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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!ucbcad!ucbvax!arizona!budd
From: budd@arizona.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: european phone numbers
Message-ID: <3515@arizona.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 29-Jul-83 11:10:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: arizona.3515
Posted: Fri Jul 29 11:10:02 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 1-Aug-83 06:30:37 EDT
Organization: CS Dept, U of Arizona, Tucson
Lines: 17


        reminds me of a summer job i had while i was back in graduate
school.  the summer job was in Munich, germany, but through a software
house in San Francisco.  The people in SF had given me a phone number
for my connection in Munich, but unfortunately it was the number you
use to phone from the USA (08xxxxx).  Since the SF company just gave
me the dollar equivalent of round trip airfare to/from munich, naturally
my wife and i flew to london and took the train, thereby saving a
considerable amount of money.  All the while we took traveling from
london to munich (about 4 days) at the end of each day i would try to
phone the number i was given and make connections.  Each time i would get
a german operator, and since i don't speak german, i would ask if she
spoke english, and she would hang up on me.  It was not until we had
reached munich, spent several hours in the train station by the phone,
that we finally looked in the phone book, saw zillions of numbers
starting with 8, and did the induction that if you dropped off the leading
zero you would get through.  it did.