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/ ]

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

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).

And this was just the start, we saw so many beautiful things in Firenze it’s hard to describe them all…If I, à la Rob Gordon from High Fidelity, had to make an all-time city top five, Firenze would definitely rank one! All the city centre is built in Renaissance style with beautiful buildings, cosy alleyways and lots and lots of churches with a lot art and graves of grave monuments of a lot of world-famous people, think Dante Alligieri, Michelangelo and Galileo Galilei. Also the city is an illustration of the wealth and power of the Medici, the family that ruled Firenze for quite some time. Most notably this can be seen on the Piazza dei Signoria (hope I spelled it correctly), with its major town hall and a open-air museum with lots of statues made by the old masters, and of course the palace of the Medici with its beautiful gardens. It took us nearly half a day to walk through those beautiful gardens. Also an impressive building you cannot miss, is the Duomo, not only is it huge, on the outside it’s also one of the beautiful churches I’ve ever seen, entirely covered with marble. Also it’s incredible high, around FOUR HUNDRED stairs high, which we, being tourists and stuff, of course decided to climb…as if we did not walk enough yet…but…I must say, even with my vertigo, the view from the top of the duomo was most amazing.

Another beautiful thing you definitely should see when visiting Florence is the Ponte di Vecchio, a bridge covered with little shops selling the most expensive jewelry (hmm, at second sight maybe I should say, ladies definitely worth visiting, guys do not go near it in female company…you’ll be a poor bastard afterwards). Well, I should also say, the bridge gives you a beautiful view of the river Arno, which, during our visit, was covered in a golden October sun, a most beautiful sight. One we enjoyed one day by sitting next to the river, in the grass, enjoying the sun and our Calzone, most incredibly bought from an Indian running a Italian food shop…Next picture gives you an impression of what I’m talking about.

We had so much fun in Firenze, amongst others by making fun of fellow Dutchmen and teasing a bunch of fairly young Scandinavian beauties that our time in Firenze passed very quickly…the day we needed to take the train to Rome, and so the next part of our journey, came closer and closer. To end our visit in style, we decided to go and visit an Opera, La Bohème by Puccini, the famous composer who happened to be born in that little town Lucca described earlier. The opera was held in Saint Marks English Church (yes, they appear to have English Churches in Italy too, do not ask me why :S), a small but cosy church and of course something had to go wrong again. A week before the Opera, we already had reserved tickets, which was indeed a very wise thing to do, because the opera was sold out we found out on the night of the event itself. To reserve tickets we had to pay 9€, but when we arrived at the church, our name was not on the list…so much for reservation…luckily we had prove that we already paid and quickly some additional chairs for us were arranged…on the front row, which turned out to be most splendid. Oh how beautiful that opera was, carried out by a talented cast which, had I wanted, I could have touched, so close to me they were. Especially, the lead tenor and soprano deserve a special mention here because of their beautiful voices and impressive style of acting. It was my second opera, but the first one that left me (even us I can say) completely baffled, but entirely enthousiastic, afterwards. Know that feeling, when seeing a good movie, that it keeps running through your head all evening and even the morning after? Well, that good it was! Thus, certainly something you should consider when visiting Florence or Italy in general.

So almost time to bring you to Rome…but not just yet. The before last day we spend in Firenze, we visited Siena. Which is a lovely town which is know for its yearly horse races, which we, of course missed. Because the day did not start that well with me breaking a bottle of beer, in the supermarket, and cutting my finger in it…we decided not to rush and adding an almost two hour train ride to that…our time in Siena was unfortunately limited. The nice thing about Siena is that it is built against a hillside and therefore the town consists of several levels connected with little alleyways. In centre there’s the square you see above, which also functions as a horse track during the races. Even more impressive though is the cathedral, which I already visited before. At that time the beautiful reliefs in the floor of the church were unfortunately covered, but you see it’s always worth visiting a place the second time, because now I could admire these reliefs. Also this cathedral is entirely covered in marble and build on top of even older churches, which you still can see if you go into the basement of the church and if you descent the staircase next to the church there’s another entrance to another church…puzzling ey? Unfortunately this was already most of what we saw of Siena, and hey, we even managed not to get ripped off buying a cappuccino on the way back to the station. Quite an accomplishment…anyway see you next time for the final part of the journey

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….

We first met Anke, I think some six or seven years ago, in the days the old pub Sally o’ Briens was still around in Heerlen and we just started visiting it. One time suddenly a shy waitress had shown up, that really did not know how to deal with our group at first, but later became part of it. I think it must have been Christian that first got her to laugh at that crazy ensemble that was having the most enjoyful time there almost every Friday and Saturday. While the rest of us was also a bit shy like Anke, or a bit aloof maybe, Christian was mostly the one getting us in touch with strangers with some weird joke, then bursting in to a very contagious laugh, which made our whole group burst in to laugher too. This would mostly result in one of two actions: (1) the person was scared away and ran to the other end of the pub, never speaking to us again, or (2) the person started to laugh and we had another friend joining the club.

Obviously, Anke was one person in the last category, and what had started from a first shy encounter now has grown into a lasting friendship. Already, we had many laughs together… For example, that time she started talking Frysian, when the lot of us, including her, had too much to drink, because the wodka cola had been very cheap that evening. Or that other night, that we were kicked out at around 4.30, when the pub already had been closed for more than one and a half hour, and we had been playing guitar and singing with our heroes, the old firm…

Then, unfortunately, after the old pub was closed, we lost contact for quite a while, but after a new pub appeared, of which we are now regular customers, she started to work there and again joined the club. It was/is great to see that familiar smile welcoming us every night we visit the pub; certainly something I’ll miss this coming half year. But, if you read this lass, I hope you have a great time in South Africa, and come back safely with a lot of beautiful memories… For those who are interested to keep updated about her adventures there, I added her blog to my blogroll, so go on and pay it a visit!

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…