Van der Valk Hotel Hengelo

... the beautiful sunroom they have. Pete and Bert were also comparing notes on the hardship of being a "floaty pen husband" – how every vacation is spent hunting for pens!

We then checked into our hotel and met Biggy and Bert downstairs in the restaurant an hour later for dinner. Wow! What a meal! It was huge and so delicious. No room for dessert, that’s for sure!

... farming communities on the German border, where things were slightly better. Dad used to tell us the story of when a bomb fell on the zoo. Opa cycled over there and came back with a chunk of the elephant's trunk, which they ate for a week. It was somewhat stringy, I believe.

Anyway, Dad was a thin and skinny thing, in danger of starving to death, so my Oma and Opa cycled all the way to Hengelo from Utrecht, in search ...

The cashew nuts were in a huff with me, after their earlier failure to give adequate directions. They folded their nutty arms and refused to tell me when to change motorways. I ended up back-tracking through a small village with no useful signposts, and some locals who waved every time we drove back past them looking for the way out. The cashew nuts smirked at me.

It was quite late by the time we got to Sander and Renata's farmhouse on the outskirts of Hengelo. It is a lovely ...

... and, even without the sound, could make out what was going on in the sitcom. This would prove helpful, because once we arrived at Coesfeld, I would be trying to figure out what was being said without the benefit of knowing German. Apparently I'm laughing in all the right places so far. On the train from Frankfurt to Munster we rode along the Rhein River. Beautiful vistas punctuated by a castle or two high on the ridge. Annette, the wife of Joysanna's host-brother, and her ...

... is outside of a small city, Enschede. I am only about 15 miles from the German border. It is like a foreigner signing up for a conference in NY and being discovering it is in Albany, not NYC. The University at Twente is similar to UAlbany. The campus was built around the same time, 1970. It was the only campus university in the Netherlands and the location was chosen due to the regional economic hardship caused by the loss ...

Below is just a silly sort of essay I came up with while commuting to work on a cold, gray, windy day. There is a sunnier sequal to it coming up soon. RUN! Leafless trees, lifeless lives And the unbearable greyness of being Just another rat in the race Just another rat in the lab Let them earn a little money Let them spent a little more Let them run in their tiny treadmills Let them run to the shops and store Nothing but stuff to fit their cage Invest ...

... grote stad, die het eerst voor mij was, verworden tot een klein dorp. Ik stond, toen ik net een paar dagen in Arnhem woonde, bij de hoofduitgang van het station en zag Hotel Haarhuis aan de overkant, de hoge huizen rechts richting het conservatorium en het drukke verkeer met de bussen op het Willemsplein. Ik dacht toen dat Arnhem nooit mijn stad worden zou, dat ik me daar altijd het kleine meisje uit het dorp voelen zou. Nu, zeven jaar later, ken ik alle ...

After spending the last few days in Amsterdam I could use a more relaxed day. Heading to Deventer today to drop some stuff off with a friend. The original plan was to head to Nijmegen to visit some more people but we decided to head back to Amsterdam and finish the night with some beer instead.

... flamingos. How strange is that?! But I loved it and was so happy that I could experience Flamingo day with the Germans! So we biked a good few miles to where the celebration was going on, which consisted of a cook out, children playing everywhere, and good neighborly conversation. Oh, I missed Foley a little at this moment. Hahaha. Sandra's family showed us their local church, which was very old and then we had a drink at a pub. I've ...

Travelled by train from Amsterdam to Enschede which is in the east of the country. My purpose was to visit the School of Management at the University of Twente. The university is situated in a very beautiful parkland environment. Stayed at the Hotel Eden de Broeierd which is situated close to the university. The hotel itself is in a nice setting and very quiet.