Bertram

So I just booked passage on the ESNTrain, a unique train that will tour Europe for 25 days, visiting 18 countries. I'll be on it April 17th through April 21st. Now all I need is recommendations for what to do during the stopovers:

• 17 hours in Brussels
  (4 hours in Luxembourg in the middle of the night)
• 6 hours in Strasbourg
• 1 hour in Karlsruhe
• 10 hours in Heidelberg
• 6 hours in Bern
• 9 hours in Zürich
• 6 hours in München
• 1 hour in Salzburg
• 7 hours in Linz
• A day (or possibly two) in Wien

I can probably find something to do in Karlsruhe, Salzburg, Zürich and München, and Heidelberg is probably not very interesting on a Sunday evening so I suspect I'll catch a tram or train to Mannheim/Ludwigshafen. That leaves me with things to do in Linz, Bern, Strasbourg, Brussels and Wien. Suggestions? Bear in mind that some of these periods are quite early (6 AM in München), late (late afternoon - midnight in several places) and on Sunday (Heidelberg and Strasbourg).

I bought a table!

Went to Amsterdam for the 100 year anniversary of the cooperative housing society in Amsterdam that I’m a member of.
Also, went to a dinner party yesterday, spent ages frantically running around trying to find some flowers or another gift for the host — then it turned out I was the only one who bothered. Aren’t you meant to take something for the host when invited to a social function?

So I went to Alphen the other day to clean out my old apartment, and among the things to do was to deal with my two bikes there.

My good one was sitting in front of the apartment building where I left it, but some jerk has attached it to the bike rack with someone else’s lock. The police refuse to do anything about it until I can prove it’s mine. Bloody nuisance.

The other bike was to be thrown away, but I had to get it to the council dump which turned out to be quite a chore, both tires were almost flat, the chain kept coming off and halfway through the nuts that kept the back wheel going in a straight line gave out... and on top of that it was hot with 95% humidity. I pried the bell off and then launched it into the iron bin at the dump.

Last week I took fuzzie’s laptop to be repaired in Woerden. Due to poor timing, missing a train and not knowing where it was, I spent a total of 2½ hours out, for something which is only 20 km away via the shortest route. So I decided to cycle there to pick up the laptop. Made two wrong turns on the way there, but on my way back I managed to get back in one go, taking about 50 minutes.

My old laptop died, so I bought a Thinkpad X31 off eBay. It's tiny!

fuzzie and I are considering going on holiday in the UK this summer. Since I've seen most of southern England and Wales (the only major places south of Cambridge that I haven't seen are Plymouth and Brighton), I'm making a list of midland, northern and Scottish places that I'm considering visiting.

• Liverpool
• Manchester
• York
• Birmingham
• Newcastle
• Edinburgh
• Glasgow
• Leeds
• (Brighton)

If you think I should or should not visit any of these places (or others), tell me.

Edit: I'm not really looking for tourist attractions, I just want to get a feel for what a place is like. I've been known to take random trains and buses in Paris, London and Cardiff just to get an idea of how the various peoples of Europe spend their lives. This is why — supposedly — not very appealing places like Glasgow and Leeds are on the list.

I spent a total of two hours today and yesterday trying to fix a blowout on my rear bike tire. It involved taking the whole back wheel off, which is kind of involved because of the in-hub gear system. I had to spend a long time putting the whole thing back on, tensioning the chain and aligning the wheel. Here's to hoping I don't have to do this again soon. The blown tire also caused me to miss a lecture :(

Our flat has sprung a leak, causing much filthy water to drip into our assembled kitchen appliances.

Also, I went to Leiden public library to study for the day, which was most successful. I managed to condense the calculus I'm required to know onto ten sheets. Having ten sheets of notes which I don't understand is obviously much better than having a handout which I don't understand.

The exam disaster wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, on account of me getting the part of the exam I did manage to finish almost entirely correct. I now have a 6.6 out of 10, so I probably won't bother appealing.

So my first exam after restarting university was today. It covered the first one-third of the calculus course. I wasn't quite sure when the exam was, as it hadn't been properly formally announced other than in the study guide, and only in the timetable at that. The timetable showed that it was just the two lecture blocks after the lunch break, which would amount to 13:45-15:30, a rather odd duration for an exam. The public website didn't have any times, so I went into the building and looked at the TFT info screens, which looked like this:



I went into the exam and got about two thirds through it when the assistant lecturer asked us to hand in our work at 16:00. Turns out the exam really was 14:00-16:00, which was noted at the top of the exam paper, which I hadn't noticed. The lecturer refuses to consider this in marking my exam. If this means I get a low grade for this exam I will have to appeal. The website has since been updated to show the accurate time.

When I was a child, there used to be elderberry plants in front of our house. We'd make elderberry blossom juice by cutting the flowers off and boiling them with lots of sugar and some other magic in a pressure vat. At some point the municipal services that maintained the patch in front of our house cut down the elderberry plants so we were forced to stop making the stuff.

A few months ago I walked into the park near our new flat with fuzzie and noticed an elderberry plant. I got curious as to whether you could buy elderberry blossom juice concentrate anywhere. None of the local organic food stores (Delft, Leiden, Alphen) seemed to have it — they all had elderberry juice, but no elderberry blossom juice.

I ended up finding the stuff at the most unlikely place: IKEA. They sell it under the name Flädersaft, which I assume is cognate with the Dutch 'vlier'. Interestingly enough, three of the six languages on the label incorrectly identify it as elderberry juice.

I've been selected for a test of the emergency evacuation systems in the tunnel on the new high speed rail line. This ought to be interesting, it'll be one of the first 'civilian' trains on the line, and I shall take my photo camera and GPS unit.

I went to Amsterdam on the bus a few weeks ago. I'd bought a day ticket for €10 (cheaper than a return or two singles), but I couldn't make the change I intended to make because the ticket issued to me was printed by a computer that the driver of the connecting bus didn't recognise. On the off chance that Connexxion (what's in a name?) were going to make themselves useful for a change I sent them a letter with the details of the journey in it. They sent me one back telling me they took it up with the driver in question and instructed him in the proper validity of various tickets. They also sent me a free day pass (no peak or premium restriction!). I'm impressed.

I haven't updated in ages, so here's some pictures:

• fuzzie and I have been nerding up my study


• Screens at the overpriced supermarket at the airport

Oh, and while we were in the Netherlands we tested our implementation of Microsoft's push email protocol. It worked swimmingly.

fuzzie and I wrote an open source Airsync/Direct Push (Windows Mobile 5 email synchronisation/push email) server. Now we need people to test it.

I went to an outlet sale at a boardgame distributer, bought six games that were highly rated on boardgamegeek. Also, I got given a Centris 660av.

( Remembrance day television coverage )

So, after a grueling eight hour journey (Trowbridge → Bath → Paddington → Farringdon → Luton Airport Parkway → Luton → Schiphol → Alphen aan den Rijn) I'm home again.

I still don't know when I'm moving, annoyingly, although I've been told that I'm expected to help decorate the new flat on Thursday.

Items that the new flat currently lacks:

• Kettle
• Coffee machine
• Vacuum cleaner
• Oven/microwave combination
• Washing machine
• Spin dryer (if I want one, a clothes drying rack otherwise)

Oh, and I bought a newspaper and an Economist, but I left them on the plane :(

I was in London yesterday.

I got in at London Luton, took the train to Blackfriars, bus (46? 45) to Chancery Lane tube, Central Line to Tottenham Court Road, visited the internet café, took the 24 bus to Hampstead Heath, then Silverlink train to Willesden Junction and back to Euston on the Watford DC, picked up my train tickets, took a 205 bus to Baker Street tube, a Metropolitan line train (Uxbridge slow) to Harrow-on-the-Hill, back on Chiltern Railways to Marylebone, where I took the Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus, changed onto Central for Marble Arch. Poked around Hyde Park for a while, then took a 436 bus to Vauxhall Cross bus station. Took a South West Trains service to Clapham Junction, then back on an almost-empty train out of Shepperton to Waterloo. The end.