Dear weblog-visitors,

Since I got a lot of messages, beeps, and requests from foreign citizens (especially English ones) with the question if I could post messages in their language, I'llpostmessages sometimes in the English language. Not all messages ofcourse. Most of them will remain in Dutch, so no worry!
I dedicate this first English post to Ben! :) After begging me multiple times, spamming without quitting he finally got me this far. Well Ben, and all others: enjoy!
Dont forget to post replies! (It's not prohibited!!)

Yesterday (Friday 6th) I went to The Hague to retrieve my visa for entranceto New Zealand. After working till 12am I catched the train from my hometown with a friend and arrived at The Hague around 2.30 pm.

After a black trip in the local tram and searching the area for atleast 30 minutes, we found the embasee of New Zealand in a poor, ugly officebuildingon the7th floor. We expected the embasee would be located in a nice, huge and well conversated villa. This was far from it...
The officebuilding was not only ugly, but didn't open either! After pulling andpushing the turndoor several times, we came to the conclusion that we could better enter the building through the left door, which was open...way to go!

Arrving on the 7th floor was a relieve. All the negative influences that the building left on our retina cleared up right away by seeing theextremely clean, modernchamberand New Zealand-based interrieur (flags included). The staff was very friendly, helped us really fast and we stood outside before we knew it. Visa included! Ingmar (that friend of mine) almost stood outside with the flag of New Zealand. Luckily he changed his mind seeing the all-seeing-cameras inside the office.

Outside, it rained cats and dogs. (Shouldnot be taken literally ofcourse.) After denying the passing trams and just walking underneath an umbrella wearing rainbreaking-clothing I could only bring up respect for Ingmar.
The only cloths he was wearing in this sheise-weather was a lousy t-shirt..hèhè! Have fun recovering from your coldthis weekend!

We arrived in thecity centre 45minutes after we left theembaseeWe drank some beer, ate some greek gyros and visited some stores. Nothing really important and funny to say about it. At 5pm we catched the train back to Amersfort, together with too many travelers! The whole train (consisting of minimally 15 carriages) was packed with well-dressed office employees and not-so-well-dressed students (including Ingmar) returning home for the weekend. Luckily we arrived earlyandfound ourself acouch to sit onduring the trip. [...]

9 weeks more to go. 8 weeksof work. Time's flying by. I only need a couple of more 'things' to do, to buy and to visit!Because, after becoming a 100% uncle one week agoit's stillgreat tosee thenew and firstdaughter of my sister and her friend!

Damn!! Ain't she cute?
And I'm going to New Zealand..what a badluck..