Guten Morgan!

I'm (it's me Brian) blogging live from Berlin, Germany. (That's right Kellers, the little red dot in Germany on your Clustermap was from yours truly ;-)). I decided it's about time that I contribute to the Thomas Family blog.

Unlike my lovely wife, who can update the blog with frequent stories related to adventures in child-rearing, my daily life isn't all that exciting to write about (how interesting are stories about how large corporations attempt to reduce their worldwide effective tax rates?!) I know some you are probably thinking to yourselves, "come on Brian, tell us, tell us," but I'm going to spare you the gory details.

Anyway, I'm in Berlin, Germany (something somewhat interesting - hence the post). I'm hear on a business trip. It just so happens to be the week of Berlin's international film festival (http://www.berlinale.de/). It's a big deal around hear. All the city's theaters are showing are entries in the festival. My colleague and I want to try and see one while we are here. But unfortunately, our work has been keeping us busy. This deal we are working on is supposed to finish on Friday. We planned to stay through the weekend, so hopefully we will have some time this weekend to enjoy the city. If anyone's been to Berlin before and has some recommendations, let me know.

The thing that bugs me the most about this hotel I'm staying in (http://www.hotel-berlin.de/default-en.html) (it was the only hotel available as this was a last minute trip and we only had 5 days to book the place + international film festival in town), is that there is no FREAKN' ESPN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean seriously, talk about torture. Everything is in German (on TV), except CNN and the BBC channel - whoop-D-stinkn'-do. This truly is painful. After a long day at work, you can't even watch Sportscenter!!!

Something humorous - on a busy street near our hotel there are some business offices. One of the businesses is named "Rent-A-Cadillac." Inside the window is a 60's era convertible cadillac of some sort. Who woulda thunk it? Talk about a great business plan. Talk about a good franchising opportunity - coming to a neighborhood near you "Rent-A-Cadillac - where even you can enjoy the pleasure of driving a Caddy for a day!" The possibilities are endless.

On a side financial note, when people say the dollar is weak these days - you can't really appreciate it until you travel to Europe. Talk about depressing. The other night we went out to dinner to an Argentinian Steakhouse and purchase a standard steak and potatoe dinner, which would probably cost you at the most $40-50 bucks in the states. The dinner cost us about about $110!! Ridiculous - good thing our client is paying for it ;-)

Anyway, I'll end my ramblings now b/f I say something really embarassing. Stay tuned for the next European blog update - coming soon...