Summer plans

Had a meeting with C about my job and where the program is headed and all that jazz. She's assured me that my position isn't being terminated (damn). Apparently they're hiring new people to take over my boss' job so they'll need someone to continue doing what I've been doing. So I'm going to have to either help them hire someone new or train someone from within the company. Uh oh. No one (well, almost no one) in my company really knows exactly what I do. I am an enigma....or rather my job function is :). Now everyone's gonna find out what a bum I was and how I used to basically just sit in my office looking and sounding important and busy, while doing nothing :).

Anyway, so what this means is that I get to go on my vacation and come back while I'm still employed, which is pretty cool since it saves me a lot of paperwork. Now I gotta drill down the details of the Europe trip. I'm planning on leaving sometime around May 15th, spending around 15-20 days in Europe and then heading on to India for three weeks. As of now the tentative list of cities is Madrid, Barcelona (maybe), Paris, Milan, Rome, Amsterdam and London. My rich and snotty colleagues at work who vacation in Spain and Italy every year, have made it their life's mission to plan out my trip for me. That's all they talk about with me these days!

Visiting and spending at least a couple of days in all those cities might be a little ambitious but I think it should be possible. If it gets too crazy, I'll take out Barcelona and Milan from my plans which will leave me with 5 cities (now that should be easy huh?). The plan is to fly in to the South (Madrid) and then work my way up by train and finally fly out of London. It sucks that the Eurail pass does not cover some of the local trains. Hadn't factored that into my budget (which is around $5500, maybe someone who's done this can tell me if that's about right?). Spoke with a couple of travel agents about air fares and they're still pretty reasonable but I need to act fast. Prices will get crazy expensive since summer is tourist season.

There was a message on the Duke admitted students group about setting up a website which would act as a centralized database for information on what everyone's plans were for the summer. That would allow people to possibly meet up if their travels were taking them to common places. I think that's a really cool idea. I'll also try to get in touch with future Duke classmates in all the cities I'm planning on visiting, once my plans are finalized.

And finally, if *anyone* from our little blogging community is planning a trip to any of those places (calling Wheresmydesert and MBA Cutie!...although I think MBAC is travelling with her family) or would like to plan something out together, drop me a line!