Thousandapologies

Yes I know, I’ve been lagging a bit behind with post again…just because I’ve holidays now and am mostly busy doing other things. I took my summer holidays knowing I wouldn’t go anywhere, mainly because I do not like going somewhere in the tourist season. Also, most of the Mediterrenean countries are just too warm during this season. But I felt I really needed a big break from paper writing and sheer OUNL madness. Already now I’m enjoying one week of holidays and I must say not thinking of work at all, is just great

Up till now, I’m using my holidays mostly too catch up on some reading…a big pile of National Geographic, zoom.nl (photography) and Kijk (popular scientific) magazines was waiting me, and I also wanted to use this vacation to learn a bit more on photography, especially testing my new lense. Luckily, the last days the weather in the Netherlands has been great and I’ve been lazing around, really reading a lot. Also, I already made a couple of trips and more trips are to come.

My first trip was to Belgium’s and more importantly our EU capital city Brussel. I went there already the first day of my holidays, first a bit hesitantly, because I had to get up so early, and frankly I was dead tired. However, Brussel turned out to be well worth it. It took us (my father, brother, uncle and his boyfriend) about two and a half hours to get there, at which moment my uncle turned into a Mr. Guide at once. Soon we already got to see most of the interesting sites in Brussel, most notably the old marketplace. The old buildings there were just amazingly beautiful and a remnance of the time Belgium and the Netherlands were still united, in what is know here as the “Golden Century” (all buildings were dated somewhere between 1600-1700)…Wandering around Brussel’s marketplace really gives you an idea of the wealth of the Netherlands during this time period, which was the age of the famous and maybe even illustrious VOC (East Indie Company) . Here’s a nice picture for your enjoyment.

Next to its history Brussel also has to offer a lot of nice shops, boutiques and restaurants (which are highly overpriced by the way). My uncle for example took me to one little shop that still sold those old records, just amazing Another reason for going to Brussel is, of course, Belgium beers, of which we had plenty, see the “about me” page for a photograph After having not enough food for the amount of money paid at a Greek restaurant we finally, after I think six or seven hours of wandering, decided to head back home; the trip which luckily was quite uneventful.

Last Thursday, I made another trip with my “vikingbrother” Stephan to Aachen. Some couple of years ago we had the crazy idea of riding our bike to Aachen (about 20km), which turned out to be a quite nice trip, of course unless it’s raining. I remember this one time (yeah, yeah…at bandcamp…) that we spend the way back riding through the pouring rain, singing Irish traditionals in the mean time, and ending up being soaked on to the bone; even my shoes contained enough water to house a goldfish, or a couple of them. Anyway, now finally the time of the reprise was there; not being able to ride my old bike because the breaks do not work no more and not willing to take my new bike (being almost sure it will be stolen), we decided to go to Aachen by train.

Arriving at Aachen West, I took Stephan for the more scenic route through Aachen’s little Delhi and we ended up looking at old records in the first store we encountered. We continued our most illogical path through Aachen, trying to get there by the longest route possible; i.e. being longer outside in Aachen means meeting more beautiful German blonde girls…try to explain that to TomTom Anyway, we soon ended up in GlasKubus enjoying our “Latté Macchiato mit Haselnussgeschmack und frissgepfirschte Orangensaft”, but not after getting Stephan a bratwurst and he showing me a comic shop, he said I should definitely point out to the Namesake, and not because of the comics… Then, on the way to Hofgarten, Stephan introduced me to yet another shop that makes Aachen just plain awesome; a five story bookshop Of course, we ended up with beer (1 L, see picture) and were trying our new beer goggles all the time, sometimes they help…but still we found the number of German beauties we saw dissappointing, wondering what had happened to Aachen. In a last attempt I took Stephan to Mölkerei, where, I assumed, they were all hiding, but alas… anyway suffice it to say we had still a great time in “our hometown” and are already planning another trip there.

After last week of lazing around, this week will be a little more busy. Tomorrow, I will visit Aachen again hopefully in company of a Dutch beauty and Friday I will meet a friend from University, whom I haven’t seen in quite a while. Most probably I will spend the weekend in Utrecht, visiting Rob and next week I will visit my cousin in the lovely town of Eindhoven. So lots of lovely things still to do, I will keep you posted!