Breda: Tuesday

It’s time for a whole new numbering scheme!

Last night I had a nice, quiet night in my awesome hotel in Schipol. At Schipol? I don’t know if it’s a city or just the name of the airport. I was starving and originally outraged at the price of room service until I ate. I didn’t expect to eat the best burger and apple pie of my life in Holland. Mmmm…

Uneventful night. The hotel is in the middle of nowhere so my only option was to sit in and watch porn. I mean sleep. Sleeping is what I did. The reciept reflects that! I did have a nice long shower, wash my socks in the sink, steam and iron some shirts and just generally lounge around.

This morning I got up super early and took the shuttle back to the airport to meet Anjali (my boss) and head for Breda, where I’ll be working for the next few days. We had a driver take us to Breda, which is about 95km from the airport. The driver had this really badass GPS / road information thing that told him when he could pass people on the shoulder and all kinds of other shit. Very efficient. I also got to see a few “real” Dutch windmills and lots of sheep on the way. Very authentic.

When we arrived in Breda we went straight to work, had a meet and greet and got to work. I met lots of people who I had only talked to on the phone before which was cool. Then my coleague Kees (pronounced Case) and I got down to geeking.

Lunch was interesting. The office has a cafeteria and everyone seems to eat in it. I had orange juice, some fruit salad, a roast beef and cheese sandwich, a little cup of tuna salad and a Kroketten. A bite of Kroketten, really. A Kroketten is a fried thing with some kind of meat paste substance in it. It looks like a really thick mozzarella stick except instead of fatty goodness inside there is… something terrible. Not my thing at all. Also, my roast beef appeared to be raw. Good though.

After lunch we took a long walk around that part of town, which is aparently the normal thing to do after lunch. Can you imagine? Excersize? Weird. Jeroen kept looking back at me to make sure I wasn’t going to croak over with a massive coronary. Not too surprising, I guess, considering I am about as thick as three dutch guys, or 47 dutch girls. Let me tell you something. If you are fat, do not come to Holland. It’s not good for your pride.

Then it was work, work, work till Jeroen took us to check into our hotel. The room is very nice but it has tricks! I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the bathroom light. Jeroen took us out to dinner and walking around town and when we got back Anjali asked me if my room had soap in it. I said I didn’t know cause the light in my bathroom didn’t work. Just as this went down we were walking up to the counter and the gorgeous receptionist giggles. Anjali asked me if I stuck my key card in the slot. I hadn’t, and we all had a real nice laugh at that. Aparently there is a key card slot inside the door. You put it there to use the lights and it’s supposed to remind you to take it with you when you turn out the lights. Stupid fools! I’m American! I haven’t turned off a light since I moved out of my Mom’s house in 1996! Sometimes I turn on EXTRA lights, in the middle of day! Then I sit back and just breath in the dinosaur fumes.

Dinner and walking was very nice. We got to see the whole city center. It’s very much like Amsterdam except with no people, or hookers, or drugs. The roads are all cobblestone, the buildings are small and very old and it feels “European”. We had dinner at a nice little restaurant. I had pork medallions with a pepper cream sauce and some kind of little moist pastry stuff. I think there was corn and onion in it. With the presentation of the food and all I would have considered this a “gourmet” restaurant… until they brought out the giant bucket of french fries. I guess you eat your food and then use the fries to fill in the empty spaces. They were served with a little tray of a bunch of different sauces. I had some kind of sweet and spicy ginger sauce with my fries and it was great.

Now it’s 10:30 and I’m back at the hotel and bored. And there’s no free Internet access. I paid EU 5.95 for 60 minutes and I’ve probably used most of that typing this. So, I’m off! Talk to you tomorrow! If you’d like to see the room I’m staying in tonight check out Flickr. That’s the only pics I took today.

Oh, have you figured out the whole Dutch, Holland, Netherlands thing? The country is The Netherlands but everyone calls it Holland. The people are Dutch and that’s also the language they speak. No one actually calls it The Netherlands. I have no idea why.

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