My friend Joeri made me these awesome book shelves for my birthday.

Check out the shelves from various angles: Book Shelves @ Flickr

[idea via instructables]

2007.05.02 11:29 AM

ICE 122, carriage 23, seat 081 - Utrecht CS

In a relatively empty second class carriage. My seat clearly shows my seat is reserved. But the seat next to me (chair 083) isn't - I am hoping this train will not fill up, so that I can sit this out in peace. Announcement just came on "Due to delayed approach of train at Frankfurt Hbf, the train will be departing slightly later." Alright, so this trip already starts with a 2 minute delay: what a shock!

Am in the fast train, it seems, as we are traveling at 250 km/h now, and we are showing no signs of stopping at any of the stations between Frankfurt Airport and Cologne Central Station (keep your fingers crossed, because you never know what will happen). It was great to get together with Katie again, and I cannot wait till the time she will find a free spot in her busy researcher's life to come visit me.


2007.05.02 1:30 PM

Leaving Duisburg, with only about a 10 minute delay. I'm hoping I can still catch my transfer connection to Den Haag when we arrive in Utrecht, but seeing as this train arrives at the platform from which my other train leaves, I see no problems there.

More and more people have gotten on the train, and I hope I can get my small suitcase out of the holding with relative ease when we reach Utrecht CS. I can only imagine other people's stuff on top of mine!

Photos of my trip to Katie in Frankfurt, Germany.

[more detailed posts will follow/precede this one]

All photos: Frankfurt @ flickr 

20070501 Worms, and meeting Frank

Today Katie and I traveled to Worms. At least, that was our plan. We went via the Max-Planck-Institute, because Katie had some cells to wake up. Wow! That is certainly a completely different world! They even keep frogs there to harvest their eggs. I still don't quite understand what Katie is researching, but I'm hoping she will explain it again to me some time. From MPI, we took the bus (number 26) back to Eschersheim Station, and we stepped onto the S6 towards Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof.

While Katie took care of my ticket, I went and got us our daily Starbucks coffee. After grabbing something to eat, we went down again to the S-bahn, to get on the S8 to get our connection to Worms. Unfortunately due to May 1 demontrations, we did not really get out of the suburbs of Frankfurt and the train went back to the central station. After checking to see my ticket would still be valid, we went on another train (regular Regional Bahn / Regional Express this time), hoping it would bring us closer to Worms. I must say, I have discovered that the DB is not as perfect as we dutch regularly are made to believe. Our train was delayed, and thankfully Frank was sweet enough to pick us up at Bensheim. Instead of a tour of Worms, he had decided to use this opportunity to take us upto the Auerbach castle (gorgeous). Afterwards we walked through a wonderful area in Bensheim, called Fürstenlager. We sat in the sun, talked about the combined history of Germany and the Netherlands, and I even sang the first and sixth stanza of the Dutch anthem (never ask me again, Frank!).

As Katie had predicted (mostly to herself), Frank and I really hit it off. We talked about religion a bit, and I cannot wait to talk some more with him about this topic, because it is obviously something that we both have a strong opinion about. Should see if I can send him some more books, and perhaps suggest (or send) some books which my grandfather wrote (note to self).

Frank took us back to Worms, and he showed us where he lives in the Dominicaner monastery. It's gorgeous, and while I find it difficult to understand his choice of life, I can see the reason for living there. Frank told us

Our trip back was relatively unremarkable.