| Round 12 - Copenhagen, Denmark (2004-04-13 -> 2004-04-21) |
Copenhagen, Denmark. "Been there, done that." is what I thought. It's like right next door, how fun can that be. Well, as it turned out, plenty of fun!
We got there on tuesday morning (and if you know the drill we usually did the travelling on monday since we had to get to work on tuesday) and
like with Helsinki the flight hardly took even an hour and then taxi to the embassy and met the staff. Now the person we work the most with
at the embassies is the person in charge of the administrative side of things and the day-to-day stuff. This was in 9/10 cases a women who had
done years and years of service for the state department working at embassies and originally secretaries. This was the 10th version -
a cool guy that personified "metrosexual". Really funny guy!
We got right to work and the first thing I did was backing all the data before I start dismantling it. I never really knew why
we did that but I was soon to find out. Tuesday went off without a hitch, then down to the Admiral hotel at the harbour to enjoy a
beer or two. Or three. Beer in Denmark is so cheap.
After a good night sleep I got the embassy to work on the old mail system only to find that it had completely had a meltdown! The controller
for the harddrives wasn't working so there was noway to get it up and going right there and then. I called back to homebase and they told me
to call HP support in Denmark and after talking with them it was either flying in a new controller from their storage in Scotland or take
down an old server from Stockholm and replace it. Either solution would have taken atleast 24 hours and that's when I showed them why
they hired me and came up with option #3 - screw it and startup all the new stuff 3 days ahead of schedule. Because I had everything
backed up on the laptop already so I didn't need to get the old server running! That had never been done before and it was so totally not by the book or checklist but since the guy in charge of the technical side of things was on holiday
he couldn't be bothered and gave me the go ahead. And I was able to squeze in 3 days of work in 12 hours and the new system was up
and running and they started logging in on thursday morning, as opposed to monday morning as the schedule was. It was my finest
hour during this project showing I could handle a good screwed up situtation and solve the problem right there and then. After this problem
was solved I was way ahead of schedule and took the rest of the work slowly and just enjoyed myself.
There were plenty of restaurants in the neighbourhood so lunching was no problem at all. We did find and asian place nearby that was
really good so we usually lunched there. During the evenings we walked around town trying to find new parts we hadn't seen before and
try new beer. Unfortunately there wasn't much beer besides Carlsberg!
For the weekend we took a boattrip around the harbour getting the normal tourist ride. Then we ended up walking and walking alot! We walked all the way
over to Christiania which is like the headquarters of anarchy in scandinavia. It wasn't at all what I expected and I did get worried that
the place was surrounded by police just waiting for the people there to do something illegal. After taking some "I was here!" pictures we
walked back to Tivoli. Unfortunately it was a bit late to do any rides or anything so we ended up enjoying a dinner at the Hard Rock Café
instead which was just fine. Then walking back to the hotel and sleeping.
Then back to work and finished it off uneventfully and I went home on the wednesday exactly as scheduled. As I said, I wasn't
expecting much out of this trip but it was quite enjoyable. And it was way more relaxed there than in Stockholm, but also more expensive
since they already had gone over to €uros.
Click here for the image gallery!
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