Amsterdam

So,

I came back from holidays last Monday. Spent wonderful days in UK, was in London, Brighton, Bath, Wales, Liverpool and Manchester. It was very nice seeing my friends Darren, Judit, Beverly, Jasna, Sabi and Klaire again! Darren found himself and his housemate Joe a very nice appartment on the first day I was in London. He immediately invited me over so I spent the first days in Elephant & Castle instead of in the Picadilly backpackers Inn, which was very pleasant. The first weekend was packed with shopping, drinking, dancing, talking and relaxing. On Sunday I met Judit, my friend from Hungary, who was having holidays with her family in England as well.

After that I was confronted with the Western bureaucracy. I hired a car at EasyCar to tour a bit through England, of course without reading the terms and conditioins... Whilst picking up the car I discovered I had to pay an additional 50 pounds of Young drivers fee, as well EasyCar did not sent me a bookings voucher, whatever that may be. Including the deposit I had to pay 650 pounds! Already when I arrived in Bath the second day my bank card refused working as consequense of this.. so I had to call my parents :)

My next lucky accident was that I pushed the on/off button of my phone so hard that it ended up being in the phone....with the result that my phone wasn't working anymore and I'd lost all my phone numbers.

The rest of my holidays was much more peaceful. Driving through Wales was very nice (though they drive so hard that you barely have time to enjoy the views), but it rained so I decided to only spend one day in Wales and move on to Liverpool immediately. It will be the European Cultural Capital 2008, and that is more then visible. I really liked the athmospere in that city.

Manchester was my last destination. Stayed at Beverly's place and met her girl friend. Jasna and Sabi were also staying there, they arrived the same day with Klaire who had driven them there from Edingbrough. It was gay pride... so lot's of alcohol were consumed. So much that we decided to stay at home on Saturday evening, suffering serious tiredness. It was nice seeing Canal Street and the Manchester Pride. It was less nice to take note of the treaths that the Brittish National Front had given prior to the pride. They're intention was to disturb the Pride, but the severe attendance of the Police prevented this from happening.

Now it is weekend again, I've worked four days in the office and finished loads of small tasks I had to do. This week I'll be working on IGLYO, Wednesday the board will arrive in Netherlands and we'll be having board meeting. Prior to that I've to finish some preparations, and start preparing myself for the Conference with Ministers which I'll be attending later this month in Budapest.