I left my job at Active Voice at the end of March '96. I'd been there since '91. It was a good place to work—I have nothing but positives to say to anyone considering a job there [Addendum 2021: in fact, I ended up doing contract work for them again in 2001-2002, taking on a project for which they needed someone in Romania; ended up working for them on and off in the 2000s, but eventually they were absorbed into NEC's Infrontia group]—but in 1996 my career interests and the company's directions weren't really a match, so after a bit too much effort to square the circle, I was out of there.
From April 9 through July 7, 1996 I travelled in Europe. Thanks to the increasingly widespread existence of cybercafes, I was able to correspond via e-mail; I had access at least once a week.
I spent most of April and the first week of May various places in Extremadura and Andalucía, with 2 days in Segovia and occasional visits to Madrid. Then I was in Barcelona through 23 May, then a weekend in Madrid, then off to Italy and Central Europe (Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Berlin) roughly for the month of June; then back to Barcelona (via Paris) and home to Seattle.
[2003 note, revised 2021:] July '96 I got back to Seattle, worked six months as Program Manager at Orca Medical Systems, then spent a little under four years in various technical management roles at Saltmine Creative (later just "Saltmine"); from January 2001 into early 2003 I did several contract jobs, mostly in Europe, then did some work for Lux, which was sort of a bastard child of Saltmine. Various other contracting, consulting, and independent softwared deveopment followed, before retiring from software in December 2020 and focusing on music. For further details, see my tech resume.