And another personalised greeting to my congregation: Hello Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. And a "Get well soon!" to Wiebke and her family as they have the swine flu. Well I have originally planed to write a short story on Amsterdam but that takes more time than I have thought first. So in order to keep pace with events, I decided to put the pictures and the boring naked truth on my blog first and I´ll post the story whenever it is ready...
On Friday I arrived in Amsterdam and Marc and Michiel picked me up from the station..
We went to Marc´s place and I was introduced to the girls of the family
Titia and Lucy (I only hope I got the spelling right...)
Marc still looks like he always did and the children actually suit him...
Father and son
Well, the children got some food and we decided it was beer´o clock
And at one point the children had to go to bed...Michiel kissing his sister goodnight...sweet....It was quite funny to watch Michiel protesting at the inhumane cruelty of being put to bed. He tried the rational approach "I´m not tired" and then the more emotional one "I don´t WANT to go to bed" but his parents showed no mercy...
Well, with the children tucked away Marc and me sat and smoked and watched the sun go down. While I was visiting my old friends over the last month I found that firstly there are some friendships that will survive time and space no matter what and secondly that all the friendships are quite special in the sense of the topics you can talk about with your friends. There are friends I can talk music the whole night or others with whom I talk movies or travels or whatever, with Marc I talk women. I don´t want to bore you with details but we had quite an animated conversation on the women of our past and present and how our previous relationships have made us the men we are now...
After dark we decided to pay Amsterdam´s night life a visit...
...but you can´t get too drunk as there are holes in the pavement all the time...
Amsterdam at night
the Red Light District...Well, Marc and me had a very civilised night out, just some beers, no hard alcohol and some greasy food and a nice healthy walk back home...
And at 4.30am we were home...and after some sleep we had to help Michiel with his train...
the good thing was that we behaved civilised the night before...
and in the end we even managed to build decent train tracks...
Lucy occupied herself (she is a cute girl)
and she quite liked the old stuff of the Holy Chao Marc and me were listeing to
Well, as I know how easy new parents could be offended I won´t compare the babies or children. They are all cute...from Otto´s and Mickey´s Jan who is the oldest down to Mark´s and Yvonne´s David...
Me looking stupid...
Father and daugher
Nice weather btw...
Amsterdam around early evening...I went out on my own as Marc had to have a fresh brain on Sunday to learn all the names of his new pupils
More Amsterdamn...
I like the typical architecture and all the canals...
Amsterdam at dusk...
The Red Light District
The good stuff even has a museum here...On Sunday I said my good byes to Marc, Titia, Michiel and Lucy and went to visit my friend Alex...Sunday was even better weather so we spend the day at the beach at the Rhine
The Rhine is a really big river...
with lot´s of boats...
this one was so big it was quite hard to get on one photo...actually that are four boats tied together and the Rhine flows from right to left and those big boats cause severe turboulences and each year several swimmers drown...well I didn´t swim too far so I didn´t drown...
Andre and Alex...it was quite funny to meet Andre again after 20 years...he still looks the same...
Me at the after beach beer drinking session...
Thinking what I should write for my blog...Ok, that was the update on last weekend, still have to cover this week, will do tomorrow...writing a more fictional blog entry is harder than expected bt I´m getting there...have fun, take care and cya
one day i'll make it to the'dam.
ReplyDeleteSee you in melbourne soon big boy.