Busy weekend...

Last weekend was very busy but very nice for us. Friday our friend Pino arrived from Berlin. We met with Thorsten and Harald downtown, where Erik took us all to the great tour of historic Amsterdam. Although I always thought that I had seen a big deal of the downtown area a had to admit that Erik brought even me to places that I hadn't seen before. It was a very interesting tour.
After the tour we went for a "borrel" (a drink) to one of the bars, befor we all had dinner at the Ghetto (a gay restaurant).

Saturday was Pino's birthday. We organized a present and a birthdaycake. I went together with him to a special museum: "Onze lieve heer op zolder". A catholic church hidden on the attic of an ordinary 16th century house. The church was from the time that the Amsterdam was protestant, but they tolerated the catholic believe as long as it was practiced hidden. Is that what they call dutch tolerance?

Sunday we took Pino to the eastern harbors of Amsterdam. It's a new residential neighborhood with interesting architecture.

Shame on you, Jörg!!!

I feel ashamed!!! My last post I see is from the 18th of June. And that really doesn't mean that nothing has happened in my live... Well where should I begin?

With the weather? Well you all know that after the hottest month of July, we had the wettest August (it rained nearly constantly). Erik and I had seen enough rain by the end of August and that's when we went to Italy to seen Erik's new born nephew Enea. On the picture you see him together with his daddy just after he is born.

Erik and I spent some days in Alano di Piave, where Erik's brother and his Italian wife live now. We found out, that we will have to learn Italian. We stayed in the house of Elena's parents (the grandparents of Enea) to discover that we couldn't communicated directly with them; they only spoke Italian. So after the vacation Erik and I started with "Italian for beginners".

After a few days in Alano we went further to see more of Italy. We went south to Rimini, San Marino (picture) and Gubbio. Then we went to see Lamberto and Emo, friends of ours in Pisa and continued our way further south to Saturnia. Here we spent the rest for our time in Italy in the hot springs, in Pitigliano and in Orvieto.

We enjoyed some wonderful food, that was washed down with some great wines. The last day in Italy we went for our Italian grocery shopping. We brought back a lot of delicious Italian cookies. Pan di stelle: Yum yum!

Though we had only two weeks in Italy I felt completely relaxed when returned to the Netherlands. Ready to face an onther year at work, LOL.

12,5 jaar in dienst van De Kern

Er is natuurlijk meer gebeurd in al die weken. Ik was 12,5 jaar in dienst bij De Kern en dat heugelijke feit, vonden mijn collega's, mocht niet onopgemerkt vorbij gaan. Mijn collega's hebben een geweldige party voor mij georganiseerd. Liedjes, optredens, een quizz, speeches, onbeperkt ijs eten, niets was ze te gek. Ik heb geweldig genoten. Ik verheug me nu al op de dag dat we mijn 25 jarig jubileum vieren.

Het andere heugelijke feit in verband met mijn werk is dat ik gesolliciteerd heb op de functie die ik al tijdelijk één jaar vervulde (teamleider van twee teams) en dat ik aangenomen ben. Nu ben ik dus officieel teamleider.