I came back from Paris about an hour ago... a super weekend!

In a few minutes I'm leaving to Amsterdam Central Station, where I'll take the Thalys train to Paris!

The Thalys leaves at 7:00 o'clock, but I want to be there a bit earlier. First of all, I don't want to miss the train, and second I have to get a newspaper, coffee and breakfast (for in the train).

The Thalys is a high-speed train (TGV), that will reach a maximum speed of 300 kilometers per hour in France. In the Netherlands the speed is "limited" to that of a regular intercity train, because the highspeed tracks are not ready yet. It's a really fast connection; I'll be in Paris at 11:00 o'clock.

Sasha arrived around this time, her plane was scheduled to arrive at 6:00 o'clock in Paris. My train arrives at Garde Du Nord, the North-station of Paris. From there it's about 15 minutes to the hotel.

Sasha has been in Cameroon for about two weeks now, and their work there is done. So, she's flying back tonight from Yaounde to Paris.

Tomorrow morning I'm taking the train and I'll meet her there in Paris... I am so happy about it!

We will spend a really long weekend together; Sasha's flying back to Washington this Monday.

Yesterday we learned about the prepositions and corresponding cases (Falle) when talking about time and date. So now I know for sure how to say: "in the weekend", it's "am Wochenende" (Dativ and preposition an).

I also signed on for the Zaterduitsdag, Saturday April 24th. There will be lessons German all day. It's organized by the Goethe Institut, where I'm doing my German course, and it's open for everybody.

There are a couple of different programs that Saturday, such as a conversation training and "intercultural differences". I choose the grammar program: cases and prepositions. Ten years ago I would have never imagined voluntarily spending a Saturday learning German grammar.

I've moved to another desk again.

It's unfortunate that I had to give up the view over the canal, but now I have a nice view on the garden at the backside of Chess.

This weekend I spent in Friesland, in Leeuwarden and Heerenveen.



I had a very nice evening with Ettie and Gerben Saturday. After dinner we saw a funny movie, Finding Nemo -- hilarious! A really cute movie about a little fish. We went out in Leeuwarden later. We visited a number of different pubs and it was cosy.



Sunday I spent with my grandmother and my parents in Heerenveen. We went to the Douwe Egberts museum in Joure in the afternoon. That was interesting. They had a lot on the history of this Dutch coffee brand, but also other things such as mechanical printers from the early 1900's.



The train journey back went really smoothly. This morning I learned that I've been quite lucky, just after I left the station in Amsterdam there was a bom alarm that shut down all train transport for the rest of the evening.

Wednesday and Thursday I was at a big trade-event for Chess. It's called Intertraffic, and it's a trade fair for the design, maintenance and management of traffic and transport infrastructure. The fair was in the RAI in Amsterdam.

Chess has been working on a new parking machine for Vialis, which is one of the projects we demonstrated this week. The goal for Chess was to make contact with potential customers and suppliers.

It was a lot of fun working there and explaining people about what we do. There were a lot of international visitors; I found good use for my (renewed) German knowledge and interesting enough also for my Bulgarian! There were a couple of visitors from Bulgaria and Macedonia.

It was also nice to learn more about other Chess projects we do from my colleagues who were at the fair.

The Chess stand at Intertraffic 2004.

Roger.

Rob with the Vialis parking machine. On the computer next to him the back-office program for parking machines that I've been working on is running.

A picture from the Intertraffic website that gives an indication of the other stands that were at the fair. Left in the back you can see the booth of Vialis.

The Intertraffic fair is an important meeting place for buyers and suppliers of traffic equipment etc; there were over 600 exhibitors.

There was a really nice e-mail in my inbox: "Breaking News: Roan Daniel is born".

My good friend Jean-Paul is the happy father of his second son! Roan was born March 30th. Mother Inger and Roan are doing fine, and they can been seen on their website. Roan is 3700 gram and 53cm tall.

Congratulations from both of us!

I'm afraid I was 15 minutes late for my German lesson yesterday -- the train from Haarlem had a big delay. I had dinner at Chess again, this time noodles with a salad.

We did a very interesting exercise at the German language course. We had a chat with the whole group, where each participant was a representative of a country. Together with Noortje I was representating Germany. It was great fun to discuss the national eating habits, especially because the teacher was filming us all with a camera. After the break we watched ourselves -- this is always painful but it was very interesting. I was describing the "Biergarten", where German people would come together once a week at their "Stammtisch" with friends. I haven't actually done that but German friends have described it so it was easy to talk about it.

Later I gave my presentation. It went reasonably well. My German always degrades when I have to talk in public but that's exactly why I'm following a course. It was a great exercise, the whole lesson yesterday. Slowly but surely I notice my German is improving.

I'm taking it easy today. I've been doing my German homework, but it's not completely ready yet. Next to my regular assignments I have to prepare a (small) presentation.

I just spoke to Sasha, who is alive and well (shiva i zdrava) in Africa. She's been working today, and she's having a great time. It's truly amazing that you can pick up the phone and call a number in Africa without any difficulties.