The list

I'm off to Vienna tomorrow to rejoin the parents and sister on their European escapades. A neat travelling quirk will have me in three countries in one day, for the third time (Netherlands-Slovakia-Austria. The other two were Italy-Belgium-Netherlands and France-Belgium-Netherlands). It also will give me a chance to add a few more countries to "the list". It is obviously not the best metric of how well-travelled a person is, but here is my country collection (in chronological order):

Been there, done that:
1. Canada: born and raised, of course
2. USA: mostly North Dakota and Minnesota, but it still counts
3. Netherlands: second longest in terms of duration
4. Belgium: a few times, first in October 2004
5. Germany: November, December and February
6. Czech Republic: November '04
7. Italy: rang in the New Year under the shadow of Michaelangelo's David (well, a copy. Plus there are no shadows at night).
8. France: Most recent addition.

Coming soon:
9. Slovakia: Should be a fun 2 hours.
10. Austria: The hills are alive ...
11. Hungary: They have a commercial here on Dutch television that plays on the Hungary/hungry homonym, in English ("You must be Hungary people!"). I laugh.

Further possibilities
12. Norway
13. Sweden
14. Denmark
(Notice a theme there?)

Also, if you care, I put a few photos of Arcade Fire in Amsterdam, round 2, featuring Final Fantasy, on my flickr page (notice also the handy link to the right). 'Twas a good show. Certainly a much better opening act (who later added his mad-violin-skills to the band) than the last time, and a better venue.

UPDATE: The list, in map form.

Obligatory tower shot

So, I was in France for 5 days, a week ago, and I saw some stuff. In Paris, we saw more or less the usual, including: Musée du Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Cathédrale de Notre Dame, l'Arche de Triomphe, Versailles, etc.

Prior to Paris, two days were spent in Tours and in the surrounding Loire Valley. We visited a famous château at Chenonceau, but nearly as interesting was the parking lot which featured some sweet rides, and a rather rare license-plate-spotting.

This weekend was Koninginnedag, or Queen's Day, here in the Netherlands. It is ostensibly a celebration of the queen (held on the Queen Mother's birthday because the current queen's birthday is in January, apparently a lousy time to celebrate). While there were some official events (I didn't see any), there seem to be three other main functions:

• a city-wide garage sale (minus the garages)


• an excuse to get dressed all in orange


• a reason to start drinking at 10 in the morning