Oh Holi Business Trip

I have never been on a business trip before. Not even a daytrip to Brussels. The closest I ever came to going on a business trip were the daytrips I did when working for a summer camp (during which I spent the whole day hiding out in a café or restaurant just to have a rest from the kids for a couple of hours). Those were more of a challenge than anything else. Since I work at an international company now, I hoped that they would send me on a business trip one day. Even if it was just to the office in London or Bratislava.

 

 

This was really one thing on my wish list in life. Like participating in a marathon (I did not run a full marathon yet, but did participate in several marathons) and buying stocks (did that too). But on this one, I did not have any influence myself.

 

And now the travel Gods have heard my wishes. The karma piggybank is paying out. The law of attraction is working its magic. I have been asked to go abroad to give some trainings! And not just to a nearby kind of abroad. I have been asked to go to India. I.N.D.A.! I am super extremely excited. The bouncy "oh my gaaawwdd!" kind of excited. I will be going to Pondicherry for two weeks, together with two other colleges.  I already received the invitation letters and went through the visa process. This is getting so real so quickly.

 

And it even gets better. We will be there during the weekend of the Holi Festival! More than one year ago, I wrote this blog post:

http://ohtheplacesyouwillgoandsee.blogspot.com/2013/08/musthavebeen-to-do-color-festival.html

Seems like I have prophetic powers. I did a color run already and now I will go to the festival itself as well. Although I could never have imagined to experience it in India.

Life is just awesome sometimes.

 

 



Traveling When You Are Traveling - The Transport Abroad

The public transport abroad is different than the public transport at home. There are different written and unwritten rules and different ways to deal with problems. As a tourist, you usually don't know these and you just do what you are used to or what seems best at that moment. This can lead to interesting situations. So here are my funniest memories about public transport.

Porto

 We were taking this cute little tram to go to the beach. But somewhere along the track, a car was parked very badly and was partially on the tram track. No time was wasted. Some guys got out of the tram and together they lift the car and moved it a meter of so. I LOVED that.

London

The first time I went to London, I was there with a group of people from university. We just had two days so we wanted to make the most of it. We travelled by tube to save time and see as many things as possible. In the south of the Netherlands we don't have metro's. There are just busses and trains and the drivers wait till all passengers are inside before closing the doors. Well, the tube in London does not wait. Of course part of the group was outside of the metro and the other half inside. And there is no mobile reception underground. Luckily the panic lasted only a short time since the next metro arrived after only a couple of minutes and we could catch up with our classmates.

Madrid

In London, the colour of the bard in the metro is matched with the colour of the lines of the route on the map. So when I went to Madrid, I took on the same theory. But this does not quite work in Spain apparently. So we ended up being in the complete wrong metro going who knows where. And we thought we were being smart...

Glasgow

 When my parents were visiting me in Leeds, we went to Glasgow for two days. The traveling part was a disaster! When switching trains in Edinburg, the doors closed and got locked because of an error in the door system (or something like that). My parents were inside the train and we were outside. I was trying to get an explanation from the staff but I could just not understand their accents at all. On the way back we got stuck at the train station of York for almost 3 hours in the middle of the night. Also not a great deal of fun.

Dublin

 Me and a friend had walked a long way to one of the museums. After the museum visit, we were tired and decided to take the tram to go back. We just hopped on and asked someone who looked like a staff member if we could buy a ticket. His answer: "You should have bought it before you got in. So if you see a guy dressed like me entering the tram, just go out quickly." Cool guy.

Istanbul

 These little dolmus busses just scare me. You get into them and before you have the chance to even sit down, where are racing through traffic already. Seatbelts are nowhere to be found. While driving, the driver takes your money for the ticket from you. No need to stop for that. I feared for my life. But at least you get where you need to be really fast.

My Favorite Travel Pictures

This time I am sharing some of my favourite vacation photos. Most of these pictures are not good or very original pictures. But all of them have either good memories or something special that makes me love them. Looking through my old vacation photos always makes me happy.



Sarajevo - A wonderful viewing point where you could see the whole city. It was on the first day of our vacation and such a huge moment of being relaxed.  

 

Prague - This was taken at a perfect moment

Dbrovnik - Because I love these old little streets

 

Porec - Chilling in the sun next to the beach. One of the first vacations far away without parents.

 

Leeds - Because this was my window for nine months, the one on the bottom on the left side of the tree.

Yorkshire Dales - He was just minding his own business

 

 Termoli - Just cute

Rome - I still can't figure out how this guy could drown in this fountain in the film "Angels and Demons" since the water is not as deep as it seems in the movie.

France - Because doing a road trip with friends is pretty cool.

 

Ljubljana - This bridge is seethrough. Very interesting when people are wearing skirts...

Liverpool - A great picnic moment

Rome - Because I don't even know how I managed to take this photo like this.

Brugge - all the white painted trees in a row just look quite special.

London - Such a colourful part of the ciy

Rome - Because I never quite realized it had a beach

Istanbul - Because this is a cat in a tree and I wonder what he is doing there. He did not seem uncomfortable at all.

Sarajevo - Because I was so pleasantly surprised by this city

Istanbul - because this is the bridge between Europe and Asia

Istanbul - I like reflections.

 

Sarajevo - The cutest tea house ever

Mostar - Because every photo you take looks like a postcard

 

Dubrovnik - The harbour is beautiful

 

 

Porto - Because I finally got my sunny beach day after many trips where the weather was not great

 

Porto - Because it is so colorful

 

HaveBeen: Antwerp - Belgium



It has been a while since I have been to Antwerp. I pass the city every once in a while, but I just change trains there and then leave again. So I don't get to see anything. But his time I did! I went with my friend for a full day of sight seeing and just strolling around the city.

 

 

 

I like the train station of Antwerp a lot. The entrance hall is very beautiful. And the cool thing is that there was an amazing flashmob done in that hall once: 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQLCZOG202k

 

 

 

 Close to the train station is a diamond quarter which is quite famous according to the Lonely Planet. But since diamonds are not quite within our budget, we skipped that part. There is also a zoo close to the train station, which is probably nice. But surely not on a gloomy and rainy day like this. So it was also a no for the zoo. Instead we went on with our mission to explore the centre part of the city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was this cool chocolate shop where you were allowed to go to the kitchen and watch the chocolate be made. They even had a chocolate dress!

 

 

Of course there was also the onze-lieve-vrouwekathedraal, quite a landmark since you can see it from everywhere in the city.

 

 

 We also saw the Brabofontein. It was switched off (apparently it quite often is), but it was still cool to see this statue, that tells the tory of how the city got its name. The story goes like this: There was a giant named Druon Antigoon who chopped of the hands of the people who did not pay their bills and after that threw the hands in the river. Brado took revenge by chopping of the hand of the giant, throwing it in the river as well. So that was how the city was named Antwerpen, coming from hand werpen (= throwing a hand).

 

The statue is actually positioned in the wrong direction since the hand is not aimed at the river now. This is because the town hall is in the direction of the river and if the statue would be placed that way, it would seem liked the hand was being aimed at the town hall.

 

 

 

 In Antwerpen there was a bunch of Christmas decorations, like in most places around this time of the year. Although they did seem a lot less into it then some of the other cities I have been to recently. And I did not quite get the elephant decorations to be honest.

 

 

 

 

 

We decided to explore the city a bit more and choose a destination that sounded nice from the city map and go there. We choose "Het Eilandje" (=the little island). Wrong decision. There was nothing touristic to see at all. Just streets full of rather gloomy looking houses. But we kept hoping to find something nicer a bit further on, so we kept walking. But no such luck. The nicest thing we saw in a walk of more than 30 minutes was this little bright blue house.

 

 

So we turned around and went back to the touristic part of the city again. No more adventurous exploring that day.

 

 

I think I have to go back to Antwerp another time to really see the city. This day it was rainy, dark en gloomy and there were tons of people doing very last-minute Christmas shopping. Not the best circumstances. I should also better prepare myself better, so I know which parts of the city are worth a visit and which are not. Just going with the flow does not always works best. But we had fun nevertheless.