When do you want me in the UK?

Until the end of November, my job has been uneventful. I have mostly been proofreading English translations and took my German course. One of the senior managers came to me and asked if my passport would allow me to travel outside of Germany, say to the UK. After I told him that it would, he said I might be going there to Manchester. It goes for a few days and I don’t hear anything. One day I am bored and without work, so I go to another senior manager to see if he has anything I can help him with. He says that I can help him by being in Manchester the next day! How crazy is that?? (I have to preface this story with Alex’s business required him to be in Hamburg this week and we were staying at his hotel together which is next door to my office – so I would not have to take the train and endure the long commute that week. All I had to do was to go to the hotel and get my already packed suitcase and head to the airport!)

I flew to Manchester that night and was “forced” to sit in business class because that was the only seat on the plane available. I then found out that we always travel business class when traveling for a client, so I have to say I like this German philosophy!

The town I was to work in for the next few weeks is called Bradford. It used to be the richest town in the world during the days when oil was plentiful. Since the recession in the UK, it has become rather “dodgy”. However, it is also the first town that the Southeast Asians (India population) immigrated to and therefore hosts the best curry restaurants I have ever been to! Also, Bradford is where the Bronte family is from and you can see the church they grew up in and a museum of their belongings. Their father was a vicar so that is why they lived in a church. Because the town our client’s office is in is dodgy, we were staying at a Marriott in another town. I love England because everything is so historic looking and unique. Here is a picture of our hotel, it was so beautiful!

After spending a few weeks in England I came to the following conclusions: I now know what to order at Indian food restaurants, I have tasted every Cadbury chocolate candy there is on the planet, I love the British dry sense of humor, but I really cannot be around the Manchester accents for a long period of time. I had to call for a taxi once and when I said I needed a taxi, the man on the phone said “wash your face”. Obviously, this was confusing to me, so I asked him to repeat himself a few times. I then handed the phone to one of my British colleagues and he started laughing. Apparently the man on the phone was saying “what’s your name?” And they say Americans have funny accents!!