Thousandapologies

Well, it’s already more than a week since we have back, so I figured I owed you a wee update. Winterschool 2008 went by just too fast; The Namesake, Ali Nadeem, the Skippyboy, Blondie, and I all had a great time there. Unfortunately, this year’s programme didn’t contain that much relevant information for me, and while I also feel some parts could be improved (for example the overcrowded schedule), I still look back with many happy feelings to the week spent in Innsbruck. Again it was a week of getting to know people in the field of e-learning and meeting again with people we met earlier at the previous Winterschool or Summerschool; luckily most of the people were splendid company, which we also noticed at the Wednesday, when we formed bonds sledging down a mountain and on Thursday, going into Innsbruck for the evening for a jolly night full of laughter, pints of vitamine G, and crappy pizza’s. It seems to me that these events were even most important, because these are were real contacts are made; first getting to know each other personally, can lead to lasting contacts and maybe even joint work in a later period. Apart from this, I think for me, the very last lecture, given by Scott Wilson about Notification/Awareness systems and OpenId, was most useful and interesting. Luckily, this year we did not have to drive back all the way from Innsbruck and the plain ride was far more relaxed than the twelve and a half hour journey(inclusive two hours of traffic jam in the middle of nowhere) back then.

Finally, I do not want you to miss the Namesake’s account of my great sledging skills, which resulted in the two of us almost dying, me from almost hitting a tree, and him from sheer laughter, so here we go:

Wednesday and what a day! I almost never have laughed so hard, or have been scared for my life! This of course alludes to the sledding day! The Namesake, I, Danish and Enrique forged a bond of men, as we sledded down the DEEP incline! Of course nothing comes easy and there were mistakes a plenty, one of which had the Namesake hurtling down the mountain his arms flailing, him shouting “oh f*ck” as he hurtled with the help of good ol Newton, on his sled. I doubled and nearly fell down, laughing my ass off. Till now that memory of the Namesake flailing around as he hurtled half-way down the mountain, really makes me laugh my butt off. Well done m8! [from: http://tim.sodhis.net/2008/02/24/back-from-innsbruck/ ]

Carneval 2008 just went by too fast…maybe also because it was already so early in the season…when I really started getting in my yearly carneval mood it was already Tuesday and hence carneval was already over. I had a great time though with my good friends Rob, Stephan and Olivia. The first day, Saturday in Voerendaal is always awesome, also because then we’re always with a nice group of amazing people. Sunday, we watched the parade in Heerlen, started at around two in the afternoon and ended around the same time in the night. Monday it was time for the Rosenmontagzug in Aachen, although still fine, it did not last as long as last year, maybe also because it was very cold and a rainy day. Moreover, Stephan totally freaked out over the aggressively flirting German women, and asked me to protect him from them. The day after it was the big parade in my home town, one of the last in our province and therefore always a big one, because all carneval addicts from other towns want to walk one last parade…again this year it was beautiful…although it was really cold and Rob, his cousin and I were already soon found in the warmth of a local pub. Anyway, check out my Flickr page for some nice pics of the parade:

http://flickr.com/photos/78327945@N00

Dum Dum Dum…think of the Beegees song, often loudly heard in the OUNL hallways sung by the Namesake and yours truly, and really the title illustrates my current allowed lazyness and moreover the lack of updates on this blog. I’ve been busy doing mostly none computer stuff, catching up on some reading, visiting some friends, eating too much (hope you had a merry Christmas too) and currently preparing for New Years eve (I wish you all the best!). Also I’ve been busy reading a lot on photography and recently bought a new portrait lense. So, enough inspiration for new blog posts, which will appear soon when I’m fed up with being lazy. See you soon!

Upon entering the train, a weird oily smell came floating towards us…I wondered what might be the cause, but it was a smell that went through everything. Weird enough, the train was not warm at all, although the day started already very hot and temperatures were well over 30 degrees Celcius. Soon enough we found out, because in Italy there must be a weird relationship between temperature and train speed; the hotter it is, the faster you go and with wide-open windows therefore the train cools down. However, at the next train station we found out where the weird smell was coming from: the breaks. Luckily, they did not break (pun not intented) down entirely and one and a half hours later we arrived safely in beautiful Firenze.

Next job: trying to find our hotel, which turned out to be quite an endeavour. We did not find a map, and the maps we had did not show the streetname we were looking for, Via dei Medici. We asked a person working for tourist information, but the answer we got was not clearly understandable, so next we found us some British tourists with a huge map but clearly no idea about how to use it (never heard of a register ). Luckily, Rob was quick enough to find the street, and surprise surprise it was only 50m from the Firenze Duomo…in the middle of Firenze. After that, we found the hotel quite fast and were told to certainly go and check the roof terrace, because it had such a beautiful view. And indeed it had, we immediately knew we would spend a lot of time there. Here’s a picture for you all to see the beautiful panorama we had when enjoying our Italian beer, baguettes and Salami (lunch).

Read more…

Short Version: lots of beautiful scenery, churches, renaissance, roman culture, expensive dinners, beautiful women, art, gelateria (ice cream shops ), an overdose of Americans and Dutchmen, beer, vino, knoore, pannekoeke, sjeel gezeever, one beautiful opera, warm weather and finally beautiful women (did I say lots of them?) For the long version read on…

On Sunday 30th of September Rob, D’r Lange (Ramon my Brother) and I started our journey towards Italy from Eindhoven airport after a journey by train without events. We left with Ryan Air at 14:55 and arrived two hours later in Pisa. Much to our surprise, our coats, brought from the chilly Netherlands, were definitely not needed since the temperature was around 25-29 degrees Celcius, hence beautiful weather Of course, travelling with my good friend Rob, I expected him to get into trouble one way or the other (after two holidays with him already, I ‘m already experienced in this kind of stuff and know I should really watch after him)…However, I did not expect him to get into trouble already 5 minutes after we’ve landed. Rob, always curious, decided he wanted to have a closer look at an airplane engine because according to him “he never seen one so close”, much to the dislike of the Italian air stewards. So after hearing some shouting and swearing in Italian, I turned around and was already expecting the cause of it…and yes I was right

Luckily, Rob was not in big trouble and we could continue our journey into the centre of Pisa, we decided to get off the bus at the main train station, Pisa Hauptbahnhof so to say and try to figure out where the hell our hotel was located…it should be near the train station they said…after asking around a bit we took another bus that delivered us somewhere at the boundary of Pisa to Hotel Bonnano, to our nice surprise a four star Hotel with nice rooms, satellite tv (mainly italian and arab…) and a mini bar I think this was the best hotel we had during the holidays. And yes, it was indeed near a train station but not near the central station, it took us another day to find out. After getting refreshed we decided to have a quick reconnaissance of the city/town and after a fifteen minute arrived at Piazza Maccaroni, err Miracoli which has about all the things worth seeing in Pisa, the tower and a beautiful cathedral, see the picture below. Since we hadn’t eaten in quite some time, we soon decided, after the usual amount of sight seeing, to get a pizza and some beer somewhere.

Next day, we went to beautiful Lucca. Last time when I visited Toscany I did not have chance to visit this town but heard it was definitely worth the visit, and so it was! Lucca is a small city, not as impressive as Firenze (Florence) or Roma but with a lot of character, a nice ambience so to say. For example it has a beautiful cathedral, a tower with trees growing on top of it, a typically styled bell tower and lots of little squares with nicely coloured buildings that are connected by small alley ways. This gives the town a rustic kind of feeling and I could not help but feel at home there, it reminded me of a town like Valkenburg here in Limburg. On other curiosity of Lucca is that it has a Piazza (square) that has been build on top of the remnants of a Roman theatre, which gives the square the typical shape of an ellipse. Unfortunately, nothing could be seen of the old Roman history, which for me is one of the most impressive aspects of Italy; the remainders of a more than two-thousand year old civilisation which are still so visible today.

The third day of our holiday in Italy, we’ve left Pisa for the second big part of our journey, bella Firenze! After leaving our hotel we first decided to head again for Piazza Miracoli for a visit to the cathedral, which we saw only from the outside. I’m lucky we made that choice, because the inside of the cathedral was amongst the most beautiful I saw in Italy. In total Pisa can be visited and seen in about two hours, and while it’s definitely worth the visit, I would advise you, would you want to visit Toscany, to get a hotel somewhere else if only for a somewhat bigger night life. I think we spent nearly two hours at Pisa’s biggest square before deciding to pick up our luggage at our hotel and head for Firenze… something that will be left for the next post….

First, you start a blog, expecting not too much people to read it, next, after three months you have already 1400 hits and after that…people start to complain when you’re not updating regularly or ask for specific film reviews Even this afternoon I was virtually bitchslapped by Till because I did not write a post in a week That’s just great, keep me at it, I say…so here we go for another story….

Last weekend was unfortunately the last weekend of my holidays, so I had to spend it well. Friday afternoon, the weekend already started in all its glory when visiting my vikingbrother Stephan. After a long time we decided it was time for another of our legendary jam sessions…one of those that eventually led to the infamous, if you want to call it a band you have my blessing, Shagwell. It already started of well by Stephan asking me to accompany him to the local Aldi to get some beer and coke (the black, drinkable stuff; some of you might have wrong impressions of the Netherlands). After that I think we spend about two hours of jamming, which was fun as always…but then…

Something called… Beerfest.

It was not us inventing some new drinking game….no not even us organising an early version of the october fests (very early)…it’s a film…one…I cannot even remember the story of in my current soberness, maybe I should start drinking again to remember…but for now, I’ll try to give you at least an impression of what the film was like… Stephan had already told me, the reason we had to get new beer, was because he and his girlfriend Olivia had drank all the beer the last time they had watched the movie; at that moment they just had bought new beer…Anyway, I thought it couldn’t be that bad and just started watching with Stephan.

It was some story about two American dudez which for some unobvious reason had to bring their grandpa’s ashes to München at the time of the October fests. In München they end up in a fest within a fest called beerfest, which is only for true alcoholics. Discovered they do not belong there, they get humiliated and lose all the beergames, at which point they have to return to the States. There they decide that they have to compose their own beerfest team and compete again. That’s about all there is to the story…and yes, when sober it sounds stupid…but watching this movie, it’s impossible to stay just that, sober…immediately at the start you feel the urge to join in the beerfest and drink way too much…and that’s what we did and it is major fun too; till I had to ride my bike home Oh, and please do not stay sober watching this movie, I warn you, if so, you won’t appreciate the (ahum!) story…

But beerfest was not the only thing I did during the weekend….On Saturday I finally visited my cousin in Eindhoven, whom I hadn’t seen in quite some time now. Visiting him is always a lot of fun because the two of us just share a lot of interests and in my opinion have similar characters. After a one hour train ride I arrived in Eindhoven to be picked up my cousin and after some little snack we directly went to a terrace catching up on stories and social drinking. I, of course, had to demonstrate my (now not so) new camera to my cousin who also loves photography, more even, his pictures are just beautiful. Still catching up, our next stop was the local pool centre, where we discovered we had even more in common; we both majorly suck at pool, now even my tactics (mo & mik, Ancona, 2007) failed in getting me to win, and we soon decided to move on to the local cinema, to go and watch Transformers…

Yeah I know…Transformers….but let me explain…if you were raised, like me, in the 80s, it’s just pure nostalgia; and in what other movie can you see cars that magically turn into oversized robots that never fit into the original size of those cars…Exactly…And, far more important, it’s the perfect Friday night movie, even though we watched it on a Saturday night…You know, when you come home dead tired on a Friday evening and just want to watch something you do not need to think about. It’s like those Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, but then way better, because Jean-Claude isn’t in it…Also it contains nice babes…And! you can still follow it in Saturday evening condition…what more do you want? Oh, and the special effects are great

Still here? I just told you about my admiration for Transformers….sure you do not want to leave? Ok, then I’ll just tell you shortly about the rest of the weekend, which most of all contained a lot of chicken, of the grilled kind….just lovely, when arriving at my cousin’s appartement, we did just did that, eat a lot of chicken, played a bit of chess, watched another movie and that’s about it. Next day, more chicken, more chess, more catching up and just relaxing on his balcony…perfect end of a holiday isn’t it? Arriving home at about five, there was something else I did….

I did not go to the music festival Booch? And I did not join my friends there; and was almost lynched….they even sang spiderpig onto my voicemail Also I was called a couple of times by different friends wanting me to join and some even tried to bribe me with little pancakes (poffertjes in Dutch)…they did almost succeed… but I am a sissy, I was just too tired and had to work the next day. Luckily, they forgave me and after a while they called me to let me at least enjoy a little bit of Gabriel Rios….so that was it again…I’ll try to update again as soon as possible, maybe even tell you about the cruelty of Italian women, but please do not virtually bitchslap me again…

Vorig weekend was het dan eindelijk zo ver; ik bracht een bezoek aan Rob Braun in zijn appartement in Utrecht (Uterech voor ingewijden). Ik was er al één keer eerder geweest, maar dat was tijdens de verhuizing, ik denk al meer dan een jaar geleden… Dus het was weer hoog tijd voor een bezoek. ‘s Morgens had ik Rob al meteen maar gemaild en gebeld dat ik later zou komen dan gepland, want de dag en avond ervoor was behoorlijk zwaar geweest . Eerst was ik namelijk een terrasje gaan pikken met Rob Collaris en had daarna in behoorlijk benevelde toestand een bezoekje gebracht aan de Naamgenoot, die me nog meer alcohol (inclusief een vreemde mix van suikervrij snoep, chips, chocolade) probeerde te laten nuttigen. Nog steeds verdwaasd (en nog niet helemaal nuchter) stapte ik rond een uur of 12.40 in de trein om rond een uur of drie door Rob te worden opgepikt van het station.

En ja, jullie raden het al, het ging meteen door naar het terras. Rob had me al verteld dat we zouden gaan barbequen en dat Christian (een oude schoolvriend) en Annick Pin (ook van bernardinus maar die kende ik nog niet) ons later zouden vergezellen. Lopend door Utrecht vroeg ik Rob al terloops of er ergens een begrafenis aan de gang was, omdat er nogal veel vreemd ogende, in het zwart uitgedoste mensen rondliepen. Rob opperde dat het waarschijnlijk geen begrafenis was, maar een gothic festival ergens in Utrecht, en dat al die mensen hun kleren, met een hoeveelheid latex waar durex jaloers van zou worden, toch bij één van Utrechts sexshops moesten hebben gekregen. Christian bood later uitkomst door te verklaren dat er inderdaad één of ander black metal festival in Utrecht aan de gang was en dat dat de grote hoeveelheid vreemd uitgedoste mensen wel moest verklaren…We hebben ons in ieder geval vermaakt met “poppetjes” kijken; oh en jah, zou iemand me kunnen uitleggen waarom sommige meisjes gemuilkorfd waren? :S

Na twee Weienstephan werd het tijd om eens richting Rob te gaan, met een kleine, maar uiterst nuttige tussenstop bij Christian. Daar hebben namelijk een kleine cursus boogschieten gehad, en hoewel ik van Christian niet op Rob mocht schieten, was het erg leuk. Ik zal er maar bij vertellen dat geen onschuldige dieren of mensen gewond zijn geraakt in onze perikelen, omdat ik weet hoezeer jullie mij met dit soort wapentuig vertrouwen. Daarna werd het echter nog veek gevaarlijker…Rob ging namelijk, nadat we bij hem waren gearriveerd, vuurstoken voor de barbeque En jah hoor mensen, ik heb een actiefoto.

Na een tijdje arriveerde Annick ook en kon het vreet en zuipfestijn eindelijk beginnen. Moet zeggen dat het eten en drinken allebei zeer lekker gesmaakt heeft. Ook was het aangenaam om met Annick kennis te maken, vooral ook met haar zangcapaciteiten en het was ook geweldig om weer eens met Christian en Rob de oude verhalen op te halen over onze middelbare schooltijd. Het was een supergezellige avond en we lagen dan uiteindelijk ook pas rond een uur of vijf in bed, om rond twaalf uur weer wakker te worden met een geniale quote “Naef, hubse zin op e beerke”, toch maar geweigerd…

Last Friday our colleagues and I watched the Simpsons movie over at the Namesake’s…While I could not really be impressed by the movie itself (maybe it was the amount of alcohol still in my blood from the afternoon) , one song has been haunting me ever since. It’s just brilliant, and probably I also drove Rob and Christian crazy singing it all the time on Saturday…This was the best version I could find on youtube:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2uZkae8ra8]

Erg leuke dag in Aachen gehad gisteren, waarschijnlijk ook door het leuke gezelschap. Als bijna altijd in Aachen, heb ik daar de Ierse shop bezocht, altijd erg leuk, hoewel behoorlijk duur. Toch kon ik het niet laten het volgende mee te nemen:

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!