Farewall Boxmeer

The week of our party leading up to it was busy as I told you, going to trophy shops and having broken conversations in english/dutch trying to get what we wanted on the Trophy. We also got everyone that played in the first team a present of some sort - including the coach and the manager. Wouter obviously got some presents - bottles of wine from Switzerland and Slovenia and a boomerang. So the day started out so poor - waking up and seeing it pouring rain,.... thanks very much Holland. again.. And after waking mark up from his sleep at 11:20, we wrapped presents, I worked on my presentation - just a collection of pictures and things from the time we have been so far.  We started off having little activities the guys had to do, and if they failed then they had to complete punishments. We had the cricket catch, the football kick (thanks to my new birthday present) the footy mark, the longest throw contest, and an actual game of cricket. We then had Australian and dutch trivia which was funny. All in all it was an awesome day, the guys loved it because they have never done that kind of stuff. We then had another party to go to for all the other guys that don't play in the 1st team. They had organised us a hamper full of dutch things etc. It was such a nice present to get (unexpected) - unexpected presents are the best. We got home late, had a sandwhich with Tommy, and then the next few days have been trying to organise the rest of our trip. We are heading to brussells to meet with Bory - a guy that has accepted us to couchsurf, and then to a small town outside of brugge to another CS place. Excited to go to other places and meet other people, so much better then staying in a hostel, when you are couchsurfing, the whole idea is to get to know the person that you are staying with/staying with you, and so you learn a lot more about the culture and way of life of the country that you go to. (well that's what we have found so far).  All in all, it made us realise the impact we have made through coaching and playing in such a short time. Sad to leave, but there is much more of the world that needs to be explored. The first chapter of the 'year off work' is almost completed.

I will leave some photos of our party.


Steve

End of season trip...

So we arrived after having a super time in Zurich and express it straight back to boxmeer for our end of season trip. Coincidentally it was my birrthday, and after receiving an awesome present in the mail - containing amongst other things  an+++ AFL football, we could show the guys what a football looked like (but not until Saturday)   Normally, we go away in Australia for 2 nights and 3 days and go to a town a fair way away. This time though we went for an evening snowboarding. Firstly, I'd never seen indoor snowboarding, so it was interesting, but way way way too short. Don't think I would go again. But that being said, it was extremely fun to do stuff with the team. It was all you could eat and drink for 19 euro. That is a bargain really, considering a meal would cost you 19 euro. (and they had a smorgasbord of food) It was funky's first try snowboarding, and boy was it funny. I will add a few videos later on my youtube account of his crashes. So we had a good time, came back to the pub pretty happy about our night. Bit of a shame that is wasn't longer. Anyway, this week has been about preparing for our end of season party that we are holding for the guys. We have been racing around the town buying things, on our way to Rotterdam to pick up a bat to play cricket with (as no town nearby has anything that is remotely like a cricket bat - stupid holland.  Our party should be very fun, it is almost a day event - with multiple games and things that will go on. I would mention exactly what we are doing, but there is a few guys that read this nowdays. Trying to organise having a GPS because the maps didn't work with my navman and I had to send it back to Australia. So this has been going on for about 3 months,....So frustrating - NAVMAN support has been absolutely woeful. I suggest anyone thinking about buying a GPS navigation system not buy one. Get a Tom Tom or a garmin. Anyway our party is this weekend, so I will let you know how it goes.

Switzerland - Part 2

So at this moment I am back in boxmeer - It is nice to be back here. But I will continue where I left off, the lake feeding ducks (see picture below in the last post) and me and Tarks went for a walk around the lake. We played a game where you would say hello to the person that is coming past you (in whichever language you wish) and if you get a response(verbal) then you would get a point. - Best out of ten. Well, I smashed mark 5/8 to 1/8. He conceded with 2 to go. Europeans aren't the friendliest bunch. But when you get to know them they are very friendly... So we went back to the car, and onward to Zurich we went. We got a little lost trying to find Peter's house, (there is 2 different streets with the same name) who would have thought... (Tip for anyone else - PUT THE SUBURB IN - not queen street "melbourne" queen street hawthorn.. that would have saved us a fair bit of time. Anyway - we threw balls around outside his "house" until we got in contact with him and he told us he was indeed outside his house... lol.

Staying at Peter and Thomas's house was amazing. The welcome we got - sipping red wine - they cooked us food when we arrived, chatted till about 1am about random things, we got to stay in an apartment right next door (as in they had 2 apartments and we got to stay in one). It was so nice to stay there. He showed us places to go around Zurich, the museum was cool, and he took us out on his boat one day also which was AWESOME. I don't know what it is about boating, or cause I haven't been on a speedboat for a fair while, but I was loving it. Sure it wasn't sunny and 34 degrees on the murray, but it was comparable. (mountains, lake, clear water 26 degrees). That night we went to have chinese food in Zurich which was so nice also. Those guys were so nice, just shows that while we got some "hostility" from outside (the European front I'm going to call it now) there is some extremely nice people inside.  We also hired bikes - rode around Zurich - got tooted a few times for cutting off traffic also. One night that we were there (and this post is a little all over the place) we had a BBQ out on their terrace/balcony overlooking the lake. The food was amazing, we had chicken, swiss sausages, vegies on the BBQ - nothing like our BBQ's at home with just snags and burgers. :-)

We wished we could have stayed a few more days with them, (just a note about couchsurfing - we have had the two best experiences in a row by staying with people and meeting the locals. I hope it will continue) but we had to get back to Boxmeer for our end of season trip. So we expressed it back through 6 countries in 7 hours from Switzerland to Holland. Sorry this post has not been as comprehensive, but it is enough. We got home pretty exhausted - holidaying seems to be taking it toll - and I don't understand how. I suppose walking around all day seeing things is hard.... sounds stupid. But we are all looking forward to a week of sleeping in.

Finally - after 27 years and 361 days I get to sit in a bobsled. It wasn't moving, but it's a start!

Zurich from the top of the church.

All around Zurich they had these little rat dogs.... (I'm sure I offended someone then, but come on, the real dog is in the picture there)

 

Switzerland

Zurich is a nice city. But I have a few other nice cities to let you know about before I get to Zurich.

Today (well not today it was on Sunday) We went rafting. It was... ahhh ok. I am sick of going to rafting places that promise bang and smash adrenaline filled adventure and fail to deliver. There was about 4-5 moments of good rafting - the rest was oh so boring. But... it was still leaps and bounds above Indonesia's rafting. But still - you pay a fair bit for a rafting experience to "rock you and shock you" and all I got was a blister from paddling hard through the calm regions of the river. *sigh*

I did meet skippy though - he was looking to use the internet and I let him use my laptop - very nice guy, hope that I can meet up with him when we go to the tour de france. (Look it up if you don't know who he is - cycling legend)

We stayed the night in a town called Interlaken. Lots of tourists there - and it was not the gorgeous valley of mountains that was lauterbrunnun. It was not the best night sleep in the hostel there - hot, and woken up by a bunch of South Korean backpackers who seemed to think that 5am was the best time to have a picnic in our room. - Ahh the perks of having a shared room.
 That morning was not so great, I don't know if it was because I had 3 cups of coffee before 10:00 or because it was pouring rain and my mountain friends were hiding behind a mask of thick fog and cloud. We didn't know what we were going to do, and we were tired from the early wake up call. But - Like all things so far, it has turned out fine. We went to a smallish town called luzene. I was feeling pretty sick, headache stomach growling, and we found a car park and grabbed a map from the tourist agency and headed out around the city. Only the problem was that andrew decieded that he was too tired and slept in the car. Idiot - comes halfway across the world to choose sleep over seeing things that he left australia to see....

Anyway mark and I saw the wounded lion , an awesome church, a weird loch in a river, had stuttered conversations with some swiss people, and climbed some towers for views of the city. It was an enjoyable afternoon. We arrived back at the car - found funky still asleep and headed off to the lake - we then spent another good hour trying to hand feed ducks while we had tea - and we were successful -  will show you some interesting pictures also. (Just the swiss alps... nothing special :P ) - also - these are with a high res camera, so if you click you can zoom in to see the detail)

The day didn't end there - but I am too tired now to continue. I will update later. For now. Later

Venice...

So we tripped off to Italy. Bought ourselves some food at the Slovenian Supermarket and back in the car for some road trip time again. A quick stop at the lake bled - too commercialised for me - not anything like the lake I added in my last post. So we didn't stay long - or take a boat ride or anything like that, plus we needed to be in Veronia by the end of the day and we had to see Venice - for those wondering, we couldn't find a place to stay in Venice - plus the parking is quite expensive, so we opted to stay elsewhere.

Now.. let me tell you what I thought of Venice. Well, it was cool - but not that cool. Ok, they had water for roads. big deal - been done in Amsterdam. And before you tell me that it is nothing like Amsterdam, and that it dates back to the 9th century - ok ok, I get it. But for me it was a little too touristy, a little too "this is the best place of all time" and was like a maze of close together buildings and waterways with way too many people. Now - the main square - San Marco was pretty cool. The architecture and the square with people everywhere, and the touch of class that was added by the waiters in white suits etc. I don't think I like Italy really, I don't know what it is about it, but I'm yet to be wooed by the people, the experience or the "sights" now - that is a bit negative, and on the whole it was pretty cool, but I don't think it was AS cool to warrant the amount of people that were walking there. Maybe I might go back when I am older - but for now - venice will not be a place I go back to any time soon. Switzerland on the other hand....

Thought i better put a picture in

So we went to Verona after a food stop at a 'gas station' and got some weird looks from the locals - looking at us munching on bread and buttering our bread with our fingers... haha - it was nice, but not obviously up to the standard the Italians are used to. I suppose the French would frown also haha. Our hotel was very nice - worth much more then the 27 euro that we paid. It felt like a decent hotel, not a hostel. The next morning after Andrew reversed into a stationary post (shakes head) we set off for Switzerland - I was happy to leave Italy. - we will leave it at that :-) I drove quickly after the guys were too tired - poor things, that is another thing I have noticed, I am sleeping way less then the other guys, averaging about maybe 6-7 hours a night, and they are about the same, but are sleeping any chance they get - mostly in the car. It is so weird.  So I drove to Switzerland - (before going through the 20 euro of tolls on the Italian freeways GRRRRR.)

We stopped a castle or two on the way to our nights accommodation, it was ok, nothing exciting. Saw some demonstrations in Italian - even though we were well into Switzerland... and we somehow bumped into the tour de suise (swizz) SPEWING!!! With plans to see the riders on the tour de france, we happened to - by chance run into another tour and have already booked our accommodation somewhere else, it was a great pity, cause the city was very nice, the party was just getting started, and there was stalls everywhere, and also, the bike race started at 3:00 and finished at 6.  Poor us... I was do disappointed. But the drive after it well and truely made up for it.  So picture this.
Huge mountains on both sides.
Green valleys in the middle.
Clouds covering the tops of the mountains, the freeway clinging almost obtrusively to the side of the mountain overlooking the valley of - damn those Italians again  (Italian designed houses!!) but oh well... it didn't detract at all - well maybe 1%. Then I drove on a freeway with no other cars, the other cars on the other side were
all gridlocked! kinda cool for us. I have to sleep now, but I will post some photos of what I am meaning. I love Switzerland so far... (well the scenery anyway)

Slovenia the real story - Pictures are fixed

So after a long road trip…. – stopping at a nice small town in germany (Reagenburg) we had a meal there after we meandered around the quiet town – stopping to gaze in stifled amazement at the church in the middle of the town, - it was similar in architecture to the sacred heart cathedral in Bendigo – I think that this one was a replica of the Bendigo cathedral – although this was built some 600 years before….    We left there after seeing a guy spaced out of his head at mcdonalds – very amusing and also saw the most famous bar in germany “Max’s bar” haha.
We got stopped at the border to get our passports checked, bought  our tax for the freeways – 90 euro a year or 20 for a month,  and through Austria we went. Mountains… mountains everywhere, Austria is 45% mountains and boy have they learned how to tunnel. Going through tunnel after tunnel, which quickly lost its novelty factor as took us away from our friends – the huge towering cliffs peering down at us.

We arrived in Slovenia and met Willim at the airport, although I first will give a more dewtailed background about what we were here for in Slovenia. We were going to play in the EPL league tournament against eastern European hockey teams.  We were offered paid fuel, paid expenses and a few tours around the area. As we all know you have to be registered(to play in a hockey team) for 3 months with the club to be able to play with the team. This of course had not been done as we were in Holland playing hockey. So after a long 13-14 hour drive – through the night, battling heavy eyelids and trying to deal with an over caffeinated funky, driving through a storm, but overall we were happy but tired with our road trip. So – when you meet someone that loves to talk, and talk crap at this, and he starts with “Do you want the good news or the bad news” I immediately knew that we had been shafted. So with multiple promises, 2 hours sleep each at best, we were in no mood to be lied to – again. I will give you a bit of history about Wilim, he has been basically kicked out of boxmeer club – we thought because of some people over reacting about him. But basically he is a manipulative old arrogant man. Or that was our impression for the first 3 days. The club in Slovenia can’t afford to pay him the money that he is collecting from them. But the sad thing about Slovenian hockey is that they don’t know any better. Cuth – think of Lou solero but older, and doesn’t know as much about hockey. So the reason that we didn't leave there and then was because (funky was going crazy in the front seat with him) – the thing that makes him so annoying is that he loves to talk – I did a test – he spoke continuously for 12 minutes, and I didn’t say a thing. No even a yes or a ah huh. So initially he said that the club was not going to pay for it, but he ended up coughing up a tank of fuel and 200 euro to cover our fuel to Slovenia. He put us up in a hotel (as the billeting out with the team was NEVER going to happen). It is similar to Indonesia – their entire family lives in the same house, incomes are low, the country has recently changed to the euro, so prices for everything has skyrocketed, and they are having the daily struggle of wages Vs cost of living.  For us, compared to western Europe, prices are cheap – food, drinks and accommodation is cheap. So we were hating it, we were being lied to on a consistent basis, with him blaming the Slovenian team.  I can’t describe how uncomfortable it was to have the guys not know what we were doing there.  The day we arrived we went to see the guys play, they weren’t very good at all, - lets say our seconds would have beaten them 3-1 (maybe this year 4-0) but they had 1 or 2 good players. I want to tell a small detailed story about when we were at the ground there. We went back to the club house (this was an away game) and had a drink (he paid) and then he was asking for money to the captain in front of us. (for our fuel!!) we had no idea that this wasn’t organised. He hadn’t even confirmed that we would get paid!! We felt so so bad, 200 euro for these guys is 2 weeks wage, so it was horrible. Then to top it off, two guys came over and came us a plate of food…. They were visibly not happy that we were there. We left that place quite annoyed… Not knowing the guys at all yet, not having any information but the lies that we were fed to get us there. But enough about that guy – we had a night sleep and the next day we were in better spirits as we were going to be taken around.. So he had organised that we were going to a winery to taste some wines, and we had the morning/afternoon off. We got picked up by one of the players…. and went through some lovely countryside to a winery on top of a hill.


At this stage we were certainly sure that we were not going to the tournament in Bratislava (we knew we were not playing – but he was trying to “clarify this issue” with the Slovenian board – piss off… we knew he was lying.  The winery and the guy that took us there were really nice, (double meaning there – thankyou English)  and we went into a celler and tasted 5-6 wines and had them explained in hugarian and in English haha. We went back and had our first training session. To paint the picture of awkwardness, I was introduced as “head coach” .. ffs. The nerve!! He had not bothered to learn the guys names in slovenian, so he had given them nicknames such as “running horse” and “peacock”  or just NUMBER 23…. Come on… How demeaning. So the first thing I did was try and remember as many names as I could, thank goodness for my teacher name memory… Anyway, they loved my training session, it was easy to identify things that they didn’t have, and give them drills to fix it. 2 and ½ hours and they were much better.
 
An interesting note – he was hired speaking English and german, but 25% of the guys could speak English. So I immediately had Dyan (the captain) translate while I spoke. Made so much of a difference. Very strange, but so powerful as a communication tool. I would like to be a translator – dunno if I want to put in the effort to learn a language well enough to translate properly.  So we went to the pub afterwards and explained our point of view – they started to change a little, and knew that we were not attached to willim. Phhew. 

The next day we went to the Slovenian caves, they were about 2 hours away, they were pretty amazing, but expensive to get into – but he was paying so it was all good. 22 euro each *3 plus tea and lunches. I feel bad to be only wanting a free trip here, but the way he treated us was nothing short of atrocious, abysmal,  horrendous, staggerin – you get the picture. We were meeting another player (Alish) at 4.00 in Ljubiana and he was going to give us a tour. Well – no tour as we were way late cause he can’t read a GPS – he knows better, and he was too busy talking to the gps he missed the turnoff.. (I am serious) and we had a game against the girls which we were going to play with the girls against the guys. Should be fun. (fast forward 3 hours) we are not at the game yet, we arrived at 7.30 for a 7.00 game, the girls coach didn’t want us playing for them, (not organised) and the guys were smashing the girls. Willim walked onto the pitch midgame blowing his whistle(like 4-5 times)… My goodness… it was so awkward. We had 22 players looking at us thinking – we were playing a game, what the hell. I refused to go on the guys team, and Andrew went on after a bit, and willim continued to try and override decisions that the girls coach made while umpiring, yelling at his players, walking over to us and not watching the game, strutting around -  dripping with arrogance. It was a pitiful display, especially considering that he was 15 minutes late to the game, because he refused to buy a tax pass for the freeway because “the club should  pay for it” come on… it’s 15 euro ish and he was getting 300 euro a week…  This continued to the point where the girls coach blew a fuse and began his rant, yelling pointing and abusing us/him/the guys players and called the game off – despite the protests of his own team. If the decision to go to the tournament hadn’t been made, it had been concreted and nailed shut. We went for drinks….

Wild Strawberries!

The next day we were given a real treat, Tina the travel agent we had met 2 days before was coming with us. This had a twopronged effect. 1) He would talk to her, not so much us. 2) We would be able to have someone show us around the area. Our first destination was a castle – which was the biggest in Slovenia – pretty nice, about 600 rooms, but not like the medieval castles that you see on TV. We then were going to go to the triangle of Hungary, Austria and Slovenia. – Willim took a wrong turn (against Tina’s advice) and we ended up on a muddy road with us slipping around everywhere on a narrow road with quite steep embankments on either side. I wasn’t scared as any plunge off the side would have ended the incessant babbling that we were enduring, and there were multiple trees on the edge to prevent the tumble – rolling and catapulting glass everywhere and would have inevitably ended in an explosion (well in the movies anyway- cars are designed not to explode).

Tina had an appointment at 12. We missed it. So we went to have some traditional food of Slovenia. On the drive back we had had enough of his talking, and we started just telling him to pull his head in. The picture changed, - we had started the day before, but with another person here it was easier. Anyway the food we had was AMAZING. We had mushroom soup – but it came in a breadbowl!! The bread was so delightful. Lezat… You ate the bread out of the bowl, and then you eat the bowl. “Nothing more satisfying then at the end of the meal then seeing nothing but a table” haha. But there was more, we had a dish that was pork – but it was nothing like the pork at home, it was melt in your mouth stuff, it was mixed with some sort of potato stuffing conglomerated with mushrooms, spices and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The other dish was pork wrapped in bacon, with stuffing that was not so good. But the bread was so delicious. 

That evening we were supposed to have a tactic session and some short corners. We gave them all our short corners that we think that they could master – about 2 hours of short corners, and they were doing them quite well. I hope they do well.

The evening finished with drinks back at the hotel. It was such a nice evening, we had finally got willim to stop talking, the other guys were there. We were supposed to be there for tactics that willim was running. But the guys had 40 minute bike ride, and had to go home to their families… GRR so I ran it -  not that it bothered me too much, it’s what I do. Within about 3-4 minutes of talking about things, they were crowding around looking like I was talking about how to create a potion that would cure old age, it was amazing, (they were asking all sorts of questions about hockey, positioning etc –)… even with a translator. It is moments like that which made me glad I came to Slovenia, we were there to help out the guys as much as we could  – not to help out an annoying arrogant old man. That being said, the more we were there, the more I think he got the message that we didn’t want to talk ( I mean listen haha) the whole time we were there. After that night we would have gone to the tournament with them if we had of been asked by someone less annoying. The next morning was leaving day, we took off to the travel agency to find a place in bled – a lakeside town in the northwest of Slovenia. We couldn’t find a place there, so we went further to another lake in Bhinj. It was amazing. The lake was surrounded by mountains, and once again we had our mountain friends looking down at us.  Driving along the river was so cool, the blue crystal clear waters rushing next to the road with trees and green foliage everywhere..  We were not treated with very good weather when we arrived, rain, rain and rain. But we toughed it out and trekked up into the mountains for a waterfall, pretty easy walk up to it, there was a fair volume of water churning over it – probably because this time of month there is the snow melting from the mountains. We came back to our hotel – very nice by the way (22 euro a night) and I started looking at where the hell we were going to go because we had no plans now.  Mark wanted to go to Venice but after a brief look most of the cheap places were booked out. I was reading about Switzerland (which sounds amazing) and we eventually (after many hours of research) found a place to stay in a town close by Venice, and we will look through Venice for a few hours. I have this hangup about Italy, I don’t know if it because that they don’t speak English very much, or because of my experience with the trains in Sardinia, but there is something about the place that I don’t like so much (and I haven’t been there yet). Some of you might be saying – what! Venice in a few hours? Well.. yes. I will tell you what happens soon.  That night I went to bed late, but I wanted to get up early and go for a run, I was tossing up do I? Don’t I? and I asked myself – would I rather 1 hour of sleep or a run around a gorgeous lake, I chose the latter, and I got to see the lake in the morning sun with clear skies ( I don’t know what happened to the rain, it was supposed to rain all week) It was such a cool experience, jogging alongside this lake with huge mountains right on top of it, mirror reflection waters to the point where the mountains looked as if they had detached from their perch and wanted to join the lake in its beauty. I wish the other guys had of got out of bed early enough to come with me, but they sleep so much more than me. I got back feeling so much better, tired now as I write this in the car on the way to Italy, but nothing a few coffees in Venice can’t fix :-)

So I think we have learnt a bit in this trip to Slovenia, I was trying to get them to make the most of things, even when we learnt that everything was a lie and funky wanted to skip town in the middle of the night. It turns out that we met some wonderfully kind and friendly people, had some excellent foods and saw some breathtaking scenery.  Were we too trusting? Maybe… But we did get everything paid for – food, drinks, tourist attractions, accommodation etc..  I’ll put this is the “experience” box...



I thought I would add this photo in - note the mirror aspect.

Slovenia

I don't have time to write a decent post, we are in Slovenia atm, not paying hockey - There is a long long story that comes with this. Anyway, on our way to Venice this morning - but I will leave you with a few picture of the lovely Slovenian Alps.

Sailing in Holland and the town Sneek.

It turned out that Eelco has the internet. So I will update my blog before we head off to Slovenia.

Our road trip was much faster then I thought it would have been. Only 3 hours drive, we were expecting more, but there will be plenty of opportunities to drive later.

We arrived to a town called Jutyip (I think) near sneek, and met Eelco, who is an acupuncturist who works out of his own house, he has been so nice to us so far, and I will begin at the start of the time we met him at his house.

The first day we got to meet him he showed us around his lovely home - it was an old church converted to a house that sits on the edge of a canal. The backyard view is amazing - see picture. We went to a town called Heeg where they had - by chance again another festival. So music and alot of dancing and some magic shows, and some more music and we missed tea we were so happy chatting to people, - here is a picture of the town, and another picture of Mark trying to get into a ball on water, the only other people using this ball were kids that were under 12 years old, it was very amusing!!





Anyway - I can't get the stupid blog to align the photos properly, so I will continue. We got home very late. The next day we took a walk with the horse dog - Yip, and walked around the beautiful canals and fields that were at the back of his house, about 3 hours walking, and we came back and chatted and shared stories with Eelco, we booked a restaurant and rode some bikes that Eelco had borrowed from his neighbours for us. Riding down the road towards the town of sneek, it was so cool, here we were with someone that had been so nice to us, taking us to a place for dinner, sharing stories - and all from a couchsurfing wesite - It has been amazing so far. We had a good night, had some very nice dessert, which is probably adding to my overseas theory of - "It's doesn't matter I'm on holidays - so I will eat it, drink it and indulge.

Slightly Guilty....

We came home much earlier, - met a guy from wagga wagga who had moved to the netherlands last night - wow he had an accent.
Riding home in the dark was also quite fun. We didn't turn our lights on cause the generator is so much harder to push - "lets chance it with no lights" and so we got home fine. The next day was sailing day I got up early and went for a run for 30 minutes, took the horse dog who was reluctant to leave the house without his owner, but I did find while I am eating alot,(read between the lines Cuth) I have managed to keep a reasonable level of fitness.  - I don't have picture from sailing as they were all on tark's camera but it was an incident packed day from our boat crashing into another one and there being an argument between a german and our skipper to having a dinner with all of eelco's friends and cooking burgers and mushrooms with butter and herbs to italian food to dutch food and bread and everything. It was such a nice evening, a perfect evening - quote eelco - good food, good drinks, good company, people working together to have a good time... I have been so lucky I feel to have been able to have this experience.

This is the dinner that we ate at, was such a nice evening.

So now we are sadly saying goodbye to freisland, (spelt wrong I'm sure) and we are now embarking on our trip to Slovenia. A night drive to get there tomorrow about lunchtime we hope. Sleeping in the car and changing shifts. We will see what awaits us in the first country of eastern europe.




 Until later.

An event filled 2 weeks

Well... when we got back from Luxembourg not much has gone on, have worked moving bricks - I got to drive a forklift - I don't know why you need a license to drive those things - it's easy...., moved big plaster boards, and digging holes. Nothing bad about digging a hole for a day or two and earning some money. We painted yesterday and the day before (painted bricks on the inside of a gym). The last week or so hasn't been very fun really. - Activity wise has been fine. Another note on the size of the pile of bricks that we moved. only about 2m high by 5m by 5m... yes, my arms were sore.


Max went missing last Wednesday after jumping the fence for 7 days! Seven! the story was as follows. There was some fireworks at the showgrounds near my parents house and buddy and max went for a run somewhere after jumping the fence. Why buddy wasn't tied up I don't know, maybe she isn't the escaping style... ;-) But the feeling of helplessness that you can't look for your dog isn't very fun, but all is well that ends well, she came back yesterday morning dutch time, which was the best news of all time. So the news from down here has been hockey wise - we lost our last game 4-2 against the bottom team. Great.... Again there were 3-4 people that came home at 4-5am and they played accordingly. Add to that the complacency factor of playing the bottom team, and they just kept hitting goals in. (oh and we had 3 players sent off - we had 8 at one point, but I wasn't one of those sent off).

The new news that we have is that our first section of road tripping starts today, we were supposed to leave at 7.30 but we are now on the internet still at 9.40.. but it's ok, we are on holidays so it doesn't matter. We have our car packed to the brim, cause we are driving halfway across Europe. First destination is is Sneek (a town in the north of holland) which is a nice place for sailing so I am told. So we are staying at elco's house (CS) for a few days and then we are going to slovenia. Why slovenia. Well we have been offered a "job" playing hockey in slovenia for a slovenian team to play in the euro hockey league finals. Yep... weird, but with an all expenses paid trip, including our fuel to get there, we will take it. Woop. We all don't know anything about Slovenia, except for the fact that it is 1300kms away from Holland.

Anyway, I best be off, We have a big few weeks in front of us, I don't know how my internet access will be, (great sentence there) but I might be away for quite a while.

Later chaps.

Steve