Ramblings

On Thursday morning of Worldcon Seattle 2025, I attended the final meeting of my term as an elected member of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee. There was a fair bit of confusion about where the meeting would be, but we did eventually end up at a meeting room in the Sheraton.

As is typical these days, all we did was receive some reports and punt most decision on to the MPC's next term. I did address the members at the end and thanked them for having been able to serve as an elected member for so many years. The MPC then officially thanked me and I got a round of applause.

I told them at the meeting that they might want to take a good look at me, as there's a non-zero chance that this would have been the last time they were going to see me.

After the meeting, Don Eastlake and I both had errands best suited to Walgreens, and since I knew where is was, we walked there together and got our stuff. I'd initially considered getting a burrito from Chipotle to have later, but the lunchtime queue there was out the door, so I thought better of it.

That was the sole item at Seattle 2025 for which we needed my membership badge. Kayla will do the rest of the work this week.

While I was traveling to Seattle, Lisa was heading to Lucerne, Switzerland, where I had arranged for her to stay at a Holiday Inn Express in a suburb of that city. The location was good (only about 150 m from the station platform on the suburban rail line), but the property was not. It was the most expensive Express we've ever booked, and Lisa reported that room was tiny, had a bunch of gnats swarming on the windows, and was generally not a good room. They did acknowledge that Lisa could stay in the room (I'd worked that out with them by email in advance), but the housekeeper apparently kept coming to tell her she wasn't supposed to be in the room. After a few hours of this, she'd had enough, handed back the keys, and left. Unfortunately, getting back to Munich, while possible, took a long time and involved riding in the Chair car of a NightJet sleeper train (covered by the rail pass; she would have bought a compartment, but there were not available) to Salzburg and then a Dreaded Bus Rail Replacement service to get back to Munich. This morning, Lisa relayed to me the sad story.

The hotel acknowledged by email to me that Lisa had handed over the keys and left. I contacted IHG and complained about the room condition and the poor treatment she received. IHG says they are going to work to have all of the points I used to book that room refunded.

Holiday Inn Express is a decently good brand in the USA and Canada. However, our experience of those in Europe has been for the most part deeply disappointing, unlike all of the other IHG properties, like the Crowne Plaza in Ljubljana and the Holiday Inn (not Express) Heathrow Bath Road.

That's now two cases where Lisa had an unsuccessful sortie from Munich to what was supposed to be a multi-day stay but turned into an unwanted extra train trip. At least the train trips were all included in the cost of the rail pass. I think Lisa will be regrouping for a few days.

Kuma Bear reported a bit on the trip. He likes trains as much as we do, but maybe not this way.