The presidential elections are less than two years away so candidates for both parties are starting to express interest in running.

One of the candidates that has announced last week to set up an exploratory committee is Barack Obama.

He is an interesting candidate because he is African American and relatively young and he has received a lot of positive buzz in the last year or so. I'd read some articles about him but never really heard him speak.

I found a nice TV fragment about him on YouTube: watch Barack Obama on the Daily Show.

On January 18th there was a big storm in the Netherlands, and it damaged the huisje near Tibor and Janneke's home in IJburg, Amsterdam.

The official name of the huisje is the Piet Hein Eek Huis. It was originally built as an ecological house for the Floriade exhibition in the Netherlands and placed on IJburg later. Tibor and Janneke together with their neighbors made sure the huisje stayed on IJburg as a place for social events.

Here is a movie of the damage that the storm did to the house. There is also a movie on the transfer of the huisje to the people in IJburg a while ago.

Let's hope the huisje will be repaired soon!

Last December Sasha and I made a trip from Bulgaria to Hungary, where we visited our friends Daniel, Erika and Martijn.

Daniel and Erika bought a new house a year ago and it was great to see their new place. Martijn had the same idea as we did to visit Hungary between Christmas and New Year's so this was a nice opportunity for all of us to meet.

When we arrived at Daniel & Erika's place Erika had cooked a delicious dinner and we spent our time talking and we had a very good time.

We stayed one night in Szolnok. It was short (never long enough!) but it was great to meet in person; much better than by phone or online. We left the next day around 3.00 pm to Budapest, and while we were planning to meet the next morning, that didn't work out due to a sudden illness.

Still, it was a very nice visit. Some pictures of our visit to Szolnok.