update

Spent night updating web-diary and chatting with Crissy and Anna.

Girlfriend

Showed girlfriend the highlights of the bad taste film. May be catching a cold.

New hair

Got my hair cut and had Cindy visit to pick up an orange cowboy had (don't ask)

Not mucn

Had planned on doing nothing but reading a book all night. In the end Nicktor popped by to make a copy of his passport and we watched a "bad taste night"-highlights dvd. Saw some pretty bad film trailers. While Zombi Holocaust would probably already rate as somewhat distateful to some people, crippled masters really made me wonder how people come up with film-ideas like these.

Demolition man

Helped McR take out his kitchen. This turned out to be a piece of cake so I did some painting afterwards as well. Watched a film at night.

Weehee!

Went car testing with McR in the morning (he needs to pick a new company car). Tested both a simple 1.6 Seat Leon as well as the 175 hp 2 liter version. Guess which one we liked best? :-) While my own car isn't exactly underpowered, I wouldn't mind swapping it for the 175 hp-version. Neither did McR, apparently it's now gonna be a 2 liter 150 hp one, which should be plenty fast. Needed some effort to convince McR that the sport seats were more important than sattelite navigation but after some longer seating exercises, I managed to convince him.

Visited parents in the afternoon and went clubbing with friends at night. Fun! Friends are sissies though, at 3 am everybody had left already.

books galore

Spent night reading a book. Girlfriend did the same though with another book.

Argh!

So... Why did I forget to take the day off today again? Drove work-wards in a possibly not entirely sober state of mind and suffered a feeling of spinning for most of the day. Nearer the end of the day I felt a whole lot better and joined in the Wednesday Night Skate fun.

It being the last one of the year, we all got to skate down the Maasboulevard, right along the river. Really awesome! Fortunately I got back home only seconds before it started pouring down with rain. Too bad I still had to bike out to my sister's place to pick up her mail. (she's on holiday)

Still holiday-ing

Fortunately I had taken today off as well for I'm still not feeling 100%. Spent the day unpacking stuff, doing laundry and buying a wireless network-card so that now I can finally use my wireless router. (I gave up on somebody fixing it at work without losing my laptop for a long while) Played with wireless for most of the afternoon untill I fell asleep again. Oh and while I was waiting at the police station to report my missing passport, Nicktor gave me a call to tell me that my passport had been sent from Austria by the camping-people. Yay! Camping people!

Joined up with Remco, Adriaan, Ronald and Remco's colleague Rik for the annual bierloop. (A sponsored pubcrawl basically held around my place). This one didn't even do too badly on the list of "best bierloop". They had proper beer-mugs, they had t-shirts, entry was cheap and on the way out Remco stole another stamp-card so that we had to down 24 pints of beer with 5 people. (At this point I started to suspect that my plan of only drinking 3 pints might not work this night).

Sadly for the bierloop people they left us a phone number to call in case of an emergency. And call we did. With some interval, 4 of us claimed that the local Belgian beer-pub (and a stop at the bierloop) had completely run out of beer. The organisers believed us and promised us more beer. Then by the time we made it to Plan C, it had closed as well, which gave us even more beer. By this time I was starting to suspect that the:"Yay! Loads of beer!"-sound in the back of my head would tomorrow probably be drowned out by a severe hangover. When did I have to start work again?

Back home

After packing our tents (yay! dry again!) and taking buses and trains, eventually Kaz and I arrived back at my place mud-caked and dead tired. Had pizza and worked on invitations for Kaz' birthday party in October before I eventually got to drop her off at the airport. After getting back home, I more or less passed out, dead tired.

Muddy waters

... and some more
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Completely forgot to mention that yesterday afternoon McR and Marlies went back home again. McR claimed he wanted to do house related stuff, Marlies went back home to take care of her husband, who somehow broke his hand while falling of his bicycle.

Sadly for them they missed out on a whole day of fun in the rain and mud. Note to self:"Don't wear crocs in mud, you'll end up stumbling around with mud-filled crocs". Highlights of the day for me were the Arctic monkeys and Johan, even though Muse was pretty good too. Pennywise somewhat less so, I've heard them play better.

Failed to join in with the mud-sliding people. Danced the night away till late once again. Music wise I've seen better editions of Lowlands but fun-wise we're doing pretty well, I believe.

Feeling somewhat yellow

And more yellow
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Please don't ask me how I got to be this yellow. It sometimes just happens. Had plenty of shouts of:"Whoa, yellow!" or:"Hey! Tweetie!"

Apparently I missed out on loud neighbours while sleeping. Booh Hiss! Highlights of the day were a band playing Beatles covers translated into dutch, the Dirty Pretty Things and Infadels.

For some reason Kaz already went to bed around 11 and so did Ellen and Gary, still had lots of fun with Nicktor, girlfriend and Sabrina.

Words and music form da Lowlands

More everybody
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Somehow we had to wait at Schiphol airport because some moron (yes Nicktor, that's you) managed to leave his tent at Rotterdam central station. Fortunately McR was bright enough to call the Dutch railway services and fortunately they found the tent and put it on the next Lowlands-bound train.

During the rest of the day saw various bands play (highlight for me was Hard-Fi) and I even got my own 15 minutes of fame when I somehow ended up in a secret bar, where for a free beer I performed as a ballet dancer with diarrhea.

Clubbed the night away till fairly late before passing out.

Back home

Woke up a bit on the early side and drove back home. Nicktor and I have survived (All roadtrip photos can be found in this flickr set (I actually got round to writing descriptions with them so now you may know what's on them). Quickly did laundry had girlfriend over for an hour and a half and then I had to pick up my Australian friend Kaz who's coming along to Lowlands.

Quickly popped by a shopping center to let Kaz buy wellies (lots of rain has been forecast), showed her a windmill, went for a beer in de Oude Haven and got laughed at by the lady at sandwich shop "Broodje snor" for appearing to use a really bad pickup line. Want to eat this here or take it away? Me:"Let's do takeaway, then we can eat it at my place!"

Linda!

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Drove up to Bonn to visit my friend Linda. Managed to cross the border without the passport (yay! Schengen!) And a couple of hundred kilometers later arrived at Linda's place.

Great to see Linda once again (it's been 2 years since the last time). Eventually ended up drinking wine at her place before passing out.

Liechtenstein

a piece of art found in Liechtenstein
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Drove towards Liechtenstein (which was pretty hard to find seeing as it was not on a satellite navigation map and seeing as Nicktor refuses to even look at cards ever since he's been replaced by an electronic device).

Eventually found Liechtenstein and found out that it was a public holiday there. Did souvenir shopping, walked around for a bit and eventually drove back home. Went for a walk, fixed my car (a blown fuse, due to which my cigarette lighter stopped functioning) and lost my passport.

Driving west

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Switched off Nicktor once again, switched on satellite navigation and pointed it towards Nenzing in the west of Austria. Apparently this town had a camping which got 88% in our camping guide and we were curious about what this would offer.

Deciding to avoid toll-roads meant that once or twice we got to drive high up in the mountains (I'm pretty good going up but I kind of suck at going down, even though I'm a lot better than the Hungarian guy whose brake-lights I was looking at for about 20 kms while going downhill. Even I know not to do that. Also managed to get stuck in really dense mist before eventually making it to Nenzing.

The campsite in Nenzing turned out to be a bit of a Frankencampsite. All was really clean, showers and toilets looked as if the belonged in a 5 star hotel but it was all a bit too neat and too clean and all the sites were just squares on gravel. Still nice to know what an 8.8 on the camping-scale looks like.

Went for a walk at night (for a change). Nicktor sat in front of the tent (again, still can't walk) Really sad for him seeing as it's great a great hiking spot. Btw had rain almost all day until we arrived at our campsite.

All by myself

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

With Nicktor still being unable to walk, he decided to stay right besides the tent. Seeing as the weather still was awesome, I decided to walk towards the north-side of the lake. This turned out to be a 2 hour walk instead of the 45 minutes I was expecting. Took the boat back to St Gilgen, drank a beer on the boat and then walked an hour back to the campsite. Me really like!

Fucking in Austria

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Left Slovenia while it was pouring down with rain (looks like this may be a theme for this roadtrip). Probably a good thing that we're sitting in a car all day, not in the least because Nicktor twisted one knee, then kept the weight of that knee for a day and now can't bend his other knee. The 'Allo 'Allo fans would have recognised the Gestapo-walk he's now got.

Switched of Nicktor, switched on satellite navigation, pointed it to Fucking and drove most of the day. Yep, besides the name there's fuck all to do in town but it was still worth a visit. Felt a bit scared about people asking us:"What have you been doing today?"

Decided to drive a bit further towards St Gilgen. Once again situated besides a lake. It being Austria, doing almost anything appears to be forbidden. Went for a walk down the lake at night and visited St Gilgen. Nice little town.

Nicktor's demise

ljubljana
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Drove down to Ljubljana where we visited the castle while it was pouring down with rain. Nicktor decided that he couldn't deal with rain while visiting a city so we were not supposed to see too much else of the city, if it weren't for Nicktor screwing up his map-reading so badly that he completely pointed us in the wrong direction on what was supposed to the way back home.

Me shouting:"We drove into town this way" got demised as:"Bollocks, we drove around town before entering it" and me predicting all the sights didn't really help either.

In the end Nicktor finally admitted that we were now on the opposite side of town and that we really needed to turn around. Decided to make sure that Nicktor wouldn't read maps again, tomorrow we're switching to my satellite navigation system.

Enjoying the sun

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Our first really sunny day. Nicktor wanted to do he-stuff, so I ended up walking around the lake all by my self. As you can tell by the photo, the lake has got a really cute church in the middle, which you can get rowed towards (ringing the church-bells gives you lots of luck, apparently)

Failed to do so but did visit the castle, which had a really great view over the whole lake and the church. Had an awesome garlic-soup for dinner. Now want to make garlic soup myself.

Enter slovenia

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Arjan's reply to my text-message never came, fortunately my colleague Jeschael was nice enough to tell us to either go to Italy or Slovenia. Because Nicktor apparently didn't like Italy, we went on Slovenia-wards.

As you can tell from the picture, here in Bled, we found sun and a really nice campsite besides a nice lake. In the evening only just managed to finish our barbecue before it started to pour down with rain. Barbecue turns out to be enormous, by the way.

Beer and loathing in Vienna

Beer in Vienna
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Took the bus/tube into town and explored. Saw buildings, had food, drank beer and got threatened with a bashing if I'd ever again try to hit Nictor in the nuts. (I now know where to aim).

It wasn't even that rainy today. Eventually back to the campsite where for a change we could actually sit outside and play games.

Austria

Being caught out in the rain for 2 days, we decided to drive on to a drier place, hoping that Austria might be it. If not then we could always text Arjan to ask for a drier place. After a day of rain, aqua-planing and more rain, we eventually made it to Vienna, where we had the most rain this far on our road-trip. Had food at Mc Donalds in the rain. Looks like this rain-thing might become a theme here.

Greetings from Loket

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Found ourselves in the rain again in the morning. Decided to look around a bit and ended up in Loket where we visited the castle, which apparently was playing along with the:"People believe that torture is fun"-theme, then we got caught out in the rain and decided to have a pizza in a place nearby. (Obviously I forgot the name)

At night actually cooked dinner before we got chased back into the car again for more rain.

The beginning

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Today our roadtrip to God Knows Where started. We'll probably figure out everything along the way. First things first though, after picking up Nicktor, we still had to go to the supermarket McR's girlfriend works at to pick up all his underwear.

Eventually set off on our travels and gave McR a phonecall to let him know that he'd be underwear-less for the next 10 days. McR apparently didn't believe us and didn't really realise this mistake till he wanted to put on new socks an hour later.Dork!

Drove eastwards all day and eventually ended up in Plzen. It rained! Played games in car all night.

Leaving tomorrow

Whatever happened during the past 3 days? Don't ask me! Girlfriend must have left for Finland and I probably did stuff preparing for leaving on holidays but seeing as I'm trying to recall 2 weeks later I don't think I'll ever really find out.

The parental unit is back from their holidays, so they spent the afternoon in my place waiting for the dishwasher repair-man, who miraculously already called at 10:00 to ask:"Can you please open the door, I'm downstairs", replied with:"Sorry, you're not supposed to be there till 1" and repair-man promised to get back.

Then at 2 he returned, my father attempted opening the door for him and then managed to lock himself out, while my mother was on a shopping-trip with the keys. Repair man failed to kill father, promised to return but didn't look too happy apparently. And at the third attempt they managed to let repair-man in and he fixed my dishwasher. *yah!*

Dinner at parents' place at night.