so officially queensday is to celebrate the birthday of the queen of the netherlands, but in reality it is just an excuse to wear extremely silly orange hats, listen to bad cover bands in overcrowded streets, buy stuff that you would not buy on any other day and most importantly to get really really drunk […]

have always been fascinated with border towns. the fact that another national economy with other taxes and other social norms is just across the border/mountain/river/fence tends to have interesting effects on these places, and especially what is for sale in the stores and on the streets. now my most favorite border town in Europe is […]

spain is probably the worst place in western europe to be a vegetarian. when i flew to argentina last year, it was absolutely impossible to find a vegetarian meal in all of barachas airport. of course iberia had fucked up my request for a vegetarian meal so i had to spend something like 20 hours […]

have been going out in amsterdam for the first time in what seems to be ages. went to a night called ‘labyrinth’ or something like that in paradiso. in the small room there is a quite prominent LED display which displays (no not the BPM count, that would have been like 10 years ago) but […]

so i got stopped for running a red light today while on the way from the dentist to work. the extremely stupid cop who struggled with reading my (dutch government issued!!) id card asked me at some point if i wanted to make a statement regarding the reasons for running the red light, to which […]

… and thus you have to fly around french airspace when you are going from amsterdam to lisbon and back. takes about an hour and twenty minutes more than the direct route, but creates a somewhat beautiful route display on the in-flight entertainment system: also reminds me of a picture i took like three years […]