If I have finnished my last message on an optimistic tone, I decided to write the trip conclusion on an optimistic tone aswell, that is probably why I have let 2 weeks go by :)

My journey started to go bad right after my previous post … I found out the my flight from Budapest to Amsterdam was going to have a 2h delay and that I would not be able to catch my connecting flight from Amsterdam to Seattle. Moreover, as I had separate tickets from Cluj-Amsterdam and from Amsterdam to Seattle, there was nothing I could do …

Cooling down from this “awsome” news, I got on my flight from Budapest to Amsterdam, and while landing saw my Seattle plane take off (without me). When I got in Schipol, I managed to rebook my plane tickets towards US for the next day, and had no choice but to spend 25 gorgeous hours in Schipol airport in Amsterdam.

I had plenty of time to read some consipracy theory fiction novell called “The Camel Club” and to get to know almost by heart the whole airport – it turns out that if I walked pretty much around the airport I managed to get tired enough to be able to get some rest on the uncomfortable chairs in the airport.

Well, in the end I embarked on the flight to the US, but my flight was not a direct one to Seattle, but one that went from Amsterdam to Memphis, then from Memphis to the twin cities of Mineapollis and St. Paul’s, and only then to Seattle. With almost no energy left (and quite hungry – just found out the NorthWest airlines doesn’t server any food on their in-country short flights, and by short I mean 2-3 hours), I was pleasantly surprised to see that my luggage made it to the destination with me :D

There was nothing left for me to do now except make a couple of phonecalls home and get a cab towards Redmond. I was in Redmond around half past midnight, picked up my apartment keys and went to have a good sleep.

The next day, I realized how far away from the Microsoft campus I really was (around 7-8 miles), and that I hadn’t picked up my rental car yet – so I called up Bogdan Berce and asked him to give me a hand :)

He drove me to downtown Bellevue from where I got my rental car (a Ford Taurus SE), and then we went and had lunch.

Afterwards things started to get on track, the next day I met my team and started my internship “duties”.
Up until now I have spent some time putting the things on track, and getting re-aquainted with the area.

Ohh, nearly forgot, at one week after my arrival, my room-mate got into Redmond aswell – he is Florin Grigoriu from the Technical University of Iasi.

Since then we managed to meet a lot of people, make quite a few new friends and spend some quality time playing basketball and getting around Redmondm, Seattle and Bellevue.

This is about everything regarding my long run to Redmond. From now on I think I’ll write either more techinical blogs ( if I’m in the mood :P ) or more about the social life and events that will be upcoming in the next weekends.