Running in the Netherlands...

I ran a 16km race today, which was fantastic (despite staying up until 2 last night playing risk and drinking wine). About 50 000 other people were running, which was crazy.

It went really well, despite having a headache and feeling sore now! I ran with Dominique (a friend of James' from the Candy shop). There was a lot of support along the way. And also an amazing amount of paper and plastic cups used - crazy. They were giving away bottles of ACE drink at the end - better than the Coke you normally get at the end of a race in SA, but still very artificial.

I also got a medal, and thought briefly of starting a medal recycling business - in another life time perhaps!

It's amazing how people identify with a brand here - they really "live" the Nike/Asics/whatever dream. It's a bit scary, but I'm very glad I grew up when and where I did. In SA it definitely was the case that not everybody had the money for brands, so you wore whatever you had, or if you did, you had parents who had better ideas of what life should be about...

Okay, enough ranting!

I'm off to Dalfsen tomorrow for the Toxics planning meeting - should be exciting!

Cheers Mbeki

Thanks for the economic growth, jobless though it was. Looking forward to see what Mbete can do in about 4 months!

BUT seriously, let's talk about Manuel with you. He's done wonders for the big companies and the rich, but to keep him on now?

Bring on the populist Zuma...

Travelling

On the weekend I went to England to visit a friend. I got caught up in the madness following the fire in the channel tunnel - basically meant that a 8 hour trip amsterdam - Canterbury turned into a 10 hour trip (still not too bad). The bonus was that I got to take the ferry which was a first time for me. The coasts of France and England were fantastic, white cliffs of Dover and all. I won't say which were better as I might offend certain people.

Once I got to Canterbury I checked out the Youth Hostel and then went to pick up Elodie from the station. We dropped our stuff and then went to town for supper and drinks and dancing etc. Good fun!

On Saturday we saw Canterbury Cathederal, which was just awesome and had me all mixed up about my Christian roots. One thing that really struck me where the plaques on the walls all around the inside of the cathedral commemorating people who had died. Mostly men in defence of the Empire. Wouldn't it have been amazing if we had the ideas of using kindness to get people onto "our" side like we had during the Iraq war. Imagine going into these (then) far flung places and using our "advanced" knowledge to heal people we encountered and bring them similar benefits to their quality of life.

Anyway, I digress. We went to Herne Bay later to walk on the beach (and got distracted by chloe and some fine lads drinking beers) and took a bried nap in the sun. We walked the pier and then caught the bus back to Canterbury. We had supper, took in some live music and then got an earlier night with me feeling a cold coming on.

On Sunday we had a Boho breakfast and then caught the train back to London, where I hopped onto the now running (slowly) Eurostar and made my way back to Amsterdam.

I fixed my other bike...

Only one more to go... Since James stole my brake lever I have had a dodgy left hand brake lever turned upside down and lacking some crucial silver bits. I am please to announce I have all the silver bits necessary now. I'm also quite keen to minimize the cycling to work in sandals phase - sandals and fixies don't always mix well...

As soon as I've fixed my mtb's front tire (it's flat) I will have three functioning bikes again. The coolness.

I'd also like to say that webcams are fantastic :-)

And one more thing. That Zapiro cartoon, now there is something to talk about. And I'm glad it's working!

Fixing my bike

I got back from 6 days of meetings, usually from 8:30am until 10pm at the Greenpeace Agriculture campaign planning meeting yesterday. It was a fantastic experience although quite tiring! And the Agricuture team are awesome - we had a lot of fun in any available time.

I got back to discover that someone had let my tire down and kicked in my back wheel. So I did the sensible thing - locked up my bike and went off in search of a party on the tram. The party in question was my end of student loan party - finally paid it off! It started with three bottles of prosecco at the Greenpeace office and ended at 4 in the morning eating chips with some of the agriculture campaigners on Rembrandt Plein. Good times.

Saturday from 10 until about 2:30 was spent fixing my bike. At first I tried to find a second hand wheel, and after a number of failed attempts, I eventually decided to buy a new one. All the time I was riding back and forth between my dutch bike and the cycle shops on my fixie, carrying various spare parts. My bike was on the top of the big bicycle park overlooking Amsterdam, so at least I had a good view while fixing!

In the end I got it fixed and now it works fine, with a shortened chain and a shiny new rear wheel! And for all this work, I spent most of the weekend on my fixie, which is SO much fun!

A good weekend, to now be rounded off with an early night!

Suriname

... is in SOUTH AMERICA!!!! and has an "e" on the end of it.

About 5 minutes ago I had one of those lightbulb moments when your perception of the world completely changes. It's a really cool thing. The world is no where near as known as we thought.

I thought Suriname was in Asia, somewhere near Indonesia. The reason I know a lot about it is that there is a large Surinamese community in Amsterdam, and I thought I always knew where it was - boy how wrong!

I almost called these moments Standard Bank moments, because when I was young I always thought the Standard Bank logo was just a squiggle in a badge. One day I saw it was a flag, and from then I could never see the squiggle again. Life changing moments.

mud, and then some photos!

So Giona and Elaine took some photos of us, just so you can get an idea:

The start of the race and everybody looking quite casual, clearly not aware of what's coming...

That's Tom, me and Eoin after clearing the last ditch (clearly we weren't too worried about getting to the finish line in time!). More like watching the other sorry souls dragging them from the nearest ditch (gloating Tom?).

The end of the race and while Eoin and Tom are looking quite relaxed I'm still dealing with mud in the teeth. Nice.











To end it all of a bit of bumper cars after a hosing by the fire brigade and plus minus three bottles of shampoo and at least 2 showers each!

Dutch Mud

Yesterday was the Land over Zand 4km fun run through the best the Dutch country side has to offer. When I say through, I mean it literally!

Tom, someone I work with on the Toxics campaign, lives in Broek in Waterland, a small town to the North of Amsterdam. Every year the town has something of a feestje, with stalls, drinking, carnival type rides and a fun run. It was for the fun run that about 350 people and I where there. Tom had invited a few of us from work to take part and while 10 of us arrived, only 5 of us ran, Tom, Andrew, Eoin, Alexandra and Myself.

After a short ferry trip and a 45 minute cycle ride (back on my fixie -woohoo!) interrupted only by a stop for a glass of fresh organic milk fresh from the farm I arrived in Broek in Waterland. I was a bit nervous and tried to gain as much information from those who had run last year (Andrew, Eion and Tom). I eventually decided to run without a shirt or shoes (as apparently the shirt can only ever be used for the same event, and having a once a year shirt ain't my thing; and if you start with shoes on, you aren't guaranteed to finish with them on!) and with tissue shoved in my ears. Why all the prep? While the run is only 4kms, it includes jumping over when you can, but more often than not, into the ditches between the fields. These are filled with a mixture of black dutch soil, cow excrement and various other flotsam and jetsam. After the first one everyone was filthy (I was rather proud of my graceful jump, only getting covered in "mud" up to my chest on the front of me, until a fellow runner jumped in behind me and caused a wave of "mud" to cascade all over me). By the end of the race we were unrecognisable. After the 10th ditch, now covered in "mud" from head to toe I had the feeling I was in a horror movie with my breathing heavy in my own ears from the mixture of tissue paper and mud, and my vision impaired by the mud dripping out of my eyebrows.

Some of the less agreeable things:

• The smell of ditch 7 and 12 (okay they were all pretty terrible, but these two were horrific)
• The hard pebbly bits in ditches 14 and 16 (I would like to believe this was bits of wood and flotting rocks, but I would imagine it was more from the lack of roughage in some of the cows diets... in any case, I now know what my teeth feel like when I brush with the toothpaste with the beads in - ditch 14 and 16, now with active.....)
• getting a couple of cuts in my feet and trying but not really succeeding to convince myself that my immune system would be strong enough to ward of the 101 things in the water that could probably cause infection that would make gangrene look like a scratch.
• The fact that if you arrived at a ditch with no one in it it was bubbling.
  

Besides these however, the whole run (well, walk in our case) was great, with a dousing by the local fire dept. and their high pressure hoses afterwards - which got the worst off, however I think I will be surprised by what goes down the drain when I take a shower tonight, even though it is my 4th in 2 days!

Beers and a bit of bumper cars sorted most of the bad memories, and was an end to an excellent visit to Broek in Waterland, and some of the best laughs of the week.

I finished off the day at "Pluk de Nacht", an outdoor film festival. The main show (Flight of the Choncords) was definitely upstaged by the short movie that was shown before hand. Guess what? I found it on you tube! I'm nominating it for official movie of my blog, as I think it fits in well with the title. Enjoy:



Today I spent the day sorting out the recycling (which isn't foreplay, but is also very important) and doing washing. Also got a webcam connected to my computer (no worries, I didn't buy it - found in my flat).

Enviro tip: You can find the drivers for most hardware on the internet, normally from the producer, so don't throw away stuff just because it's not talking to your computer.

More info? skype me and I'll show you :-)

To GE or not to GE

A good question: if GE had no corporate contral, no bad environmental impacts and real benefits, more than exisiting and conventional methods, would it be a bad thing?

This sounds like a really loaded question but I ask it in all sincerity, should we persue a technology that is currently not performing at all in the hopes that at some time it may deliver un-thought of benefits.

I think it is in this last sentance lies the rub - GE is a solution looking for a problem, and at the moment it's doing a terrible job of it.

The march of Asia

Upon booking a hotel in Accra for a woman with the first name Kim, I received an e-mail asking when exactly Mr Kim would be arriving.

Could be my eurocentic viewpoint, but could also be that many Asian business men have been visiting Africa lately...

The conspiracy theories march on...

Hope for anti-war!!!

The Raytheon 9 are nine people who walked into the Raytheon ("light from the gods") headquarters, and threw computer servers and files out of the window, disrupting Raytheon's business.

Raytheon is a company that produces missiles and other weapons that are used around the world, but particularly in the middle east.

On Wednesday all 9 were acquitted for their actions by a jury of their peers.

There is hope.

More on http://www.raytheon9.org/

So many things to write about, so little time!

Really the story of my life right now, but there are a million things I want to write about at the moment, but I may have to settle for posting little soundbites here and there. I am in Johannesburg for the IAASTD (International Assessment of Agriculture, Science and Technology for Development). At the moment I am busy working on the Greenpeace Toxics campaign's monthly and I stumbled over this:

Philips have opened a recycling plant for lightbulbs in Lesotho. Cunning huh? btw, Greenpeace was mentioned at least 4 times in their AGM - nice!

more to come...

Side-effects of terrorism

Do terrorists targeting airplanes and airports help combat climate change?

While governments and the airline industry seem to pay only lip service to combating climate change, every time there is a terrorist attack, attempted attack or even just a threat airports are shut down and AIRPLANES DO NOT FLY. The security checks that slow flying and make other more climate friendly options of transport more attractive, are largely due to the threat of terrorism.

Sounds like an inconvenient truth...

Oi Oi!

Just a quick one on a very misty Amsterdam morning to say WELL DONE MR RUDD!! 'Bout bloody time. Great news for a Wednesday morning!

ipodism

I like the whole idea of being able to take music wherever I go, but I think there is a dark side of ipods. In essence it is just another attempt by the people trying to sell us things to compartmentalise our lives and ourselves. If we have no connections to other people we are more insecure and look for things to fill those insecurities and things that fill our time.

In South Africa this captive market has been very easy to create due to our lack of public transport (at least what all the rich people see as a lack of public transport). We leave home and travel in a small metalic bubble to wherever we are going, and then quickly hurry into the office or shops trying to avoid eye contact with car guards and beggars on our way. The ipod is essentially just the car stereo for people without cars. In Europe where a lot of people (and rich people - at least rich enough to consume) travel by public transport, there was a chance almost daily to interact with other people. With everybody listening to ipods this is difficult. I feel as if I am intruding if I need to ask someone listening to and ipod for directions, and striking up a random conversation is impossible. I think this is why continental Europeans (and all of us really) like to complain. Complaining is a great way to strike up a conversation, particularly with someone you don't know. But that is another story.

ipods enable us to ignore those around us and pretend we didn't hear whatever it is that might make us vaguely uncomfortable. I recently lost my ipod (which wasn't actually an ipod, but in the hopes of diluting Mr. Jobs brand, I will refer to as an ipod). I don't think I'm going to replace it, and see if I have any opportunities to talk to people that I wouldn't normally.

We need to unplug more from all the noise we create in our lives. Hopefully we will be able to hear each other more and create connections that create meaningful lives. Who knows, we might even hear nature in the mix.

This is very badly put together, but I think it is very important. I'll try and think about it a bit and get something more succinct out.



Thanks to Nathalie for making me realise I wasn't completely crazy.

Good riddance.

The Dakar Rally was cancelled in 2008 by the race directors, citing political unrest and terrorist threats against the race. Good riddance I say.

In a world that is facing the threat of climate change, I can hardly see the sense in racing a truck through the desert. Well, not just trucks but cars, quads and motorcycles too. In a world of gps, airplanes and instant communication, do we really need to still prove that we can drive over the last little bits of wilderness left in the world in rather outmoded forms of transport? In the TV advert, showing various vehicles doing the best to destroy the desert and other competitors, the last shot is of someone saying sarcastically "oh yeah, lets do the Dakar". I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the entries start like that, late night down the pub - admittedly at a rather high end pub - this is not the sport of the masses. In a rush to create heroes, I'm sure the competitors (which from the organisers website, it looks like are all male) would complain about the gruelling steering wheel turning and gear changing, and the advertisers would flock to this camel man adventure.

There must be a better way to compete. Not only to show off physical and mental ability of the competitors, but maybe to do something for the planet (hell, even for other people!). This isn't a call for more of the bleeding heart side show, yes I know they donate to SOS Sahel. Stop here for a moment, go to the organisations website, see the 14 white staff (out of a staff of... 15) and get into a discussion about European solutions for Africa. I am not talking about donating a percentage of the takings to a (very worthy, I'm sure) cause. I mean make it the central part of the competition.

Competition seems to have done so well at ripping apart the fabric of our planet, her ecosystems and our societies. In the end of the day though, competition is not inherently bad or good. Nor are we, and just as we can fail to set any positive goal for competition we can consciously decide to make competition a catalyst for change. With all the creativity we have, is there no one who could create a reality TV show for good, that would still manage to sell prime time TV commercials?

I'm sure there is, but in the mean time, I'm just overjoyed that all those litres of fuel aren't going to be burnt this year, getting people somewhere they don't really need to be and probably wouldn't want to be after the champagne stopped flowing. Now, who's got some good ideas for stopping F1?


Thanks to my dad for reminding me I have a blog...

Amsterdam

Got the internet sorted - yay! It's not wireless because trying to get that sorted out was toooo much! So now for a bit about getting to Amsterdam and my first weeks here...

I left after a night of late night packing in Berlin. Torsten (my flat mate) helped me to the Station, which was really good because I would never have made it. I left with my big rucksack, small rucksack and bike with bike trailer. More stuff than I would've liked to have, but anyway. Torsten got a picture of it all (und Torsten ich wurde gerne die bilder noch haben!) so I'll post that when I get it. I eventually got on the right train, after chasing my rucksack around the hauptbahnhof (it got left in a lift - I was too slow at unloading), with all my stuff and the trip to A'dam was pretty uneventful. Once in Amsterdam I moved into my room and met my new flatmate (engineer on oil refineries, deer hunter, southerner...). My room is much smaller than my room in Berlin (and more expensive) but should do for now!

On the following Monday (the 19th) I started work. For the 1st day I was shown around and didn't do much work as my computer wasn't set up, but got to meet loads of people who's names I subsequently forgot. I work in a building with about 120 other Greenpeacers. Our offices are in a three story building on the outskirts of Amsterdam. We have the whole top floor (where I am) and half the second floor. We also have archives, a bike cellar and a cafeteria in the basement. The people at work are cool, as one would expect working at Greenpeace. Our campaigns (Toxics and GE) are both being scaled down next year as GP is focusing more and more on Climate Change, so for now there are 2 campaign assistants (myself and Hanna, who was CA before me), but come 2008 it'll just be me. I've also been asked to work 5 days a week instead of 4, an idea I'm warming to.

So now that the job has started I'm just slowly starting to get used to everything here. I've bought a new bike as I was advised not to use my mountain bike as it would probably get stolen. It's a classic Amsterdam bike - a gazelle. Apart from going to a Cat Empire concert last Thursday, I haven't been doing much social, but looks like things will be starting up from next weekend. Also going to go check out some ultimate frisbee on Mondays...

Less internet, less blogging...

As most of you know I still don't have internet access on my laptop, so I'm afraid the blogging is going to take a bit of a knock. Suffice to say that I am LOVING my new job, and amsterdam looks like it's going to be a great city! I've put a link to my map on the right...

Life is so much better than good!

It's been a while and from now on I have no apologies for not sitting in front of a computer and blogging, life is happening!

I've just got back to Berlin's first snowfall from Prenzlau. Prenzlau is a small town (about 20 000 peeps and probably loads of cool animals, some rather aggressive...) near the Polish border, my digsmate (flatmate for our american friends) Torsten comes from Prenzlau and he took me back there for a day and night yesterday. It was awesome. On the car drive there I spoke a lot with his folks about life in the DDR times (Torsten took the train to take his bike). When we got there we went to visit Torsten's grandparents who were celebrating their 51st wedding anniversary. We helped Torsten's grandpa load some large strawbales onto a trailer and played a bit with Barny, the (very beautiful) dog. I WANT A DOG! I also played with a very aggressive Kaninchen (rabbit) and got properly scratched. Also saw the buck rabbit - frikkin huge! We ate kartoffel puffer mmmh. Then we went to visit some other relatives who were renovating an absolutely traumhaft (from a dream) old manor house. The Germans use of coloured glass bricks needs to be addressed though, but otherwise beautiful with strawberry fields and horses. We had a celebratory supper at a beer garden for Torsten's grandparents. It was great, but they did have horse on the menu, which seemed kinda strange to me, but I guess sometimes when I have these moments of clarity, having any animal on the menu seems totally barbaric, even if some of them scratch... My german is pretty much fluent now although my grammar leaves much to be desired. It was great to be able to participate in conversation and understand everything that was being said.

It's funny to hear some German people complaining about how unsightly wind turbines are, but in the same sentence how beautiful the scenery is (which is all fields for agriculture). I think both are a necessary evil if we want to live the high-tech power hungry lives we do and try and feed everybody (or produce sweetened highly processed food - most of the fields were for sugar beet which is made into sugar). We've gotten used to the fields which are essentially biodiversity deserts because they are essential for our way of life, I wonder if my children will have gotten used to wind turbines in the same way? I think it would be great if we could live a bit more in step with gaia. I guess if we don't she'll reject us anyway...

So I'm about to leave for work which will be the start of my last week in Berlin. It has been an amazing time. Berlin is now securely my second favourite city, edging out Istanbul. CT first of course. I'm really going to miss a lot about my time here, and probably most of all the amazing variety of people I've met and friends I've made. I'm sure I'll stay in touch with many of them (facebook has to have some use!) and can't wait to introduce some of them to Cape Town and South Africa.

I'm looking forward to Amsterdam, and getting going at Greenpeace, I think it's going to be a really good feeling to be putting my energy into something I really believe in! And of course there will be new friends to be made there, as well as deer hunting flatmates to deal with!

Life is beautiful!

Oslo-a-go-go

Back from Oslo, and it was an awesome time! Here's kind of how it went:

Thursday - got on the bus at 21:00 and left berlin. A couple of ferry rides, a stop in Kopenhagen and a 19 hour journey later I arrived in Oslo at 16:20 on friday.

Friday - got off the bus and as per em's sms went to find the tourist info. Found out about Cabins in the area and was boffed by Em. Happy meeting! Then followed her outside to find Al "hovering" in the rental car. Finally got to off-load my backpack (holding 17 bottles of beer to escape murderous Norwegian alcohol prices) and we set off in search of our cabin about 30min outside Oslo. On the way we stopped off at a supermarket to get some supplies, and the first bought of (much) hilarity started when we had to ask the 7/11 man where a proper supermarket was (after getting lost in the industrial area). We got the supplies after much discussions over the type of bread that was right for us and very little discussion over a small fillet of reindeer that would have cost R490. We proceeded on to the site of our cabins, found it and picked a good one and then went to the Hotel to pick up the key, where we found we could also use the hotels facilities including pool - nice.

We made our way over to the cabin, unloaded and had a couple of beers. Em gave me the marmite and a couple of other presents from people back home. We then cooked supper and ate. After that we got an early night.

Saturday - We got up late to find ourselves in an awesome area with mountains behind us and fjords in front. Norway is a beautiful country (and had some similarities to South Africa I thought). We went for a walk up the mountain (hill maybe) behind us to kings view and where warned about the slipperyness, which I laughed at, only to find out all about on our way down. We got to the top in the rain, walking through forests with moss on the ground . spectacular. The view wasn't the best with the rain, but Al "the scot" Simpson, Glen "the German" Tyler, and Emily "the Saffer" Tyler made the most of it. We walked/slid down again to the hotel where we took full advantage of the swimming pool, jaccuzi and sauna as well as the beers on call (as one does). After warming up and drying off, we bought some more supplies at the Joker and headed back to the cabin for an afternoon of beer drinking, reading and hearts playing. Supper was a stir fry of sorts followed by hot chocolate and bed.

Sunday - we got up and had a nice cooked breakfast with a killer omlete and then packed up the cabin and cleaned it. After dropping off the keys we headed off to Oslo to our (well Em's with me and Al freebootin') Hotel. Very fancy and a breakfast buffet to get stuffed for. We settled in (checked out the facilities, planned the next day's sightseeing, drunk beer and made sure we knew where all the important tv channels were. We finished off the sandwiches and snacks from the weekend, watched hitch and then went to bed.

Monday - We got up at 7 and proceeded to the buffet that would be the scene of some of the biggest breakfasts eaten over the next couple of days. Rolling out an hour later we made our way to our car and headed off to town, picking up a Taiwanese woman on the way who joined us for the first part of the day. We got to the Statue Park early which was amazing with lots of larger than life statues (unfortunately none with a toe as big as emily's head) which we proceeded to impersonate, looking as much like tourists as we could, and probably having something to do with our Taiwanese guests running like mad from us as soon as we had got her to town on the pretence of finding lunch. After the park we checked out two museums, a Norwegian Volksmuseum, with some great houses and things that the locals used to live in, as well as some very poor reasons for why the alcohol is so expensive. We also took in a Stave Church, which was very impressive, or at least it was before Emily tried to break the door down to get inside. The next Museum was a viking museum with three viking boats. Very good as there was not too much to take in and all was explained quite well (unlike the last museum). We then took the car back and went off to explore the town centre. However we didn't get very far before Em realised she had left her wallet in the car, something that would become a recuring theme with em and al for the next couple of days. Our first stop was a Mövenpick ice cream shop where we ate rather large, delicious soft serves, and saw the brute force of the Norwegian police (they hunt in pairs, one native one immigrant) and a very suspicious looking woman in an orange top abducting innocent women from the pavement. With our tourist mode being rather played out (well mine at least) and me professing that I prefer to get lost and then find my way back we proceeded to wander around Oslo looking for a castle, which we found, speculated about the guards and lazed in the sun on top of the wall. To our credit, we did try and go into a museum about the Norwegian resistance to the Nazi's, but it was closed. After the castle we walked through town to a Scottish pub for a pint and did some fantastic people watching. We then walked to our restuarant of choice for a slap up meal as it was the last evening before Em started her conference. After baulking at the prices (something that took place before buying anything in Norway, regardless of how long we were there) we thankfully didn't decide just to get a pizza (we were all quite tired) but stayed and ate supper there, drinking a fantastic French white wine, eating superb food and being waited on by one of the best waiters I have ever been waited on by. After supper we made our way back to the hotel via train for a little while.


Tuesday - Emily's conference started, so she was up early. Al and I took a more leisurely pace, and made it to breakfast at 9:15. I put in my most impressive performance on the buffet table, managing 5 courses - Ian would have been proud. After breakfast Al and I headed up the Olympic ski jump for a really good panoramic view of oslo, as well as a look at the ski museum. We then took a ride on a ski simulator, which I think is obligatory for tourists. After managing to hold on to our breakfasts we went for a walk in the woods which was really great. Once we got to a good vantage point we stopped (still in the sun - the weather was amazing) and cracked a couple of beers. After the beers we walked back and started what was a very long and perilous decision making process for supper. We decided pizza was out as two medium pizzas and the short train journey to get there would have cost in the region of R400. We checked out a restaurant near the hotel, before going back to the hotel. We went to the fancy hotel restaurant and asked to see the menu, seeing the price of a main being about R290 Al asked if they had reindeer. When they said no, I told Al that the other hotel restaurant did, complete a cunning get away without looking cheap. Little did we know we wouldn't be laughing too long! We got to the other restaurant which was in the same place as the breakfast buffet. Judging by the breakfast quality, we didn't think we could go too wrong. Oh how wrong we were. Not thinking it suspicious that we were the only people in the restaurant (maybe the rest are just eating later...) we ordered a beer and the first of a series of terrible mistakes. The meals all came on very small plates and were literally what the said. If you ordered a reindeer patty, you literally got one reindeer patty in gravy with no veg. The service wasn't much better, with the waitress brining Al something wrapped in tinfoil and saying "I hope it's fish". Somehow we ploughed through four of these entrées each before realising that things just weren't going to get better. The food made airplane food look like haute cuisine. It was ugly. Anyway, we had another drink with Em who was back from her conference dinner and then retired to our room, vowing that we would be back to visit our retribution on the breakfast buffet.


Wednesday - Our day of leaving, and I said my goodbyes to Em as she left for her conference. Al and I went to breakfast, came back and packed. Em popped in again for a final goodbye and then Al walked me to the station to catch a train to the bus station. I spent my last kroner on padkos for the bus and then boarded for a trip through the stunning Norwegian country side and the 16hr (minus the 3hr wait in Copenhagen) trip to Berlin.

It was an amazing holiday, with things seeming to all go right for us. The best part of it for me was getting to spend time with Em and Al. Lots of good laughs.

I'm now back in Berlin and have my first shift in a couple of hours.