Gerrit Niezen

It’s been more than a week since I’ve returned from South Africa and I’m only now finding the time to write something about it. Well, sit down, get a cup of coffee, and let me tell you all about it.

The main reason for the visit was to attend my friend Eugene’s wedding. He appointed me as his best man and I still feel pretty awesome about it. I arrived at Jo’burg airport on the morning of the bachelor’s party, so I barely had enough time to shower and put on some clean clothes before we took the road to Pelindaba for a river rafting adventure on the Crocodile River. It was the strangest experience to move from a cold, rainy Eindhoven to paddling down a river surrounded by cliffs on both sides in the span of a few hours!

The next day we had an epic lunch of lamb shank, rice and onion rings:

And then I was off to the Kruger National Park with my mom, to stay at the Kruger Park Lodge for a few days. What an experience! Herds of impala running around on the golf course as you enter, with hippo’s in the river just a few metres away. My dad lent me his Sony SLR camera, so I was able to take quite a few good photos during the trip.

Check out the rest of the photo’s here!

I only had two days to try and meet up with people in Pretoria that I haven’t seen for quite a while.. so hopefully I’ll be able to see the rest when I go back in December!

And then it was time for the wedding:

The day after the wedding I was lucky enough to have brunch with the groom, bride and her family.. and that same afternoon it was off to the airport again. Crazy busy, but a whole lot of fun! What will I remember the most fondly? The fact that the exact same quote I prepared for the toast on the bridal couple (during my best man’s speech) was uttered by the pastor during the wedding ceremony, and later learning that the exact same quote was hanging on a wall in their house:

My dad was in London for business at the end of July, and made a quick trip across the Channel to the Netherlands! It was great spending some time together – just a pity it was only for three days!

Well, what did we end up doing? As we stayed with my gran in Rotterdam, we decided to explore the city and went to the Maritiem Museum, where you can walk around on an old training ship:

Walking from the museum to the river we came across a “Walk of Fame”, with stars’ hand imprints on the pavements. It’s here where I realized that my hands are just as big as André Rieu’s hands! Now if only I could play the violin as well as he does

The next day my aunt and uncle took us to Vogelpark Avifauna, a bird park near Alphen aan de Rijn. They have quite a variety of birds in the park with lots of shows and feedings to keep you entertained. I also learned a number of things:

• A lilac-breasted roller (known as a troupant in Afrikaans) is known as a vorkstaartscharrelaar in Dutch. Quite a long name for such a small bird..
• Watching pelicans and penguins getting fed is extremely entertaining.
• A condor’s wing span is about 3.6 metres. As my cousin Max is demonstrating in the photo below, his “wing span” is just larger than that of a toucan. My own “wing span” is about equivalent to that of an European owl. The condor’s wing span is off this chart (as in larger than the albatross shown)!

On Saturday morning we made an early start for Amsterdam, left our bags at the train station and took a train to Zaanse Schans. Apart from the beautiful windmills and scenery, there’s also a cheese factory, bakery museum, and my personal favourite, a Verkade (Dutch cookie & chocolate manufacturer) museum:

We also got to see how traditional Dutch wooden clomps are made:

After a visit to a sawmill and a paint mill it was time to return to Amsterdam to fetch our stuff, and then head for the airport. Thanks Dad, it was fun having you here!

Wow, I just realized that I haven’t written a blog post for two months. Then again, it has been a very hectic two months. A week with the research group in Milan, then another week in Oulu in Finland for a summer school. Two weeks of writing and debugging code for a new version of our demonstrator to show off at a conference in Riccione in Italy. And then, my brother came to visit!

We spent our first weekend in Amsterdam, watching the Netherlands defeat Japan at the World Cup, and visiting open gardens of Amsterdam’s rich and famous on the Sunday. Early (around 03h00) the Monday morning we were off to Weeze Airport (in Germany, and not close to Düsseldorf at all, ahem), for a flight to Bologna, from where we took the train to Riccione – a delightful little seaside town on the east coast of Italy.

There my colleague Bram and I presented our research at the SISS (Semantic Interoperability in Smart Spaces) workshop and attended meetings for a day and a half, after which we spent a little while just lounging around on the beach and exploring the town. Italy has the most awesome cuisine by far. Case in point:

After that we were off to Florence – Italy just the way I’ve always imagined it. We stayed at the Plus Florence Hostel – best hostel I’ve ever stayed in! They really have everything you would ever want or need in a hostel – terrace bar with amazing view, restaurant, excursions, excellent pub crawl, free internet, and very friendly staff. And we even met a group of 40 South Africans there on their way to Germany.

After two days of walking around in Florence we had blisters on our feet and I had to buy a new pair of shoes. Then we were off to Bologna:

After our day in Bologna we returned to the Netherlands the next morning, watched the Netherlands defeat Slovakia in the fan park in Eindhoven, and set off for De Efteling the next morning. And it was awesome:

On my brother’s last day in Europe we took a train to Amsterdam, left his bags at the train station and just walked around town, visiting the Hard Rock Café and Vondelpark.. and we found these little gems:

Thank you little brother, it was awesome having you here!

There are lots more photos for your viewing pleasure.

My grandmother passed away this week after a long battle with cancer. I know she’s in a better place now, but I do wish I was able to attend her funeral. I suppose you have to live with the choices you make – I’ve moved to the Netherlands for three years knowing that things like that might happen.

Luckily I had two friends from SA here to keep me company – I took a short holiday and we travelled the Netherlands from east to west over the past week. They arrived on the Thursday, and I spent the afternoon and Friday showing them the sights in Eindhoven – “Koninginnedag” (and “-nacht”), the Blob, the parks, IKEA, Stratumseind and various pieces of architecture (like the Son-o-house) in the surrounding area.

On Saturday we went to Amsterdam. Note that it was the day after Koninginnedag, and the municipal workers were striking, so the place was very dirty, filthy even. But we didn’t let that keep us from enjoying the sights, and we went to The Heineken Experience! The Van Gogh museum was extremely busy, so we walked to the NEMO science museum and did some sightseeing in the city center.

On Sunday we went to the Efteling – the most awesome theme park in the world! Hehe, ok, maybe just in the Netherlands, as I haven’t been to Disneyworld (yet).. If you ever go to the Efteling, do not miss the Python and Flying Dutchman rides, they’re wicked!

Early Monday morning we were off to Rotterdam, but what we didn’t know is that almost all museums in the Netherlands are closed on Mondays. We did see some pretty cool buildings though, and spent the night in the fabled Kubuswonings designed by the Dutch architect Piet Blom. A few of the cube houses have been converted into a Stayokay hostel, and it is a pretty sweet hostel – very modern, clean and breakfast was superb! It is not the cheapest of hostels, and has a hotel-like feel to it (but it is not that expensive). You just have to make your own bed, and for an additional fee they will even do that for you, and provide you with a towel as well That evening we had all-you-can-eat sushi at Shabu Shabu, where you can eat as much sushi as you want for two and a half hours, provided that you eat everything that you order (you get fined for each portion you don’t finish).

The next morning we took a trip in a Spido boat around Rotterdam harbour, and that afternoon we went on another boat cruise with the Nehallenia to Kinderdijk, a world heritage site with the largest concentration of windmills in the Netherlands.

This morning we took a train to Schiphol, stored their luggage in a locker there, and went by bus to Keukenhof, the world’s largest flower garden, which is only open for two months in the year.

And yes, it was stunning! (albeit a bit crowded)

The interesting part happens on the way back to the train station. The bus we were travelling in, packed with K’s Choice fans, was involved in an accident! It collided with a car, but sitting in the back of the bus we didn’t even realize it. When the bus came to a sudden stop, we just thought that the driver braked a little bit too hard, as the bus already made quite a speedy entrance into the bus stop when it picked us up. When an announcement was made over the speaker system asking if everybody was okay and that the doors will be opened, one person even asked why it was happening. As we exited, I became aware of a cloud of smoke surrounding the bus. Only when we circled around to the front of the bus, we saw that a car smashed head-on into the side of the bus. Luckily nobody was hurt.

We had to walk the rest of the way to the station on foot, and as we walked underneath the schedule of departing trains, I came to the realization that the last train to Eindhoven left the station two minutes earlier. Apparently night trains between Utrecht and Eindhoven only travel on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. This meant that I had to travel with Miek to Leiden, 45 minutes in the opposite direction from Eindhoven. At least he had a place for me to crash, and I woke up at 06h30 this morning to make the two-hour trek back to Eindhoven.

It was quite an experience being part of the Dutch morning commute though. While I usually only wake up around 08h00, Leiden station was already quite busy at 07h00. And there are people from all wakes of life travelling at that time of the morning. Business men in suits, teenagers on their way to school, pretty girls on their way to work.. yes, one sat right next to me on the section between Utrecht and Den Bosch.
I arrived back in Eindhoven around 08h45, with just enough time to take a shower and drink a smoothie before making my way to university. Oh yes, I bought a coffee and a bacon and egg sandwich on Utrecht Central Station, so luckily I didn’t have to sustain myself on only a smoothie for the entire morning. I arrived at the university around 09h30, with just enough time to prepare for our monthly progress meeting.

Last Saturday I had some fun in Amsterdam! If you’ve been following the blog since last year, you might remember that the Parlotones came to the Netherlands in October 2009. Well, they’ve returned for an evening of mayhem in Bitterzoet, the same venue where they played last year:

Once again, I was amazed at the number of South Africans in the Netherlands willing to support SA music, but it wasn’t quite the huge gathering that I expected. We were able to get up quite close and personal:

I even managed to get a short video clip of their “I gotta feeling” cover

I got to walk around in Amsterdam for a little while as well:

Never trust a Frenchman. Or, at least, a French shuttle transfer driver who promises to take you to Chamonix and then disappears, leaving you and six other people stranded in a Swiss airport. Our flights were delayed, but that didn’t give him any excuse to leave us stranded without any explanation. It was pretty close to a miracle that the one lady knew a guy in Chamonix who was willing to make the one hour drive to Geneva airport to pick us up. At double the normal price though: €50 per person, but at two o’ clock on that Sunday morning I was willing to pay a pretty penny to get my ass to Chamonix as quickly as possible.

That was the not-so-nice part of my holiday. The rest of the holiday was absolutely, breathtakingly, gloriously awesome!! Yes, it was that good. I woke up to the most beautiful view outside our hostel – the snow-capped French Alps:

After a 2 hour private skiing lesson I considered myself to be in sufficient shape to tackle the slopes on my own. Boy, was I in for a surprise! I quickly discovered entirely new ways of falling while having two long planks strapped to your feet. Though I could feel my proficiency increase every day, it was only at the end of the week that I realized that skiing will have to become a yearly ritual for me. Who knew you could have so much fun travelling over snow down a hill at high speed?!

Our first lunch on the mountain was traditional cheese fondue (delicious!):

It was only fitting that dinner the first evening would be in a pizza place, with Brasserie du Mont Blanc Blonde beers to wash it down. We were right next to Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, after all.

The next morning we were once again off to Le Tour, a ski area on the edge of Chamonix valley. From the gondola lift at Le Tour the view looks something like this:

On Tuesday we decided to take a little break from falling down, by taking the Montenvers train to the Mer de Glace glacier. After a 20 minute train ride on one of only two remaining rack and pinion railways in France, you reach an altitude of 1913m, the foot of Mer de Glace:

By taking the gondola lift down to the glacier, and a further 350 steps down, you get to an ice cave:

Interestingly enough there is a plaque at the top of the staircase indicating the height of the glacier in 1980. Which means that in the past 30 years since the glacier moved 350 steps down in the vertical direction. Oh, and there are people skiing on top the glacier, off-piste, requiring a tour guide, a climbing harness (to get on top of the glacier) and carrying your own ski equipment up and down those stairs.

After the climb back to the top it was time for some welcoming OBS (specially imported from good ol’ SA) and fun with snow angels:

On Wednesday it was back to the slopes, and we decided to try the piste at Flégère. Lunch was had on top of the mountain, and with a view like this I promise you – a burger and fries have never tasted this good:

That evening we had raclette for dinner – a very tasty dish consisting of melted cheese, cold cuts of meat, potatos, gherkins, pickled onions and tomatoes:

Just so that you don’t think all we did was to try out all the local delicious food, I’ll put up a few videos of my skiing successes and failures in another post. I’ll leave you with a photo taken from the top of the beginner’s slope at Le Tour:

I‘ll also put up some more photos on Facebook and link to them here.

UPDATE: I’ve uploaded the photos.

Have you ever forgotten your ticket to a concert at home, when said home was 1.5 hours away by train? And realizing it just as you arrive at the concert stadium? Yes, I almost crapped my pants. Then I tried searching for a receipt, or some other kind of evidence on my phone, to show that I actually bought the ticket. After discovering an e-mail confirmation, I was able to log in on the site where I bought my ticket and re-download a .pdf file of the ticket itself (thank you, full Firefox browser on the N900 ) With no internet café in sight to print the ticket, I decided to try my luck at presenting the electronic ticket on my phone at the door, knowing quite well that the printed ticket said “De kaart is alleen geldig als een complete A4-print”. No surprise there: the cashier referred me to the ticket checker, who referred me back to the cashier, who referred me to another cashier, who referred me to another cashier who quickly rushed me through a side entrance, after manually entering my ticket number on her PDA.

After securing ourselves a place rather close to the front of the stage, I got the SA girls (dankie koeksusters ) and myself some drinks. After the first warm-up band, we were treated to this:

The Street Drum Corps is a punk rock percussion band using instruments like garbage bins, buckets and marching band equipment to create a really unique sound. I loved it! But of course, we weren’t there to see warm-up acts, we were there to see 30 Seconds to Mars!! And this is how it started:

http://www.youtube.com/v/znni3M6mm78

Great fun was had by all:

So yeah, all-in-all an impressive show and I really enjoyed it!

But wait, the drama doesn’t stop there.. While planning our journey back, I realized that I’ll have to leave on the 00h00 train to make it back to Eindhoven, with two stopovers. After having a late-night snack on Utrecht station and saying goodbye to Dineke (we both had to wait about 40 minutes for our stopover trains), I boarded my train to Den Bosch (where the final stopover would be). As I boarded the train, I noticed that there would be a 10-minute delay, which would mean that I’d miss my final train from Den Bosch to Eindhoven. A stressful 45 minutes later I’m busy stretching with a few other people in the train, preparing ourselves for a sprint from the one train (arriving at 1h43am) to the other train (departing at 1h43am). Yes, you read correctly, we literally had zero time to get from the one platform to the other. Luckily the driver realized that there were still a few worried souls running towards his train at full speed, so he waited a few minutes for everyone to board. So yes, I arrived safely in Eindhoven. Good times!

On Tuesday I went to see 30 Seconds to Mars in Amsterdam. Expect an entire blog post on the experience in a little while. For now, here’s just a little something that caught my attention. My favourite song at the moment, “Kings and Queens“,

http://www.youtube.com/v/QMX3qv1N37s

has been used in both the Apple iPad commercial

http://www.youtube.com/v/HCmjucgQu7o

and the new trailer for the movie “Legend of the Guardians“.

http://www.youtube.com/v/x8RKCmkOyB4

Should the new measure of song awesomeness be based on the number of places it appears?

OK, so this is the first post that I’m writing on my new Nokia N900 phone (or mobile computer as Nokia prefers to call it I’m using an application called MaStory to write this, and I suppose one of the nice things about having a Linux-based device is that you’re really spoiled for choice – if you don’t like one app’s way of doing things, you can download another one (or write your own, or adapt an existing one, etc) without having to pay a cent. This may sound cheap, but when something is free you tend to consider it on its own merits, and not on the marketing hype that surrounds it. And since you didn’t pay anything for it, you’re not obliged to use it if you don’t want to.

Now, on a bit of a different note: One thing that is starting to bother me about the Netherlands is Albert Heijn (the supermarket chain that’s almost ubiquitous here). How am I supposed to make my own healthy meals when they always have “twee halen een betalen” specials on their tasty (but not necessarily that healthy) microwave dinners?