breakfast today is a more relaxed affair than yesterday…mike has another go at the whsmith bookshop — alas, it’s not yet open. i find it rather ironic that for years the european (and the british press in particular) has been mocking germany for their restricted shop opening times: 99% of the shops outside london don’t open before 9:00 (some as late as 10:00) and most close already at 17:30 (some staying open `late’ until 18:00) — the supermarkets being the exception. even before they changed the law governing the shop opening times, most german shops had open until 18:30…

midway through my pot of tea and today’s guardian (paper edition) a stocky, small man literally waltzes into the breakfast room, each step causing the floor to slightly vibrate. he is wearing a pair of red braces and exudes an aura of loudness somehow…funny. when i relate that story to my colleagues later on, i use the word “suspenders” instead of “braces” — not realizing that suspenders has a bit of a different meaning in british english…oh, well.

we take a taxi to the lab and spent the morning going over the work items and then leave with hursley cars for heathrow airport around 11:00. as we are way too early, i need to wait for 20min before i can check-in my bag at the fast drop counter…once that’s accomplished we split as mike wants to spent some time in the landside whsmith while i plan on stocking up on talisker whisky at the duty free shop. instead i first end up at the airside whsmith (buying murder room by p.d. james, bare bones by kathy reichs, and blow fly by patricia cornwell), meet up with mike and we both then go to the duty free shop where i get two 1l bottles of talisker whisky for GBP 27.95 each.

as it’s by now a quarter past one we are hungry and head for the pizzeria and after a 10min wait get seated…not realizing that the pizzas servered here are quite large (i should have remembered that: last time doro and i shared one pizza and that was quite enough) we order a pizza each…after a pint of guiness (me) and of bitter (mike) we stumble over doug and together make our way to the gate.

the flight back is very smooth. in contrast to swiss air who no longer serves refreshments and snacks, british airways has not yet become that cheap: in fact the piece of apple cake we get is quite nice — although the list of ingredients (pictured on the right) seems to be a bit math challenged: if you add that up you get a 104% apple-peach cake…

with a very nice landing (no bouncing around as the swiss pilots seem to be fond of) we arrive on time in zürich. as i’m over the duty free limit of 1l whisky, i declare my stuff, pay CHF 22 customs and taxes for the 1l and am still CHF 10.00 per bottle better off than had i bought it at globus in downtown zürich…