Arte Hotel Genk

... Inside there was a Coffee shop bar that sold the usual range of drinks as well as papers,lighters etc. The 'exotic wares' were dispensed through cashier style windows at the back of the shop, screens above the windows showed what types of weed/hash are available and giving their price per gram, I picked up a gram of 'Pollen Gold' hash (Pollen has always been my favourite) and then got a coffee and mineral water and headed through to the ...

... I can still hear the cars - I keep missing sentences because of them)
It dulled over as the day went on but I kept the hammer down and even a bit of light rain couldn't stop me. Although some of the roads slowed me down (it was almost reassuring to see second rate public services again). I made only one wrong turn in Opglabeek (I missed As in what must have been very similar to yesterday's 'Eindhoven' incident (I leave it to readers to devise their own jokes ...

... but unfortunately the pic didn't come out

Sadly after this my relation ship with s'-Hertsogenbosch was to go downhill fast as the curse of the signposts struck again (see fig. 1 - guess which one I took first?) After the signs disappeared I wasn't immediately concerned (they do that, like I said) however as all traces of any signposts vanished for about 20 minutes, and it took me another 20 to find someone to ask at that time. And so it was with a sense of ...

... hotdog, which is eaten with both raw and fried (Asian-style dried) onions, remoulade, ketchup and pickles. It was fantastic and I'm really beginning to think I could have made this into a purely food-related blog... We arrived in Odense fairly late and walked, again through the rain, to meet Emil at the birth-house of Hans Christian Andersen. Emil and I rushed around this pretty awesome little museum. We were there for nearly an hour, but could easily have spent 2 leqrning about his ...

... we were picked up by Peter, Ingeborg and Maud.When we arrived at their home in Boukoul, Hugo and Twan were playing the ps3 so before longI had joined them and we had already settled in. Ingeborg's brother Renee also popped byto say hi.
Dinner was a homemade lasagne, and although there was plenty I think we polished it all off. After dinner we went across the street to meet Sef and Trees (Grandma's sister) for the first time, after receiving many birthday ...

The main reason I had decided to come to Holland in March was to celebrate my Tante Welmoed's 80th birthday with her. My cousin Judith did pretty much all of the planning and it was a fabulous party!

The guest began arriving at about noon and included friends of Welmoed's as well as lots of family. Of course Welmoed ...

... the student city would be pretty active for that fest or at least the foreigner students. Stan drove us there, and we walked downtown. Our first encounter was with the riot police! WHAT!!! They take these little monster seriously! Then further more and more police. Once downtown, we looked at some cafe and they seemed either empty or moodless, it looked like they were expecting some kind of party but the crowd was absent. We finally didnt go to spend ...

... small cursory road sign confirmed we had crossed into Belgium. It was an absolute pleasure to ride along the flat bike lanes attached to each and every road, a far cry from the stress and angst of riding alongside vehicle traffic in Australia, and we kept going for a good 25km or so to the town of Genk.

Genk itself was a fairly non-descript place, but when in a local supermarket we were each able to ...

Dit is de start van een nieuw leven! Een jaar lang weg uit de omgeving die voor mij gedurende 18 jaar zo bekend is geworden. Die bekende omgeving ga ik nu verlaten en ga nieuwe horizonten opzoeken. Spannend? Eng? Ik denk een beetje van beiden. Maar dat wil niet zeggen dat ik het niet meer zie zitten.

De laatste dagen zijn hier wel wat vreemd geweest, de dag komt ook zo dichtbij. Afscheidsfeestje is geweest voor vrienden en familie. Want ik ga ...

... here in Belgium cause its really really fun and beautiful too. We got up really ****ed up from the previous night. Stan was having class and I went with him to see how it was like. so like it was a first one of the semester, it was explanation and so. Im pretty tired and dirty and hungry but I did my first university class lol!! Later on I'm going to join Gil or her friends but I really want to wash and change before then. Otherwise I also have a ...