart, and the distance fluctuated wildly with the ambient temperature. It was the shortest at about 11:00 AM, while the  beastly afternoon heat and the spiky morning cold each tried to outdo the other in making the walk seem longer and longer. One of the many side effects of the walk (or at least that’s where I have chosen to lay the blame) was my constant and shocked misreading of a sign at a booth selling handdipped corn dogs. Have a look at the picture to get an idea of what I imagined I saw, and thank Photoshop for helping me bring my “dreams” to life.

V is for Visitor
Both locations proved to be well placed, and gave visitors the impression that Microsoft was everywhere, but not in an oppressive “call the DOJ” sort of way. In fact, the reception from the crowd and the treatment we received from the event staff was fantastic. Steady streams of spectators, pilots, and crew got hands-on with Acceleration, on their own or in scheduled races, and the response was excellent. There was a nice mix of “I had no idea I could do this sort of thing on a computer!” and “It’s about time you guys added racing!”, with only the occasional “When are you guys going to do a version for the Xbox360 / Mac / iPhone?” and the odd “The bartender says I have to talk to you if I want more than two drinks…” A man I called “the guy in the hat, no, not that one, the one who hugged Paul” turned up several times to announce that we’d be fools to charge anything less than $200 per copy.

The multiplayer races that we had at the booth were far more successful than I’d expected, frankly, since most attempts to introduce any kind of organization to the crowded chaos we’re used to end in a whimper of cat-herding futility. This time, though, thanks in large part to the crisp efficiency of Mike Singer, (and the booming note of authority lent to his voice by the portable PA we found at Wal-Mart) the races ran smoothly, and proved to be a major attraction. The race winners became minor celebrities, and a number of them have since received spectacular prizes by mail.

A Day at the Races
Other than the regrettable and somber periods when the air port was closed to investigate one of the accidents, there was a pretty steady stream of aviation activity each day. Each of the race classes – Sport, Biplane, Formula One, T-6, Jet, and Unlimited – generally each flew one race per day. The jet class was just introduced in 2002, and was initially limited to a single type, the L-39. This year, the class was expanded to include “…any non-afterburning jet with less than 15 degrees of wing sweep”, which opened the competition to L-29s, T-33s, and a T-2 Buckeye. While the jets are popular, the undisputed stars of the races are the airplanes in the Unlimited class. Unlimiteds must be piston-powered and weigh a minimum of 4,500 pounds, and the majority of them are WWII vintage warbirds, or at least they started out that way before some extraordinarily extensive modification. P-51s, Hawker (regular and Sea) Furies, and F-8 Bearcats are frequently seen, along with Yak-3s, along with extremely rare types such as the spectacular F-7F Tigercat.

Between races, there were a number of traditional airshow acts, like real-life “Loopy Larry” Kent Pietsch who flies a technically brilliant “comedy act” in his Interstate Cadet, culminating in a landing on top of a moving RV. Also flying was Dan Buchanan who does a well-choreographed aerobatic routine in a hang glider. Remarkably, Dan is a paraplegic, a fact that usually isn’t sprung on the audience by an overly melodramatic local narrator until after he lands. Dan is a spectacular pilot, and his routine is inspirational, but there’s a great deal more to his flying than the fact that he does it in spite of a disability. There’s just something off-putting about a narrator smugly, almost happily announcing “That’s right folks, Dan can’t get out of his hang glider yet … because he CAN’T WALK! There’s his ground crew, bringing him his wheel chair BECAUSE HE CAN’T MOVE HIS LEGS AT ALL! How about that?!?!”

Rounding out the show each day was a typically gorgeous performance by my long-time favorites, the Canadian Forces Snowbirds. After their last routine of the show, the split into a loose trail formation and ran several laps around the pylons before departing. Pure class. And speaking of class, and the Snowbirds, for some spectacular pictures of the team, check out Roy McMillion’s shots here.

Another Bowl of Whiskey, Mister Bryan?

This trip gave us the chance to spend some quality time with some friends of the team. Dave Hall and Donovan Fell from the previously-mentioned Moto Art always make good company, and it’s a pleasure to see so much of their work firsthand. Brian Terwilliger, director of the film One Six Right, popped in a few times, as did Ron Kaplan of the National Aviation Hall of Fame. Dale “Snort” (yes I know the story, and no, I’m not telling) Snodgrass and Rolf Getty from American Top Gun Productions, and their associates Dan McCue and Sean Carroll rounded out our entourage, or we theirs, it was difficult to tell.

Rolf also works for Sky Blue Radio, and takes a persistent and sadistic delight in ambushing me for interviews and commentary. I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, having heard Rolf’s voice in a nightmare, his signature “I’m here with Hal Bryan…” ringing in my ears. Then, mercifully, I close my eyes and take comfort in counting the flashing retinal sears of the Peppermill lobby as I drift back to sleep.

Dale, Dan, and Sean are all consummate pilots and frequently gentlemen. Dale, retired from the US Navy and the highest time F-14 Tomcat pilot in the world now flies Mustangs and an F-86 in airshows, often as part of a heritage flight. Dan is a retired airline pilot who flies, among other things, an F-4U Corsair, and is actively prepping a dozen Northrop F-5’s for sale to airshow pilots and collectors. Yes, he promised me that I could fly one. Sean is also an airshow pilot, and has flown his Yak-3 at Reno in years’ past. At dinner our first night, shortly after I toasted the table with a bottle of Scotch (a wonderfully generous gift hand delivered by Norman Blackburn), using a soup bowl since my quaich was, regrettably, at home, we all got to be friends. Their insights, not to mention their introductions, made the show a lot richer for all of us.

Nothing Delicate About the Sound of This Thunder
Another friend of the team, Mitch Carley, was responsible for what was  certainly the single most memorable evening of the trip, the world premiere of the film Thunder Over Reno. Mitch, known to a lot of airshow goers as the man behind Duggy, the constantly smiling DC-3, wrote, produced, and directed the film, a lot of which was shot on location at the Reno races. The film is billed as “the world’s fastest love story”, but, for those of us in the theater watching it, time unquestionably stood still. It’s the quintessential coming-of-age tale of a farm boy who makes good, hearkening back to the classic and familiar stories of adventure, love, loss, and redemption that we’ve seen over and over for years.

The acting was raw and enthusiastic, with romantic leads Hawk Younkins (yes, that is his real name) and Natasha Yi throwing such effort behind their performances that even their quietest and most introspective scenes weren’t in danger of being drowned out by the titular thunder of the flying sequences. (A certain hot-shot Yak pilot at my table who shall remain nameless was actually tearing up at one point. But don’t tell him I told you.) Even with all this competition, pilots Jimmy Leeward and Bob Odegaard (who was also the Executive Producer) turned in some of the strongest acting performances, playing themselves.

From the moment the guests arrived, filing into the hotel lobby past two Mustangs and a red and white Super Corsair that had been trucked over for the premiere (and that all featured in the film) to the instant they left as they credits rolled, there was something palpable in the air. It was truly an experience, and those of us who attended could hardly imagine the luck that brought us there. For fans of the genre, it’s a must-see, and I can hardly wait for the DVD to take its rightful place in my personal collection.

Not Such a Bitter End
The show wrapped up, as it does every year, with the final race of the Unlimiteds. Thanks to Snort and company, I watched most of it from a seating area atop the support trailer for the Miss America P-51. The last race was certainly the best, with more passing than most, a number of emergencies (including a stuck throttle for the winner,  Rare Bear), but all were handled skillfully and ended safely. I remember a pretty groggy dinner that night, ordering from a French menu that I wouldn’t have understood even if I wasn’t half asleep, then my usual night-before-departure ritual of “pack up and pass out”.

This wasn’t an easy show, in many ways, though much of it went as smoothly as the best of them. But, in spite of everything, it was a great trip, and another excellent opportunity to get face-to-face with the people who pay our salaries.

Hey, Wait! Before You Go . . .
Interestingly, my skill at games that require absolutely none paid off one last time  as I was leaving the hotel after checkout: On a whim, I dropped a single dollar in a slot machine, and won $100. Given that the $100 I won was just a piece of paper with “$100” printed on it that I’d have to give to the casino cashier in order to get another piece of paper with “$100” and a picture of Ben Franklin printed on it, I decided to push my luck. I sauntered jauntily (which is something to see, believe me) into the “high stakes” slot machine room, put my $100 chit in the first Gamblotron I saw, pressed a button, and out came a new chit. I assumed it was simply a “thank you” note, given that I was now officially a high roller, but, actually, I’d won again. $200, this time.

I’m not normally known for, shall we say, under-doing things, but, in this case my devil-may-care “Easy come, easy go” was clubbed over the head by a miserly “quit while you’re ahead”.  So I did.

Another lesson learned, at least temporarily.

Additional Photos

I Should be Writing About Toronto, But I’m Here in Stead
Reno / Stead airport, that is, the home of the 44th Annual National Championship Air Races, where I’ve blown into town with yet another army of volunteers, demoing Flight Simulator X: Acceleration. This event is unusually timely, given that the ability to fly the Reno course in multiplayer is a key feature of FSX:A.

Before I got here, however, and after I left Germany, I had a fantastic if all-too-brief trip to Toronto, where I did a day of press demos and interviews for an amazing range of Canadian media. I will tell that story and share some pictures, but I’m going to fiddle with the order of things here by necessity, since I’ll need to provide some reasonably timely (and, thanks to the elevation, oxygen-deprived) updates from here in the high desert.

Even that won’t really start just yet, because it’s late or early or something, and I’m tired from yesterday’s setup and today’s semi-public dry run.

So, here’s some pictures to look over. I’m going to go take a nap.

The simple and understated elegance of our hotel lobby, a poignant reminder of why you should never use a hair dryer when bathing in Pepto-Bismol.	Mirrors make small spaces look bigger. I get it.	Here’s a shot of the bed in my suite, taken from the campsite which was as far I as I got the first night. I hope to summit before first light.	My first look at the famed "home pylon", the inspiration for the changes I had made to the centerpiece of our booth.
The booth, complete with newly customized center bit, basically up and running after setup.	Check out Flight Sim, get bombed – a look at the bar in the corner of our VIP lounge area.	Another part of our lounge, complete with first-class airline seats and a radial-engine coffee table.	Ladies and gentlemen, you have a race … The first public run of the multiplayer Reno race mission.

A Pleasant Trip to Germany – Part II

After the talkative cab ride to the Leipzig-Halle airport as mentioned in my previous … epic, I wrapped up my last  half hour in the former DDR with the Besondere Frühstuck, the special breakfast, at what I would modestly insist is the best airport restaurant in the world. It’s called Ilyushin 18, and is named for one of the prettiest Soviet-era airliners, known more simply as the Il-18. The airplane, once the backbone of the DDR’s state-run airline Interflug, looks like the prettiest bits of a DC-6 and a Lockheed Electra (the 188), with just a hint of the bomber-style greenhouse cockpit that lends a slightly sinister air to most East-bloc civil aircraft of the day. The breakfast, meanwhile, the backbone of my assertion about the quality of the restaurant, was made from the tastiest bits of eggs and pigs, with hints of potatoes and cheese, and there was nothing sinister about it. Except, perhaps, its stubborn refusal to be available elsewhere.

The breakfast was delicious, and I left for my departure gate sated and well-prepared to enjoy the smug, comfortable decadence of another day in the soft life.

An Opportunist Knocks
When I went to Leipzig last year, my return flight was routed through München (Munich), which sparked an idea for this year’s trip: If I was going to pass through the city anyway, why not pay a visit to my contact Matthias Knopp, one of the curators of the world-renowned Deutsches Museum. I met Matthias  two years ago when he attended a presentation I gave at a gathering of Air & Space Museums hosted by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He’d expressed some interest in using Flight Simulator in the museum, and I’d promised to arrange a stopover at some point. Emails were exchanged, and, though Matthias himself was unavailable during the time I’d allotted, he arranged for me to meet with chief curators (titles) of the aviation collection of the main Deutsches Museum in downtown Munich, as well as the aviation-only satellite facility at Uber Schleißheim, the oldest continuously operating airport in Germany. The perfect chance to do a pleasurable bit of opportunistic business while I was in the neighborhood, as it were.

The flight from Leipzig to Munich takes about an hour and twenty minutes. Or at least I assume it still does, even if I wasn’t on it. Given the fact that every single person on the planet flocks to Leipzig for Game Convention, it only stands to reason that, when it is over, they all leave. And so it was that flights from Leipzig on the day after the show were booked nearly solid, and my hour-and-twenty-minute hop to Munich turned into a seven hour excursion, half of which was spent in the Vienna airport. If you know your Geographie, or can find your way around a map, this routing is thoroughly non-obvious to anyone not versed in the dark arts of airline scheduling.

Coincidentally, seven hours is the amount of time it would have taken me to travel directly to Munich by train, and an hour and twenty minutes is precisely the amount of time by which my flight to Vienna was delayed, thanks to a mechanical in Dresden.

Waiting at the gate, every quarter-hour or so the agent would make a lengthy and exceedingly detailed announcement in German that came across so fast I was lucky to catch one or two words per sentence: "Ladies and gentlemen … flight … furniture … Vienna … apple juice … minutes … thank you." Then, thankfully, she’d paraphrase the announcement in English, which was always the same: "There is not news about the flight. We will tell you later. Thank you."

Eventually the airplane arrived, and it was impressed upon us that we needed to board as quickly as possible. There was something over the PA about an apology for the hasty turnaround, alluding, I thought, to the fact that there wouldn’t be time to do a normal clean and prep of the cabin between flights because of the already lengthy delay. Again, when it came in English, it was a bit lacking in detail: "Here is the airplane. Board quickly, now. Thank you."

A Fool and His Luggage are Soon Parted
The flight, operated by Austrian Air under contract to Lufthansa, was short and pleasant, the thankfully-enjoyable-and-evocative-but-literally-non-stop strains of Strauss waltzes punctuated by a periodic series of apologies for the delay. It was the final apology, the one delivered as we were standing to deplane, that included a piece of information, tossed aside a near-afterthought, that really caught my attention. This apology, it turned out, was the one in which Austrian Air was not only still sorry for the delay, they were now sorry that they made us all board so quickly that they didn’t actually have time to take on any of our luggage. Of course, we were assured, it would catch up to us eventually, but would we please make sure to speak to the airline representative who would be waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs as we disembarked?

I have one piece of advice for anyone in my vast readership of several who might one day find themselves in a situation like this one: do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to be the last one off of the airplane. If you do, you will see the aforementioned airline representative ushering anyone who had checked baggage to report missing on to a bus, a bus that then will drive off (presumably to some magic Information Haus) without you, just a few steps before the soles of your shoes first touch the tarmacadam. Wilkommen im Die Österreich.

I spent the first half of my layover turning slowly in a circle, trying to figure out exactly who I should talk to, wondering if I’d even properly understood that last apology. I’ve lost bags on tight connections before, but I’ve never actually encountered an airline that consciously decided not to load the bags that were neatly assembled and waiting for the flight, just to save a few minutes on a schedule that had already been blown to bits. Eventually, the prudent thing to do seemed to be simply to deny the problem and worry about it when I got to Munich. My bag has traveled as much as I have, and I had every reasonable confidence that it was mature enough to find its way there on its own. I poked through the airport shops, and, in a spasm of non-jingoistic-self-deprecation, couldn’t resist buying a mug emblazoned with a yellow road sign, the silhouette of an animal, and the inscription in English (the only language in which the joke makes sense):  "There Are No Kangaroos in Austria".

Once I got to Munich, I reported to the Lufthansa customer-service area, and took a number, happy to see that there was only one customer ahead of me at each of the two service desks. I would have been even happier had I seen that my number was already being called at a third service desk, hidden on the other side of a partial wall behind me, but I ended up there soon enough. I explained my situation and described the lost bag, the Lufthansa agent’s eyebrow arching slightly when I noted the color as "two-tone, black and plum". The eyebrow went the rest of the way up when I explained that the flight had left without any bags, not just mine.

"I should like to point out" he pointed out, in crisp English, "that this flight was not operated by Lufthansa directly. There are some situations that might arise when we subcontract a route that simply wouldn’t happen if you had chosen an actual Lufthansa flight. However, we are, of course, pleased" – his expression was anything but – "to take full responsibility to see to it that your luggage is delivered to you as quickly as possible." On the bright side, his incredulity at the situation helped him forget his contempt for the high-visibility color scheme that adorns my suitcase.

He gave me a copy of my report, and a tracking number for a website that would enable me to repeatedly verify throughout the evening that there was absolutely no new information with respect to my bag. Then he handed me a large black-zippered pouch that looked it might need to be delivered to an embassy, and said "With our apologies for the inconvenience, we hope the amenities in this kit will help minimize the difficulties you encounter in the absence of your luggage." I thanked him and stated to leave, but he gestured for me to wait a moment, and he had a quick exchange with one of his coworkers. He then turned back to me and said "A small number of people – perhaps one in a thousand – have reported a bad … allergy to the" he interrupted himself with another exchange with his coworker "toothpaste or deodoriser or hand lotion or something in there. I am certain that you will suffer no such weakness, but consider that carefully before you use the conditioner or the gel for your hair."

As it happened, his warning was entirely unnecessary, since it was the shampoo to which I had the impertinence to be allergic. I gleaned this not by actually using it, but by simply opening the amenity kit to find that the shampoo had leaked, and soaked nearly everything else inside. Everything, that is, except the plastic-wrapped emergency mu-mu disguised as a double-extra-large T-shirt, and a maddeningly clever hairbrush with a built in mirror that folds in on itself in a way that doesn’t actually defy the laws of physics, but does seem to snicker at them under its breath. The bag and the rest of its contents, along with the 60 Euros I spent on the cab from the airport, were disposed of with equal haste.

After several seconds of unpacking, which consisted of setting my carry-on down on a chair in my hotel room, I took a walk into the city.

Eins, Zwei, G’Suffa!
Yes, for those of you that know Munich and are wondering, I went straight to Die Hofbrauhaus. For those that don’t know, you should assume, incorrectly, that this is not the most obligatorily touristesque thing I could have done. In my defense, I had a long-standing reason: those of you that found your way through my first report from Germany know that I studied the language for a year in high school. In that class, one of the things that we found ourselves … well, forced to do was to learn to sing two German songs. One, Bude Jacke, was set without irony to the tune "Frere Jacques" (or, if you prefer, as I do, it was set to the tune of the backup vocal line in the Beatles’ Paperback Writer.) This was the song that taught me that church bells in Germany don’t make a "ding" or "dong" sort of sound – rather, they say "bim" and "bam". I didn’t believe it in 1986, but I do now.

The other song was a traditional Bavarian drinking-hall song, and, for reasons that elude me, I couldn’t forget the first line even if I tried to manually cauterize that part of my brain with a soldering iron: "In München steht ein Hofbrauhaus, Eins, Zwei, G’Suffa!". Unfortunately, I not only remember the song, I can also hear it sung by a room full of disaffected teenagers, mumbling their way phonetically through it. Dear Mary "Van" Whalen might have generated a tad more enthusiasm in the class had she more fervently emphasized the fact that this is a song that celebrates beer. Regardless, she clearly did something right, since I’m stuck with it for life.

So … the Hofbrauhaus it was. By this point, my palate had become well enough attuned to the fine points of assorted wursts that I could tell that the food was  a bit bland, but the beer … well, it had no business being anything but excellent, and it was. Or wasn’t … help, I’m trapped in a turn of phrase! Anyway, beer = good. The entire liter that constitutes one serving. (Note for my fellow metrically-challenged Americans: For some reason, we all know how big a two liter bottle of Coke is – this, then, was precisely half of that.)

From die Hofbrauhaus, I did a bit of exploring around the city, but, unfortunately, this stopover didn’t permit much in the way of the sort of self-taught history that I love to digest, muddle up, then share with self-important ignorance. Which turned out to be fine, actually, since there was considerable history in my immediate future.

Eventually, my luggage found its way to my hotel, and I was able to unpack and use the energy I’d spent wondering about my bag to start wondering just why it was that the hair dryer was under the television.

Hier ist mein Visitenkarte
The Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik, or, well, anything other than that for short, is the largest museum of science (Naturwissenschaft) and technology (you can guess) in the world. And it is terribly impressive, even before you walk in. There is a large cobblestone courtyard in front of the main entrance that features a gigantic sundial, while the museum’s prominent tower sports a gargantuan barometer and hygrometer. This sets the tone for the exhibits inside, many of which are large, intricate, and and infused with efficient analog complexity.

My host, however, Ludwig Dorn, the curator for aviation (Luftfahrt), was infused with good-natured hospitality, patience with my efforts with the language, and an even greater enthusiasm and depth of knowledge of the subject matter than I’d have guessed.

When I arrived at the museum, I presented my business card (Visitenkarte) to the employee at the information desk and said, with the confidence that comes from having practiced for twenty minutes, "Grüß Gott. Ich heiße Hal Bryan, von Microsoft, und Ich bin für ein Meeting mit Herr-Doktor Ludwig Dorn gekommen. Hier ist mein Visitenkarte."

The "Grüß Gott" bit is worth calling out briefly. On second thought, it really isn’t – it’s just a bit of the sort of tangential trivia that I enjoy obsessing over to destroy any inadvertent sense of flow and order in my writing. So, I’ll call it out anyway. My adventures with speaking German had thus far been confined to the area in and around Leipzig, where they use a dialect called Mitteldeutsch, or Central German (I could also legitimately refer to it as Thuringian-Upper-Saxony, but then I’d just be showing off). Munich, however, is in Bavaria, where Oberdeutsch, or Upper German is the dialect of choice. Apparently, my usual and well-worn Mitteldeutsch greeting of Guten Tag, or "Good Day" is considered prim and distant to someone who speaks Oberdeutsch, and can often lead to misunderstandings. While I don’t seem to be comfortable traveling unless I’m actively doing things that lead to misunderstandings, the last thing I wanted the good Bayern Volk to attribute to me was any sort of prim distance. So, "Grüß Gott", literally, "God bless you", it was.

(Speaking of (here we go again) … a number of my German friends initially found it impossible to believe that we sometimes use their word for good health, gesundheit, after someone sneezes. Once I explained that A) most of us don’t know exactly what it means, and 2) we giggle like idiots when we see the word in giant letters in a pharmacy (Apotheke) window, they began to accept it.)

My tour of the museum, and my discussions with Ludwig were superlative. The museum boasts an impressive aviation section with an even mix of artifacts and interactive displays showcasing the science of aeronautics, testing and research equipment, etc. The initial entry into the aviation hall shows a 1909 Wright Flyer – like the lesser-known 1908 Flyer in the Smithsonian, this example is entirely original, and, to me, provides a more direct link to the brothers’ achievements in aviation than the partially recreated and restored 1903 Flyer. This area also features a 1910 Etrich-Rumpler Taube, the only airplane I’ve ever thought had a wing that might rival a Spitfire’s in terms of sheer beauty. There is also an original Lilienthal glider on display, and a 1909 Grade monoplane, which looks startlingly like a 1978 Weedhopper ultralight. A Weedhopper, in turn, looks startlingly like something cobbled together from the Garden Center at Fred Meyer – a vinyl awning, a patio chair, some wheels from a garden cart, and a lawnmower engine all lashed together into something with a basic airplane-like shape.

Along the side of this first room is a series of cases that explain the mechanics of flight in nature, something that is often overlooked in aviation museums. If there is a single display that I think highlights the intricate and analog nature of most of the exhibits, it was a case that demonstrated how a maple seed autorotates. There was the expected samples of the seeds, and a diagram showing how the single rotor-like wing spins to help carry the weight of the seed pod, etc. The remarkable bit, however, was the seed that had a small hole drilled in it, mounted on a wire that ran the length of the case vertically. Ludwig pushed the first of many buttons of our tour, and the first of many powerful fans came on, and the seed, kept in the airflow by the wire, spun, and autorotated its way straight up to the top of the case. It was simple, rugged, and an absolutely perfect mechanism to demonstrate exactly how this principle works.

Certainly the standout in this opening hall for me was the nose structure from the original LZ-127, the Graf Zeppelin. This conical collection of aluminum alloy girders was nearly hallowed to me. If I believed in past lives, I’d say for certain that I was a regular voyager on this particular airship’s transatlantic crossings from 1928-1940. There’s always been something amazing to me about the fact that, just one year after Lindbergh fought cold temperatures, fatigue, and stale sandwiches on his groundbreaking flight, one could make a similar trip in opulent comfort, with formal meals, a private stateroom, and someone who would shine your shoes if you left them outside your door when you retired for the night. I hadn’t known that there were any such substantial pieces remaining – I love to be pleasantly surprised.

The remainder of the aviation section of the museum is laid out on multiple floors, and it’s charmingly incongruous to walk into a room full of airplanes, and then look up to see the nose of something as large as a JU-52 peering over the edge from a second floor balcony. This section included notable Messershmitts (misspelled on their website as "Messerschmidt" – tsk, tsk!) including an M17, 108, 109, 163, and 262. There was a V-1 and V-2, and the boldly optimistic but ultimately unsuccessful Ba349A Natter "semi-dispensable rocket interceptor". Unfortunately, the engineers behind this one also considered the test pilot to be semi-dispensable, since he was killed by a windscreen that wasn’t up to the task. 

Other notable artifacts included a Junkers F13, the first purpose-built airliner, a Lockheed F-104G Starfighter, an American design better utilized by the Luftwaffe than any other air force, and an HFB320 Hansajet, a clean-lined business jet from the mid-60’s that is made strikingly elegant by its forward-swept wings. There was a design that, from across the room, I’d have guessed to be an early protoype from Arado, but, in actuality, was a crude-but-viable homebuilt twin made from cast-off BMW motorcycle bits. Its first flight was intended to be its last, a one-way trip in 1989 from the East over the Wall to the West, but history snuck past it, and, it never flew because it didn’t have to. Located throughout were cockpit displays, mechanical simulators, and all manner of wind tunnels – a celebration of the science of flight.

I could go on and on. In fact, I just did.
And I’ve only just touched on the aviation portion of this, the main branch of the museum. There were equally impressive sections donated to chemistry, optics, and electricity – in this last, there was a demonstration of lightning that defies explanation, and, had it been displayed in the US, would have been challenged to defy litigation. It consisted of a roped-off collection of what looked to be giant Van de Graaf generators, a model of a small town, and a docent pulling levers and terrorizing the city with massive lightning bolts, twisting knobs and turning levers like a modern-day Rotwang. The downtown museum also includes an impressive maritime collection. My enthusiasm, if not my encyclopedic knowledge of German maritime history which consists of about 3 things, got me access to the restored bridge of an original Norddeutscher-Lloyd liner that they have setup as a surprisingly immersive simulator, not to mention close-up looks at pieces of the Tirpitz, and the rare privilege of actually touching the original ship’s bell that is all that remains of the Bremen.

Needless to say, a visit to the museum is an absolute must for anyone who finds themselves with some time in Munich. Unfortunately, the train and automobile collections had recently been moved to another building across town and my already straining schedule didn’t accommodate a visit.

Throughout my tour and our ongoing discussion, Ludwig expressed a strong desire to begin updating the museum to take advantage of new technology, and introduce some more digital elements amongst the analog. I’m certainly excited by this, since it means that Flight Sim (and Train Sim 2) can find a place in the museum, and, as we brainstormed, be utilized as an informative and entertaining tool to enhance visitors’ experiences. However, the flying maple seed, the myriad dioramas, wind tunnels, and even mechanical simulators have a tangible richness to them that is extremely effective, and it would be a crime to see any of that lost. My hope is that the Deutsches Museum learns a lesson from George Lucas – right now, the Museum is "A New Hope" … I’d hate to go back in a few years and find that its become "The Phantom Menace", if you catch my meaning.

Il Stravino Armonico
That night, after spending some time in my hotel catching up on some work, I explored the city a bit more. Again, I wasn’t able to delve terribly deep, but the hustle, and certainly some of the bustle, did me a world of good. In a bit of light irony, it was a group of Italians who made the strongest impression on me that night in Germany. I was working my way back to the hotel through the middle of the Marienplatz, a cobblestone plaza in the heart of downtown that is restricted to pedestrians, and a small handful of Mercedes station wagons with special passes that may have been pedestrian hunting permits. Walking along, I saw a crowd slowly coalescing under an eave outside a large department store. Being tired, and generally hating crowds, I made straight for the middle of it, and saw a group of four musicians getting ready to play. There was an accordionist, a cellist, a man playing an upright bass, and the leader, a balding violinist who inspires adjectives like "lean", and, given his chosen instrument, the inevitable "sinewy".

I’ve tried to describe the music I heard that night to friends and family, and have fallen terribly flat. They were the tightest, richest, and fullest sounding … cover band I’ve ever heard. Ripping their way through pieces of gorgeous complexity, they’d lean over to each other and swap inside jokes, all without missing a note. Their repertoire consisted of things like Ave Maria, Pachelbel’s Canon, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, and the Allegro non Molto movement of Vivaldi’s Winter, from his Four Seasons. Listening to them from just a few feet away was something like being inside an orchestra. Not an ordinary orchestra – an orchestra that played simply for their love of the music (and a few euros tossed in a cello case), an orchestra that didn’t follow a conductor’s baton to interpret the piece, but seemed to channel the composer’s passions directly. It was, truly, like nothing I’ve ever heard.

The highlight for me, even more potent than the Vivaldi, a lifelong favorite, was when the violinist got the audience’s attention and said: "Meine Damen und Herren, Ladies and Gentlemen … and now for something completely different: From Giachino Antonio Rossini, Il Barbiere di Siviglia". The piece was somehow at once technically flawless and emotionally raw, all of it beautifully executed. But that wasn’t what struck me. What struck me was the nearly overwhelming urge I had to sing along. Not in the original Italian – I have more than enough trouble mit meine Deutsche, danke schön! No, the words that came to my head were those from the interpretation of man known to the animatoscenti as Carlo Jonzi, as sung in the first opera I ever loved … by a bunny called Bugs. It all came back to me … "Welcome to my shop, let me cut your mop, let me shave your crop …", "Lots of lather, lots of soap, please hold still don’t be a dope", "There, you’re nice and clean, although your face looks like it might have gone through a ma-chine."

I resisted the temptation, and managed to slip through another situation that very nearly exposed the fact that I actually have no culture, whatsoever. I did not, thankfully, resist the temptation to buy a CD to take home. I recommend it, highly, but it doesn’t even begin to capture what it was like to luxuriate in the music as it was performed live. I walked the rest of the way back to the hotel, trying not to feel profoundly affected, and failing miserably.

Deutsches Museum Flugwerft Schleißheim
The next morning, I spent approximately a billion Euros on a taxi ride to the Flugplatz Oberschleißheim for the second half of my meetings with the Deutsches Museum. I was joined for this meeting by Michael Nagler, the Games for Windows Marketing Product Manager for Microsoft Germany. Michael combines the unstoppable professional enthusiasm of a good marketeer with a remarkable appreciation for and understanding of Flight Simulator – ahh, the joy of competence found.

Unlike the main Museum downtown, the annex at the Schleißheim airport is devoted entirely to aviation. The airport is the oldest one in continuous operation in all of Germany and was the home of a commercial pilot school as far back as 1923. Our host and my primary contact for FS projects in the future was Uwe Froemert. Uwe proved to be a fascinating tour guide, and was extremely patient with my efforts to establish some measure of credibility by identifying aircraft (there were a few that had me stumped, I’m not proud to admit) and bandy about names like Ernst Udet and Gustave Weisskopf.

The collection at Schleißheim is broad, eclectic, and impressive. One of the first aircraft you see after entering is a Luftwaffe C-47, which at first looks glance looks like a bit of sloppy set dressing from a bad war movie – you can imagine James Coburn and George Peppard swaggering out of the airplane in poorly-researched Wehrmacht uniforms before being driven away in an open-top Mercedes with too many flags on it. But, actually, it’s quite legitimate.

Other aircraft in the first hall include a Fieseler Storch, a Bücker 181, a Waco YKS-6 (the only Waco on the German registry), and, staggeringly, an entirely original Fokker D7. Entirely original, even including the fabric and the elastic bands that make up the suspension on the main landing gear. There are very, very few even mostly original German aircraft from WWI still extant. The iconic Fokker DR1 triplane (dreidekker) of "Red Baron" fame, for instance – there isn’t a single one left anywhere in the world. All of those that fly, even all of those on display in museums are replicas. To see an original D7, then, was remarkable. To have the velvet ropes lowered so that I could walk right up to it was humbling.

The next room was devoted to some pioneering efforts from around the turn of the 20th Century. There was more from Lilenthal, and I was glad for the chance to set aside my usual nationalistic diatribes and make it clear that I understood just how significant an impact he’d had on the development of aviation. The Wright brothers themselves referred extensively to his book, Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst (Birdflight as a Basis for Aviation) when doing their own research, and said that Lilienthal was " … without question, the greatest of the precursors."

A Bag of Rocks
It was then that Uwe pointed us to an interesting looking glider, and again the ropes were cast aside and I was able to walk straight up to a flying machine from 1907. The innovation in this design was so staggering, and its existence so completely unknown to me, that it took the bris right out of my hubris, to coin a phrase. The glider was built by Alois Wolfmüeller, and included some innovations I’d have thought impossible, or at least hopelessly anachronistic, had I not seen it for myself. You might be thinking to yourself: "The Wright brothers flew a powered  machine, a real airplane, not just a glider, in 1903, four years earlier – what’s the big deal about a glider?" (In actuality, you’re probably thinking to yourself "this is long though not as long as the last one but there are no booth babes in it and I no longer care … is it time for Grey’s Anatomy yet?") You’d easily be forgiven for thinking either.

However, the Wolfmüeller Gleitflugapparat included: A conventional rear-mounted tail plane with horizontal and vertical stabilizers with elevator and rudder. These controls were manipulated by cables threaded over extended control horns for leverage. It had separate control surfaces off of the the trailing edges of the lower wings for bank control – these controls weren’t hinged, rather they used a warping mechanism, so they weren’t quite ailerons, but they were awfully close. This was over a year before Henri Farman added the first generally recognized ailerons to his biplane, and quite a few years before the Wrights and Glenn Curtiss would get entangled in litigation over the idea.

The aspect of Wolfmüeller’s design that really got me, however, was a bag of rocks. This bag was tied with a loop to a long bamboo pole that extended in front of the glider by probably two meters. The pole had markings on it that Uwe explained corresponded to various wind velocities, and the bag, serving obviously as a counterweight, would be slid fore or aft to the appropriate marking based on the wind at the time of the flight. What this was, then, was the first pitch trim mechanism in history.

I realize that this may not be terribly impactful to those of you who maintain a healthy lack of my unhealthy obsession with the arcane details of fly-y trivia. But the discovery of a mod con like pitch trim, something used in contemporary aircraft as a work-saving device for pilots, is a little like discovering an abacus with a USB port. It’s enough to make one wonder if history doesn’t just rearrange itself slightly, having a bit of fun when we’re not looking.

What’s That And Why Did They Name it After Me?
The remainder of the museum yielded some old favorites, like a former Soviet Army AN-2, which was obviously a VIP transport because of the threadbare Berber on the cabin floor, and the curtains in the windows, a Focke Wulfe 44 Stieglitz, a MiG 21, and even a Cessna 195. We were able to walk the floor of the restoration hangar which was dominated by their He-111, which I, as part of my ongoing and misguided campaign to trade trivia for credibility, identified as one built after World War II in Spain by CASA. Then there were some remarkable rarities like a massive Do-24 flying boat with original engines, the VTOL Dornier 31 and Yakovlev 191, the latter known with a certain disrespect as the Harrierski. There was the EADS / Boeing X-31, and the Eurofighter 2000 DA-1 prototype. I saw my first MiG-23, and Saab Draken. Then there was a shiny silver jet fighter that looked a little bit like every shiny silver jet fighter from the late 50’s through the late 60’s. I saw a resemblance to an F-100 and a Sukhoi 15, and more obscure types like a Hawker Hunter or a Supermarine Swift. I was stumped, so I immediately took a bunch of pictures with which to taunt my like-minded brother the second after I knew what it was. As it happens, I, of all people, should have known what to call it; it seems it was a HAL HF24, built in India by Hindustan in 1961.

Uwe had to leave us for about thirty minutes to attend another meeting. While he was away, Michael and I talked and took a number of additional pictures. He asked me what he could do to help me in my ongoing relationships with an organization like the Deutsches Museum, and I explained that one of the best things that we can do is arrange donations of our software to organizations like theirs to help offset some of the costs of upgrading. In the US, however, it is a bit more difficult for me to get German language versions of some Microsoft software, but it is very easy for Michael to obtain. In addition, Marketing has a much larger budget for that sort of thing which helps quite a bit. What it came down to, then, was that Michael, perhaps in an absence of good judgment, agreed to an arrangement in which I make all manner of irrationally exuberant promises of software donation, and he’ll make good.

Michael and I were both very happy to see that Uwe has what looks to be a superb Flight Sim cockpit under construction. They’re fabricating their own airliner-style yokes and utilizing a number of high-end components from existing FS cockpit companies. The cockpit will be largely based on a 737, but they’re leaving it somewhat modular and flexible to recreate other aircraft as well. It’s unquestionably going to be a compelling attraction for anyone who may not immediately find the same level of excitement as I did at the sight of a bag of rocks.

The day wound down far too quickly, and the next morning found me flying from Munich to Copenhagen, then on to Seattle on an SAS A-340. The best part of that part of the story is the fact that the transatlantic trip was every bit as good as every other transatlantic trip I’ve made on an SAS A-340. The SAS 340s standout to me for three reasons. First, there is a self-serve galley in business class where they just leave precious airborne commodities like bottled water just sitting out for the taking. Second, there are two windows in the restroom – I don’t know what it is about a loo with a view, but it feels remarkably decadent. And, finally, there are two aircraft-mounted cameras accessible via the in-seat video monitors. One is pointed straight down, the other is mounted on the nose and points straight ahead, allowing back seat pilots like me innumerable opportunities to critique approaches and landings, among other things.

But, really, I think the story ended in the paragraph before the last one with the bit about the rocks. I just kept writing to make sure nobody thought I was still in Germany. I’m not. In fact, since I got back, I’ve slept at home, at a friends’ house in Olympia, Washington, at a hotel in Toronto, at a hotel in Chicago, and now at a hotel in Reno.

Clearly, I’ve got some catching up to do. In the meantime, here’s a final picture from Schleißheim, a shot of the fantastic Dornier 31:

Here, in schönes Leipzig, Germany …

Click to See Leipzig Maps and Aerial Views on Windows Live

• Goethe wrote Faust: der Tragödie.
• Richard Wagner wrote his very first sonatas.
• Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the St. John Passion and Clavierübung.
  

And I … I Wrote This
Somewhere in the amorphous and slightly gummy responsibility stew that constitutes the job description of a Flight Simulator Community Evangelist, one can find the word "spokesperson". It’s just there to the left of "sluggish-blog-poster", and a bit below "river widener". It is perhaps ironic, then, that I’ve left the trade fair I’ve attended for the past week just as I was really beginning to be able to speak.  The event is held in Leipzig, which is in the region of Saxony in the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik, aka East Germany. It has happened annually since 2002, and, with attendance approaching 200,000 people, is one of the largest events of its kind. I first attended to support the launch of Flight Simulator X last year, and made my triumphant return to demo an early Beta build of our new expansion pack – Flight Simulator X: Acceleration. Mike "Tdragger" Gilbert also attended, doing press demos and interviews "behind closed doors" to continue to get the word out about the triumphant return of Train Simulator 2.

The event is known by its proper German name which is simply: Game Convention. 

An astute reader likely will not need any help translating that name into English. After all, German and English share a considerable number of words in common. For example, the German words for "helicopter", "mousepad", and "radium" (it came up in a conversation about the glow-in-the-dark markings on old aircraft gauges) are, respectively, helicopter, mousepad, and radium. However, sometimes the same words don’t always mean the same thing. For example, in German also means "thus", wenn means "if",  and Handy means "cellular telephone". Thus (also), when Nietzsche wrote Also Sprach Zarathustra, he didn’t mean that the Persian prophet of the title was simply wandering around muttering "Me too."

In that vein, then, it is worth noting that, in this case, the actual translation of Game Convention is "Like E3, but Bigger, and With People."

In other words, a significant, well-produced, and very well-attended event in the world of electrical entertainment.

A bit over two decades ago, I took a year of German language instruction at Enumclaw High School, courtesy of the imperturbable Mary Ann "Van" Whalen. At the time, I didn’t think I learned much, unlike, say, driver’s education, in which I know I didn’t learn much. Imagine my pleasant surprise, then, to find a few odds and sods auf Deutsch clambering out of my memory when I came to Leipzig for the first time last year. By the end of that trip I was near-fluent in certain key phrases like "I don’t understand", "a bratwurst and a Pilsner, please", and "The Flight Simulator X will have been to you for sold in more than 19 Octobers from  like stores excuse me".  

I’ve found, however, that there’s really only one phrase I need to "go to ground" anywhere in the world and be instantly assimilated and well-cared-for: "Excuse me, please, I do not speak (your language) very well." This introduces a tempering dash of humility to the universal respect and unfettered admiration that I, as an important American and a Microsoft employee, naturally engender worldwide.

When I got in to the city on Monday, I wasn’t nearly as awkward as I was the first time, but I’d lost a lot of what I’d  learned. My conversation with the first cab driver was unusually short – "Hello, to the Renaissance Hotel, please" – and I sat in the back seat like a tired and aloof tourist.

When I made the return trip to the airport a week later, I sat in the front like a local, and wouldn’t shut up. We discussed the politics of German reunification and where the driver was when the Berlin Wall came down, we compared notes on our respective Windows-based PDA phones (his was nicer than mine), and he agreed with me when I posited that the most effective bit of Cold War propaganda ever employed was the myth that East German women look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But I’m digressing ahead of myself …

Across the Water on a 747 – Yeah We’re Livin’ in, in a Modern World
When I travel, especially in Europe, somewhere in my head I can’t help but feel just the slightest touch of a certain savoir faire. This is undoubtedly inspired by a lifetime (so far) of reading Ian Fleming, and the fact that I am, at heart, pretentious. However, while I do travel easily these days, and with more relaxed confidence than the average rube, my actions, demeanor, mis-and-near-miss-adventures and even the occasional near mis-demeanor tip the scales far closer to, say, Atkinson’s Bean than Connery’s Bond. I’d happily settle for Barry Nelson’s Bond or even Woody Allen’s (from Casino Royale (1955) and Casino Royale (1967) respectively), but no such luck.

This latest trip started at Sea-Tac in Seattle at about stupid o’clock in the morning, and the first leg was an uneventful hop to Dulles. From there, it was off to Frankfurt on a United 747-400, coincidentally the first time I’d been on a 747 since I rode along on my dad’s last flight as a United captain in 1989. This trip was also the first time I’d actually ridden upstairs in an airliner. It’s a lot like business class on any other airplane, but higher.

Anyway, I found my way upstairs, didn’t have a smoke, somebody spoke, and I utterly failed to fall into a dream. I tried to sleep, as I always do, but my brain rules its inner clock like the King of Circadia, and the diplomatic approach (sleep because it’s dark, not because you’re tired) never works. All it really respects is brute force. So, I read magazines, books, watched a few random bits on the in-seat video monitor, and played with my shiny new Nintendo DS Lite. My Brain Age is considerably younger than my real age, thank you very much, though it felt nothing of the kind when I shuffled off the airplane in Frankfurt.

Once again considering Fleming, I’ll borrow a few words from his first novel Casino Royale to describe the queue at Frankfurt’s temporarily-relocated-due-to-construction passport control office: "The scent and sweat and smoke of a (passport control office) are nauseating at three in the morning." It wasn’t three in the morning in Frankfurt, or in Seattle, but my head and stomach figured it felt as much like three o’clock as any other time. Enough said.

The final leg into Leipzig was short hop on a Eurowings BAE-146. The 146 is an interesting little airliner. From a distance, it looks further away than it actually is, since, with four engines, it really ought to be bigger. And it knows this – unlike most airliners, the wings don’t seem to flex at all, giving it the stiff-shouldered look of someone trying not to be noticed as they sidle self-consciously out of a party.

Round, Round, Get Around, I Get Around
At certain times of the year, this being all of them, I travel a lot. I love to travel, and I love to live up to my title and go forth spreading the word, as it were. I also have a nagging fear of becoming one of the so-called "road warriors" (without the cool Australian-built Fords) who just drag themselves from trade show to trade show, shuffling past sandwich boards that say things like "Welcome Interstate Managers", doing the same thing and seeing the same people no matter where they are in the world. The sort of half-homeless sad-sack that the song "Bright Future in Sales" by Fountains of Wayne was written about – "Seven scotch-and-sodas … and I don’t remember where I’m from", etc.

With that in mind, then, I always try to find something to do, to see, to learn, or a conversation to have that I wouldn’t find elsewhere. It might be something as seemingly simple as finding out the name and history of a building I can see from my hotel room window, trying whatever food or drink the area seems most proud of (within certain limits – if there’s a place that is famous for its mushrooms, I’m not going), or just exploring a bit if the trip affords any spare time. Anything that will stay with me, a cerebral souvenir to remind me that the world remains a big and interesting place.

To put some of this another way, I seek out and thrive on connection. There are places where I have found connections, and places where I haven’t, and I tend to promptly dismiss and forget the latter. When I try to establish a connection in a conversation, even in my mother tongue, in effect what I am doing is seeking or establishing a common language. In a foreign country, then, speaking to someone in German (in this case) is a logical extension. And unlike most things in life, I’ve found that the reward is roughly proportional to the effort – even the simplest conversation, when successful, feels like a major accomplishment. Last year, for instance, it took nearly two hours for a friend of mine to find a way to say "I am a waitress in a restaurant on a boat" in German that was pointed enough for my thick skull. Once it finally clicked, you’d think I had discovered a new Rosetta stone, I was so proud.

Hey, Things are Different Here
Initially, just noticing the superficial things, the novelty of the differences in the surroundings, can be enough to capture that flavor of actually having "been somewhere." That first cab ride I mentioned, a run in a Mercedes from the airport to the hotel, was my first real reminder that I was back in Germany. Even from my aloof vantage point in the back seat, I was easily reminded of what I will politely call the German cab driver’s enthusiasm for the road. I didn’t try converting 200 km/h to something I could more easily relate to, and it was probably just as well.

For an American on a first trip to a city like Leipzig, there are all kinds of things that stand out, even if you manage to overlook things like cobblestone streets, classic architecture, and the fact that the Polizei use the classic two-tone siren. (Trivia: the police cars I used to drive had this siren as one of the choices, but it was the last one, and most people wouldn’t bother to turn the knob that far. I always used it, so it became my "signature siren.")

Microsoft Spokesmodel Mike Gilbert Showing off a Ford S-Max

When walking in the city, one will notice that there are trains in the middle of most streets and that the tracks neatly bisect the crosswalks. And speaking of crosswalks, like the sidewalks, they are divided into two lanes – one for bicyclists only, and the other for bicyclists who want to try to hit pedestrians. And, still speaking of crosswalks, they are guarded over from the traffic lights by die Ampelmann, a unique variation of the "Walk / Don’t Walk" guy in traditional green and red, but dressed smartly, to the point of even wearing a little hat. The cars that will run you down if you ignore die Ampelmann (and if the bicyclists and trains don’t get you first) are, of course, heavily skewed toward Mercedes, BMW, and Audi. There are also a large number of Smarts, a car we’re just starting to see here in the US, as well as all manner of Citroëns, Seats, Skodas, classic Minis, Peugeots, even a few lingering Trabants. The (very) few American cars are usually models that we don’t see in the US, like the tiny Ka, and the less-tiny S-Max van, both from Ford.

While I don’t normally work blue, as they say, an American abroad will also notice a few differences in the rest room. First, in a public restroom, the stall doors generally go all the way to the floor. This, combined with the fact that most of the doors are weighted to swing shut on their own, and the lack of any lock-activated signage completely eliminate any of that pesky confidence that the stall is not already occupied. Second, the water level in the major appliance will appear absurdly and inefficiently low. This is reinforced by the fact that there is what at first glance appears to be a plunger mounted near every one I’ve seen. As it turns out, they aren’t plungers but brushes, in a nod to cleanliness. And the water level? Well, manipulating the mechanism on the wall at the back sets in motion an event I have christened Der Blitzflaushen. The sheer volume of water and the force with which it is introduced is, thankfully, indescribable, but I believe my term does it a certain justice. There is more to be said, (such as an emphatic suggestion to stand up, if appropriate, before pushing the button) but I do have my limits – in fact, I can still see them somewhere back behind me.

But Wait, There’s More
As charming as some of them are, too much time spent focusing on the relative novelty of the superficial things can be insulating, for want of a better term. As I mentioned above, Leipzig has some truly remarkable history. For example, as interesting as it is that the drink I had with dinner at Die Alte Nikolaischule was a surprisingly palatable mix of dark beer and Coca Cola, it is far more interesting to take note of the striking column in the courtyard. Looking a bit like a Roman candle, this single giant pillar marks the spot where, in 1989, first several, then hundreds, then thousands and finally 250,000 people gathered to protest the policies of their government. Said government then ultimately obliged by getting confused, issuing a few misunderstood proclamations, and then ceasing to exist. They say it was a bloodless revolution that came at only minimal cost, and it inarguably could have been far, far worse, but history shows that there were plenty of people that paid in advance.

The Bell Tower of die Thomaskirche

I mentioned the echoes of, among others, J.S. Bach in the introduction. Bach’s connection to the city is especially strong, as he was the cantor at a church toward the east end of downtown Leipzig called Die Thomaskirche. The current building, minus the prominent tower, was completed in 1496, but parts of the church date to 1160, which means that the church had already been around for 563 years by the time Bach got there. When he was hired by the city council to take over the choir, the minutes of the meeting read "Since the best men are not available, mediocre musicians must be considered." It’s easy, but ultimately dissatisfying, to miss these sorts of things while trying to be missed yourself by an enormous brown Mercedes disguised as a UPS truck.

When you’re heading back into the city from the Game Convention, ruminating on whether or not the girl working at the booth demoing some kind of new mousepad or something was actually wearing almost nothing but paint, you might miss a glimpse of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, the "Monument to the Battle of Nations". The largest monument in Europe, it commemorates the as many as 110,000 soldiers lost in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. The battle was fought by Napoleon Bonaparte and his dwindling army made up of French and conscripted German soldiers against some smaller German states and just about everybody else. His crushing defeat led to his abdication and exile, less than two years before he met his Waterloo at you-know-where.

The Hotel Kosmos

To someone like me who lives in a 118 year old state in a 231 year old country, a place like this that is so rich with  history is compelling. Walking the streets is an exercise in a sort of lateral archaeology, every building is another strata. Across from die Thomaskirche, for instance, is the Hotel Kosmos, an irresistable (from the outside, anyway) image of Sputnik-era "commoptomism".  The bakeries and meat markets in the city’s major shopping center might, albeit only briefly, distract you from the fact that they’re housed in the largest train station in Europe, though at only 82 years of age, it is far from the oldest. Every building wears its era, bright or dark, on its sleeve, and they all have their stories to tell.

He Seems to Mention Food A Lot
Yes. The food in Germany manages to include a number of choices from the "guilty pleasures" food group in every meal. If I walk into any one of a dozen bakeries and order a salami sandwich, I’m asked to choose from among 14 different kinds. There’s Kartoffelsuppe, Lieberkase (yes, I know it’s just fancy Spam), all manner of Wursts, good beer, and a wonderful Alkohol-frei beverage called Apfelschorle. Even the daily free breakfast buffet in the hotel, which at some hotels is worth little more than what you pay for it, is excellent – an embarrassment of riches. Never mind the fact that every day I eat here adds an inch to my waist and costs me at least a year at the end of my life. It’s worth it.

Making a Messe Things
Leipzig has been hosting trade fairs since at least as far back as 1165. After that, some things happened, then, in 1996,  a new venue, the Leipziger Messe

The Center Hall

Exhibition Centre, was built. The design consists of five massive buildings centered around an enormous elevated hall with a curved roof of glass and girders that looks like a cutaway of either a Zeppelin or a Bahnhof, depending on whether you work on Flight Simulator or Train Simulator respectively. There are a surprising number of trees growing inside the buildings, and a nice grassy area with a fountain and such that always seems to be full of other people who figured out exactly how to get to it from inside.  

A Day in the Habitrail

The buildings are interconnected with smaller elevated glass hallways that defy you not to  think of them as human Habitrails until the sun hits them and then they simply defy you to think about anything other than how not to pass out. In general, air conditioning isn’t a thing of ubiquity in the area, though it’s especially noticeable when you put more than 100,000 people under glass and then point the Sun at them. Thankfully, there’s a great deal to see as you blink away the sweat.

You And What Army?

The Hallenmeister Has Abandoned His Post

Microsoft certainly establishes one of the largest presences at this show, but we’re far from the only company that does things in a big way, making this event a significant undertaking for the logistical teams that work for the venue itself, or are contracted by the vendors. In addition to the usual suspects, like fork lift drivers and electricians and the sorts of people who can be paid to indulge the whims of companies like ours who say things like "Wait … what about a Halo 3 Ferris Wheel!?!? We can put it out back next to the fake beach …" The best job, or, certainly, the best job title, has to be die Hallenmeister. As far as I can tell, the Hallenmeister’s job is to sit in an smallish window office full of an absurd number of blinking lights that sticks out like a control tower of the interior wall of each of the five display halls and scowl politely, restraining himself from pressing whatever button would actually reveal his utter bafflement at the shenanigans that go on below.

Microsoft’s German office, based in Munich, does an extraordinary job of taking care of those of those of us from the product teams that fly in to support our titles. We had a large suite of meeting rooms, our own catered lunches, a private outdoor deck, and even a seemingly bottomless supply of my belov’d Apfelschorle. The event is big enough that my part of setup is traditionally very simple – all I have to worry about is getting my software to run well and look good. There are people everywhere for everything else.

People like Joe (pronounced "Yo") who works for the company that handles the logistics of the event and actually manages to be everywhere at once. Joe looks like a young Al Pacino, and knows everybody. If he finds someone he doesn’t know, he simply treats them as if he does and, with what can only be described as a boisterously wounded magnanimity, he shames them into "remembering" him. At Game Convention, the phrase "I’m a friend of Joe’s" is even better than "They said I was supposed to be invited to this …" anywhere else in the world.

There’s Christine, one of our senior business administrators with Microsoft Germany who, like every other "admin" at Microsoft has dark and unexplainable powers to conjure exactly what is needed the second before you need it. When I was checking in to the hotel, there was some trouble finding my reservation, since I have a first name for a last name, my passport shows my middle name which is actually a last name, and I go by a short version of my first name. I muddled along with things like "Entschuldigung, bitte, aber nein- diese ist mein Nachname, und diese ist mein Fürname … " then asked if the hotel clerk could call Christine and speak to her directly. They spoke for a few moments, then the clerk hung up abruptly, and I expected her to politely explain to me that I was a month early or something. Instead, though, Christine just appeared at the counter armed with a sheaf of confirmation numbers and things, and I had my key almost instantly.

Michael, our Marketing Manager for Games For Windows in Germany, is simultaneously completely affable and unusually enthusiastic. His English is so good that on the very rare occasions that he pauses to consider the right word, it’s jarring, like maybe he just got very suddenly sick. He’s extremely sharp, and he not only gets Flight Sim, he uses it himself at home! Given the large number of customers we have in Germany, and the passion they have around the product, we’re extremely lucky to have someone like Michael taking care of things in his part of the world.

Julia, Christine, and Someone Who Was Mad That I Took Her Picture

Then there was Madika and Julia (pronounced "Yoo-lia", more on that in a second) from the German office of the PR firm we use in many areas of the world. They arranged a big Microsoft (that’s redundant, in a way) dinner at a restaurant called Die Bayerische Bahnhof, which was, apparently a former Bavarian Train Station, though I never got a straight answer as to why there was a Bavarian anything in Saxony. During dinner, Madika, Julia, along with colleagues Mark and David, started swapping stories and cultural and language questions with me and my date for the evening, the lovely and talented Mike Gilbert. It was a lot of the usual break-the-ice sort of stuff about music and television, some shop talk and all that, then when it looked as if we’d all be friends, the conversation took a much deeper, even darker turn.

Say "Obligatory"

No matter how much common ground can be found in conversation (and I spend so much energy finding common ground that I bought a time share) among new friends over great food and amazing beer, there is undeniably some very volatile history between the peoples of the United States and Germany. Somewhere,  deep in the core of the American psyche, if there is such a thing, there’s a burning desire to shine a light on the darkest of these differences, to ask the magic question that might enlighten all of us, then put an ugly chapter to bed (along with that ugly mixed metaphor) once and for all. I kept almost bringing it up, then backing away, unsure if the mood was still too fragile or not. Then, out of nowhere, Madika broached the subject herself, and I had my chance. She asked a pointed and direct question, and I told her in German that I would answer her question with a question, and that I would accept the responsibility of doing so on behalf of all Americans:

"David Hasselhoff?!?! What are you people thinking?!?!?"

It felt good to get it out. And, for the record, Madika told us that she took down the ‘Hoff posters when she was about 14. That was good to hear – at least there’s hope for them to grow out of it.

I mentioned that I’d mention something more about Julia, but I will actually mention two things. First off, her name immediately brought to mind the Beatles’ song of the same name, one that Lennon wrote for his mother. Actually, it was only one line of the song that came to mind, and stayed all week, providing a maddeningly repetitive musical score to my continued attempts to speak German. "Half of what I say is meaningless …" Over and over again. It may well be, however, that I shouldn’t discount any form of communication that’s actually 50% meaningful.

The second thing was when the Microsoft group went to the vendor party at a venue called the Volkspalast, or People’s Palace. I ran into Joe again, and I managed to intercept him before he could start trying to convince Julia that they were old friends, and introduced them: "Yoo-lia, Yoe. Yoe, Yoo-lia."

Meine Boothfrauleine
Given that A) Game Convention is a lot like an amplified version of what E3 used to be, and 2) that, very generally speaking, certain sensibilities are different in Europe than here in the United States, it should come as no surprise to learn that a lot of companies hire what would inevitably (if not actually desultorily) be called "Booth Babes". And there were a lot of them. If you build a game that has swords and dragons and things, the code of a show like this demands that you hire a vacuously pretty young model with a permanent smile, and that you then give her two leather belts (or, as mentioned earlier, a scrap of cloth and a guy with an airbrush) and tell her it’s a costume. Her job is then to stand there, and sometimes to hand out product literature; other times she is expected to pose for pictures for or with customers who ask, and even the rather creepy skulkers who don’t. It is what it is and I’ll leave it at that.

(This being a progressive industry, there are opportunities for men, as well – take a close look at the photo below of me with "Hello Kitty" for example.)

Thankfully, Microsoft doesn’t exactly go in for that sort of thing. Or, rather, we do, but only sort of, and with more class. Microsoft Germany brings in young women, yes. But they give them actual clothes to wear. And, with all due respect to the girl who wore the paint – she could be another Jill St. John as far as I know – they hire smart ones. And then they train them on the products that they will support and demonstrate at the show.

Sarah, Mandy (Who Wouldn’t Stop Playing "Ratatouille", Turn Around, And Come Join Us For The Picture So We Went to Her) Me, and Ayşe

Last year, I was amazed at the staff that was there to support the Games For Windows section of the Microsoft presence. They came into the event knowing far more about Flight Sim than I’d have expected (note: not because of their gender or their age or any of that – no hate mail, bitte. Only because FS is a complex product and it’s unusual to find people who can show it off with only limited experience) and they picked up all manner of new and useful (under the circumstances) bits of FS ephemera from watching and listening to me. They spoke English to varying degrees, and I, at least, am fluent in FS-Geek, so we ended up making a very effective team.

This year was better still, since two of the three that I worked with last year, Sarah and Mandy, were back, along with newcomer Ayşe. In spare moments between customer visits, I’d practice my German which was better than it was last year, and they’d practice their English, which was also better than last year.

All of them proved to be very patient with my attempts at the language, and were excellent teachers. Sarah, a student in theology who is cowriting a book with her professor, was the most demanding, challenging me with a new word in just about every sentence. Ayşe, in school studying dentistry, wanted more of a quid pro quo, learning new English words from me like "ironic", "facetious", "technically", "subtle", and "mullet". Mandy, an architect and photographer who owns and operates a bar in Mallorca picked up a considerable amount of English, and then kept throwing in some Spanish just to complicate things. When she could tear herself away from playing "Ratatouille" on one of the PC’s that is.

Freudig Begrussen Wir Die Edle Halle
The venue, as I’ve mentioned, is gigantic, and covers something like 20,000 square meters. And, for the better part of one week every year, every inch is covered with gamers, games, and the people whose job it is to bring one to the other. The "booths", such as they are, can be massive – one corner of the Microsoft layout last year included a 300 seat arena. There are live musicians, movie theaters for demos (a word I will pronounce dee-mos for at least another week), a giant inflatable Bart Simpson, and the aforementioned … costumed demo staff.  The sheer numbers of people and the noise is incredible. Last year, there were ridiculous human traffic jams – one of which kept me from getting to lunch because I stepped off the platform from our booth and simply didn’t move for half an hour. This year, die Hallenmeister had people actually directing traffic, establishing one-way flows through the habitrails for example.

A number of other companies had stages, and actual seating, or at least open areas for crowds to gather. This was a fascinating phenomenon to watch: visitors would stand in line, sometimes for a couple of hours, to get in and see a demo, or even a pretty basic "pitch". Then, toward the end, they’d throw some swag – t-shirts, USB-enabled miscellany, even coupons for 5% off your first month’s bill with a new wireless carrier (I’m not making that up), and the crowd would go absolutely mad. At that point, whoever was on stage would introduce a sort of … cheer, I suppose. There’d be a challenge yelled from the stage, then a response yelled in unison from the audience, and it would get louder and louder, t-shirts and near-useless coupons flying everywhere, until everyone would applaud and then leave making room for the next group.

Last year, in the Microsoft arena I mentioned, the cheer consisted of someone in a Microsoft shirt on stage yelling "Ix-box!", and the audience response was to yell "360", in German, "Drei Sechsig!" It actually started up in our neighborhood once this year, and I ran over there because I wanted to exercise my right as an employee of Microsoft Games Studios and be the guy who yelled "ix-box!" The instant I was handed the microphone, however, the crowd just evaporated. Whatever it takes to get a crowd of German gamers to yell at you, I don’t have it … yet.

What About the – How Do You Say, Ah Yes – Customers?
While I did a few interviews and press demos at the booth, the number one reason I was there was to talk to our customers. This is always fascinating to me, getting a sense for how someone uses our product, how long they’ve been a customer, what they like, what they hate, what they hope to see next time, etc. As a very general rule (my amateur demography is hardly an exact science), I see a higher average level of interest in realism in European customers. There seem to be more people building cockpits and asking detailed questions about systems modeling and the like. I suspect that this is in some part because of the unusually high costs of (real) general aviation, not just in Germany but in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

There was definitely an above average number of people who really knew how to use the product. At a lot of shows, I’ll talk to someone who already owns FSX, and they’ll offer some feedback about how you can’t see very well to land when using the virtual cockpit of some aircraft, or about how they wish there was a way to easily reposition the aircraft in the sim – a quick introduction to <shift>-<enter> to raise the eyepoint and / or the "Y" key for slew can be met with astonishment. That simply wasn’t the case here. I passed along some tips, certainly, but they were far fewer and much deeper than average.

Speaking of hardware, my own attempts at using features like slew were maddening for the first couple of hours, as I continually forgot that, on the German keyboard, QWERTY becomes QWERTZ  as the "Z" and "Y" keys have swapped positions compared to the US layout. The booth furniture had a Saitek X-52 throttle and stick for each PC, which proved popular, and stood up well to the exercise of the more spirited visitors.

News to Me …

Each PC in the Games for Windows section also had a brand new Sidewinder mouse, which generated a lot of questions and feedback, especially about that one button nobody could reach. I renamed it the Blindsidewinder, since none of us working the booth knew they were coming or had even heard of them, and were totally unprepared to field questions other than to point vaguely toward another part of the Microsoft compound where, rumor had it, there were some people who knew some things. I immediately regretted renaming it, because then I was asked to try to explain, in German, what was an agonizingly lame pun to begin with. I had to start with the snake, then the missile, then the Microsoft joysticks that came and went, and then finally the mouse that has suddenly resurrected the brand. Then I had to illustrate the concept of being blind-sided which was almost too much.

Who Watches the Watchman?

In addition, this group had a much higher percentage of awareness of the fact that we had released a Service Pack for FSX, though it stands to reason that just about everybody who walked into the show was more web savvy than average, and much more likely to go out and proactively look for things. Awareness of the add-on community also struck me as considerably higher – the fact that our friends from Aerosoft were there (as they are every year) with an eye-catching cockpit display certainly helped.

The promise of multiplayer Red Bull air racing was universally well received. The Reno Races generated a lot of excitement, but awareness of the real event was dramatically lower than for Red Bull. The F-18 was, again, the clear winner in terms of first-choice aircraft, but not by nearly the margins we saw at Oshkosh. Even though it was certainly the roughest aircraft in the build, the EH-101 helicopter came, anecdotally, a very close second.

In fact, even though there were far more "hardcore simmers" at this show than I’d expect to see at such a console-oriented event in the US, they struck me as unusually forgiving of the obvious flaws in the early Beta we were showing. Moments that I found cringeworthy didn’t get anyone too upset. Simply explaining, or reminding them that the software was Beta (bee-ta) was enough in most cases, and they’d dig into another feature.

A number of those conversations netted us some new Beta testers, not only for ongoing FSX-related releases, but people to help test and eventually possibly write for our (finally) upcoming localized versions of the FSInsider.com website.

Ben

There are always a number of highlights: I met a teenager called Ben who shot approaches in the FSX Airbus better than anyone I’d ever seen. I had a surprisingly long and effective conversation with a gentleman who spoke no English but understood my halting German perfectly well – by reading my lips, as he is fully hearing-impaired. I met a retired Polizei helicopter pilot who uses FS at least two hours a day to stay sharp. And, of course, a lot of kids (wearing color-coded wristbands that indicated their age group and ostensibly kept them from getting to close to the painting with the girl under it) who loved bouncing the F-18 around and showing off the afterburner.

It’s always educational to stand face to face with the people who swap their Euros for a couple of DVD’s we put in a box.

Is it Possible to be Interesting When Your Vocabulary is About the Same Size as That of a Fairly Stupid Dog?
On my last night, after leaving the Messe for the last time this year, I went back to the hotel and dressed for dinner at a restaurant called Panorama on the top of the City Hochhaus building. The building, at 142.5 meters the tallest in the former East Germany, was built from 1968-1972. The structure, as designed by Russian-born German Modernist Hermann Henselmann, is meant to look like an open book; given the era in which it was built, I would suppose that to be

Schönes Leipzig

no more or less ironic then the Demokratische in Deutsche Demokratische Republik. The restaurant overlooked the city, affording a gorgeous view which, like my mood, was thoughtful and slowly going hazy-pink with the sunset (and the wine). I fought it for a while, then finally gave in to the inevitable sentimental reflection, and thought back on the people I’d met, the friends I’d seen again, and the strange sense of satisfaction I’d gotten from even the most basic of conversations when they were successfully conducted in German.

I can’t say that I developed a "command" of the language by any stretch of the imagination. I did, however, manage a series of reasonably confident requests of the language, and those got significantly better each day. By the end, I was at the point where I could do a lot of customer interactions (but certainly not all of them) entirely in German. That’s not to say that I didn’t make a fool of myself more than a few times in conversation, of course … For instance: I have (I wish I could say "had") a maddening tendency to confuse the German words for "hours" and "o’clock" and, conveniently, "before" and "after".  Two of the show days required us to staff the booth for 11 hours, up from the usual 9, which gets to feeling a skosh long after about the halfway point. It wasn’t uncommon for me to stretch, look at my watch in a rare break from customer traffic, and say something bloody brilliant like "There is only three more o’clocks after seven hours we close before. Yes?"

Ich habe "Savoir Faire" … nicht.

There were several occasions when I found myself communicating with people to the point where I was beginning to skip the bit where I’d translate everything to and from English in my head, only to run into a massive hole in my contextual vocabulary. I’d be referencing something fairly arcane, like the operation of an autopilot, or thrust reversers that only work when the airplane’s wheels are touching the ground, then I’d freeze, paralyzed, because I didn’t know a word like "if" or "because" or "always". It was an even stranger sensation when confidence wandered into overconfidence and someone would fire off a barrage of sehr schnell German at me, perhaps even at my request, and, after three sentences, I realized I hadn’t understood so much as a syllable. For a fraction of a second, it was frightening, feeling like I’d imagine one might when having a stroke. Then I’d take a breath, and offer my white flag with as much dignity as I could: "Excuse me, please, I do not speak German very well."

Even though it was frustrating if I wasn’t learning as fast as I wanted, there’s a certain freedom in trying really hard with a limited vocabulary. People tended to look out for me, finding a certain pitiable charm in my dogged determination to announce what time it is. Every time I spoke to someone for the first time, they’d get this gentle smirk on their faces as they tilted their heads to the side in a "Oh, bless his little heart" sort of way. (Except for one guy, who tilted his head in more of a "This American is an idiot. I wonder if I could grab his wallet?" sort of way.)

It makes me wonder if I’ll still have any German-speaking friends when and if my vocabulary actually improves. Thankfully, I’ve got at least a year to forget as much of what I’ve learned as possible.

Over the course of the week I had one memorable conversation after another. My proudest moment in German was the time that I was able to tell a funny story with something approaching reasonable timing, entirely in unhesitating German, start to finish. The story was about how I’d gone to get a haircut the evening of the first day, and I ended up in a place where no one spoke any English at all. To top it off, the woman who actually cut my hair … had never done it before. I was her first customer, and the only relevant words I knew were "haircut" and the phrase "Not so short, please."

Believe me, this absolutely killed in the original German. Und vun vas a salted … peanut.

Well, I Have to Go Back Now
For better or for worse, the single most memorable conversation I had at the show was in English, with a customer that I recognized from last year. It really struck me, so much so that I wrote it down almost immediately. It was about mid-way through the first full day of the show and a well-dressed and slightly dour young man … Well, I want to say that he walked up to me, but that isn’t right. It’s more correct to say that he "reported" to me, standing nearly at attention, peering at me through small wire-rimmed glasses. This was our exchange:

Customer: Hello. I come here last year, I see you, and I ask a question. Now it is one year later, I have returned, and I have another question.

Me: Yes, yes! I remember you – it is good to see you again! How are you?

Customer:  I am fine. And now here is my question.

Me: Okay.

Customer: When will the Flight Simulator X Expansion Pack Acceleration be available for sale?

Me: It will be out this fall, in time for holiday shopping.

Customer: Thank you. I will see you again next year, undoubtedly with another question.

With that, he inclined his head slightly in my direction, actually clicked his heels, turned, and strode away purposefully through the crowd. I did not see him again. I’m left wondering, even worrying a little, about next year’s question, and those after that. For some reason, I have a strange feeling they’re going to get progressively more difficult, but I can’t say why. 

In any language.  

Additional Photos:

USA Miss Liberty Fashion! We’re Number One! Take That, Europe!	It’s Great to See The Rest of the World Catching- Oh, That’s Just Mean, Never Mind	Microsoft Germany’s Local Support Staff Ensured That I Never Had to Leave the Booth For Any Reason Whatsoever	The Hotel Bar Made Me Feel Welcome, Even Naming a Drink After Me
Aerosoft’s Enviable Cockpit Display	Remind Me to Send Flowers on Motherboards’ Day	Because Why Not?	Popularity Contest
	Why We Always Test Our Menus in German	Hello, Kitty!