When I woke up Sunday, it was nearly 11. I went to take a shower and was relieved to see Sydney sleeping on the couch. Sydney and Berck had been dying to see the Transit Museum, so I found a place in Brooklyn to eat breakfast. Teresa’s is in a very nice, very trendy part of Brooklyn right by the County Court House. Everyone in there speaks with a Polish accent, as far as I can tell. We ordered all the different kinds of pirogi (excellent), some plain cheese blintzes (excellent), some home fries (very, very good), some challah French toast (quite tasty), and some normal pancakes for Sydney. Unfortunately, we nearly died of thirst because our waitress disappeared for about three quarters of an hour. Maybe she was hiding from the INS. They were really hopping, and we were pretty lucky to get a table when we did.

Berck had taken over the navigation duties, and he led us to the old subway station where the Transit Museum is flawlessly. We then spent the next three hours there as Sydney and Berck studied everything in great detail. Fortunately, they show a silent Harold Lloyd film in a theater, so I could sit and relax. Berck took dozens of pictures of the old subway cars, so I’m not going to go into detail about them.

We were finally done around 4 and walked to an actual working subway stop, then took the train to Chelsea to meet Sydney’s friend who works for Google’s New York headquarters. I can’t tell you how excited I was about this. We walked up to a nondescript building on 8th Avenue and called Mike, who appeared in the doorway shortly afterward.
He led us up to a nondescript front desk housing an imposing black man, who examined our drivers licenses and took our pictures with a little computer cam, then printed them out on sticky name tags that we adhered to our chests. Mike swiped his smartcard through the little glass gate that you could easily jump over, if you wanted to risk the wrath of the man behind the counter. We boarded an elevator and headed up to the 4th floor.

At the empty Google front desk (it was Sunday afternoon, after all), we had to electronically sign an agreement that we wouldn’t disclose anything deemed confidential… with a mouse. It printed out even more name tags for us, which we adhered to the other sides of our chests. Then Mike swiped his smartcard to unlock the front door, and we were in.

He led us to the game room first, basically a huge rec room with a big screen TV on which to play video games, a pinball machine, a couple of foosball tables, a pool table, an air hockey table, a dart board, a ping pong table, an exercise bike, and two massage chairs. There was only one massage chair there the last time Sydney visited, and she and Mike said there really should be another one right next to it so two people could sit in them and chat. The next day a second one appeared, so apparently, Google really is a magical place where just saying something makes it come true.

Actually, Google is a place that wants its employees to be really, really happy. Mike says he usually comes into work around 11, leaves at 7 if he’s got plans for the evening, or otherwise leaves around 11 to go home. He’s a lowly intern currently, so he’s trying to impress them (and is apparently doing a pretty good job of it) with his work on Notebook. He said that as long as you get stuff done, they don’t really care when you work, though that may just be for the engineers.

All the engineers get two huge flat screen monitors to work on or one ginourmous one, except Mike gets one huge one and one ginourmous one because he needs a Windows box to test his programming. Most of the folks there run Linux, though he says you can run whatever you want. And new employees are immediately fitted with a new Mac laptop. There are no cubicles; everyone works in a little area with three other folks who are all working on the same thing, all while connected to folks in California working on the same thing by a video conferencing computer that runs constantly.

If you need some privacy, there are dozens of little offices with just a desk, chair, pens, paper, telephone, and, most importantly, a door. If you run out of a particular office supply, there is a cabinet with whatever you need just outside in the hall. If you’re hungry, just head over to the nearest snack area. There you’ll find nearly every snack food or cereal you could think of in dispensers. Gourmet packets of chips are in baskets beneath them. The fridges are stocked with sodas, ice teas, flavored waters, lemonades, or whatever else you want. We each grabbed a drink while we were there. On the counters were baskets of every sort of tea bag and during the week fresh fruit. There was a coffee machine into which you insert a little canister, put your cup beneath it, and you have fresh brewed coffee in about 60 seconds. There’s also an espresso machine. And there’s a mini fridge just for any sort of white stuff you’d like to add to your coffee (or cereal): cream, whole milk, 2%, 1%, skim, soy milk, rice milk, or whatever else you want. There are tables and chairs nearby to sit and snack and play with Legos. Yes, there are tubs and tubs of different colored Legos and half completed projects scattered all around. There’s a Google logo on the wall made of Legos. There’s a wall of blocks that extends across three tables and off each end. There are portraits of Larry and Sergey made of Legos that Mike and his buddy made (I think he REALLY wants to work there when he graduates).

The campus takes up the entire 4th floor. They’ve nicknamed the different parts of the rectangle after the different parts of Manhattan. Printers are subway stops, and the part they use on the other floor is called Brooklyn. When we got to The Cloisters, Todd called to say he had finally arrived. “Quick!” said Mike, “Everyone grab a scooter!” There are scooters everywhere leaning up against the walls. We each hopped on one and were at the other end of the building in no time. (You gotta be prepared for when the tile meets the carpet, though.) We went down the elevator and waited on the other side of the glass gate for Mike to fetch Todd. “How will I recognize him?”

“He has blue hair,” the three of us said.

Todd went through the entire branding process, and then we hopped on our scooters once again to head back to the Bronx. Todd was getting up some good speed on his when he hit a rough patch in the floor and wiped out. It looked pretty painful, but he hopped back up and on we went. We got a drink for him in the snack bar and some more M&M’s for Berck. Scootering with a paper cup full of M&M’s is tricky.

Next we took another elevator down to Brooklyn (or maybe it was Staten Island) to the cafeteria. Of course, being a Sunday afternoon there was no one there and no food, but Mike showed us where everything would have been. Google brings in a famous guest chef from somewhere from time to time to whip up something gourmet. He said the burgers were amazing but it was hard to find French fries. There’s always something vegetarian, something vegan, and a fish. There is always desserts, but they’re in tiny portions so you’re not tempted to overeat them. Despite the fact that he eats as much as he wants for lunch and supper, Mike said he’d lost weight since he started working there because everything is so healthy. Oh, and organic.

We walked out on to the spacious balcony where you can eat your lunch and admired the view of Midtown and the Empire State Building. Around the edge of the balcony wall were planters full of fresh herbs, presumably for use in the kitchen. We were allowed to take pictures out on the balcony.

We passed on visiting another floor with more of the same, although it has showers and will be getting a full gym soon (thus the showers). We also declined on using the bathrooms, even though Mike kept offering them to us. It occurs to me now that we may have missed out! I’m hoping they’re just normal corporate toilets.

There is also a big room with chairs and five screens that come down for videoconferencing with California, whenever they have a big event going on. There are also screens all over the eating areas, so you always know what’s going on (or maybe so they can know what’s going on with you as you slip a taste of Victory Gin).

Mike also showed us the corner where the IT folks hang out. Whenever you have a computer problem, no matter how small, you go to them, and Google has found a way to always keep them in the same place so you know where to find them. They’re the only people who get a Wii to play with, along with some other game consoles and a rack of DVD’s to watch. Mike pointed to the metal cabinets all along the walls of their cubby and said inside was any possible computer part they might ever possibly need to fix what ails you.

Out in the halls were an assortment of oddities, kind of like a museum. One hall had a series of ancient computers on pedestals, from an Atari to an Apple Newton, all of them on and working. Along the wall of the snack area was a long printout of the evolution of operating systems, which fascinated Berck. There were also white boards everywhere with encouragements to scribble on them. One was divided into quadrants: Left=Bad, Right=Good, Up=Permanent, Down=Temporary. So “death” and “taxes” were in the upper left corner. “Politicians” were in the lower left corner. “Battlestar Gallactica” was in the lower right corner, as was “physical love.” “Free food” was in the upper right, but that’s only for Google employees. Sigh. The rest of the board was filled in with all sorts of stuff where they should be according to the cross spectrums.

We’d seen about all there was to see, so we retired to the game room and played until it was time for Todd to catch his Chinatown bus home to Boston. We bid him adieu and took Mike with us to find the actual location of the Cuban/Chinese restaurant a couple blocks away. Alas, it truly did not exist, so Mike took us to an Italian place across the street from his office. Berck finally got his gnocchi, and the rest of us had some delicious raw beef. Berck ordered me the veal, which was good, though Berck deemed it excellent, and I was left with the rest of his gnocchi. Berck and Mike argued about computers, since Berck knows a lot about Linux and Mike knows a lot about lots of other things. Berck enjoyed this immensely. Then Mike went back to work, and we reluctantly went back to the apartment.

After all, we had to get up at 4 to get to the airport.