How not to....

How not to do corporate travel.

Firstly, and one of the more important elements of the today, was the departure form the house at 5:45am. This is not something I recommend.

Karen had to leave the house 30 mins before that to get to my house and we agree that this is not a good thing to do to the body.

Whenever an alarm has to be set earlier than the norm, particularly if there's a deadline driving the alarm call, the body goes into panic mode. Karen and I agreed that neither of us had got anything like a decent night's sleep because our minds were worrying about missing the alarm.

So, bleary eyed, I opened the door to Karen and she transferred to my car and I drove to Southend to catch a flight to Cologne.

At this point I should probably own up to getting lost, despite handy map, and driving around the Aviation Business Park for about 10 minutes before figuring out that it didn't contain an airport.

Eventually once Karen and I had put our blonde heads together we found the airport and then we panicked because we were still waitlisted for the flight. Then, when I got called to check-in and Karen didn't, we started to hatch a plan for just in case she didn't get on the flight. She could get a lift back to Dunton, Dave could give Karen a lift back to our house (via nursery and after school club to pick up the kids) so Karen could pick her car up.

Fortunately we didn't need to worry. Karen and I boarded the plane and were able to sit next to one another and we settled down for a chat, as girls do. Along came Mr Somebody who did that thing when people get on planes and they think you're in their seat. He hovered, and looked at us, then looked at his boarding pass stub, then looked at us again until it became embarrassing and I had to say "oh, is it assigned seating?" Turns out I was in his seat. As if it mattered. Karen whispered "shall I ask him to swap?" I didn't think he was the type, so we left it.

We got the coach from Koln airport and arrived at our destination. Denis had warned me we might face a 10 min walk to the offices we were visiting. We soon realised we needed to get visitors badges. So we filled in a form with name, address, passport number – I kid you not. And then they wanted another form for the laptop. I was starting to get annoyed. I don't do bureaucracy very well.

The woman behind the security desk asked us where we were going and laughed when we told her – not an auspicious start. She then said she'd call for a shuttle bus. All of this made sense as Denis had said it was a walk away, so we sat and waited, and waited, and waited for about 30 minutes.

This made us late for our meeting and I hate being late for anything. Not a good start.

Lunch was followed by one meeting, then another, then a sort of free for all exchange.

It was a good day for meeting people. There are loads of people in the Cologne offices that I talk to, e-mail or have heard about and it's always very helpful to put a face to the name. We haven't got webcams at work but I wonder whether webcams would give the same benefit as a face to face meeting. I know communication is 90% non verbal but I get the feeling that a fuzzy image of a face doesn't really count.

There was only one thing about the return journey that stood out as unusual, and exceptionally unpleasant.

The stench of sweaty men as we got onto the plane was vile. I should point out that of the 86 seats available only about 6 were occupied by women.

Fortunately by the time food was on offer the smell had subsided, presumably on account of arms not being raised putting things into overhead lockers.

I think there's clearly a good case for the return of smelling salts.