That’s good morning. This is not a language for amateurs.
A word on the danger of tight international connections. Northwest’s first A330 in Detroit destined for Amsterdam on Friday night decided it was broken, so the company flew another one in from Minneapolis, which was fine, except that my Amsterdam connection to Budapest was one hour and twenty five minutes, and we left one hour and twenty minutes late. So I sat for seven hours in Amsterdam. One note to travelers. If you are making a connection in Schiphol Airport and have to go through EU immigration (i.e., from the international side, which is Concourses E and higher, to the domestic side (A-D), and you 
have a tight connection, there is a “short connection” line at the left, which you may not see until you’ve waited in the other lines for a while.
I arrived at the hotel in central Pest at about 11:30 p.m., and even on Saturday night most restaurants are closed by 11 p.m. I walked out onto Vaci Utca (street), which one guide described as a quaint and lively pedestrian zone, which seemed to be pretty deserted, and was approached by a very loud and obnoxious pimp and a different prostitute in the first three minutes. English for “get lost” seemed to work okay. I came back to the room (after finding the 24 hour grocery store) to find that another guide book, had I read it, would have warned me that this is exactly what I should have expected.
Notes on teaching American regulatory law (securities) to international lawyers coming up this week.
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw on July 12, 2009 at 03:30 AM