Holland Holiday

After an absence of three weeks, here's the African blogger again. Back in business! It is now Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting at Mundo's, the sports bar. On the screens there are two matches being played. On the large screen it's the rugby world cup, the biggest thing in this South African bar and on the small screen the final of the women's world cup football. As with the men the two countries which have played most finals face each other: Germany and Brazil. James just texted me saying that he's watching it too and it is as boring as women's basketball. Sorry ladies, but I have to agree.

I've been back now for a week after an extremely busy two weeks 'holiday' in Holland. It was so busy I heard myself say to someone: "I think I have an opening tomorrow morning between 10 and 11". This was supposed to be a holiday!!! But the two weeks were great! I know this is supposed to be a blog on Mozambique, but one entry on Europe couldn't hurt, could it?

As you know the trip started off on a wrong foot with the lack of fuel for my air plane, but I got lucky (thank you again, Mr Katanja). So I was back in Utrecht just an hour later than planned. To start off, that first day I already got shot to shambles. Death by needle as the medical services gave me a few more vaccine and tuberculoses related shots. After some more work related appointments I finally got to hang out with my friends at - where else? - Cafe Flater. That had been a long time and very enjoyable.

(By the way, I think a former Flater bar girl just 'fell' of the balcony of here actor boyfriend totally drugged and into a coma. You probably heard about it in the news this last week. It's on De Telegraaf with pictures and everything.Poor Kim).

Of course the highlights of the trip included live concerts of Prince and The Police and the visit to Spa Franchorchamps for the Formula 1 race! Let me start with Prince. As we were a bit late in booking a hotel, we ended up at a youth hostel. Last time I did that, I was actually a student visiting New York and staying at the local YMCA (No, that is not a gay bar for groups of guys dressed up as Indians, construction workers or police officers). Back then I swore never to do that again. Especially after I saw all the turds floating around the shared toilets just minutes after they actually cleaned it. Luckily this place, called the Vi.... ehh.... the Generator, was quite decent and relatively clean. Of course, I didn't dare touching a wall or shower curtain, but other than that, it worked out fine. Still again, the last time of course!

Prince was, well, Prince! Absolutely brilliant as a live artist. If you like live music you should definitely have done a Prince concert once in your life. Even if you don't like his music. What made it even better is that he only played his older songs, which increased the party feel as those are the songs all fans know by heart and let's face it, it was his best period. The absolute highlight though was at the end of the concert. It was over, lights were on, security was packing and people were leaving. When almost half of the people were gone, Prince just reappeared on stage wearing some sort of sweat suit and just started playing the piano. All by himself! People ran back, security guys had no clue what to do and we all went totally nuts. He played intros of his songs and then the audience did the lyrics. Absolutely brilliant!

There is actually some footage on his website of one of the London concerts. Check out a 10 minute set here.

Two days later it was time for The Police in Amsterdam. It was a good concert. They played all the favourites, Andy Summers is a great guitarist (better than I actually remembered) and it was the fulfilment of a childhood dream: seeing The Police live. And they really are one of the all-time best bands. Even now, it still sounds current and not old fashioned. However, it just is quite unfair to them (and I guess myself), to watch them live just two days after the purple one. But I'm happy I did.

Then it was time for the road trip with Frits. First to Maastricht on the Saturday, hang out there and party a bit and then, of course, the second leg to the Ardennes in Belgium for my first ever Formula 1 race. first of all, it is a very beautiful setting. A race track in the hilly forested area. Something wonderfully contrasting about seeing these mechanical wonders in between pine trees where you expect a grizzly bear to come at you at any second.

But what stuck most was the sheer impressiveness of these cars. They're fast, very very very fast! They are 10 times faster in real life than on television. And they make about 100 times more noise than you can even imagine! And so small! These are lawn mowers on some serious steroids! Rasmussen would race the Himalayas on this stuff!

And you know what I really missed during my stay in Maputo? That delicious 'Dutch' food! And I ate it all during these two weeks: Dim Sum, Pita Giros, Peking Duck Pancakes, Roti, Rijsttafel, Won Ton soup and of course the lovely Japanese twins Sushi & Sashimi! They're so yummie!

Then it was time to go back to Moz. After my two flights with Kenya Airways I had learned my lesson. This time I was doing my own luggage. First, no more KQ for me. Second, no thru-labelling of my suitcase. I flew KLM to Johannesburg and South African to Maputo, but I was getting my suitcase of the belt at JBG and checking it in again. It worked. The flights worked like a charm and I got back here on time and complete (meaning me and my suitcase made it together. we are so happy).