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Posts tagged united kingdom
Frimley and the office
The Sir William Siemens Square in Frimley (formerly Frimley Square) – that’s the place where my employer took up residence for his UK headquarter back in 2007. The typical Siemens policy “far outside where it’s cheap” was taken into account once more – with all advantages and disadvantages. Despite perfect country idyll and therefore plenty of space, there is a legal parking rate of the car parks directly besides the office that aren’t allowed to raise. This regulation that should strengthen the public transportation would make sense – would there be any public transportation. :) So more parking space is rented offside (not legaly prohibited) and people are getting transfered to the office by private buses. So every poor fellow who isn’t important enough and/or forgot to book his space (what has to be done daily and isn’t possible for more than one day per booking) has 30 minutes more apart from his/her family – the time to actually book it in the intranet not included. As terrific as complicated – the system could almost be German. Altogether: I need to discuss my admittance every day again, because my German numberplate isn’t recognized by the camera. And the intercom-bell obviously is – as usual in England – on the right side of the car. ;) And that’s how my job started…
However, once on the office area, everything feels good. Even very good. A nice welcome, quick but good briefing, team introduction, interesing airport project and in addition nice conveniences like modern offices with a nice plaza in between, Starbucks, free tea, free gym and a modern restaurant in Jamie Oliver style. Good preconditions for spending 8 month.
My personal objective was to move as close as possible to the City of London. The promised company-sided relocation service turned out to be just financial support. The searching of accomendations I needed to do alone. And also because of that reason it took me a while. After 14 days in the Casa hotel I needed a change and this change I found in the form of a colleague-recommendation. A nice and pleasant international shared flat with Elisa (GER), Zue (Malaysia), Christopher (GER) and Pavol (Slovakia) – and just 300 metres distance to the office. Ideal to buy some time to take a closer look to London’s apartment market in a more relaxed way. And after a while (quite A while of more or less more than a month) I finally found the perfect flat in Richmond…
United Kingdom – Arrival
And here I am since more or less two month now. LONDON, and Frimley respectively. Frimley is close to Camberley and Sandhurst. The latter most of you’ll probably already know because of the Royal Military Academy. Normally the royal family sends their men to this place so that they get trained as officers – recently William and Harry. Well, Frimley, Camberley and Sandhurst are bordering on the M3, a motorway that is heading to the south-west (bottom left) to Southampton. It’s not more than 54 km distance from the centre of London (Westminster), but already outside the M25-circle (a motorway ring that leads around London and outlines more or less the border of Greater London – a bit like the Yamanote ring in Tokyo) and because of that somewhere in the middle of nowhere to me.
The journey to the United Kingdom at the begin of February 2010 was scheduled for 2 days. A one-day trip of about 12 hours I didn’t want and wasn’t allowed to – after all I’m part of the labour agreement. :) Cologne or Brussels presented themselves as ideal stopover possibilities. However, Cologne was already checked on New Years Eve with my two Freiburg buddies Alex and Stefan – and so it was Brussels. Tanya, a Bulgarian fellow student from former Swedish times had unfortunately recently moved to the US. However, my old primary schoolmate Johannes worked and lived there as well and so it was a really nice evening with Finnish delicacies (his girlfriend is from – guess what! – Finnland) :) and a good bottle of wine.
The next day was rainey – definitely quite a progress compared to the snowstorms the day before in France, Luxembourg and Belgium. There was actually enough time left to drive up the French coast, but there was one thing I hadn’t reckoned with: the rush-hour traffic of Brussels during the morning. And so I spend the next three hours to speed up the Calais to check in for the Channel Tunnel. It was a bit like an animal transport, however it was fast (35min) and made sure that I put my feet/tires on British ground already around noontime. Two hours and a bit of left-hand driving and M25-ring later, I could check in at my hotel in Frimley. I had just leave behind a hubcap of the loyal Twingo of my sister.
The Casa dei Cesari turned out to be a proper managed hotel, complemented by a well-known Italien restaurant. Managed by Indians paired with loads of East European employess and a real singing Italian waiter. Really special at all, but also really likable. What remained was an evening in the hotel and restaurant before the adventure of England really started the next day in a working-related manner.