Category Archives: Everywhere and nowhere

Meer plaatsen bezoeken -> meer leren -> meer mens

Prague

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Prague!Since a few days I’m home again after a very tiring but very enjoyable snowboard vacation. Tomorrow I head over to Prague, to visit Eliska and Zuza :-)

I had planned to go by train, but the costs are higher then the airplane, and it needs to be arranged weeks in advance. Going by plane is a lot of hassle booking everything last minute, so I think I’ll try my luck and go by car.

I am very curious… after some research I found out Prague is a beautiful historic city and I’ll be visiting the perfect guide that live in the middle of it all. Still I’m going to buy a tourist guide, together with a bottle of berry brandy and a packet of cookies to be well prepared. ;-)

Wengen

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I’m home again :-)

And I am truly exhausted after a fantastic vacation. One full week of snowboard classes with board professor Andrea. All the muscles in my body are in pain. I ripped my pants and broke my supposedly unbreakable goggles while falling really hard on the back of my head. I was called a lazy side-slipper by the professor and all the green-team members were feared (in a good way) in the hotel.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll post some additional pictures (if they pass the censorship). Now first to get some sleep.

Wengen, Switzerland

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Snowboarding!!!In a moment I’ll be heading towards Limburg (or some place near) for a cozy sleepover and afterwards I’ll be (studying) snowboarden for a week in Wengen in Switzerland. This year we have the biggest IP04 group ever. I think we’ll be a 10-person group :-), ammer, baraba, beast, em, emjee, fuzzy, herman, red devil, skiwi and me, so that promises to be a great adventure.

This year I’m going to be snowboarding the entire week (with classes of course), so for sure I will have to endure pain, extreme cold, plenty of ‘bollost”!, rolling soaking wet in the fresh snow, falling a lot, apre-ski-ing even more, trying to ignore the pain and have extreme fun!

This year I go equipped with some strong caffeine pills and I sneakily brought some toe-warmers I tested a while ago so I can spend at least one day in the snow with warm feet. I hope no-one will notice because fur sure I’ll be the laughing stock of the group if anyone sees me with my toe-warmer.

See you in a week!

Prague

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Becherovka!Just said my goodbyes to Zuzana. Today we went to visit Madurodam once again, and I learned that Escher was in fact a Dutch guy, we visited de pier and ate a nice herring sandwich. It was a very nice week, and Zuza told me I absolutely had to visit her in Prague before going back to work. In fact she told me I was welcome to visit as much as I wanted, and I would not even mind visiting her a few times.

I discovered I have a deep respect for the Czech way of life.Every day around one Zuzana proposed to start drinking some beer, quickly moving onwards to stronger liquors. After I told her I did not like becherovka, I was told I just licked it, and should drink some more. Strange, because I distinctly noted my throat burning. I got the advice to practice a lot more drinking beer and alcohol to be prepared to visit Prague.

Den Haag

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Er zijn een aantal ingrediënten nodig voor een bijzonder goeie dag. Goed gezelschap, een bezoek aan een museum, plenty plenty bier, goldstrike, becherovka en als afsluiter van de avond een bezoek aan de paap alwaar een of andere vage band optreed met een zanger annex gitarist die extreem zeker is van zichzelf. Deze zekerheid wordt aangetoond doordat de zanger/gitarist stukken gitaar speelt terwijl ie op de grond ligt. Hij speelt stukken gitaar met de gitaar op zijn rug, hij speelt met een brandende peuk tussen de snaren en noem maar op :-D

Native American

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Indian!Sometimes you just fold over laughing about absolutely nothing. Laughing so hard you start to cry and when you realize you are laughing about nothing it’s just more funny.

Last week my friends from Chicago were visiting, and they pointed out to me that my downstairs neighbors have a little plate on the door with their names on it. In addition to their names there is a very prominent picture of a native American, an Indian. Of course I had seen the sign, but I never really thought about it. The family living in the apartment could not be less related to any native American.

The initial discovery of the name sign resulted in a good laugh, but now, every time I pass the totally incorrect sign with the Native American I start to laugh.

It is just too funny that a typical Dutch lower class family, a husband, a wife, three children and three dogs somehow for some strange reason placed a sing with their names and an Indian on their door. I suspect they selected the Indian because it is a very colorful image, but it still remains such a funny mystery. I think I’ll just go and have another look. :-p

Americans

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Jenny, Lauren, Diana & Me!This Thursday Lauren, Jenny and Diana arrived. To make things easy they took a plane to Eindhoven. This resulted in a very early morning for me, and the need to drive a lot. Clearly the Americans have a different concept of distance and they cannot grasp the idea that in a small country like the Netherlands even a relatively small distance of 150 kilometers can be very far. Well, all things considered it was okay. The girls recognized me when I went to pick them up and after a trip to Leiden we directly went on to visit Amsterdam. :-p

Friday was a working day for me, but we had agreed to meet in Amsterdam in the afternoon. After my work I went to find the girls. Not easy, because my knowledge of Amsterdam is very limited, and it was difficult for the girls to give me clear directions. Eventually I did manage to find them and of course when I found them they were just visiting a coffeeshop :-p. What a surprise!

Vakwerkschuur (Job work shed)

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Desperado! The power floating behind ip04!It is over already…. a really nice ip-04 weekend…

Saturday we learned that professional sheep herders are really weird people, with a strange system of social priorities… how messed up do you need to be to place your dogs in a higher social class than your wife and kids. After herding the sheep we went on a 10 persons bike to make the neighborhood unsafe (quite literary).

Sunday we woke up with coffee and Jack Daniels. We visited the three-lands point and the only ski hut in the Netherlands. We finished the day like we started it with an extremely strong coffee.

Now we need some patience waiting for the pictures.