This morning I caught the 6:10am flight to Christchurch or should that be Auckland!

After two missed landings due to fog we ‘diverted’ to Auckland and landed two and half hours after leaving!

Anyway, having landed I proceeded to a check-in kiosk and scanned the barcode for my original flight and found I had already been rebooked on the 10:05 flight!

Within 5 minutes of landing I was rebooked and back through security – impressive.

The only down side to the morning (apart from being late to Christchurch) was the lack of accurate information on the ground regarding the flight.

In the last 60 hours I have ‘visited’ 6 countries. I started on Friday morning in Malmo, Sweden where I caught the train to Copenhagen, Denmark. The train crosses the incredible 7.8km long Oresund Bridge.

From Copenhagen I flew to Munich, Germany to visit our Munich-based German Sales-rep Tobias – more on that below.

The next morning I flew to Ostrava in the Czech Republic to visit our Web Developer Radomir – Radomir did a couple of years overseas experience in New Zealand where he first started work for us. He has since returned to the Czech Republic to Karvina where he continues to work developing all the Cadimage websites.

Today I found out from Radomir the fastest way to get on the motorway back to Ostrava airport was to go through Poland – Radomir’s house is about 300 m from the Polish border, something that suits him well as petrol is 15% cheaper in Poland - though you can see why as the roads are pretty bad!

From Ostrava I flew to Budapest, Hungary making it my sixth country in 6 hours. Incidentally, on the flight reading the inflight magazine I discovered that Ostrava was home to the great Ivan Lendl.

I stay in Budapest for a couple of nights and catch up with everyone at Graphisoft HQ before heading to the UK later it the week.

Anyway getting back to Munich, I have visited Munich on a number of occasions, but I had never heard of the English Garden a park larger than New York’s Central Park. The park is huge and stretches from the city centre well out to the north eastern extents of the city.

Two of the impressive featrues of the English Garden are the Chinesischer Turm – a large Chinese Tower with a nearby beer garden! And the second is the Munich Standing Wave on the a small man-made river called the Eisbach that runs through the English Garden. Apparently the wave was discovered by an Australian surfer. The spot is extremely popular with both surfers and tourists and is quite an incredible sight: (I did take my own video but found it easier to link to someone elses!)

I am currently in Malmo visiting BIMobject and Graphisoft Sweden.

I was here briefly in 2008 and saw the Turning Torso by Calatrava but didn’t have time to get up close!

The tower is 190 metres high and has 54 stories. It is the tallest building in Sweden and when completed in 2005 it was the 2nd tallest residential building in Europe.

Santiago Calatrava is a spanish sculptor, architect and engineer and the building was based on a sculpture of Calatrava’s known as the Twisting Torso – a white marble piece based on the form of a twisting human being.

The building is constructed in nine segments of five-story pentagons that twist as it rises; the topmost segment is twisted ninety degrees clockwise with respect to the ground floor. Each floor consists of an irregular pentagonal shape rotating around the vertical core, which is supported by an exterior steel framework. The two bottom segments are intended as office space. Segments three to nine house 147 luxury apartments.