Don was invited to speak at the Tech 2020 show in Holland and we gladly accepted the offer. Pim van der Horst accommodated us and Dennis Blom drove us to places. A very nice drive I might add – in his electric Jaguar – what a pleasure!
With Pim’s help we rented bicycles and saw a lot of the area around his house, Dr. Heijebrug, windmills and all. A very short and sweet ferry ride to an island called ?? for lunch. The weird thing was it was a Sunday afternoon and the only open restaurant we found was only open for a function, but they graciously let us have a bite too. It was also nice to exercise, and I found out that I was definitely not bicycle-fit.
Don did a rebreather crossover to the Liberty, and had to dive in the lake at Zandeiland in ?? degrees Celsius cold water. Kees gave him a thicker hoodie because his was totally inadequate.
The 2020 Tech talk was a sounding success. The organisers did an astounding job and the speakers were first class. There was an audience of over 300 people. Don had to sing for his supper with two later workshops regarding the Boesmansgat expedition and that too was well received by the attendees.
Then we were off the Das Boot show in Dusseldorf, chauffeured by Dennis again, but sadly not in his Jag – apparently it was too far for an electric motor. The parking lot was usper-impressive. Not space to wiggle around in with all the cars asked to park head to tail. Glad I did not have to get my car out of the parking space. The show was just as impressive and it was good to catch up on some of our suppliers from all over the world. Catching up on new technology was also great. But quite strangely, we could not find a decent pair of dive gloves with white or light palms. Light palms make for better signalling as opposed to dark ones. I loved the fact that at the end of the day you jumped on a train and it took you to the city. I really enjoy public transports that work!
Our “hotel” – booked though bookings.com was weird. Turned out to be in what looked like private flats – you then walk to the first floor and there’s a make-shift office where we got our keys. The room was clean and had all the usual amenities so all’s well… except there were empty beer bottles in the cupboard. I guess housekeeping do not check cupboards. Upon departure, there was no one in the office but there was a key drop-box. Before we could get to it, a man stopped us and enquired if he could help and I mentioned that we were just checking out and looking for the staff. He said to hand him the key as he’s the owner. Well as I told him – anyone could say they’re the owner.
Sight-seeing in Dusseldorf is maximum a day’s worth. We had 2 days, and we were freezing. We ended up going into various stores along the route just to warm up a bit. True window-shoppers. Of course a visit to Dusseldorf is not complete without “Bratwurst” so we ordered two in one of the restaurants. We chose the indoors seating, but there were plenty outdoorsy people enjoying their meal in the cold with full-blast heaters everywhere.
Back to Holland in a train, and then off to the Red Light District in Amsterdam. Ohh-weee.. Lots of young blokes all round of course. It was difficult finding space in a restaurant in the area. The next day we did a hop-on-hop-off boat/bus thing. It being Amsterdam the boat was of course a necessary adaption to the hop-on-hop-off busses. As we were out of season, there was space a-plenty on the tours. It’s so nice to see Amsterdam for real. When we wanted a plain old cappuccino, we had to look hard to get a plain coffee shop.. some of them were smoked out..
At this point Don had come down with something and I think he did well to tolerate running around Amsterdam. It was clearly not as much fun for him. All too soon we had to depart back home and we made it just in time for the first round of “flatten the curve”. At home I came down with the same something Don had, but. I had the luxury of being able to be at home in bed. Mine was not as bad as Don’s. We are both sure we had “C0v1d”. But a year and a bit later I don’t know… It’s still not isolated.. !?! That is a conversation for another day.
Shexit 